‘Retail Apocalypse’ Continues: Forever 21 Files For Bankruptcy, 30,000 Jobs At Risk
Following reports earlier this month that a bankruptcy for the fast-fashion pioneer was imminent, Forever 21 filed for Chapter 11 protection in Delaware Sunday night, becoming the latest brick-and-mortar retailer to succumb to the Amazon-driven ‘retail apocalypse’, Bloomberg reports.
In addition to the competition from e-commerce retailers, BBG said Forever 21 struggled with high rents and heavy competition from other fast-fashion rivals (like H&M and Zara).
Court papers show Forever 21 has estimated liabilities (on a consolidated basis) of between $1 billion and $10 billion. Thanks to Chapter 11 protection, Forever 21 will continue operating as it works out a plan to pay back all of its creditors.
Part of that plan, again, according to the filings, will likely involve closing as many as 350 of its more than 800 stores around the world. Most of the closures will focus on Asia and Europe: The company has earlier announced plans to shutter all 14 of its Japanese stores. Meanwhile, its operations in Mexico and Latin America will continue, according to Reuters.
This means that nearly half of the chain’s 30,000 employees could lose their jobs.
Even before the Forever 21 bankruptcy, the ~11,000 announced and completed store closures in the US were already on track to exceed to the totals from the past few years. One research shop projects annual closures in 2019 to hit 12,000 by year end.
Analysts at Goldman Sachs estimate that $7.5 billion of ‘sales opportunity’ will arise from store closures in 2019 as liquidation sales pull some demand forward.
Meanwhile, Goldman believes the shift to e-commerce will continue: “We believe e-commerce growth will likely accelerate over the course of the second half as a record number of retail store closures, initiatives around fulfillment such as Amazon’s $800 million investment in same-day delivery and Etsy’s move to free shipping…will drive more consumers to shift purchases online.”
The Chapter 11 filing allows the Los Angeles-based company to keep operating while it works out a plan to pay its creditors and turn around the business.
Since the start of 2017, more than 20 US retailers – including former giants like Sears and Toys ‘R’ Us, as well as discount brands like Payless Shoes – have filed for bankruptcy, as the sector has struggled with massive debt loads and a migrating consumer base.
And the pressure is only intensifying. Compared with the same period last year, Chapter 11 filings among American corporations have risen by nearly 20% in 2019, according to Reorg Research.
Since 2015, retailers have accumulated more than $45 billion in aggregate liabilities from more than 80 filings.
Since June 2015, retail chains have accumulated more than $45 billion in aggregate chapter 11 liabilities in connection with over 80 bankruptcy filings: pic.twitter.com/Q1XO9pSWij
However, thanks to a series of loans, Forever 21 might be able to exit bankruptcy protection more quickly than some of its rivals. The retailer has already locked down $275 million in financing from lenders including JPMorgan, which is acting as agent for the loan, along with $75 million in new capital from TPG Sixth Street Partners and its affiliated funds. Forever 21 still expects to be able to honor gift cards and merchandise returns, the company said.
“The financing provided by JPMorgan and TPG Sixth Street Partners will arm Forever 21 with the capital necessary to effect critical changes in the U.S. and abroad to revitalize our brand and fuel our growth, allowing us to meet our ongoing obligations to customers, vendors and employees,” Linda Chang, executive vice president of Forever 21, said in a statement.
Forever 21 was founded in 1984, and before bankruptcy operated 815 stores in 57 countries.
Green Shoots: China’s Caixin Mfg PMI Expands Fastest In 19 Months, But Doubts Remain
What a coincidence: economic green shoots appeared in China just in time for the start of the country’s National Day and Golden Week holidays, as both the official and Caixin manufacturing PMIs rose in September.
Specifically, the NBS manufacturing PMI increased to 49.8 in September and the Caixin manufacturing PMI rose to 51.4, with both readings coming in above expectations. Sub-indexes in the two surveys all pointed to stronger production, new orders and higher price pressures in the manufacturing sector. In contrast, the NBS non-manufacturing PMI edged down 0.1pp on the back of a weaker construction PMI.
