Month: March 2018

Authored by Virginia Fidler via GoldTelegraph.com,

Today’s world has been coined the “Interconnected Age.” There is plenty of positives with removing friction in communication; however, there is a significant negative. Government and corporations are keeping an eye on our every move.

We like to think we enjoy some fundamental liberties, however governments and corporations continue to assault our privacy on a daily basis. The internet tracks our interests, beliefs, purchases, and social life. Order your groceries online, and someone knows what you’re having for dinner. Get the latest bestseller from Amazon, and your reading habits are an open book. And that’s just the beginning. Our liberties have shrunken to the point of no return.

When we think of liberty, we think of the power of choice. Yet, our choices are being limited in ways few kings and despots have dared in the past.

Do you rejoice in having a job? What you have are employers snooping through your computer and company cell phone. In some cases, your political views can get you fired, even if they have nothing to do with your job. Recently, a woman was fired for having a gun permit (not a gun). Freedom of speech has translated into “hate speech” by anyone who may disagree with your thoughts. If you thought you had the freedom to think, think again.

Many employers today are hiring part-time workers, who lack the freedom to partake of benefits to which they might otherwise be entitled.

The health of our seniors was at one time sacrosanct. Now, Medicare is limiting benefits, treatments, and access to life-saving medicine.

There’s a proven and powerful correlation between education and longevity. The more you know about taking care of yourself, the longer you will probably live. Yet, the cost of a basic four-year college education is being priced beyond the capabilities of more and more Americans. Good health is shifting into the realm of privilege instead of right. The days of Dr. Marcus Welby are long gone. You no longer have the right to make decisions about your health. The government and insurance companies have happily relieved you of that burden.

At one time, America was the only country where social upward mobility was the norm. People from all over the world arrived at our shores with little more than the shirt on their backs. Hard work ensured that their children would enjoy a good education and a better life. College cost has risen by 300 percent since the 1980s, placing it out of reach to a struggling middle and lower class that saw education as the means to a better life. Full-time jobs with benefits are giving way to part-time jobs. In 2017, approximately six million Americans worked part-time, with limited, if any, benefits. Many American workers are losing their right to free time and vacation because companies don’t have anyone to cover for them. The American Dream has turned into a scramble for survival. The right to pursue our dream job is disappearing at a time when children with a lemonade stand are facing government scrutiny.

A trade used to be a transaction between equal parties. No more. Banks and mortgage brokers are frequently hiding key provisions in incomprehensible verbiage while deliberately misrepresenting the terms of a transaction. A deceptive market is no longer a free market as consumers are being deprived of their right to choose.

The right to have both a public self and a private self-has been eroded.

It’s not just Facebook, Google, Twitter and the internet, in general, that has made privacy a thing of the past. You can’t leave the house, take a walk, or go into a store without a camera watching your every move. If you carry a cell phone (and who doesn’t?), cell towers track and pinpoint your location 24 hours a day. Many electronic devices have entered our homes and are turning our private life into the public domain, to be used by large corporations and government.

Most Americans enjoy using debit and credit cards when shopping. After all, it saves them from being potentially robbed of a wad of cash. Instead, they are being robbed of any pretense of privacy. Few realize the sophisticated way our purchases are being tracked – and the personal information we are giving to the seller. It’s called data mining. In 2012, an angry father contacted a national retailer about the fact that his young daughter was receiving information and discounts for baby products. Imagine the man’s surprise when he learned that the retailer had analyzed his daughter’s purchases and had guessed correctly that the girl was, indeed, pregnant. Forget about the right to privacy when you learn you’re about to become a grandparent from a retail chain. Technology is establishing patterns and data to guide us toward making purchases without us being aware of what is happening. It’s not 1984. It’s the reality in which we live.

Retailers analyze every aspect of consumer behavior, demographics, and choices. Signs proclaiming, “We do not accept cash,” are not unusual. Smartphones are being used to pay for everyday items at food stands and cab rides. The day is near when retailers know more about you than your family and friends.

Banks and the government are gaining full control over our banking activities. The more information we hand over, the more of our freedom they can control and erode. Information is power, and the government has always been the epitome of power.

Retailers are encouraging us to move toward a cashless society with reward points and by conveniently saving our banking information. Some economists muse about banning physical currency entirely. Without cash, we no longer own our own money. We give custody of it to our bank. What happens if the banks refuse to hand over our claim to our own funds? It’s an easy next step for the bank to deprive us of or seize our own money if we act in ways it doesn’t approve, like a bank run.

In addition, banks survive and thrive on interest income. Payments made with cash would deprive banks of their business. That would account for the constant invitation to quality for just one more credit card. The banks aren’t being charitable. They are after your information and money. To discourage the use of physical money, currency might be taxed in the future.

