Month: May 2017

Three months after China unveiled "Silent Hunter" – its vehicle-slicing laser weapon, Stars & Stripes reports that US military forces are testing their own array of hi-tech weaponry.

 

 The Silent Hunter laser is powerful enough to cut through light vehicle armor at up to a kilometer away, making you wonder if China already has more powerful laser weapons only for domestic use.

And now Military.com reports, the toy-like drones destroyed during an Army field exercise at Fort Sill, Okla., last month weren't anything special; however, the way they were brought down — zapped out of the sky by lasers mounted on a Stryker armored vehicle — might grab people's attention.

 

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

What a difference 16 months makes.

It was in February of 2016 when, looking at the latest trends in the Hong Kong housing market, we wrote that in January [2016] Hong Kong home prices tumbled the most since July 2013, and after a 12 year upcycle, prices were now down 10% from the recent peak just four months prior…

… while the local Centaline Property Agency estimated that total Hong Kong property transactions at the start of 2016 were on track to register the worst month on record.

Fast forward to today when that particular blip is long forgotten, swept away by the record credit injection unleashed by China in the interim, which has spilled over into the Hong Kong’s housing market where instead of concerns about a bubble bursting, the locals are preoccupied with chasing the latest, and biggest yet, housing bubble to form in Hong Kong, as crowds of people line up in hope of being the winning bidder for one of several properties for sales, some of which are oversubscribed as much as 15x.

Another HK new home sales oversubsribed 14.8x today, not as hot as ystdy ‘cos >HKD18k/sq ft. Only hundreds buyers. http://pic.twitter.com/WrraPLudEk

— Simon Ting (@simonting) May 27, 2017

According to the latest data from Hong Kong’s Centaline Property Centa-City Leading Index of existing homes, prices have risen an unprecedented 23% in the past year, setting new price records week after week. Over the past decade, home prices in the financial capital of Asia have tripled.

As Bloomberg observes, snaking queues of thousands of prospective apartment buyers in Hong Kong signaled authorities have made no progress in cooling a red-hot property market, where prices are at records.

A HK new home sale site queues with over thousand of buyers.
Last time this happened in 1997. http://pic.twitter.com/DHtH897ga9

— Simon Ting (@simonting) May 26, 2017

At the Victoria Skye, a luxury project at the former airport site of Kai Tak and at the Ocean Pride development by Cheung Kong Property Holdings people were lining up on Friday and over the weekend for their chance to buy a home at all time high prices.

K&K Property has offered an additional 200 units at Victoria Skye after it sold 306 flats on Saturday, Ming Pao newspaper reported. Cheung Kong will put another 346 up for grabs after selling 496 in a single day, May 26, it said. In both cases, the developers will raise the prices of the additional units by about 2 percent, the newspaper reported.

Yes, HK real estate prices are rising by 2% not over a year, or a month, but in one day!

That, however, does not stop the relentless demand from local buyers. Hong Kong developers sold 8,616 homes in the first five months of the year, more than were sold in any first half since new purchasing rules were introduced in 2013, the Hong Kong Economic Times reported.

What makes this particular bubble different is that this time, it is obvious to everyone, certainly the local press. An editorial in The Standard newspaper on Monday was surprisingly accurate: “successive moves by the government in recent memory to cool the property market only resulted in it becoming crazier. The result is a sea of madness.”

It is also obvious to the local central bank, which, however, like Vancouver and Toronto, appears powerless to halt the tsunami of hot mainland money. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority has been tightening rules for lenders, Bloomberg writes, including restricting levels of lending to developers, as it tries to limit financial risks and take some of the heat out of the market. 

And yet, so far the result is absolutely nothing as nobody bothers to listen to the growing warnings. 

Speaking at a Legislative Council meeting last Monday, Hong Kong’s central bank chief, HKMA Chief Executive Norman Chan, said levels of demand were reminiscent of 20 years ago, just before Hong Kong suffered a property bust, and he expressed concern that people with limited financial resources were buying just because they thought prices would only keep going up, just like in a bubble.

Chan said that while the global economy has improved, uncertainties remain and warned that when the property cycle reverses, “the impact will be serious.”

