Feb 112017
 
 February 11, 2017  Posted by at 10:26 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,


Dorothea Lange Play street for children. Sixth Street and Avenue C, NYC 1936

 

Trump ‘May’ Not Appeal Travel Ban Ruling To Supreme Court (ZH)
What’s Really Behind Trump’s Bungling Of The Immigration-Ban Order? (MW)
White House: Cohn-Led Tax Plan Is Real and It’s Phenomenal
Daniel Tarullo, Federal Reserve Regulatory Point Man, to Resign (WSJ)
Foreigners Dump Debt, Offering Up a Test for Rates (WSJ)
Russia’s Exile From World Markets May Soon Be Over (BBG)
EU Foreign Policy Chief Tells Trump Not To Interfere In Europe’s Politics (G.)
EU In Disintegration Mode (Martin Armstrong)
Eurozone, IMF Agree On A Common Stance On Greece (R.)
Greek Bailout Talks Set to Drag Past February Amid Standoff (BBG)
Universal Basic Income ‘Useless’, Says Finland’s Biggest Union (Ind.)
Snowden Claims Report Russia May ‘Gift’ Him To Trump Proves He’s No Spy (G.)
‘We Are Silently Dying’: Refugees In Greek Camp Slip Into Despair (MEE)

 

 

Keep ’em guessing.

Trump ‘May’ Not Appeal Travel Ban Ruling To Supreme Court (ZH)

Update: In the latest moment of confusion for the new administration, chief of staff Reince Priebus said the administration was still considering an appeal to the Supreme Court after a lower court soundly rejected its request to reinstate the order. Priebus’s statement came one hour after a White House official said it was not planning to challenge the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling upholding a temporary restraining order (TRO) blocking the ban, while Trump himself has said a new order on security could come next week. Priebus told The Washington Post that “every single court option is on the table, including an appeal of the Ninth Circuit decision on the TRO to the Supreme Court. In short, the situation remains fluid.

What a difference a day makes. Less than 24 hours after an angry Trump tweeted “SEE YOU IN COURT, THE SECURITY OF OUR NATION IS AT STAKE!” in the aftermath of yesterday’s adverse Appeals Court ruling… … the President has changed his mind and has decided not to see anyone in court – if only for the time being – because according to Reuters, his administration is not currently planning to appeal the temporary hold on his travel ban to the Supreme Court, a White House official said Friday according to multiple media sources. The official noted, however, that the White House said it will forge ahead on the broader battle against a lawsuit challenging the executive order, if out of court. Which means, that as per the steps we laid out last night, the administration will now prepare a brand new immigration order.

Trump hinted as much earlier in the day when during his press conference with Abe, he said: “We’ll be doing something very rapidly having to do with additional security for our country; you’ll be seeing that sometime next week,” Trump said with Abe by his side. He offered no specifics. He then added “we are going to keep our country safe,” he said on Friday. “We are going to do whatever’s necessary to keep our country safe.” He added he would continue to fight for the travel ban in courts, and that “ultimately, I have no doubt we will win that particular case.” Trump later told reporters aboard Air Force One that he would likely wait until next week to respond with legal action. “Perhaps Monday or Tuesday,” he said.

Trump earlier Friday hinted a new order could be in the works, but he declined to detail what it would look like. And so, while his travel ban is held up in court, Trump said he is considering ordering his staff to draft a new executive order that will have an easier time clearing legal hurdles. “We also have a lot of other options, including just filing a brand new order,” he told reporters on the presidential aircraft.

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“The justices were very unlikely to second-guess a president’s national security intelligence. They don’t consider that to be their job, they don’t want to do it, and they know how dangerous that could be – for the country and, indeed, for the standing of the courts. Legal precedent strongly suggests that they’d support the president so long as he could reassure them he had a rational basis for his action. But that’s not what Trump’s lawyer did.”

What’s Really Behind Trump’s Bungling Of The Immigration-Ban Order? (MW)

What on Earth is wrong with Donald Trump? Did he actually set out to lose his immigration ban in the appeals court deliberately, so that he could whip up his base into ever more fury at the “elites”? Contrary to what you may hear, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit on Thursday did not — repeat: did not — repudiate Trump’s legal right to suspend selective immigration. It just repudiated the bungling incompetence with which his administration made the case. Yes, the three justices ruled: “Courts owe substantial deference to the immigration and national security policy determinations” of the president and Congress. That is “an uncontroversial principle that is well-grounded in our jurisprudence.” Indeed, as I pointed out earlier this week, it is well established that the president has very broad discretion to suspend immigration where he deems it necessary.