Is paying for a hot dog with cash our last remnant of freedom? If government and banks have their say, it may become illegal to do so. Only then will we realize that physical money is the very essence of freedom. And exactly what we have given up when we make the choice to give up cash.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2J2TK6v Tyler Durden

The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has launched a new initiative to stimulate increased partnerships with the scientific community, higher education, and business professionals, through a series of conversations and outreach events. In the first wave of war propaganda, the U.S. Air Force has released a 5-minute video detailing how it thinks aerial warfare might look like in the next ten to twelve years.

The war video debuted on the AFRL YouTube channel on March 22 to promote the service’s new “Science and Technology 2030” initiative, which aims to close the technology gap between America’s adversaries by innovating “smarter and faster.” The AFRL states, “Our warfighters depend on us to keep the fight unfair and we will deliver.”

Further, the AFRL suggests America “can not afford to slow down,” and the initiative is “to help us [AFRL] better prepare for 2030 and beyond.”

In other words, the AFRL has openly admitted the existence of the Cold War 2.0 between Washington, Moscow, and Beijing.

In the short animated video below, the AFRL reveals the next-generation fighter jet, autonomous unmanned planes, hypersonic weapons, weaponized drone swarms, tactical high energy lasers and other directed energy weapons, and throughout the video demonstrates how an artificial intelligence-enabled network will be the high-tech backbone infrastructure that manages it all.

According to Defense News, here is an exclusive breakdown of the major technology programs featured in the video:

Loyal Wingman

“An F-35 pilot, surrounded by a ring of unmanned fighter aircraft, sends several of the drones ahead to strike a target. This is the concept behind Loyal Wingman, one of AFRL’s most anticipated efforts. AFRL is developing algorithms that will allow fighter pilots to control multiple drones, and industry has stepped up with technologies that could further enable the technology. For instance, in 2017, Lockheed Martin flew a demonstration with an unmanned F-16 teamed with a manned fighter. Kratos Defense and Security Solutions has also tested two drones, the Mako and Valkyrie, which were developed for the program.”   

Gremlins

“In the second clip, the door of a C-130 cargo bay is opened and a robot pushes a pod into the air from which hundreds of small drones detach and begin swarming around the ship. This effort, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s “Gremlins” program, aims to create recoverable UAS swarms that would be able to penetrate contested areas and provide a variety of capabilities including intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, electronic warfare, signals intelligence, or other kinetic effects. General Atomics and Dynetics were awarded contracts for the second phase of the Gremlins program in 2017. DARPA intends to downselect to a single competitor in 2018, and in 2019 that company will demonstrate the ability to launch and recover multiple drones aboard a C-130.”

CHAMP

“The next video clip shows the Counter-electronics High Power Microwave Advanced Missile Project, or CHAMP, flying over a city, seemingly causing a blackout. CHAMP is a cruise missile-like weapon that uses a high-powered microwave to fry nearby electronics. The capability is being developed by AFRL and Boeing, which demonstrated CHAMP in 2013. CHAMP has been in development since the beginning of the decade, but it recently received a ton of press as a potential counter to North Korean intercontinental ballistic missiles. Those reports were a bit overstated. As Defense News sister publication C4ISRNET reported, ICBMs would likely be stored in a way to protect against any sort of an attack that could impact its electronics, and its highly unlikely that CHAMP could fry an ICBM’s circuitry while in flight.”

F-X, also known as Penetrating Counter Air or Next-Generation Air Dominance

“The final capability showcased — a rendering of a conceptual design of the service’s future fighter jet — is one that Air Force leadership has remained quiet about in recent months.

The reason for that, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Dave Goldfein said, is to force industry to widen the aperture and begin thinking of air superiority as a “system of systems” instead of a single platform. Beyond that, he’s not saying much.

“The last thing I would want to do is to give our adversaries any heads up on the thinking that we’re doing on that mission set and others,” he told Defense News earlier this month.

The Air Force hasn’t chosen a manufacturer or design for its sixth-generation fighter, which is alternately called F-X, Penetrating Counter Air, or Next-Generation Air Dominance. However, the rendering in the AFRL video shows a sleek, stealthy design with a laser powerful enough to destroy an enemy fighter.

The service is currently conducting an NGAD analysis of alternatives that will help solidify whether a new fighter jet will remain part of the Air Force’s air superiority plans and what capabilities it will need.

In 2016, Brig. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, who led the service’s Air Superiority 2030 study, said the Air Force could field a new fighter jet by 2030 if it used rapid prototyping and parallel development to create promising new technologies and drive down risk.”

In order to defend the United States from Russia and/or China, the Air Force has now decided to unleash its propaganda machine to further the technology behind its futuristic weapons, with increased partnerships from academia and the private sector. In doing so, the Air Force is openly admitting that the new Cold War could turn hot in “2030 and beyond.”

via RSS https://ift.tt/2GT8d4d Tyler Durden

Authored by Nick Cunningham via OilPrice.com,

Record production of natural gas is snuffing out any price rally that might have occurred from the bout of cold weather this winter.