China’s Caixin manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index, published on Monday, and which unlike the official PMI is a measurement of economic activity at smaller, privately-owned companies, showed China’s factory activity expanded at the fastest pace in 19 months in Sept., with a reading of 51.4, up from 50.4 in Aug., the highest level since early 2018.
And while China’s official manufacturing PMI contracted for a fifth month in Sept, amid the ongoing threats of a China-US trade war, it printed slightly higher to 49.8, from 49.5 in Aug., if still below the 50-level that separates it from contraction and expansion.
While there are conflicting signals of an economic rebound in China, and goalseeked number meant for political consumption will hardly change the narrative, manufacturers continue to deal with slowing domestic growth and an escalating trade war that has slowed global trade volumes. Trade talks between Washington and Beijing are expected to resume next week despite President Trump consideration to delist Chinese firms from US markets.
Meanwhile, economists don’t expect the slight manufacturing rebound in China to sustain into late year, but rather turn back down.
“We believe the official manufacturing PMI may decline again, the growth slowdown could gather pace and (financial)markets could become more volatile in coming months,” economists at Nomura said.
To be sure, Nomura revised its 3Q19 growth forecast for China to 5.9% and its 4Q19 view to 5.8%, decreasing from the 6.2% forecast in 2Q19. The note cited escalating trade war, slowing industrial production, waning real estate markets, and a construction slowdown.
Others were just as skeptical, with analysts at Citi saying that “even if there is a ceasefire, the damage is already partly done because of elevated business uncertainties. The government will certainly step up fiscal and monetary efforts to boost domestic demand, which we believe can help stabilize, probably not accelerate, economic growth.”
A look below the headline numbers showed that export demand remained weak, with orders sliding for the 16th straight month, an ominous sign for China’s export-heavy economy.
China’s manufacturing PMIs followed a weak industrial production print that hit 17.5-year lows last month, while factory deflation deepened.
Martin Lynge Rasmussen, a China economist at Capital Economics, said in a note that “China’s fiscal stance is unlikely to be loosened during the remainder of the year, we think the PBOC will find it an increasingly hard sell to refrain from more decisive monetary easing.”
To boost the economy, the PBOC lowered banks’ reserve requirements seven times since 2018 to spark more credit creation. China has cut its new benchmark lending rate for the second month in a row. However, economists warn that monetary policy easing in a downturn might not be as effective as before, considering China’s record debt levels, especially in the real estate market.
Furthermore, while Beijing was hoping that a strong services sector would counter the manufacturing slowdown, that appears to not be the case, with the non-manufacturing PMI in Sept. printed at 53.7, slightly down from August’s 53.8, although the convergence is so far weaker than in Europe where both the Manufacturing and Service PMIs are almost equal.
While oil dipped as China’s manufacturing, and non-manufacturing surveys remained weak, with no signs of a robust recovery but rather more slowing into the late year, futures rebounded and bond yields rose on the stronger than expected Caixin PMI. Ironically, stock in China traded lower on the PMIs, with the CSI 300 and Shanghai Composite both suffering a late session sell-off, and sliding down about 1%. Chinese shares only traded on Monday, ahead of the country’s National Day celebration that will last through Oct. 7.
China’s Yuan weakened from 7.12 to 7.14 after the PMI print. It jumped on Friday from 7.11 to 7.15 after President Trump announced new plans to delist Chinese companies from US stock exchanges.
Elsewhere, UST futures slipped on China PMI prints. The JGB curve moved higher ahead of BOJ’s Oct. buying plan announcement, while currencies were little change in the overnight session, with the USDJPY slightly firmer at 107.75.
MbS: War With Iran Would Send Oil To Highs “That We Haven’t Seen In Our Lifetimes”
In an interview that aired just days before the one-year anniversary of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s disappearance and presumed murder, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman sat for an interview with 60 Minutes – reportedly the most extensive interview he has ever given to a Western media outlet.
During the nearly 15-minute discussion with ’60 Minutes’ correspondent Norah O’Donnell (in an interview that, fittingly, was aired during ’60 Minutes’ 52nd season premier), MbS addressed every controversy afflicting his regime: tensions with Iran and the recent attacks on Abqaiq, the murder of Khashoggi, MbS’s hopes for peace in Yemen and the arrest of female activists despite MbS’s landmark gender reforms like granting women the right to drive.
