The Balkan Peninsula is known as the “gunpowder barrel” of the European continent. In Albania, this “gunpowder barrel” seems to explode quite often due to frequent political conflicts. For any foreign observer the continuous political crisis in this country seem absurd but for the Albanian people it is a harsh reality that effects them socially, economically as well as jeopardizes the European integration of the country in EU.
What is happening in Albania? Why the gunpowder barrel has exploded again? And why, Albanians are frightened that this political conflict might escalate into a civil conflict?
During the parliamentary elections of 2017, the three leading parties achieved these results:
Socialist Party of Albania – 764,791 votes – 48.34% – 74 seats
Democratic Party of Albania – 456,481 votes – 28.85% – 43 seats
Socialist Movement for Integration – 225,975 votes – 14.28% – 19 seats
The Socialist Party secured enough seats to rule as majority in government. But the election process was recently disputed by the Democratic Party and the Socialist Movement for Integration due to the exposure of investigating files 339 and 184 in which ministers, mayors and other key important figures of the Socialist Party were involved into collaborating with organized crime in order to intimidate the voters and manipulate the results.
As the local elections of June 30, 2019 were approaching, the opposition parties withdrew their mandates from parliament, i.e.: 60 out of 140 seats letting the majority (SP) to seat and rule alone in parliament. The two opposition parties, representing 43% of the voters are already out of parliament asking for the resignation of Albanian premier Edi Rama, whose prompt political maneuver did not involve resignation, nor talks, but replacement of the parliamentary seats with freelance candidates who rushed to cease such an opportunity, thus creating the new opposition designed by the premier himself.
Despite the addition of the new MP-s the Albanian Parliament is still not in its full capacity because there are many unoccupied seats, a fact that legally raises many constitutional questions.
In addition, in order to avoid the failure of the forthcoming local elections, Rama is encouraging and supporting, and even raising small parties, to register in the Electoral College. With such a maneuver, without the opposition, the SP will ensure the wining of every single municipality in the country. With the central and local government under total control, and a parliament under his rule, premier Rama might as well enjoy the attributes of an ancient monarchy.
Therefore, during the recent weeks thousands have rallied in the streets of Tirana, especially in front of the prime-ministry and parliament asking for the resignation of Edi Rama as the only solution of free and fair elections.
During the first mandate of the Edi Rama premiership Albania has received frequent negative reports from the State Department and several foreign institutions regarding the high level of corruption, organized crime, cultivation of cannabis and smuggling of heavy drugs. The world media has raised many alerts about the nation spread cultivation of cannabis. The state police has been allegedly involved in such activities and up to the present several district heads of police have fled the country, wanted by the authorities, and are still at large.
In 2016 an Italian and German report indicated that there were 363 cannabis areas spread throughout the country. This report was kept secret by the government and when exposed by the few independent media it was denied, however, the former Minister of Interior, Saimir Tahiri went under investigation accused of drugs trafficking and collaboration with organized crime. The financial income from the cannabis activity was estimated in 5 billion euros, half the country’s GDP. The opposition parties claimed that this money was used in ensuring victory in parliamentary elections as well as money laundry. It was this past bitter experience that forced the opposition parties undertaking the radical decision of boycotting the parliament and sabotaging the forthcoming local elections.
Albania seems to be heading toward a civil conflict. In June the European Commission is expected to refuse once again the opening of the negotiations for the Albanian membership in EU. This will be an added fuel to the present situation. The international institutions are observing patiently, awaiting the Albanian political storm to cease. A storm that seems to end only by the decision to step down of one man: the Albanian premier, Edi Rama.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2WiIokZ Tyler Durden
Following Julian Assange’s UK court sentencing early Wednesday where he was hit with 50 weeks in prison for skipping bail, which we noted earlier is close to the maximum sentence, WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief Kristinn Hrafnsson slammed the “vindictive” punishment as having caused “shock and outrage” in statements to reporters.
However, Hrafnsson said after the court that the “real battle” begins Thursday, which marks the start of US extradition hearings for Assange, set to begin at 10AM (UK) at the Westminster Magistrate Court. He called it a matter of “life and death” for Assange, and ultimately for the journalistic profession itself.
Image via EuroNews
Hrafnsson noted that the outcome of the US extradition hearing could prove a watershed moment for the future of journalism: “Tomorrow is the first step in a long battle, so the fight will certainly continue. This is the fight for press freedom, primarily, as we’ve always stated.”
Hrafnsson stressed further: “That is a real battle, it’s not just for Julian Assange – even though for him it’s a question of life and death – it is most certainly a question of perseverance [over] a major journalistic principle,” in statements made after Assange’s sentencing stemming from the 2012 bail related charges.
Concerning Wednesday’s stiff sentence for skipping bail – close to one year in prison – WikiLeaks later issued the following statement:
Julian Assange’s sentence, for seeking and receiving asylum, is twice as much as the sentencing guidelines. The so-called speedboat killer, convicted of manslaughter, was only sentenced to six months for failing to appear in court.
Reuters summarizes the specific charges the US will seek to extradite him on as follows:
The U.S. Justice Department said Assange was charged with conspiring with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to gain access to a government computer as part of a 2010 leak by WikiLeaks of hundreds of thousands of U.S. military reports about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and American diplomatic communications.
Last week WikiLeaks and a German online magazine published the contents of a letter sent by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) to a former WikiLeaks staff member which suggests US officials are attempting to put together a case against Julian Assange based on the Espionage Act.