The gas market saw a jolt at the end of December and in early January due to extremely cold temperatures across much of the U.S. This winter was about 13 percent colder than last year, which pushed up residential and commercial gas demand by 3.5 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d), according to Barclays.

At the same time, demand continues to grind higher on a structural basis, with more LNG exports leaving U.S. shores and more utilities burning gas for electricity. That led to a sharp drawdown in gas inventories, pushing them 16 percent below the five-year average in the first quarter.

Nevertheless, the price impact was muted. In the past, sever cold snaps have led to sharp price spikes. While that happened in regional spot markets, the price increases were very short-term and nothing like the price increases during the 2014 Polar Vortex. After the cold subsided, Henry Hub spot prices fell back below $3/MMBtu.

Gas traders are so sanguine because the U.S. is producing more natural gas than ever. And 2018 is shaping up to be a record year for new gas output. A mild streak during February eased some pressure on inventories as well.

As a result, the U.S. will likely see “heavy” gas injections during the second quarter, according to Barclays. The bank expects gas inventories to rise at a pace that is 1 Bcf/d higher than last year.

Barclays sees gas output growing by 6.4 billion cubic feet per day this year. That is an impressive figure, but it will be aided by the fact that a lot of drilled but uncompleted wells (DUCs) could come online in 2018.

Still, Barclays says that record production and higher natural gas prices are not necessarily mutually exclusive. While there isn’t really a bullish case for gas, Barclays says that prices are probably a bit oversold. Inventories will rebuild quickly this spring, but the U.S. will still enter summer months with inventories 17 percent below the five-year average.

Meanwhile, there is a bit of a geographical mismatch between supply and demand, with gas growing at extraordinary rates in the Marcellus Shale and Permian basin, while demand growth is largely concentrated along the Gulf Coast. That could result in some higher gas prices along the Gulf Coast, helping gas drillers there.

But, ultimately, prices will have to go up ahead of next winter in order to adequately replenish gas inventories. If prices were to remain where they currently are, there would be a much larger coal-to-gas switch happening for electricity generation. Leaning harder on gas-fired power plants, made possible by low prices, would result in a smaller gas injection into storage. In other words, if natural gas prices do not rise, the U.S. would enter the winter season with too little gas on hand.

So, Barclays predicts Henry Hub prices will average $3.12/MMBtu over the course of injection season, which lasts until November. Higher prices this summer would turn off some coal-to-gas switching in the electricity sector. For instance, a move from $2.70/MMBtu to $3.00/MMBtu would destroy about 700-800 MMcf/d of gas-fired power burn, which would translate into about 150 Bcf of extra gas to put in storage over the course of the injection season, according to Barclays.

Barclays is not alone in that assessment. “If this winter’s level of year-on-year demand growth can be sustained into the spring and summer, prices may need to move higher to achieve adequate storage levels by the end of October,” said analysts at Mobius Risk Group, according to Natural Gas Intelligence.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2IbTl0a Tyler Durden

A new report from the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General (DoD IG) exposes even more fraud, waste and/or corruption in America’s ongoing war in Afghanistan. This latest report reveals that more than $3.1 billion of U.S. taxpayer funds provided to the Afghan Armed Forces from 2014 through 2017 was grossly mismanaged.

According to the DoD IG, U.S. military leaders overseeing operations in Afghanistan “failed to accurately record” some 95,000 vehicles transferred to Afghan Armed Forces, along with fuel expenses and maintenance costs to keep the vehicles operational. The report issued last Wednesday was the last in a series of DoD IG audits that examined the Pentagon for “systemic challenges” in how senior officials oversee U.S. direct funding to the Afghan Armed Forces said the Military Times.

The DoD IG warned the lack of accountability via military leaders overseeing Afghanistan leaves U.S. taxpayer funds vulnerable to “fraud, waste, and abuse.”

“Combined Security Transition Command–Afghanistan (CSTC-A) officials did not effectively manage and oversee the U.S. direct funding provided to the Ministries of Defense and Interior, which oversee Afghanistan’s Army and National Police, respectively,” the report stated.

“CSTC-A management and oversight of the direct funding is intended to increase [Afghan security forces] effectiveness and capabilities so the [forces] can become more professional and increasingly self-sustaining.”

Stars and Stripes, an American military newspaper, said military officials blame, what else, “inadequate staffing and security concerns” for any financial discrepancies. However, the DoD IG audit determined systemic issues are to blame.

CSTC-A officials established unrealistic and unattainable goals for the Afghans to improve their own capabilities toward achieving independence in supplying their own troops, the IG also found.

