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Debt Rattle October 29 2024

Oct 292024
 
 October 29, 2024  Posted by at 9:25 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  82 Responses »


Jules Adler Panorama de Paris vu du Sacré Coeur 1935

 

• Will Donald Trump Get His Revenge? (Susan Quinn)
• Leftists Are Terrified About What Will Happen To Them If Trump Wins (ZH)
• Worst. Nazi. Rally. Ever. (Margolis)
• Kamala Is Just A Vessel; We Are Running Against Something Far Bigger (MN)
• Speaking of Abortion (James Howard Kunstler)
• Trump’s 19th-Century Solution to Fiscal Disaster (David Stockman)
• Trump Campaign Slams Harris Over Beyonce ‘Lies’ (RT)
• Trump To Make Ukraine The EU’s Problem – FT (RT)
• I Don’t Want War With Russia – Vance (RT)
• University Professors Approaching Near Unanimity as a Democratic Lock (Turley)
• Bezos Explains Why WaPo Dropped Presidential Endorsements (RT)
• Steve Bannon To Be Released From Prison One Week Ahead Of Election (JTN)
• How America Was Destroyed (Paul Craig Roberts)
• The Enormous Constraints Faced By Netanyahu (Juan Cole)
• BRICS Make History – Can They Keep the Momentum? (Pepe Escobar)
• Slovak PM Fico Warns Of Continued Attempts On His Life (RT)
• Volkswagen Planning Mass Layoffs – Workers’ Council Chief (RT)

 

 

 

 

ABC

MSG


https://twitter.com/i/status/1850691657303519451
https://twitter.com/i/status/1850654136293024210

Elon

Stossel

 

 

 

 

Trump is not looking for revenge. He and his X-men team have bigger fish to fry. Trump’s “revenge” will be that what happened to him since 2015 -lawfare- can never happen again.

“…the changes he will make will be in the way government operates, not mere petty payback to individual miscreants…”

• Will Donald Trump Get His Revenge? (Susan Quinn)

There’s almost nothing that Donald Trump likes better than throwing his adversaries off their game; he likes to be unpredictable, confusing and in charge. It gives him an edge in achieving his goals. He’s kept his adversaries guessing to the extent that he will pay them back for their lawfare and deep-state machinations, and not surprisingly, they expect the worst. Yet he has said repeatedly that victory in the election will be his revenge. They don’t know what to make of it. A Trump senior advisor made the following observation: “President Trump has made clear that success will be the best revenge,’ Trump senior adviser Brian Hughes said. ‘When others have weaponized government and legal institutions against him for political interference, he will return these institutions to their constitutional purpose of protecting Americans’ liberty and creating a safe and prosperous nation again.

But since the political Left almost always chooses to see deceit in Trump’s comments, they don’t believe he is sincere. He made it even more unpredictable for them with this: “Look when this election is over, based on what they’ve done, I would have every right to go after them,” Trump said. “And it’s easy because it’s Joe Biden, and you see all the criminality, all of the money that’s going into the family and him, all of this money from China, from Russia, from Ukraine.” And then Trump underscored it again, wanting to be sure there was no doubt in the minds of the Left that he could act against them: When asked during a Fox News interview on Wednesday if he plans to use the justice system to punish his political opponents, Trump said: “When this election is over, based on what they’ve done, I would have every right to go after them.” Note that in both of the previous quotations, Trump commented on what he could do, not on what he would do.

Given the incidents of lawfare that Trump has had to endure, the hyperbole spouted by the mainstream media and the political Left, it’s no wonder that Trump would want to take revenge against those who have relentlessly criticized and attacked him. Jonathan Turley, law professor at Georgetown University, has commented several times on the pathetic and weak lawfare attacks that have been launched against Trump from various attorneys and district attorneys. He made this comment a few months ago about Alvin Bragg, Manhattan District Attorney, who twisted the facts of a Trump misdemeanor to transform them into a felony: Like his predecessor, Bragg previously scoffed at the case. However, two prosecutors, Carey R. Dunne and Mark F. Pomerantz, then resigned and started a public pressure campaign to get New Yorkers to demand prosecution.

Pomerantz shocked many of us by publishing a book on the case against Trump — who was still under investigation and not charged, let alone convicted, of any crime. He did so despite objections from his former colleague that such a book was grossly improper. Nevertheless, it worked. Bragg brought a Rube Goldberg case that is so convoluted and counterintuitive that even liberal legal analysts criticized it. It’s no wonder that Trump is relishing the discomfort and fear that he is eliciting in his opponents. They have spent years trying to ruin his reputation, insulting him, discrediting him and trying to humiliate him. Meanwhile, in reflecting on the 2016 election, Trump said the following about Hillary Clinton:

“I could have gone after Hillary. I could have gotten Hillary Clinton very easily. And when they say lock her up, whenever they said ‘lock her,’ you know, they’d start, 30,000 people, ‘lock her up, lock her up.’ What did I do? I always say take it easy, just relax. We’re winning. Take it easy. Take it easy.” He added: “I could have had her put in jail. And I decided I didn’t want to do that. I thought it would look terrible. You had the wife of the president of the United States going to jail. I thought it would be very bad if we did that. And I made sure that didn’t happen, OK? I thought it would be bad.” But now he has reached the point where striking fear in the hearts of his enemies seems righteous. Yet the changes he will make will be in the way government operates, not mere petty payback to individual miscreants. That will be devastating to the Leftist cause. It will also serve as his retribution.

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“They lament the undeniable shift of global politics to the conservative right while refusing to ask why it’s happening?”

• Leftists Are Terrified About What Will Happen To Them If Trump Wins (ZH)

After being indoctrinated for almost a decade to believe that their political opponents are secret Nazis ready to install a fascist regime, it’s not surprising that Democrats are freaking out over recent polls indicating a potential Trump win in the November elections. Convinced that America 2024 is going to be a repeat of Germany 1933, ignorant leftists are scrambling to determine whether or not to leave the US or “start a revolution.” The anxiety is palpable. The New Yorker recently asserted in an arduous and rambling article spanning centuries of political history and every rhetorical cliche imaginable that, essentially, Trump is likely to win. The outlet describes Kamala Harris as “virtuous” (which is laughable), but they suggest this trait is not respected enough within the American political sphere. They lament the undeniable shift of global politics to the conservative right while refusing to ask why it’s happening?

They simply default to the old low-IQ and low effort accusations of “racism” and “xenophobia”. The New Yorker argues: “Even when it is utterly self-destructive – as in Britain, where the xenophobia of Brexit cut the U.K. off from traditional allies while increasing immigration from the Global South—the apprehension that “we” are being flooded by frightening foreigners works its malign magic. It’s an old but persistent delusion that far-right nationalism is not rooted in the emotional needs of far-right nationalists but arises, instead, from the injustices of neoliberalism…” The mass immigration from the third world continues in Britain because the same progressive elitists are still in charge despite the Brexit vote. That’s why the country is spiraling into a pit of criminality, mass stabbings and a rape epidemic. It’s the reason why the British voted for Brexit in the first place.

Brexit and the end of mass immigration is the will of the majority of the people, just as it’s the will of the majority of people in many parts if Europe and the US. Yet, leftists who pontificate endlessly about the virtues of democracy dismiss the majority when it suits them. It is this arrogance of the political left that has led directly to the rise of the right wing movement that so utterly terrifies them. The problem is, leftists never take responsibility because they see this as an expression of weakness, and also because their moral relativism allows them to rationalize any behavior as necessary “for the greater good.” Their main character syndrome spurs them to believe they are the ultimate good in the world, and if they are the ultimate good then anyone who dares oppose them must be the ultimate evil. This is why they have a tendency to demonize their political opposition in extreme ways. The New Yorker describes Trump as singularly dangerous, comparing him to mobsters, tyrants and even cancer:

“Trumpism is a cancerous phenomenon. Treated with surgery once, it now threatens to come back in a more aggressive form, subject neither to the radiation of “guardrails” nor to the chemo of “constraints.” It may well rage out of control and kill its host…” And this kind of rhetoric is exactly why there have been at least two assassination attempts on Trump’s life; attempts which the leftist media then shamelessly blamed on Trump. It’s also gaslighting, considering the level of tyranny Democrats have engaged in under Biden and the contempt they have displayed for American ideals over the past decade. The fantasy world of the left is rife with paranoia built on a foundation of emotional sand rather than evidence. They see a new Trump term as the end of everything:

“Having lost the popular vote, as he surely will, he will not speak up to reconcile “all Americans.” He will insist that he won the popular vote, and by a landslide. He will pardon and then celebrate the January 6th insurrectionists, and thereby guarantee the existence of a paramilitary organization that’s capable of committing violence on his behalf without fear of consequences. He will, with an obedient Attorney General, begin prosecuting his political opponents…” “When he begins to pressure CNN and ABC, and they, with all the vulnerabilities of large corporations, bend to his will, telling themselves that his is now the will of the people, what will we do to fend off the slow degradation of open debate? Trump will certainly abandon Ukraine to Vladimir Putin and realign this country with dictatorships and against NATO and the democratic alliance of Europe. Above all, the spirit of vengeful reprisal is the totality of his beliefs—very much like the fascists of the twentieth century in being a man and a movement without any positive doctrine except revenge against his imagined enemies…”

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Which was worse? 1939 or 2024?

