Tag: news

Authored by Robert Parry via ConsortiumNews.com,

When the Reagan administration launched peacetime “psyops” in the mid-1980s, it pulled in civilian agencies to help spread these still-ongoing techniques of deception and manipulation…

Declassified records from the Reagan presidential library show how the U.S. government enlisted civilian agencies in psychological operations designed to exploit information as a way to manipulate the behavior of targeted foreign audiences and, at least indirectly, American citizens.

A just-declassified sign-in sheet for a meeting of an inter-agency “psyops” committee on Oct. 24, 1986, shows representatives from the Agency for International Development (USAID), the State Department, and the U.S. Information Agency (USIA) joining officials from the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Department.

Some of the names of officials from the CIA and Pentagon remain classified more than three decades later. But the significance of the document is that it reveals how agencies that were traditionally assigned to global development (USAID) or international information (USIA) were incorporated into the U.S. government’s strategies for peacetime psyops, a military technique for breaking the will of a wartime enemy by spreading lies, confusion and terror.

Essentially, psyops play on the cultural weaknesses of a target population so they could be more easily controlled or defeated, but the Reagan administration was taking the concept outside the traditional bounds of warfare and applying psyops to any time when the U.S. government could claim some threat to America.

This disclosure – bolstered by other documents released earlier this year by archivists at the Reagan library in Simi Valley, California – is relevant to today’s frenzy over alleged “fake news” and accusations of “Russian disinformation” by reminding everyone that the U.S. government was active in those same areas.

The U.S. government’s use of disinformation and propaganda is, of course, nothing new. For instance, during the 1950s and 1960s, the USIA regularly published articles in friendly newspapers and magazines that appeared under fake names such as Guy Sims Fitch.

However, in the 1970s, the bloody Vietnam War and the Pentagon Papers’ revelations about U.S. government deceptions to justify that war created a crisis for American propagandists, their loss of credibility with the American people. Some of the traditional sources of U.S. disinformation, such as the CIA, also fell into profound disrepute.

This so-called “Vietnam Syndrome” – a skeptical citizenry dubious toward U.S. government claims about foreign conflicts – undermined President Reagan’s efforts to sell his plans for intervention in the civil wars then underway in Central America, Africa and elsewhere.

Reagan depicted Central America as a “Soviet beachhead,” but many Americans saw haughty Central American oligarchs and their brutal security forces slaughtering priests, nuns, labor activists, students, peasants and indigenous populations.

Reagan and his advisers realized that they had to turn those perceptions around if they hoped to get sustained funding for the militaries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras as well as for the Nicaraguan Contra rebels, the CIA-organized paramilitary force marauding around leftist-ruled Nicaragua.

Perception Management

So, it became a high priority to reshape public perceptions inside those targeted countries but even more importantly among the American people. That challenge led the Reagan administration to revitalize and reorganize methods for distributing propaganda and funding friendly foreign operatives, such as creation of the National Endowment for Democracy under neoconservative president Carl Gershman in 1983.

Another entity in this process was the Psychological Operations Committee formed in 1986 under Reagan’s National Security Council. In the years since, the U.S. administrations, both Republican and Democratic, have applied many of these same psyops principles, cherry-picking or manufacturing evidence to undermine adversaries and to solidify U.S. public support for Washington’s policies.

This reality – about the U.S. government creating its own faux reality to manipulate the American people and international audiences – should compel journalists in the West to treat all claims from Washington with a large grain of salt.

However, instead, we have seen a pattern of leading news outlets simply amplifying whatever U.S. agencies assert about foreign adversaries while denouncing skeptics as purveyors of “fake news” or enemy “propaganda.” In effect, the success of the U.S. psyops strategy can be measured by how Western mainstream media has stepped forward as the enforcement mechanism to ensure conformity to the U.S. government’s various information themes and narratives.

For instance, any questioning of the U.S. government’s narratives on, say, the current Syrian conflict, or the Ukraine coup of 2014, or Russian “hacking” of the 2016 U.S. election, or Iran’s status as “the leading sponsor of terrorism” is treated by the major Western news outlets as evidence that you are a “useful fool” at best, if not a willful enemy “propagandist” with loyalty to a foreign power, i.e., a traitor.

Leading mainstream media outlets and establishment-approved Web sites are now teaming up with Google, Facebook and other technology companies to develop algorithms to bury or remove content from the Internet that doesn’t march in lockstep with what is deemed to be true, which often simply follows what U.S. government agencies say is true.

Yet, the documentary evidence is now clear that the U.S. government undertook a well-defined strategy of waging psyops around the world with regular blowback of this propaganda and disinformation onto the American people via Western news agencies covering events in the affected countries.

During more recent administrations, euphemisms have been used to cloak the more pejorative phrase, “psychological operations” – such as “public diplomacy,” “strategic communications,” “perception management,” and “smart power.” But the serious push to expand this propaganda capability of the U.S. government can be traced back to the Reagan presidency.

The Puppet Master

Over the years, I’ve obtained scores of documents related to the psyops and related programs via “mandatory declassification reviews” of files belonging to Walter Raymond Jr., a senior CIA covert operations specialist who was transferred to Reagan’s National Security Council staff in 1982 to rebuild capacities for psyops, propaganda and disinformation.

Raymond, who has been compared to a character from a John LeCarré novel slipping easily into the woodwork, spent his years inside Reagan’s White House as a shadowy puppet master who tried his best to avoid public attention or – it seems – even having his picture taken.

From the tens of thousands of photographs from meetings at Reagan’s White House, I found only a couple showing Raymond – and he is seated in groups, partially concealed by other officials.

But Raymond appears to have grasped his true importance. In his NSC files, I found a doodle of an organizational chart that had Raymond at the top holding what looks like the crossed handles used by puppeteers to control the puppets below them. The drawing fits the reality of Raymond as the behind-the-curtains operative who was controlling the various inter-agency task forces that were responsible for implementing psyops and other propaganda strategies.

In Raymond’s files, I found an influential November 1983 paper, written by Col. Alfred R. Paddock Jr. and entitled “Military Psychological Operations and US Strategy,” which stated: “the planned use of communications to influence attitudes or behavior should, if properly used, precede, accompany, and follow all applications of force. Put another way, psychological operations is the one weapons system which has an important role to play in peacetime, throughout the spectrum of conflict, and during the aftermath of conflict.”