But that was not what the Trump administration claimed. Instead, they argued that they were actually above the law, the Constitution or legal review. “The Government has taken the position that the President’s decisions about immigration policy, particularly when motivated by national security concerns, are unreviewable, even if those actions potentially contravene constitutional rights and protections,” the justices wrote with disbelief. They added: “There is no precedent to support this claimed unreviewability, which runs contrary to the fundamental structure of our constitutional democracy.” You couldn’t make this up. Trump is now raging at the judges. But the blame for this fiasco lies entirely with him, and no one else. All the administration had to tell the appeals court was that it had rational reasons for suspending immigration from the seven specific countries.

Even with national security details “redacted,” the president’s lawyer could have laid out a simple case. Call it Iraq War II. “Intelligence sources say .. intelligence sources warn .. We have received intelligence ..” And so on. He could have kept it vague and menacing. He could have made it up. So long as he offered something. All the courts needed was an excuse. Cue our old friend “Curveball.” The justices were very unlikely to second-guess a president’s national security intelligence. They don’t consider that to be their job, they don’t want to do it, and they know how dangerous that could be – for the country and, indeed, for the standing of the courts. Legal precedent strongly suggests that they’d support the president so long as he could reassure them he had a rational basis for his action. But that’s not what Trump’s lawyer did.

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Having Goldman do your tax policies can backfire in seconds.

White House: Cohn-Led Tax Plan Is Real and It’s Phenomenal

Former Goldman Sachs president Gary Cohn is leading the effort to craft President Donald Trump’s plan to overhaul taxes that will be released within weeks, a White House official said. Unnamed congressional leaders have been consulted on the blueprint, the official said. It’s separate from Trump’s proposed budget, the official said, requesting anonymity because the plan is still under development. During a meeting at the White House with U.S. airline executives Thursday, Trump said he had a “phenomenal” plan to revamp business taxes that would be revealed within the next two or three weeks, without offering details. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters later that day that specifics would emerge only in the coming weeks.

Still, he said the White House is at work on an outline of the most comprehensive business and individual tax overhaul since 1986. Cohn, 56, stepped down as Goldman’s president and COO in December after agreeing to lead Trump’s National Economic Council, an influential panel that helps coordinate and develop the president’s economic program. He was long seen as the heir apparent to the bank’s CEO Lloyd Blankfein. During a news conference Friday with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Trump said he was working with House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on the tax measure, which would be guided by an “incentive-based policy” and released “over the next short period of time.”

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3 seats now, Yellen’s in a year. Politicians deciding where a by law independent central bank will turn.

Daniel Tarullo, Federal Reserve Regulatory Point Man, to Resign (WSJ)

The Federal Reserve’s lead architect of postcrisis financial regulations plans to resign this spring, giving President Donald Trump more freedom to remake the central bank and to accelerate a deregulatory agenda by putting his own appointees in charge of overseeing Wall Street. Daniel Tarullo, a 64-year-old Fed governor and the government’s most influential overseer of the American banking system, wrote to Mr. Trump on Friday saying he would resign “on or about” April 5. The move had been expected, and will remove from the policy-making debate one of the strongest voices for imposing safeguards on big banks and nonbanks to protect against another meltdown. Mr. Trump and many of his advisers have criticized those rules as hampering economic growth, and have suggested they will fill vacancies with officials who will handle banking policy with a lighter touch.

Stock prices for megabanks jumped on the news of Mr. Tarullo’s imminent departure, with shares in Bank of America and Citigroup rising almost 1% in the half-hour following the announcement. Mr. Tarullo’s resignation will also give the Trump administration broad discretion to put its own stamp on the central bank at a time when critics—including top Republicans in Congress—have accused the institution of lacking transparency and accountability. The departure could leave vacant three of the seven slots on the Fed’s board of governors. In addition, Janet Yellen’s term as chairwoman expires early next year. Filling those vacancies would also give the new president the chance to redirect the course of monetary policy, though it is unclear whether he would seek officials who would alter Ms. Yellen’s current course of cautious rate increases.

Mr. Tarullo’s announcement came exactly a week after Mr. Trump signed an executive order instructing regulators to review the rules implemented since the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial overhaul, and as Republican lawmakers intensify their plans to rewrite that landmark law. But partisan gridlock on Capitol Hill makes it unlikely Congress can make big changes, leaving it to the regulators Mr. Trump nominates to change the way rules are written, implemented and enforced.

