You might be wondering what I think of Trump’s decision to pick Mike Pence for VP, given that Pence has disagreed with Trump on substantive policy issues in the past.
First of all, policies don’t matter in this election, or in any other election. Reason is mostly an illusion. And anyway, Pence will modify his positions to match Trump. No one cares.
Secondly, political experts say making a good choice for a VP running mate can’t help a candidate much, but a bad choice can hurt. Pence doesn’t do much to help, but he also doesn’t do much to hurt. So he’s a safe choice on that dimension. And he has plenty of government experience, as Trump says he needs. So Pence helps solve for Trump’s lack of experience. But those effects are all marginal.
What matters with Pence is how he looks in terms of contrast with Trump. The best choice for VP is someone who looks like a boring, washed-out version of the top of the ticket. You need that contrast to remind people that the top of the ticket is truly special.
Pence is an experienced politician. But you stand him next to Trump and he sort of disappears. The contrast persuades you – subconsciously – that Trump is better than an experienced politician. That’s totally irrational, and totally effective.
What’s Clinton’s biggest strength? Experience. How does Trump compare to the experienced politician on his own ticket? Better, at least in the public’s irrational way of thinking. So if Clinton and Pence are both experienced, and you prefer Trump over Pence, you somewhat automatically extend that thinking to Clinton – with all of her boring experience – and imagine her to be a weak version of Trump as well.
Replace Trump and Pence with Reagan and Bush-the-elder to see how well this contrast-based persuasion works.
And think of Obama picking Biden. It’s all the same persuasion trick. You want the VP to be the solid, uninteresting version of whoever is at the top of the ticket.
Now imagine if Trump had picked Gingrich for his VP running mate. Gingrich would make Trump look less experienced, less informed, and less intelligent by contrast. That’s a bad formula for winning. Gingrich is simply too interesting.
And after Gingrich came out in favor of testing Muslims for loyalty to Sharia law, he became the worst possible choice for Trump’s running mate. Trump is trying to move to the middle for the general election. Gingrich is running hard in the opposite direction. If Gingrich is not on the ticket, his radical-sounding ideas create an anchor that actually makes Trump look moderate by comparison. But if Gingrich had been a running mate, it would make a Trump presidency look scarier than it already is. And fear is Clinton’s best weapon against Trump. So no matter what Trump planned a week ago, Gingrich took himself out of the running with his recent comments about testing Muslims. Still, I expect Gingrich to be part of a Trump administration somehow.
No matter what you think of Pence, he was the right choice on the dimension of persuasion. And that’s the only dimension that will matter here. Trump just needs to stay boring until November to win. Pence can do that. Gingrich probably could not.
On the surface, things seem pretty quiet in mid-July 2016. The biggest news stories were about the speculation surrounding Donald Trump’s choice of running mate (no we know), the stock market in the U.S. keeps setting new all-time record highs, and the media seems completely obsessed with Taylor Swift’s love life. But underneath the surface, it is a very different story. As you will see below, the conditions for a “perfect storm” are coming together very rapidly, and the rest of 2016 promises to be much more chaotic than what we have seen so far.
Let’s start with China. On Tuesday, an international tribunal in the Hague ruled against China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea. The Chinese government announced ahead of time that they do not recognize the jurisdiction of the tribunal, and they have absolutely no intention of abiding by the ruling. In fact, China is becoming even more defiant in the aftermath of this ruling. We aren’t hearing much about it in the U.S. media, but according to international news reports Chinese president Xi Jinping has ordered the People’s Liberation Army “to prepare for combat” with the United States if the Obama administration presses China to abandon the islands that they are currently occupying in the South China Sea…
“Chinese president Xi Jinping has reportedly ordered the People’s Liberation Army to prepare for combat,” reports Arirang.com. “U.S.-based Boxun News said Tuesday that the instruction was given in case the United States takes provocative action in the waters once the ruling is made.”
A U.S. aircraft carrier and fighter jets were already sent to the region in anticipation of the ruling, with the Chinese Navy also carrying out exercises near the disputed Paracel islands.
Last October, China said it was “not frightened” to fight a war with the U.S. following an incident where the guided-missile destroyer USS Lassen violated the 12-nautical mile zone China claims around Subi and Mischief reefs in the Spratly archipelago.