Paddock continued, “Military psychological operations are an important part of the ‘PSYOP Totality,’ both in peace and war. … We need a program of psychological operations as an integral part of our national security policies and programs. … The continuity of a standing interagency board or committee to provide the necessary coordinating mechanism for development of a coherent, worldwide psychological operations strategy is badly needed.”

One declassified “top secret” document in Raymond’s file – dated Feb. 4, 1985, from Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger – urged the fuller implementation of President Reagan’s National Security Decision Directive 130, which was signed on March 6, 1984, and which authorized peacetime psyops by expanding psyops beyond its traditional boundaries of active military operations into peacetime situations in which the U.S. government could claim some threat to national interests.

“This approval can provide the impetus to the rebuilding of a necessary strategic capability, focus attention on psychological operations as a national – not solely military – instrument, and ensure that psychological operations are fully coordinated with public diplomacy and other international information activities,” Weinberger’s document said.

An Inter-Agency Committee

This broader commitment to psyops led to the creation of a Psychological Operations Committee (POC) that was to be chaired by a representative of Reagan’s National Security Council with a vice chairman from the Pentagon and with representatives from CIA, the State Department and USIA.

“This group will be responsible for planning, coordinating and implementing psychological operations activities in support of United States policies and interests relative to national security,” according to a “secret” addendum to a memo, dated March 25, 1986, from Col. Paddock, the psyops advocate who had become the U.S. Army’s Director for Psychological Operations.

 

“The committee will provide the focal point for interagency coordination of detailed contingency planning for the management of national information assets during war, and for the transition from peace to war,” the addendum added.

 

“The POC shall seek to ensure that in wartime or during crises (which may be defined as periods of acute tension involving a threat to the lives of American citizens or the imminence of war between the U.S. and other nations), U.S. international information elements are ready to initiate special procedures to ensure policy consistency, timely response and rapid feedback from the intended audience.”

In other words, the U.S. government could engage in psyops virtually anytime because there are always “periods of acute tension involving a threat to the lives of American citizens.”

The Psychological Operations Committee took formal shape with a “secret” memo from Reagan’s National Security Advisor John Poindexter on July 31, 1986. Its first meeting was called on Sept. 2, 1986, with an agenda that focused on Central America and “How can other POC agencies support and complement DOD programs in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica and Panama.” The POC was also tasked with “Developing National PSYOPS Guidelines” for “formulating and implementing a national PSYOPS program.” (Underlining in original)

Raymond was named a co-chair of the POC along with CIA officer Vincent Cannistraro, who was then Deputy Director for Intelligence Programs on the NSC staff, according to a “secret” memo from Deputy Under Secretary of Defense Craig Alderman Jr.

The memo also noted that future POC meetings would be briefed on psyops projects for the Philippines and Nicaragua, with the latter project codenamed “Niagara Falls.” The memo also references a “Project Touchstone,” but it is unclear where that psyops program was targeted.

Another “secret” memo dated Oct. 1, 1986, co-authored by Raymond, reported on the POC’s first meeting on Sept. 10, 1986, and noted that “The POC will, at each meeting, focus on an area of operations (e.g., Central America, Afghanistan, Philippines).”

The POC’s second meeting on Oct. 24, 1986 – for which the sign-in sheet was just released – concentrated on the Philippines, according to a Nov. 4, 1986 memo also co-authored by Raymond.

But the Reagan administration’s primary attention continued to go back to Central America, including “Project Niagara Falls,” the psyops program aimed at Nicaragua. A “secret” Pentagon memo from Deputy Under Secretary Alderman on Nov. 20, 1986, outlined the work of the 4th Psychological Operations Group on this psyops plan “to help bring about democratization of Nicaragua,” by which the Reagan administration meant a “regime change.” The precise details of “Project Niagara Falls” were not disclosed in the declassified documents but the choice of codename suggested a cascade of psyops.

Key Operatives

Other documents from Raymond’s NSC file shed light on who other key operatives in the psyops and propaganda programs were. For instance, in undated notes on efforts to influence the Socialist International, including securing support for U.S. foreign policies from Socialist and Social Democratic parties in Europe, Raymond cited the efforts of “Ledeen, Gershman,” a reference to neoconservative operative Michael Ledeen and Carl Gershman, another neocon who has served as president of the U.S.-government-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED), from 1983 to the present. (Underlining in original.)

Although NED is technically independent of the U.S. government, it receives the bulk of its funding (now about $100 million a year) from Congress. Documents from the Reagan archives also make clear that NED was organized as a way to replace some of the CIA’s political and propaganda covert operations, which had fallen into disrepute in the 1970s. Earlier released documents from Raymond’s file show CIA Director William Casey pushing for NED’s creation and Raymond, Casey’s handpicked man on the NSC, giving frequent advice and direction to Gershman. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “CIA’s Hidden Hand in ‘Democracy’ Groups.”]

While the initials USAID conjure up images of well-meaning Americans helping to drill wells, teach school and set up health clinics in impoverished nations, USAID also has kept its hand in financing friendly journalists around the globe.

In 2015, USAID issued a fact sheet summarizing its work financing “journalism education, media business development, capacity building for supportive institutions, and strengthening legal-regulatory environments for free media.” USAID estimated its budget for “media strengthening programs in over 30 countries” at $40 million annually, including aiding “independent media organizations and bloggers in over a dozen countries,”

In Ukraine before the 2014 coup, USAID offered training in “mobile phone and website security,” which sounds a bit like an operation to thwart the local government’s intelligence gathering, an ironic position for the U.S. with its surveillance obsession, including prosecuting whistleblowers based on evidence that they talked to journalists.

USAID, working with billionaire George Soros’s Open Society, also funded the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), which engages in “investigative journalism” that usually goes after governments that have fallen into disfavor with the United States and then are singled out for accusations of corruption.

The USAID-funded OCCRP also collaborates with Bellingcat, an online investigative website founded by blogger Eliot Higgins, who is now a senior non-resident fellow of the Atlantic Council, a pro-NATO think tank that receives funding from the U.S. and allied governments.

