Month: May 2016

A massive brawl broke out between the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) during a Turkish parliament meeting recently. According to Russia Today, the fight started as the two sides debated a constitutional amendment that would strip lawmakers of their legal immunity.

Tensions were already high as Turkish president Erdogan has been accusing HDP of ties to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), and the constitutional amendment that was being debated was allegedly worrying members of the HDP that they'd potentially be open to prosecution for any opposition of the ruling party.

Here is the footage of the chaos…

After all of the mayhem, the parliament did end up actually approving the bill, according to Reuters.

This is presumably not going on the best practices list in any civics textbooks.

via http://ift.tt/1WG6m5n Tyler Durden

Submitted by Yves Mamou via The Gatestone Institute,

Patrick Kanner, France's Minister for Urban Areas, was undoubtedly not planning to tell the truth on March 27.

He was on the set of Europe 1 TV to emphasize the left's credo: Islamist terrorism is rooted in poverty and unemployment. But they asked one question again and again: "How many Molenbeeks are in France?" Finally, he said: "There are today, we know, a hundred neighborhoods in France that present potential similarities with what has happened in Molenbeek."

Molenbeek, as the entire world knows today, is the neighborhood of Brussels that has become the epicenter of jihad in Europe. It is a neighborhood under Salafist control that sent three of its residents to assassinate hundreds of people in Paris on November 13, 2015. These are the residents of the same neighborhood that bombed the Brussels airport and the Maalbeek Metro station.

The Molenbeek neighborhood of Brussels has become the epicenter of jihad in Europe. Abdelhamid Abaaoud (right), mastermind of the November 2015 attacks in Paris, lived in Molenbeek. Amedy Coulibaly (left), who in January 2015 murdered a policewoman and four Jews in Paris, spent time in Molenbeek.

The reactions to Kanner's statement have not been slow. The first secretary of the Socialist Party, Jean-Christophe Cambadélis, accused Kanner of "dissolving national harmony." Julien Dray, another leading figure of the Socialist Party, also criticized Kanner, telling him: "I do not like it when we stigmatize [people]."

Nonetheless, Kanner will not let himself be intimidated. In a March 28 interview in Le Parisien, he recalled,

"Amedy Coulibaly [the killer in the Hyper Cacher attack], who was from the Grande-Borne à Grigny, Mehdi Nemmouche [the Brussels Jewish Museum killer], who passed through the Bourgogne neighborhood in Tourcoing. and Mohamed Merah, who was from the Mirail neighborhood in Toulouse."

Malek Boutih, Socialist Deputy, came to Kanner's aid. He declared,

"It is the first time that a minister of the suburbs says even a little bit of the truth, namely that the ghettos have transformed, little by little, into zones that we cannot control very well… Neighborhoods that are incubators for terrorists."

Samia Ghali, a Senator from Bouches du Rhones (Socialist Party), echoed the statements of the Minister for Urban Areas: "There are training camps in the neighborhoods of Marseille where people are learning to shoot." She adds, "I've gotten to the point of asking if we should build walls to protect schoolyards from Kalashnikov bullets or from rifles finding their way into the school yard."

Gilles Kepel, professor at the Paris Institute of Political Studies, and one of the best experts on Islamism in France, explained in early April that three ingredients are necessary for making a Molenbeek:

"1) A strong system of crime organized around kif [a type of marijuana];

 

2) Hideouts for terrorists and sites where they can stock weapons;

 

3) Local politicians who accept that the Salafists have opened countless uncontrollable mosques."

These three ingredients would be uniformly present in all 100 French Molenbeeks, added Kepel. But the goal of the Salafists, he adds, is actually to seize neighborhoods in order to wage a "enclave war."

Patrick Kanner, the Minister for Urban Areas confirmed this view: "The Salafists want to take the power in these neighborhoods." The gravity of the situation was recently underscored by Prime Minister Manual Valls: a fundamentalist "minority," he said, is about to win "the ideological and cultural battle" over Islam.

The Salafists, in fact, do not want to "take the power in these neighborhoods." In many, they already have it.

On January 27, the magazine Paris-Match dedicated several pages to the neighborhood Reine-Jeanne in Avignon, a large city in the south of France, where the Salafists have systematically exploited half a million Muslims.