Instead, the Afghan government has remained reliant on the United States to furnish its supplies because American officials have not provided adequate training, according to the report.

Additionally, the report stated CSTC-A officials have not enforced penalties within U.S. agreements with the Afghan government. Penalties include levying fines when terms and conditions of contracts are not met, such as providing detailed logs of vehicle maintenance and fuel consumption data.

Stars and Stripes provides a summary of the latest findings from the DoD IG report:

For example, Afghan officials only provided CSTC-A fuel consumption reports for the Afghan army when directly requested by the United States, though contracts require biweekly reports. The IG concluded the United States cannot be certain that at least $174 million worth of fuel was properly used.

CSTC-A also cannot properly track the status of some 95,000 vehicles that the United States has given the Afghans because officials did not properly inventory the types and quantities of vehicles provided.

Furthermore, the IG blamed CSTC-A officials for failing to properly train the Afghans to maintain those vehicles, leaving the U.S. military to spend about $21 million to replace engines and transmissions that should have been the Afghans responsibility.

The IG report was the eighth and final report in a series of oversight investigations into CSTC-A functions since 2015. The reports have uncovered widespread issues within the command, including the commands’ inability to account for more than $700 million of ammunition provided to the Afghan security forces between 2015 and 2017.

As a result of the Pentagon’s lousy accounting practices, if not outright fraud and embezzlement, the audit notes that CSTC-A officials did not have the assurance that “$3.1 billion in U.S. direct funding was used entirely for the intended purposes.”

In other words, just over $3 billion may have been stolen.

And lastly, we will leave you with David Stockman, the former Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan, who recently appeared on Fox Business — calling out Trump’s record-setting defense spending for fiscal year 2018/19 as absolutely “crazy.” To that, all we can add is that with all the “fraud, waste, and abuse” via the Pentagon in America’s endless wars, the next war would leave the country even more insolvent than it is already.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2Gi7TuC Tyler Durden

Authored by Major Danny Sjursen via AntiWar.com,

Students march for gun control; women march for a variety of causes, and, well, against anything Trump; but who is marching for less American war in the Greater Middle East?

Why? Why isn’t there a passionate coalition willing to combat the American war machine? A machine that is, by now, on autopilot.

This weekend, hundreds of thousands of protesters marched to protest gun violence; in January, hundreds thousands of women – and their supporters – staged a second annual protest against all things Trump. Leaving aside the relative merits of each issue, the sheer number of marchers physically descending on various cities, rather than engaging in far easier social media activism, is impressive. Right or wrong in their convictions, these citizens, exercising their First Amendment rights, made this author proud…and then sad.

Sad because of what I know: that there is no constituency of any comparable size ready or willing to march against the single greatest disease in 21st century American society – creeping militarism and endless foreign war.

As I write this, on a Sunday morning, I’m certain the key weekly television programs – “Meet the Press,” “This Week,” and “Face the Nation” – will focus on, at best, three issues. First: Russia-gate, the Left’s favorite daily soap opera; Second: gun violence, the NRA, and a nation divided over firearms; and, if we’re lucky, Third: the John Bolton appointment and the potential for a future war in Iran.

You can bet there will be hardly any mention of Yemen, Niger, Somalia, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, or Afghanistan – seven of the countries in which Americans have killed and been killed in the last year. There will be no cost-benefit analysis or discussions about which conflict – if any – is in America’s vital, national interest. There will be no nationwide antiwar protests to cover, no dissenting veterans interviewed, no investigative reporters on the ground with disgruntled local civilians in a Mideast locale. No, the Sunday shows will be all about politics, or at least what passes for political discourse these days, and, of course, the ongoing national culture wars.

These are, mind you, important issues. Nonetheless, the relative silence regarding America’s seven – at least – ongoing shooting wars is itself instructive. No one cares. Military intervention, bombing, even the occasional dead servicemen – how many readers even know there were seven killed in Iraq this past week? – hardly register in the news cycle. War is the new normal. Young people know nothing else. A junior in high school, marching against guns violence this weekend, was likely born in 2002 – he or she has never known peace. In each year of that young student’s life, at least scores – and usually many hundreds – of U.S. troops have been killed fighting indecisive, barely reported, wars in the Greater Middle East.

Without a draft, and with taxes as a percent of GDP trending downward rather than up, most Americans are hardly touched directly by the forever war. A shrinking, familial, warrior caste fights in these ill-advised, unsatisfying contests, and will do so until, inevitably, they are brought to an indecisive conclusion. Their thanks comes in the form of airport adulation, minor discounts at the local Texas Roadhouse, and excessive verbal expressions of gratitude. We thank our troopers, then we ignore them and retreat, inevitably, back to our post-Trumpian political battle stations to fight the wars at home: the culture wars.

