Tag: news

For the first time in over a decade a hurricane is expected to make landfall in Florida. Winds from strengthening Hurricane Hermine lashed at Florida's northern Gulf Coast, forcing residents to evacuate some coastal areas and stock up on provisions ahead of what the state's governor warned would be a lethal storm. Forecasters are also warning that Hermine poses a Labor Day weekend threat to states along the northern Atlantic Coast that are home to tens of millions of people.

As Reuters reports, Hermine became the fourth hurricane of the 2016 season around midafternoon when its sustained winds reached 75 mph (120 kph). Located about 85 miles (135 km) south of Apalachicola, Florida at 5 p.m., it was expected to make landfall early on Friday.

h/t @Mark_Baden

 

Hermine could dump as much as 20 inches (51 cm) of rain in some parts of the state. Ocean storm surge could swell as high as 12 feet (3.6 meters). Isolated tornadoes were forecast.

 

 

The governors of Georgia and North Carolina on Thursday declared emergencies in affected regions. In South Carolina, the low-lying coastal city of Charleston was handing out sandbags.

Florida Governor Rick Scott declared a state of emergency in 51 of Florida's 67 counties, and at least 20 counties closed schools. Mandatory evacuations were ordered in parts of five counties in northwestern Florida and voluntary evacuations were in place in at least three more counties.

"This is life threatening," Scott told reporters on Thursday afternoon. "You can rebuild a home. You can rebuild property. You cannot rebuild a life."

 

In coastal Franklin County, people on barrier islands and low-lying areas on the shore were being evacuated.

 

 

"Those on higher ground are stocking up and hunkering down," said Pamela Brownlee, the county's director of emergency management.

 

 

"If we get hit with a real storm head on, all the provisions you can make aren't going to matter out here," he said, ready to use a chainsaw to cut beams on covered slips if rising water pushed boats dangerously close to the roof. "It'd be pretty catastrophic."

 

On its current path, the storm also could dump as much as 10 inches (25 cm) of rain on coastal areas of Georgia, which was under a tropical storm watch, and the Carolinas. Forecasters warned of "life-threatening" floods and flash floods there.

Still, many people in Florida, whose population has swelled since the last hurricane struck, saw Hermine less as a threat than entertainment.

While the impact of Wilma in 2005 seems long-forgotten by many in Florida, the devastation of Sandy on the Tri-State area is fresh in many people's minds and residents in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut — particularly those who live along the coastline — are taking precautions against Hermine. As ABC7NY reports, the calm before the storm is the best time to prepare for the worst, officials say, and crews in Hempstead's Point Lookout spent the day tying down boats to docks and building sand dunes along the beach to protect from high winds and high tides. It's just a small part of what's being done in preparation for Hermine.

"We've got chainsaws being oiled and made sure they're operational, should we have major trees coming down to block streets," Hempstead Town Supervisor Anthony Santino said. "We have again vehicles being fueled up. We have all of the boats on various town marinas being secured. We are moving non-essential equipment to higher ground."

 

"We've met with the Red Cross, we've reviewed our sheltering plan," Nassau County Executive Ed Mangano said. "We drive the coastal evacuation routes to review whether there's any construction, whether there's any debris in the storm drains, so we can alert the public if there's any hazard that was unexpected when we advised residents to utilize the coastal evacuation routes."

 

…

 

Along the Jersey shore, some towns were beginning to discuss preparations for the days ahead, while others were taking a wait-and-see approach.

 

Officials in Long Branch held a meeting Thursday. "We're just on standby right now," emergency management coordinator and beach operations director Stanley Dziuba said. "We have our hardware vehicles prepared, ready to go. We have our shelters in place, and we're just going through our checklist, making sure everything is ready to go."

 

…

 

"Right now, we're not expecting anything really major," he said. "But things change. Every five, 10 minutes, it seems like we get different updates."

 

…

 

"We're expecting a lot of energy happening," assistant beach manager Susana Markson said. "I know they're talking about the cone of uncertainty coming. We're not rally sure what edge of the storm we're going to get, or anything. We're prepared for any possibility."

 

Seaside Heights emergency management officials are still discussing whether or not they'll erect temporary sand dunes, saying decisions like that will likely be made further into the weekend.

In New York state, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said he has directed the State Office of Emergency Management to closely monitor the storm’s path and for state agencies to be prepared.

“If the storm continues far enough up the coast, there is a possibility downstate New York may experience high rip currents, heavy rain and strong winds this Labor Day weekend,” Cuomo said. “I urge all New Yorkers, especially those in the downstate region, to be prepared, check local weather reports, and use NY Alert to stay updated on the storm’s progress throughout the weekend.”

Follow Hermine in real-time… (click image below)

 

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

One month ago, when the first Q2 GDP estimate was released, we reported that if one strips away the consumer part of the economy, the US was already in a recession. 

Overnight, In his latest letter SocGen’s Albert Edwards picks up on this topic, but first dispenses with the usual warning, saying that “the US economy is on crutches, and they are about to be kicked away” adding that “US economic growth is weak yet the labour market is tight. This juxtaposition is keeping the Fed in a quandary on whether to raise interest rates. As it stands it probably will, or will not, depending on which way the wind (data) is blowing that day!”

After the requisite “flip-flop Fed watching”, Albert then proceeds to agree with what we said recently, namely that “the only thing keeping the US out of recession is the US consumer (see chart below). It is difficult to say consumption is driving the economy forward – rather it is like a woodwormridden crutch creaking under the strain of holding up a deadweight economy. This recovery ? the fourth longest in history – is surely nearing its end.”

While so far the consumer remains resilient, and in fact in the second quarter, US personal spending unexpectedly soared to near cycle highs just as the rest of the economy dipped in a recession…

 

… this pace of consumption, of which Obamacare has been a significant recipient, will hardly sustain itself. According to Edwards, his “hypothesis that a US profits recession will lead to a collapse in business investment and take the economy into recession seems to be playing out. If consumption stalls then we really are in trouble, for the next devastating phase of the secular valuation bear market in equities will kick in ? much to the shock of both investors and the Fed.”

