Authored by Nathan Rubbelke via TheCollegeFix.com,

‘Progressive stacking’ not new, not isolated to Penn…

The backlash may be new, but the method is not.

Controversy erupted recently after tweets from an Ivy League teaching assistant showed her admitting she only calls on white male students as a last resort.

“I will always call on my black women students first. Other [people of color] get second tier priority. [White women] come next. And, if I have to, white men,” University of Pennsylvania teaching assistant Stephanie McKellop tweeted in October.

McKellop’s tweets spotlight a method known as the “progressive stack” in which speaking priority is given to minority voices while those deemed as having privilege must wait their turn.

McKellop’s comments ignited a firestorm over the controversial teaching method and prompted her university to look into the situation, but a College Fix review of online documentation shows McKellop is far from the first instructor to employ the “progressive stack” in the classroom.

Use of the progressive stack, which is lauded by advocates as amplifying oppressed voices and criticized by others as discriminatory, has been used in college classrooms for years, and has roots in liberal activism.

The College Fix review found several instances in which scholars have engaged in the practice. Additionally, a sociology professor told Inside Higher Ed progressive stacking dates back at least a couple decades.

In an email to The College Fix, University of New Mexico psychology professor Geoffrey Miller denounced the “progressive stack” method and said it will further alienate universities from their stakeholders.

“It’s obvious that universities feel deeply embarrassed when whistle-blowers publicize that progressive stacking is being used in their classrooms; they know that parents, alumni, legislators, and taxpayers can see how discriminatory it is, and will withdraw financial support if it continues,” Miller said.

The method has been met with resistance by students as well. It drew complaints in one college course because students felt it “silenced straight white male students on the basis of their identities,” according to an article published by the course’s instructors.

According to the conservative website Legal Insurrection, the tactic traces back at least to the well-known Occupy Wall Street demonstrations.

“It has been a core part of progressive and academic organizing at least since the Occupy Wall Street protests of 2011,” the website states.

A 2011 article from the liberal magazine The Nation highlighted how Occupy Wall Street protesters used progressive stacking as a means to allow those from “traditionally marginalized groups” to speak at events.

“In other words: women and minorities get to go to the front of the line,” the article explains.

The use of the “progressive stack” in Occupy Wall Street appears to have fueled its use on campus in a few of the cases identified by The Fix.

In a 2014 essay published online, then-UC Berkeley Ph.D candidate Genevieve Painter explained how the Occupy Wall Street movement taught her “how to occupy my own classroom” and explains how she and her colleagues “brought techniques from the movement” into a course.

One of those techniques included the “progressive stack” method, which Painter mentions was used by a professor she assisted in a legal theory course to moderate discussion. Painter inferred that white male students were actually called on first since they were a minority in the class.

“Afterwards, we discussed how students felt – particularly given that, in a classroom populated largely by women, the progressive stack entailed giving speaking priority to the white men in the room,” she wrote.

Painter did not respond to a request seeking comment.

In a 2013 article published in the journal “Radical Teacher,” a cohort of instructors who taught an “Occupy Wall Street-inspired” course admit to using the progressive stack in the class.

In their article, the professors explain they moderated discussion in their “#occupyyoureducation” course by “calling on those who had not spoken (or rarely spoke), women, queer-identified students, and students of color before we called on regular talkers, white, straight, and/or male students.”

However, the method was met with criticism from some students who complained progressive stacking muzzled white men in the class. In their article, the instructors said the complaints led to a meeting with their department chair and that they “took this opportunity to clear up some misconceptions about the class.”

Two of the course’s instructors, who now teach at different universities, did not respond to emails from The College Fix regarding their use of the progressive stack method.

In 2015, Saint Mary’s University professor Jody Haiven said at a panel discussion on misogyny that women should be allowed to speak first in public settings. Haiven, a management professor, said she practiced the technique in her own teaching, according to a news article.

“[[n] the management department, women get to speak first. I think that that is a primary issue that we actually have to look at, how to do question and answer [periods]. And we can start today,” she said.

When probed about whether that tactic could lead to sexism against men, Haiven reportedly said “yes, I suppose at some point that could happen.”

Haiven did not respond to a request seeking comment.

The “progressive stack” method was also used at a 2014 conference on “Transnational Feminisms” that was hosted for scholars at Ohio State University.

“Since some people feel more comfortable than others in settings like these, we ask facilitators to keep a ‘progressive stack’ of speakers, asking those who have already spoken in the session to wait until all others have spoken once before speaking again,” the conference’s welcome packet states.

The packet asks “all participants to privilege the voices of those who might easily be marginalized in academic conversations in the [U.S.].” It goes on to list students, foreigners, non-native English speakers, junior faculty members and the disabled as those who fall under that category.

Amid McKellop’s tweets about her use of the “progressive stack” method, scholars rallied to her defense on social media and defended her use of the technique. They include Cornell Ph.D candidate Jesse Goldberg, who tweeted that he uses the progressive stack in courses he teaches.

In a series of tweets, Goldberg said the progressive stack is an “established method of facilitating discussion.”

“It’s based on the social fact that in conversation, people who signify as being of marginalized identities are talked over constantly,” he said.

Goldberg added that “the method is flawed” but refuted accusations it’s discriminatory.

Yet other scholars disagree.

“Most academics strive to maintain an environment where everyone can speak as opposed to stack participation to address social patterns or bias. Each student must be treated equally — not de-prioritized due to his association with a racial or gender group,” writes famed law professor Jonathan Turley. “While there are an array of social ills outside of the classroom, we maintain an equality of thought and status as a basic component of high education. Moreover, our students come to our schools to be treated equally — not to find themselves the ongoing social experiment of people like McKellop.”

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

Organized crime is the newest and most profound threat to the U.S. retail industry (besides the fear of Amazon and or filing for bankruptcy).

Loss prevention professionals are scrambling to combat highly organized criminal rings operating across state lines deploying armies of “boosters”, who go into stores to steal anything from designer clothes, infant formulas, and electronics.

