Month: October 2016

If you’re following the news, you know FBI Director James Comey announced that the FBI found a bunch of emails on Anthony Weiner’s laptop.

As Dilbert Creator Scott Adams notes, there appears to be two main observations:

1. Comey seemed pro-Clinton when he dropped the initial email case.

 

2. Comey seems anti-Clinton this week because he announced a new round of investigations right before the election.

So, how can both behaviors be explained?

 First some background from Adams on 'The Persuasion Filter':

As my regular readers know, the Persuasion Filter is related to the idea that the human brain never evolved to accurately comprehend reality. In order for us to be here today, our predecessors only needed to survive and procreate. They had no need to understand reality at any basic level. And we have no such need either. That’s why you might believe you are reincarnated from a monk and I might believe my prophet flew to heaven on a winged horse but we can both get through the day just fine. Many different interpretations of reality are good enough for survival. I like to describe reality as each person living their own movie, which works well unless our script’s conflict. When that happens, one of us goes into cognitive dissonance and rewrites our past to make the movies consistent.

 

That’s how I see the world.

 

Last year in this blog I suggested that the most productive and predictive way to view reality is through what I call the Persuasion Filter. That’s what I have been using to make spooky-good predictions about the election so far. And that’s what I’ll use today to give you an alternate movie about James Comey. Compare it to the movie you are running in your head and see which one better predicts the future.

 

The base assumption of the Persuasion Filter is that people are irrational 90% of the time and only rarely – when no emotions are involved – truly rational. This is the reverse of the common filter for reality, in which people are assumed to be rational 90% of the time and a bit crazy 10% of the time. That’s some background for context.

 

Read more here…

So, back to Comey, Adams asks –  which movie does the best job of explaining our observations and also predicting the future?

Some say Comey is a political pawn in a rigged system. By that movie script we can explain why he dropped the initial email case. But we can’t explain why he’s acting against Clinton’s interests now. What changed?

 

Well, some say Comey had to reopen the case against Clinton after discovering the Weiner laptop emails. If he failed to act, there might be a revolt at the FBI and maybe a whistleblower would come forward. But that leaves unexplained why Comey detailed to Congress how Clinton appeared to be guilty of crimes at the same time he said the FBI was dropping the case. If Comey had been protecting Clinton on the first round, he would have softened his description of her misdeeds, wouldn’t he? But he didn’t seem to hold back anything.

 

And none of those hypotheses explain why the people who know Comey have high regard for his integrity. Comey also has the security of a 10-year appointment as Director, so he has a low chance of getting fired or politically influenced. That’s exactly why the job has a 10-year term. Given what we know of Comey before any of the Clinton emails, any movie that casts Comey as an ass-covering weasel is probably making a casting mistake.

 

So allow me to offer an interpretation of events that casts Comey as more of a patriot and hero than an ass-covering weasel. Compare my interpretation with whatever movie you have in your head and see which one works best for explaining and predicting.

 

My movie says Comey had good evidence against Clinton during the initial investigation but made a judgement call to leave the decision to the American public. For reasons of conscience, and acting as a patriot, Comey explained in clear language to the public exactly what evidence the FBI found against Clinton. The evidence looked daming because it was. Under this interpretation, Comey took a bullet to his reputation for the sake of the Republic. He didn’t want the FBI to steal this important decision away from the people, but at the same time he couldn’t let the people decide blind. So he divulged the evidence and stepped away, like the action hero who doesn’t look back at the explosion.

 

In the second act of this movie, Comey learns that the Weiner laptop had emails that were so damning it would be a crime against the public to allow them to vote without first seeing a big red flag. And a flag was the best he could do because it was too early in the investigation to leak out bits and pieces of the evidence. That would violate Clinton’s rights.

 

But Comey couldn’t easily raise a red flag to warn the public because it was against FBI policy to announce a criminal investigation about a candidate so close to election day. So Comey had a choice of either taking another bullet for the Republic or screwing the very country that he has spent his career protecting.

 

In this movie, Comey did the hero thing. He alerted the public to the fact that the FBI found DISQUALIFYING information on the Weiner laptop. And he took a second bullet to his reputation.

 

How do I know the new emails are that bad?

I start by assuming Comey is the same man now as the one who was carefully vetted before being hired to protect the integrity of one of our most important institutions. And even Comey’s critics concede he’s smart.