The two issues from the interview that garnered the most attention were MbS’s insistence that he wasn’t aware of the plot to kill Khashoggi (but that he ‘accepts responsibility’, as a leader should), and the disruption in global oil supplies – triggering a spike in global prices – that could result from a war with Iran (just look at how global benchmarks responded to the attack on Abqaiq, with the largest one-day spike since Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait).
Asked point-blank whether he ordered Khashoggi’s murder, MbS replied “absolutely not” and described the attack as a “heinous crime” (all via a translator).
“Absolutely not. This was a heinous crime. But I take full responsibility as a leader in Saudi Arabia, especially since it was committed by individuals working for the Saudi government.”
When pressed about how he could’ve been unaware of a mission in which some of his closest associates participated, MbS insisted that it would be ‘impossible’ for him to monitor what KSA’s 3 million government employees do on a daily basis.
“Some think that I should know what three million people working for the Saudi government do daily? It’s impossible that the three million would send their daily reports to the leader or the second highest person in the Saudi government.”
Moving on, O’Donnell had a few questions about the attack on Abqaiq, which briefly took 5.5% of global oil production offline. She asked MbS about Iran’s motives, as well as what a conflict would be like.
Asked what ‘strategic’ reason Iran would have for orchestrating the attack on Abqaiq (a question that many skeptical analysts have also raised), MbS responded that the only sensible motive was “stupidity.”
“I believe it’s stupidity. There is no strategic goal. Only a fool would attack 5% of global supplies. The only strategic goal is to prove that they are stupid and that is what they did.”
’60 Minutes’ also aired what it described as the first footage of the attack on Abqaiq, which showed the barrage of cruise missiles slamming into various infrastructure inside the plant:
Echoing comments from Mike Pompeo, MbS said he would describe the attack on Abqaiq as an ‘act of war’, before the discussion turned to the global oil market.
Given Saudi Arabia’s importance to global energy supplies, a war with Iran could bring about the “total collapse” of the global economy, not just the Middle East region.
“The region represents about 30% of the world’s energy supplies, about 20% of global trade passages, about 4% of the world GDP. Imagine all of these three things stop. This means a total collapse of the global economy, and not just Saudi Arabia or the Middle East countries. Iran appears willing to risk war to improve its position.”
Oil prices would likely soar to “unimaginable” highs that we “haven’t seen in our lifetimes” as global supplies are disrupted.
“If the world does not take a strong and firm action to deter Iran, we will see further escalations that will threaten world interests. Oil supplies will be disrupted and oil prices will jump to unimaginably high numbers that we haven’t seen in our lifetimes.”
Finally, touching on the issue of a ceasefire in Yemen, MbS said Saudi Arabia is working diligently toward peace. He added that he considers the Houthi-backed ceasefire a “positive step.”
Not long after, O’Donnell wrapped up the interview with a final question: “What lessons have you learned? And have you made mistakes?
“Of course I’ve made mistakes,” MbS insisted. “Even prophets make mistakes, so how come we, as humans, expect not to make mistakes?”
When three Tampa, Florida, police officers were fired for misconduct earlier this year, Hillsborough County State Attorney Andrew Warren put his newly created “conviction review unit” to work. The members pored over 225 closed cases that the officers were involved in, and Warren’s office ultimately vacated 17 convictions.
It was a relatively rare move by a prosecutor’s office. In less scrupulous jurisdictions, the officers’ misconduct might have been concealed under police secrecy laws or the defendants might have been left to challenge their convictions in court, but Hillsborough County is one of the few dozen places in the United States that has a unit dedicated to rooting out bad cases. “In short, we felt that convictions cannot stand based exclusively on the testimony of discredited officers,” Warren says.
Conviction review units, also known as conviction integrity units, operate within prosecutors’ offices to investigate old cases for errors or misconduct that may have led to a wrongful conviction. The first one started in Dallas in 2007. There are now around 45 across the country, mostly in major cities.
Many district attorney’s offices have traditionally operated under a “just win” mentality, measuring their performance by the number of convictions they obtain. Conviction review units are an acknowledgment that public officials can suffer from tunnel vision, confirmation bias, professional ambition, and bureaucratic self-preservation. Left unexamined, these failings can lead police and prosecutors, especially in an adversarial justice system, to dismiss the possibility that they put the wrong person behind bars.