The cost of organized retail crime has increased for all retailers. Back in 2016, the National Retail Federal (NFR) said “retailers see an average impact of $700,259 per $1 billion in retail sales. That is up significantly from 2015’s $453,940”. 

Jim Cosseboom, manager of investigations and corporate asset protection for the supermarket operator Ahold USA, parent company of Giant, Food Lion and other chains, warns those who are participating in organized retail crime are becoming more brazen and dangerous.

“What they’re targeting is always shifting,” he says, from a mix of high-end luxuries to everyday commodities. Most items can be sold for quick cash on city streets.

National Retail Federation (NFR) outlines the various types of organized crime:  physical and online fencing, cargo theft and issues with gift cards and merchandise credits

Physical Fencing: In all, 63% said they had identified or recovered stolen merchandise from a physical location, such as a store, swap meet or pawn shop. That is down from 2011, when 75% said they had. Of the types of location, finding stolen merchandise in kiosks, temporary/pop-up stores and swap meets all declined over the 2015 figures. Other types of locations increased slightly, with respondents listing warehouses, street vendors and residences.

 

E-fencing: Recovering stolen items advertised on the Internet — online auctions, classifieds and blog listings — is becoming more common. Nearly six in 10 (58%) have identified stolen merchandise on online auction sites, which is significantly higher than the previous year (39%). All forms of e-fencing have seen an increase. Other websites — such as social media sites — increased from 28% in 2015 to 39% in 2016.

 

Merchandise credit and gift cards: Stolen merchandise returned for gift cards/store credit and then resold continues to challenge retailers. Two in three retailers — 68% — reported this as an issue. The number has dropped since 2013, when 78% reported this problem. 64.4% reported finding credits or gift cards on websites while one in three said they have found them in pawn shops. Check cashing (15.3%) and other venues (8.5%) like gift card exchange sites are also places where stolen gift cards and store credits are found.

 

Cargo Theft: With cargo theft, organized retail criminals can score on a much bigger level. In 2016, 44% of those surveyed reported they had been a victim of cargo theft. While this does not reach 2012 levels — when 52% of those surveyed reported cargo theft — it is on the rise again after two years of decreases.

The report also points out new trends in organized crime highlighting “shoplifters are becoming more aggressive”. Criminals are becoming bolder, riding a decriminalization trend by states that has reduced shoplifting to a misdemeanor. Retailers affected by organized crime offer thoughts on trends: 

Decriminalization of shoplifting has led to higher theft per ORC incident. “The felony limit used to be $500, so they would steal $490 per store. Now, with many states having increased the felony limit to $1,500, they steal $1,490 per store.”

 

Online fraud rates have increased. “Our online fraud rates have tripled. We use software to highlight risky transactions for loss prevention review prior to shipping. We have stopped over $350,000 from being shipped due to fraud.”

 

E-gift cards purchased with stolen credit cards is a growing problem. “People have been purchasing e-gift cards with stolen credit card information in large amounts. They then re-sell the cards or use them.”

 

ORC is turning toward credit card and gift card fraud. “Frequently these individuals are people known to us from prior shoplifting incidents. The gift cards are used online and the packages shipped to the same area. Generally, not the same addresses, but multiple addresses within a few-block radius.”

 

Gift cards purchased on reseller sites often are based on merchandise stolen and returned to store for a store credit. “Over the past 12 months we have seen more and more gift cards being sold on sites. When researched, all come back to no-receipt returns in stores.”

 

Law enforcement may have difficulties determining proper jurisdiction for these crimes. “Laws need to be updated on these types of credit card fraud scams.”

Robert Moraca, vice president of loss prevention for the National Retail Federation, says the increase in organized is being fueled by the opioid epidemic, as those who are addicted steal for quick cash to fund the next high. In a recent speech, President Trump outlined more than two million Americans had an addiction to prescription or illicit opioid in 2016.  This is more bad news for retailers, as the opioid crisis is only expanding.

Last year, National Retail Federation (NFR) reported that organized crime cost retailers $30 billion. Retailer’s solution to combat organized crime is to allocate additional resources for technology and staffing.

Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago are America’s top cities for organized crime. Interesting enough, organized crime on the east coast follows the I-95 corridor, as seen on the chart below.

According to The Baltimore Sun,

In September, the Federal Government announced they broke up a San Diego-based shoplifting ring that stole upwards of $20 million worth of high-end merchandise from malls around the United States, including at least one store in Maryland.

New York’s attorney general said, the leader of a theft ring that stole millions of dollars of electronics and ink cartridges from big-box retailers and resold them on websites such as Amazon and eBay pleaded guilty to the top criminal charges he faced.

Bottomline: will the trend in organized retail crime be the final death blow for U.S. retailers who are already struggling to survive?

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

Award winning journalist and UN correspondent of 25 years, Joe Lauria, penned an outstanding article on the origins of “Russiagate” which he published to the liberal Huffington Post this week.

24 hours later, HuffPo yanked the article – leaving a dead link and a sad message in its place.

Perhaps the insights offered in the article didn’t quite conform to HuffPo’s approved narratives, or maybe it has something to do with Lauria’s new book “How I Lost By Hillary Clinton,” with a forward written by Julian Assange.

Considering Joe Lauria’s tenure as the Wall St. Journal’s UN correspondent of nearly seven years, as well as the Boston Globe’s for six – covering just about every major world crisis over the past quarter century, his unique perspective on the matter merits a read.

Reproduced below for your edification:

The Democratic Money Behind Russia-gate

As Russia-gate continues to buffet the Trump administration, we now know that the “scandal” started with Democrats funding the original dubious allegations of Russian interference, notes Joe Lauria.

By Joe Lauria

The two sources that originated the allegations claiming that Russia meddled in the 2016 election — without providing convincing evidence — were both paid for by the Democratic National Committee, and in one instance also by the Clinton campaign: the Steele dossier and the CrowdStrike analysis of the DNC servers. Think about that for a minute.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

We have long known that the DNC did not allow the FBI to examine its computer server for clues about who may have hacked it – or even if it was hacked – and instead turned to CrowdStrike, a private company co-founded by a virulently anti-Putin Russian. Within a day, CrowdStrike blamed Russia on dubious evidence.