Meanwhile, the relationship between the United States and Russia continues to go from bad to worse. The installation of a missile defense system in Romania is just the latest incident that has the Russians absolutely steaming, and during a public appearance on June 17th Russian President Vladimir Putin tried to get western reporters to understand that the world is being pulled toward war…
“We know year by year what’s going to happen, and they know that we know. It’s only you that they tell tall tales to, and you buy it, and spread it to the citizens of your countries. You people in turn do not feel a sense of the impending danger – this is what worries me. How do you not understand that the world is being pulled in an irreversible direction? While they pretend that nothing is going on. I don’t know how to get through to you anymore.”
And of course the Russians have been feverishly updating and modernizing their military in preparation for a potential future conflict with the United States. Just today we learned that the Russians are working to develop a hypersonic strategic bomber that is going to have the capability of striking targets with nuclear warheads from outer space.
Unfortunately, the Obama administration does not feel a similar sense of urgency. The size of our strategic nuclear arsenal has declined by about 95 percent since the peak of the Cold War, and many of our installations are still actually using rotary phones and the kind of 8 inch floppy disks for computers that were widely used back in the 1970s.
But I don’t expect war with China or Russia to erupt by the end of 2016. Of much more immediate concern is what is going on in the Middle East. The situation in Syria continues to deteriorate, but it is Israel that could soon be the center of attention.
Back in March, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Obama administration wanted to revive the peace process in the Middle East before Obama left office, and that a UN Security Council resolution that would divide the land of Israel and set the parameters for a Palestinian state was still definitely on the table…
The White House is working on plans for reviving long-stalled Middle East negotiations before President Barack Obama leaves office, including a possible United Nations Security Council resolution that would outline steps toward a deal between the Israelis and Palestinians, according to senior U.S. officials.
And just this week, the Washington Post reported that there were renewed “rumblings” about just such a resolution…
Israel is facing a restive European Union, which is backing a French initiative that seeks to outline a future peace deal by year’s end that would probably include a call for the withdrawal of Israeli troops and the creation of a Palestinian state. There are also rumblings that the U.N. Security Council might again hear resolutions about the conflict.
For years, Barack Obama has stressed the need for a Palestinian state, and now that his second term is drawing to a close he certainly realizes that this is his last chance to take action at the United Nations. If he is going to pull the trigger and support a UN resolution formally establishing a Palestinian state, it will almost certainly happen before the election in November. So over the coming months we will be watching these developments very carefully.
And it is interesting to note that there is an organization called “Americans For Peace Now” that is collecting signatures and strongly urging Obama to support a UN resolution of this nature. The following comes from their official website…
Now is the time for real leadership that can revive and re-accredit the two-state solution as President Obama enters his final months in office. And he can do this – he can lay the groundwork for a two-state agreement in the future by supporting an Israeli-Palestinian two-state resolution in the United Nations Security Council.
Such a resolution would restore U.S. leadership in the Israeli-Palestinian arena. It would preserve the now-foundering two-state outcome. And it would be a gift to the next president, leaving her or him constructive options for consequential actions in the Israeli-Palestinian arena, in place of the ever-worsening, politically stalemated status quo there is today.
Sadly, a UN resolution that divides the land of Israel and that formally establishes a Palestinian state would not bring lasting peace. Instead, it would be the biggest mistake of the Obama era, and it would set the stage for a major war between Israel and her neighbors. This is something that I discussed during a recent televised appearance down at Morningside that you can watch right here…
At the same time all of this is going on, the global economic crisis continues to escalate. Even though U.S. financial markets are in great shape at the moment, the same cannot be said for much of the rest of the world.
Just look at the country that is hosting the Olympics this summer. Brazil is mired in the worst economic downturn that it has seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s, and Rio de Janeiro’s governor has declared “a state of financial emergency“.
Elsewhere, China is experiencing the worst economic downturn that they have seen in decades, the Japanese are still trying to find the end of their “lost decade”, and the banking crisis in Europe is getting worse with each passing month.
In quite a few articles recently, I have discussed the ongoing implosion of the biggest and most important bank in Germany. But I am certainly not the only one warning about this. In one of his recent articles, Simon Black also commented on the turmoil at “the most dangerous bank in Europe”…
Well-capitalized banks are supposed to have double-digit capital levels while making low risk investments.
Deutsche Bank, on the other hand, has a capital level of less that 3% (just like Lehman), and an incredibly risky asset base that boasts notional derivatives exposure of more than $70 trillion, roughly the size of world GDP.