With real estate prices rising fast – in some cases as much as 2% per day – his warning has fallen on deaf ears. Of course, it will be different when the bubble against bursts, and everyone is “shocked” that the authorities let it come to this again, and then first the HKMA, then the PBOC, will have to again step in and bail out all the bubble chasing speculators once more, or risk yet another economic collapse, rinse and repeat.

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EURUSD is sliding in early Asian trading after Greece’s government is reportedly planning to forego its next bailout payment (of around EUR7bn) if no debt relief is offered by creditors (thus leaving it likely to default on its next round of repayments).

Bloomberg reports, Greece’s government preparing to possibly go without next bailout payment if creditors don’t agree on debt relief for the country according to German newspaper Bild (without saying where it obtained the information).

While probably just another negotiating step, it is weighing on EURUSD.

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Authored by Eric Peters via EricPetersAutos.com,

Naturally, the solution to the problem of police abusing their authority is to hold them less accountable when they do exactly that.

Leave it to “law and order” Republicans such as Texas Sen. John Cornyn and Rep. Ted Poe to evolve such logic. They have put forth the Black and Blue – whoops, Back the Blue – act (see here) which would make it harder to sue run-amok law enforcers in civil court to recover damages resulting from actions undeniably illegal – while at the same time imposing more severe penalties on Mundanes who affront the holy person of a law enforcer than those imposed on Mundanes who do exactly the same thing.

As regards the first:

So long as the victim – er, perp – was “engaged in felonies or crimes of violence” (how this it to be determined in the heat of the moment remains unclear) the law enforcer administering the wood shampoo or “directory assistance” (beating administered with a phone book in between the flesh and he nightstick, to keep the bruising down) or some other such informal technique, will be immunized from subsequent civil suit by his victim, provided the abuse suffered occurred while the enforcer was acting in a “judicial capacity.”

Breathtaking.

It is obvious – or should be – that this only encourage more lawless “street justice” by the enforcers of the law. It will also encourage more generous application of the law – i.e., of bogus/trumped-up charges (such as felony “resisting”) in the immediate aftermath of an otherwise legally unjustifiable beatdown, to immunize the beaters from the legal consequences of said beatdown.

This GOP act of cop suckage is even better than a throw-away stiletto  – which dirty cops used to keep on hand to leave adjacent to the bloodied corpse of their victim, so as to justify his aeration.

That was at least illegal.

Now, they won’t have to bother.

 

What these Republican brownshirts – and that term isn’t too strong; if anything, it is too soft – propose to do is legalize objectively criminal conduct, the conduct to be justified by eructing that the victim was a “law breaker” and so – presumably – deserved to have more than the legally prescribed justice meted out to him and – critically – before he has been duly convicted of anything at all.

Under the proposed Black and Blue lawlessness, law enforcement is to be given discretion to administer street justice, according to its lights – and the victim of this is to be rendered legally helpless. No damages are to be awarded for any violations of law that occurred during “any action brought against a judicial officer for an act or omission taken in the judicial capacity of that officer.”

Hut!Hut! Hut! You will respect my authoritah!

 

At the same time, any assault upon the person of a law enforcer by a Mundane becomes a separate federal crime with a mandatory two-to-five-year stint in federal prison. Twenty if the accused was in possession of a weapon during the incident.

The legal definition of “assault” can be a trivial as jabbing a finger onto someone else’s chest. Or – in the case of law enforcement – defending oneself against an assault by a law enforcer. Attempt to ward off a wood shampoo –  a reflex action that is almost impossible to suppress, and – to well-practiced cries of “stop resisting!” – you have just purchased a two-to-five-year ticket to the federal prison of their choice.

It goes without saying that a law enforcer who commits exactly the same offense – assuming he is even charged – will suffer nothing of the sort.

Cannot suffer anything of the sort, because the the law specifies more lenient treatment for assault-by-cop upon a Mundane.

And the lights just got a little dimmer.

One hates to trot out the Nazis, but they seem never to go away. They merely change uniforms. In the Third Reich, to strike an officer of the Reich was an enormous crime, far worse – and treated far more severely – than the treatment meted out to officers of the Reich who abused citizens of the Reich. For which acts, the officers of the Reich were usually rewarded.