Still, it is a new protest march that the republic requires. A march for peace, maybe, or at least a march demanding de-escalation and prudent policy in the Middle East. Let us have no illusions: terrorism will continue, Islamist extremism must run its course, and the Levant will remain an ugly place. The term “peace,” may even be inadequate for these times. Nevertheless, the citizenry must march, must protest, if it wishes to send a message to their deerelict-in-their-duty congressmen: no more unnecessary war in our name.

Every protest needs an enemy. Lobbyists tend to make excellent villains. So do individual politicians. The students believe they’re combating the NRA; the women, well, they hate Trump. Who, then, would our imaginary marchers do battle with? Here’s an idea: the military-industrial-congressional complex. Honeywell, Lockheed Martin, and the representatives they pay off in Washington; the 55 cowardly senators who just this week refused to even allow a vote on US complicity in the horrific war in Yemen. The liberals among the protesters could call out the ten Democrats who joined with the Republican majority to tacitly lend approval to Saudi terror bombing in Yemen: bombing which could not continue, mind you, absent extensiveAmerican military support in the way of U.S.-supplied munitions, U.S.-supplied intelligence, and U.S.-supplied in-flight refueling.

The marchers would need to think strategically and avoid platitudes and words sure to trigger alienation on both sides of the political spectrum. They’d have to take the world as it is and recognize the US military will continue to have (a very limited) counter terror role in an undoubtedly dangerous world. But the protesters’ arguments would be simple and nearly incontestable: that the only remaining vital US national security interest in the Mideast is transnational terror.

Times have changed. The old interests no longer jive with existing realities. Deterring Soviet power in the Persian Gulf is oh so 1980s; securing access to oil resources is so 1990s or 2000s. Russia, even at its Putinian worst, is decidedly not the Soviet Union. Furthermore, a combination of renewable energy options and new domestic hydrocarbon resources are changing the calculus of Mideast oil politics. Still, nothing has changed in the US military posture in the region. Consider it the American inertia strategy: more interventions, more troops, more bombs, more…everything.

The protesters I’m imagining would rally around two simple foreign policy demands: do less and be consistent. For 17 years now, the US has doubled down on hyper-interventionism, despite the obviously counterproductive results – there are more worldwide terror attacks and more Islamist groups now then there were at the outset of the foolishly declared “war on terror.” The US has also lost any and all credibility on the “Arab street.” That shouldn’t surprise us: we’re oh so inconsistent in the region.

The US talks talks peace, liberty, and freedom but remains the world’s largest arms dealer. Some 49% of all US sales go to the Mideast, including to absolute monarchies (think the Saudis), autocrats (think Sisi in Egypt), and Islamist-allied militias (think the messy Syrian “opposition”). This isn’t solely a Trump problem, either; arms sales exploded under Barack Obama, though the current president does appear to be doubling down.

So here’s the rub: US military action, the outright killing and dying it does in at least seven states of the Greater Middle East, along with the arms sale bonanza the Mil-Industrial Complex profits from, have not made us any safer.

According to the comprehensive, Brown University Costs of War project, some 7,000 US servicemen and women have died since 9/11. Their numbers pale in comparison to the upwards of 200,000 civilians killed in the wars of choice that Washington unleashed on a fragile region. The blood, much of it anyway, is on our hands and shed in our name. And, tragically, all that death and destruction hasn’t made the US, or the world, a safer place. Yet, on the wars go; where they’ll stop? Nobody knows.

That sounds like something worth marching about.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2E3m197 Tyler Durden

China has rolled out an advanced facial recognition system over 16 provinces, cities and autonomous regions ominously called “SkyNet” for the “security and protection” of the country, reports Workers’ Daily. 

“The system is able to identify 40 facial features, regardless of angles and lighting, at an accuracy rate of 99.8 percent,” reports People’s Daily. “It can also scan faces and compare them with its database of criminal suspects at large at a speed of 3 billion times a second, indicating that all Chinese people can be compared in the system within only one second.”

In the past two years, over 2,000 criminals at large were reportedly apprehended by public security cameras using the system – while officials tout a June 2017 rescue of a 6-year-old girl reported missing in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region based on a photo taken several years ago. 

The police officers still found the girl quickly thanks to the system, which established information related to the girl based on her facial features and locked in on her trace via a surveillance camera in a market. –People’s Daily

In January, Bloomberg reported that Beijing was using facial recognition to surveil Muslim-dominated villages on China’s western frontier, which alerts authorities when targeted individuals are more than 1,000 feet beyond designated “safe” areas. 

The areas comprise individuals’ homes and workplaces, said the person, who requested anonymity to speak to the media without authorization.