But of course Deutsche Bank isn’t getting a lot of attention from the mainstream media right now because of the stunning meltdown of banks in Italy, Spain and Greece. Here is more from Simon Black…
Italian banks are sitting on over 360 billion euros in bad loans right now and are in desperate need of a massive bailout.
IMF calculations show that Italian banks’ capital levels are among the lowest in the world, just ahead of Bangladesh.
And this doesn’t even scratch the surface of problems in other banking jurisdictions.
Spanish banks have been scrambling to raise billions in capital to cover persistent losses that still haven’t healed from the last crisis.
In Greece, over 35% of all loans in the banking system are classified as “non-performing”.
Even though U.S. stocks are doing well for the moment, the truth is that trillions of dollars of stock market wealth has been lost globally since this time last year. If you are not familiar with what has been going on around the rest of the planet, this may come as a surprise to you. During my recent appearance at Morningside, I shared some very startling charts which show how dramatically global markets have shifted over the past 12 months. You can view the segment in which I shared these charts right here…
I would really like it if the rest of 2016 was as quiet and peaceful as the past couple of days have been.
Unfortunately, I don’t believe that is going to be the case at all.
The storm clouds are rising and the conditions for a “perfect storm” are brewing. Sadly, most people are not going to understand what is happening until it is far too late.
When we described the aftermath of Turkey’s failed, and painfully disorganized military coup attempt, we asked rhetorically, “Who wins?” To which we answered: “Why Erdogan of course. As he said during a press conference upon his arrival back in Istanbul in the early Saturday morning hours, the coup is an opportunity to “to purge the military.” Erdogan also vowed to exact “the highest price” from the perpetrators. Or, to summarize, the military said Erdogan’s power consolidation justifies the attempted coup; Erdogan said the coup justifies further consolidation of power.“
Overnight, when analyzing the market’s take of the coup, Renaissance Capital’s Michael Harris said that “for markets to respond positively, we think Erdogan must go the reconciliation route, pledging not to hold elections for the coming year and committing to a consensus approach to constitutional change. More likely, though, Erdogan will seek to leverage this into a constitutional super-majority via a snap election.”
Their conclusion: “A military coup has failed, but if Erdogan responds to this historic moment the wrong way, a democratic coup could be the result.“
Not surprisingly, as of this morning, Erdogan is indeed responding to this historic moment the “wrong way.” But before we get to that point, there are questions whether this coup was even that.
As a NYT analyst on the ground pointed out, confirming what we said last night, the planning, organization and implementation of the attempted military overthrow were suspect at best and outright laughable at worst:
Major point people are missing. Very few tanks out there compared to a full military chain-of-command coup. https://t.co/UGJHWwPMh5
We don’t have to remind readers that when military coups take place in the middle-east, they are i) ruthless, ii) extremely well-organized and planned, and iii) succeed on virtually every occasion. But not this one. The question why is what the media (or at least its fringes) will be pondering over the next few days and weeks.
What there is no question about, however, is Erdogan’s response, which as he warned last night, would begin with a quick crackdown against the army. As of this moment, hundreds of soldiers have already been arrested.
As AP adds, local NTV television has shown footage of a Turkish colonel and other soldiers being taken into custody at military headquarters. The video shows them being hand-searched by special forces police, their hands behind their heads. Some are later seen kneeling on the ground, their hands still held behind their heads.
According to Hurriyet newspaper’s online edition, some of the privates who were detained told interrogators they were not aware that they were part of a coup attempt. They had been told by commanders they were taking part in military maneuvers. Some said they understood that it was a coup attempt when they saw civilians climb on tanks.
The pro-Erdogan, state-run Anadolu Agency added all soldiers involved in the attempted coup at the military headquarters in the capital, Ankara, have been taken into custody. The report says anti-terrorism police will now conduct a “detailed search” at the headquarters.
However, the real punchline was revealed moments ago when Anadolu said a top body overseeing judges and prosecutors has dismissed 2,745 judges across the country. Anadolu Agency says the emergency meeting of the Judges and Prosecutors High Council was held Saturday, mere hours after Turkish forces quashed an attempted coup, and promptly purged the slate clean of anyone in the judicial branch who was seen as even remotely opposed to Erdogan.
Not just that, both moments ago NTV added that Turkey has issued arrest warrants for 140 appeals court members, as if they also had something to do with the army’s failed putsch.