As is often the case, the words of the brutal but never truckling Reichsmarschall Herman Goring are worth recalling.

But first, it is worth recalling that Goring was Nazi Germany’s chief law enforcer for a time. Head of the Prussian State Police, creator of the first German concentration camps and founder of the Gestapo, the acronym standing for geheim staats polizei, or secret state police. He was hanged – well, supposed to have been hanged – after the judgment at Nuremburg precisely for his activities as Nazi Germany’s Top Cop.

And here is what Goring had to say about his law enforcers, when the question of excesses arose:

“Shoot first and inquire afterwards; if you make mistakes, I will protect you. Every bullet which leaves the barrel of a police pistol is my bullet. If one calls this murder, then I have murdered. I ordered all this. I back it up. I assume the responsibility and I am not afraid to do so.”

One can imagine Cornyn or similar “law and order” Republican – including the current orange-tinctured buffoon – saying pretty much the same.

What the hell happened to us?

Well, to some of us.

There has always been a jackbooted strain in American politics, the bloody lust of the Red Queen to “off with their heads.” But until recently, it was backwater  – along with things like handling snakes, jabbering in “tongues” and sipping strychnine.

But these and worse barbarisms wax mainstream.

Rather than hold those who enforce the law to at least the same standard expected of the rest of us – if not a higher standard – they are to be held to a lesser standard. We, meanwhile, had best not so much as raise our voices to these dispensers of “justice.”

Remarkable.

And it’s only taken 70 years for us to get from there to here.

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Last summer, when the Syrian conflict was near its peak under the Obama administration, China unexpectedly warned it was ready to enter the proxy war when in a stunning announcement, Xinhua reported that Beijing was prepared to side with Syria – and Russia – and against the US-led alliance, and that Xi and Assad had agreed that the Chinese military will have closer ties with Syria and provide humanitarian aid to the civil war torn nation.

A high-ranking People’s Liberation Army officer also said that the training of Syrian personnel by Chinese instructors has also been discussed: the Director of the Office for International Military Cooperation of China’s Central Military Commission, Guan Youfei, arrived in Damascus on Tuesday for talks with Syrian Defense Minister Fahad Jassim al-Freij, Xinhua added. Guan said China had consistently played a positive role in pushing for a political resolution in Syria. “China and Syria’s militaries have a traditionally friendly relationship, and China’s military is willing to keep strengthening exchanges and cooperation with Syria’s military,” Xinhua quoted Guan.

Rear Admiral Guan Youfei

As Reuters also added at the time, China tends to leave Middle Eastern diplomacy to the other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, namely the United States, Britain, France and Russia, while relying on the region for oil supplies. But over the past two years, China has been trying to get more involved, including sending envoys to help push for a diplomatic resolution to the violence there and hosting Syrian government and opposition figures.

Fast forward to today when the Syria proxy war is once again at an impasse – especially after today’s warning by Macron that France would get involved after another “chemical attack” –  and once again it may be up to China to be the decisive tiebreaker.

According to both Sputnik and the Daily Sabah, Moscow is once again hoping “for China’s help in solving the Syrian crisis and restoring the country: Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov said Monday.

“Our cooperation with China on Syria at various international venues is unprecedented. We blocked six attempts to pass anti-Syrian resolutions in the U.N. Security Council,” Morgulov said at “Russia and China: Taking on a New Quality of Bilateral Relations” international conference.

The Russian deputy foreign minister added that Russia values Beijing’s position on the Syrian crisis, and hopes that, “the Chinese partners will continue their efforts to promote a political settlement.”

“Together we call for a peaceful and political-diplomatic solution to conflicts, without double standards, unilateral action or attempts at ousting regimes. Our approaches coincide, among other things, on the uncompromising fight against terrorism,” Morgulov said.

To be sure, Russia and China are already largely alligned at the United Nations, where the two nations have repeatedly vetoed Security Council resolutions imposing sanctions against the Assad regime. Moscow has long-standing links to the Assad regime and is its key ally, while China has an established policy of non-intervention in other countries’ affairs, although as noted above that appeared to change in 2016.

Needless to say, should China break from its policy of direct foreign non-intervention, and should it indeed side with Syria, and Russia, as it hinted it would do last year, the shape of middle eastern geopolitics would change overnight. And now we await the official, or unofficial, response from China to Russia’s “indecent” diplomatic proposal for a joint effort in Syria against the US-led alliance.