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I’m going with Tim Duy’s tweet on this one: “I would say “Foreigners back away from US Treasury, proving they aren’t necessary to finance deficits.”

Foreigners Dump Debt, Offering Up a Test for Rates (WSJ)

Foreign buyers, led by China, are taking a smaller slice of the debt issued by the U.S. and other major economies, a change that may test the long-held belief that overseas money has kept interest rates low in the developed world. For much of this century, the world’s money increasingly sought the harbors of the bond markets of big, Western nations, principally the U.S. but also Germany and Britain. During that period those countries, and their citizens and companies, borrowed money at remarkably low interest rates. The receding foreign tide comes amid other momentous changes for the global economy and interest rates, including a turn in many political corners away from the free-trading ethos that has defined modern capitalism and glimmers of inflation that are encouraging major central banks to pare back their unprecedented economic stimulus measures.

Foreigners are steadily pulling back: As of November, for the first time since 2009, less than 30% of the $20 trillion market for U.S. government debt was held overseas, according to the latest official data, released in January, from the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve. In the U.K., it is now 27%, compared with a record of 36% in 2008. In Germany, it is 49%, down from a peak of 57% in 2014. The consequences from this shift are uncertain. Strong demand helps push up prices, and lower yields, of government bonds, at least in the short term. And buyers such as the Chinese state have been ravenous sources of demand.

Between 2000 and 2014, Chinese authorities built up a $4 trillion currency reserve, mainly through buying Treasurys to keep the yuan weak and help the country’s exporters. In January, its reserves fell below $3 trillion, the lowest level in almost six years. China is now trying to boost its currency, and its Treasury holdings fell by about $200 billion between May and November. “You create an environment where yields are manipulated lower by captive investors,” said Paul Donovan, chief economist at UBS Wealth Management. “There is now a shift going on here, which is most significant for the U.S.”

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Russia did so well under the sanctions, perhaps it’s better for them to keep doing what they were.

Russia’s Exile From World Markets May Soon Be Over (BBG)

As Donald Trump edges the U.S. closer to a thaw in relations with Vladimir Putin’s Russia, commodity investors are already jumping in. A plan by United Co. Rusal, the biggest Russian aluminum maker, for a London sale of shares valued at about $1.7 billion is the latest sign that Russia’s exile from world markets is over for the nation’s metal and mining giants. It’s a turnaround from years in which slumping raw-materials prices, a weak economy and sanctions imposed by then-U.S. President Barack Obama over the annexation of Crimea punished valuations and drove away foreign investors. Share sales by Russian mining companies have been rare since 2010. Until two months ago, PhosAgro’s offering in April 2013 was the last major sale by a non-state Russian mining company.

The fertilizer miner and processor is among those that have returned since December. Offerings from Novolipetsk Steel and TMK bring the total raised by mining and metals producers since then to about $575 million. Others weighing offers include En+ Group and Polyus. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel, also known as MMK, is also considering selling a small stake to the market, people familiar said on Friday. Billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov’s Onexim may offer up to 5% of Rusal to investors soon, people said late Thursday. It’s not just plain equities. In a sign of investor appetite, steelmaker Severstal sold $250 million of convertible bonds on Thursday paying a zero coupon. “Investors see less risk in Russian companies now as the geopolitical situation has eased,” Rusal Deputy Chief Executive Officer Oleg Mukhamedshin said in an interview in Moscow last week following a company sale of eurobonds. “That affects demand for both bonds and equities.”

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Brussels trembles ahead of multiple national elections. But faking your great achievements and position of strength doesn’t actually make you look strong.

EU Foreign Policy Chief Tells Trump Not To Interfere In Europe’s Politics (G.)

The EU foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, has warned the Trump administration not to interfere in European politics, advising it to “deal with America first”. Speaking during a two-day visit to Washington, Mogherini did not make specific accusations but said that she sometimes heard voices in the new administration “saying the European Union is not necessarily a good idea. Inviting us to dismantle what we have managed to build and which has brought us not only peace, but also economic strength.” “It’s not for me or another European to speak about domestic political choices or decisions in the US. The same goes with Europe – no interference,” Mogherini said, speaking at the Atlantic Council thinktank. “Maybe America first means also that you have to deal with America first.”