“A system like this is obviously well-suited to controlling people,” said Jim Harper, executive vice president of the libertarian-leaning Competitive Enterprise Institute and a founding member of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee. “‘Papers, please’ was the symbol of living under tyranny in the past. Now, government officials don’t need to ask.” –Bloomberg

We’re sure the new facial recognition “SkyNet” will go hand in hand with China’s new “Social Credit Score” system set to launch in 2020. 

Imagine a world where many of your daily activities were constantly monitored and evaluated: what you buy at the shops and online; where you are at any given time; who your friends are and how you interact with them; how many hours you spend watching content or playing video games; and what bills and taxes you pay (or not). It’s not hard to picture, because most of that already happens, thanks to all those data-collecting behemoths like Google, Facebook and Instagram or health-tracking apps such as Fitbit. But now imagine a system where all these behaviours are rated as either positive or negative and distilled into a single number, according to rules set by the government. That would create your Citizen Score and it would tell everyone whether or not you were trustworthy. Plus, your rating would be publicly ranked against that of the entire population and used to determine your eligibility for a mortgage or a job, where your children can go to school – or even just your chances of getting a date.

…

In February 2017, the country’s Supreme People’s Court announced that 6.15 million of its citizens had been banned from taking flights over the past four years for social misdeeds. –Wired

And as the Washington Post noted, the Chinese city of Chongqing has engaged in a pilot project called “sharp eyes,” which connects various cameras throughout the region in order to fight crime. 

The intent is to connect the security cameras that already scan roads, shopping malls and transport hubs with private cameras on compounds and buildings, and integrate them into one nationwide surveillance and data-sharing platform.

It will use facial recognition and artificial intelligence to analyze and understand the mountain of incoming video evidence; to track suspects, spot suspicious behaviors and even predict crime; to coordinate the work of emergency services; and to monitor the comings and goings of the country’s 1.4 billion people, official documents and security industry reports show. –WaPo

Perhaps China could have named their new facial recognition system after something other than the dystopian AI-controlled national defense system that led to the end of civilization in the Terminator series. Then again, maybe that’s the point.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2GgI8z5 Tyler Durden

Authored by Nicholas Colas via DataTrekResearch.com,

One of the best things about writing daily reports is that I can look back in time and see what topics and themes dominated capital markets every single trading day. In fact, I just did that with all the DataTrek notes for the first quarter of 2018. There are several ideas that fit together neatly to give us some perspective on what may come in Q2.

#1. Too many equity investors are overweight Technology. This was today’s central lesson, so it is a good place to start. Tech has been a one-way ticket to outperformance for the last five years, and that clearly sucked too much capital into the sector.

With the end of Q1 almost here, today’s selloff is a sign many portfolio managers no longer want to show dramatic overexposure to the group. We doubt they finished selling down these positions today. If you are looking for a short-term trade into Q2, you should get your chance in large cap Tech over the next two days. The selling will likely continue.

What it means for Q2: Tech will return to its roots as a high risk/high return sector. That is where fundamentals say it should be. The critical question for the quarter will be how investors absorb that punch.

On the plus side, remember that Facebook/Google/Twitter and others are in the dog house for running businesses that are too good at what they do. Even with a dialed-back commercial model, they still have something akin to the only game in town. Slim comfort at the moment, to be sure. But the important one over the longer term.

#2. Big Tech is no longer a sleek, elegant black box; it is a jumble of wires that requires the constant intervention of an increasing number of humans to keep it on the rails. This is the other Tech-related theme that started in Q1 but will cast a shadow on the rest of 2018. It isn’t just Facebook, either. Google’s YouTube is hiring thousands of monitors to keep its platform safe. Uber’s tragic accident shows technology cannot deliver the magic bullet of self-driving cars any time soon. Tesla can’t seem to produce vehicles at scale.

In short, the bloom is off the tech rose.

What it means for Q2: equity prices are already adjusting to the spectacle of Mark Zuckerberg and other tech leaders doing their public penance in Washington. The more important issue is how much Facebook and its peers will have to spend in labor and capital to remediate their business models into compliance with user expectations.

More broadly, investors will have to adjust to a world where they still drive themselves to work in five years and wonder if the 2020 US presidential elections will be free and fair. All this is a large shift from a year ago and we doubt the adjustment process is over.

#3. Volatility may be an absolute measure, but humans perceive it in relative terms. Shifting to a behavioral finance point, equity price volatility in Q1 may have seemed exceptionally high. That, combined with lofty valuations, has sparked concerns that US equities are poised to drop materially.

The truth is US equities are currently exhibiting normal volatility.

Take the VIX as one proof point: today’s close was 22.5, about 10% above its long run average. But did today feel like a typical day? No – not by a long shot. That’s because we have had a long period of low volatility, only recently broken by more typical price churn. Like it or not, today is closer to a “Normal” US equity market than last year.