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Authored by Mark St.Cyr,

On this holiday weekend known here in the U.S. as Memorial Day, I would like to make a slight turn in the narrative that many give little to no attention too, yet, is one of the most important underlying principles or fundamentals which helped shape, lift, mold, sustain, and create one of the world’s greatest economic powerhouses bar none.

That “turn” is in remembering: The liberty to create, and own, one’s own business.

As true as holding the principles of liberty close to one’s heart is near-and-dear to every American. What gets forgotten all too easily is what enabled many of those immigrants that fled here during its rocky beginnings, and still continues today, to shape and mold a better life for themselves and their families. That other foundational principle is this:

The ability to create, and pursue, a business idea that could, or would, allow them to acquire economic liberty based on their own self-expression made manifest via perseverance, and sometimes a little luck. And with that – create a foundation which could either be passed on, or sold, by their heirs, giving them possibly one further step-up, or ahead, onto firmer ground to take another. And maybe another, and another, and so forth.

Only through the pursuit of business was the true circumvention of any stigmatized political or economic class, ethnicity, and more so truly held in one’s own hands. Self-actualization, the pursuit of economic riches, the ability to ingratiated oneself by their own means to not only claim to be part of the American experiment, but to actually be American regardless of where one began, either from abroad or born within – was not inconsequential.

Being an American businessman, regardless of ethnicity, political class, economic class, religious persuasion, gender, or anything else, in many ways was the embodiment for something to be cherished and honored by the owner.

Being the sole-owner of one’s own economic future was either unattainable, or unavailable anywhere else.

It embodied everything the American principle was created for and rose upon. Without it – we would have just been another ruled monarchy; socialist; communist; caste; (fill-in-the-blank) or combination of all system under a different name with better topography. It’s the only thing that separates the U.S. from all others that came before and since.

(Note: The gender neutral term “business-person” just doesn’t flow and only emboldens the gender-sensitivity-police and I’m personally sick-and-tired of them. Women with true business fortitude understand there’s no derogatory slight in the term “businessman.” Period. For those wanting more on my thoughts about women in business see my article “The Bull On Bossy” for more insight.)

The term, as well as structure, that has allowed the U.S. to grow as to become such an economic powerhouse is called: Free Market Capitalism (FMC.) And its foundational starting point is the sole-person who decides to either create their own product, or work with (and yes even for) others who are in need of their talent. Then, decide where, and on what agreed upon price commerce takes place. (Examples of such are Family Dr’s., accountants, bakers, tattoo artists, waiters, waitresses, plumbers, electricians, salespeople, and far too many more to list. And yes, even bankers.)

Again, at its foundational point is the solitary person who decides to take matters and consequences under their own purview and either rise, or fall, on their own business prowess upon the battlefield known as business or commerce.

What is taking shape today, and what’s worse – growing – is anything but.

What most have no understanding of, let alone idea, that’s taking place today is the circumvention of Free Market Capitalism, and in its place, the insertion of its hybrid, ever-morphing, evil twin. e.g, Cronyism, aka Crony Capitalism (CC.)

I could go on for days explaining why this insertion of CC into the FMC model is not only egregious, but dangerous. However, all one has to do is look at the current economic landscape with an eye for truth – and its perversions and consequences can be seen everywhere.

It’s like a visible, metastasized cancer encroaching upon economic liberty. i.e., Forget about the “golden egg” its wrapping its hands firmly around the goose’s neck in broad daylight. And never mind those not bothering to look. What’s worse – is those who can’t turn their eyes away seem to think there’s anything wrong with this picture! e.g., Ivory Towered academics, main stream business/financial outlets, et al.

A few years ago I penned the following article, “It’s The Entrepreneur That Saves An Economy – Not The Fed” and in it I made the following point. To wit:

“The problem that’s taking place right now within the economy is exactly what you get when you take a free market economy and try to impose a command and control blanket over it: you smother it.