Mogherini’s tone echoed the increasing alarm in Brussels over the new administration’s attitudes. Donald Tusk, the head of the European Council, has listed the new US administration and its “worrying declarations” as one of the leading global threats to the EU. Trump has not missed a chance to deride the EU, going out of his way to praise Brexit, and in an interview just before taking office, he depicted the continent as being dominated by Germany and on the brink of collapse. “President Trump believes that dealing bilaterally with different European countries is in US interests, that we could have a stronger relationship with the countries individually,” said Ted Malloch, the man tipped to be Donald Trump’s nominee as ambassador to the EU. He also accused Europe of “blatant anti-Americanism”.

She also took the opportunity to remind the administration, which hosted the UK prime minister, Theresa May, as the president’s first foreign guest, and promised her a favourable trade deal, that Britain did not have the right to negotiate independently until it was outside the EU, which was two years away at least. “The strength of the EU and the unity of the EU I believe is more evident today than it was a few months ago. This has to be clearly understood here,” Mogherini said. “This also means respect for the EU not simply as an institution. It is a union of 28 member states.”

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“..the Trump Administration [..] fail to grasp that talking the dollar down will just not work if the political structure of the EU is breaking up.”

EU In Disintegration Mode (Martin Armstrong)

The EU leadership is really trying to make Great Britain pay dearly for voting to exit the Community. Like the socialists in America, it’s our way or no way. The left may call the right the “deplorables” but the left are the “intolerables” who refuse to ever consider they might be wrong. The EU thinks that if they can make it so bad for Britain, nobody else will leave. They refuse to examine why there is rising discontent within Europe. They refuse to let go of this dream of a federalized Europe to eradicate national identities along with sovereign rights. [..] Britain is not willing to surrender all domestic law to that of the EU. Indeed, EU law is no longer to be applied in Britain. Here we have the EU demanding Ireland retroactively charge Apple taxes simply because their tax rate is less that the highest EU member.

That is surrendering everything sovereign to Brussels. Laws are only to be decided by the British parliament – not Brussels. Jurisprudence is a matter for the British courts not the European Court. Britain is to leave the EU internal market and the EU Customs Union and seeks a free trade agreement to be concluded between the EU and Great Britain. The EU seeks to punish Britain for rejecting its dream. The EU forgets that Trump is now in and a trade deal with Britain will no longer be at the back of the queue as was the case under Obama. Free movement of people, together with the free movement of goods, free movement of services and the free movement of capital, are the four fundamental freedoms which are regarded as the foundation of the EU. The free movement of persons justifies the right of all EU citizens to settle in the Union and to accept work. However, this has not worked as smoothly as presumed.

The cost of living is significantly different throughout the EU. Eastern Europeans, mainly from Poland, have infiltrated Britain working for less money creating competition for domestic workers while foreign companies use cheaper labor in the East to undercut domestic companies on their home-turf. As the economy turns down and deflation prevails, the threat of foreign jobs is being addressed throughout Europe. Add to this the refugee crisis and you have a powder keg throughout Europe waiting to go off. In view of the high unemployment in almost all countries, domestic citizens have ALWAYS turned against foreign workers as the easy scapegoats for the economic decline. This only merges with the high taxes reducing disposable income.

The EU leaders [..] have no clear statement to challenge what is going on. The regulatory nightmare and outright rage that is rising among the people is simply ignored by Brussels. The legal uncertainty with the British exit on the banking system is something nobody even wants to speculate about. How do bail-ins work in Europe if abandoned in Britain? So while the EU thinks by punishing Britain they will discourage others from leaving, they are seriously mistaken. The dream of the EU is dead. It should have remained just a trade union – that was it. What the Trump Administration is clueless about is the ability of the EU to hold it together, they fail to grasp that talking the dollar down will just not work if the political structure of the EU is breaking up.

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All that’s left is emptiness.

Eurozone, IMF Agree On A Common Stance On Greece (R.)

Euro zone lenders and the International Monetary Fund have reached agreed between themselves to present a common stance to Greece later on Friday in talks on reforms and the fiscal path Athens must take, euro zone officials said. Such a united stance would be a breakthrough because the two groups have differed for months on the size of the primary surplus Greece should reach in 2018 and maintain for years later as well as the issue of debt relief. Those differences have hindered efforts to unlock further funding for Greece under its latest euro zone bailout program. “There is agreement to present a united front to the Greeks,” a senior euro zone official said, adding that the outcome of Friday’s meeting with the Greeks was still unclear and it was unclear if Athens would accept the proposals. “What comes out of it, we will see,” the official said. Financial markets took heart from the news, however.