The DOJ letter addressed to former WikiLeaks spokesman Daniel Domscheit-Berg for the intent of requesting an interview outlined “possible violations of United States federal criminal law regarding the unauthorized receipt and dissemination of classified information,” according to a translation from the German, later published to WikiLeaks’ official social media.
Crucially, conviction under the 1917 law geared toward protecting the nation’s military secrets and most sensitive security matters could result in life in prison or even the death penalty for Assange.
But all of this is of course conditioned on whether or not the UK ultimately grants the Untied States’ extradition request, the first step in the process of which comes Thursday morning.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2vy2lbK Tyler Durden
The United States has been plagued with uncertainty ever since President Donald Trump started his trade disputes with many of our trading partners. From steel and aluminum tariffs to renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and replacing it with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), trade rules have been in flux, with U.S. consumers caught in the crossfire—and with no end in sight.
This drama started in March 2018, when the Trump administration announced that it would impose 25 percent tariffs on steel and 10 percent tariffs on aluminum for imports from all countries that he deemed to be treating America unfairly. The duties were levied in the name of national security, even though they would actually punish many of our NATO allies. At the time, the administration made no secret about the fact that it planned to use the tariffs as leverage to renegotiate the 25-year-old NAFTA with Canada and Mexico.
Whether the strategy worked is still up for debate. Yes, NAFTA was renegotiated through the USMCA, but that agreement hasn’t been approved by the U.S. Congress or ratified by Mexico or Canada, either. In other words, NAFTA is still the law of the land. Unfortunately, the uncertainty over whether (and when) the USMCA will replace NAFTA places a significant economic burden on companies trying to make investment decisions and predictions throughout North America.
What’s not up for debate is the fact that in some important ways, the USMCA is more protectionist than NAFTA. It’s true that the USMCA includes a few improvements over NAFTA, such as an update of the digital trade rules. The internet was barely a thing when NAFTA was adopted, so the agreement did need to be modernized on this front. The USMCA also includes the slight opening of a few markets, for example the Canadian dairy market. That said, several of these provisions were already agreed to in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement, which Trump withdrew from soon after he entered office.
On the negative side, the USMCA’s new automotive “rules of origin” are much more restrictive than the ones in NAFTA, including a new minimum wage provision requiring that 40 percent of a car be made in plants where the workers are paid at least $16 an hour or tariffs will be imposed on those cars. No such requirement exists in NAFTA. These changes will make producing cars in North America, and in the United States specifically, more expensive. Considering that the automotive industry’s future lies in large part with exporting, it’s unwise to raise the cost of producing cars in the United States, as it makes it more difficult for U.S. car companies to export them.
That said, in spite of its problems, approving the USMCA would at least put an end to some uncertainty. In fact, according to a recent report by the U.S. International Trade Commission, some of the biggest economic gains from adopting the USMCA would come from ending the current uncertainty.
So how close are we to adopting the USMCA? It doesn’t look too good.
For starters, the Democrats would like to see even more significant labor provisions imposed on Mexican workers. The House leadership said that it wasn’t anywhere near putting it up for a vote.
On the Republican side, Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa warned the president that he shouldn’t expect his team to support the USMCA as long as the metal tariffs are still in place, writing in The Wall Street Journal, “If these tariffs aren’t lifted, USMCA is dead. There is no appetite in Congress to debate USMCA with these tariffs in place.” The metal tariffs have hurt American consumers of foreign metals. And once retaliatory tariffs from Canada and Mexico went up, everyone suffered even more.
What’s more, Canadian and Mexican officials have shown very little interest in bringing the new deal to a vote in their own countries. The window for a vote is closing fast, as there are elections coming in Canada; observers predict that if the deal hasn’t been approved by then, it will have to wait until 2020.
Ultimately, for all the talk about using these tariffs as leverage, it seems that Trump’s true goal for the duties was to protect the steel industry. He is a protectionist, period. As such, he won’t let those tariffs go easily.
So, get used to the uncertainty.
from Latest – Reason.com http://bit.ly/2Wixeg7
via IFTTT
The United States has been plagued with uncertainty ever since President Donald Trump started his trade disputes with many of our trading partners. From steel and aluminum tariffs to renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and replacing it with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), trade rules have been in flux, with U.S. consumers caught in the crossfire—and with no end in sight.
This drama started in March 2018, when the Trump administration announced that it would impose 25 percent tariffs on steel and 10 percent tariffs on aluminum for imports from all countries that he deemed to be treating America unfairly. The duties were levied in the name of national security, even though they would actually punish many of our NATO allies. At the time, the administration made no secret about the fact that it planned to use the tariffs as leverage to renegotiate the 25-year-old NAFTA with Canada and Mexico.
Whether the strategy worked is still up for debate. Yes, NAFTA was renegotiated through the USMCA, but that agreement hasn’t been approved by the U.S. Congress or ratified by Mexico or Canada, either. In other words, NAFTA is still the law of the land. Unfortunately, the uncertainty over whether (and when) the USMCA will replace NAFTA places a significant economic burden on companies trying to make investment decisions and predictions throughout North America.
What’s not up for debate is the fact that in some important ways, the USMCA is more protectionist than NAFTA. It’s true that the USMCA includes a few improvements over NAFTA, such as an update of the digital trade rules. The internet was barely a thing when NAFTA was adopted, so the agreement did need to be modernized on this front. The USMCA also includes the slight opening of a few markets, for example the Canadian dairy market. That said, several of these provisions were already agreed to in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement, which Trump withdrew from soon after he entered office.