But before we drill down into the consumer part, first a quick look into why the SocGen strategist so confident that the non-consumer part of the economy is about to tap out. For that, he present the following historical parallel:

The year 1986 has been the only case where a business investment recession did not cause an outright US GDP recession. Why? Because the economy had recently emerged from 1982 recession and it was growing very strongly indeed when the hit to capital spending came. In addition, households were leveraging up aggressively, which boosted consumer spending. Neither of these things is the case now. Indeed the current consumer/GDP conjuncture has echoes of Q1 2007 (circled in the chart below), when robust consumption only temporarily offset extreme weakness in the data elsewhere. But within six months, by November 2007, the NBER recorded that the economy had fallen into outright recession.

So going back to the consumer, what does Edwards believes will catalyze the next move in spending lower? Well, besides today’s abysmal auto sales numbers
(which Edwards did not have in front of him when he wrote his note), he brings up another point we raised several months, namely that “The Fed Has A Problem: Inflation May Hit 3.5% By December Due To Gas Price “Base Effect“.” Indeed, now that we have anniversaried the low point in 2015’s energy prices, it’s all uphill from here for CPI prints. This is how Edwards puts it:

One key and imminent risk for the consumer is a rapid pick-up in headline CPI inflation as the weak oil price of H2 last year starts to drop out of the yoy calculations. Headline CPI inflation is set to rise rapidly from the 1% where it has hovered for the past six months and to converge with core CPI, standing at 2¼%. That will sap some 1¼% from real personal disposable income growth, which will decelerate rapidly, removing the key prop for recent moderate robust consumption growth. This is the economy?s crutch being kicked away.

His conclusion:

In this likely outturn the increasingly tight labour market might mean the household sector can respond to the squeeze in real income growth by pushing up wages, which have been accelerating at a moderate but consistent pace over the last couple of years. An acceleration in wages might help offset the impact of slowing employment growth, as the pain in the corporate sector ripples over into all categories of their spending – hence nominal household disposable income growth (the dotted line in the chart above), may not slow so sharply. But with the Fed confronted with a traditional end-of-cycle, tight labour market with accelerating headline CPI and wages, the pressure to hike rates aggressively will be fierce. Perhaps the next recession will be of the normal, ?made in Washington? variety after all.

To be sure, rising wages (something corporations have only granted to the lowest paid workers as shown earlier this week) may delay the day of reckoning, but it opens up a whole new can of worms, because as Fitch warned just today in a report titled “Sharp US Wage Shock Could Cause Global Tightening; Major Slowdown“, a domestic US wage cost shock could lead to substantial financial tightening, which would result in a significant slowdown in the world economy. In the report Fitch economists explore the consequences of a much faster-than-expected pick-up in US wage growth and the impact on economic growth, Fed policy and bond yields as well as international macroeconomic spillovers.

“Fitch’s baseline forecast is for US wage growth to pick up gradually, which would support household incomes and help bring inflation back to target as the Fed gradually normalises policy, but a very sharp increase in US wage inflation would be problematic,” said Brian Coulton, Chief Economist, Fitch. “A surge in US wage inflation would prompt the Fed to hike rates much more quickly than expected and threaten the lower-for-longer market consensus on interest rates that underpins current very low bond yields.”

As Fitch concludes:

“The benefits of higher wages on US consumer spending would be quite quickly offset by up-front rate hikes from the Fed. Fitch’s simulations suggest the Fed would react by raising interest rates by an additional 150bps (relative to baseline) over the course of six months. In combination with the impact of higher wage costs and bond yields, this would see growth 1.4pps lower than baseline in the US in 2017, at 0.6%. About half the impact on US growth stems from the Fed’s reaction and higher wage costs and half from higher bond yields.”

Or, in other words, a recession is coming if wages remain low, but should wages rise too fast, the recession will come even faster. Pick your poison.

via http://ift.tt/2c8IiHd Tyler Durden

Submitted by Mac Slavo via SHTFPlan.com,

Earlier this year we reported that Texas game wardens on the southern border have been issued radiation detectors due to concerns that a nuclear or radiological device could be smuggled into the United States through the porous Mexican border.

It appears that the Department of Homeland Security is also taking the potential for a nuclear-based weapon of mass destruction seriously. According to a new report from NextGov the government has ordered some $20 million worth of wearable intelligent nuclear detection (WIND) units in an effort to boost domestic security:

Last year, DHS made a broad agency announcement soliciting proposals for so-called Wearable Intelligent Nuclear Detection, or WIND, technology. Employees would wear the products to ensure nuclear devices weren’t secretly being transported in areas like marine vessels, metro systems, or other public areas, according to DHS.

 

DHS was specifically searching for “advanced technology demonstrations,” which are for “mature prototype capable of providing reliable performance measurements in a challenging and realistic, albeit simulated, operational environment,” the BAA said.

 

…

 

DHS’ Domestic Nuclear Detection Office, whose mission is to protect the U.S. from nuclear devices, was specifically searching for a modular wearable system that could sense, localize and identify nuclear particles, including gamma rays and neutrons.

The move signals a real and emerging threat and one that the Obama administration highlighted in March in which they warned of the four ways a large-scale nuclear attack on U.S. soil could happen. Whatever the method, the end result would be devastating:

The most devastating but improbable scenario involves a group stealing a fully functional bomb from a nuclear-armed country. Most nuclear experts point to Pakistan as the likeliest source, though that would require cooperation with someone on the inside of Pakistan’s military.

 

Easier to pull off would be for IS or another group to obtain fissile material like highly enriched uranium, then turn it into a crude nuclear device delivered by truck or ship.

 

A third possibility is that extremists could bomb an existing nuclear facility, such as the Belgian waste plant, spreading highly radioactive material over a wide area.