• Worst. Nazi. Rally. Ever. (Margolis)

When Donald Trump’s campaign announced plans for a rally at Madison Square Garden, Democrats and their media allies knew they had a problem. Trump was going to pack the house on their turf. So they wasted no time pushing the tired Hitler narrative and claimed that the choice of venue was an homage to a pro-Nazi rally held there in 1939. It wasn’t just liberals in the media pushing this narrative, either. Hillary Clinton accused Trump of “actually re-enacting the Madison Square Garden rally in 1939.” “President Franklin Roosevelt was appalled that neo-Nazis, fascists in America were lining up to essentially pledge their support for the kind of government that they were seeing in Germany. So I don’t think we can ignore it,” Hillary added. Then she doubled down.

“Now, it may be a leap for some people and a lot of others may think, ‘I don’t want to go there. I don’t want to say that.’ “But please open your eyes to the danger that this man poses to our country, because I think it is clear and present for anybody paying attention.” Even the Harris-Walz campaign joined in on the rhetoric. “Donald Trump’s got this big rally going at Madison Square Garden,” Kamala’s running mate Tim Walz said at a campaign event in Henderson, Nevada. “There’s a direct parallel to a big rally that happened in the mid-1930s at Madison Square Garden.” Walz added, “And don’t think that he doesn’t know for one second exactly what they’re doing there.”

Well, the rally took place Sunday night, and boy, talk about the worst Nazi rally ever! In addition to the diverse speakers at the event, a black woman sang the national anthem.

And clearly, Jews didn’t get the memo that this was a “Nazi rally.”

The only Nazi symbols you saw at all came courtesy of the Democrats.

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“I’m asking you to be excited about the future..”

• Kamala Is Just A Vessel; We Are Running Against Something Far Bigger (MN)

During a historic rally Sunday at Madison Square Garden, president Trump urged that Kamala Harris is purely “a vessel” and in reality the MAGA movement is fighting against “something far more powerful.” Trump told the crowd, “We are not just running against Kamala — She means nothing. She is purely a vessel — We are running against something far bigger than Joe or Kamala and more powerful than them, which is a massive, vicious, crooked, radical left machine that runs today’s Democrat Party.” Trump further asserted that Biden and Harris are “perfect vessels because they’ll never give them a hard time. They’ll do whatever they want.” He continued, “I know many of them. It’s just an amorphous group of people. But they’re smart and they’re vicious, and we have to defeat them. And when I say the ‘enemy from within,’ the other side go crazy.”

Trump added that these people “are doing such harm to our country with their open border policies, record-setting inflation, ‘Green New Scam,’ and everything else they are doing. But we’re not going to let it happen any longer. We’re going to have the biggest victory in the history of our country on November 5 … We’re going to make America great again.” Elsewhere during his speech, Trump urged that his party is one of real unity and inclusion, while the other side is intent on fomenting hatred and division. “We bleed the same blood. We share the same home and we salute the same great American Flag. We are one people, one family, and one glorious nation under God,” Trump declared.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1850696878469337233

Trump vowed to make America stronger than ever before and to bring back the American Dream. Trump told the crowd “I’m asking you to be excited about the future,” further urging “this will be America’s new golden age.” The MSG event was a roaring success, despite deranged leftists demanding it be shut down claiming it was a literal ‘Nazi rally’.

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“You have not seen such a vivid demonstration of slowly-and-then-all-at-once since the implosion of Lehman Brothers as the collapse of the Democratic Party this fateful October..”

• Speaking of Abortion (James Howard Kunstler)

What were they thinking after they shoved “Joe Biden” into the abyss, like an old refrigerator over the edge of the landfill, and afterward settled — instantly it appears, with no process at all — on Kamala Harris to lead the party to victory in the fall election? I will tell you: they were not thinking at all. The collective mind of the Democrat elite was a vast vacuum devoid of thought, mass, or light, like a corner of deepest space, lacking even a particle of cosmic debris to evoke the existence of existence. Such mindlessness was the consummate expression of a party that for eight years worked every angle of political mental illness toward the loss of its mind, driven by whatever dark energy seeks escape from truth, life, and God — whatever is opposite of creation and being. What you are witnessing is a colossal act of being un-born. The party put out a call to the universe and the universe ordered. . . an abortion of the Democratic Party! You are reminded again: be careful of what you wish for.

And so do things stand one week before the election. You have not seen such a vivid demonstration of slowly-and-then-all-at-once since the implosion of Lehman Brothers as the collapse of the Democratic Party this fateful October. Poor Kamala is just collateral damage at this point. She goes out before some manufactured audience and seven-minutes onstage delivering a door-dash order of precooked blather is all she can stand before being overwhelmed by the emptiness and futility of her task. . . and then she flees back to the waiting limousine (and the chardonnay bottle). Meanwhile, her allies — that is, the Democratic Party’s allies — play their own roles in this political abortion. The LA Times and the WashPo declined their usual proforma endorsements, two kisses of death. Those actions last week provoked nervous breakdowns in both newsrooms, cries of anguish, resignations, professional suicides.

The news media find themselves in a peculiar position, having gone along for years with the gathering mental illness of the Democratic Party, like incompetent parents in a large dysfunctional family, offering unconditional support for their kids’ intolerable and unacceptable behavior. They are flying to pieces now on the CNN chat panels. James Carville, the party’s shriveled Gollum, has gone to IV infusions of Jim Beam, seems like. Jake Tapper gets Sunday schooled by JD Vance and turns into a mewling cat-lady right before your eyes. Anderson Cooper goes all waxy and mute. Joy Reid surrenders to echolalia as her MSNBC fans are subjected to the guest list of P. Diddy’s “freak-offs,” ranting about Hitler. Lawrence O’Donnell is looking more and more like Vincent Price in Return of the Fly. Reality-optional hardly suffices to describe cable news these days.

You’ve got to ask: can they just let it be? Can they just let go of their insane Jacobin rebellion now and let it fade into history? Then, kick back, recuperate, get their minds right, put their house and family in order, and move on as a legit political faction in a functioning republic? Or, do they burn the asylum down? The signals are troubling. They are chattering about Mr. Trump “using the military” against them in the months to come — as if the Abrams tanks were going to roll up to DNC headquarters and blast away. By now, you know that such thoughts expressed by Democratic pols and news pals are always projections of their own wishes. The New York Times published just such a classic paranoid projection exercise last week “. . . telling Americans that if he [Trump] wins, he plans to bend, if not break, our democracy.”

Surely it is too late, with early voting well underway, to stop any ballot harvesting and other election shenanigans as engineered by master fraudster Marc Elias. In fact, frauds are already being discovered (e.g., Lancaster County, PA.) Not a good look. It is exactly what a conspiracy (to commit election fraud) means in law, and the actual people who cooked the ballots and transported them are going to rat-out those who instructed them to do it. Wait for that, and wait for it to pop up elsewhere around the country. This time, watchers are watching, much more carefully.

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Stockman knows his numbers. Take the following, and then remember (you too, David) that Elon Musk says he can save $2 trillion on spending.

“Trumpian revenue tariffs would generate about $9 trillion over the next decade, or nearly 80% of the $11.5 trillion revenue loss from drastically shrinking the income tax coverage..”

• Trump’s 19th-Century Solution to Fiscal Disaster (David Stockman)

In the last weeks of the campaign, Donald Trump is slicing and dicing the Federal income tax nearly as fast as he served up fries at the McDonald’s drive-thru window last weekend. So far, he has proposed to extend the lower rates, family tax credits, and investment incentives of the 2017 Tax Act after they expire in 2025 and to also exempt tips, Social Security benefits, and overtime wages from the Federal income tax. Those items alone would generate a revenue loss of $9 trillion over the next decade, but he has recently proposed to also exempt firefighters, police officers, military personnel, and veterans from the Federal income tax as well. We estimate the latter would cost another $2.5 trillion in revenue loss over 10 years. As it happens, there are 370,000 firemen, 708,000 policemen, 2.86 million uniformed military personnel, and 18.0 million veterans in the US.

These 22 million citizens have an estimated average income of $82,000 per year, which translates to about $60,000 each of AGI (adjusted gross income). At an average income tax rate of 14.7% these exclusions would generate $250 billion per year of reduced income tax payments. In all, Trump has thus tossed out promises to cut income taxes by $11.5 trillion over the next 10-year budget window. In turn, these sweeping reductions would amount to upwards of 34% of CBO’s estimated baseline income tax revenue of $33.7 trillion over the period. Alas, even in the halcyon days of Reagan supply-side tax cutting no one really dreamed of eliminating fully one-third of the so-called crime of 1913 (the 16th Amendment which enabled the income tax).