The report said the meeting was called to discuss disciplinary measures against members suspected of links to the movement led by the U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen. The government says the attempted coup was carried out by a clique within the military loyal to Gulen’s movement.
However, as we reported last night, the cleric Fethullah Gulen, who is currently residing in the US, said he condemned the coup “in the strongest terms.” Gulen, as those who have followed recent Turkish history know, is Erdogan’s quasi-imaginary bogeyman nemesis; Erdogan has repeatedly accused Gulen of plotting a “parallel state” whose intention is to overthrow Erdogan, and has used that strawman narrative as justification to expand his powers and to push for a shift from a parliamentary to a presidential regime.
Gulen wrote in his blog that “As someone who suffered under multiple military coups during the past five decades, it is especially insulting to be accused of having any link to such an attempt. I categorically deny such accusations.”
Was Gulen behind the coup? Hardly. But as over the past several years, the spectre of a Gulen “coup” – now culminating with last night’s events – is all that Erdogan will need to further cement his ruthelss, authoritarian grasp over the country, which this morning, with gun shots still heard in Turkey, began with the cleansing of all judges and prosecutors even remotely critical of the “president.” Recall that just two months ago, we reported that “Erdogan Nears Absolute Power With Appointment Of Puppet Premier, Stripping MPs Of Immunity.”
As of right now, Erdogan has removed the two last hurdles on his way to absolute, supreme power: holdouts in Turkey’s judicial branch and in the army.
As such, the path forward for Erdogan – now left with no domestic opposition whatsoever – is all too clear.
Every year, typically during the summer months, many state laws that were passed during earlier state legislative sessions take effect. Some repeal bad old laws. Others add to the mix.
Baylen Linnekin has written about the impact of these state laws on beer brewers, sellers, and consumers, noting that a new crop of laws demonstrated progress but showed just “how far we have to go to make sure brewers, restaurants, other sellers, and consumers alike have all the choices they want.”
This summer, with many changes on the books, seems as good a time as any for an update.
Former National Security Agency Director Michael Hayden makes the case for the expansive power of the American security state. In a review of Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror, from the August/September issue of Reason magazine, Brett Max Kaufman finds Hayden’s justifications and metaphors less than compelling:
Playing to the Edge is Hayden’s grand statement, the case for himself as a mover and shaker, a humble but aggressive visionary, a team player, an honorable man, and, most of all, right about everything. If we disagree with him, it’s only because we don’t know what he knows—and this is a problem. He’s concerned, he says, that “critics, observers, and just average citizens don’t know as much about intelligence as they want or should.” (Intelligence, in this context, means just about everything the NSA and CIA do.) If the public misunderstands what intelligence does, we might not want intelligence to keep doing it. He wants to show us that we should.
But it is not a good sign when your memoir’s central metaphor breaks down in the foreword. Hayden’s conceit is that those who run intelligence have a duty to “us[e] all the tools and all the authorities available, much like how a good athlete takes advantage of the entire playing field right up to the sideline markers and endlines”—the edge. As he’s said elsewhere (he’s been on this kick for nearly a decade), “Playing back from the line protected me but didn’t protect America. I made it clear I would always play in fair territory, but that there would be chalk dust on my cleats.”
The first problem is that if you get chalk on your cleats, it means you’re out of bounds. (Or at least you are in football, Hayden’s obvious inspiration.) That this has apparently gone unremarked to Hayden over the years—even by Dan Rooney, the owner of Hayden’s hometown Pittsburgh Steelers and Hayden’s high school football coach, with whom he watches too many Super Bowls in this book to count—is notable in itself. That it goes entirely unexamined in the book’s numerous invocations of the image is, alas, characteristic.
Worse still is that “taking advantage of the entire playing field” is a pretty odd way to describe the main thing that good athletes do. Of course, spraying one down the right-field line or throwing it deep and wide can sometimes help the team. But they are hardly required to win the game. Hayden never bothers to explain why pushing it to the edge is a main point of his duty as a public servant. Like so much in the book, it is simply assumed that people of good faith will agree.
On Tuesday a white police officer in Baton Rogue, Louisiana, shot and killed a black man named Alton Sterling. One day later a white police officer in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, shot and killed a black man named Philando Castile. According to critics of the criminal justice system, police shootings like these can be stopped only if meaningful reforms have been put in place. But according to Heather Mac Donald, author of the new book The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe, those critics have it wrong.