 

So…

 

The way you know the new emails are disqualifying for Clinton is because otherwise our hero would have privately informed Congress and honored the tradition of not influencing elections. Comey is smart enough to know his options. And unless he suddenly turned rotten at his current age, he’s got the character to jump in front of a second bullet for the Republic.

 

According to this movie, no matter who gets elected, we’ll eventually learn of something disqualifying in the Weiner emails.

 

And we can’t say we weren’t warned. Comey took two bullets to do it.

 

So compare this movie to your own movie and see which one does the best job of explaining the observed facts. And when we find out what is in the Weiner laptop emails, compare that news to my prediction that the information is disqualifying.

 

The Persuasion Filter says there is no prefered reality. We all see our own movies. In my movie, Comey’s has a consistent personality from start to finish. He starts out his career as a smart, competent patriot and he later proves it by taking two bullets for the Republic. If your movie script has Comey suddenly changing his basic character for this election season, don’t expect an Oscar.

 

Read more here…

Of course if you're a Democrat, this is all irrelevant and Comey is "A Putin puppet" (Howard Dean), "a federal law-breaker who should never have been appointed" (Harry Reid), and "a partisan, prejudiced individual" (Eric Holder)…

NEW: Former Attorney General Holder, dozens of other former DOJ officials pen letter criticizing FBI director Comey. https://t.co/aXmWvAiFMg http://pic.twitter.com/FskFeDpoyE

— ABC News (@ABC) October 31, 2016

You decide which makes more sense – Scott Adams' "movie" or the real partisan hacks above?

via http://ift.tt/2eT3Qb0 Tyler Durden

After 7 straight days up, Middle East stocks sank overnight on the heels of dashed hopes of an oil ‘freeze/cut’ deal. The end of the dead cat bounce coincided with the formation of a “death cross” in Bloomberg’s GCC 200 index which did not end well for oil or stocks the last two times…

The 50-day moving average crossed below the 200-day moving-average triggering the classic technical pattern known as the ‘death cross’. As Bloomberg notes, the last time the double bearish signal occurred, in August 2015, the index of the largest and most liquid companies in the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council sank the most since 2008 on a monthly basis.

Chart: Bloomberg

 

Gulf stocks fell for the first time in almost two weeks…

Chart: Bloomberg

Finally,  it appears oil prices have rallied over-optimistically, and with the failed talks coinciding with a ‘death cross’ we suspect oil will revert back – just as it did in July – to the equity market’s view of the outlook for the energy complex…

Chart: Bloomberg

via http://ift.tt/2e3J076 Tyler Durden

Submitted by Fred Reed via FredOnEverything.com,

Oh good. The world reaches a crossroads, or probably a road off a cliff, just when I want to relax and watch gratuitous violence on the tube. To judge by the rapid drift of events aboard our planetary asylum, the talons of Washington and New York on the world’s throat are fast being pried a-loose. The Global American Imperium is dying. Or so it sure looks anyway.

I say talons of  “New York and Washington” because America’s foreign policy, forged in those two cities, belongs entirely to them. Americans have no influence on it. Further, none of of what the Empire does abroad is of any benefit to Americans. Do you care at all what happens in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, or the South China Sea?  Do you want to pay for it? America has been hijacked.

And the Empire prospereth not. It prospereth very not. Consider the recent record of the world’s  hyperpower:

Washington does not have control of Afghanistan, and obviously is not going to.

 

Washington does not have control  of Iraq, and appears unlikely to.

 

Washington did not back Iran down, and isn’t going to.

 

Washington did not back Russia down in Ukraine and Crimea, and isn’t going to.

 

Washington did not back China down in the South China Sea and, while this is perhaps not over, the Empire seems to be losing.

 

Washington has not backed North Korea down and is not going to.

 

In the Philippines, President Duterte has told Obama to “go to hell” as being “the son of a whore,” which may be taken to indicate latent hostility. He is vigorously seeking rapprochement with China. While Washington may have him murdered, it seems to be losing control of the Little Vassals of ASEAN.

 

Turkey seems to be cuddling up to Russia–that is, looking East like Duterte. Maybe Washington can turn this around temporarily, but there-s a whole lot of wavering going on.

 

Meanwhile Washington thrashes around impotently as per usual in Syria, and, though the jury remains out on this one, looks to have poor prospects. If Washington–AKA New York–loses here, after doing so in Iraq, Libya, Somalia, and Afghanistan, the Empire will beyond redemption be on the downward slope.