"The farther I walked between the buildings, the more I was stunned. A courtyard of Islamist miracles, a Salafist pocket, an enclave that wants to live like during the times of Muhammad. Bakery, hairdresser, building managers, teenagers. All (or almost) overcome with the Koran. Well, their Koran. It's a mini Islamic Republic.

 

"During the sermons, they denounce, they criminalize. A woman who smokes? A degenerate. A woman who does not veil herself? A tease. A man that does not eat halal? He has an express ticket to hell. That female neighbor, the one who is divorced, with three kids, and works with men? She will end up losing her virtue. She should just give up. In order to not pass for an 'easy woman,' the unlucky choose the hard life, welfare benefits!"

In Sevran, a suburb of Paris, the Salafist mosque was sealed off several weeks ago because it had been recruiting a dozen young Muslims for the Islamic State. Six may have already been killed in Syria. Nadia Remadna, a Muslim social worker, lives in Sevran. She started the local "Mothers' Brigade" to help women keep control over their children, against the Islamists. In 2014, she wrote the provocative book, How I Saved My Children, with the sub-title "Before, we feared our children would fall in with delinquents. Now, we fear they will become terrorists."

On March 14, Remadna received a death threat over the phone: "We know where your kids go to school," and "your daughter is very pretty."

The next day, a delegation of completely veiled Salafist "true Muslim mothers" came and told her, "We want mosques, not schools."

On March 29, the philosopher Yves Michaud spoke to the magazine Paris Match about his students:

"My ex-students who teach today in the suburbs… tell me that among their students they have some who could become terrorists overnight. They take on the weight of Islam, of adolescence, of the ghettoization that makes them question their identity, of cultural disorientation. It is an ideal breeding-ground for the jihadist calling."

How many Salafists are there in France? 15,000 to 20,000, according to Bernard Godard, former head of the Bureau of Religion for the Ministry of the Interior. According to the politician Antoine Sfeir, there are 20,000 to 30,000 Salafists. According to police sources, out of 2,500 listed Islamic places of worship in metropolitan France, at least 90 are Salafist. The number doubles every three years. They are located in the suburbs of Paris, in the Lyon region and in Marseille.

According to the Ministry of the Interior, 41 Islamic places of worship have been the target of "infiltration," meaning that "traditional" imams are being forcibly evicted and replaced by Salafist imams.

The real question is:

If the state is aware of the situation — and it is — why has it not banned Salafism, and why does it not expel the Salafist imams who are prospering not only in these neighborhoods, but also on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter?

via http://ift.tt/1TJdf3d Tyler Durden

David Siegel is worried, very worried as a matter of fact. The co-founder of Two Sigma, the $35 billion hedge fund said at the Milken Institute Global Conference that he's "very worried" that machines could soon replace a large amount of the workforce.

"Most people in the bulk of the job market are not involved in super-high-value jobs. They are doing routine work and tasks and it's precisely these tasks that computers are going to be better at doing" Siegel said.

A perfect example of this is on display in many Mcdonald's restaurants now as a result of some states raising the minimum wage. You now will find touch screens to place your order and pay instead of dealing with a person.

Of course, Mr. Siegel knows a bit about how powerful a role computers could play in the economy, as his New York based firm is regarded as one of the most sophisticated firms that use technology in order help it make money (i.e. high frequency trading).

A few other people chimed in on the matter as well. Steve Cohen, of SAC fame, agreed that artificial intelligence is "coming but not here yet", and it will be "a while" before technology displaces humans. David Harding, founder of $30 billion London based Winton Capital commented that artificial intelligence "won't completely change the whole field. It won't replace distressed-credit arbitrage or something like that."

While AI may not replace distressed credit arbitrage right away, one look at the floor of the NYSE during trading hours indicates that it may not be far off.

via http://ift.tt/1W6Vxe2 Tyler Durden

Via Dana Lyons' Tumblr,

Commercial Hedgers just hit their most extreme net short position ever in sliver futures.

Just 5 weeks ago, on March 28, we noted that the so-called “smart money” commercial hedgers had reached their largest net short position in silver futures in more than a decade. Well, for us to dedicate another post to this situation within such a short time frame, there had to be either a massive reversal in that positioning, or a further expansion in shorts to an all-time record. As the title suggests, the latter is the inspiration for this post.