We know that wrongful convictions happen. According to the Innocence Project, there have been 365 DNA exonerations in this country since 1989. Some of the exonerees were awaiting execution. But conviction review units require support and funding—otherwise they’re little more than Potemkin projects.
They also need some measure of independence from the larger prosecutorial system. The Hillsborough County state attorney’s conviction review unit, for instance, includes a review panel made up of a former Florida Supreme Court justice, a former state appellate judge, and a current appellate judge. Warren says that about half of the conviction review units he’s looked at around the country have similar panels.
Another crucial element is buy-in from local law enforcement. “The reality is that we’re all doing our jobs because we want to make our community safer and because we believe in justice and fairness,” says Warren. “Having innocent people in prison does not advance that mission. They know that, and they recognize that we all make mistakes. We’re not perfect, and so just having a mechanism to go back to try to right a wrong that may have occurred is a good thing.”
Not all elected prosecutors are so enthusiastic. The Dallas County Conviction Integrity Unit exonerated 30 people between 2007 and 2015 under District Attorney Craig Watkins. Since he lost his re-election bid, however, the only exonerations have been a handful of cases initiated during Watkins’ tenure.
The difference between an aggressive conviction review unit and a neglected one is stark. In 2013, Florida resident Eric Wright fired a warning shot at an aggressive ex-girlfriend who burst into his mother’s house and refused to leave. Under the state’s harsh 10-20-life law for firearm offenses, Wright received a mandatory minimum of 20 years in prison. The trial judge who sentenced him and the appellate judge who upheld that sentence lamented the fact that they had no authority to change it. Even the ex-girlfriend wanted him out of prison.
Wright’s attorney approached Jacksonville State Attorney Melissa Nelson’s conviction review unit about his case in 2018. The head of the unit suggested Wright file a procedural appeal. Instead of challenging it, Nelson’s office then offered him a plea deal to be released on time served.
Although the case was outside the scope of the unit’s regular work—Wright’s claim was that his punishment was outrageously cruel, not that he was innocent—it was the correct function of a conviction review unit, which should determine not only factual innocence or whether rules were broken but also whether the law was justly applied.
In 2018, there were 151 exonerations in the United States, according to a report by the National Registry of Exonerations. Conviction review units secured 58 of those, even though they only operate in a tiny fraction of the country’s roughly 2,300 prosecutors’ offices. Imagine how many more people are languishing behind bars for want of government self-reflection.
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When three Tampa, Florida, police officers were fired for misconduct earlier this year, Hillsborough County State Attorney Andrew Warren put his newly created “conviction review unit” to work. The members pored over 225 closed cases that the officers were involved in, and Warren’s office ultimately vacated 17 convictions.
It was a relatively rare move by a prosecutor’s office. In less scrupulous jurisdictions, the officers’ misconduct might have been concealed under police secrecy laws or the defendants might have been left to challenge their convictions in court, but Hillsborough County is one of the few dozen places in the United States that has a unit dedicated to rooting out bad cases. “In short, we felt that convictions cannot stand based exclusively on the testimony of discredited officers,” Warren says.
Conviction review units, also known as conviction integrity units, operate within prosecutors’ offices to investigate old cases for errors or misconduct that may have led to a wrongful conviction. The first one started in Dallas in 2007. There are now around 45 across the country, mostly in major cities.
Many district attorney’s offices have traditionally operated under a “just win” mentality, measuring their performance by the number of convictions they obtain. Conviction review units are an acknowledgment that public officials can suffer from tunnel vision, confirmation bias, professional ambition, and bureaucratic self-preservation. Left unexamined, these failings can lead police and prosecutors, especially in an adversarial justice system, to dismiss the possibility that they put the wrong person behind bars.
We know that wrongful convictions happen. According to the Innocence Project, there have been 365 DNA exonerations in this country since 1989. Some of the exonerees were awaiting execution. But conviction review units require support and funding—otherwise they’re little more than Potemkin projects.