Greece’s two-year bond yield fell almost 50 basis points to 9.55%. It hit the 10% mark on Thursday as worries about the bailout drove away buyers. The chairman of euro zone finance ministers, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, said in The Hague that Friday’s meeting, in which Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos will take part, was to discuss the size of Greece’s primary surplus. The euro zone wants Greece to reach a primary surplus – which excludes interest repayments on debt – of 3.5% of GDP and keep it there for many years. But the IMF believes that with reforms in place now Greece will reach only 1.5% next year and in the following years and has therefore been pushing for Athens to legislate new measures that would safeguard the agreed euro zone targets. Officials said the lenders would ask Greece to take €1.8 billion worth of new measures until 2018 and another €1.8 billion after 2018, focused on broadening the tax base and on pension cutbacks.

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What a surprise.

Greek Bailout Talks Set to Drag Past February Amid Standoff (BBG)

Greece probably won’t complete its bailout review by the time the euro area’s finance ministers next meet, on Feb. 20, setting the stage for potentially thorny negotiations in the midst of next month’s bitter electoral campaign in the Netherlands. “We will take stock of the further progress of the second review during the next Eurogroup,” Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem said in a statement after a meeting with his Greek counterpart, Euclid Tsakalotos, in Brussels on Friday. “There is a clear understanding that a timely finalization of the second review is in everybody’s interest,” Dijsselbloem said after the meeting, in which representatives of creditor institutions also participated.

Greece is locked in talks with the European Commission, the ECB, the European Stability Mechanism and the IMF over the conditions attached to its latest bailout. During Friday’s meeting, bailout auditors asked the government to legislate additional fiscal cuts equal to about 2% of GDP if the country fails to meet certain budget targets, a person familiar with the matter said after the talks. These contingent measures are the basis for further discussions, the person said, asking not to be named as the matter is sensitive. While progress was made in the meeting, unreasonable demands from the IMF make a resumption of staff-level talks difficult, a Greek government official said in a text message, asking not to be named in line with policy.

The Greek government has been resisting calls to preemptively legislate contingent belt-tightening for 2018 and beyond, arguing that measures already in place should suffice to meet an agreed goal for a budget surplus – before interest payments – equal to 3.5% of GDP. Among the measures the IMF is demanding is pension cuts and a lowering of the threshold at which income tax is paid. Both are red lines the government says it’s not willing to cross. “Although we expect that the Greek government will implement the required measures, the risk of early elections is increasing given the rising political cost to the government and its slim majority in the parliament,” Moody’s analyst Kathrin Muehlbronner said. “Early elections might bring a new and more reform-minded conservative government, but Greece’s economy would be hit again by prolonged uncertainty, after having just started to record positive growth.”

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This must be the dumbest thing I’ve heard in a long time. And that’s saying something these days. The UBI trial started just weeks ago, and they already know it will fail?

Universal Basic Income ‘Useless’, Says Finland’s Biggest Union (Ind.)

Finland’s basic income experiment is unworkable, uneconomical and ultimately useless. Plus, it will only encourage some people to work less. That’s not the view of a hard core Thatcherite, but of the country’s biggest trade union. The labour group says the results of the two-year pilot program will fail to sway its opposition to a welfare-policy idea that’s gaining traction among those looking for an alternative in the post-industrial age. “We think it takes social policy in the wrong direction,” said Ilkka Kaukoranta, chief economist of the Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions (SAK), which has nearly 1 million members. Since January, a group of unemployed Finns aged between 25 and 58 have been receiving a stipend of €560 per month. The amount isn’t means-tested and is paid regardless of whether the recipient finds a job, starts a business or returns to school.

Popular in the 1960s, the idea of a guaranteed minimum income for everyone is gaining more proponents again amid resurgent populism. French Socialist candidate Benoit Hamon has made it a policy platform in his presidential campaign. A universal — or unconditional — basic income (UBI), which would replace means-tested welfare payments, has its share of supporters on both the left and the right of the political spectrum. Advocates say it eliminates poverty traps and redistributes income while empowering the individual and reducing paperwork. In Finland, which like other Nordic nations is seen as a trendsetter when it comes to the welfare state, the idea is being explored by a center-right government headed by a former businessman and self-made millionaire.