10-Year Revenue Loss:
Extend the 2017 Trump tax cuts: $5.350 trillion.
Exempt overtime income: $2.000 trillion.
End Taxation of Social Security benefits: $1.300 trillion.
Exempt Tip income: $300 billion.
Exempt Income of Firemen, Policemen, Military and Veterans: $2.500 trillion.
Trump Total Revenue Loss: $11.500 trillion.
CBO Income Tax Baseline Revenue: $33.700 trillion.
Trump Revenue Loss As % of Baseline: 34%.

Then again, Trump may have something virtually epic in mind. To wit, scrapping the income tax entirely in favor of taxing consumption via levies on imported goods and merchandise. “In the old days when we were smart, when we were a smart country, in the 1890s and all, this is when the country was relatively the richest it ever was. It had all tariffs. It didn’t have an income tax,” Trump said at a sit-down with voters in New York on Friday for Fox & Friends. “Now we have income taxes, and we have people that are dying.” The New York Times is deeply alarmed: “The former president has repeatedly praised a period in American history when there was no income tax, and the country relied on tariffs to fund the government.” Actually, however, 19th-century America was even smarter than Trump realizes.

In 1900 total Federal spending amounted to just 3.5% of GDP because back then America was still a peaceful republic and had no Warfare State or even significant standing army at all. And save for the most advanced precincts of Europe, the Welfare State hadn’t yet been invented, either. So, yes, the so-called “revenue tariffs” of the 19th century did meet the income needs of the Federal government to the point of actually balancing the budget year after year between 1870 and 1900. Indeed, the actual annual surpluses were large enough to pay down most of the Civil War debt, to boot. Today, of course, the Warfare State, Welfare State, and the Washington pork barrels account for 25% of GDP. So Trump may be directionally correct in wanting to tax consumption rather than income, but, as usual, he’s off by about seven orders of magnitude when it comes to the size of the Federal budget that needs to be financed.

Still, Trump has stepped up to the plate when it comes to a 21st-century version of the revenue tariff. He has pledged to impose a 20% universal tariff on all imports from all countries with a specific 60% rate for Chinese imports. Based on current US import levels of $3.5 trillion per year from worldwide sources and $450 billion from China, Trump’s tariffs would generate about $900 billion of receipts per annum. To be sure, Trump’s claim that these giant tariffs would be paid for by Chinamen, Mexicans, and European socialists is just more of his standard baloney. Tariffs are paid for by consumers, but that’s actually the hidden virtue of the Tariff Man’s favorite word. The truth is, government should be paid for via taxation on current citizens, not fobbed off in the form of giant debts on future citizens, born and unborn.

So if we are going to have Big Government at 25% of GDP rather than a 19th-century government at 3.5% of GDP, and Trump is a Big Government Man if there ever was one, better that the burden be placed on consumption, not production, income, and investment. After all, today the “makers” get hit good and hard by the current exceedingly lopsided income tax system. Thus, the top 1% pays 46% of income taxes, while the top 5% pays 66% and the top 10% pays 76% of all income taxes. On the other end, by contrast, the bottom 50% pays just 2.3% of individual income taxes, while 40% of all families pay no income tax at all. In any event, the math works out such that the proposed Trumpian revenue tariffs would generate about $9 trillion over the next decade, or nearly 80% of the $11.5 trillion revenue loss from drastically shrinking the income tax coverage and collection rate. So that’s a big step in the direction of fiscal solvency rather than more UniParty free lunches.

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“They have to use people to get people to come, and then they send buses..”

• Trump Campaign Slams Harris Over Beyonce ‘Lies’ (RT)

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has accused Democratic rival Kamala Harris of misleading voters by attracting them to a rally in the belief that they would see a performance by pop superstar Beyonce. Over 30,000 people turned up at the Democratic event on Friday in Houston, Texas, with some expecting a free concert after it was announced that Beyonce would be present. MSNBC and the Washington Post reported ahead of the rally that the superstar singer would appear with Harris during the event, while NBC cited a source as saying that Beyonce was “also expected to perform.” Beyonce earlier approved the use of her song ‘Freedom’ as a soundtrack for the Harris campaign. The 43-year-old Houston native did take to the stage at the event with her former Destiny’s Child bandmate Kelly Rowland, before announcing that she was there as a mother and not as an entertainer.

In a speech that lasted less than five minutes, Beyonce urged rallygoers to support abortion rights, after Harris called on voters to “mobilize” on November 5 in support of reproductive freedom. “It’s time for America to sing a new song,” Beyonce added. “Our voices sing a chorus of unity. They sing a song of dignity and opportunity. Are y’all ready to add your voice to the new American song,” the singer said, welcoming Harris onto the stage. Speaking at a Michigan rally on Saturday, Trump hit out at the apparent failure of the Harris campaign to meet supporters’ expectations. “Beyonce went up and spoke for a couple of minutes and then left, and the place went crazy,” Trump stated, adding that “they booed the hell out of everybody.”

“They thought she was going to perform… it’s crazy. They have to use people to get people to come, and then they send buses. We don’t send buses. Everybody comes. We’re just going to make America great again. It’s very simple,” the former president added. Tim Murtaugh, a senior adviser to Trump, claimed that organizers of the Democratic rally had “lied to build a crowd.” While the front rows at the rally appeared supportive as Harris proceeded with her speech after seeing Beyonce off the stage, clips on social media indicated booing and heckling at the back, with some apparently leaving the venue in disappointment. The vice president has been backed by American pop sensation Taylor Swift as well as Usher, Eminem, and Cardi B, while Trump has received endorsements from SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, rapper 50 Cent, and popular journalist Tucker Carlson.

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“Russia gets a guarantee of neutrality from Ukraine,” while Germany and other EU countries foot the bill for Ukraine’s reconstruction..”

• Trump To Make Ukraine The EU’s Problem – FT (RT)

Donald Trump will leave the enforcement of any peace deal between Russia and Ukraine to European powers, one of the former US president’s advisers has told the Financial Times. The plan is one of several floated by Trump’s advisers and allies, all of which involve the US refusing to deal with the aftermath of the conflict. Trump has promised to bring a rapid end to the ongoing conflict if he is elected president in November. However, he has offered few specifics as to how he would do this, save for pressing Vladimir Putin and Vladimir Zelensky into peace talks with US aid to Kiev as leverage. In the absence of any concrete peace plan, a host of Trump’s current and former advisers have outlined how they think the former president could achieve this goal.

One unnamed “long-term Trump adviser” told the Financial Times on Monday that the Republican candidate could resolve the conflict with “a reimagining of the failed Minsk agreements of 2014 and 2015,” under which Kiev agreed to grant some autonomy to the majority Russian-speaking regions of Donetsk and Lugansk. This time around, the adviser said, the deal would be enforced by EU peacekeepers. “There are two things America will insist on,” he said. “We will not have any men or women in the enforcement mechanism. We’re not paying for it. Europe is paying for it.” Reviving the Minsk agreements would likely present several major challenges.

After multiple European leaders admitted that they never intended to abide by the 2014 and 2015 agreements, Moscow does not believe that the EU can play the role of honest broker, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said earlier this month. Furthermore, Donetsk and Lugansk – along with Kherson and Zaporozhye – have since joined the Russian Federation, and any peace deal must take into account this “territorial reality,” the Kremlin has said. Fred Fleitz, a former CIA analyst who served in Trump’s White House, told the British newspaper that the US could “freeze the conflict” along the current front line, and negotiate a lasting settlement with Russia at a later date. Ukraine would not give up its territorial claims in the meantime, Fleitz said, explaining that this plan counts on delaying a final agreement until “Putin leaves the stage.”

However, Fleitz conceded that he does not speak for Trump and does not know the former president’s foreign policy plans. The most detailed proposal has been put forward by Trump’s running mate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance. Speaking to former US Navy SEAL and podcast host Shawn Ryan last month, Vance said that the current frontline could be demilitarized and fortified, ensuring that “Russia doesn’t invade again.” In exchange, “Russia gets a guarantee of neutrality from Ukraine,” while Germany and other EU countries foot the bill for Ukraine’s reconstruction. The current American policy of “throw[ing] money at this problem, [and] hope[ing] the Ukrainians are able to achieve a military victory” is “stupid,” Vance told Ryan.

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“I think that we should try to pursue avenues of peace.”

• I Don’t Want War With Russia – Vance (RT)

The US is not at war with Russia and should not seek one, Republican vice-presidential nominee J.D. Vance has said, when asked whether he would brand President Vladimir Putin an “enemy” of America. The senator from Ohio was asked during his appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday whether he saw the Russian leader “as an ally or an enemy.” Putin is “clearly an adversary, he is a competitor,” but Washington needs to be “smart about diplomacy too,” Vance responded. ”Just because we don’t like somebody doesn’t mean that we can’t occasionally engage in conversations with them,” he suggested. Host Kristen Welker pushed him further on whether he would directly refer to Putin as an enemy. ”We are not at war with him. And I don’t want to be at war with Vladimir Putin’s Russia,” the senator said. “I think that we should try to pursue avenues of peace.”