 

The Ivory Tower academics have no real understanding of what “free” actually entails when it’s expressed through the economy as a whole. The ability to build a better mouse trap, or, solve a previously unsolvable riddle all while charging a price two parties can both bear, profit by, and have satisfaction in the transaction does not, nor ever will take place within a command and control base. Ever.

 

Free markets allow for competition to find equilibrium as to provide and deliver a service or good someone will pay a fair price for. And yes, even for such an item such as a stock price.

 

Command and control fosters either the “State” to be the only provider, or, a fostered crony capitalism styled arrangement which is nothing more than another iteration of some communist system in prettier buildings wearing better suits. Harsh? Yes. Off point? Hardly. And that’s the problem.

 

The great capital formation experiment and enterprise known as Wall Street and its Exchanges, once the envy of the world, has now been transformed into nothing more than a rigged casino where Fed fueled “hot money” front runs orders in ways so egregious to the principal of fair play; walking into “a den of thieves” would be considered a step up.”

Here’s a bit more from that article directed squarely at the Fed. (or central banks in general) and its interventionist policies. At the time my accusations were excoriated as derisive, uneducated, (fill-in-the-blank.) However, with that said I’ll let you be the judge as to just whom seems to be “uneducated” when it comes to economic theory and practices. Again, to wit:

“Business people know and understand this intuitively. Ivory Tower academics, intellectuals, and economists are not only clueless, it’s their wanton indignation of these facts that move their policies beyond destructive right into outright dangerous territory for any free market based economy.

 

The only one’s that can benefit from such a business environment are those that gorge and reward themselves via the availability current Fed. policy fosters. And the name for it is: crony capitalism.

 

Whether the Fed. wants to admit or not, that’s what their current policy and communication fosters and bolsters which is the antithesis of what the Fed. itself states as its primary objective; for there is no wage growth, no true job creation, no sustainable capital formations, and not stable markets.

 

The Fed. is killing the economy – not helping it. And as de facto proof I point to their own measurements of achievement. The markets, the labor participation rate, small business formation, wage growth, and on, and on. It’s all pathetic.

 

The Fed’s QE program has adulterated valuations so much it will be a wonder if we ever get back to a more normalized set of business values let alone their valuations and away from this calamity.

 

There are entrepreneurs along with CEO’s of companies who are quite literally chomping at the bit to try new or improved innovations – yet don’t dare for either their competitors are being kept alive via cheap money afforded them under current ZIRP policy, or worse, don’t dare hire or spend for who knows if the Fed. will raise out of the blue or announce some new program that runs anathema to basic sound monetary policies.

 

You don’t invest in cap-ex or hiring for the long-term if you don’t know what the rules might be tomorrow never-mind next year. Period.”

If you gauge the current economy via the abomination now known as “markets” (which the Fed. clearly does) this “success” is all but missing its own “Mission Accomplished” banner. However, if you measure the economy via its true measurements of health like jobs, small business creation, cap-ex, and more? You go from banner to tombstone. Yet – the epitaph reads the same as “banner.” It only depends on perspective as to what the words mean. Think about it.

To make my point even further on just how far economic “thinking” has gone off the rails. I was reminded of it by none other than Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook™ via his latest speech or commencement address.

Nowhere in my recent memory has the idea of small business, along with what it means for the economic health (e.g. Free market Capitalism) been so avoided, so adulterated, so perverted in its messaging and delivery than what I witnessed when viewing Mark Zuckerberg’s address to this year’s graduating class at Harvard University.

In my opinion: It was the epitome of everything going wrong in business today. I also viewed it as one of the most tone-deaf, quasi-political speeches ever given at a commencement speech via someone who should be the embodiment of this time in history’s most celebrated and espousing Free Market Capitalism entrepreneurs.

It was so dreadful, and full of what I view as socialistic laced mumbo-jumbo, I couldn’t listen to much more than a few minutes. Again, via my interpretations; it was agonizingly void of anything resembling free market business principles.

Only a speech delivered by Hilary Clinton compared for substance and delivery. And that’s being kind.

This so-called “address” was anything but “uplifting” for those who are supposedly about to enter the work force and help create the next wave of dynamism for economic growth for the U.S. and subsequently the global business environment.