What it means for Q2: we expect similar volatility in Q2 as in Q1. In fact, it should continue for the balance of the year. US equities can still return their typical 6-8% in such an environment. They have, after all, done so many times in the past.

#4. What President Trump giveth, he can also taketh away. Last year’s dominant investment theme centered around tax reform. In the first quarter of 2018, that shifted to trade policy. The first was very helpful to US equities prices. The second has not.

What this means for Q2: the list of potential equity market risks is long, but what happens inside the Beltway clearly tops the list. First quarter 2018 showed that President Trump is not afraid to generate headlines that hit stock prices over the near term. There is no reason to think next quarter will be any different.

#5. Equity sector correlations tighten up at the first sign of trouble and stay there. The most underappreciated market dynamic of 2017 was the drop in sector price correlations to the US equity market as a whole. From an average +80% correlation, they dropped to 50% right after Election Day 2016 and remained low all last year. With the spike in volatility in Q1, however, they returned to their pre-election levels.

What this means for Q2: we expect correlations to remain elevated while investors piece through the other themes in this note. Also worth noting: there is a mathematical relationship between correlations and market-wide volatility. Until correlations decline, day-to-day market-wide price moves will remain higher than 2017.

#6. Stock investors will have to keep a weather eye on fixed income markets. This trend started with the move higher for Treasury yields at the start of 2018. Now, the list of rate markets to watch includes Libor, breakeven rates on Treasuries/TIPS, the shape of the yield curve, and commercial paper markets. None of this is comfortable for equity investors, who feel much happier looking at earnings releases and talking to managements.

What this means for Q2: We believe two statistics will drive equity valuations in the second quarter.

• The first is the chance the Federal Reserve moves three more times this year, as measured by Fed Funds Futures. Given the selloff in stocks today, the odds there fell to 29.8% from 33.4% yesterday. If that number goes to 50% quickly on the back of stronger economic news, equities will likely falter. 

  You can track this here: http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/interest-rates/countdown-to-fomc.html

• The second is the shape of the 2-10 Year Treasury spread. Currently at 50.5, this is the easiest way to see if debt capital markets believe the Federal Reserve is stumbling into a policy mistake. 

  If the Fed is right and the US economy is still strong, inflation expectations should take long-term rates higher and increase the 2-10 spread. So far in 2018, debt markets aren’t so sure the Fed is on the correct course – the 2-10 spread is essentially where it was at the start of the year.

  The data here: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/T10Y2Y

To sum up: we aren’t throwing in the towel on US stocks. We understand how we got to a down Q1 for US stocks, and why Tech is under pressure. Our central point is that there is nothing unusual about either. After many years of artificially low interest rates and liquidity, capital markets are returning to a more normal level of volatility. Yes, the transition isn’t easy. But there’s no reason to think it must end badly.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2IcpXHg Tyler Durden

Looking back on David Shulkin’s tumultuous, scandal-marred tenure atop the federal government’s second largest agency, it’s amazing he made it this far.

Shulkin, the lone Obama holdover in Trump’s cabinet, has been living under a cloud for weeks thanks to an investigation released last month which found that Shulkin and his staff committed several egregious ethics violations related to travel and access to other perk. During that time, he has struggled against a group of Trump appointees who’ve been trying to convince the president that Shulkin is the wrong man to lead such a crucial department.

And today, President Trump finally dropped the hammer. Less than 24 hours after the Washington Post published a story claiming  Shulkin would soon be shown the door – the latest in a parade of departing senior Trump administration officials – the president himself announced Shulkin’s resignation on Twitter, and even revealed whom he would nominate to lead the VA in Shulkin’s stead.

 

I am pleased to announce that I intend to nominate highly respected Admiral Ronny L. Jackson, MD, as the new Secretary of Veterans Affairs….

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 28, 2018

 

 

….In the interim, Hon. Robert Wilkie of DOD will serve as Acting Secretary. I am thankful for Dr. David Shulkin’s service to our country and to our GREAT VETERANS!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 28, 2018

 

Shulkin’s firing comes after he criticized the VA inspector general’s findings that the Shulkins improperly accepted Wimbledon tickets and airfare for Shulkin’s wife during a 10-day European junket. He then refused to accept the determination that his chief of staff misled ethics officials to get clearance for his wife’s airfare, suggesting instead that her email had been hacked. Of course, none of this was true. Shulkin later expressed regret and repaid the cost of the tickets and airfare.

Ronny Jackson, Shulkin’s replacement, currently serves as physician to the president.

The firing comes, ironically, after Trump joked a year ago that he would never need to use his signature catchphrase on Shulkin.