On the negative side, the USMCA’s new automotive “rules of origin” are much more restrictive than the ones in NAFTA, including a new minimum wage provision requiring that 40 percent of a car be made in plants where the workers are paid at least $16 an hour or tariffs will be imposed on those cars. No such requirement exists in NAFTA. These changes will make producing cars in North America, and in the United States specifically, more expensive. Considering that the automotive industry’s future lies in large part with exporting, it’s unwise to raise the cost of producing cars in the United States, as it makes it more difficult for U.S. car companies to export them.
That said, in spite of its problems, approving the USMCA would at least put an end to some uncertainty. In fact, according to a recent report by the U.S. International Trade Commission, some of the biggest economic gains from adopting the USMCA would come from ending the current uncertainty.
So how close are we to adopting the USMCA? It doesn’t look too good.
For starters, the Democrats would like to see even more significant labor provisions imposed on Mexican workers. The House leadership said that it wasn’t anywhere near putting it up for a vote.
On the Republican side, Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa warned the president that he shouldn’t expect his team to support the USMCA as long as the metal tariffs are still in place, writing in The Wall Street Journal, “If these tariffs aren’t lifted, USMCA is dead. There is no appetite in Congress to debate USMCA with these tariffs in place.” The metal tariffs have hurt American consumers of foreign metals. And once retaliatory tariffs from Canada and Mexico went up, everyone suffered even more.
What’s more, Canadian and Mexican officials have shown very little interest in bringing the new deal to a vote in their own countries. The window for a vote is closing fast, as there are elections coming in Canada; observers predict that if the deal hasn’t been approved by then, it will have to wait until 2020.
Ultimately, for all the talk about using these tariffs as leverage, it seems that Trump’s true goal for the duties was to protect the steel industry. He is a protectionist, period. As such, he won’t let those tariffs go easily.
So, get used to the uncertainty.
from Latest – Reason.com http://bit.ly/2Wixeg7
via IFTTT
The Democrat Party has joined the globalist Left in their quest to wipe out all remaining bastions of freedom and liberty throughout the West which, if they are successful, will plunge the world into chaos, war, and destruction.
In Europe, freedom fighters like Tommy Robinson and Carl Benjamin are fighting Leftists in Britain and throughout the European Union as they attempt to build political opposition to what is very obviously an anti-libertarian and anti-democratic campaign of suppression and censorship.
Robinson, demonized by the European Left as a “far-right extremist” who has been attempting to speak the truth about the virtual invasion of anti-Western Muslim “refugees” from war-torn segments of the Middle East, was jailed in 2018 for essentially expressing his views.
Since his release, he continues to be targeted for censorship and silencing by EU and British government authoritarians as well as the social media giants — so much so that he now feels his only recourse is to become a Minister of the European Parliament (MEP) in order to retain a platform.
“He and others are doing this in an attempt to take over the EU from the inside…”
“Now, you might not know that,” Lloyd continued, “because, within hours of setting up an account to represent his campaign on Twitter, it was removed. Why it was removed, nobody knows. No explanation has been given.”
In other words, Robinson was treated just like American conservatives, pro-constitutionalists, and supporters of our “America First” president, Donald Trump.
“This is following the trend that’s been happening on social media for quite a long time,” Lloyd said, noting that his own employer, Infowars, was systematically removed from Twitter, YouTube, PayPal, and other big tech platforms last year ahead of the 2018 elections.
For Robinson, it’s his warnings about Muslim destruction of Western culture that landed him in hot water throughout Europe, not just in Britain. In the U.S., Trump supporting Americans who oppose Democrats and their obsessions — abortion, gun control, high taxes, and demand for conformity — who are under assault.
THE GLOBALIST DEMOCRATIC LEFT HAS BECOME UN-DEMOCRATIC
But also, a man who describes himself as a classic liberal — Sargon of Akkad, or Carl Benjamin — has also been targeted by the Left because he’s not Left-wing enough.
“He doesn’t toe the line for globalist organizations like the EU or the United Nations,” Lloyd noted, adding that Benjamin has also launched a campaign to become an MEP.
“They’ve attacked him in a lot of ways much like they have Tommy Robinson,” said Lloyd. “They’ve also removed his campaign account – he’s running as a member of UKIP, the United Kingdom’s Independence Party – for no real reason.”
The silencing of political opponents, Lloyd noted, is nothing new, as it’s been happening throughout world history. But typically, suppression of speech, political points of view, and expression have been associated with authoritarian governments and tyrannical leaders like kings and dictators — not havens of democracy like Britain and the U.S.
Lloyd said that in Benjamin’s case, “he has made some controversial comments in the past,” though in reality, they’re really not that controversial that he should be banned from the public square.
Indeed, America’s founding fathers were so offended by such tactics that, in the very first amendment to the Constitution, they recognized an inalienable right for humans to speak, think, and express themselves freely — without having to be ‘approved’ for certain speech while other speech is banned because it’s been deemed ‘offensive’ or ‘wrong-headed.’
Despite complaints by consumers and platform users throughout the Western world, however, the social media behemoths aren’t budging: Like Democrats and the global Left, they are demanding groupthink, conformity of speech and thought, and the quashing of dissenting voices.
They are anti-Democrats, in other words, and they won’t stop until they shut down all opposition.
“Free speech is a myth. Technically we’re allowed to say what we want and won’t get arrested for it, but we constantly have to self-censor our speech, including our political opinions, for many reasons. You’re allowed to express some opinions, so long as they’re the right opinions. But if you lose your ability to pay your bills as a result of your honest and open speech, then you’re not really free.”
Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway announced Sunday it would expand its brokerage operations into Middle Eastern markets by opening Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Gulf Properties, reported Reuters.