Higgins has spread misinformation on the Internet, including discredited claims implicating the Syrian government in the sarin attack in 2013 and directing an Australian TV news crew to what looked to be the wrong location for a video of a BUK anti-aircraft battery as it supposedly made its getaway to Russia after the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in July 2014.

Despite his dubious record of accuracy, Higgins has gained mainstream acclaim, in part, because his “findings” always match up with the propaganda theme that the U.S. government and its Western allies are peddling. Though most genuinely independent bloggers are ignored by the mainstream media, Higgins has found his work touted by both The New York Times and The Washington Post, and Google has included Bellingcat on its First Draft coalition, which will determine which news will be deemed real and which fake.

In other words, the U.S. government has a robust strategy for deploying direct and indirect agents of influence who are now influencing how the titans of the Internet will structure their algorithms to play up favored information and disappear disfavored information.

A Heritage of Lies

During the first Cold War, the CIA and the U.S. Information Agency refined the art of “information warfare,” including pioneering some of its current features like having ostensibly “independent” entities and cut-outs present U.S. propaganda to a cynical public that would reject much of what it hears from government but may trust “citizen journalists” and “bloggers.”

USIA, which was founded in 1953 and gained new life in the 1980s under its Reagan-appointed director Charles Wick, was abolished in 1999, but its propaganda functions were largely folded into the new office of Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, which became a new fount of disinformation.

For instance, in 2014, President Obama’s Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy Richard Stengel engaged in a series of falsehoods and misrepresentations regarding Russia’s RT network. In one instance, he claimed that the RT had made the “ludicrous assertion” that the U.S. had invested $5 billion in the regime change project in Ukraine. But that was an obvious reference to a public speech by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland on Dec. 13, 2013, in which she said “we have invested more than $5 billion” to help Ukraine to achieve its “European aspirations.”

Nuland also was a leading proponent of the Ukraine coup, personally cheering on the anti-government rioters. In an intercepted phone call with U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt, Nuland discussed how “to glue” or “midwife this thing” and who the new leaders would be. She picked Arseniy Yatsenyuk – “Yats is the guy” – who ended up as Prime Minister after elected President Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown.

Despite all the evidence of a U.S.-backed coup, The New York Times simply ignored the evidence, including the Nuland-Pyatt phone call, to announce that there never was a coup. The Times’ obeisance to the State Department’s false narrative is a good example of how the legacy of Walter Raymond, who died in 2003, extends to the present.

Over several decades, even as the White House changed hands from Republicans to Democrats, the momentum created by Raymond continued to push the peacetime psyops strategy forward.

In more recent years, the wording of the program may have changed to more pleasing euphemisms. But the idea is the same: how you can use psyops, propaganda and disinformation to sell U.S. government policies abroad and at home.

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Chris Hedges and David North via TruthDig.com,

 

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This week, the U.S. and Israel announced that they would be withdrawing from UNESCO, citing 'continuing anti-Israel bias'.

As Statista's Niall McCarthy notes, the move comes as a major blow to the organization which is known for designating cultural sites around the world such as the Grand Canyon or ancient Palmyra in Syria.

The U.S. has been expected to pay the bulk of UNESCO's budget for years and it cancelled its financial contributions back in 2011 in protest of Palestine's admission as a full member.

In the years since, it has amassed significant arrears of over $500 million…

You will find more statistics at Statista

This year, the UK, Japan and Brazil have all failed to pay their contributions so far, accrueing nearly $70 million of arrears between them.

This isn't the first time the U.S. has turned its back on UNESCO.

The country also left the organization under Ronald Reagan in the 1980s before rejoining under George W. Bush in 2003.

The latest withdrawal will come into effect at the very end of 2018.

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Despite a disappointing US CPI report on Friday, which saw core inflation miss once again despite an expected spike due to the “hurricane effect”, moments ago China reported that in September, its CPI printed at 1.6% Y/Y, in line with expectations, and down from, 1.8% in August largely due to high year-over-year base effects, but it was PPI to come in smoking hot, jumping from 6.3% last month to 6.9% Y/Y, slamming expectations of a 6.4% print and just shy of the highest forecast, driven by the recent surge in commodity costs and strong PMI surveys.

While there has been no reaction in the Yuan, either on shore or off, the stronger than expected PPI has pushed China’s 10Y yield to the highest in 30 months, or since April of 2015.

Adding fuel to the flame was PBOC head Zhou Xiaochuan who said earlier that China’s GDP would pick up from the 6.9%  figure recorded in the first six months of the year “thanks to a boost from household spending”, according to a synopsis of his comments at the G30 International Banking Seminar posted to the People’s Bank of China website on Monday.” The reason why his comments have impacted the long-end is that the reported, and completely fabricated number, is higher than the previous consensus forecast of a goalseeked Q3 Chinese GDP of 6.8%.

And while spiking Chinese yields wouldn’t be concerned if China was indeed deleveraging as the Communist Party and the PBOC claim it is doing, the reality is, of course, that China continues to add more and more debt as the latest weekend credit numbers out of the PBOC revealed. As Bloomberg reported earlier, China’s broadest credit aggregated, Total Social Financing, jumped to 1.82 trillion yuan, or over a quarter trillion dollars in September ($276BN to be precise), vs a Wall Street estimate of 1.57 trillion yuan and 1.48 trillion yuan the prior month. New yuan loans also beat expectations, at 1.27 trillion yuan, versus a projected 1.2 trillion yuan, while for the first time in months, the broader M2 money supply did not hit fresh fresh record lows, and instead beat expectations, rising to 9.2% from an all time low of 8.9%.

Just as notable, after China’s shadow banking credit appeared to have finally been tamed after several months of contraction, shadow banking finance saw a pick-up in Sept (trust loans, entrusted loans and undiscounted bills), which accounted for 22% of Sept TSF vs. 18% in August. This was due mostly to milder deleveraging pace post the completion of self-checking of CBRC regs.

Commenting on the latest burst of credit creation by China, Kenneth Courtis, chairman of Starfort Investment Holdings and a former Asia vice chairman for Goldman Sachs Group, said that “Momentum continues to be very strong. Loan demand of the private sector has finally turned up in recent months.”