The same logic applies to China, Vance said, adding that he perceives it as a greater threat to American interests than Russia. The US may not like having to talk to its rivals, but in the case of the Ukraine conflict, resolving it will require negotiations, the senator pointed out. When asked whether former President Donald Trump would take the US out of NATO, Vance assured that he wouldn’t. If his running mate returns to office, the country will honor its commitment to the organization, but the bloc “is not just a welfare client, it should be a real alliance,” he said. Vance was referring to Trump’s criticism of insufficient defense spending by its European members.

Moscow has identified NATO’s enlargement in Europe as a threat to its national security and a key reason for the deterioration of relations with the West. The organization’s increasing involvement in Ukraine since the 2014 armed coup in Kiev and promise to bring Ukraine into the fold have contributed in a major way to setting off the ongoing hostilities, Russian officials have said. The current Democratic administration has pledged to stand by Kiev “for as long as it takes” to defeat Russia and has pushed other nations to do the same. Despite the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on Ukraine aid, Kiev’s troops are currently retreating along many parts of the front. Trump has claimed while campaigning that he would end the hostilities in 24 hours, if elected.

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“..he and others continue to saw feverishly on the branch upon which we all sit in higher education..”

• University Professors Approaching Near Unanimity as a Democratic Lock (Turley)

The 2024 presidential election is shaping up to be the single most divisive election in our history. The public is split right down the middle with almost every group splintering between former president Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. There is, however, one group that seems almost unanimous: professors. A new survey of more than 1,000 professors shows that seventy-eight percent will vote for Harris and only eight percent will vote for Trump. Other than a poll of the Democratic National Committee, there are few groups that are more reliably Democratic or liberal. For anyone in higher education, the result is hardly surprising. The poll tracks what we already know about the gradual purging of departments around the country of conservative, libertarian, and dissenting professors.

Indeed, the lack of political and intellectual diversity may be turning some donors and even applicants from higher education. With failing revenue and applications, universities are starting to re-embrace commitments to neutrality on political issues. Some, however, are doubling down on advocacy and orthodoxy. In an op-ed this week, Wesleyan University President Michael Roth called on universities to reject “institutional neutrality” and officially support Kamala Harris. Calling neutrality “a retreat,” Roth compared Trump’s election to the rise of the Nazis and insisted that schools should “give up the popular pastime of criticizing the woke and call out instead the overt racism.” He added, without a hint of self-awareness or irony, that “we should not be silenced because of fears of appearing partisan.”

In my book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I discuss the intolerance in higher education and surveys showing that many departments no longer have a single Republican as faculties replicate their own views and values. So not only are professors voting en mass for Harris, Roth would have the schools themselves work openly for her election. That ideological echo chamber is hardly an enticement for many who are facing rising high tuition costs with relatively little hope of being taught by faculty with opposing views. There are obviously many reasons why faculty may reject Trump specifically, but this poll also tracks more generally the self-identification and contributions of faculty. A Georgetown study recently found that only nine percent of law school professors identify as conservative at the top 50 law schools — almost identical to the percentage of Trump voters found in the new poll.

Notably, Roth acknowledged that the current lack of intellectual diversity in higher education had become so extreme that there might be a need for “an affirmative action program for conservatives.” However, he and others continue to saw feverishly on the branch upon which we all sit in higher education in calling for even greater political advocacy. There is little evidence that faculty members have any interest in changing this culture or creating greater diversity at schools. In places like North Carolina State University a study found that Democrats outnumbered Republicans 20 to 1.

Recently, I had a debate at Harvard Law School with Professor Randall Kennedy on whether Harvard protects free speech and intellectual diversity. This year, Harvard found itself in a familiar spot on the annual ranking of Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE): dead last among 251 universities and colleges. Harvard has long dismissed calls for greater free speech protections or intellectual diversity. It shows.

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University professors are not the only group with such an outsized bias. MSM editors and writers have it just as much. And Bezos will not solve that by withholding an endorsement. His hiring practices need to change. Or his paper is toast.

• Bezos Explains Why WaPo Dropped Presidential Endorsements (RT)

The Washington Post has abandoned its decades-long tradition of endorsing a US presidential candidate to earn back the trust of the American public, the newspaper’s owner, billionaire Jeff Bezos, has said. He explained his reasoning in an op-ed published by the Post on Monday after facing intense backlash from current and former staff. The newspaper has been endorsing candidates since 1976, but announced the suspension of the practice on Friday, prompting several editors to resign. The Post’s editorial board endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020. According to CNN, the Post’s staffers had drafted an endorsement of the Democratic candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris, which was ultimately not approved by the management. Bezos began his Monday’s op-ed by citing a recent Gallup poll, which found that nearly 70% of Americans have little or no trust in the media.

“Our profession is now the least trusted of all. Something we are doing is clearly not working,” the entrepreneur wrote, adding that “most people believe the media is biased.” “Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election,” he continued. “What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one.” The founder of Amazon and aerospace manufacturer Blue Origin admitted that the decision to drop endorsements so close to Election Day on November 5 was the result of “inadequate planning.” At the same time, he insisted that neither campaign had affected his decision-making, and that the move to abandon endorsements was not connected to last week’s meeting between Republican presidential candidate, former President Donald Trump, and Blue Origin top executives in Austin, Texas.

A total of 21 of the Post’s opinion columnists signed a statement, describing the non-endorsement as “a terrible mistake.” They argued that “this isn’t the right moment, when one candidate is advocating positions that directly threaten freedom of the press and the values of the Constitution.” Three of the newspaper’s 10-person editorial board have since stepped down. More than 200,000 people – or about 8% of the Post’s paid subscribers – had canceled their digital subscription by midday on Monday, according to NPR. The decision to end endorsements was criticized by many prominent journalists, including the Post’s former longtime executive editor Marty Baron.

Last month, Patrick Soon-Shiong, the owner of the Los Angeles Times, announced that the newspaper would also not be making presidential endorsements. The move faced similar backlash, with editorials editor Mariel Garza resigning in protest. Throughout his campaign, Trump has blasted “the lying media” for what he said was a long history of unfair coverage of him and his time in office. The Harris campaign and allies have similarly accused pro-Trump media outlets of amplifying “desinformation.”

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“The Trump ally is expected to hold a press conference on Tuesday afternoon in Manhattan, just hours after his release.”

• Steve Bannon To Be Released From Prison One Week Ahead Of Election (JTN)

Former President Donald Trump’s ally Steve Bannon will be released from prison on Tuesday, exactly one week ahead of the 2024 presidential election. Bannon was sentenced to four months in prison at a federal facility in Danbury, Connecticut, in 2022 after he was convicted by a jury on two Contempt of Congress charges for not complying with a congressional subpoena. A judge had allowed Bannon, who was a first-time offender, to delay his sentence while he appealed the convictions but was eventually ordered to report to prison in July. The Trump ally is expected to hold a press conference on Tuesday afternoon in Manhattan, just hours after his release.

Sam Mangel, Bannon’s prison consultant, told ABC News on Monday that Bannon taught U.S. history and government to other inmates while he was behind bars, and that he was respected by other inmates. “I’m sure he’s quite glad to put it behind him and move on with his life,” Mangel said. “From what I’m told, he feels he’s got a lot left to accomplish now.” Although Bannon will be released from the Connecticut prison, he still faces criminal charges related to an alleged scheme to defraud donors over the construction of a border wall on the United States southern border. That trial is scheduled for December, and he has pleaded not guilty to all charges, including conspiracy, fraud, and money laundering.

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“..the US military is there to use lethal force to suppress those who object. If Trump’s win is too lopsided to be subject to theft, there can be a cybersecurity attack that prevents a vote count..”

• How America Was Destroyed (Paul Craig Roberts)

Those who control the Democrat Party are concerned about Kamala’s election chances. Little wonder. She represents the most anti-American, anti-Constitution, anti-white, anti-peace regime in US history. Top Democrats are concerned that Trump will not only take the swing states, despite the multiple theft mechanisms Democrats have in place, but also some blue states. Polls are revealing that a majority of men of color see Trump as a leader of America and Kamala as a destroyer of America. Those who control the Democrat party, most certainly not the people, are also disturbed by reports of the heavy early voting by Trump supporters. Trump encouraged early voting, because in 2020 Democrats managed to prevent many Trump supporters from voting on election day.

The downside to early voting by Trump supporters is it gives Democrats an idea how many votes they have to steal in order to “win.” It is a no-win situation for Trump supporters. If you wait until election day, voting machine failure, closed precincts, and other excuses can be used to keep you from voting. But if you vote early, you signal to the Democrats how many votes they have to steal. They are well set up to steal them. The Democrats in two swing states have already said that it will be days before they will have the vote count. These days are the time they need to produce the fraud that wins for them. A Democrat and a free election are mutually exclusionary. Arizona officials, for example, say it will take 2 weeks to tabulate the vote count. The Democrats in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin say they are unable to declare election results for several days after the election.