 

The most likely scenario that security experts fear is that a group could get ahold of radioactive material, such as cesium or cobalt, for a dirty bomb that could be carried in a suitcase. Those materials are widely used in industrial, academic and hospital settings, with no consistent security standards across the globe. Last year, an Associated Press investigation revealed multiple attempts by black market smugglers to sell radioactive material to Middle East extremists.

We know for a fact that individuals from the middle east have been using the Southern corridor to enter the United States illegally. We also know that some of those individuals have ties to terrorist organizations. 

With DHS actively looking for ways to detect nuclear radiation it appears that an attack on the United States is now a serious possibility.

Of course, no threat has been announced to the public and chances are that should one exist the American people won’t know until it’s too late. 

Preparing for such an event is critical, because in the fallout (literally) there will be no assistance from emergency responders for days or weeks. That means law and order will break down, medical services will be non-existent and basic necessities will become unavailable.

Having food, water, self defense armaments will be essential to survival. But in a CBRN (Chemical, Biological, Radiologicla, Nuclear) event, an evacuation plan will be just as critical.

And if you are evacuating in a CBRN situation, advanced CBRN-rated breathing equipment will be a life saver.

As Tess Pennington notes in her book The Prepper’s Blueprint, you need to be ready to move the moment a serious threat presents itself or you risk being stuck in the midst of thousands of others who are trying to escape the danger:

If you are told to evacuate keep the following points in mind… If you are driving, keep the car windows and vents closed, and use recirculating air.

 

Due to the fear of panic and gridlock that will ensure from mass evacuations, most governments will delay mandatory evacuations until the last minute. This will only cause mass confusion and chaos at gas stations, grocery stores and on the streets. The best way to prevent this is to stay ahead of the crowd and prepare ahead of time. 

There is a real possibility that one morning we’ll wake up to a massive terror attack on the United States.

Will you be ready for it?

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

In 1958, Congress passed the "Former Presidents Act" (FPA) which entitled former presidents to certain taxpayer-funded benefits after leaving office.  The benefits include a pension for the former president, lifetime secret service protection, transition expenses to a new office after leaving the White House and funding for the president's staff.  All expenses are explicitly intended to be used specifically for the benefit of the former President.  But like many things with the Clintons, discoveries from a Politico FOIA request imply that rules under the Former Presidents Act were seemingly viewed by Bill as more of a "suggestion" rather than explicit guidance on how taxpayer dollars could be appropriated.  

According to a report published by Kenneth Vogel of Politico, Bill Clinton seemed to ignore the rules of his FPA funding and instead used it to at least partially fund the salaries of Clinton Foundation staff and to purchase IT equipment for the Foundation.  Per a FOIA request, Politico found that Bill Clinton requested allocations totaling $16 million under the FPA since leaving office in 2001, more than any other living president over that same time period.  While that number is staggering, what's more disturbing is the level of overlap between Clinton's official staff (i.e. those eligible for FPA salaries) and the Clinton Foundation staff.  Per Politico:

An analysis of the records provided by GSA, combined with Clinton Foundation tax returns, found that at least 13 of the 22 staffers who have been paid by GSA to work for Clinton’s personal office also worked for the Clinton Foundation.

While staffers to former presidents certainly aren't getting rich off their efforts, Politico points out the the key reason for adding so many many people to the president's official staff is so they become eligible for "full federal employee benefits" which include "health and life insurance and pensions."  In fact, Politico points out that Bill's staffers who did work for the Clinton Foundation "almost never" received benefits from the Clinton Foundation.  

A GSA spokesperson declined to comment on specific employees, but said ex-presidents have broad discretion over how they choose to divvy up the $96,600 they are provided each year for staffing. They can give the entire sum to a single employee or divide it among multiple employees.

The key reason for adding staffers to the GSA payroll, according to two people familiar with the Clintons’ staffing arrangements, was that each employee became eligible for full federal employee benefits, including health and life insurance and pensions. The two people familiar with Bill Clinton’s staffing said the employees on his GSA payroll almost never received benefits from either the Clinton Foundation or the CESC.

To be fair, an aide to Bill Clinton assured Political that Bill's use of the GSA program was "entirely consistent with the Former Presidents Act." 

Generally, the aide explained that Clinton “wears several hats — among them being former President of the United States and the founder of the Clinton Foundation. His staffing reflects those roles.”

 

The aide added “there is no legal prohibition that would preclude the former president’s staff from receiving compensation from other sources or doing personal work for the former presidents. We are unaware of any legal prohibition that would preclude these activities.”

Yes, we're sure that while adding 22 people to your personal staff, when George Bush somehow finds a way to survive with just 4, primarily so they can get access to taxpayer funded benefits, isn't "technically" illegal (a seemingly frequent argument of the Clintons lately…see "How The Hillary 'Victory Fund' Uses State Democratic Committees To Launder Money To The DNC") it certainly seems to not be entirely consistent with the "intent" of the funding either.  

And then there is the computer equipment.  Politico found that, in several cases, GSA officials raised questions about whether requested furniture and IT equipment including servers were intended for the Clinton Foundation, rather than Clinton’s personal office.  In at least one instance, GSA paid to purchase and maintain a specialty Lockheed Martin database system called Intranet Quorom, the supporting systems for which were housed at one time at the Clinton Foundation’s offices, and used by both foundation staff and Bill Clinton’s personal office staff to store and process his correspondence.

And then there is the following request for reimbursement from the GSA for a Dell server purchased through "MNJ Technologies Direct."  Oddly enough, the invoice from MNJ clearly indicates that the bill should be sent to the "Office of Former Pres. Clinton" while the equipment should be shipped to "The Clinton Foundation."  Does that seem reasonable to everyone?

 

When questioned about the expenditures by the GSA, the Clinton Foundation pointed out that the server needed to be housed at their office due to "better air conditioning."  Yes, we're sure that Bill's office was just sweltering.  Per Politico:

Clinton Foundation officials explained to the GSA that they wanted the Dell server housed at foundation headquarters rather than at Clinton’s personal office. They explained in an email that the foundation office had better air conditioning, allowing it to support “about 10-15 more servers,” and also it was where IT staff were based, so “trouble shooting with the servers can be done ASAP.”