The new unit will be led by Chairman Ihsan Husein Al Marzouqi and Chief Executive Officer Phil Sheridan. The team will consist of 30 advisers and support staff, according to a company statement. “Gulf Properties aspires to grow quickly by tripling its advisor count and opening a second office in Abu Dhabi within a year,” it said.
“We are excited to enter the UAE and Dubai with such experienced and respected leaders as Dr. Ihsan Husein Al Marzouqi and Phil Sheridan,” said Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Chairman Gino Blefari. “Dubai has been a top priority for our network’s global expansion as it represents innovation among world leaders and is a top global center for trade, logistics, tourism and finance. Gulf Properties will connect our growing brokerage network between East and West and will provide unrivaled access to one of the world’s most exciting real estate destinations.”
Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices partnered with London-based Kay & Co. last year, its second overseas franchise in Europe, after Rubina Real Estate in Berlin. The company expects to add Milan, Vienna, and Dubai to its international book. Berkshire Hathaway Specialty Insurance recently began operations in Dubai.
Buffet is entering the Dubai property markets as prices have fallen 25% since the 2015 peak.
Lower oil prices, weaker currencies in nearby countries (UAE’s currency is pegged to the USD), a global synchronized slowdown, and political turmoil in the Middle East have all contributed to the downward pressures on price.
Property development is a vital part of Dubai’s economy, so the fall in prices has slowed the city’s economy.
The city is also suffering from a glut, having overexpanded in the last decade. It was a strategy that powered the city after the 2008 financial crisis, brought developers from around the world to build tens of thousands of homes.
The glut is expected to depress prices for several more years. Dubai is one of the world’s biggest ongoing construction sites, with nearly 1,200 cranes active across the city, constructing an estimated 31,000 homes this year, far exceeding demand.
“We are excited for the future and honored that our franchise agreement makes Dubai the first Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices location outside the U.S. and Europe,” said Al Marzouqi. “The presence of such an iconic global brand is further testament that Dubai is indeed a global destination when it comes to commerce and real estate investments.”
Chris Stuart, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices, said their Duabi unit has “experienced leadership, talented agents and an ambitious growth plan for Dubai and the UAE.”
S&P Global Ratings warned in February that Dubai home prices could drop by at least 10% this year due to a continued imbalance in the market, before bottoming out in the early 2020s. Seems like Buffet’s next big move into the Gulf region is to capitalize on an extremely dangerous bet that Dubai’s housing could bottom soon.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2PG8vQe Tyler Durden
A video released by Isis after the attacks shows Zahran Hashim, an Islamic preacher and alleged leader of the bombers, pledging allegiance together with six other men – also thought to be bombers – to the self-declared caliph and leader of Isis, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Western leaders, as is usual, are proposing easy or unattainable action that will do little to damage Isis capabilities – such as trying to limit its access to social media – while steering clear of potentially more effective but difficult to implement policies to eradicate Isis that might be contrary to their national interests.
The best way to weaken Isis to the point where it can no longer orchestrate or carry out mass slaughter, like that in Sri Lanka last Sunday, is to bring an end to the wars in the Middle East and North Africa which over the last forty years have produced al-Qaeda and its clones, of which Isis is the most famous and most dangerous.
Governments deny that they are in any way responsible for Isis staying in business and point to the western-backed offensives against it which led to the last piece of the Islamic State being over-run on 23 March.
As a territorial entity Isis has been eliminated, but that does not mean that it cannot carry out guerrilla and terrorist attacks, as has happened in the last few months in Iraq and Syria. These are little reported because they take place in the vast deserts on the Iraq-Syrian border or they target regimes we do not like, such as the Syrian government in Damascus.
Isis was born out of war. In 2001, at the time of 9/11, al-Qaeda – out of which Isis was to emerge – consisted of a network of fanatics and a few hundred fighters in camps in Afghanistan. They were so few that they had to hire local Afghan tribesmen to fill out their numbers in propaganda videos.
It was the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 that turned the al-Qaeda franchise in Iraq under Abu Musab al-Zarqawi into a powerful military movement. When forced out of its strongholds by a reinforced US presence and weakened by opposition from within the Sunni Arab community in 2007, al-Qaeda in Iraq retreated to its hideouts, waiting for better times.
These were not long in coming with the advent of the Syrian civil war in 2011 which the movement had the resources in men and weapons, to turn to their advantage. I remember Iraqi leaders in Baghdad telling me in 2012/13 that unless the war in Syria was quickly brought to an end, it would reignite the insurgency in Iraq.
They were soon proved right. Isis, as it was now called, astonished the world by emerging from its fastnesses to capture Mosul in 2014 and sweep through western Iraq and eastern Syria.
Western powers certainly wanted to defeat Isis but also did not want to do anything that would enable rivals and opponents – Russia, Iran and Bashar al-Assad – to win a clear victory in the Syrian war. They demanded that Assad go long after it was obvious that he was going to win after receiving Russian military support in 2015.
Stirring the pot in Syria in order to thwart Russia, Iran and Assad was much in the interests of Isis which could exploit the fact that opposition to it was fragmented.
Opportunities exist for Isis wherever government authority is weak or non-existent and it can put down roots. When defeat looms in eastern Syria this year, Isis moved thousands of surviving fighters next door into western Iraq. In Mosul and Raqqa, once the de facto Isis capitals in Iraq and Syria, assassinations and suicide bombings have started again. Kurdish-led forces are regularly ambushed. In Syrian government held territory near Palmyra, a series of Isis attacks in April killed 36 and captured ten pro-Assad soldiers.