Specifically, as of Tuesday, April 26, commercial hedgers held a net short position of 91,302 silver futures contracts. Since the CFTC began reporting the Commitment Of Traders’ data in 1986, that is their largest net short position on record. Of course, on the other side of that position, we find the non-commercial speculators holding a record net long position of 78,773 contracts.

 

 

What is the significance of this situation? As we have explained before, the non-commercial speculators category mainly consists of commodity funds who are making directional bets in the futures markets. These funds are primarily trend followers and, thus, will build up a position in the direction of the trend. On the other side of those trades are commercial hedgers whose main function in the futures market, as their name implies, is to hedge. By definition, therefore, they typically build up positions contrary to the prevailing trend.

As a result, at key turning points in a contract, these groups’ net positioning is often at an extreme, with hedgers correctly positioned for the turn and speculators incorrectly positioned. It is for that reason that the hedgers are often referred to as the “smart money” and the speculators, the “dumb money”.

These tags represent a bit of a misnomer, however, as neither group has a monopoly on right or wrong positions. Indeed, during long trends, the “dumb money” speculators may be correctly positioned for a considerable length of time. It is at the turns that the group will most often be off-sides, and vice-versa for the “smart money” hedgers.

Of course, identifying the turning points in the underlying contract and delineating when the groups’ positioning is extreme enough to matter are the challenges. An apparent extreme can continue to become even more extreme before any consequences are felt. Premature record commercial short positions in crude and the U.S. Dollar in recent years come to mind as examples.

Thus, the positives that silver bulls have going for them are

A) the trend is on their side,

 

B) the metal has continued to be firm in the face of the bearish COT positioning, and

 

C) a market that does not do what it’s “supposed to” is likely telling us that its current trend is strong enough to overwhelm these ancillary factors for the moment.

However, with the COT positioning at its most extreme ever, the potential headwind for silver upon a turn lower could be considerable should the speculators race to unwind their record long position.

Assuming silver does run into a setback, it will interesting, and telling, to see what form such a setback takes. If the metal is able to consolidate its gains of the past few months by more or less going sideways while the COT extremes are worked off, it may argue for another eventual leg higher in the metal. On the other hand, should the full potential of the unwind of COT extremes come to pass, it could conceivably undermine the 2016 reflation scenario, at least as far as silver is concerned.

But that is getting a bit ahead of ourselves. For the moment, silver’s intermediate-term bull market remains in force, albeit with a record level of bearishness on the part of the “smart money”.

*  *  *

More from Dana Lyons, JLFMI and My401kPro.

via http://ift.tt/1Z8ziSA Tyler Durden

Speaking at a panel in the Milken conference titled “Monetary Policy: Out Of Ammunition” moments ago Pimco’s global economic advisor Joachim Fels, formerly of Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, had a few observations on QE vs NIRP, not surprisingly nudging central banks that explicitly central bank buying, i.e., QE, is far more powerful than the implicit deflationary signal which is NIRP.

• FELS: QE IS A MORE POWERFUL TOOL THAN NEGATIVE RATES

He then proceeded to point out the obvious;

• FELS: PROBLEM IS INFLATION IS TOO LOW

By which he was of course referring to wages; as we showed recently rent inflation is currently running at a record 8% Y/Y (ignoring the double digit increases in health insurance costs).

He then had some more big picture ideas of how the world can get rid of its excess debt: central banks should just buy it all up and then “cancel it” (of course by doing so they would also cancel the offsetting balance sheet entry which is bank reserves which also happen to prop up global capital markets).

• FELS: TO ERASE DEBT, CANCEL IT ON CENTRAL BANK BALANCE SHEET

And finally, he hinted what he, and/or Pimco, would prefer that the Fed should buy next. Stocks.

• FELS: QE SHOULD FOCUS ON CREDIT AND POTENTIALLY EQUITY BUYING

What he did not note is that by the time it’s all over, central banks will be buying not just credit and equities, but virtually every asset class, both directly and indirectly through helicopter money. That said, we prefer that “other” proposal by Pimco’s Harley Bassman from two weeks ago, according to which the Fed should monetize gold to a price of about $5,000 to “shock” inflation expectations higher. However, somehow we doubt if given the option of buying gold or stocks (directly as opposed to through Citadel), the Fed will pick the former.

via http://ift.tt/1VIwu0q Tyler Durden

Authored by AP's Lolita Baldor, via Military.com,

No one disputes that U.S. military forces are fighting in combat in Iraq and Syria — except maybe President Barack Obama and some members of his administration.