It also means that just two weeks after the PBOC cuts its RRR for most banks in an unexpected monetary easing on Sept 30, “there is little hope of further policy easing in the fourth quarter as the monetary policy is very accommodative,” said Zhou Hao, an economist at Commerzbank AG in Singapore. “There could be even a tightening bias.”

Of course, confirming what we have been saying for years, Christopher Balding who is an associated professor in Peking Univeristy in Shenzhen said that “deleveraging is not happening if we look at any measure of credit growth” and that “lending in 2017 has actually accelerated significantly from 2016.” This is shown in the chart below, which confirms that to keep its GDP at 6.9% or some other goalseeked number, China has to inject more than double that amount in credit every single month, in this case 15%. The biggest question is what happens to China’s credit impulse after the 19th Party Congress which begins on Wednesday.

When looking at the boost in household spending noted above by Zhou Xiaochuan, all of this is the result of a surge in household lending: “Household short-term loans have increased too rapidly, with some funds being invested in stock and property markets,” said Wen Bin, a researcher at China Minsheng Banking Corp. in Beijing. “Regulators have started to pay attention to the sector and required banks to strengthen credit review. I think the momentum will show signs of slowing in the fourth quarter.”

Commenting on the recent burst in Chinese household leverage, where short-term household loans soared to 1.53 trillion yuan, versus 524.7 billion yuan this time one year ago, Deutsche Bank’s Hans Fan writes that “noticeably China households are levering up quickly. We welcome the personal loans driven by genuine consumption growth, but there may be a notable portion of short-term consumer loans that were used to finance property purchases, which in our view contains higher risks.” 

Some more details:

A breakdown by borrower suggests household and corporate sectors continued to lever up, making up 31%/41% of new system credit in Sept (35%/38% in Aug). For households, while mortgage growth had slowed, s/t retail loan growth accelerated to 17.6% yoy in Sept (vs. 15.8% in Aug or 7.3% in 1Q17) to make up c.10% of credit creation. We attribute this to both decent consumption growth with rising credit penetration and property-related lending. We estimate 1/3 of new consumption loans may be used to finance purchases of second homes. However, PBOC and local CBRC offices have started to crack down on property-related consumer loans in September and we expect consumer loan growth momentum to moderate in the coming months.

However, as so often happens in China, this surging leverage “sugar high” will not last, as “regulatory crackdown on property-related consumer loans together with monetary policy staying neutral lead us to expect slower credit growth in 4Q17.” The implications for China’s economy and the global credit impulse will be adverse, and will lead to a global economic slowdown just as all central banks enter tightening moment together.

Finally, for those wondering what the biggest timebomb in the global financial system was, is and will be until such time as it finally blows up, here is a lovely up close schematic courtesy of Deutsche Bank.

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Submitted by Elijah Magnier, Middle East based chief international war correspondent for Al Rai Media

The US has raised the level of tension with Iran without taking any concrete steps to pull out of the Iranian nuclear deal. The reason why Trump is expected to limit himself to verbal abuse and continue threatening hostile measures against Tehran without executing them is fundamentally to avoid a breach between the US and the EU. The Nuclear deal is not bilateral, so the withdrawal of the US theoretically cannot scupper it. Nevertheless Iran is likely to consider the deal totally void if the US pulls out, with all that that implies. So the US continues its aggressive verbal campaigns against Iran, confusing the Europeans, who rightly fail to predict what decisions this US President is capable of adopting in the medium to long term.

However, the target is not only Iran but also its main ally and military arm in the Middle East: the Lebanese Hezbollah. The US posted bounties on two Hezbollah members of the military council (the highest military authority within the organisation), Haj Fuad Shukr and Haj Talal Hamiyeh, allocating “$12 million to whomsoever is able to offer information” that brings these two to justice. The US bounty purposely showed old photos of the two men to avoid revealing the intelligence sources which have provided the most recent ones. The main question remains: which country is going to take advantage of such an offer, and how?

Hezbollah troops at a rally and speech. Image source: Anadolu

Iran is not longer interested in what Donald Trump will do in relation to the nuclear deal. The Iranian leadership has created hundreds of commercial companies during the embargo, mainly in Oman, Dubai, and Abu Dhabi, to counter over 30 years of US sanctions and embargo. Moreover, Iran used gold and oil in exchange of goods and technology and managed to hold on for many years, accepting to buy at a higher price in the open market.

Today the nuclear deal has opened the thirsty Iranian market and connected it to the European markets. The EU is unwilling to lose that now – especially with the financial crisis the old continent has been going through since 2008 – all because Trump, the US President (alone among all the signatories) considers unilaterally that the “spirit of the nuclear deal has been violated”. The US would like to see the Iranian missile program halted and the supply of weapons to Hezbollah cease: this would also please Saudi Arabia and Israel. However these issues are considered by all the countries who signed (including Iran but excepting the US) as unrelated to, and excluded from, the nuclear deal.

Saudi Arabian officials visited recently Washington, offering unlimited financial assistance as long as the US helps to destroy Hezbollah and limit Iran’s influence in the Middle East. In fact, Hezbollah is considered responsible for spoiling the game of the international and regional countries who were supporting a regime change in Syria. Therefore, many would like to see Hezbollah, the strong arm of Iran, cut off completely because this would transform Iran into a giant without arms.

Moreover, during the Saudi Arabian King Salman’s visit to Moscow, the monarchy told the Russian President Vladimir Putin that all groups operating in Syria, such as the “Islamic State” (ISIS), al-Qaeda and Hezbollah are considered terrorist and should be eliminated. Putin, despite the King’s generous financial offer of contributions to invest in Russian products was very clear: any country or group fighting in Syria following the request of the legitimate government is not a terrorist group. The “head of Hezbollah” was not on the table in the Russian capital.

As for as the US rewards are concerned, the Hezbollah leaders of the first, second and third ranks of the organization are moving freely between Beirut, Damascus, Tehran and Baghdad according to the requirements of the “war on terror” the organization is involved in against ISIS and al-Qaeda in Syria and Iraq.

No authority – neither the Lebanese authorities nor the US authorities – would dare to arrest any of Hezbollah’s leaders without suffering direct consequences that would backfire against their solders or interests in the Middle East. Abduction (or capture) is expected to be treated similarly and rejected without hesitation.