While some pundits use the phrase “war on cops” almost literally, with false claims that violence against cops has been surging, Mac Donald mostly leaves this idea alone, aside from one assertion that anti-cop rhetoric has “spawned riots, ‘die-ins,’ and the assassination of police officers.” Instead she aims to push back against the critics of the criminal justice system, defending intrusive policing practices such as stop-and-frisk and calling it a “dangerous lie” that the system treats whites and blacks differently. She says we need more proactive policing and stricter incarceration practices to protect our cities from “mass destruction.” But as Tim Lynch observes in his review of the book, Mac Donald doesn’t make a very convincing case.
The president of Turkey, Recep Erdogan, returned to Ankara from the seaside province of Marmaris to declare the coup launched against him by a “portion of the military” had failed. The hotel he was staying at was also reportedly bombed after he left, according to CNN.
Erdogan addressed Turkey during an interview on CNN Turk conducted via Facetime. “Those who are responsible, we will give them the necessary punishment,” Erdogan said, calling on his supporters to demonstrate in the streets. Erdogan also reportedly appeared at a rally in Ankara.
Erdogan has accused the imam Fethullah Gulen, who lives in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania, and his followersm of orchestrating the coup attempt. Gullen has a loose network of charitable organizations, professional associations and other ventures, including 150 charter schools in the U.S, as the Associated Press reported in February.
The Turkish president said the coup plotters were guilty of treason and would be treated the same way as terrorists. More than 40 people have reportedly died in clashes in Ankara. Gulen is already on Turkey’s most wanted list for terrorism, although the U.S. has declined to extradite him and has not previously commented on his status. President Obama called for “restraint” in Turkey and support for the “democratically-elected government.”
Opposition parties in the Turkish parliament have all officially condemned the attempted coup.
Pakistan, a nation of 200 million, is witnessing a plethora of oppression, injustice, tyranny, religious exploitation and blatant lying. A majority of the population live in either various forms of poverty as victims or in fear of targeted killings and kidnappings for ransom by workers of the major political parties and religious terrorists. The perpetrators – politicians and judiciary (the legal system including the upholders of law) as well as the clergy (known as ulema or mullah) are corrupt to the very hilt and this has filtered deep into the fabric of the nation’s national character. The brunt of this is being felt among the people living in villages and ghettos who’re being exploited mainly by the clergy while 6-10% of the rich and upper middle class who live in large cities continue to eat the fruits sowed with the seeds of corruption in every government heirarchy.
Pakistan is a nation in chaos as are many other Muslim countries whose citizens are victims of terrorism, tyranny, corruption, oppression and injustice. These will be illustrated as several epitomes in the following paragraphs.
I was going to omit reference to the corruption in the military but after receiving a rather interesting email, I decided to include the contents after investigating the authenticity of the email. In brief, during his regime, General Zia-ul-Haq of Pakistan was en route to USA on an official visit with his wife. Several gifts were loaded on the plane for distribution and among them were some marble lamps. Due to last minute plan changes, the marble lamps were not loaded in the cargo section. The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) found the lamps left behind and after failing to trace the owner(s), broke the lamps and found them stuffed with heroin. After several arrests, the track led to Zia’s ADC Captain Qamar Zaman, the “adopted son” of the general. I traced an article in Pakistan Tribune newspaper of 11 October, 2011 as well as the book “Profiles of Intelligence” by Brigadier A.I. Tirmizi. Fascinatingly, Qamar Zaman was appointed Chairman of Pakistan’s National Accountability Board (NAB) the very authority charged to investigate corruption. Details of Qamar Zaman’s corruption are noted on the referenced article.
On 9 July 2016 a noble and humble Pakistani philanthropist, Abdul Suttar Edhi, died at the age of 88 in Karachi serving humanity, the very essence of Islam. In a blog EDHI: A LIFE LESS ORDINARY in the newspaper The Dawn , filmmaker and journalist Hassan Zaidi wrote In fact, if anything made him (Edhi) bitter it was how some mullahs (clergy) had perverted the spirit of religion with literal interpretations. He would rail many times about how the clergy only created problems for other people, never helped those in need. In another anonymous blog, Edhi’s wife Bilquis stated that “What we are doing (charity) should be done by the government and should be appreciated, but instead we are blamed.” I remember an Italian saying ‘the fish smells from the head’ – true enough.