Oddly enough, the GSA claims they disputed this specific purchase and ultimately did not provide reimbursement….

“Consistent with the support we provide to every former President, GSA does not approve purchases for entities other than the offices of former Presidents,” the spokesman said. “In this case, GSA staff sought clarification about the intended use of proposed purchases. Ultimately, the referenced server was not purchased.”

While a Clinton aide insisted that, in fact, the GSA did purchase the server…

But, perhaps highlighting the confusion caused by the overlapping spheres in the Clinton’s universe, the Clinton aide offered a different recollection. “We believe that the information GSA provided you with is incomplete. Our files show that GSA purchased the Dell server…"

Might we suggest just taking the small victories when they're handed to you?

via http://ift.tt/2c5c2pP Tyler Durden

Back in its heyday, the trading floor in UBS’ Stamford office, once the largest in the world and big enough to hold 23 basketball courts, was a symbol of everything that went right on Wall Street. Packed with traders, it was a non-stop cacophony of screaming, constant motion and furious energy – to an outsider sheer chaos, which somehow ended up generating millions in profits for the bank every day. Some time around 2008, just before the financial crisis hit, it looked like this.

 

Fast forward 8 years later, when all that’s left of the UBS trading floor, and the legacy of that version of Wall Street, is this.

h/t @anilvohra69

 

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

Submitted by Yves Mamou via The Gatestone Institute,

For many today, French secularism is an anti-human rights ideology, a kind of moral deformity close to racism.

How can a free country, they ask, even think of doing such a thing as trying to ban a veil or a burkini — the full body covering for women to wear on the beach? How, they ask, can the French Republic call itself free and remain free when many of its citizens would like to rob Muslim women, peacefully obeying their own religion, of the freedom to choose their own clothes?

The current radicalization in France is not like that of the recent migration of Muslims to other European countries. Muslims have been coming to France in large numbers since the French left Algeria in 1962. The French never made any distinction between the French of "Gaul" and the French of North Africa. The current radicalization is not of those who came then, but of the younger generation — of French Muslims. They were born in France, speak French, were schooled in France — but they are not at ease with the values of France.

Islamic fundamentalism in France has been imported from the outside — by avenues such as Al Jazeera and Muslim wars in the Middle East. Now, therefore, these young French Muslim citizens have a real wish for secession from the rest of the population — like the wish of the Confederate states for secession from the United States, before and during the U.S. Civil War. These young French Muslims apparently do not want to live in the same country anymore. They seem to want a separate country, or a different country.

For more than 25 years, the French Republic, right and left, has been trying to disentangle the country from the "Muslim textile problem" (hijab, niqab, burka, burkini and so on). When the problem began back in 1989, the head of Creil College expelled three Muslim girls for wearing the Muslim veil, the hijab. A strong debate followed: pro-veil vs. anti-veil. Same arguments: as usual, tolerance, freedom of choice, and freedom of religion were on one side, secularism and respect for rules on the other side.

Rules? What rules?

Central to the history of France, is that, in the republic, state schools were built to fight the grip of the Catholic church on the whole of French society. At the end of 19th century, until the First World War, republican teachers worked hard to build schools separated from the Pope and the church. The thinking was that Darwin is better at explaining the origin of the human race than the Bible's crediting God with creating the world in seven days. To build a country of free citizens: knowledge first; belief only if you insist, and even then, only by yourself.

The Islamic veil at school, or the burkini at the beach, seems an attempt to "re-religiousize" France and break the French consensus for secularism. For a hundred years, the consensus has been accepted by everyone — Catholics, Jews, Protestants — except for Muslims.

Four policemen in Nice, France, are pictured forcing a woman to remove part of her clothes because her outfit violated the city's "burkini ban," on August 23. They also fined her for the violation. (Image source: NBC News video screenshot)

The consensus can be summarized like this: Religious beliefs cannot belong to the public sphere without risking tyranny or civil war. If French citizens want to live in peace democratically, all disturbing subjects — especially faith in a country of multiple faiths — must remain strictly private.

For almost 30 years now, Muslims organizations in France have been telling everyone they do not accept this old private-public rule. Even at public schools, there are constant attempts to remodel the curriculum to align with religious faith.

In 2002, a group of teachers published a book, The Lost Territories of the Republic ("Les territoires perdus de la République"), about daily life in school classrooms where Muslims were numerically the dominant group. The general environment, according to the book, was violence, sexism, anti-Semitism and Islamism. The book was such a shock that everyone in the media boycotted it.

In June 2004, Jean-Pierre Obin, General Inspector of the National Education, gave the Minister of Education a written report, entitled, "The signs and manifestations of religious beliefs in schools of the Republic". The report was mostly about the behavior of Muslim secondary school students. In every school where Muslims were dominant in number, according to the report, boys refused to mix with girls in the classroom and at sports. The Muslim students understandably refused non-halal food at school cafeterias, did not come to school when there were Muslim holidays, such as Eid el Kebir, Eid el Fitr, Ramadan — and virtually all of the students displayed a virulent anti-Semitism.

More problematic was that many of the Muslims in secondary schools began objecting to the school curriculum, according what is halal (permitted) or haram (forbidden):

"Very frequently there is a refusal or an objection to certain kinds of literary works. Philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment, especially Voltaire and Rousseau, and all the philosophical works who submit religion to rational examination. 'Rousseau is contrary to my religion,' explained one student while leaving the class before the end. Molière and especially "Le Tartuffe" — a satire of religious bigotry — were the most popular targets: there was refusal to study, refusal to play, refusal to attend or else disturbances when actors were on stage. The same rejection applied to literary works that many considered licentious, (example, "Cyrano de Bergerac"), free-thinking or in favor of the freedom of women (Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert). They also refuse to study authors such as Chretien de Troyes because they believe the goal of that teaching is to promote Catholicism… There is every indication that students are encouraged from the outside to distrust everything the teacher can teach them, and to distrust any food proposed to them at school's cafeteria. They are encouraged to select what they want to learn according the religious categories of halal and haram".