The United States is not in danger. The Empire is. This is not good. Empires, the Soviet Union notwithstanding, seldom go quietly. Either Washington gambles on war of some sort against Russia, or Russia and China, in the desperate hope of reversing things, or the Empire  gets slowly eaten. Or not so slowly. Once one country pries itself loose, many may rush for the door.

New York may go for calculated war against Russia–say, cyberwar expected not to turn into shooting war, shooting war in Syria not expected to turn into global shooting war, global shooting war not expected to turn into nuclear war. This will be a  crapshoot. Note that America has badly misguessed the outcomes of every war since Korea.

This is why the American election actually matters, unusual in Presidential contests. It is Blowhard against Corruption, a swell choice, but Trump is firmly against war with Russia, and Hillary for. Her military understanding is that of a fried egg.

The woman is both a fool and a knave but, it seems, Trump has talked trash, and therefore she will likely be President. Weirdly, the future of the world depends on how an excited electorate of political middle-schoolers responds to one candidate’s dirty talk. From a curmudgeon’s point of view, it is pretty funny. It is funnier if one lives  outside of the radiation footprint.

But back to business. The seaboard Axis of Evil needs a war because almost every tide runs against it. Proximately, the Axis has pushed China, Russia, and Iran together against the Empire. (First rule of empire: Do not let the dissidents unite.) Many signs suggest that the world, or much of it, is beginning to see China as its future. The BRICS, the SCO, the NDB, the AAIB–all exclude the US. China becomes the major trading partner of country after country. The twilight deepens.

Not all goes wrong for the Empire–not yet, but things are getting spooky. On the European Peninsula of Asia, countries remain docile, especially England and, much more importantly, Germany. Yet even among Washington’s European harem, there seem to be faint stirrings of a forgotten independence. As I understand it, Germany’s businessmen would very much like to end Washington’s sanctions on Russia and improve trade with China, which would be greatly to the benefit of the Peninsula.  Washington won’t let them. It can’t. If the Europeans did what would be good for themselves, and looked to Eurasia, then the fat lady, already warming up, would burst into full bellow.

Which, methinks, raises the likelihood that Washington will in desperation do something phenomenally stupid. At this writing Hillary’s camp seems to be prepping the public for war with Russia. The telescreen tells us day after day that Putin is Hitler, that Russia is expanding, that the Russkies are hacking the election, that they cause indigestion and falling hair. Is this just Hillary waggling her codpiece in the expectation that Moscow will demurely back down, as God intended? Or will she again send other people’s children to fight for her in somebody else’s country? 

The larger picture, assuredly obvious to New York, is truly grim–for New York, not for Americans. China has a huge population of a billion Han Chinese, versus two hundred million Caucasian Americans–these being the scientific, technological and entrepreneurial brains of the Empire. One must not notice this, but you can bet that New York and Beijing do. Economically China is growing hugely, advancing technologically at a high rate, building rail lines that now extend from  the Chinese Pacific coast to Madrid. It will increasingly dwarf the Empire no matter what happens–short of a world war.

The curtain falls in ways unnoticed. China recently launched a communications satellite, the world’s first employing quantum cryptographic links, which cannot be intercepted. The intention of this, as well of the QC link from Beijing to Shanghai, is to keep the NSA off China’s back. A small thing, perhaps. Yet if successful and adopted en masse by other countries weary of Washington’s meddling, the result will be a loosening of the Empire’s grip on everybody’s communications.

For the Empire it is, as Elvis sang, “now or never.” Lenin spoke of “useful idiots.” Ours aren’t even useful, but they call the shots.

via http://ift.tt/2e3nK1o Tyler Durden

Authored by Pepe Escobar, originally posted op-ed via Strategic-Culture.org,

Will Trump pull a Brexit times ten? What would it take, beyond WikiLeaks, to bring the Clinton (cash) machine down? Will Hillary win and then declare WWIII against her Russia / Iran / Syria «axis of evil»? Will the Middle East totally explode? Will the pivot to Asia totally implode? Will China be ruling the world by 2025?

Amidst so many frenetic fragments of geopolitical reality precariously shored against our ruins, the temptation is irresistible to hark back to the late, great, deconstructionist master Jean Baudrillard. During the post-mod 1980s it was hip to be Baudrillardian to the core; his America, originally published in France in 1986, should still be read today as the definitive metaphysical/geological/cultural Instagram of Exceptionalistan.