And, it has now been disclosed that the Clinton campaign and the DNC paid for opposition research memos written by former British MI6 intelligence agent Christopher Steele using hearsay accusations from anonymous Russian sources to claim that the Russian government was blackmailing and bribing Donald Trump in a scheme that presupposed that Russian President Vladimir Putin foresaw Trump’s presidency years ago when no one else did.

Since then, the U.S. intelligence community has struggled to corroborate Steele’s allegations, but those suspicions still colored the thinking of President Obama’s intelligence chiefs who, according to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, “hand-picked” the analysts who produced the Jan. 6 “assessment” claiming that Russia interfered in the U.S. election.

In other words, possibly all of the Russia-gate allegations, which have been taken on faith by Democratic partisans and members of the anti-Trump Resistance, trace back to claims paid for or generated by Democrats.

If for a moment one could remove the sometimes justified hatred that many people feel toward Trump, it would be impossible to avoid the impression that the scandal may have been cooked up by the DNC and the Clinton camp in league with Obama’s intelligence chiefs to serve political and geopolitical aims.

Absent new evidence based on forensic or documentary proof, we could be looking at a partisan concoction devised in the midst of a bitter general election campaign, a manufactured “scandal” that also has fueled a dangerous New Cold War against Russia; a case of a dirty political “oppo” serving American ruling interests in reestablishing the dominance over Russia that they enjoyed in the 1990s, as well as feeding the voracious budgetary appetite of the Military-Industrial Complex.

Though lacking independent evidence of the core Russia-gate allegations, the “scandal” continues to expand into wild exaggerations about the impact of a tiny number of social media pages suspected of having links to Russia but that apparently carried very few specific campaign messages. (Some pages reportedly were devoted to photos of puppies.)

‘Cash for Trash’

Based on what is now known, Wall Street buccaneer Paul Singer paid for GPS Fusion, a Washington-based research firm, to do opposition research on Trump during the Republican primaries, but dropped the effort in May 2016 when it became clear Trump would be the GOP nominee. GPS Fusion has strongly denied that it hired Steele for this work or that the research had anything to do with Russia.

Couple walking along the Kremlin, Dec. 7, 2016. (Photo by Robert Parry)

Then, in April 2016 the DNC and the Clinton campaign paid its Washington lawyer Marc Elias to hire Fusion GPS to unearth dirt connecting Trump to Russia. This was three months before the DNC blamed Russia for hacking its computers and supposedly giving its stolen emails to WikiLeaks to help Trump win the election.

“The Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee retained Fusion GPS to research any possible connections between Mr. Trump, his businesses, his campaign team and Russia, court filings revealed this week,” The New York Times reported on Friday night.

So, linking Trump to Moscow as a way to bring Russia into the election story was the Democrats’ aim from the start.

Fusion GPS then hired ex-MI6 intelligence agent Steele, it says for the first time, to dig up that dirt in Russia for the Democrats. Steele produced classic opposition research, not an intelligence assessment or conclusion, although it was written in a style and formatted to look like one.

It’s important to realize that Steele was no longer working for an official intelligence agency, which would have imposed strict standards on his work and possibly disciplined him for injecting false information into the government’s decision-making. Instead, he was working for a political party and a presidential candidate looking for dirt that would hurt their opponent, what the Clintons used to call “cash for trash” when they were the targets.

Had Steele been doing legitimate intelligence work for his government, he would have taken a far different approach. Intelligence professionals are not supposed to just give their bosses what their bosses want to hear. So, Steele would have verified his information. And it would have gone through a process of further verification by other intelligence analysts in his and perhaps other intelligence agencies. For instance, in the U.S., a National Intelligence Estimate requires vetting by all 17 intelligence agencies and incorporates dissenting opinions.

Instead Steele was producing a piece of purely political research and had different motivations. The first might well have been money, as he was being paid specifically for this project, not as part of his work on a government salary presumably serving all of society. Secondly, to continue being paid for each subsequent memo that he produced he would have been incentivized to please his clients or at least give them enough so they would come back for more.

Dubious Stuff

Opposition research is about getting dirt to be used in a mud-slinging political campaign, in which wild charges against candidates are the norm. This “oppo” is full of unvetted rumor and innuendo with enough facts mixed in to make it seem credible. There was so much dubious stuff in Steele’s memos that the FBI was unable to confirm its most salacious allegations and apparently refuted several key points.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (right) talks with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office, with John Brennan and other national security aides present. (Photo credit: Office of Director of National Intelligence)

Perhaps more significantly, the corporate news media, which was largely partial to Clinton, did not report the fantastic allegations after people close to the Clinton campaign began circulating the lurid stories before the election with the hope that the material would pop up in the news. To their credit, established media outlets recognized this as ammunition against a political opponent, not a serious document.

Despite this circumspection, the Steele dossier was shared with the FBI at some point in the summer of 2016 and apparently became the basis for the FBI to seek Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants against members of Trump’s campaign. More alarmingly, it may have formed the basis for much of the Jan. 6 intelligence “assessment” by those “hand-picked” analysts from three U.S. intelligence agencies – the CIA, the FBI and the NSA – not all 17 agencies that Hillary Clinton continues to insist were involved. (Obama’s intelligence chiefs, DNI Clapper and CIA Director John Brennan, publicly admitted that only three agencies took part and The New York Times printed a correction saying so.)

If in fact the Steele memos were a primary basis for the Russia collusion allegations against Trump, then there may be no credible evidence at all. It could be that because the three agencies knew the dossier was dodgy that there was no substantive proof in the Jan. 6 “assessment.” Even so, a summary of the Steele allegations were included in a secret appendix that then-FBI Director James Comey described to then-President-elect Trump just two weeks before his inauguration.

Five days later, after the fact of Comey’s briefing was leaked to the press, the Steele dossier was published in fullby the sensationalist website BuzzFeed behind the excuse that the allegations’ inclusion in the classified annex of a U.S. intelligence report justified the dossier’s publication regardless of doubts about its accuracy.