The most recent “incident” occurred in Iraq when Washington expressed its desire – when Baghdad asked all US forces to pull out from Iraq under President Barack Obama – to take the Lebanese Hezbollah commander, Ali Moussa Daqduq, to ??America. Hezbollah then sent a clear message to the US administration – through Iraqi leaders – that taking Daqdouq away from Iraq meant that every US soldier and officer in the Middle East, mainly in Iraq, would be held hostage.

This prompted Washington to turn a blind eye and leave the Iraqis to decide the fate of the Hezbollah officer who had participated in the killing of five American soldiers and officers in an impressively planned operation in Karbala. In January 2007 Daqdouq – along with Moqtada al-Sadr’s resistance group AsaebAhl al-Haq – used bulletproof black cars belonging to an Iraqi minister that the same US had given him as a donation. The fact that Daqdouq was on board facilitated the entry of the convoy into the government building without raising the suspicions of the American forces stationed inside the building.

Hezbollah is aware there are many American soldiers and officers who travel freely within Lebanon, mainly operating with the Lebanese Army. Therefore, the organization is reassured that the United States is conscious of Hezbollah’s capability for responding by reciprocity and will not leave their men prisoners without an action or reaction. Hezbollah thereby considers its own leaders safe from kidnapping, though not from assassination attempts.

Thus, the US ”bounties” on the two Hezbollah commanders aim to please the US’s Middle Eastern allies (mainly Israel and Saudi Arabia) saying “we are all in one boat against Hezbollah’s presence and operational capabilities”. Indeed, it shows how Washington is serious about taking political – rather than operational – measures to limit Hezbollah and Iran in the Middle East. Both are considered enemies of the US and its close Israeli and Saudi Arabia associates.

Tel Aviv – like Washington – is limiting itself to adopting a threatening rhetoric, talking about “a nearby war” against Hezbollah but without taking the narrative further or adopting any belligerent steps besides the rumbling of its drums.

In the unlikely event of war between Israel and Hezbollah, there is no doubt that Israel has the destructive military capability to bring back Lebanon to the “Stone Age,” as it claims. However, this is a situation that the Lebanese have already experience of since the civil war in1975 and the two (1982 and 2006) Israeli wars. In these wars, Israel launched attacks and destroyed the Lebanese infrastructure, killing thousands of civilians and hundreds of Hezbollah militants.

However, there is also no doubt that Hezbollah would give Israel a taste of a similar “Stone Age” scenario, with its tens of thousands of rockets and missiles, among them some of the very highest accuracy. The Israeli population however is not accustomed to such a harsh possible scenario: Hezbollah missiles will hit the infrastructure (bridges, concentration locations, markets, water, electricity, chemical plants and more), harbours, airports, military barracks and institutions, and civilian homes.

It is true that Israeli political and military leaders are not naïve and will never exchange their own security against economic and financial support (which was offered by Saudi Arabia to destroy Hezbollah), no matter how substantial the offer. Israel won’t exchange a public diplomatic relationship with Saudi Arabia and most of the Gulf countries to give up its own safety and the well-being of its people. Israeli commanders are fully aware of the unique military experience which Hezbollah developed in Syria and Iraq, and how Hezbollah is using new underground caches for its long-range accurate missiles on the Lebanese-Israeli borders.

Nevertheless, Israel and the US are capable of carrying out security and intelligence attacks to strike Hezbollah leaders, as both countries have done in the past with the late Hezbollah Secretary General Sayed Abbas al-Moussawi, with Sayed Hasan Nasrallah’s vice Imad Mughnniyeh and against other minor positions within the leadership such as Hussein al-Lakis, Samir Qantar, Jihad Mughnniyeh, and others.

The “account” is still open between Hezbollah and Israel. The Lebanese organization has certainly tried similar intelligence strikes against Israel. However, several attempts have failed due to poor planning and a US-Israeli intelligence breach of Hezbollah security by an officer involved in the external operations unit.

But the balance of terror between Hezbollah and Israel remains: Hezbollah feels more at ease in Syria today and is able to dedicate more resources to the fight against Israel and its allies in the region.

Thus, American pressure remains within the limits of the inability of anyone to take it further: there is no country or entity that wants to confront a rival like Hezbollah, trained in the art of war and politics and an essential player in the Middle Eastern and international arenas.

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News of mass “performance-based departures” at Tesla, reported yesterday by the San Jose Mercury News has underscored the fact that Elon Musk and company have burned through a ridiculous amount of cash in the past two quarters alone, raising questions about why the company would choose to cut nearly 10% of its workforce when the assembly line for the company’s new Model 3 sedan has reportedly not yet been completed, and production remains woefully behind schedule as employees at the company’s Freemont factory have been forced to piece together the cars by hand.

And with Elon Musk reeling from a series of embarrassing revelations, Bloomberg is here to remind us of one of the many reasons why Tesla will never become a global automotive behemoth.

So far, the US government’s generous tax incentives for buyers of electric vehicles have helped bolster Tesla’s sales – a strategy that has been employed across Europe – and have sustained the market’s misguided conviction that Tesla will one day become a profitable enterprise.

But unfortunately, those incentives aren’t nearly enough to create the infrastructure to support Morgan Stanley’s forecast of 526 million electric vehicles operating globally by 2040. Building the charging stations and other infrastructure necessary would cost an astonishing $2.7 trillion, much of which would probably need to be allocated by governments.

Morgan Stanley says the problem requires a mix of private and public funding across regions and sectors. The investment bank’s strategists added that any auto company or government with aggressive targets would be unfeasible unless the infrastructure is in place.

As we’ve noted time and time again, the electric-vehicle industry is essentially being support by generous – and borderline anti-competitive – government subsidies. In China, which has aggressively pushed EVs as a potential remedy for its pollution problem, communist party officials have hit on an effective strategy for forcing consumers to favor electric vehicles. In Shanghai, where tens of thousands of people enter monthly lotteries for just a handful of license plates, consumers who buy electric cars are given license plates with little resistance.

Morgan Stanley expects China to become the largest EV market in the world by 2040, accounting for about a third of global infrastructure spending, Bloomberg reports.

But with Trump in office, it’s unlikely the US will prove so amendable to subsidizing Elon Musk’s ambitions for much longer.