No, instead, after listening about such themes as “guaranteed universal basic income”, “we are the world”, “save the planet”, and more; it would make perfect sense after receiving their diplomas they simply returned home to their parents basements and waited for the world to offer them a corner office, 7 figure starting salary, trophy-spouse, 2.2 children (gender to be determined) and world peace. Just make sure you’re logged into FB as you wait. Because that’s how Mark gets paid, even if you don’t.

It seemed when listening that in a Zuckerberg vision of the world: Don’t pull on your own bootstraps. Wait! Sooner or later they’ll be able to offer you Utopia. And you’ll thank him for it. Just remember to vote “Like” to show your support behind him if, or when, he decides to run for office. Because for what that speech lacked in spoken words of business ideals, it was laced with more unspoken terms of the political which could not be ignored even when trying. i.e., I couldn’t help but think at any moment I would hear something to the effect of: “And be on the lookout for Zuckerberg for (fill in the blank) in 20??”

Compare Mark’s recent with the one delivered in 2005 by the late Steve Jobs at Stanford University. The two could not be more striking in both tone, as well as delivery. The difference is utterly remarkable and is clearly visible:

One is a businessman explaining via his own words and experiences how one may go about changing the world for the better via FMC principles and ideas eschewing anything to do with the political. The other? The antithesis of the former, delivering a speech more in-tune as if it were written by Mrs. Clinton’s former speech writers.

Don’t take my word for it, view both of them yourself and come to your own conclusions. The differences couldn’t be more striking.

The only way forward for this nation (e.g., U.S.) is for the rebirth of quest and zeal for small business America. It is what built this nation, continues to support it (although it is being waged war upon by crony capitalist benefactors and devotees daily) and is the only way to reassert and preserve the foundations of the Free Market Capital system.

What we are experiencing today is an adulterated, ever-growing, Frankenstein perversion of those once pristine principles that is growing ever-the-more unstable with each passing day and is showing signs that it’s about to break loose of its creators (The Federal Reserve) control at any time.

The current “market” is nothing more than a bull looking for a china shop. Ironically, it may be China that subsequently puts the “bull” into a place which no one “thinks”, let alone, believes.

For those of the newly minted “graduate class” let me offer you an example of just how cronyism works and is prevalent at the very core of what many of you use and treat almost as sacrosanct for entrepreneurialism in today’s business and “market” climate. e.g., Social media, and the companies that fuel it.

If you are one of the few that believed (or still does) Snapchat™ was possibly the next Facebook and invested in its stock, only to see your profits or initial investment go “poof” much like its core product? And yet – have watched simultaneously as FB shares rise and think there must be some “business” reason as to why this happens or “business acumen” you don’t fully yet comprehend? Hint: Welcome to central bank manipulation for picking winners and losers 101.

As I’ve stated too many times to count over the years: This is why having (or picking) a company with a stock price which has a central bankers “bullseye” on it is the only thing that matters. And guess what – Facebook does and Snapchat doesn’t. Want proof. Fair point. To wit:

“Swiss National Bank’s U.S. Stock Holdings Hit A Record $63.4 Billion”

The real issue here as I’ve reiterated time, and time again, is this:

When your investment loses value – you lose money and net worth. When a central banks “investment” loses value – they just print more, and buy more, allowing the pretense of “health” to perpetuate inducing even more to buy alongside them furthering the charade of a “market” based price or demand. Rinse, repeat.

Hint: Facebook is on that “Bullseye” list. Along with a few other notables. Snapchat? See latest stock price for clues. And that’s just the SNB. You still have the Fed’s proxies, ECB, BoJ, PBoC and their proxies buying who knows what else.

Is it any wonder why small businesses are having such a hard time competing with these new-found business behemoths of today? For others, its having to compete with companies which are clearly “over.” e.g., See Sears™ for clues and why it has been able to stay open via cheap capital facilitated via Fed. policies unavailable to small businesses.

So with that all said: Long live small business! It may be badly banged up, battered, and bruised. But it’s far from dead just yet. We only need to remember its importance too all of us. Our nations health, and very survival depends on it. It’s a too often overlooked part of our fundamental liberties. Brave men and women of all stripes have, do, and hopefully will, continue to fight for its preservation along with our other sacred liberties.

To all of them: past, present, and future – you have my sincere gratitude. Both military, as well as business people.