Russian Fingerprints

The other source of blame about Russian meddling came from the private company CrowdStrike because the DNC blocked the FBI from examining its server after a suspected hack. Within a day, CrowdStrike claimed to find Russian “fingerprints” in the metadata of a DNC opposition research document, which had been revealed by an Internet site called DCLeaks, showing Cyrillic letters and the name of the first Soviet intelligence chief. That supposedly implicated Russia.

Dmitri Alperovitch, the Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of CrowdStrike Inc., leading its Intelligence, Technology and CrowdStrike Labs teams.

CrowdStrike also claimed that the alleged Russian intelligence operation was extremely sophisticated and skilled in concealing its external penetration of the server. But CrowdStrike’s conclusion about Russian “fingerprints” resulted from clues that would have been left behind by extremely sloppy hackers or inserted intentionally to implicate the Russians.

CrowdStrike’s credibility was further undermined when Voice of America reported on March 23, 2017, that the same software the company says it used to blame Russia for the hack wrongly concluded that Moscow also had hacked Ukrainian government howitzers on the battlefield in eastern Ukraine.

“An influential British think tank and Ukraine’s military are disputing a report that the U.S. cyber-security firm CrowdStrike has used to buttress its claims of Russian hacking in the presidential election,” VOA reported. Dimitri Alperovitch, a CrowdStrike co-founder, is also a senior fellow at the anti-Russian Atlantic Council think tank in Washington.

More speculation about the alleged election hack was raised with WikiLeaks’ Vault 7 release, which revealed that the CIA is not beyond covering up its own hacks by leaving clues implicating others. Plus, there’s the fact that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has declared again and again that WikiLeaks did not get the Democratic emails from the Russians. Buttressing Assange’s denials of a Russian role, WikiLeaks associate Craig Murray, a former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, said he met a person connected to the leak during a trip to Washington last year.

And, William Binney, maybe the best mathematician to ever work at the National Security Agency, and former CIA analyst Ray McGovern have published a technical analysis of one set of Democratic email metadata showing that a transatlantic “hack” would have been impossible and that the evidence points to a likely leak by a disgruntled Democratic insider. Binney has further stated that if it were a “hack,” the NSA would have been able to detect it and make the evidence known.

Fueling Neo-McCarthyism

Despite these doubts, which the U.S. mainstream media has largely ignored, Russia-gate has grown into something much more than an election story. It has unleashed a neo-McCarthyite attack on Americans who are accused of being dupes of Russia if they dare question the evidence of the Kremlin’s guilt.

The Washington Post building in downtown Washington, D.C. (Photo credit: Washington Post)

Just weeks after last November’s election, The Washington Post published a front-page story touting a blacklist from an anonymous group, called PropOrNot, that alleged that 200 news sites, including Consortiumnews.com and other leading independent news sources, were either willful Russian propagandists or “useful idiots.”

Last week, a new list emerged with the names of over 2,000 people, mostly Westerners, who have appeared on RT, the Russian government-financed English-language news channel. The list was part of a report entitled, “The Kremlin’s Platform for ‘Useful Idiots’ in the West,” put out by an outfit called European Values, with a long list of European funders.

Included on the list of “useful idiots” absurdly are CIA-friendly Washington Post columnist David Ignatius; David Brock, Hillary Clinton’s opposition research chief; and U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres.

The report stated: “Many people in Europe and the US, including politicians and other persons of influence, continue to exhibit troubling naïveté about RT’s political agenda, buying into the network’s marketing ploy that it is simply an outlet for independent voices marginalised by the mainstream Western press. These ‘useful idiots’ remain oblivious to RT’s intentions and boost its legitimacy by granting interviews on its shows and newscasts.”

The intent of these lists is clear: to shut down dissenting voices who question Western foreign policy and who are usually excluded from Western corporate media. RT is often willing to provide a platform for a wider range of viewpoints, both from the left and right. American ruling interests fend off critical viewpoints by first suppressing them in corporate media and now condemning them as propaganda when they emerge on RT.

Geopolitical Risks

More ominously, the anti-Russia mania has increased chances of direct conflict between the two nuclear superpowers. The Russia-bashing rhetoric not only served the Clinton campaign, though ultimately to ill effect, but it has pushed a longstanding U.S.-led geopolitical agenda to regain control over Russia, an advantage that the U.S. enjoyed during the Yeltsin years in the 1990s.

Time magazine cover recounting how the U.S. enabled Boris Yeltsin’s reelection as Russian president in 1996.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Wall Street rushed in behind Boris Yeltsin and Russian oligarchs to asset strip virtually the entire country, impoverishing the population. Amid widespread accounts of this grotesque corruption, Washington intervened in Russian politics to help get Yeltsin re-elected in 1996. The political rise of Vladimir Putin after Yeltsin resigned on New Year’s Eve 1999 reversed this course, restoring Russian sovereignty over its economy and politics.

That inflamed Hillary Clinton and other American hawks whose desire was to install another Yeltsin-like figure and resume U.S. exploitation of Russia’s vast natural and financial resources. To advance that cause, U.S. presidents have supported the eastward expansion of NATO and have deployed 30,000 troops on Russia’s border.

In 2014, the Obama administration helped orchestrate a coup that toppled the elected government of Ukraine and installed a fiercely anti-Russian regime. The U.S. also undertook the risky policy of aiding jihadists to overthrow a secular Russian ally in Syria. The consequences have brought the world closer to nuclear annihilation than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.

In this context, the Democratic Party-led Russia-gate offensive was intended not only to explain away Clinton’s defeat but to stop Trump — possibly via impeachment or by inflicting severe political damage — because he had talked, insincerely it is turning out, about detente with Russia. That did not fit in well with the plan at all.