Until 2020–the Big Steal–the US has not had a problem of producing a vote count on time. Why do Americans accept the election theft implied by a delayed vote count with ballot boxes coming in by the truck loads long after voting is closed? On October 14, I reported on this website that the Biden regime had issued one month before the presidential election a military directive 5240.01. The directive says the US military can be used to come to the aid of civilian police to quell domestic disturbance and can use lethal force against US citizens. I provided a link to the directive. Fourteen days later I have seen no mention of this directive in the presstitute media.

Now ask yourself where the authority comes from for an executive branch cabinet department to overturn an act of Congress. Where did the Biden regime Department of Defense get the authority to overturn American tradition and the Posse Comitatus Act? That there has been no protest against this illegal and unconstitutional Defense Department directive indicates how close the US is to a tyranny. As we learned from the hoax “Jan 6 Insurrection,” it is a simple matter for those in authority to declare “insurrections.” They can do it again. It has now been admitted that 200 federal agents were at work on January 6 trying to orchestrate an insurrection. Next time there will be 2,000. As the Democrats are in power, they can create an “insurrection” prior to the vote count.

[..] So, some of the swing states have said that election results will not be timely reported. When the results are misreported, the US military is there to use lethal force to suppress those who object. If Trump’s win is too lopsided to be subject to theft, there can be a cybersecurity attack that prevents a vote count. Putin and Trump can be blamed for an insurrection orchestrated by the FBI, and the Democrats will be declared by the American whore media as the winner. This sounds far-fetched, but it isn’t.

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“Israel could not gain overflight permissions from Turkey, Iraq or any of the Gulf Cooperation Council states (Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman). Sean Matthews at Middle East Eye points out that as a result, the Israelis would have had to fly down the Red Sea, go west across the Gulf of Aden, and approach Iran from the Arabian Sea. It is a long way around.”

• The Enormous Constraints Faced By Netanyahu (Juan Cole)

The limited strikes on Iran carried out by Israeli fighter-jets early on Saturday morning Tehran time above all demonstrated the constraints under which even this extremist Israeli government has to operate. The bombings are said to have been limited to military targets, including missile manufacturing facilities.The first constraint Israel faced was logistical. The Netanyahu government could not have its fighter jets fly straight to Iran, which would have allowed a more extensive set of attacks. Israel could not gain overflight permissions from Turkey, Iraq or any of the Gulf Cooperation Council states (Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman). Sean Matthews at Middle East Eye points out that as a result, the Israelis would have had to fly down the Red Sea, go west across the Gulf of Aden, and approach Iran from the Arabian Sea. It is a long way around. They would have had to bring along large hulking refueling planes. This long, clumsy flight path limited what the Israelis could accomplish.

Extremist Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had earlier not ruled out hitting Iran’s nuclear facilities or its oil fields. Iran, however, essentially held the GCC countries hostage, warning that if US-backed Israel hit Iranian oil fields, Tehran would retaliate against US-backed Arab oil monarchies in the Gulf such as Saudi Arabia. The Biden administration is trying to woo those countries into recognizing Israel, and having a berserker Israeli government draw them into hostilities with Iran would instead make these Arab countries flee both the US and the possible Israeli embrace. For some diplomatic purposes, as with detente with Iran, Saudi Arabia has already gone to China instead. According to Middle East Eye, Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, had announced Tuesday that Iran had been promised by the Gulf Arabs that they would not allow their air space or soil to be used for Israeli attacks on Iran. At the same time, Joe Biden pressured Israel not to attack Iranian nuclear facilities or oil fields.

I view Netanyahu as an adventurer who has been attempting to widen the war so as to force the Biden administration to support him. Although Iran backs Hamas, the CIA assessed that the ayatollahs had no idea Hamas was planning to carry out the October 7 attacks, and, indeed, that the Iranian leadership had declined to support Hamas during the past year precisely because they were furious that Yahya Sinwar had tried to drag them into a war without so much as consulting them. Iran also put pressure on Hezbollah not to provoke a war with Israel. That is, though Iran certainly supports anti-Israel guerrilla groups in the region and enjoys harassing the Israelis through them and their rockets and drones, it doesn’t appear to have acted aggressively given the ferocity of Netanyahu’s genocide in Gaza.

Netanyahu struck the Iranian embassy in Damascus last spring in an obvious attempt to bring Iran into the war, and Iran replied with a missile barrage that the US shot down. Then this summer Netanyahu assassinated Ismail Haniyeh, the civilian head of the Hamas Party politburo (which is not the same as the al-Qassam Brigades paramilitary). The assassination was carried out in Tehran, in a clear attempt to get Iran’s goat. Likewise, Netanyahu’s creepy pager booby trap attack on Hezbollah personnel (and some Iranians, such as the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon) and his assassination of Hassan Nasrallah in September were in part aimed at humiliating Iran. Iran’s October 1 missile barrage at Israel was mostly shot down by the US, but some missiles got through and one hit an Israeli military base. This attack was revenge for the killings of Haniyeh and Nasrallah.

Israel’s riposte was so limited that it might well not elicit any response from Iran, drawing a line under this phase of the Israel-Iran conflict. But Netanyahu was forced into a limited response by the Arab Gulf states (two of which –Bahrain and the Emirates– recognize Israel) and by the Biden administration. The refusal of overflight permissions by the GCC states also limited what Israel could accomplished with its F-35s. I view Iran’s missile program as largely defensive. They have used it against Israel twice this year, and both came in response to Israeli provocations (provocations that I believe to be deliberate on Netanyahu’s part). Israel has made the point that its jets can now reach Iran with extensive refueling. Iran has made the point that a swarm of missile attacks can penetrate Israel’s missile defenses and hit an Israeli military base.

Each side is seeking some form of deterrence against the other, a deterrence that has broken down this year because of Israel’s aggression in Gaza and Lebanon and its anti-missile defenses. I think Iran will be satisfied if it feels that a restoration of deterrence has been achieved. I don’t think Netanyahu is defending; I think he is attacking and attempting to expand his influence in the region. For that reason, it will be difficult to reestablish deterrence between the two countries. For the moment, however, all-out war seems to have been averted.

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“..BRICS China crisscrossing Eurasia from east to west while BRICS Russia/Iran/India crisscross it from north to south..”

• BRICS Make History – Can They Keep the Momentum? (Pepe Escobar)

The not so simple twists of fate always allow certain cities to make their mark in History in ineffable ways. Yalta. Bretton Woods. Bandung – a 1955 de-colonization staple. And now Kazan. The BRICS summit in Kazan, capital of Tatarstan, under the Russian presidency was historic in more ways than one – followed with riveting attention by the whole Global Majority and with perplexity by a great deal of the declining Western order. It did not change the world – not yet. But Kazan should be seen as the departing station of a high-speed train journey towards the emerging multi-nodal new order. The metaphor was also spatial: the pavilions at the Kazan Expo center “station” holding the summit simultaneously connected to the airport and to the aero-express train to the city. The rippling effects of BRICS 2024 in Kazan will be perceived for weeks, months and years ahead. Let’s start with the breakthroughs.

The Kazan Manifesto
1.The Kazan Declaration. That is no less than a detailed diplomatic manifesto. Yet because BRICS is not a revolutionary agent – as its members do not share an ideology – arguably the next best strategy is to propose real reform, from the UN Agenda 2030 to the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO, the WHO and the G20 (whose summit is next month in Rio). The kernel of the Kazan Declaration – which had been debated for months – is to move in practice towards in-depth institutional changes and to reject Hegemony. The Declaration will be presented to the UN Security Council. There’s no doubt the Hegemon will reject it. This paragraph sums up the reform drive: “We condemn the attempts to subject development to discriminatory politically motivated practices, including but not limited to unilateral coercive measures that are incompatible with the 5 principles of the UN Charter, explicit or implied political conditionality of development assistance, activities, aiming at compromising the multiplicity of international development assistance providers.”

2. The BRICS Outreach session. That was Bandung 1955 on macro-steroids: a microcosm of how the new, really de-colonized, non-unilateral world is being born. President Putin opened and handed the floor to the leaders and heads of delegations of other 35 nations, most at the highest level, including Palestine, plus the UN Secretary General. Quite a few speeches were nothing short of epic. The session lasted 3h25. It will be circulating all across the Global Majority for years. The session tied up with the announcement of the new 13 BRICS partners: Algeria, Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Turkiye, Uganda, Uzbekistan, Vietnam. A strategic tour de force including 4 Southeast Asian powerhouses; the top two Central Asian “stans”; 3 Africans; 2 Latin Americans, and NATO member Turkiye.

3. The Russian BRICS presidency itself. Arguably no other nation would have been able to pull off such a complex and impeccably organized summit, held after over 200 BRICS-related meetings throughout the year across Russia conducted by unnamed sherpas, members of working groups and the BRICs Business Council. Security was massive – for obvious reasons, considering the odds of a false flag/terrorist attack.