By the late 1990s, at the end of the millennium, two years before 9/11 – that seminal «before and after» event – Baudrillard was already stressing how we live in a black market maze. Now, it’s a black market paroxysm.

Global multitudes are subjected to a black market of work – as in the deregulation of the official market; a black market of unemployment; a black market of financial speculation; a black market of misery and poverty; a black market of sex (as in prostitution); a black market of information (as in espionage and shadow wars); a black market of weapons; and even a black market of thinking.

Way beyond the late 20^th century, in the 2010s what the West praises as «liberal democracy» – actually a neoliberal diktat – has virtually absorbed every ideological divergence, while leaving behind a heap of differences floating in some sort of trompe l’oeil effect. What’s left is a widespread, noxious condition; the pre-emptive prohibition of any critical thought, which has no way to express itself other than becoming clandestine (or finding the right internet niche).

Baudrillard already knew that the concept of «alter» – killed by conviviality – does not exist in the official market. So an «alter» black market also sprung up, co-opted by traffickers; that’s, for instance, the realm of racism, nativism and other forms of exclusion. Baudrillard already identified how a «contraband alter», expressed by sects and every form of nationalism (nowadays, think about the spectrum between jihadism and extreme-right wing political parties) was bound to become more virulent in a society that is desperately intolerant, obsessed with regimentation, and totally homogenized.

There could be so much exhilaration inbuilt in life lived in a bewildering chimera cocktail of cultures, signs, differences and «values»; but then came the coupling of thinking with its exact IT replica – artificial intelligence, playing with the line of demarcation between human and non-human in the domain of thought.

The result, previewed by Baudrillard, was the secretion of a parapolitical society – with a sort of mafia controlling this secret form of generalized corruption (think the financial Masters of the Universe). Power is unable to fight this mafia – and that would be, on top of it, hypocritical, because the mafia itself emanates from power.

The end result is that what really matters today, anywhere, mostly tends to happen outside all official circuits; like in a social black market.

Is there any information «truth»?

Baudrillard showed how political economy is a massive machine, producing value, producing signs of wealth, but not wealth itself. The whole media / information system – still ruled by America – is a massive machine producing events as signs; exchangeable value in the universal market of ideology, the star system and catastrophism.

This abstraction of information works as in the economy – disgorging a coded material, deciphered in advance, and negotiable in terms of models, as much as the economy disgorges products negotiable in terms of price and value.

Since all merchandise, thanks to this abstraction of value, is exchangeable, then every event (or non-event) is also exchangeable, all replacing one another in the cultural market of information.

And that takes us to where we live now; Trans-History, and Trans-Politics – where events have really not happened, as they get lost in the vacuum of information (as much as the economy gets lost in the vacuum of speculation).

Thus this quintessential Baudrillard insight; if we consider History as a movie – and that’s what it is now – then the «truth» of information is no more than post-production synch, dubbing and subtitles.

Still, as we all keep an intense desire for devouring events, there is immense disappointment as well, because the content of information is desperately inferior to the means of broadcasting them. Call it a pathetic, universal contagion; people don’t know what to do about their sadness or enthusiasm – in parallel to our societies becoming theaters of the absurd where nothing has consequences.

No acts, deeds, crimes (the 2008 financial crisis), political events (the WikiLeaks emails showing virtually no distinction between the «nonprofit» Clinton cash machine, what’s private and what’s public, the obsessive pursuit of personal wealth, and the affairs of the state) seem to have real consequences.

Immunity, impunity, corruption, speculation – we veer towards a state of zero responsibility (think Goldman Sachs). So, automatically, we yearn for an event of maximum consequence, a «fatal» event to repair that scandalous non-equivalence. Like a symbolic re-equilibrium of the scales of destiny.

So we dream of an amazing event – Trump winning the election? Hillary declaring WWIII? – that would free us from the tyranny of meaning and the constraint of always searching for the equivalence between effects and causes.

Shadowing the world

Just like Baudrillard, I got to see «deep» America in the 1980s and 1990s by driving across America.

So sooner or later one develops a metaphysical relationship with that ubiquitous warning, «Objects in this mirror may be closer than they appear».

But what if they may also be further than they appear?