In Iraq, Isis cells are reactivating in Sunni areas that surround Baghdad which, in the not-so-distant past, were the staging posts for the prolonged and devastating suicide bombing campaign that killed thousands.
It is probably only a matter of time until Isis succeeds in staging a Sri Lanka type multiple bombing once again in the Iraqi capital. The last big bomb in Baghdad was on 3 July 2016, when a refrigerator truck packed with explosives blew up killing 340 civilians and injuring hundreds more. This should be a moment when the US could do all it can to resist the coming onslaught. Instead Washington is giving priority to pressuring the Iraqi government to impose US sanctions on Iran – something that is bound to divide Iraqis and aid Isis.
There is a similar pattern across the wider Middle East and North Africa where no less than seven wars, large and small, are being fought in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Somalia and north east Nigeria. These flare up or die down on occasion but they never come to an end.
The reason for these wars – the true breeding ground for Isis and its kin – is that foreign powers have plugged into local civil wars and want to see their proxy either to come out on top or, at worst, avoid defeat. Libya is a good example of this: would be leader of Libya General Khalifa Haftar, backed by Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, France and Russia are fighting a government in Tripoli supported by Qatar, Turkey, Italy, Tunisia and Algeria.
Such divisions and rivalries are repeated in conflict after conflict and mean that Isis will always be able to lodge itself somewhere in the chaos.
At the same time, one needs to keep a sense of proportion about Isis’s capabilities: the atrocities it carries out in Colombo, Baghdad, Paris, Manchester, Westminster and elsewhere are geared to dominate the news agenda, provoke fear and project strength. But none of these things win wars and the defeat of the caliphate earlier this year was real and irreversible.
This does not mean that Isis will not try to resurrect itself as a guerrilla movement relying heavily on terrorist attacks on soft targets. It is, at bottom, a military machine led by experienced military men who adapt their strategy and tactics according to circumstances. Talk in the west about cutting Isis off from the social media as if that would be a mortal blow misses the point.
Social media may be a powerful tool for Isis but it would survive without it. Savage cult-like movements similar to Isis such as the Nazis in Germany and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia existed long before the internet and were able to spread their toxic message without use of it..
The only effective way to bring an end to Isis is to end the wars that produced it. A large part of the Middle East and North Africa have become a zone of conflict where international and regional rivalries are fought out through local proxies. So long as that goes on Isis will continue to exist.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2PPrdFn Tyler Durden
It looks like McDonald’s new-and-improved “hot” Hamburglar might have some competition.
The CBC reported on Tuesday that a mysterious ‘hamburglar’ has been victimizing users of a new digital payments app rolled out in Canada by McDonald’s called ‘My McDs’. Hackers have apparently found a way to infiltrate the app and wrack up large bills on unsuspecting users’ credit cards.
The story was again brought to the media’s attention after a tech writer got hit with a $2,000 bill for food he didn’t order that was charged via the app. When he contacted McDonald’s to complain about the fraudulent charges, the company told him to resolve the issue with his credit card company and refused to issue a refund – an experience that was apparently shared by dozens of others.
The fraudster pulled off the fast-food scam by infiltrating O’Rourke’s McDonald’s mobile app account, which was linked to his debit card.
The scammer then used the app to order more than 100 meals for pick-up between April 12 and 18. The smorgasbord included McFlurries, Big Macs, Chicken McNuggets and poutine.
“It could be one guy who was able to hack my account and he shared it with a bunch of his friends across Montreal, and they all just went on a food spree,” said O’Rourke, who’s baffled by the crime.
Since McDonald’s wouldn’t issue immediate refunds, forcing impacted customers to wait weeks for their banks to resolve the issue, some complained that the charges, which typically amounted to hundreds of dollars, put them into a difficult financial position.
Lauren Taylor says she has no idea how someone in Montreal spent $483.65 using her McDonald’s app.
The Halifax woman said she received dozens of order confirmations in her email inbox with the last four digits of her Visa debit card between Jan. 25-29.
“It’s amazing to see how quick someone can just breach your privacy…rent is three days away and now I have to find the money,” Taylor said. “It’s a good thing that I live with family. Otherwise I’d be out.”
As customers congregated online to complain about the security breach, which they blamed on the flaws with the app, McDonald’s issued a statement apparently blaming the app’s users for their own misfortune.
McDonald’s Canada told CBC News that it’s only aware of “some isolated incidents” involving compromised app accounts. The company said it keeps personal information secure and that it’s confident in the security of its app.
McDonald’s didn’t say how fraudsters have infiltrated customer accounts, but it recommended that customers practice due diligence by beefing up their passwords and keeping them secure.
“If guests notice any unauthorized purchases, we recommend they contact their bank and change their password immediately,” said spokesperson Adam Grachnik in an email.
So far, the dollar-value of food stolen has climbed into the thousands of dollars.
That’s a lot of McDoubles.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2GUXVSK Tyler Durden
I’ve been publicly debunking the “fine people” hoax since 2017. The press created the hoax by consistently and intentionally omitting the second half of President Trump’s comments about Charlottesville.
If you only see or hear the first half of what the president said, it looks exactly like the president is calling neo-Nazis “fine people.”
But in the second part of Trump’s comments, he clarified,
“You had people in that group who were there to protest the taking down, of to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of the park from Robert E. Lee to another name.”
In other words, the president believed there were non-racists in attendance who support keeping historical monuments. To remove all doubt, the President continued with
“I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally – but you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, okay?”