4. Connectivity corridors. That is the main geoeconomic theme of Eurasia integration, and Afro-Eurasia integration as well. Putin explicitly named, more than once, the new growth drivers of the near future: Southeast Asia and Africa. Both happen to be key partners of several high-profile Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects. Additionally, Putin named the top two connectivity corridors of the future: the Northern Sea Route – which the Chinese describe as the Arctic Silk Road – and the International North-South Transportation Corridor (INSTC), where the three drivers are BRICS members Russia, Iran and India. So that translates as BRICS China crisscrossing Eurasia from east to west while BRICS Russia/Iran/India crisscross it from north to south, with ramifications in all latitudes. And with all the energy add-ons, with Iran positioning itself as a crucial energy hub, opening the finally feasible possibility of building the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) pipeline, one of the unfinished sagas of what I described in the early 2000s as Pipelineistan.

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“..because of his “attitudes towards Ukraine.”

• Slovak PM Fico Warns Of Continued Attempts On His Life (RT)

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, who survived an assassination attempt in May, has revealed that he faced a potential second attempt on his life, due to his stance on the Ukraine conflict. Fico was shot at close range by an activist who opposed the PM’s views on relations with Kiev. An armed man was detained at an event commemorating a World War II battle in eastern Slovakia in early October, the prime minister revealed in an interview to Bratislava-based internet outlet Standard on Sunday. Fico said the man “hates” him because of his “attitudes towards Ukraine.” According to the prime minister, “a fully loaded weapon” was found on the suspect when he passed through a metal detector. The event in question was held on October 6 to mark the 80th anniversary of the Battle of the Dukla Pass between German and Soviet forces on the border with Poland. The celebrations were attended by Fico, Slovak President Peter Pellegrini, and members of the government and parliament.

Fico has been an outspoken critic of the EU’s policy of providing lethal aid to Ukraine in its fight with Russia, calling instead for a diplomatic solution to the conflict. In May, Fico was shot four times at close range by a man who, according to Slovakia’s Special Criminal Court, was largely motivated by the decision by the prime minister and his government not to send arms to Ukraine. “I was lucky,” Fico told Standard, commenting on the shooting. He went on to describe the alleged shooter, Juraj Cintula, as a political activist who had attended Fico’s public meetings while “probably” planning the attack. Following the shooting, Fico argued that the assassination attempt emanated from foreign-backed politicians who refuse to accept his government’s policies that prioritize Slovakia’s interests over the agendas of major Western powers.

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“Throughout its almost 90-year history, the carmaker has never closed a plant in its home country..”

• Volkswagen Planning Mass Layoffs – Workers’ Council Chief (RT)

Volkswagen is looking to significantly reduce its workforce in Germany and shut down several factories in the country, amid a major overhaul aimed at lowering costs and increasing return on sales, the head of the carmaker’s Works Council has announced. Daniela Cavallo explained to employees in Wolfsburg on Monday that Volkswagen management is “absolutely serious” about the plans and that the move is “not saber-rattling in the collective bargaining round,” Reuters reported. Throughout its almost 90-year history, the carmaker has never closed a plant in its home country. The last time it shut down any of its facilities was in 1988 in the US. “It is a firm intention to let the locations’ regions bleed dry and the clear intention to send tens of thousands of Volkswagen employees into mass unemployment,” Cavallo said.

Her comments come as the automotive giant has been negotiating for several weeks with unions over plans to overhaul its business in order to remain competitive in light of weaker demand from China and Europe. She did not specify which of the ten Volkswagen plants operating in Germany would be shut down or exactly how many of its roughly 300,000 workers in the country would be laid off, but noted that all remaining facilities would be affected by the changes and that “none of them are safe.” Cavallo also stated that Volkswagen management is demanding a 10% pay cut and no pay raises for the next two years. Cavallo stressed, however, that the German government must urgently come up with a plan to ensure that the country’s economy does not “go down the drain.”

She noted that Volkswagen and other European companies are in agreement as to the nature of the problems they are facing, such as slower-than-expected electric transition as well as fierce competition from Chinese automotive brands entering Europe. “We are not far apart when it comes to analyzing the problems. But we are miles apart on the answers to them,” Cavallo said. Earlier this month, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper reported that the German economy is expected to contract for a second year in a row as it struggles to keep up with soaring energy costs after cutting itself off from Russian gas. Over the past year, the German government has noted a 5.3% drop in the country’s industrial output as orders for domestic-made goods have also plummeted. Experts at the Berlin-based Forum for a New Economy have warned that Germany’s failures are expected to turn the 2020s into a “lost decade” for the country as it suffers “the worst economic downturn since World War II.”

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Oxi

 

 

Makary

 

 

RFK
https://twitter.com/i/status/1850974386528166152

 

 

Crow
https://twitter.com/i/status/1850822295465369739

 

 

Peggy and Molly

 

 

Squid

 

 

Good old days

 

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in wartime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle October 4 2024

Oct 042024
 
 October 4, 2024  Posted by at 8:53 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  73 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Juan-Les-Pins 1920

 

• Will Trump Make It to Election? (Jim Rickards)
• Trump ‘Resorted To Crimes’ To Overturn 2020 Election: Jack Smith (BBC)
• Trump’s Opportunity for a Knockout (RCW)
• CISA Chief Says Foreign Interference Won’t Much Alter US Election Results (ET)
• Court Refuses to Throw Out Andrew Weissmann Defamation Lawsuit (Turley)
• Biden-Harris’ Mysterious Nationwide Migrant Network (ZH)
• 19 GOP AGs Launch Probe Into ActBlue Over Money Laundering Allegations (AmG)
• US Port Workers Agree To End Strike After Accepting 62% Wage Increase (ZH)
• Israel Planning Major Attack on Iran (Antiwar)
• Lebanon: Nasrallah Agreed To Temporary Ceasefire Just Before Assassination (ZH)
• ‘Iron Dome Proved to Be a Bust’: Larry Johnson (Sp.)
• ‘Who Do You Want to Win?’ (Patrick Lawrence)
• Musk Slams US Democrats Over Freedom Of Speech (RT)
• EU Car Industry Faces ‘Horror Fall’ – Bild (RT)
• Another Right-Wing Election Winner Is Sidelined in the EU (Marsden)
• Telegram Shares User Details With Governments – Durov (RT)

 

 

 

 

Trump signs
https://twitter.com/i/status/1841535009100107822

 

 

Butler
https://twitter.com/i/status/1841645637504217376

 

 

Sondland

 

 

Latest death toll: 215. Still hundreds missing.

 

 

Dore

 

 

JD Vance

 

 

Emhoff

 

 

Trump tariffs

 

 

 

 

“We only have to be lucky once, you will have to be lucky always.” In other words, the assassination attempts will keep coming.”

• Will Trump Make It to Election? (Jim Rickards)

MSNBC and CNN and the rest of corporate media put out these lies about Trump as a form of propaganda. The lies are aimed at a target audience of Trump-haters and progressive lightweights. Routh was the target audience. Corporate media are too cowardly to take direct action against Trump. But by putting out propaganda, they hope to trigger those who are prone to such action. The triggering propaganda was not limited to the media. Kamala Harris said of Trump, “Does one of us have to come out alive? Ha, ha, ha, ha!” Joe Biden said, “It’s time to put Trump in a bull’s-eye.” Tim Walz’s wife, Gwen Walz, said, “Buh-bye, Donald Trump.” Democratic member of Congress Dan Goldman said about Trump, “He is destructive to our democracy and… he has to be eliminated.” I could offer 100 similar quotes but you get the idea. The media class and the political class are calling for Trump to be killed. It’s just a matter of triggering someone to do it. In Routh’s case, he was completely triggered.

Then he picked up his rifle. Just as the USSS are responsible for letting these assassinations happen, corporate media and many Democrats are responsible for triggering unstable individuals to conduct the assassination attempts. It’s not a stretch to say the USSS, corporate media and many Democrats are all out to kill Trump. They simply rely on mentally ill zealots to do their wet work. Routh told the court on Monday, Sept. 16, that he had no material financial assets and owned no property. The court has appointed a public defender to represent Routh. If he has no assets, how was Routh able to afford his move to Hawaii? His travels to Ukraine? How did he finance his recruiting effort while in Ukraine? Where did he get the rifle? How could he afford to travel to Florida to carry out the assassination plan? It seems clear that Routh has a hidden source of financial support. The CIA typically deals in cash while running covert operations. Was Routh a CIA asset turned loose on a rogue mission with a predictable outcome?

I worked for the CIA for 10 years in various capacities, including special operations. Ukraine has been a CIA outpost since 1991 after the fall of the Soviet Union and the creation of the Russian Federation. Ukraine is riddled with CIA operatives, bioweapons labs and forward-deployed assets intended to destabilize Russia. It’s impossible that a high-profile American like Routh could run around Ukraine recruiting mercenaries without coming to the attention of the CIA and coming in direct contact with CIA assets. This likely scenario strongly suggests that Routh may have been financed and otherwise assisted by the CIA to carry out his assassination plan. The fact that Routh was using a Russian-designed rifle (which would have been plentiful in Ukraine as Cold War surplus) is another tell. The parallels with Lee Harvey Oswald, who was a U.S. defector to the Soviet Union and who later returned to the U.S. and had contacts with anti-Castro Cubans working for the CIA, are too obvious to ignore.