The contemporary instant event/celebrity culture deluge of images upon us; does it get us closer to a so-called «real» world that is in fact very far away from us? Or does it in fact keep the world at a distance – creating an artificial depth of field that protects us from the imminence of objects and the virtual danger they represent?

In parallel, we keep slouching towards a single future language – the language of algorithms, as designed across the Wall Street / Silicon Valley axis – that would represent a real anthropological catastrophe, just like the globalist/New World Order dream of One Thought and One Culture.

Languages are multiple and singular – by definition. If there were a single language, words would become univocal, regulating themselves in an autopilot of meaning. There would be no interplay – as in artificial languages there’s no interplay. Language would be just the meek appendix of a unified reality – the negative destiny of a languidly unified human species.

That’s where the American «dream» seems to be heading. It’s time to take the next exit ramp.

via http://ift.tt/2epAYGs Tyler Durden

You now it's bad when…

MSNBC anchor and commentator Andrea Mitchell (second only to John Harwood in the media pecking order of suck-up-iness to Clinton) is forced to admit: "This is the just worst possible situation for the FBI for the country, for Hillary Clinton certainly."

"For Hillary Clinton to go nuclear on Comey yesterday was a deliberate decision. They’re trying to rally the base. And she did this in Daytona. She did this going then to an historically African-American college and had a huge rally there on the football field.”

“She’s really now taking this to Comey."

“And they made a deliberate decision to do this. If she’s elected, she has to live with James Comey who has a ten-year term. That is a very hostile situation and a dangerous situation. Let me point out, John Kerry in Ireland said he has not been notified. Comey did not know what these emails were and whether they were work-related.That is the question that is raising so many concerns.”

* * *

Of course, it's not just the media, Democrats have blasted Comey for making the announcement less than two weeks before Election Day, with Senate minority leader Harry Reid claiming Comey may have violated federal law…

“I am writing to inform you that my office has determined that these actions may violate the Hatch Act,” Reid wrote in a letter to Comey, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The Hatch act prohibits government officials from using their positions to influence an election.

“Through your partisan actions, you may have broken the law.”

 

“When Republicans filibustered your nomination and delayed your confirmation longer than any previous nominee to your position, I led the fight to get you confirmed because I believed you to be a principled public servant,” Reid wrote.

 

“With the deepest regret, I now see that I was wrong."

Full letter below:

JUST IN: Letter from @SenatorReid to FBI Dir Comey: Actions RE: Clinton server investigation "may violate the Hatch Act" ==> http://pic.twitter.com/EHvy3YkchX

— Frank Thorp V (@frankthorp) October 30, 2016

Which is esecially ironic as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was so full of priase just 3 months ago… calling Comey, a former George W. Bush administration official, as “a great man” that Americans “are very privileged” to have leading the federal agency.

Forward to 6:45…

But we conclude with the utter desperation of the Democrats to distract (through lies and obfuscation) once again via Harry Reid…

Reid says he's talked w/ top NatSec officials who say that Comey “possesses explosive information” about Trump’s ties to Russia

— Sam Stein (@samsteinhp) October 30, 2016

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With Democratic"Get Out The Vote" rallies springing up everywhere around Philadelphia (culminating with a Katy Perry concert this weekend) and Hillary clinging to a lead in Pennsylvania, perhaps the Transport Workers Union should have picked a better week to start a mass transit strike – potentially threatening to cut turnout among the African-American community dramatically on election day.

As FiveThirtyEight wrote, when most people think of battleground America, they think of Florida and Ohio, two of only three states (along with Nevada) that have voted for the winner of every presidential election since 1996. They tend not to think of Pennsylvania as a classic “swing state” — it has voted for the Democrat in every election since 1992, and it didn’t even crack the top 10 in 2012 campaign ad spending.

But in 2016, Pennsylvania could be the keystone of the Electoral College and the ultimate arbiter of whether Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Which perhaps explains the major push to increase turnout and "get out the vote"…

So far so good as far as polls go, Pennsylvania is leaning to Hillary (pre-FBI emails)…

 

But there may be a problem for Hillary Clinton's campaign turnout (aside from the FBI emails debacle), as 6ABC news reports, members of the Transport Workers Union are set to walk off the job on Monday night bringing public transportation in the city to a halt unless an agreement can be reached.

 

Talk continued on Wednesday, but negotiations have been very slow going, and issues like pensions remain to be resolved. That is why at this point people are starting to talk about strike contingency plans.