They also need some measure of independence from the larger prosecutorial system. The Hillsborough County state attorney’s conviction review unit, for instance, includes a review panel made up of a former Florida Supreme Court justice, a former state appellate judge, and a current appellate judge. Warren says that about half of the conviction review units he’s looked at around the country have similar panels.
Another crucial element is buy-in from local law enforcement. “The reality is that we’re all doing our jobs because we want to make our community safer and because we believe in justice and fairness,” says Warren. “Having innocent people in prison does not advance that mission. They know that, and they recognize that we all make mistakes. We’re not perfect, and so just having a mechanism to go back to try to right a wrong that may have occurred is a good thing.”
Not all elected prosecutors are so enthusiastic. The Dallas County Conviction Integrity Unit exonerated 30 people between 2007 and 2015 under District Attorney Craig Watkins. Since he lost his re-election bid, however, the only exonerations have been a handful of cases initiated during Watkins’ tenure.
The difference between an aggressive conviction review unit and a neglected one is stark. In 2013, Florida resident Eric Wright fired a warning shot at an aggressive ex-girlfriend who burst into his mother’s house and refused to leave. Under the state’s harsh 10-20-life law for firearm offenses, Wright received a mandatory minimum of 20 years in prison. The trial judge who sentenced him and the appellate judge who upheld that sentence lamented the fact that they had no authority to change it. Even the ex-girlfriend wanted him out of prison.
Wright’s attorney approached Jacksonville State Attorney Melissa Nelson’s conviction review unit about his case in 2018. The head of the unit suggested Wright file a procedural appeal. Instead of challenging it, Nelson’s office then offered him a plea deal to be released on time served.
Although the case was outside the scope of the unit’s regular work—Wright’s claim was that his punishment was outrageously cruel, not that he was innocent—it was the correct function of a conviction review unit, which should determine not only factual innocence or whether rules were broken but also whether the law was justly applied.
In 2018, there were 151 exonerations in the United States, according to a report by the National Registry of Exonerations. Conviction review units secured 58 of those, even though they only operate in a tiny fraction of the country’s roughly 2,300 prosecutors’ offices. Imagine how many more people are languishing behind bars for want of government self-reflection.
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The Labour MP Jess Phillips says she has received more threats after an incident outside her constituency office on Thursday when a man allegedly tried to smash her windows. She showed Sky News a message that said: “Unless you change your attitude, be afraid, be very afraid.”
The Labour MP David Lammy has criticised the columnist Brendan O’Neill after he said on BBC Politics Live that the delay to Brexit should have sparked riots. It came after the Times quoted an unnamed senior cabinet minister today who warned the country risked a “violent, popular uprising” if a second referendum overturned the result of the first.
Why Violence Picked Up
Violence has picked up, but “surrender” has little to do with it.
Rather, it’s the very nature of this heated campaign, fueled mostly by Remainers, commentators, and even official Labour Party policy that had led to violence.
Jeremy Corbyn will scrap controls on immigration and hand foreign nationals the right to vote in future elections and referendums if Labour wins power.
The Labour leader will head into the next election promising to extend freedom of movement to migrants around the world, along with abolishing detention centres, under plans approved on Wednesday.
Despite Mr Corbyn’s team being privately opposed to the plan, delegates at Labour’s annual conference in Brighton unanimously backed a motion which commits the party to “free movement, equality and rights for migrants”. The motion commits Labour to oppose any future immigration system which includes caps on numbers or targets, and which assesses a migrant’s suitability based on their income or usefulness to businesses.
And it requires Labour to commit to the proposals in its next election manifesto – meaning a complete reversal of its 2017 pledge to end free movement after Brexit.
No Immigration Controls and Voting Rights for Foreigners!
Might not that idea lead to violence?
Which Party Incites Violence?
Jess Phillips once said she would knife Jeremy Corbyn ‘in the front’. Ed Davey said Remainers should unite to ‘decapitate’ Boris Johnson. John McDonnell still won’t apologise for repeating a joke about ‘lynching’ a Tory MP. These people are hypocrites: https://t.co/f23ozt8EHk
Boris saying “surrender act” encourages violence towards MPs, apparently. Lib-Dems don’t have a problem with an MP wanting to decapitate our Prime Minister, though. pic.twitter.com/oj8qhGcQGP
Which side, if you had to pick one, is inciting violence?