The semantic arguments over whether there are American "boots on the ground" muddy the view of a situation in which several thousand armed U.S. military personnel are in Iraq and Syria. Obama has said more than a dozen times that there would be no combat troops in Iraq and Syria as the number of service members in those countries grows; last week, Defense Secretary Ash Carter acknowledged the military personnel there were in combat and "we should say that clearly."

So, when is a military boot on the ground? And what does it all mean?

Are U.S. military troops in Iraq?

Yes. More than 5,500 U.S. service members. The Pentagon, however, counts them in different ways. Obama recently authorized an increase in the number of troops that can deploy to Iraq to advise and assist Iraqi forces in fighting the Islamic State. The cap was increased last week from 3,870 to 4,087.

But a number of troops aren't counted against the cap because of the military's personnel accounting system. For example, troops assigned to the U.S. Embassy for security or those sent to Iraq for temporary, short-term assignments are there in addition to the 4,087.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter, in Stuttgart, Germany for a change-of-command ceremony Tuesday, revealed that a serviceman had been killed in combat near Irbil in Iraq. A U.S. military official, speaking on grounds of anonymity, said the American was killed while performing his duty as an adviser to Kurdish Peshmerga troops. He was killed by "direct fire" after Islamic State forces penetrated the Peshmerga's forward line. The official said the American was three to two to three miles behind the front line.

Are U.S. military troops in Syria?

Yes. Last week the Pentagon announced an increase in the number of U.S. forces working in Syria from 50 to 300. Those troops are working with local Syrian forces and are mainly Army special forces, but the latest increase will also include medical and logistics units.

So, that would mean there are U.S. "boots on the ground" in Iraq and Syria, wouldn't it?

Yes it would. In Iraq there are advisers, trainers, special operations forces and others stationed at Iraqi bases, working with the Iraqi forces. Last week, Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced that some advisers would begin working with Iraqis at the brigade and battalion level. They had been working with Iraqis at the division headquarters level. The change would embed those teams of advisers with smaller units, who would likely be closer to the fight.

In Syria, the U.S. has about 50 special operations forces going into Syria from a base in a neighboring country to meet with local Syrian opposition forces. They aren't based in Syria, so they travel in and out, sometimes staying in the country for several days at a time. According to officials, the additional 250 forces will do the same thing. They will not be based in Syria, but will instead work out of neighboring countries, such as Iraq or Turkey. And they are not there to fight alongside the Syrians, they are there to provide advice and other assistance.

What about air strikes? Aren't pilots flying combat missions?

Yes they are. Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made it clear during a Senate hearing last week that U.S. fighter jets conducting airstrikes in Iraq and Syria are conducting combat missions.

Why does the administration say there are no U.S. boots on the ground?

Obama administration officials have consistently told the American public since 2013 that there will be no combat "boots on the ground" in Iraq and Syria. Their argument is based on the idea that there are no conventional U.S. ground forces in large units fighting the Islamic State militants in direct combat. Saying there are "no U.S. boots on the ground" — while inaccurate — is meant to convey the administration's view that U.S. troops are not on the front lines waging the war. Instead, U.S. troops are advising and assisting the Iraqi and Syrian forces, providing training, intelligence, and logistical support from behind the battlefront.

The parsing of words is meant to differentiate the latest Islamic State conflicts from earlier wars in Iraq and Afghanistan when thousands of U.S. troops were battling the enemy in small units and in close combat.

Carter told the Senate Armed Services Committee last week that U.S. troops are not going to war to substitute for the local forces, but are trying "to get them powerful enough that they can expel ISIL with our support. And when we provide that support, we put people in harm's way. We ask them to conduct combat actions."

Aren't special operations forces in direct combat in Iraq or Syria?

A: Probably. But the Pentagon doesn't talk about the often highly classified operations that U.S. commandos — including Army Delta Force or Navy SEALs — are doing no matter where they are. And Army special forces — or Green Berets — are in many war-torn countries providing training and assistance, because that's one of their key jobs.

In some cases, U.S. officials have acknowledged special operations missions to capture or kill high-value targets or to try and rescue hostages.

But those are not considered "boots on the ground" because they often move in and out quickly, and stay for short periods of time.

via http://ift.tt/1Z8r2SA Tyler Durden