The corruption, tyranny, oppression, religious intolerance, terrorism and injustice in Pakistan are representative across the entire Muslim world. Muslims are fleeing from their own countries and seeking sanctuary anywhere where they can escape the horrific crimes being perpetrated against innocent men, women and children by their leaders and extremist groups like Al-Qaeda, Islamic State and Taliban.
Ask Muslims about the roots of terrorism and they’re quick to point the fingers at the USA or Israel. They’re not thinking. They’re not thinking inwardly. The plague of terrorism is homemade, not foreign. The western countries however prop up the Muslim perpetrators with bribes and political protection so that they can extract economic benefits from the mayhem. Why not exploit the homegrown situation?
Terrorism was born predominantly in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan as a tool to expel Soviets from Afghanistan in 1980s. The other day I was asked about these three countries. The official descriptions of Pakistan and Afghanistan are THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF PAKISTAN and ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF AFGHANISTAN. I posed a question to several Muslims: are these two countries Islamic or republics or democracies as their leaders and politicians claim? The answers were unanimously ‘no’ in each case. They are hypocrisies and mirror reflections of Saudi Arabian monarchy in every respect. These countries are namesake Islamic only, not in principle or in spirit. The blame also lies with the clergy who mislead Muslims and appease the political leaders for personal gains and power sharing.
The current Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif owes much to the Saudi monarchy as it had granted him sanctuary during his 9 year exile from Pakistan in 1999 following a military coup. Saudi Arabia has granted sanctuary to other heads of Muslim countries known for their extremities of corruption, oppression, tyranny, murder, mayhem and injustice against their peoples. A case is that of Idi Amin President of Uganda from 1971-1979, an incredibly disturbed psychotic who is on record to have killed half million citizens. Another corrupt tyrant-dictator who was granted sanctuary in Saudi Arabia was the former President of Tunisia Zain El-Abedin bin Ali (1987-2011). He fled with his notorious wife Leila bin Ali and nearly 1.5 tons of gold valued at $75 million. Why has the Saudi monarchy granted sanctuary to such tyrants? One can only surmise that “birds of a feather flock together”.
The plague of terrorism was born and nurtured in Afghanistan and Pakistan in prayer houses (mosques) of God under control of fundamentalist clergies trained and funded by the same country that has supported and granted sanctuary to tyrants, dictators, political criminals, unjust rulers, oppressors and murderers. One of them was President Zia-ul-Haq of Pakistan, a religious zealot, who together with Saudi Arabia aspired to promote Wahhabism- an extremist belief far removed from mainstream Islam which preaches humanity and tolerance – across the Muslim world. Fortunately his aspirations died with him in a military airplane crash in 1988 but the monarchy and Wahhabism continues to survive and grow like a cancerous plague of radicalism, terrorism and terrorists.
The plague spans not only the Muslim countries but even the USA and European nations. The only Muslim country which has successfully prevented terrorism within its borders is Iran. Whether they belong to Al-Qaeda, Taliban or the Islamic State (IS), these bearded terrorists are products of extremism and religious fundamentalism, brainwashed in mosques by the Saudi trained clergy to indiscriminately kill men, women and children. Then they vanish in the crowds and find sanctuary in the mosques. They call themselves Muslims who believe that God has chosen them to do His bidding and that they’ll be rewarded in Paradise.
Let us now consider in a couple of paragraphs how to eliminate the global plague. The US and European NATO partners have a grand plan for Saudi Arabia, a nation that cannot defend itself but would willingly pay other Muslim countries to do its dirty job. It has hopes that Pakistan, Afghanistan, other Arab monarchies would send regular army troops to defend the country and the two holy sites in Mecca and Medina. It has thus formed a coalition of Sunni Muslims including Al-Qaeda, IS and Taliban to counter the growing influence of Shia axis (Iran, Iraq, Syria and Hezbollah) in the Middle East. The grand plan is to start a civil war between Shias and Sunnis (both Muslims) and thus contain the plague in US and EU while Muslims will be engaged in throat cutting.
As to the timing of the civil war, it might just well be in less than two years following the US elections. Donald Trump, the Republican Party presidential nominee, is the circus clown who has been thrown into the ring to gauge the sentiments of the Americans towards Muslims while the “terrorists” unleash chaos in the US. Behind the scenes is the juggler, Hillary Clinton (endorsed as the Democratic Party presidential nominee), as she spins a web that will lead to the Shia-Sunni civil war in the Middle East. Iran’s Supreme leader Khamenei warned his nuclear negotiators that under the N-deal is a “half nuclear bowl” suggesting caution that the US-EU has an ulterior motive. Now that the sanctions are gradually being lifted, Iran is economically and militarily preparing towards the eventuality of the civil war that it has foreseen in the “half nuclear bowl”. I perceive that the civil war will be a major regional conflict that will prolong many years till terrorism and fundamentalism will be defeated and peace will prevail but the human toll among Muslims will be massive.