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Defense Secretary James Mattis appeared on “Face the Nation” with John Dickerson on Sunday and repeated his warning that an armed conflict with North Korea would be “catastrophic” for US allies in the region, and that it "would be probably the worst kind of fighting" because of the North's proximity to the South Korean capital, Seoul.

 

“A conflict in North Korea, John, would be probably the worst kind of fighting in most people's lifetimes. Why do I say this? The North Korean regime has hundreds of artillery cannons and rocket launchers within range of one of the most densely populated cities on earth, which is the capital of South Korea."

Mattis told a Pentagon news conference earlier this month that a war with the north would be “tragic on an unbelievable scale," suggesting that the Trump administration would seek to exhaust all alternatives before resorting to military action. 

“We are working with the international community to deal with this issue. This regime is a threat to the region, to Japan, to South Korea. And in the event of war, they would bring danger to China and to Russia as well. But the bottom line is it would be a catastrophic war if this turns into a combat if we're not able to resolve this situation through diplomatic means.”

Mattis affirms that the North is a threat to the US, but he stops short of drawing a line in the sand when he tells Dickerson he’d prefer not to answer a question about what the North could do, if anything, to provoke a response from the US. The president, Mattis said, needs “political maneuver room on the issue.”

“It is a direct threat to the United States. They have been very clear in their rhetoric we don't have to wait until they have an intercont- intercontinental ballistic missile with a nuclear weapon on it to say that now it's manifested completely.”

"Yeah, I'd prefer not to answer that question, John. The president needs political maneuver room on this issue. We– we do not draw red lines unless we intend to carry them out. We've made very clear that we're willing to work with China and we believe China has tried to be helpful in this regard.”

North Korea launched another missile into the Sea of Japan Sunday evening, a few hours after Mattis appeared on the show, and shortly after the Pentagon said it is preparing to test its capability to shoot down an intercontinental-range missile next week.

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Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo on Sunday condemned a vivid example of reverse racism, when she called for a black feminist festival in the French capital to be banned, saying it was “prohibited to white people.” The first edition of the Nyansapo Festival, due to run from July 28 to 30 at a cultural center in Paris, bills itself as “an event rooted in blackfeminism, activism, and on (a) European scale.”

According to AFP, four-fifths of the festival area will be set aside as a “non-mixed” space “for black women,” according to its website in French. Another space will be a “non-mixed” area “for black people” regardless of gender, while a final space would be “open to all” although as the French media explains, the English version of the site does uses the word “reserved” instead of “non-mixed.”

The announcement prompted an angry response from Hidalgo, a socialist, who said on Twitter that she “firmly condemned” the organisation “of this event, ‘prohibited to white people‘.”

“I am asking for this festival to be banned,” Hidalgo said, adding she also reserved the right “to prosecute the organisers for discrimination.”

She wasn’t the only one: French antiracist and antisemitism organisations strongly condemned the festival. SOS Racisme described the event as “a mistake, even an abomination, because it wallows in ethnic separation, whereas anti-racism is a movement which seeks to go beyond race.” LICRA, the International League against Racism and Antisemitism, said “Rosa Parks would be turning in her grave,” a reference to the American civil rights icon.

Attention to the festival was first brought up by Wallerand de Saint-Just, the regional head of Marine Le Pen’s National Front party, who challenged Hidalgo on Friday to explain how the city was putting on an event “promoting a concept that is blatantly racist and anti-republican.”

As for the response by the organizers of the clearly racist event, it was just as one would expect: instead of taking responsibility they blamed “fake news” and the “far right”:

The cultural centre La Generale, where the event was to be hosted, and the collective Mwasi, which organised the event, said Sunday they were the “target of a disinformation campaign and of ‘fake news’ orchestrated by the foulest far right.”

 

“We are saddened to see certain antiracist associations letting themselves be manipulated like this,” according to a statement posted on the Generale website.

Because when all else fails, and one has no arguments, what does one do? Blame “fake news” and/or the “alt-right”, which at least in this case means those who point out the facts.

The Nuansapo is not the first prominent French reverse-racist event: a “decolonisation summer camp” in the northeastern French city of Reims elicited similar outrage last year, as it billed itself as a “training seminar on antiracism” reserved for victims of “institutional racism” or “racialised” minorities — excluding by default white people.