"People are going to have to be creative. They're going to have to think of ways to get to work," says SEPTA's Director of Media Relations, Carla Showell-Lee.

If there is a TWU walkout November 1st, city buses, trolleys, the subway and EL will not run.

*  *  *

With Trump winning among blue-collar and disaffected voters, Philadelphia’s large African-American population is key for Clinton to ensure the state and a public transport shutdown in the city is far more likely to affect Hillary's base ability to get to polling stations than Trump's.
 

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You know the Dakota Access Pipeline protests are working when oil interests start resorting to underhanded tricks to paint water protectors in a negative light. TheAntiMedia.org's Nick Bernabe reports that, as the fight against the pipeline grows in North Dakota and around the country, dirty tricks are being deployed in an apparent attempt to delegitimize the opposition.

Dakota Access Employee Tries to Incite Violence, Sheriff’s Department Makes False Report That He Was Shot by Protesters

Mother Jones journalist Wes Enzinna, who was at the protests, says he witnessed a Dakota Access LLC employee try to infiltrate the Dakota Access Pipeline protests:

“An armed security agent employed by the company behind the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline was arrested Thursday after he was caught entering the camp of activists protesting near the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in southern North Dakota. After a car chase and a standoff during which he allegedly pointed his assault rifle at a local Sioux teenager, the man, whose ID indicated he was an employee of Dakota Access LLC, was arrested and handed over to the FBI.”

According to an official statement from the tribe, the man fired several shots from his gun before being peacefully apprehended by tribal police. Witnesses at the scene say he pointed his gun at several protesters. The man was clearly trying to provoke violence that could later be used to demonize protesters who have so far remained peaceful.

The Morton County Sheriff’s Department circulated a false report claiming the man was shot, presumably by protesters. As you can see in the images above, the man was not harmed. The Sheriff’s Department has since retracted that report. Anti-Media’s attempts to obtain clarifying comments from Morton County Sheriff’s were ignored.

Fake Internet Trolls Slam Dakota Access Pipeline Protests, Promote Pipeline on Twitter

With very little organic support for the Dakota Access Pipeline remaining, groups allied with the pipeline builders now seem to be creating paid Internet trolls or bots to slam protesters while praising the pipeline.

DESMOG, an environmental blog, conducted an investigation and found what it says are “sock puppet” accounts tied to an oil industry lobby operating on Twitter:

“A DeSmog investigation has revealed the possibility that a front group supporting the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) — the Midwest Alliance for Infrastructure Now (MAIN) — may have created fake Twitter profiles, known by some as ‘sock puppets,’ to convey a pro-pipeline message over social media. And MAIN may be employing the PR services of the firm DCI Group, which has connections to the Republican Party, in order to do so.

 

“DeSmog tracked down at least 16 different questionable Twitter accounts which used the #NoDAPL hashtag employed by protesters, in order to claim that opposition to the pipeline kills jobs, that those protesting the pipeline at the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s encampment use violence, and that the pipeline does not pose a risk to water sources or cross over tribal land.

 

“On September 13, people began to suspect these accounts were fake, calling them out on Twitter, and by September 14, most of the accounts no longer existed.”

 

Big Oil is astroturfing pro-DAPL tweets, like they did for KXL. All these accounts with 0 followers tweeted in sync: http://pic.twitter.com/lR6H4Rcm6u

— Duncan Meisel (@duncanwrites) September 13, 2016

 

With the Dakota Access Pipeline builders resorting to backhanded trickery, it’s clear the tide is turning against the pipeline following law enforcement’s overwhelming militarized crackdown of the protests.

And now, as Anonews reports, Anonymous warns the governor to back off or they will release documents showing the conflict of interest and then goes on to say that if one protestor on the Indian side is harmed, Anonymous will “release docs on” the individuals responsible.

“We decided to stand with the Native Americans whose land you raped, whose sacred lands you destroyed.”

 

“We know where you live. Everyone you know. And everything there is to know about you.”

While translating that threat—which extends to individual Guardsmen—is perilous, according to Anonymous, it has in the past involved monkey wrenching individual credit ratings, cancelling credit cards—electronic mischief ranging from embarrassing to harmful.

via http://ift.tt/2eSpxYA Tyler Durden

Several astute observations on the ongoing transition from active to passive management in general, and what is shaping up as the worst year for hedge funds since the financial crisis in particular, that are sure to resonate among our hedge fund readers courtesy of Eric Peters, CIO of One Rive Asset Management.