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Authored by He Huifeng via The South China Morning Post,

In an inglorious echo of 2007 America, many young homeowners in booming cities owe more than they earn, and some even falsify salary details to get bigger mortgages…

Young Chinese like Eli Mai, a sales manager in Guangzhou, and Wendy Wang, an executive in Shenzhen, are borrowing as much money as possible to buy boomtown flats even though they cannot afford the repayments.

Behind the dream of property ownership they share with many like-minded friends lies an uninterrupted housing price rally in major Chinese cities that dates back to former premier Zhu Rongji’s privatisation of urban housing in the late 1990s.

Rapid urbanisation, combined with unprecedented monetary easing in the past decade, has resulted in runaway property inflation in cities like Shenzhen, where home prices in many projects have doubled or even tripled in the past two years.

City residents in their 20s and 30s view property as a one-way bet because they’ve never known prices to drop. At the same time, property inflation has seen the real purchasing power of their money rapidly diminish.

“Almost all my friends born since the 1980s and 1990s are racing to buy homes, while those who already have one are planning to buy a second,” Mai, 33, said.

 

“Very few can be at ease when seeing rents and home prices rise so strongly, and they will continue to rise in a scary way.”

The rush of millions young middle-class Chinese like Mai into the property market has created a hysteria that eerily resembles the housing crisis that struck the United States a decade ago. Thanks to the easy credit that has spurred the housing boom, many young Chinese have abandoned the frugal traditions of earlier generations and now lead a lifestyle beyond their financial means.

The build-up of household and other debt in China has also sparked widespread concern about the health of the world’s second largest economy.

 

The Chinese leadership headed by President Xi Jinping has taken a note of the problem and launched an unprecedented campaign in the second half of last year to curb home price rises in major cities by raising down payment requirements, disqualifying some buyers and squeezing the bank credit available for home buyers. The campaign is still deepening, with five more cities introducing rules last weekend that will freeze some property deals.

Meanwhile, China’s financial regulators have launched an investigation of “consumer loans” in big cities because a torrent of consumer credit flowed into the property market after the government imposed restrictions on mortgage loans.

Government policies are also protecting the interests of homeowners. City governments have squeezed land supply to keep land prices high and made secondary market trading less attractive, with new home buyers left to compete for a few new developments. Meanwhile, there is no property tax, which encourages homeowners to hold on to appreciating property assets.

The result has been skyrocketing housing prices in Shenzhen, Beijing and Shanghai, where property prices can match those in Hong Kong or London.

The lesson was that “if you don’t buy a flat today, you will never be able to afford it”, Wang, 29, said.

Property ownership was now increasingly what separated the rich and the poor, the haves and have-nots, and the privileged and the underdogs, she said.

And that means young people like Mai and Wang are scrambling for credit to buy property.

In May last year, after the value of his first flat, a 70 square metre unit in Guangzhou’s Panyu subdistrict, soared from 900,000 yuan (US$136,500) to 1.2 million yuan in just a few months, Mai, who has a monthly salary of 15,000 yuan, decided to raise the down payment for a new property to cash in on the booming housing market.

In June, he emptied his and his parents’ 300,000 yuan in savings and incurred debts to friends to muster the 50 per cent down payment for a 2.4 million yuan flat.

To meet the mortgage repayments of about 12,000 yuan a month on the two flats, and other debts to friends, he used the first flat as collateral for a loan about 800,000 yuan and got 200,000 yuan in cash from a short-term consumer loans supposedly for a car.

Mai got the money easily from local banks and financial institutions. Now, he needs to pay about 25,000 yuan a month for loans totalling around 3 million yuan, including around 4,000 yuan in mortgage payments for his first flat, about 7,300 yuan in mortgage payments for his second flat, nearly 9,000 yuan on the secondary mortgage for his first flat, 3,800 yuan for car loans, and the rest to service debts to family members and friends.

In Wang’s case, she borrowed 500,000 yuan from her parents, relatives and friends and sourced another 300,000 yuan from credit cards and consumer loans to pull together 800,000 yuan late last year for the minimum down payment on a small flat.

She also borrowed 1.8 million yuan from a bank, with monthly mortgage payments of about 9,600 yuan – 80 per cent of her monthly income – for 30 years. To help cover the mortgage, her mother, a retiree who lives 4,000km away in a city in northeastern China, remits the bulk of her pension to Wang.

“The debts are huge to me,” Wang said. “But a person without a flat has no future in Shenzhen.”

In China’s world of debt, household debt is supposed to be much safer than corporate or local government debt. Outstanding household loans were the equivalent of 44.4 per cent of China’s gross domestic output last year, more than double the ratio in 2008 but much lower than in most advanced economies. The ratio is 87 per cent in Britain, 79 per cent in the United States and 62 per cent in Japan.

 

But the figure could be misleading because it failed to reflect regional differences and it under-reported many hidden family debts in China, a recent report by the Institute for Advanced Research at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics said.

Because Chinese household incomes were growing more slowly than property prices, families were facing serious liquidity problems, with increasing amounts of income and savings sucked into the property market, Chen Yuanyuan, a co-author of the report, told the South China Morning Post.

Real household debt would have been the equivalent of at least 60 per cent of China’s GDP at the end of last year, Chen said, warning that the rapid rise in household debt was undermining China’s economic growth prospects.

China’s crackdown on grey rhinos won’t reduce its debt burden, it will only redistribute it

“If it goes on, as early as in 2020, the ratio of mortgage debt and disposable income in China will reach the same peak level [127 per cent] as the US [in 2007] on the eve of the subprime crisis,” Chen said.

The boom in China’s housing market since 2015 was the result of soaring household debt leverage, Jiang Chao, an analyst at Haitong Securities in Shanghai, said in a research note last month.

China’s household debt to household disposable income ratio had soared to 90 per cent from less than 35 per cent in 2007, he said. Meanwhile, its household savings to household disposable income ratio had dropped from more than 30 per cent in the early 2000s to about 15 per cent last year.

The latest data from the People’s Bank of China, the country’s central bank, shows that at the end of May, domestic household savings deposits totalled around 63 trillion yuan while the amount of outstanding personal loans had soared to 36.4 trillion yuan, up from 8.8 trillion yuan in 2010.