Having previously shown the following chart as an example of the 'liquidity gap' between fund-level liquidations and the exuberant UK real estate market, warning that things could get ugly very quickly…
Bloomberg reports, they just did! The index by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors dropped to minus 46 in June from minus 35 the previous month, showing that more real-estate agents are recording lower prices in the capital than higher ones. The reading was the weakest since early 2009. All responses were received after the EU referendum on June 23.
A separate report from Acadata Ltd. and LSL Property Services Plc showed home values in the capital were already being hurt ahead of the vote, with prices decreasing 1.4 percent in May, the biggest monthly fall since June 2011.
RICS’s survey provides the first insight into the impact the decision to leave the EU is having on the housing market. It shows nationwide demand falling to its lowest level since the middle of 2008, while the number of properties put up for sale plunged to a record low. A gauge of sales expectations for the next three months was at its weakest in 28 years.
“It was always likely we were going to see a bit of a fallout from the EU referendum,” Simon Rubinsohn, RICS’s chief economist, said in an interview on Bloomberg Television with Guy Johnson and Caroline Hyde.
“It’s also part of a trend that emerged at the start of the second quarter, particularly the London data.”
The Brexit vote has “clearly unnerved many buyers and sellers, and it is evident that some are reevaluating what they do and/or are attempting to renegotiate the price,” they said.
Thanks to the fad-tastic launch of Pokemon GO – more popular than porn – Nintendo stock has exploded over 93% in the last 7 days (the most ever) to 6 years highs. But the Pokemania was really in the trading volume where 476 billion yen changed hands for the highest daily turnover on the Tokyo Stock Exchange this century…
Second-highest turnover for any given day was Tokyo Electric with 446b yen on May 21, 2013, followed by SoftBank with 431b yen on Nov. 29, 2005.
* * *
Seems sustainable, right?
Having second thoughts? Maybe you're right? From Gawker:
"Pokémon Go Is a Government Surveillance Psyop Conspiracy"
Less than a week after Pokémon Go’s launch, our streets are already filled with packs of phone-wielding, Weedle-catching zombies. They’re robbing our teens, filling our churches with sinners, and tricking our children into exercising. But worst of all, Pokémon Go is turning us all into an army of narcs in service of the coming New World Order.
Allow me to explain.
More like Privacy Poli-See Everything
Lots of apps have sketchy privacy policies, that’s nothing new. But the first set of alarms go off as soon as you realize that Pokémon Go’spolicy does seem a bit more liberal than most, because not only are you giving Pokémon Go access to your location and camera, you’re also giving it full access to your Google account (assuming you use that to sign in).
There’s one section of the privacy policy in particular that seems to be getting the conspiracy theorists of the world up in arms and which Reddit user Homer_Simpson_Doh calls “very Orwellian”:
Most Orwellian of all is this line:
We may disclose any information about you (or your authorized child) that is in our possession or control to government or law enforcement officials or private parties.
As TechCrunch explained, Pokémon-loving millennials are far less likely to object to a few extra permissions when its Squirtle staring them in the face as they abandon their every god-given freedom than they do when Google reads their email.
Pokémon Go comes directly—directly—from the intelligence community
And it’s not like Pokémon Go itself doesn’t already have a direct(-ish) line to the CIA. After all, Pokémon Go was created by Niantic, which was formed by John Hanke.
Now, Hanke also just so happened to help found Keyhole. What does Keyhole do, you ask? I’d tell you to go to Keyhole’s website—but you can’t. It just takes you straight to Google Earth. That’s because Keyhole was acquired by Google back in 2004.
Before that, though, Keyhole received funding from a firm called In-Q-Tel, a government-controlled venture capital firm that invests in companies that will help beef up Big Brother’s tool belt. What’s more, the funds In-Q-Tel gave Keyhole mostly came from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), whose primary mission is “collecting, analyzing, and distributing geospatial intelligence.”
Still unsure if Pokémon Go’s creator is a government spook? Check out this excerpt from the NGA’s in-house publication…