In trying to teach history, the problems — perhaps not for everyone but for many — were worse:

"On a general matter, everything that is connected to history of Christianity and Judaism is a matter to be contested. There are many examples, some surprising: refusal to learn about the construction of cathedrals, or to open the history book on a page where there is a reproduction of Byzantine church. They also refuse to learn about pre-Islamic religions in Egypt or the Sumerian origin of writing. Sacred history is continuously opposed to factual history. The objection becomes the norm and can escalate to radicalization when the program addresses sensitive issues such as the Crusades, the genocide of the Jews (they negate the reality of the Holocaust), Israeli-Arab wars and the Palestinian problem. In civic education, secularism is considered anti-religious".

The Obin report was so frightening for politicians that it was buried for many months and put online as discreetly as possible on the website of the ministry of education. In an interview given to the French magazine l'Express in 2015 , Jean-Pierre Obin said:

"Many of the young people are conducting a secession from the French nation. This secession expresses itself in clothes (the veil, or full Islamic dress), the requirement of halal food, and absenteeism for religious reasons. In certain schools, some students were introducing carpets for praying, or protesting noisily to have a mosque inside the school. (…) More than ten years later, we can say the situation is worse. Our education system is unable to integrate people from different origins, and this difficulty is bigger for low income families"

What is the connection between the burkini at the beach and Islamism at school?

What seems to stand out is that although many of the burkini women may, of course, just be enjoying the beach in accordance with the precepts of their religion, many others appear to be Islamist militants who want to plant Islamic markings on all levels of society. The problem, as the philosopher Catherine Kintzler writes in Marianne, is that:

"The tolerance level is decreasing inside the country. The collective condemnation of the burkini is so fast and so unanimous that it becomes a problem of public order… Public opinion accepts less and less a closed religious affiliation, the marking of bodies and territories, the control of values, campaigns to make preferred practices uniform on behalf of a religion, which is in reality a policy".

Hala Arafa, writing in The Hill, describes Muslim women's attire more or less as a tool of war:

"… no one is denying them the right to practice their religion in private. They don't have the right, however, to invade the public space and impose their ideology and belief system represented by their dress. … If the hijab or burkini had anything to do with modesty or piety, the Islamic fundamentalists would have sought private beaches, not insisted on forcing themselves on the public. But as they did before, they want to become part of the accepted social scene and part of the new norm of the society. … If the hijab becomes an accepted public phenomenon, a modern society cannot teach its future generations that a woman's dress is not an excuse for rape".

In the process of a Muslim secession, the burkini is just another opportunity to mark bodies and territories. A French Muslim society that often seems to feel as if it still belongs to its country of origin, appears to have decided that the game of secularism and "living together" should be over. With veils, burkinis and guns, various Islamists groups seem to be trying to embed the same message: We remain Muslims first and have decided to pay no attention to the culture of countries in which we are living.

The problem is that politicians in France — and in other countries — do not want to analyze these questions properly. They remain persuaded that an "Islam of France," supposedly compatible with French society, remains an option. The politicians will not protest this attempt to carve a religion into France once again: the people doing that also vote.

via http://ift.tt/2bN9adr Tyler Durden

Georgetown University President, John DeGioia, recently announced that the university will give "preference in admissions" to descendants of slaves formerly owned by the Maryland Jesuits as part of the school's effort to "atone" for profiting from the sale of enslaved people.  According to a report of a special "Working Group" of the university, two priests who served as president of the university back in 1838 orchestrated the sale of 272 people to pay off school debts.  The slaves were apparently sent from Maryland to plantations in Louisiana. 

DeGioia said the university will take steps to identify the descendants of the slaves and recruit them to the university.  Might we also suggest the university post the "Offer" to the official Reparations marketplace (see "There Is Now A Marketplace For White People To Make Reparations Payments").

The official report from the university includes the following details about the 1838 transaction in question:

Between Georgetown’s founding and 1864, the year slavery was declared unconstitutional in the state of Maryland, the 1838 sale of 272 slaves from the Jesuit plantations stands out for its size and the controversy it garnered. It was not the only, the first, or the last sale of slaves to provide operating revenue for the school, but it was the largest. This mass sale was the product of a complicated calculus on the part of the Jesuit leadership and an extensive controversy within the order. All the factions recognized that the plantations were not producing enough income even to support themselves in the early nineteenth century, and at the same time, the College suffered from mounting debt. 

 

Jesuit authorities in Rome became involved in this dispute. Their initial inclinations were toward some form of emancipation. Following extensive lobbying by American Jesuits, they capitulated to those who argued for sale. They then placed conditions on a sale: that families not be divided, that the continued practice of the Catholic faith by these baptized slaves be ensured, and that the monies raised from the sale be used for endowment, not for operating expenses or the paying down of debt. In the end, none of these conditions was fulfilled.

 

The Working Group also called on university leaders to offer a formal apology, saying:

As the University works to develop its relationship with these groups, on and beyond our campus, the Working Group recommends that the University offer a formal, public apology for its historical relationship with slavery. The Working Group believes that an apology from the University president offered jointly with the provincial superior of the Maryland Jesuits would be especially fitting, bringing together, as it would, the successors to the two officeholders who were the architects of the 1838 sale.

 

The Working Group finds an express apology proper for two reasons: first, because an apology is a precondition for reconciliation. The responsibility to apologize, moreover, belongs to the perpetrators; it is what perpetrators can do on their own initiative. They admit the performance of the deed, recognize that it was wrong, display regret, and pledge not to repeat the deed. While apologies often need repeating and this apology need not to be thought of as the last, without an apology pursuit of reconciliation ends.