The Chinese tradition of saving money for a rainy day has been uprooted, and it’s not just that the younger generation, like Wang and Mai, are trying to spend before they earn. Their property buying frenzy has also been endorsed by their parents.

“My mum is happy about my decision,” Wang said.

Shenzhen is one of the most indebted cities in China. Data from Lianjia, the country’s biggest property agent, shows that Shenzhen property buyers took on a record amount of debt last year, with mortgage loans a feature of more than 93 per cent of purchases.

Property buyers in the city spent an average of about 3.7 million yuan on their flat in the first half of last year, with mortgage loans averaging 2.38 million yuan, Lianjia said, resulting in an average loan-to-value ratio of just over 64 per cent. In Hong Kong, banks’ average loan-to-value ratio for new mortgages was 51 per cent in December, according to Standard & Poor’s, while in the US last year it was 55.5 per cent, according to Statista, a leading Web-based data and statistics provider.

China’s first home buyers are, on average, younger than those elsewhere in the world, with most of those in Shenzhen in their 20s and 30s. On average, they need to pay about 10,600 yuan a month for 30 years for their first flat – or 13,000 yuan for 20 years – based on the current mortgage interest rate of 4.9 per cent. Meanwhile, the average white-collar salary in Shenzhen was 8,315 yuan last year and 8,892 yuan in the first quarter of this year, according to Zhaopin.com, a leading Chinese jobs website.

“Chinese banks typically allow homebuyers to use up to half of their monthly incomes to repay mortgages,” said Julia Fan, a former state bank manager.

 

“But the market in cities like Shenzhen and Shanghai is full of buyers whose out-of-pocket property spending is much more than their actual monthly salaries.”

Bill Duan, a manager at a Chinese investment bank, said it was not unknown for Chinese buyers to exaggerate their salaries or use fake payslips when taking out mortgages and loans, “and this may be when the problem starts”.

“It’s known among industry insiders that local branches of the banks in many cities do not always double-check salary details with employers, even though the applicants offered salary certificates for several times the city’s average wages,” he said.

Mai and Wang have been playing it fast and loose to deal with their debts.

Mai has lent 600,000 of the 800,000 yuan he got from a bank after using his first flat as collateral to a money shark promising an annualised return of 20 per cent. Wang gave the bank fake documents showing her monthly income was 18,000 yuan – about 1.6 times her actual salary. It did not ask any questions.

Neither see any problem, because the value of their underlying assets, the flats, have risen.

The value of Mai’s two flats rose from 3.8 million yuan last year to 6.4 million yuan last month, while the value of Wang’s unit is now 2.93 million yuan, up from 2.6 million yuan.

“I think I made a smart and successful decision to leverage debt,” Mai said.

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On the heels of San Franciso Fed Governor John Williams' warning  that The Fed "doesn't want there to be excesses in financial markets… " Janet Yellen has reiterated her concerns that markets are a bit toppy…

Market valuations “are at high level in historical terms” when assessed on metrics akin to price-earnings ratios, warned Fed Chair Janet Yellen in response to a question on an IMF panel in Washington, but was careful to add that "overall financial stability risks in the U.S. remain moderate."

 

"Prospects for U.S. fiscal stimulus have buoyed sentiment but not yet had much impact on spending or investment," she said.

 

“Broader financial stability risks depend on more than just asset prices and it may also be important just why asset valuations are high. So one factor that clearly comes into play is an environment of low interest rates and central bankers like many market participants have been adjusting our notions of what” interest rates are likely to be in the longer term.

So – to sum up – The Fed doesn't want excesses… Yellen thinks stock valuations are stretched… but don't worry coz rates are low (although we are dedicated to raising them) and financial stability (despite record high corporate leverage and record low spreads) is not a problem.

Well… The market has almost never been this expensive…

As Peter Boockvar warns: "Almost there. S&P 500 price to sales ratio is just 4% from March 2000 peak."

Additionally, Draghi and Kuroda were also said they saw little evidence of frothiness in markets.

Others in Washington were less sanguine…

The market “feels as benign in 2017 as it felt in 2006,” said Jes Staley, the chief executive of Barclays Plc, referencing the eve of the crisis.

Yellen also added in a subtle jab at Trump that while prospects for U.S. fiscal stimulus have buoyed sentiment but not yet had much impact on spending or investment…

"It is a source of uncertainty," Yellen says of fiscal policy changes, "we've taken," as many households have, "a kind of wait-and-see attitude."

Of course, The Fed head being worried about stock valuations is a nothing-burger for the mainstream.

Since Janet Yellen's first warning in July 2014: "Equity market valuations appear stretched"

• S&P +29%
• Nasdaq +53%
• DOW +33%

So did Janet just give the market a reverse-psychology BTFD signal? If she did, not everyone's buying it…

Swiss Finance Minister Ueli Maurer said in an interview with Swiss newspaper SonntagsBlick that:

"the only question regarding next crisis is 'when and where', not 'if'…"

And finally Mexico's central bank governor Agustin Carstens said Sunday on a panel in Washington, where he participated in IMF meetings that some emerging-market assets may be priced too richly and governments need to prepare for contingencies…

A search for yield has dominated asset allocation for too long, and some severe problems could emerge when portfolios are re-balanced, Carstens says.

 

A lack of liquidity can cause severe reactions in some emerging markets, he says.

He's got a point!

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In a major escalation involving the disputed Iraqi Kurdish region, which last month declared independence following a referendum which was not recognized by any of its neighbors or Baghdad, Iraqi state media reported that on Monday morning Iraqi federal troops entered territories occupied by the nation’s Kurds, with the FT confirming that Iraqi forces moved to enter the city of Kirkuk. The Iraqi advance comes three years after Kurdish militias seized the areas outside their autonomous region as a pretext to defend against an advance by the Islamic State extremist group.