This isn’t close. Let’s move on to Eurointelligence, emphasis mine.
Eurointelligence Comments
Boris Johnson’s aggression and his use of the term surrender act are deliberate strategic choices, based on intensive polls;
The latest polls show him widening the lead over Labour and managing to fend off the Brexit Party;
We argue that the strategy is ugly, but it is working;
What is widely underestimated is the sheer unpopularity of the Brexit extensions. We recalled a Tory MP telling us in June that they had underestimated the electoral effect of the April extension, which resulted in the victory of the Brexit Party at the European elections.
Experience has taught not to predict elections, and certainly not elections that have not even been scheduled. But one micro prediction we are happy to make is that the person who extends will not be elected in a general election. That person might well be Jeremy Corbyn. If there ever were a government of national unity, it would be under his leadership. We don’t want to discount that possibility completely, but we don’t think that Labour would do itself any favours by forcing a Brexit extension followed immediately by an election. Just as we don’t think the Tories would do themselves any favours with a no-deal Brexit followed immediately by an election.
Boris Johnson’s bulldozing strategy is not pretty, but it is working. His repeated use of the term surrender bill strikes a cord not only with core Tory voters, but with many people in the country. Steven Swinford of the Times tells us that the Tories have done a lot of polling on this specific term, and they have come to the conclusion that it damages the Labour Party. We are reminded of the late 1980s, when it was Labour Party that used the damaging term of a poll tax to describe what was officially known as the community charge. It was the poll tax that sank Margaret Thatcher’s government – not her position on Europe.
The YouGov poll, with polling done on Sep 25, shows the Conservatives at 33% and LibDems and Labour both at 22%. This would translate into 348 seats for the Tories which is an absolute majority of 30, 163 for Labour and 77 for the LibDems. The Brexit Party scores 14% but does not get a single seat.
What one needs to understand about this and other polls is the interplay of two conflicting dynamics. On the pro-Brexit side the Tories are competing with the Brexit Party. The pro-Remain vote is split between Labour and the LibDems. Johnson is managing to squeeze out the Brexit Party more than Labour is managing to squeeze out the LibDems.
It is best to understand the relation between percentage votes and seats in the UK in terms of thresholds. For the LibDems to get more seats than Labour, they would need to poll a lot more than 22%. At 14%, the Brexit Party’s potential to deprive the Tories of seats is limited only to a few marginals. But, once they get above 20%, they would become as dangerous to the Tories as the LibDems are to Labour.
Next week, the Tories will hold their party conference in Manchester despite the vote in the Commons against a customary recess. We expect another rabble-rousing performance by Johnson. Since he became leader, the party’s fundraising has skyrocketed. September was their best month ever. There is a lot of support for him from business.
Part of the fury among MPs about Boris Johnson’s inflammatory rhetoric is that it appears to be a deliberate, election-driven strategy.
But the situation is made worse by the suspicion that it is neither careless nor casual – but rather a concerted effort to whip up anger in the country against MPs in order to motivate pro-Brexit voters to back him at the polls.
Johnson’s language about a “surrender bill” is calculated to cast his opponents as people colluding with foreign powers to block Brexit. It was not a flippant, one-off comment, as the prime minister has used the words at least eight times in the House of Commons. He also told Conservative MPs that he was determined to continue using those words.
This is the hallmark of Dominic Cummings, the former Vote Leave architect who is now Johnson’s most senior adviser. Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, has also highlighted its similarities with the language of rightwing populist demagogues such as Donald Trump. “He is whipping up division with language that’s indistinguishable from the far right,” the Labour leader said in his conference speech this week.
Accurate Assessment
Indeed the language is neither careless, nor casual.
Rather, the language is an accurate assessment of the matter.
If you remove the strongest negotiation tactic someone has, the other side is less likely to negotiate.
Period.
There is no rebuttal. Surrender is the correct word.
Which is of course why the Remainers at the Guardian do not like it.
Order of the Privy Council
Sir John Major says he believes he knows how Johnson circumvent the Benn legislation.
There is a difference between “Orders in Council” and “Orders of Council”. It’s not worth the time it would take to understand the difference.