As for Trump’s so-called protection, why was the golf course not secure? How did Routh set up a sniper’s nest on the sixth hole of the course without being detected until minutes before Trump came into sight? Routh stayed in his sniper’s nest for over 12 hours before he was confronted. Why was that area not swept several times in the period? How did Routh even know Trump would be playing golf there that day without a leak from Trump’s security detail? These and many other questions need to be answered quickly before the cover-up goes much further. The FBI official in charge of the Florida assassination attempt investigation is Jeffrey Veltri, a notorious Trump-hater who was ordered by the FBI director to scrub his social media accounts of anti-Trump posts. One bit of good news is that Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida will be conducting his own state-level investigation with full subpoena power and expert forensics.

The corporate media, Democrat politicians, the USSS and other branches of the deep state are largely to blame for these two assassination attempts because of their constantly repeated lies about Trump’s character, political platform and ostensible “threat to democracy.” Calling Trump “Hitler” (as the media continually do) offers deranged individuals like Routh a license to kill. In Routh’s case he apparently took up the challenge and almost succeeded. Saying the assassination attempt failed is not a source of comfort. One is reminded of the IRA’s near assassination of Margaret Thatcher in the Brighton Grand Hotel bombing in 1984. After the bombing, the IRA boasted to Thatcher: “We only have to be lucky once, you will have to be lucky always.” In other words, the assassination attempts will keep coming.

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Guess they will swear this is not election interference… This is one month before the election. DOJ always said 60 days minimum. 165 pages where 45 would be “normal”.

Jack Smith focuses on instances where he thinks he can plausibly claim Trump was not the president, but a private person. Because that’s the “niche” the Supreme Court left open.

Zero Hedge has a longer version on the topic. I stuck with BBC.

• Trump ‘Resorted To Crimes’ To Overturn 2020 Election: Jack Smith (BBC)

Donald Trump “resorted to crimes” while trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat, and should not escape charges, prosecutors say. A new court filing challenges Trump’s claim that he should avoid a trial thanks to a recent landmark US Supreme Court ruling. This said American presidents should be immune from prosecution when acting in an “official” capacity. Trump was president when the alleged offences were committed – but prosecutors say he was acting in a “private” capacity, not an official one. In response, Trump has repeated false claims that the 2020 vote was “rigged” and suggested the timing of the filing’s release was designed to hurt his 2024 campaign. In an interview with NewsNation, he also criticised Special Counsel Jack Smith, the lead prosecutor in the election interference probe who submitted the filing. US District Judge Tanya Chutkan released the document – filed by Mr Smith last week – with redactions on Wednesday.

This is one of four criminal cases Trump has faced since being voted out in 2020 – another of which led to a historic conviction in New York. He is accused of seeking to illegally block the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election, but denies wrongdoing. The new 165-page document presents the clearest view yet of how Mr Smith’s team would pursue their case, having tweaked the wording of their charges after the Supreme Court’s intervention. It gives details of Trump’s alleged scheme, including his actions when his supporters rioted at the US Capitol building on 6 January 2021. It also outlines the efforts of Mike Pence, the vice-president at the time, to talk him down. The issue remains prominent in US politics almost four years later, ahead of the 2024 election in November, which will be contested by Trump and Kamala Harris. It came up in Tuesday’s vice-presidential debate, during which JD Vance refused to answer whether Trump, his running mate for 2024, lost in 2020.

The court filing may represent Mr Smith’s last chance to set out his case against Trump. The case has been frequently delayed since charges were filed by the Department of Justice (DoJ) more than a year ago. Trump will not face trial before November’s election – and he may seek to have the case dropped if he wins. Trump’s lawyers fought to keep the latest filing sealed. Campaign spokesman Steven Cheung has called it “falsehood-ridden” and “unconstitutional”. In the newly-released document, Mr Smith and his team try to navigate the summer Supreme Court ruling – which dented their case – by narrowing their scope. The Supreme Court ruling did not apply immunity to unofficial acts. The prosecutors argue that although Trump was still in office when attempting to overturn the 2020 vote, his attempts related to his campaign and his life as a private citizen. They call it a “private criminal effort”.

The court should therefore “determine that the defendant must stand trial for his private crimes as he would any other citizen,” the filing says. The filing lays out several instances in which Pence, expressed doubt about his boss’s voter fraud claims and tried to persuade him to accept he lost the election. In the court document, prosecutors say Trump was not upset when he learned his vice-president had been rushed to a secure location as rioters stormed the Capitol on 6 January 2021. “So what?” he allegedly said, when informed of the scenes. Pence would later go public about his falling out with Trump in the wake of the storming of Congress, when some rioters shouted “hang Mike Pence” because the vice-president refused to obstruct the certification of election results.

The filing also alleges that Trump always planned to declare victory no matter the result, and laid the groundwork for this long before election day. It also accuses him of knowingly spreading false claims about the vote that he himself deemed “crazy”. Mr Smith also provides several new details about the Trump campaign’s alleged role in sowing chaos in battleground states, where a large number of mail-in ballots were being counted in 2020 because of the Covid-19 pandemic. In the Democratic stronghold of Detroit, Michigan, when a large batch of ballots seemed to be in favour of Biden, a Trump campaign operative allegedly told his colleague to “find a reason” that something was wrong with the ballots to give him “options to file litigation”.

The filing also claims that Trump and his allies, including lawyer Rudy Giuliani, sought to “exploit the violence and chaos at the Capitol” on 6 January 2021 to delay the election certification. They allegedly did this by calling senators and leaving voicemails that asked them to object to the state electors. Trump said on Wednesday that the case would end with his “complete victory”. A trial date has not been set.

Trump lawsuit
https://twitter.com/i/status/1841569926844477847

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From the home of Tim Walz.

• Trump’s Opportunity for a Knockout (RCW)

In a very significant development — I am almost prepared to say the most significant development in the current presidential contest — it has recently been revealed that Brian D. Lozenski, an associate professor of urban and multicultural education at Macalester College and a leader in the development of Minnesota’s proposed ethnic studies curriculum, explicitly called for the “overthrow of the United States.” This goal has demonstrably shaped Minnesota’s ethnic studies standards, according to which students are taught as early as kindergarten that America is evil. The video recording of Lozenski was made two years ago but was taken down the day after it was spotted by Stanley Kurtz, senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. This finding is pertinent to the national electorate because Lozenski is one of many anti-American ideologues contributing the “liberated” ingredient to Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz’s new ethnic studies requirements for public education in Minnesota.

These requirements are decisively shaped by Critical Race Theory (CRT), of which ethnic studies is a variant. As Kurtz aptly puts it, “…Essentially, ethnic studies is a kind of anti-civics in which students are taught to reject and replace America’s system of government.” CRT, of course, is part of the ideology Harris-Walz bring with them from the catastrophes of California and Minnesota straight to every schoolhouse in America. Kurtz has provided a good overview of Walz’s education policies and the Lozenski connection. As Kurtz writes: In a 2020 piece, “The Black Radical Tradition Can Help Us Imagine a More Just World,” Lozenski touts the work of Cedric Robinson and Robin D. G. Kelley — leading thinkers of the radical ethnic-studies movement — as the answer to Minnesota’s education woes. To Lozenski, the George Floyd “uprising” of 2020 presages the “inevitable death” of the current “social order.”

Lozenski oozes contempt for “the egoistic pursuits of U.S. society and its desperate cling to individualism.” Educationally, he adds, transforming the social order requires reforms like agitation for defunding the police and an end to all standardized testing. Shockingly, other than the Center of the American Experiment and Kurtz, this topic has been lightly covered, though the Trump campaign is aware of it. We shall probably know in the upcoming Vance/Walz debate whether the Trump campaign will highlight this issue. If it doesn’t, others must. There is a real danger that this issue will vanish down the memory hole. To make as explicit an assertion as did Lozenski is extremely rare; indeed, I have never seen or heard such an admission. The destructive intent of ethnic studies or CRT has been very apparent and much commented upon for many years by the conservative commentariat.

But Lozenski’s open, cavalier articulation makes the destructive nature of ethnic studies virtually impossible to deny. Defenders of ethnic studies may claim that Lozenski is an outlier, but as he is the leading figure in Minnesota’s ethnic studies movement and the prime mover of Minnesota’s ethnic studies initiative, it will not be possible to sustain such an denial. Although Democrats might try to stonewall until the election, the Republicans and the conservative media must not allow it. Lozenski not only admitted the goal of ethnic studies is American destruction, but also chastised his many fellow travelers for not revealing their purpose. Again, this is no surprise to those who have been paying even the slightest attention.