Joe Lauria is a veteran foreign-affairs journalist. He has written for the Boston Globe, the Sunday Times of London and the Wall Street Journal among other newspapers. He is the author of How I Lost By Hillary Clinton published by OR Books in June 2017. He can be reached at joelauria@gmail.com and followed on Twitter at @unjoe.

via http://ift.tt/2zqUi1i ZeroPointNow

Authored by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

A major goal of this Asia trip, said National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster, is to rally allies to achieve the “complete, verifiable and permanent denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.”

Yet Kim Jong Un has said he will never give up his nuclear weapons.

He believes the survival of his dynastic regime depends upon them.

Hence we are headed for confrontation. Either the U.S. or North Korea backs down, as Nikita Khrushchev did in the Cuban missile crisis, or there will be war.

In this new century, U.S. leaders continue to draw red lines that threaten acts of war that the nation is unprepared to back up.

Recall President Obama’s, “Assad must go!” and the warning that any use of chemical weapons would cross his personal “red line.”

Result: After chemical weapons were used, Americans rose in united opposition to a retaliatory strike. Congress refused to authorize any attack. Obama and John Kerry were left with egg all over their faces. And the credibility of the country was commensurately damaged.

There was a time when U.S. words were taken seriously, and we heeded Theodore Roosevelt’s dictum: “Speak softly, and carry a big stick.”

After Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in August 1991, George H.W. Bush said simply: “This will not stand.” The world understood that if Saddam did not withdraw from Kuwait, his army would be thrown out. As it was.

But in the post-Cold War era, the rhetoric of U.S. statesmen has grown ever more blustery, even as U.S. relative power has declined. Our goal is “ending tyranny in our world,” bellowed George W. Bush in his second inaugural.

Consider Rex Tillerson’s recent trip. In Saudi Arabia, he declared, “Iranian militias that are in Iraq, now that the fight against … ISIS is coming to a close … need to go home. Any foreign fighters in Iraq need to go home.”

The next day, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi responded:

“We wonder about the statements attributed to the American secretary of state about the popular mobilization forces. … No side has the right to intervene in Iraq’s affairs or decide what Iraqis do.”

This slap across the face comes from a regime that rules as a result of 4,500 U.S. dead, tens of thousands wounded and $1 trillion invested in the nation’s rebuilding after 15 years of war.

Earlier that day, Tillerson made a two-hour visit to Afghanistan. There he met Afghan officials in a heavily guarded bunker near Bagram Airfield. Wrote The New York Times’ Gardiner Harris:

“That top American officials must use stealth to enter these countries after more than 15 years of wars, thousands of lives lost and trillions of dollars spent was testimony to the stubborn problems still confronting the United States in both places.”

Such are the fruits of our longest wars, launched with the neo-Churchillian rhetoric of George W. Bush.

In India, Tillerson called on the government to close its embassy in North Korea. New Delhi demurred, suggesting the facility might prove useful to the Americans in negotiating with Pyongyang.

In Geneva, Tillerson asserted, “The United States wants a whole and unified Syria with no role for Bashar al-Assad … The reign of the Assad family is coming to an end.”

Well, perhaps? But our “rebels” in Syria were routed and Assad not only survived his six-year civil war but with the aid of his Russian, Iranian, Shiite militia, and Hezbollah allies, he won that war, and intends to remain and rule, whether we approve or not.

We no longer speak to the world with the assured authority with which America did from Eisenhower to Reagan and Bush 1. Our moment, if ever it existed, as the “unipolar power” the “indispensable nation” that would exercise a “benevolent global hegemony” upon mankind is over.

America needs today a recognition of the new realities we face and a rhetoric that conforms to those realities.

Since Y2K our world has changed.

Putin’s Russia has reasserted itself, rebuilt its strategic forces, confronted NATO, annexed Crimea and acted decisively in Syria, re-establishing itself as a power in the Middle East.

China, thanks to its vast trade surpluses at our expense, has grown into an economic and geostrategic rival on a scale that not even the USSR of the Cold War reached.

North Korea is now a nuclear power.

The Europeans are bedeviled by tribalism, secessionism and waves of seemingly unassimilable immigrants from the South and Middle East.

A once-vital NATO ally, Turkey, is virtually lost to the West. Our major Asian allies are dependent on exports to a China that has established a new order in the South China Sea.

In part because of our interventions, the Middle East is in turmoil, bedeviled by terrorism and breaking down along Sunni-Shiite lines.

The U.S. pre-eminence in the days of Desert Storm is history.

Yet, the architects of American decline may still be heard denouncing the “isolationists” who opposed their follies and warned what would befall the republic if it listened to them.

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

Noted civil rights activist and political hack Rev. Jesse Jackson has been accused of sexual harassment by a journalist who says the Chicago community organizer once grabbed her thigh and made a crude comment.

In a post for “The Root,” writer Danielle Young accused Jackson of making “unwanted” advances and comments during a photo-op following a speech the reverend gave about the duties of black journalists.

I used to work for a very popular media company, and we had a meeting that ended with a keynote speech by the living legend, the Rev. Jesse Jackson. So, of course, the conference room was packed wall-to-wall.

 

After Jackson’s riveting and inspiring speech about the responsibility of black journalists, we all lined up to take a photo with him. One by one, we stepped up, shared a few words and thank-yous with Jackson, snapped photos and went back to our desks. Simple enough, right?

 

I walked toward Jackson, smiling, and he smiled back at me. His eyes scanned my entire body. All of a sudden, I felt naked in my sweater and jeans. As I walked within arm’s reach of him, Jackson reached out a hand and grabbed my thigh, saying, “I like all of that right there!” and gave my thigh a tight squeeze.

 

I was shocked, to say the least. Even though Jackson had had his hand reached out, I had no idea that he would touch me in a sexual way.

The post included several photos of the encounter in which Young writes "don't let the smile fool you. I'm cringing on the inside."

A representative for Jackson's Rainbow PUSH Coalition said "Although Rev. Jackson does not recall the meeting three years ago, he profoundly and sincerely regrets any pain Ms. Young may have experienced."

Young said she was "never going to tell this story" originally "because for the longest time, I didn't even know if there was a story."

"What happened to me was something that was so casual, I almost didn’t even consider it sexual harassment, even though it was beyond my desire," she wrote.