“We decided to close our firm,” read the email from a friend.

I moved it to a folder that’s filling up fast. Been a brutal year in an unforgiving industry. Change is in the air. It usually arrives slowly, quietly, fog. But sometimes change is a hurricane.

Today’s tempest is snapping saplings, uprooting oaks. A large state pension just announced a “Back to Basics” investment strategy; the commission voted unanimously to fully redeem from seven of the industry’s most prestigious hedge funds. They’re not the only ones heading Back to Basics.

Industry redemptions this year are $60bln; on track to match the 2009 record. Back then outflows were driven by losses. Now they’re driven by insufficient profits, high fees, and a general aversion by hedge fund managers to take enough risk to earn 8% annual returns.

Because that’s what investors must generate to meet long-term retiree obligations.

And if states can’t meet those obligations they’ll raise taxes, reduce investments, or cut pensions – leaving broke Baby Boomers diaper-less.

But raising taxes and reducing investment is self-defeating; slowing growth, reducing productivity.

So how will “Back to Basics” solve America’s intractable pension problem? With bond yields at 5,000 year lows, and stocks at valuations exceeded only during the 1929 and dotcom bubbles, a Back to Basics solution is an oxymoron.

Back to Basics is the exact opposite of what’s needed. Unless of course it means liquidating your portfolio and going short because everything’s overvalued. Or unless Back to Basics means market timing, because overvalued assets can still rally, just not indefinitely. And of course, shorting and market-timing are things that hedge funds do uniquely well.

Which is why we’re not the problem, we’re part of the solution. That’s why today’s hedge fund tempest presents extraordinary opportunity. For those who evolve, bend, and survive this storm.

* * *

“My company is in structural decline,” he said gazing across Gotham, high in the corner office.

“Made it through denial, anger, bargaining, and given that we’re having this conversation, I suppose I’m mostly through depression.” Which leaves the final stage of grief and loss; acceptance.

The transition from active management to passive has been devastating for those who’ve devoted their lives to the former.

“I wonder whether the deep pessimism that we confront every day in our own businesses helps explain why we’re so skeptical of all time S&P highs.”

via http://ift.tt/2eppXVL Tyler Durden

On Sunday night, Wikileaks enigmatically tweeted that it would launch “phase 3 of [its] US election coverage” in the coming week. The site put politicians on notice Sunday evening in a tweet that also included a plea for donations.

“We commence phase 3 of our US election coverage next week. You can contribute: http://ift.tt/2dTIjBV @WLTaskForce” the whistleblower website announced moments ago.

We commence phase 3 of our US election coverage next week. You can contribute: https://t.co/MsNZhrTzTL @WLTaskForce http://pic.twitter.com/XferJnMGux

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) October 30, 2016

As the Hill noted, Wiki did not provide information about what the third phase entails or if there are still more revelations to come. As a reminder, Wikileaks’ founder Julian Assange currently finds himself in the Ecuador embassy where his internet access has been revoked for the duration of the presidential campaign to avoid the appearance of intervention.

Wikileaks supporters, now including a number of disgruntled GOP nominee Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders supporters, promptly replied with tweets expressing hope that phase three would ultimately damage Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign. User “CorruptMedia” responded with a Photoshopped estimating what CNN coverage of Clinton being escorted to jail would look like.

A new archive of Clinton-related documents would further irk a campaign still reeling from FBI director James Comey’s announcement on Friday that new emails related to the Clinton server probe had been discovered.

But there is at least some reason to believe Wikileaks could release material that is not solely Clinton related. Julian Assange, the head of Wikileaks, has stated that he would publish information from Trump if the site were sent any.

Wikileaks has already posted hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chief John Podesta: the former led to the resignation of former DNC chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz after it was revealed that the DNC was actively scheming to prevent Bernie Sanders’ nomination;  the former has led to a series of dramatic revelations into the strategic operations of the Clinton campaign, with the most damaging emails exposing the Clinton Foundation and WJC’s consulting outfit Teneo as an “influence-peddling” pay-to-play organization as noted most recently in “Doug Band To John Podesta: “If This Story Gets Out, We Are Screwed”“

via http://ift.tt/2f7eB8N Tyler Durden