 

Second, a formal, spoken apology strikes the Working Group as appropriate because its absence rings so loudly. The University, despite the many ways that it has invested resources over the past half century to heal the wounds of racial injustice, has not made such an apology. While there can be empty apologies, words of apology, genuinely expressed, make a difference in the quest for reconciliation. Words along with symbolic actions, such as the naming of buildings, and material investments, such as the foundation of an institute for the study of slavery, work together in making apology a coherent whole. None of these components—words, symbolic gestures, and material investments—should be neglected. Again, the counsel of the descendants of the slaves, whose labor and value supported the University, should be sought out and weighted heavily.

The official report of the Georgetown University Working Group can be read in its entirety below:

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Authored by Bonner & Partners' Bill Bonner, annotated by Acting-Man's Pater Tenebrarum,

Low Rates Forever

Nothing much is happening in the money world. The press reports that traders are hanging loose, wondering what dumb thing the Fed will do next. Rumor has it that it may decide to raise rates in September, or maybe November… or maybe not at all.

 

So far, the Fed has hiked the FF rate just once, by 25 basis points. That hardly matters though, since the Fed maintains its balance sheet at the bloated level reached after three QE operations. Banks are holding large excess reserves as a result, and the federal funds  market is therefore a mere shadow of its former self. The FF rate has no practical significance anymore –  the effect of rate hikes is mainly psychological, due to the feedback loop between credit markets and the Fed’s policy stance. It cannot influence the activities of banks that no longer need to borrow reserves in order to expand credit. In short, although Fed policy is relatively “tight” compared to that of other major central banks at the moment, it remains extremely loose considered on its own – click to enlarge.

 

It hardly matters. The Fed has created an unnatural, hothouse economy. Neither banks, nor business, nor investors fear a frost. None suffers drought or flood.

The feds have worked so hard, for so long, to protect them from the real, outside world. Now, they can only survive in the strange world where light, water, and temperature are all controlled and they can get the Miracle-Gro of money at the lowest rates in 5,000 years.

Open the doors? Turn off the water? No chance. The Fed will never, ever return to normal market-discovered interest rates – at least, not willingly. There are too many precious orchids in that hothouse.

They vote. They make campaign contributions. They employ millions of workers. And they can’t survive in the outside world. Just look at the numbers. The U.S. has total credit market debt of about $64 trillion. Even at a super-easy 2%, it means that it costs $1.3 trillion a year to pay the interest. Or, about 7% of GDP.

That leaves the economy in a precarious balance – where it has just enough income to pay expenses. Growth, if you believe the figures, is less than 2%. Now, add just 1% to interest rates. What do you get?

Another $650 billion of GDP that must be devoted to interest payments, or more than 1 out of every 10 dollars’ worth. Suddenly, billions – perhaps trillions – of investments, speculations, capital improvements, households, small businesses, and major corporations would be in trouble.

 

US non-financial corporate debt (red line; corporate bonds and bank loans) and the Wilshire Total Market Index. The stock market bubble is highly dependent on the continued expansion of this giant debt-berg, as corporations incur a lot of debt for financial engineering purposes, chiefly stock buybacks. In spite of the often belabored large amount of cash held by companies, net debt has soared to new record highs as well; moreover, corporate cash is very unevenly distributed. The vast bulk of it is held by just a handful of large companies. Consider the time period highlighted by the blue box (you may need a magnifying glass): this tiny dip in debt was the extent of deleveraging attending the “great financial crisis”. Obviously, a real deleveraging episode would lead to an irrevocable systemic collapse. Monetary “normalization” will never happen – click to enlarge.

 

Many would go broke. And the whole financial system could freeze up, just like it did in 2008. Open the window in September? Maybe. But only a crack. And then shut it fast when the weather turns cold!

How does this all end?

 

The Final Form of Human Government

When Francis Fukuyama wrote his landmark essay “The End of History?” in 1989, the battles of the 20th century seemed to be over. We had reached the “endpoint of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of western liberal democracy as the final form of human government,” he wrote.

With the Cold War over, modern democratic capitalism could now be perfected. U.S. companies could hustle their products to 1.5 billion more consumers, recently come out from behind the former Iron Curtain. And the U.S. wouldn’t need to spend so much on defense.

That was the most obvious and immediate benefit to the U.S. – a “peace dividend.” Billions of dollars could now be liberated from the defense budget and put to better use elsewhere. Things were looking up. As China and the Soviet Union went, so went the rest of the world.

 

A 10,000 ruble Russian privatization voucher from 1992

 

Soon, everyone was trying to learn the latest buzz words from globalized business schools… setting up factories to make things for people who really couldn’t afford them… gambling on Third World debt (with a guarantee from the feds in their back pocket)… trading stocks of companies that used to belong to the government… and aiming to get their sons and daughters into Stanford so they would be first in line for a job at Goldman Sachs.

 

Google It!

Things got even better when, in the late 1990s, it looked as though the Information Age had freed us from the constraints of the Machine Age. Forget axles and drive trains. Forget oil wells.

Two things held back growth rates, or so it was said at the time: ignorance and resources. You needed educated scientists and trained engineers to design and build a railroad. You also needed material inputs. Iron ore, copper, steel, and so on – and most important: energy.

Education took time and money. And Stanford could only handle a few thousand students. Most people – especially those in Africa, Asia, and Oklahoma – had no easy access to the information they needed to get ahead.

The Internet changed that. You want to build a nuclear reactor? Google it! You want to know how Say’s Law works? Or Boyle’s Law? Or the Law of Unintended Consequences?

 

Indeed – Google can tell you how to build a nuclear reactor. Among the top four results there are even instructions for constructing a really cheap one in the basement (which a 14-year old kid in Michigan promptly did) – click to enlarge.

 

It’s all there. With enough imagination you can almost see an Okee in a trailer in Muskogee, studying metallurgy online. You can almost see him driving up to Koch Industries in Wichita with a plan for a new way to process Tungsten.

And if you drink enough and squint hard, you can almost bring into focus a whole world of people, studying, comparing, inventing, innovating… which leads – at the speed of an electron bouncing around a hard drive – to a whole, fabulous universe of hyper-progress.