Al-Iraqiya TV said the military, anti-terrorist units and federal police have taken control of “vast areas” around the oil-rich city of Kirkuk which has long been one of the country’s deepest faultlines, claimed by both Erbil and Baghdad. While the TV report said the Iraqis advanced without firing a shot and “without opposition from Kurdish Peshmerga”, unconfirmed social media reports suggest that at least one peshmerga has been killed in the fighting:

First casualty in Kurdish, Baghdad/militia fighting around Kirkuk. https://t.co/GWx5LYzy1E

— Samuel Oakford (@samueloakford) October 16, 2017

Separate twitter reports showed fighting in the southern part of Kirkuk in line with reports of clashes breaking out between Iraqi forces and Perhmerga:

Yet another explosion in Duz Xurmatu right now. http://pic.twitter.com/H5KnoDeKQA

— Afarin Mamosta (@AfarinMamosta) October 15, 2017

A Rudaw report of heavy gunfire was also captured on Twitter:

Heavy gunfire live on Rudaw on the outskirts of Kirkuk #Iraq http://pic.twitter.com/yPpjvf0PY5

— Fazel Hawramy (@FazelHawramy) October 15, 2017

Additionally, the FT writes that Najmaddin Kareem, Kirkuk’s governor, was shown on pro-Kurdish channel Rudaw urging the people of the city to take up arms in its defence. Assuring that further bloodshed appears inevitable, Hemin Hawrami, a senior adviser to Masoud Barzani, KRG president, told the Financial Times that the peshmerga forces would defend the city.

“We have orders, if they come close, all Peshmerga forces will respond very strongly,” Hawrami said. He added that the KRG president had held talks on Sunday with Muhammad Fuad Masum, the Iraqi president, that aimed to resolve the stand-off, saying that it sought “peace and dialogue”. “It seems that Iraqi government and PMF (Popular Mobilisation Forces) made their decision to launch the offensive without even waiting for President Masum to go back to Baghdad tomorrow to take our proposals for talks,” Mr Hawrami said.

“Iraqi forces and Popular Mobilisation are now advancing from Taza, south of Kirkuk, in a major operation; their intention is to enter the city and take over [the] K1 base and oilfields,” said the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Security Council.

As Reuters adds, citing Lieutenant Colonel Salah el-Kinani of the Iraqi army’s ninth armoured division, the aim was to take the K1 air base, west of Kirkuk.  Iraqi forces had gathered to the south of Kirkuk in recent days threatening to reclaim a city they had fled in 2014 after Isis militants captured nearby Mosul. The KRG’s peshmerga fighters have held the city for the past three years but its inclusion in last month’s independence referendum, where Kurds voted overwhelmingly to leave Iraq, has enraged Baghdad, and drawn strong opposition from Iran and Turkey.

The AP adds that, for now at least, a commander of the local Kurdish police force said Kurds remain in control of Kirkuk province’s oil wells. That may change very soon if Iraq has indeed sent troops to reclaim the local oil infrastructure.

Earlier in the day, Iraqi Kurdish media accused Iran of closing most of its border as its leaders met to discuss rocky relations with Baghdad, to pressure them into making concessions to the central government. As Zero Hedge reported earlier in the day, in an unexpected diplomatic turn of events which underscores the seriousness of escalating tensions between the Iraqi government and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), the head of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard (which last week were designated by the US as a terrorist organization), General Qassem Soleimani, arrived in Erbil on Sunday and met with Kurdistan regional president Masoud Barzani to discuss the growing crisis at a moment when Kurdish Peshmerga forces were blocking Iraqi Army access to Kirkuk oil fields and military installations

As a result, Iran and specifically its Shia militias appear to be also involved: according to the FT, there are fears among Kurdish officials of the involvement of Shia militias, such as the PMF, in the advance. They have played a critical role in ending Isis rule in Mosul but have made a series of threats to the KRG in Kirkuk in recent days.

Qais Khazaali, the head of one of Iraq’s most powerful Iranian-backed Shia militias put out a statement on Twitter: “We all stand with our heroic forces in implementing the orders of the general commander of the armed forces and the decisions of parliament for the state to regain control over areas overtaken [by the KRG].”

The autonomous Kurdish region exports about 550,000 barrels a day of crude oil, including from fields operated by the federal North Oil Company.

Following news of armed clashes in the oil rich region, oil prices jumped more than 1 per cent in early Asian trading, with Brent crude oil hitting $57.76 a barrel.

For those trading oil overnight, here is a live feed from Kirkuk:

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Having spoken out so forcefully on both health care and gun control over the past month – seemingly quickly capable of signaling his virtue against President Trump at any headline –  many viewers might have expected Jimmy Kimmel do the same about the sexual harassment and assault allegations against Harvey Weinstein… but (perhaps unsurprisingly to many) he has not.

Donald Trump Jr. noticed…

Thoughts on Harvey Weinstein? #askingforafriend https://t.co/iyHhvrlDXO

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) October 7, 2017

To which Kimmel responded…

“Well, he’s an idiot. This is an imbecile whose job seems to be tweeting, as far as I can tell."

And then attempted to defend his lack of coverage of the massive liberal donor's disgusting actions (via TheDailyBeast.com)…

“First of all, the Harvey Weinstein thing, people like this false equivalence of that’s somehow equivalent to what happened in Las Vegas,” Kimmel added, arguing that the alleged assault of dozens of women does not deserve the same reaction as the killing of nearly 60 people.

 

He said that Weinstein is “not a friend of mine,” adding, “I'm not in the movie business.”

 

As a once and future Oscar host who is friends with many of the movie stars in Weinstein’s orbit, that claim is a hard one to buy.

 

“And I'll add that that story came out like I think moments before we went to tape on Thursday and we didn't have a show on Friday,” Kimmel continued.

While The Daily Show’s Trevor Noah managed to work a throwaway joke about Weinstein into his Thursday night show last week, Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers, Jimmy Fallon and James Corden all did not cover it until Monday. John Oliver was the first host to fully address it Sunday night.

But even when Kimmel did finally talk about Weinstein on Monday, he used the story more as a tool to go after Trump Jr. than anything else.

“Next time you’re defending your father and you think it’s a good idea to draw a comparison between him and a freshly accused sexual predator, don’t. It doesn’t help,” Kimmel told him, before delivering one joke about Weinstein just to prove that he could.

 

“They're saying that I'm calling myself the moral conscience of America, which I most certainly never did and most certainly never would,” he declared.

Kimmel is probably telling the truth when he says he never set out to become the “moral conscience of America,” but it appears that when it's possible to lay his comedic hammer down on anything trump-related, 'morals' and 'conscience' are quickly forgotten (and sexual assault allegations are beyond the realm of discussion… unless they are about Trump).

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