While limited in scope (it’s conditional on the beneficiary having received some form of unemployment support in November 2016) and size (it’s based on a randomly-selected sample of 2,000 jobless people), the Finnish trial may help answer questions like: “Does it work”? “Is it worth it”? And the most fundamental of all: “Does it incite laboriousness or laziness?”

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“Speak not because it is safe, but because it is right.”

Snowden Claims Report Russia May ‘Gift’ Him To Trump Proves He’s No Spy (G.)

Whistleblower Edward Snowden has seized on a report that Russia is considering sending him back to the US as a “gift” to Donald Trump, saying that the story vindicates him of charges that he is a spy. “Finally: irrefutable evidence that I never cooperated with Russian intel,” he said on Twitter. “No country trades away spies, as the rest would fear they’re next.” Snowden was responding to a report by NBC which stated that US intelligence had collected information that Russia wanted to hand Snowden over in order to “curry favor” with Trump, who has said that the former NSA contractor is a “traitor” and a “spy” who deserves to be executed. The report – based on two sources in the intelligence community – said the intelligence had been gathered since Trump’s inauguration.

Snowden’s ACLU lawyer, Ben Wizner, told NBC News he was unaware of any plan to return his client to the US. “Team Snowden has received no such signals and has no new reason for concern,” Wizner said. Russia granted Snowden asylum in 2013 and a three-year residency in 2014. Snowden has been living in exile in Moscow, facing charges in the US including violations of the US Espionage Act for leaking documents about secret mass surveillance programs. Speaking at a GOP candidate debate in March 2016, Trump said of Snowden: “I said he was a spy and we should get him back. And if Russia respected our country, they would have sent him back immediately, but he was a spy. It didn’t take me a long time to figure that one out.” The Kremlin publicly dismissed these claims.

Snowden offered a longer explanation of his feelings of vindication when he was interviewed by Katie Couric in December 2016, when rumours of a Russian handover first started circulating. He described the suggestion as vindication that he was“independent”. He added: “The fact that I’ve always worked on behalf of the United States and the fact that Russia doesn’t own me. In fact the Russian government may see me as a sort of liability.” Snowden suggested that a reason why Russia might want to return him was his recent criticism of the Kremlin’s human rights record and his suggestions that its officials had hacked US security networks. Previously Snowden has said that Moscow had “gone very far, in ways that are completely unnecessary, costly and corrosive to individual and collective rights” in monitoring citizens online.

When Couric asked if Snowden would mind being extradited, he replied: “That would obviously be something that would be a threat to my liberty and to my life. “But what I’m saying here is you can’t have it both ways. You can’t say this guy’s a bad guy – a Russian tool or something like that – at the same time you say he’s going to be traded away.” After reiterating his sense of vindication on Friday, Snowden posted again to Twitter: “Speak not because it is safe, but because it is right.”

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Incredible.

‘We Are Silently Dying’: Refugees In Greek Camp Slip Into Despair (MEE)

Poor living conditions, a sudden spate of deaths and a “complete loss of hope” are exacerbating mental health issues and leading to suicide attempts and self-harm in the Moria refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesvos, NGOs and refugees have warned. “More and more what we are seeing is people with severe depression linked to the conditions in which they are in and to the complete loss of hope,” said Louise Roland-Gosselin, an advocacy manager for the medical NGO, Doctors Without Borders (MSF). “[Refugees] in Moria are absolutely crushed and we hear more and more about how people are self-mutilating, how they want to commit suicide and we are aware of cases of suicide and attempted suicide, not only on Lesbos but also on other islands,” she added.

[..] For many of the camp’s residents the long and backlogged process of applying for asylum and the lack of activities in the camp has heightened their despair. “It’s still quite a depressing sight,” explained Roland-Gosselin. “You still have hundreds of people who are sleeping in tents, there is little access to water, hygiene conditions are not acceptable, there’s still hundreds of people without heating and they have absolutely no activity, they have nothing to do all day. So it’s an incredibly depressing place.” Some are turning to self-harm as a result of the situation. Cutting is common in the camp according to refugees MEE spoke to. “People here die inside, so when they die inside they either hurt someone else or they hurt themselves, that’s why they do it, to get the pain out. So they cut themselves. I’ve seen it happen to my friend. He’d cut himself, we’d bandage his arm and then he’d do it again the second day,” explained al-Anny.

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    Dorothea Lange Play street for children. Sixth Street and Avenue C, NYC 1936   • Trump ‘May’ Not Appeal Travel Ban Ruling To Supreme Court (ZH) •
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle February 11 2017]

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