Keep in mind that it doesn’t matter if the President’s assumption about the attendees was accurate or not. He clearly stated his assumption that some people were there for the monument protest, which he contrasted to the racists who were there to march and chant racist stuff. The New York Times interviewed a member of the non-marchers who said they did not stand with the racists. They cared about guns and free speech. See for yourself, here and more background on that group here.
Last week I chatted at length with one of the Charlottesville protest attendees. He hates racism, loves free speech, and wasn’t “marching with” anyone. He reports that there was chaos from the start, with lots of people all over the venue doing lots of different things. And there was no way to know what all of the people in normal street clothes were thinking by attending. He was there because he figured it would be a diverse group, from Antifa to neo-Nazis, with plenty of normal non-racists in between. Bolstering his argument is his Jewish heritage. He didn’t think he was attending a neo-Nazi event. He learned that from the press.
How dumb is that guy, you might reasonably ask?
I asked him to explain how he could look at the flyer for the event and NOT know it was organized by racists. I pointed to the little Nazi-looking winged image on the flyer to make my point. He said it looked like an American eagle to him. And when I started to push back on that point, he sent me other images of American eagles that are evil and warlike. At that point, I remembered a central truth about the human experience: If a hundred people look at exactly the same thing at the same time, they will arrive at wildly different opinions of what they are seeing. If you show that racist flyer to a hundred Americans, most would not recognize the names of the speakers, and many would not realize the graphic design was suggestive of a racist association. The fact that you and I would definitely recognize it for what it was does not suggest others would do the same. As evidence that people interpret the same information differently, consider every political disagreement ever. Most of it involves people looking at the same information and drawing mind-bogglingly different conclusions about what it all means. I wrote about that phenomenon in my book Win Bigly.
I remind you again that it doesn’t matter whether or not President Trump was accurate in his assumption that some non-racists attended. He stated his assumption and then spoke to the assumption. Worst case, the New York Times got the “fine people” story wrong, and Trump also got a detail wrong about the composition of the crowd. There was no reporting on the exact composition of the crowd, then or later. No one did a survey of opinions. We only know of the groups that had the highest profiles.
In America, if there is a large political protest of any kind, the most reasonable assumption one could make is that it will attract a diverse crowd including nearly every kind of opinion on just about everything. If the President is wrong about the existence at that event of some non-racists who were pro-statue, this would be one of the few times in history that there were only two opinions at an event attended by hundreds.
My point is that Trump could have been right or wrong about who attended, but it doesn’t change the fact that his words clearly and unambiguously condemned the marching racists while excluding them from his “fine people” category.
But there is something far more interesting going on here than just a story of fake news and quotes taken out of context. This topic is like a laboratory for testing cognitive dissonance. Rarely do you see a strongly held belief, such as the “fine people” hoax, which can be so easily and unambiguously debunked. You only need to show the transcript and/or the video of Trump’s comments in their entirety. The case is made. Easy, right?
After a few years of trying to deprogram people from this hoax, I have discovered a fascinating similarity in how people’s brains respond to having their worldview annihilated in real time. I call it the “fine people” hoax funnel.
When you present the debunking context to a believer in the hoax, they will NEVER say this:
“Gee, I hadn’t seen the full quote. Now that I see it in its complete form, it is obvious to me that my long-held belief is 100% wrong and the media has been duping me.”
That doesn’t happen.
Instead, people usually react by falling down what I call the Hoax Funnel. I use the funnel imagery because the big hoax (that the President called neo-Nazis fine people) is instantly replaced with a lesser hoax, and so on, until the final claim is laughably vaporous, consisting of a question without a claim. Here is the hoax funnel in all its parts. You can test this at home by debunking the hoax with friends and family. Watch how they all go down the same hoax funnel until they end with nothing but questions of the “How do you explain X, then?” type.
We start at the top of the funnel.
Trump called neo-Nazis and white nationalists in Charlottesville “fine people”
This is debunked by showing the full transcript or the full video in which he clearly, and without prompting, says the exact opposite, that the neo-Nazis and white nationalists should be condemned totally. See for yourself.
The believer in the “fine people” hoax will question the authenticity of the transcript first, which you can debunk by showing the actual video clip here. Once the legitimacy of the transcript is established, expect the believer to retreat down the hoax funnel to the following hallucination.
No “fine people” march with neo-Nazis!
Here you can expect the hoaxed person to hallucinate (literally) a fact that is not claimed and is not in evidence. There is no claim that “fine people” were “marching with” the neo-Nazis, or supporting them in any way. There is a claim that such people were in the same zip code. The “marching with” hallucination is easily debunked by a New York Times article in which they interview one of the non-racists in attendance who love guns and free speech and do not stand with racists, much less march with them. Excerpt here:
But it doesn’t matter if the New York Times got that story right. What matters is that the President explained his assumption about who attended. Keep in mind that the media has not reported who attended. No survey of opinions was taken, and there were plenty of people in attendance who were not physically marching or chanting with the neo-Nazis.
Once you debunk the “marching with” point, expect the believer to retreat down the hoax funnel to this next point.
Trump wasn’t talking about statue protests! He was talking about protesters versus neo-Nazis!
Again, showing the transcript debunks this claim. Trump specifically mentioned that people were protesting the removal of the Robert E. Lee statue. That clearly frames the “both sides” as being pro and anti-statue, not neo-Nazis versus anti-racism protestors, which of course was the biggest story theme from the event.
Once you have shown that Trump was explicitly talking about both sides of the statue debate, believers can be expected to retreat down the hoax funnel to this next level.
It was obviously a neo-Nazi event, so no one would attend who was not a racist!