The key point is Orders of the Privy Council are normally unimportant procedural things about which there is no genuine debate.
I do not believe Johnson would ever attempt to use such a process as it would immediately be challenged and reversed in court.
Even sillier is the process Major proposes to circumvent an Order of the Privy council, send a letter to the EU from UK civil servants.
With background information out of the way, let’s return to Eurointelligence.
BBC Newsnight last night reported that the European Council was plotting to accept a Brexit extension letter from a civil servant formally before the summit Oct 17. The idea is to avoid a situation where it is confronted by conflicting information at the council meeting itself – for example if Johnson were to distance himself from the [Benn] letter in the meeting itself.
We think this information is probably correct in the sense that it reflects either the position of Donald Tusk or that of some other pro-Remain politicians. We do not believe that the European Council as a whole has formed a view on this issue. It would be a big deal for the European Council to act in this manner. We don’t exclude the possibility, but this is not to be done lightly.
We think it is quite plausible that this strategy [an Order of the Privy Council] may have been discussed at some point, but we doubt this is the main strategy. We noted one official denial describing the idea as too-clever-by-half, an expression we would agree with. It is likely to fail for the same reason that prorogation did. If the Supreme Court were to decide that this order was given for political reasons – to frustrate another bill – it too might be judged to be null and void. But we cannot rule out that it might be attempted, if only to demonstrate to the public that Johnson is really trying everything in his power to deliver Brexit. Each court case strengthens the people-vs-establishment narrative.
And Johnson may also prorogue parliament again, for a period of five to six days only to make way for a Queen’s speech. We don’t think that any combination of these various ruses would get him over the line to deliver a no-deal Brexit. But as we wrote before, we should be focusing on the politics more than on procedure. It would be a grave misjudgement for the European Council to be seen as part of a plot with Remainers in the UK parliament. Such a plot would drive a lot of moderate Remainers and fence-sitters into the Brexit camp. If Johnson were elected with an absolute majority, he would no doubt come back with a do-or-die commitment for January 31.
Winning Ugly
Johnson would likely appeal any letter by civil servants to the EU as being illegal. He would also appeal to the UK supreme court.
He only needs to win one of them. I believe he would easily win both.
This is yet another amusing sidelight in which we get to discuss arcane rules and procedures of UK law.
The key overall point is whether or not the “Surrender” campaign is working. I believe it is.
Let’s return to a key idea that was easy to miss: “Tory fundraising has skyrocketed. September was their best month ever. There is a lot of support for him from business.”
Brexit may be ugly, but Corbyn is even uglier.
One of Corbyn’s proposals is to require businesses to give 10% of their shares to workers. Corbyn also wants to renationalize rail, water, energy and Royal Mail, increase corporation tax and the minimum wage, and extend workers’ rights.
“Like Something From A Sci-Fi Movie”: Russia Shows Off Secretive Next Generation Aircraft
Russia’s Defense Ministry has released rare footage showing its futuristic and newest heavy drone Okhotnik (or ‘Hunter’) conducting its first ever tactical aerial movements next to a fifth-generation Su-57 fighter jet.
The footage was part of a 30-minute flight test, and comes after its maiden brief take-off and landing test in early August, when it was unveiled to the world as a stealth heavy unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV) being developed by Sukhoi as a sixth-generation aircraft.
The Russian military claims it possesses “special material and coating” in order to avoid radar detection. The wedge-shaped drone is considered among Russia’s most advanced aircraft to date, and looks like something straight out of Star Wars.
Russian media has further described the Okhotnik as capable of traveling up to 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles), despite it’s significant weight of about 20 tons.
“Okhotnik has a flying-wing body type, which makes it looks like something from a sci-fi movie,” one Russian media report noted.
The next generation Su-57s, one of which was filmed flying just meters apart from the still in testing phase ‘Hunter’ drone, are set to be active by the end of the year.
Much less is known about the experimental drone, however. First photos of the advanced stealth drone initially surfaced in January 2019, and were published by the aircraft analysis site The Aviationist.
Via The Aviationist
Earlier this year the secretive aircraft was first spotted by land-based cameras at an airfield in Novosibirsk in southern Russia, and then picked up by commercial satellite imagery in May at the Chkalov State Flight-Test Center.