Shulkin’s situation was known to be “under review,” according to Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. He survived 13 months in the Trump administration.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2pJBNBW Tyler Durden

Keith Raniere, the co-founder and leader of a secretive self-help cult called NXIVM who was run out of Arkansas when Bill Clinton was governor has been arrested by the FBI in Mexico and charged with sex trafficking. Raniere fled to Mexico last November after U.S. authorities began interviewing “witnesses and victims” linked to NXIVM, however finding him proved elusive after Raniere began using “end-to-end encrypted email and stopped using his phone.” 

Shortly before Raniere was arraigned in a Texas courtroom, the FBI raided the Saratoga County, NY home of NXIVM co-founder, Nancy Salzman – who was alleged to be storing large amounts of cash at her residence, brought over the border following NXIVM training sessions in Mexico. 

While NXIVM describes itself as a self-help business that has helped thousands of people “reach their potential” through various courses, the women’s-only “inner sanctum” led by Raniere is known as ‘DOS’, which whistleblower Frank Parlato – a Buffalo-area businessman who worked for the cult, says stands for “dominus obsequious sororium” – Latin for “master over the slave women”. Once they are a member – or “slave” – they are allegedly encouraged to recruit new women into their “slave pods”, stop dating, and be on call 24 hours a day to their “master”.

DOS reportedly required female members to give their recruiter – or “master,” naked pictures or other compromising material which could be used as blackmail before being branded with Raniere’s initials below the hip using a cauterizing iron. 

Sarah Edmondson, one of the participants, said she had been told she would get a small tattoo as part of the initiation. But she was not prepared for what came next.

Each woman was told to undress and lie on a massage table, while three others restrained her legs and shoulders. According to one of them, their “master,” a top Nxivm official named Lauren Salzman, instructed them to say: “Master, please brand me, it would be an honor.”

A female doctor proceeded to use a cauterizing device to sear a two-inch-square symbol below each woman’s hip, a procedure that took 20 to 30 minutes. For hours, muffled screams and the smell of burning tissue filled the room.

“I wept the whole time,” Ms. Edmondson recalled. “I disassociated out of my body.” –New York Times

Of note, Smallville actress Allison Mack who played Chloe Sullivan is (or was) allegedly a “master” in the cult, and required to obey orders from Raniere – including finding women to sleep with him. 

Mack would require that prospective “slaves” place compromising collateral into a Dropbox account — one of whom was India Oxenberg, the daughterr of Dynasty actress Catherine Oxenberg – who met with prosecutors in New York and presented evidence against Raniere. 

NXIVM Funding and the Clinton connection

As Rolling Stone reported in November, “In 2010, Vanity Fair published “The Heiresses and the Cult,” a detailed account of Seagram heiresses Sara and Clare Bronfman‘s immersion in NXIVM; the sisters reportedly gave up approximately $150 million of their trust fund to help fund the alleged cult.” 

And in a 2007 article by the New York Post entitled “Hillary’s $30,000 fans are her “cult” following,” journalist Charles Hurt notes that Raniere was run out of Arkansas after Bill Clinton’s then-attorney general, Winston Bryant, charged the cult leader and two others with fraud and business deception. 

While Raniere paid fines in both New York and Arkansas in the case, over a decade later NXIVM executives proceeded to donate $29,900 to Hillary Clinton’s presidential 2006 campaign – and at least three NXIVM officials are “invitation-only” members of the Clinton Global Initiative. 

 

On March 14 and April 13, records show, more than a dozen contributions poured into Clinton’s coffers from NXIVM, an executive and group-awareness training organization led by Brooklyn-born Keith Raniere, 47.

Most were from first-time political donors, each giving the $2,300 maximum.

 

Three of the March and April Clinton pledges came from Raniere’s most high-profile followers: Seagram heiresses Clare and Sara Bronfman, and Pamela Cafritz, daughter of D.C. A-listers Buffy and Bill Cafritz.

Hillary isn’t the only Clinton NXIVM officials are attracted to.

At least three of them – group President Nancy Salzman and the Bronfman sisters – are members of Bill’s charitable organization, the Clinton Global Initiative. Membership is by invitation only and requires at least a $15,000 donation per person for one year. –New York Post

Prosecutors say Raniere was uncooperative when immigration officials arrested him in Mexico – while women he was staying with “chased the car in which the defendant was being transported in their own car at high speed.” 

Raniere is expected to be transferred to New York authorities following Tuesday’s Texas court appearance. During their request that he be held without bond, federal prosecutors said he “has spent his life profiting from his pyramid schemes and has otherwise received financial backing from independently wealthy women.”

He faces a mandatory minimum of 15 years in prison if convicted of the sex trafficking chrages, according to federal prosecutors – who say he poses a “significant risk of flight” due to his “access to vast resources,” and his “long-standing history of systematically exploiting women through coercive practices for his own financial and sexual benefit.” 

What is it with Clinton supporters and cults? 

via RSS https://ift.tt/2pMK0VJ Tyler Durden