 

Gassy Ideas

MIT has only 11,319 students. But with the Internet, millions of people all over the world now have access to more or less the same information. There are even free universities that package learning, making it easy to study and follow along.

Now, there is an almost unlimited number of scientists and engineers – not to mention the shrinks, bone crackers, and social scientists ready to put on their thinking caps to make a better world. Surely, we will see an explosion of new patents, new ideas, and new inventions.

As for resources, the lid had been taken off that pot, too. In the new Information Age, you shouldn’t need so much steel or so much energy. It only takes a few electrons to become a billionaire. After all, how much rolled steel did Bill Gates make? How much dirt did Larry Ellison move?

The capital that really matters is intellectual capital, not physical resources. Or so they said. If you used your brain you could disrupt traditional businesses, disintermediate the middlemen, and reduce the need for energy and resources.

 

The Nasdaq bubble and crash around the turn of the century – click to enlarge.

 

The new economy was light, fast-moving, and infinitely enriching. There were no known limits on how fast this new economy could grow!

Those were the gassy ideas in the air in the late-1990s. Investors were intoxicated. They drove up the prices of dot-com companies to dizzy levels. And then, of course, the Nasdaq crashed.

 

Sullen Teenager

One by one, the illusions, scams, and conceits of the late 20th century – like pieces of bleak puzzle – came together: No “peace dividend” –  the military and its crony suppliers increased their budgets. No “End of History” – that was all-too-obvious on Sept. 9, 2011.

No “hyper-progress”, no “Great Moderation”, no “Goldilocks” economy – all of that came to an end Sept. 15, 2008, when Lehman Bros. declared bankruptcy.

And as far as producing real, measurable wealth – the Internet, too, was a dud. By 2015, the World Wide Web had already been around for two decades. And economic growth rates were averaging only half those of a half-century before.

As the new century matured into a sullen teenager, the ground was littered with scales, fallen from the eyes of millions of parents. The entire 21st century was a flop. People hadn’t gotten richer at all. Instead, they had gotten poorer.

Depending on how you measured it, the typical white man had lost as much as 40% of his real earnings since the century began. People rubbed their eyes and looked harder; the picture came into sharper and more ghastly focus.

 

A chart we have shown before: GDP growth is evidently inversely correlated with the extent of credit and money supply expansion. In other words, reality is the exact opposite of what the world’s central planners and their countless claqueurs and courtiers keep asserting. It is noteworthy that the information revolution was marked by especially poor output growth, but it seems highly likely that this was also primarily due to accelerating credit and money supply expansion (credit booms result in capital consumption; the planners seem largely unaware of this, probably because they know nothing about capital theory).

 

Now, they saw that the promise of material progress and political freedom was a sham. In the U.S., economic growth rates fell in every decade since the 1970s. Real wage growth slowed, too… and even reversed.

And so twisted had the financial system become that the least productive sector – government – was the only one with easy access to capital. Government now was more powerful, more intrusive, and more over-bearing than ever… and able to borrow at the lowest rates in history.

 

Deeper Breakdown

There were signs of a deeper breakdown, too. Soldiers returning from the Mideast were killing themselves in record numbers. The fellow in the trailer in Muskogee was likely to be a minimum-wage meth addict watching porn on the Internet rather than studying metallurgy.

Debt had reached a record high – at 355% of GDP. Real peace seemed as remote as real prosperity.

And then, in June of 2016,  the Republican Party chose New York real estate developer (and former Democrat) Donald Trump as their presidential nominee – the most unlikely standard bearer for a major political party in U.S. history.

 

Donald Trump – the unlikely standard bearer

Caricature by DonkeyHotey

 

For most Republicans, Mr. Trump had only one qualification of importance: He was not Hillary Clinton.

Ms. Clinton, perhaps more than any other politician, was the face of The Establishment. She had her fingerprints on every piece of the dark puzzle – the decline in wages and GDP,  the rise of Wall Street and “The One Percent”, the wars, the debt… and the Deep State itself.

 

The Deep State representative in this year’s election – Hillary Clinton (a very convincing looking android, apparently. Occasionally it is subject to glitches).

Image credit: Dana Ellyn

 

How these things came to be, and where they lead, is the subject of much speculation. And it is the subject of James Dale Davidson’s The Breaking Point. The delight of the book is that it approaches these issues in an original and interesting way.

Thomas Piketty (the rich get richer), Robert Gordon (the important innovations are already behind us), Joseph Tainter (it’s too complicated) – all have theories about why the 21st century is such a disappointment.

Davidson connects the dots, too… but more dots… and more unexpected dots…  than perhaps anyone. In the end, writes Davidson,

“[T]he long run meets the present [where] systems that no longer pay their way exhaust their credit and go broke. The Breaking Point is a nonlinear departure on the road to nowhere. It occurs when collateral collapses, burying the public’s faith in fiat money and the institutions that create and regulate it.”

That is why Donald Trump stood confidently before the American people in the summer of 2016 promising to “make America great again.” His listeners knew something was deeply wrong. And they wanted desperately to believe that Mr. Trump could fix it.

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Judicial Watch just released another 510 pages of State Department emails from Hillary's tenure as the "inconvenient facts" just keep piling up for the Democratic nominee.  Per Judicial Watch, the new disclosure includes 37 Hillary email exchanges that were not turned over as part of her initial 55,000 page submission to the State Department.  Obviously, these new discoveries continue to contradict Hillary's claims to Congress that she turned over all of her government emails to the State Department. 

The new release includes, among other things, Clinton Foundation executive, Doug Band, reaching out to Huma Abedin to help facilitate "diplomatic passports" for himself, Justin Cooper (member of Bill Clinton's personal office) and one other person referred to as "jd".  The emails also reveal Bill Clinton pushing the State Department for a meeting between Hillary and the CEO of Dow Chemical, a $1-$5mm donor to the Clinton Foundation.  Emails also reveal Hillary forwarding classified information to Huma's non-state.gov email account and a request from Newsmax CEO, Chris Ruddy, for a State Department favor.