The Aviationist previously described the secretive UAV as possessing “low-observable capabilities, providing it with the ability to penetrate heavily defended airspaces without detection to conduct covert precision strikes.”
The utter futility of European attempts to keep faith with the flawed Iranian nuclear deal has been brutally exposed in the wake of the uncompromising approach adopted by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani during the United Nations General Assembly.
In the build-up to the UN’s annual jamboree of global networkers, there had been much speculation that, against a background of mounting tensions in the Gulf over Tehran’s aggressive conduct, the forum might provide an opportunity to re-establish a dialogue with the ayatollahs.
To this end French President Emmanuel Macron has, in particular, been actively trying to broker a diplomatic rapprochement between Tehran and Washington, to the extent it was even suggested that a bilateral meeting might be possible between US President Donald Trump and Mr Rouhani.
The reality of the delusional approach adopted by Mr Macron and other European leaders was, though, brutally exposed the moment Mr Rouhani arrived in New York.
Instead of showing any sign of seeking to repair Tehran’s strained relationship with the West and its allies, he instead indulged in an orgy of self-justification in which he sought to portray his country as an innocent victim of Western aggression rather than accepting, as is really the case, that Iran was the primary instigator of the latest escalation in tensions.
Not even the charm offensive applied by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, whose presence in New York was no doubt a welcome distraction from his domestic political woes, was able to make much impression on Mr Rouhani’s demeanour. Mr Johnson briefly raised a laugh from the Iranian leader when he suggested he make a return visit to Glasgow — a city Mr Rouhani knows well from the time he studied there in the 1990s — while remarking, “As you know, Glasgow is lovely in November” — a reference to the city’s notoriously cold and wet climate at that time of year.
The atmospherics — to use the diplomatic jargon — might have appeared promising during Mr Johnson’s one-to-one with the Iranian leader, but reality soon set in the moment Mr Rouhani took to the UN podium and embarked upon an extraordinary exercise in self-justification, one in which the US and its allies were the villains and Iran was portrayed as a nation wronged.
The prime target of his attack was, unsurprisingly, the US, which he accused of engaging in “merciless economic terrorism” following the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the 2015 nuclear deal and impose a new round of economic sanctions against Tehran.
Washington’s policies, Mr Rouhani contended, were designed to “deprive Iran from participating in the global economy” by resorting to tactics that amounted to “international piracy.”
He also made it clear that, despite the concerted efforts of European leaders to persuade Tehran to renew negotiations with Washington, there was no possibility of talks taking place until the sanctions had been lifted — a policy no one in the Trump administration is prepared to support.
Nor was Mr Rouhani’s outburst confined to the sanctions. In his view, the US was responsible for the recent escalation in tensions in the Gulf after Washington increased American military deployments in the region following a series of aggressive acts undertaken by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. “The security of our region shall be provided when American troops pull out,”he said.
Perhaps the most eye-catching claim the Iranian leader made came during his appearance on Fox News, when he sought to defend Iran’s support for terror groups such as Hamas and Hizbollah. Mr Rouhani insisted that these groups were freedom fighters, not terrorists, and went on to make the laughable claim that “Iran during the last four decades fought against terrorism unequivocally” — a claim that will no doubt provoke few wry smiles in Jerusalem.
In short, the tone of Mr Rouhani’s address to the UN was that of a politician who wants to maintain his confrontational stance against the West, rather than of a man who genuinely seeks peace.
This will have made for uncomfortable listening for all those European leaders who still believe that the best way to resolve the global crisis with Iran is by trying to save the nuclear deal.
The reality is that, so long as Tehran remains committed to its hostile stance towards the West, there is little prospect of having a constructive relationship with Iran.
In England, the Thames Valley Police Department, has announced it will stop posting photos of knives officers seize because they may frighten people. The department said it hopes the decision will “help reduce the fear of knives and knife carrying in our local communities.”
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In England, the Thames Valley Police Department, has announced it will stop posting photos of knives officers seize because they may frighten people. The department said it hopes the decision will “help reduce the fear of knives and knife carrying in our local communities.”
from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2miHAjm
via IFTTT