That point would make sense if you had never spent a minute as an adult in the actual world. In the real world, a hundred people can look at a flyer and have a lot of different opinions on what it means. You might look at the flyer and conclude that only racists were attending. Someone else might look at it and not know some of the named speakers had racist views, or might assume the racists were a small part of a larger event about statues. The only way a believer can defend their “should have known” opinion is by assuming that the attendees were smarter than the average American seems to be in every other walk of life. You can’t get a hundred Americans to have the same interpretation of ANYTHING, no matter how confident you are that they should.
Once you have debunked this claim by showing how opposite the “should have known” argument is to all human experience, observation, and common sense, the believer will still hold it to be a rational argument. But you can finish it off by reminding the believer that the facts of exactly who attended do not matter to the hoax question because the President clearly stated he believed some non-racists were attending to protest the statue question. (No marching!)
At this point, your believer will retreat further down the hoax funnel to an even weaker position that looks like this.
Why didn’t the non-racists who attended turn and leave as soon as they arrived? Huh? Huh? Explain that, you apologist!
Notice we are entering the question phase instead of the opinion stage. When hoax believers are so far down the hoax funnel that the best point they can make is in the form of a question, you have already debunked the main point: The President was NOT calling the neo-Nazis and white nationalists “fine people.”
But watch how your believer will abandon the main point without admitting it, as if the lesser points that follow are somehow all the original point, but different. This is when things get really freaky.
Expect this question next.
Why doesn’t the president speak out against racism and neo-Nazis?
This can be debunked by referring to links showing the President repeatedly condemning racism and bigotry at different times and places. See here and hereand here for examples. And of course here talking about Charlottesville.
After you have shown clips of Trump condemning racists repeatedly, and naming the groups, you generally see the hoax believer retreat down the hoax funnel to this.
Why is Trump “revising history” now, instead of when it happened in 2016?
Chris Cuomo of CNN asked this question recently when discussing the topic. And he asked the question immediately after reporting that Sleepy Joe Biden had raised the issue in his campaign announcement speech. Biden is the answer to the first part of the question as to why it is in the headlines. But why is Trump pushing back on the hoax now when he didn’t push back so hard in 2016?
Unfortunately, I have some insight into that question, and I don’t like it. According to my sources, the White House staff (many of whom were not as pro-Trump as you would expect, especially in 2016) and even some percentage of the management of FoxNews believed the hoax. That isn’t so surprising when you consider that half the country believed it and still do. Under those conditions, the President was trapped. If he couldn’t get his own staff and FoxNews on his side, maybe it was better to let the story atrophy from lack of attention. I can’t read the President’s mind, but without his staff and FoxNews on the same side, it would have been risky to take on the hoax without backup.
So what changed?
It turns out I’m part of the answer to that question. As I said, I’ve been publicly persuading on this topic for a few years, and slowly picking up support. But I wasn’t getting much traction until Sleepy Joe raised the issue, and that encouraged me to hammer at the topic with the help of my 312,000 Twitter followers. Brave writers such as Joel Pollack and Steve Cortes took it up a level with articles debunking the hoax here and here. Best of all, meme-maker phenomenon Carpe Donktum mocked the hoax in a way that is fun and visual, which increased its attention. And special thanks to the Twitter patriots who wrestled with other Wikipedia editors to correct the record on that site, including @Unstumpable2016, @natasjlp, @milkchaser, @daveJay and @SolidPhase.
Collectively, including all the folks on social media who joined the debunking, we made enough noise to force the major news outlets to respond to the criticisms, with several of them naming me as a debunker. Wikipedia was the first non-right-leaning publication to debunk the hoax by including for the first time the entirety of the President’s statements. In the past week, I’ve seen other major publications debunk it as well, while pretending they are not. By that I mean they show the second part of the quote that debunks the hoax. They don’t frame it as a debunking, choosing instead (every time) to descend down the hoax funnel to find something – anything – that is tangentially related to the topic that they can claim is what they meant all along, or is true enough, or at least changes the subject. I include among the debunkers this past week the Washington Post, Vox, CNN, FoxNews, TheDailyBeast, RealClearPolitics, Breitbart, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, and even Politifact.com. Any publication that printed the second part of Trump’s statement is debunking the hoax.
You might think all that debunking would be enough to end the hoax. But the hoax funnel goes deep. Chris Cuomo of CNN retreated all the way to this question.
Why does Trump speak out against Islamic terror more than white supremacy when the death count lately is higher from white supremacists?
I can’t read the President’s mind, but I observe he downplays everything he wants to see less of and exaggerates everything he wants more of. For example, he downplayed ISIS when the press was warning they were still a bigger threat. I interpreted that as a way to keep ISIS recruiting down. Who wants to join a losing team? Likewise, downplaying the rise of white nationalists/supremacists is how you get less of it. That last thing that would be helpful to the nation is hearing our President say the racists are doing great lately at getting their kill stats up. That would attract people to it.
We also know the press tries hard to frame the president as the cause of any rise in racist violence in this country. If someone is blaming you for causing a problem, would you respond by saying there’s a lot of that problem? You might think the smart answer involves minimizing it, given that you know you are going to take the blame for it.
It also doesn’t make much sense to say domestic racist terror is “worse” than Islamic terror based solely on the fact that the recent body counts are higher in one group. For starters, only a few dozen people are killed by domestic terror per year, compared to 280,000 people killed by handguns over the past decade. If all you do is count dead bodies, domestic terrorism and even Islamic terrorism in this country both round to zero. If you are being honest, you don’t compare those two groups on the basis of victim counts alone.