As NBC points out, Jackson was previously accused of harassment in 2010 by an openly gay staffer who filed a complaint alleging the civil rights leader propositioned him.

Jackson flatly denied the allegations in a legal response.
 

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In the few short days since Saudi Arabia erupted in a 'pre-emptive coup', the nation's credit risk has spiked dramatically higher, bets on a devaluation of the Riyal have surged, oil has jumped, and the Tadawul All-Share Index is… unch.

Saudi Credit Risk has spiked…The cost of insuring exposure to the country’s debt against default has spiked the most in seven months in the two days since it arrested dozens of princes, billionaires and public officials as part of an anti corruption drive

 

3-month Riyal forwards have plunged…

 

And the recently issued 3.625s of March 2028 have tumbled…

 

But the stock market has miraculously been panic-bid every day this week since the purge…

 

Driven by a surge in Saudi Banks!

"rigged"?

 

 

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To combat ‘revenge porn’, Facebook is now asking users to send in their nudes, to test a new anti-revenge porn technology.

A pilot program is currently underway in Australia, where one in five women aged 18-45 and one in four Indigenous Australians are victims. It appears, Facebook made the right choice to test out Australian users before a much wider and or global rollout occurs.

Australian Government, e-Safety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said victims of “image-based abuse” would be able to censor images before posted on Facebook’s platform(s).

Grant further said, “we see many scenarios where maybe photos or videos were taken consensually at one point, but there was not any sort of consent to send the images or videos more broadly.”

According to the Daily Mail, sending your nudes to Facebook will stop the so-called ‘revenge porn’ phenomenon:

She also added, “as part of our continued efforts to better detect and remove content that violates our community standards, we’re using image matching technology to prevent non-consensual intimate images from being shared on Facebook. These tools, developed in partnership with global safety experts, are one example of how we’re using new technology to keep people safe and prevent harm”.

* * *

We ask one simple question: What Rights Does Facebook Have to Your Photos?

In Facebook’s terms of service: “You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook”.

…but Facebook gets a “non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license” to your photos.

* * *

Conclusion– don’t take nudes and problem solved. Otherwise, some creepy techie in Silicon Valley along with artificial intelligence will be admiring what you do on a personal level. SkyNet called it wants your nude pictures.

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One year ago, we introduced readers to William Binney, a former high-ranking NSA official turned whistleblower with an interesting theory: Binney believes the intelligence community’s assessment that Russia-linked hackers stole emails from the DNC as they pushed to sway the election in Trump’s favor is bullshit.

The real story, he says, is that a DNC insider stole the emails by downloading them manually from the DNC’s server onto a hard drive. Binney says he arrived at this conclusion after conducting an independent analysis of the metadata from the emails with a particular eye toward timestamps that he says indicate a download speed consistent with loading the files onto a thumb drive.

Binney’s views have been vigorously rebutted by the intelligence community, which has accused him of cynically advancing his theory to benefit President Trump, whom he supported during the election.

But now, it appears Binney’s theory is being discussed at the highest levels within the CIA after the Intercept reported that CIA Director Mike Pompeo met with Binney late last month under the advisement of President Donald Trump.

Mike Pompeo

The meeting, as the Intercept noted, has caused something of a stir in the intelligence community, as several agents dished that they were worried Pompeo’s politics were superseding his interest in preserving our national security – an extremely serious charge to make under cover of anonymity.

However, given the Mueller probe’s recent turn toward investigating Trump associates’ alleged financial crimes and other allegations unrelated to the campaign, and the growing skepticism surrounding the Clinton’s and their conduct during the campaign and during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State, and investigators’ seeming reluctance to elaborate on how they know what they know (which one might expect them to do given the seriousness of the allegations) it’s unsurprising that Trump would get frustrated.

Of course, this isn’t the first time Pompeo has expressed skepticism about Russia’s involvement in the DNC hack, and in trying to influence the election more broadly…

More recently, at a Washington event in October, Pompeo said that U.S. intelligence had determined that Moscow’s intervention hadn’t impacted the outcome of the election. He was quickly criticized for the comments, and the CIA had to issue a clarification saying that the intelligence assessment on Russia hadn’t been altered.

 

Pompeo’s meeting with Binney came just days before the first charges from Mueller’s investigation were made public on October 30.

…Which in turn has alarmed some of his colleagues at the CIA.

However the meeting came about, the fact that Pompeo was apparently willing to follow Trump’s direction and invite Binney to discuss his analysis has alarmed some current and former intelligence officials.

“This is crazy. You’ve got all these intelligence agencies saying the Russians did the hack. To deny that is like coming out with the theory that the Japanese didn’t bomb Pearl Harbor,” said one former CIA officer.

Binney, for his part, is happy that the meeting occurred and eager to help Pompeo and Trump get to the bottom of the DNC email theft. As he points out, the intelligence community helped Bush justify the war in Iraq with intelligence they knew to be unreliable. Who’s to say – given the clues that initially sparked Binney’s doubt – that something similar isn’t happening with Russia.

One thing’s for sure: Trump’s support for warmer relations with Russia immediately alienated the intelligence agencies and foreign policy establishment, which have always been deeply suspicious of Russia.

“I was willing to meet Pompeo simply because it was clear to me the intelligence community wasn’t being honest here,” Binney said, referring to their assessment of the DNC email theft. “I am quite willing to help people who need the truth to find the truth and not simply have deceptive statements from the intelligence community."

Binney said that Pompeo asked whether he would be willing to meet with NSA and FBI officials to further discuss his analysis of the DNC data theft, suggesting that there may be some institutional follow-up.
 

Of course, the CIA’s comms department has insisted that Pompeo supports the community’s findings, which were laid out in a paper published in January.

“The Director stands by, and has always stood by, the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment,” Boyd, the CIA spokesperson, said.