But we're sure Donna Brazile, the new DNC chair, will see these various "requests for favors" from the Clinton Foundation and others as just another attempt to "criminalize normal behavior."

Below is the exchange between Doug Band (Clinton Foundation Executive) and Huma Abedin back in July 2009 where Band requests diplomatic passports for himself, Justin Cooper (aka "justy") and and unknown person referred to as "jd."

From: Doug Band
To: Huma Abedin
Sent: Jul 27, 2009 10:32 AM
Subject:

 

Need get me/ justy and jd dip passports

 

We had them years ago but they lapsed and we didn’t bother getting them

 

 

From: Huma Abedin [Huma@clintonemail.com]
Sent: Monday, July 27, 2009 10:38:39 PM
To: Doug Band
Subject: Re:

 

Ok will figure it out

 

Per Judicial Watch, the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations strictly limits the granting of diplomatic passports to members of the Foreign Service, their family members, or those working on U.S. government contracts. According to 22 CFR 51.3:

A diplomatic passport is issued to a Foreign Service officer or to a person having diplomatic status or comparable status because he or she is traveling abroad to carry out diplomatic duties on behalf of the U.S. Government. When authorized by the Department, spouses and family members of such persons may be issued diplomatic passports. When authorized by the Department, a diplomatic passport may be issued to a U.S. Government contractor if the contractor meets the eligibility requirements for a diplomatic passport and the diplomatic passport is necessary to complete his or her mission.

 

Next we have the exchange where Huma admits that Bill Clinton is pushing for a meeting between Hillary and the CEO of Dow Chemial, a $1-$5mm donor to the Clinton Foundation.     

From: Huma Abedin Huma@clintonemail.com
To: Valmoro, Lona J
Sent: Monday, Jul 27 06:02:01 2009
Subject:

 

Wjc wants to be sure hrc sees Andrew Liveris, ceo of dow tomorrow night. Apparently he is head of us china business council. Is he definitely going to be there?

 

 

From: Valmoro, Lona J [VlamoroLJ@state.gov
Sent: July 27, 2009 6:03:54 AM
To: Huma Abedin
Subject: Re:

 

I will check. He declined our invitation to dinner tonight at State.

 

 

From: Valmoro, Lona J
Sent: Monday, July 27, 2009 9:24:08 AM
To: Huma Abedin; Narain, Paul F [Clinton aide]
Subject: Re: CEO of dow

 

Paul, Andrew Leveris, CEO of Dow Chemical, is going to be at the dinner tomorrow night. We would like HRC to see him, perhaps they can do a brief pull aside upon arrival. Huma, would that work for you?

 

 

From: Huma Abedin [AbedinH@state.gov]
Sent: Monday, July 27, 2009 9:24:55 AM
To: Valmoro, Lona J, Huma Abedin, Narain, Paul F
Subject: Re: CEO of dow

 

Yes pull aside on arrival

 

 

From: Narain, Paul F
Sent, Monday, July 27, 2009 7:56 PM
To: Valmoro, Lona, Abedin Huma
Subject: RE: CEO of dow

 

Lona, I have arranged this pull aside for on the arrival in the Hold Room across the hall from the ballroom, immediately prior to the Secretary’s entrance and remarks.

 

The next exchange begins as Band urges Abedin to follow up on a request from Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy to set up a meeting with then-Ambassador to Panama Barbara Stephenson on behalf of lobbyist Amb. Otto Reich, President Reagan’s ambassador to Venezuela who maintained high-level government positions during the tenure of both President George H.W. Bush and President George Bush.  In early September, Ruddy then was contacted by State Department Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, Roberta S. Jacobson, at the behest of Band and Abedin, in reference to Ruddy’s concerns about Wilson Lucom, whose estate was embroiled in a heated multi-million-dollar lawsuit.  Ruddy’s Newsmax Media Inc, made a contribution to the Clinton Foundation of between $1 million and $5 million. The emails show the responsible official was put in contact with Ruddy.

 

From: Christopher [Redacted]
To: Doug Band [Redacted]
Sent: Mon Aug 17 3:40:56 2009
Subject: Panama

 

Otto Reich is arriving in Panama tonite on the matter I discussed. He was hoping to meet with Barbara Stephenson or her Charge this week. He has not heard back from her. Any “air’ support you can give for this meeting would be helpful. Thanks! – Christopher Ruddy

 

 

From: Doug Band
To: Huma Abedin
Sent: Aug 18, 2009 10:37 PM
Subject: Fw: Panama

 

Would be good to do quickly.

 

Even a call

 

 

From: Huma Abedin
To: Doug Band
Sent: Wed Aug 19 4:51:35 2009
Subject: Re: Panama

 

Both of our point people are out on vacation. I can ask someone junior to deal with this?

 

 

From: Doug Band
Sent: Wednesday, August 19, 2009 5:20:13 PM
To: Huma Abedin
Subject: Re: Panama

 

Sure

 

 

From: Jacobson, Roberta S
Sent: Friday, September 04, 2009 7:32 AM
To: ruddy [Redacted]
Subject: Panama case

 

Mr. Ruddy: Your inquiry about the Lucom case has been passed to the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs here at State. I apologize for not getting you a response on our position last evening, but we will get back to you as soon as possible today. Many thanks. Roberta Jacobson.

 

 

From: Christopher Ruddy
To: dband
Sent: Fri Sep 04, 08:01:20 2009 7:32 AM
Subject: FW: Panama case

 

 

From: Doug Band
To: Huma Abedin
Sent: Fri Sep 04 08:18:43 2009
Subject: Fw: Panama case

 

 

From: Huma Abedin
Sent: Friday, September 04, 2009 8:37:21 AM
To: Doug Band
Subject: Re: Panama case

 

She’s the dep assistant secretary for the whole bureau.

 

The Panama desk guy is on leave so I asked that she at least reach out.

 

And the plume of smoke continues to grow….

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