Islamic terrorists would love to use a weapon of mass destruction in the United States. They are an international organization bent on world domination, with standing armies, at least in the case of ISIS. And they are driven by an ideology that is hard to stop once it gets a toehold. By contrast, white racist terrorist attacks usually involve mental illness and lone wolves. I don’t see those risks as similar, and I don’t know how smart it would be to tell the public the racists are doing a great job of getting their stats up.
Now let’s say you have talked a believer in the “fine people” hoax all the way down the hoax funnel to here. Do they acknowledge how badly they have been misinformed and hoaxed by their trusted news sources for years?
Never.
Instead, expect them to pivot to one of the other debunked hoaxes that they are not aware have been debunked because their news sources are unreliable. That last gasp looks like this.
Well, Trump said other things that prove he is a racist monster, so…
That’s when the hoax-believer will present a laundry list of other hoaxes they still believe, including these gems.
Trump called Mexicans “animals”! (He didn’t. He called MS-13 gang members animals)
Trump called countries in which brown people live “shitholes.” (He didn’t. It was a reference to poor economic situations in some countries.)
Trump questioned Obama’s birth certificate. (Questioning an opponent’s legitimacy for office is politics 101. Trump did the same for Ted Cruz, questioning his Canadian birth. Politics of the most common kind is not racism.)
Trump said all Mexicans are rapists! (He didn’t say all Mexicans are rapists. He was using his normal hyperbole to say too many criminals were crossing the border.)
Trump said Judge Curiel couldn’t be fair because he is Mexican! (No, he indicated that Judge Curiel’s Mexican heritage might bias him against Trump because the media had painted Trump as an enemy of all Hispanics. In the legal process, calling out potential bias is normal and useful.)
Trump mocked a reporter who has an arm disability! (No, Trump uses similar mocking gestures for anyone he thinks acts stupid, including Ted Cruz. See for yourself here.
As I mentioned, this topic is interesting on the political dimension, but far more fascinating on the psychological dimension. As a test that you can try at home, see if you can push a believer in the “fine people” hoax down the hoax funnel. And just for fun, see if you can talk a believer into reading aloud the part of Trump’s transcript in which he “condemned totally” the neo-Nazis and white nationalists. I predict it will be hard to get anyone to read it. The cognitive dissonance should, in theory, freeze their brains and render them speechless. The believer will become “cognitively blind” to the transcript and probably get angry in the process. And you will give yourself a lesson in what cognitive dissonance looks like. Watch carefully the eyes of the hoax believer as their worldview dissolves. They will often get bug-eyed (literally widening their eyes) and start to sputter out laundry lists of other hoaxes.
You won’t change any minds. In my experience, the hoax believers go all the way down the hoax funnel and then forget the journey, returning to the top as if it had not been debunked one minute earlier. But you might enjoy breaking the brains of your critics. And you might learn something in the process.
Have fun!
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2Lrfe1Q Tyler Durden
Perhaps signaling a dangerous return to a ‘new Cold War’— as some Russia scholars have recently called it — a just published study has revealed last year’s global military expenditure reached its highest level since the end of the Cold War, according to Reuters, and shows ratcheting competition for arms buying between the United States and China.
Image via “China US Focus” blog
The finding is based on the latest arms spending figures from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), which announced in its annual report that total global military spending reach $1.82 trillion in 2018, up 2.6 percent on the previous year.
The think tank identified the hugely significant increase, the highest global spending has been since 1988— in the last few years of the Soviet Union’s existence — as driven fundamentally by increased spending in the United States and China.
Specifically US military spending was up 4.6% last year at $649 billion, and China, led by President Xi’s desire to rapidly modernize the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), spent 5% more on arms compared to the prior year, as Reuters notes, an increase for the 24th consecutive year. Per data from the SIPRI report:
U.S. military spending rose 4.6 percent last year to reach $649 billion, leaving it still by far the world’s biggest spender. It accounted for 36 percent of total global military expenditure, nearly equal to the following eight biggest-spending countries combined, SIPRI said.
China, the second biggest spender, saw military expenditure rise 5.0 percent to $250 billion last year, the 24th consecutive annual increase.
One analyst involved in the SIPRI Arms and Military Expenditure program which produced the report put the numbers in perspective as follows: “In 2018 the USA and China accounted for half of the world’s military spending.”
This also as President Trump has made strong national defense a high priority, with his 2018 defense spending request put before Congress breaking every past budget record.
Other top spenders that came in below the US and China were identified in declining order as:
Saudi Arabia
India
France
Russia
Britain
Germany
Japan
On a per capita basis, Saudi Arabia is actually outspending the United States amidst its war in Yemen, raging since 2015, and as fears of growing Iranian influence in the region fuels Riyadh’s weapons shopping spree.
Saudi Arabia by far outspent all other regional countries, including Iran and Turkey in 2018.
Russia, which flexed its military muscles with its 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region and intervention in the Syrian conflict, dropped out of the list of the top five spenders in 2018 following an annual decline of 3.5 percent.
Despite a sustained drive to upgrade and modernize Russia’s armed forces, President Vladimir Putin has had to tighten purse strings following a sharp decline in global oil prices and the need to prioritize some domestic spending programs.
Meanwhile, total NATO spending amounted to just over half of global spending, the report concluded.
And yet SIPRI found that “military expenditure by all 29 NATO members amounted to just over half of global spending” — which suggests a predictable NATO posture of threat inflation regarding Moscow.
But clearly, the report ought to put to bed the favorite Washington notion of the return of an expansionist menace in the form of a resurgent Russia; instead, US defense planners should be more worried about a “red menace” further to the East.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2UTThIj Tyler Durden