AFP adds that police prefect Michel Delpuech said in a statement that police had not been advised about the event by Sunday evening. But, Delpuech added, the police “would ensure the rigorous compliance of the laws, values, and principles of the republic”.

In a subsequent update reported by Bloomberg, Hidalgo said her “firm”
discussion with organizers had yielded a satisfactory clarification: the
parts of the festival held on property would be open to everyone and
“non-mixed workshops will be held elsewhere, in a strictly private
setting.” Although even this prompted confusion: MWASI, the Afro-feminist collective sponsoring the three-day
event, responded to the mayor’s latest comments by saying it hadn’t
changed the festival program “an inch.“

Meanwhile, last week several women attempting to stage a “burkini party” were detained in Cannes after a ban against the full-body beachwear favored by some Muslim women was upheld in a fresh decree.

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

Authored by Paul Sperry, op-ed via NYPost.com,

New revelations have surfaced that the Obama administration abused intelligence during the election by launching a massive domestic spy campaign that included snooping on Trump officials.

The irony is mind-boggling: Targeting political opposition is long a technique of police states like Russia, which Team Obama has loudly condemned for allegedly using its own intelligence agencies to hack into our election.

The revelations, as well as testimony this week from former Obama intel officials, show the extent to which the Obama administration politicized and weaponized intelligence against Americans.

Thanks to Circa News, we now know the National Security Agency under President Barack Obama routinely violated privacy protections while snooping through foreign intercepts involving US citizens — and failed to disclose the breaches, prompting the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court a month before the election to rebuke administration officials.

The story concerns what’s known as “upstream” data collection under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, under which the NSA looks at the content of electronic communication. Upstream refers to intel scooped up about third parties: Person A sends Person B an email mentioning Person C. Though Person C isn’t a party to the email, his information will be scooped up and potentially used by the NSA.

Further, the number of NSA data searches about Americans mushroomed after Obama loosened rules for protecting such identities from government officials and thus the reporters they talk to.

The FISA court called it a “very serious Fourth Amendment issue” that NSA analysts — in violation of a 2011 rule change prohibiting officials from searching Americans’ information without a warrant — “had been conducting such queries in violation of that prohibition, with much greater frequency than had been previously disclosed to the Court.”

A number of those searches were made from the White House, and included private citizens working for the Trump campaign, some of whose identities were leaked to the media. The revelations earned a stern rebuke from the ACLU and from civil liberties champion Sen. Rand Paul.

We also learned this week that Obama intelligence officials really had no good reason attaching a summary of a dossier on Trump to a highly classified Russia briefing they gave to Obama just weeks before Trump took office.

Under congressional questioning Tuesday, Obama’s CIA chief John Brennan said the dossier did not “in any way” factor into the agency’s assessment that Russia interfered in the election. Why not? Because as Obama intel czar James Clapper earlier testified, “We could not corroborate the sourcing.”

But that didn’t stop Brennan in January from attaching its contents to the official report for the president. He also included the unverified allegations in the briefing he gave Hill Democrats.

In so doing, Brennan virtually guaranteed that it would be leaked, which it promptly was.

In short, Brennan politicized raw intelligence. In fact, he politicized the entire CIA.

Langley vets say Brennan was the most politicized director in the agency’s history. Former CIA field operations officer Gene Coyle said Brennan was “known as the greatest sycophant in the history of the CIA, and a supporter of Hillary Clinton before the election. I find it hard to put any real credence in anything that the man says.”

Coyle noted that Brennan broke with his predecessors who stayed out of elections. Several weeks before the vote, he made it very clear he was pulling for Hillary. His deputy Mike Morell even came out and publicly endorsed her in the New York Times, claiming Trump was an “unwitting agent” of Moscow.

Brennan isn’t just a Democrat. He’s a radical leftist who in 1980 — during the height of the Cold War — voted for a Communist Party candidate for president.

When Brennan rants about the dangers of strongman Vladimir Putin targeting our elections and subverting our democratic process, does he not catch at least a glimpse of his own reflection?

What he and the rest of the Obama gang did has inflicted more damage on the integrity of our electoral process than anything the Russians have done.

 

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