Notably, the revelation that former DNC Chairwoman Donna Brazile said she feared for her life after DNC staffer Seth Rich was murdered certainly help cast Binney’s views in a new light. Some suspect that Rich wasn’t murdered in a robbery gone awry, like police said, but in a deliberate hit job organized by shadowy elements associated with the DNC and Clinton campaign. Binney said he mentioned the case of Seth Rich to Pompeo during their meeting.

And as the Intercept readily admits, Pompeo’s decision to meet with Binney breathes new life into narratives that were originally dismissed by the mainstream media as “right wing conspiracy theories." 

Pompeo’s decision to meet with Binney raises the possibility that right-wing theories aired on Fox News and in other conservative media can now move not just from conservative pundits to Trump, but also from Trump to Pompeo and into the bloodstream of the intelligence community.

 

Some senior CIA officials have grown upset that Pompeo, a former Republican representative from Kansas, has become so close to Trump that the CIA director regularly expresses skepticism about intelligence that doesn’t line up with the president’s views. Pompeo has also alienated some CIA managers by growing belligerent toward them in meetings, according to an intelligence official familiar with the matter.

 

The Director has been adamant that CIA officers have the time, space and resources to make sound and unbiased assessments that are delivered to policy makers without fear or favor,” Boyd said in an email to The Intercept. “As he has stated repeatedly, when we deliver our assessments to policy makers, we must do so with complete candor. He has also pushed decision making down in the organization, giving officers greater ownership of their work and making them more accountable for the outcomes. These changes are designed to make CIA more agile, aggressive and responsive." 

This past summer, as the Mueller investigation was heating up, Binney co-authored a memo, published by members of a group of former intelligence officials called Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, making the case that the DNC emails were not hacked by Russia, but stolen by an insider. The memo argued that the emails were likely downloaded directly from a DNC computer onto a thumb drive or some other external device.

“Forensic studies of ‘Russian hacking’ into Democratic National Committee computers last year reveal that on July 5, 2016, data was leaked (not hacked) by a person with physical access to DNC computer,” the memo states. The memo’s conclusions were based on analyses of metadata provided by the online persona Guccifer 2.0, who took credit for the alleged hack. “Key among the findings of the independent forensic investigations is the conclusion that the DNC data was copied onto a storage device at a speed that far exceeds an Internet capability for a remote hack."

 

The memo garnered attention on the right, but its claims have been disputed. It cited timestamps embedded in the Guccifer files showing when they’d been copied, and used this data to extrapolate how quickly they’d been copied from one computer to another. The analysis on which the VIPS memo was based, conducted by a blogger called “The Forensicator,” showed that the files were transferred at a speed roughly equivalent to the rate at which data can be downloaded to a USB thumb drive. VIPS claimed that speed was “much faster than what is physically possible with a hack,” and so the files had to have been stolen by an insider with direct access to the computer system.

Binney, who has serious health problems and is confined to a wheelchair, said he traveled to the CIA headquarters in Langley Virginia to meet with Pompeo, who was accompanied by two CIA analysts who didn’t reveal their names.

While the intelligence community has categorically disputed Binney’s theory, it has never provided a compelling explanation as to why.

However, we imagine now that the death of Rich is back in the news cycle and both the Mueller indictments plus the revelation that the ‘Trump dossier’ was financed by Democrats, the intelligence community is rapidly hurtling toward a Sophie’s choice of sorts: Admit they lied and acknowledged that Binney’s theory is at least plausible, or produce the evidence that will definitively prove that Russia-linked hackers were responsible for the DNC leaks – something we imagine might be difficult in the absence of any real conclusive evidence.

Like they say, being “mostly certain” is just an upside-down way of saying that doubts remain.  
 

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Authored by John Mauldin via MauldinEconomics.com,

This is something I’ve been pondering for some time. I think the next crisis will reveal how little liquidity there is in the credit markets, especially in the high-yield, lower-rated space.

Dodd–Frank has greatly limited the ability of banks to provide market-making opportunities and credit markets, a function that has been in their wheelhouse for well over a century.

However, when the prices of massive amounts of high-yield bonds that have been stuffed into mutual funds and ETFs begin to fall, and the ETFs want to sell the underlying assets to generate liquidity, there will be no buyers except at extreme prices.

My friend Steve Blumenthal says we are coming up on one of the greatest buying opportunities in high-yield credit that he has ever seen. And he has 25 years of experience as a high-yield trader.

There have been three times when you had to shut your eyes, hold your breath, and buy because the high-yield prices had fallen to such extreme levels. That is going to happen again.

But it is going to unleash a great deal of volatility in every other market. As the saying goes, when you need money in a crisis, you sell what you can, not what you want to. And if you can’t sell your high-yield, you end up selling other assets (like equities), which puts strain on them.

But that is not just my view. Dr. Marko Kolanovic, a J.P. Morgan global quantitative and derivative strategy analyst, has written a short essay called “What Will the Next Crisis Look Like?” and it’s this week’s Outside the Box (subscribe to this free weekly publication here). He sees additional sources of weakness coming from other areas, too.

Frankly, the lack of volatility is beginning to scare me a bit. Minsky constantly reminded us that stability begets instability. Stability is a pretty good word to describe the current markets.

But such stability always ends in a "Minsky moment." We don’t know when; we don’t know where it starts; but we know it’s coming.

What Will the Next Crisis Look Like?

By Marko Kolanovic, PhD, and Bram Kaplan
October 3, 2017

Next year marks the 10^th anniversary of the Great Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2008 and also the 50^thanniversary of the 1968 global protests against political elites. Currently, there are financial and social parallels to both of these events.

Leading into the 2008 GFC, some financial institutions underwrote products with excessive leverage in real estate investments. The collapse of liquidity in these products impaired balance sheets, and governments backstopped the crisis. Soon enough governments themselves were propped by extraordinary monetary stimulus from central banks. Central banks purchased ~$15T of financial assets, mostly government obligations. This accommodation is now expected to reverse, starting meaningfully in 2018. Such outflows (or lack of new inflows) could lead to asset declines and liquidity disruptions, and potentially cause a financial crisis. We will call this hypothetical crisis the “Great Liquidity Crisis” (GLC). The timing will largely be determined by the pace of central bank normalization, business cycle dynamics and various idiosyncratic events, and hence cannot be known accurately. This is similar to the 2008 GFC, when those that accurately predicted the nature of the GFC started doing so around 2006. We think the main attribute of the next crisis will be severe liquidity disruptions resulting from market developments since the last crisis:

• Decreased AUM of strategies that buy Value Assets: The shift from active to passive assets, and specifically the decline of active value investors, reduces the ability of the market to prevent and recover from large drawdowns. The ~$2T rotation from active and value to passive and momentum strategies since the last crisis eliminated a large pool of assets that would be standing ready to buy cheap public securities and backstop a market disruption.

• Tail Risk of Private Assets: Outflows from active value investors may be related to an increase in Private Assets (Private Equity, Real Estate and Illiquid Credit holdings). Over the past two decades, pension fund allocations to public equity decreased by ~10%, and holdings of Private Assets increased by ~20%. Similar to public value assets, private assets draw performance from valuation discounts and liquidity risk premia. Private assets reduce day-to-day volatility of a portfolio, but add liquidity-driven tail risk. Unlike the market for public value assets, liquidity in private assets may be disrupted for much longer during a crisis.

• Increased AUM of strategies that sell on ‘Autopilot’: Over the past decade there was strong growth in Passive and Systematic strategies that rely on momentum and asset volatility to determine the level of risk taking (e.g., volatility targeting, risk parity, trend following, option hedging, etc.). A market shock would prompt these strategies to programmatically sell into weakness. For example, we estimate that futures-based strategies grew by ~$1T over the past decade, and options-based hedging strategies increased their potential selling impact from ~3 days of average futures volume to ~7 days of average volume.

• Trends in liquidity provision: The model of liquidity provision changed in a close analogy to the shift from active/value to passive/momentum. In market making, this has been a shift from human market makers that are slower and often rely on valuations (reversion), to programmatic liquidity that is faster and relies on volatility-based VAR to quickly adjust the amount of risk taking (liquidity provision). This trend strengthens momentum and reduces day-to-day volatility, but increases the risk of disruptions such as the ones we saw on a smaller scale in May 2010, October 2014 and August 2015.

• Miscalculation of portfolio risk: Over the past 2 decades, most risk models were (correctly) counting on bonds to offset equity risk. At the turning point of monetary accommodation, this assumption will most likely fail. This increases tail risk for multi-asset portfolios. An analogy is with the 2008 failure of endowment models that assumed Emerging Markets, Commodities, Real Estate, and other asset classes are not highly correlated to DM Equities. In the next crisis, Bonds likely will not be able to offset equity losses (due to low rates and already large CB balance sheets). Another risk miscalculation is related to the use of volatility as the only measure of portfolio risk. Very expensive assets often have very low volatility, and despite downside risk are deemed perfectly safe by these models.

• Valuation Excesses: Given the extended period of monetary accommodation, most of assets are at their high end of historical valuations. This is particularly true in sectors most directly comparable to bonds (e.g., credit, low volatility stocks), as well as technology- and internet-related stocks. Sign of excesses include multi-billion dollar valuations for smartphone apps or for ‘initial crypto- coin offerings’ that in many cases have very questionable value.

We believe that the next financial crisis (GLC) will involve many of the features above, and addressing them on a portfolio level may mitigate the impact of next financial crises. What will governments and central banks do in the scenario of a great liquidity crisis? If the standard rate cutting and bond purchases don’t suffice, central banks may more explicitly target asset prices (e.g., equities). This may be controversial in light of the potential impact of central bank actions in driving inequality between asset owners and labor (e.g., see here). Other ‘out of the box’ solutions could include a negative income tax (one can call this ‘QE for labor’), progressive corporate tax, universal income and others. To address growing pressure on labor from AI, new taxes or settlements may be levied on Technology companies (for instance, they may be required to pick up the social tab for labor destruction brought by artificial intelligence, in an analogy to industrial companies addressing environmental impacts). While we think unlikely, a tail risk could be a backlash against central banks that prompts significant changes in the monetary system. In many possible outcomes, inflation is likely to pick up.

The next crisis is also likely to result in social tensions similar to those witnessed 50 years ago in 1968. In 1968, TV and investigative journalism provided a generation of baby boomers access to unfiltered information on social developments such as Vietnam and other proxy wars, Civil rights movements, income inequality, etc. Similar to 1968, the internet today (social media, leaked documents, etc.) provides millennials with unrestricted access to information on a surprisingly similar range of issues. In addition to information, the internet provides a platform for various social groups to become more self-aware, united and organized. Groups span various social dimensions based on differences in income/wealth, race, generation, political party affiliations, and independent stripes ranging from alt-left to alt-right movements. In fact, many recent developments such as the US presidential election, Brexit, independence movements in Europe, etc., already illustrate social tensions that are likely to be amplified in the next financial crisis. How did markets evolve in the aftermath of 1968? Monetary systems were completely revamped (Bretton Woods), inflation rapidly increased, and equities produced zero returns for a decade. The decade ended with a famously wrong Businessweek article ‘the death of equities’ in 1979.

*  *  *

Every week, celebrated economic commentator John Mauldin highlights a well-researched, controversial essay from a fellow economic expert. Whether you find them inspiring, upsetting, or outrageous… they’ll all make you think Outside the Box. Get the newsletter free in your inbox every Wednesday.

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The last month or so has seen 'momentum' dramatically outperform the market as retail flows chase 'what is working'…

In fact this has very much been a year of momo…

 

But, as Bloomberg notes, U.S. stocks with the fastest-rising prices are showing the kind of strength they did in the 1990s, according to Jonathan Krinsky, chief market technician at MKM Partners LLC.

He cited this year’s swings in the MSCI USA Momentum and MSCI USA indexes in a report Sunday. The gap between them stands at 15 percent, a threshold that the momentum index only crossed on a full-year basis in 1999.

“Momentum is definitely stretched relative to the market, but there is no guarantee that it won’t become more stretched,” he wrote.

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