Lozenski is tethered to Governor Walz. Walz’s Education Department appointed Lozenski to the ethnic studies “implementation framework” committee and ethnic studies is a critical initiative for Walz. In 2021 he introduced what he called his “Due North” education plan, which featured funding for a major ethnic-studies initiative. Speaking about the initiative during his State of the State address, he said: This plan would tackle the racial and geographic opportunity gap by dramatically reforming school financing, expanding access to rigorous coursework, and ensuring our curriculum and teacher workforce better reflect our increasingly diverse student body.

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But but… Hillary, Mueller, Weismann, Adam Schiff!

In reality, it’s not FOREIGN interference that’s the problem.

• CISA Chief Says Foreign Interference Won’t Much Alter US Election Results (ET)

Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), said that America’s election systems are so secure that foreign adversaries will be unable to manipulate the outcome of the 2024 presidential election in a “material” way. Easterly made the remarks in an Oct. 2 interview with The Associated Press, in which she said that foreign powers are actively seeking to influence U.S. voters and sow discord but that they lack the ability to interfere with core election infrastructure such as vote casting and ballot counting. “Malicious actors, even if they tried, could not have an impact at scale such that there would be a material effect on the outcome of the election,” Easterly told the outlet. U.S. intelligence agencies continue to raise concerns about disinformation and influence operations by foreign powers ahead of the Nov. 5 election.

A recent update from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) warned that countries such as Russia, Iran, and China are ramping up the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to shape public opinion in the United States. According to the ODNI report, AI has accelerated foreign influence operations. Russia’s efforts include the use of AI to produce misleading election-related content, from fake audio and videos to fabricated narratives. Iran has focused on generating fake news articles and social media posts to stoke divisions among U.S. voters. China’s efforts have been more indirect, aiming to shape global perceptions of its own policies while amplifying U.S. domestic issues such as illegal immigration and drug policy. Easterly acknowledged these attempts to influence public opinion in the United States, noting that China is “very interested” in swaying the 2024 election. However, she stressed that no cyber activities targeting America’s voting systems had been detected thus far.

“We have not seen specific cyber activity designed to interfere with actual election infrastructure or processes,” Easterly said. Several surveys have pointed to concerns over the integrity of U.S. elections, including doubts about their honesty and openness and the potential impacts of AI or foreign interference. One survey, carried out by the Public Affairs Council found that just 37 percent of Americans believe the 2024 election will be “honest and open.” Another survey from the University of South Florida found that a majority of U.S. voters think the federal government hasn’t done enough to deter foreign actors from interfering with this year’s presidential election. And a survey published in May by the Imagining the Digital Future Center at Elon University found that 78 percent of Americans think the upcoming election will be influenced by “abuses” related to AI-generated content that spreads on social media.

“Many aren’t sure they can sort through the garbage they know will be polluting campaign-related content,” Lee Rainie, director of the Digital Future Center, said in a statement. In March, The Epoch Times reported on the rising influence of political memes on election discourse. At the time, Pamela Rutledge, director of the Media Psychology Research Center, told The Epoch Times that deep fakes—which are realistic images, videos, and audio typically created by generative AI software—can and do effectively fool people Rutledge said that even if the content is obviously fake or of low quality, the messages can still be persuasive if they confirm people’s political biases.

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Andrew Weissmann effectively ran the Mueller investigation. Mueller was just a figurehead.

• Court Refuses to Throw Out Andrew Weissmann Defamation Lawsuit (Turley)

We previously discussed the defamation case against NYU Law Professor and MSNBC legal analyst Andrew Weissmann. He is being sued by lawyer Stefan Passantino after Weissmann said that he coached former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson to “lie” to Congress. At the time, I wrote that “it is hard to see how Weissmann can avoid a trial.” U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan apparently agrees. She just rejected Weissmann’s motion to dismiss the case. The controversial former aide to Special Counsel Robert Mueller (and NYU law professor) is being sued after declaring that attorney Stefan Passantino (who represented Hutchinson before Congress) told her to lie. Weissmann’s controversial commentary was not a surprise to many critics.

Many of us questioned Mueller hiring Weissmann given his reputation for stretching legal authority and perceived political bias. Weissmann reportedly congratulated acting Attorney General Sally Yates after she ordered the Justice Department not to assist President Donald Trump on his immigration ban. The Supreme Court would ultimately affirm Trump’s underlying authority, but Yates refused to allow the Justice Department to assist a sitting president in defending that authority. Weissmann gushed in an email to her, writing “I am so proud. And in awe. Thank you so much.” As noted earlier, Weissmann seemed to respond to those criticisms by aggressively proving them true. Weissmann has only become more controversial as an MSNBC analyst. He called on Justice Department officials to refuse to assist in the investigation of abuses in the Russian collusion investigation. While opposing investigations involving Democrats, he has seemingly supported every possible charge against Trump or his associates.

What Weissmann often lacked in precedent, he made up for in hyperbole. That signature is at the heart of the current lawsuit. On September 13, 2023, Weissmann was referring to Judy Hunt and noted on Twitter (now X) that “Hunt also is Cassidy Hutchinson’s good lawyer. (Not the one who coached her to lie).” In making this claim against Passantino, Weissmann actually triggered the “per se” defamation standard twice. These are categories that have been treated as defamatory per se. The allegation against Passantino would not only constitute criminal conduct but also unethical professional conduct. Passantino denounces the statement as an “insidious lie” and “smear.” AliKahn noted that “At her fifth deposition, Ms. Hutchinson discussed a line of questioning from her first deposition about the January 6 incident in the Presidential limousine,” AliKhan wrote.

“She explained that, during a break after facing repeated questions on the topic, she had told Mr. Passantino in private, ‘I’m f*****. I just lied.’ Mr. Passantino responded, ‘You didn’t lie. . . . They don’t know what you know, Cassidy. They don’t know that you can recall some of these things. So you [sic] saying ‘I don’t recall’ is an entirely acceptable response to this.’” Hutchinson repeatedly confirmed that Passantino “never told me to lie,” “didn’t tell me to lie,” and “He told me not to lie.” While Judge AliKhan on Monday tossed out the second count in the complaint as lacking foundation for the claim of financial harm, she refused to dismiss Passantino’s defamation claim and moved the case forward toward trial. That could prove embarrassing as Passantino’s team searches for evidence of malice in his emails and other communications.

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There’s a lot of money in illegals these days. “I don’t want to say it’s a gold rush, but business is very good.”

• Biden-Harris’ Mysterious Nationwide Migrant Network (ZH)

Large staffing companies that thrived during the Afghanistan and Iraq wars under the Bush-Obama years retooled their business models as the US involvement and war funding in the Middle East wound down. Now, these staffing firms seem to be profiting off the Biden-Harris administration’s open-border migrant invasion by providing essential services, such as private security, transportation, and many other services, to ensure the fed’s migrant network nationwide operates smoothly. These companies are likely awarded handsome federal contracts, paid for by the US taxpayer. Bussing and housing millions of illegal and legal aliens is big business for staffing companies and non-profits. Americans have to realize their tax dollars are paying for all of this while the migrants displace and replace blue-collar workers in small-town factories nationwide.

The folks in Springfield, Ohio, and Charleroi, Pennsylvania, know firsthand just how devastating globalist open border policies can be for them. Real America’s Voice host Ben Bergquam posted on X, “More breaking footage of the Democrats harboring illegals in Chicago. Now using unmarked brand new hotels like this Holiday Inn at [XXXXXXX] to disguise Kamala and Biden’s illegal invasion operations.” Bergquam’s video of the Holiday Inn filled-migrant hotel in the Chicago metro area is very intriguing. First, the security guards appear to be sourced from staffing firm GardaWorld.

Second, a person who seems to be another worker said the Holiday Inn is “federal property.” The focus should be on industrial-sized staffing companies that provide security and other services to keep the fed’s migrant network operational. But let’s take a step back and realize that some of these staffing companies could be part of the DC swamp that profited off the endless wars in the Middle East. In 2012, the head of GardaWorld told Reuters that Middle East conflicts had kept the staffing firm “busier than ever and has never been greater,” adding, “I don’t want to say it’s a gold rush, but business is very good.” Sticking with the staffing companies, just recently, Muckraker’s Anthony Rubin dropped a bombshell in a report titled “Finding The Feds’ Missing Children | CHILD TRAFFICKING IN AMERICA.” He provided intel that MVM, a private security contractor with ties to the CIA, NSA, FBI, and Homeland Security, was caught moving unaccompanied migrant children around the country.

[..] when the war funding dried up in the Middle East, like GardaWorld, MVM pivoted to catering to the federal government’s next big globalist idea: profiting off the migrant invasion by providing migrant solutions. Their website reveals their ‘Mission Solutions,’ which include “Transportation and care for vulnerable populations [migrants].” MVM has operated a migrant bus network nationwide. Even though we cited only two large staffing companies that profited off Middle East wars and pivoted to providing domestic migrant solutions to the Biden-Harris administration, smaller staffing companies are operating nationwide, providing transportation for migrants, and even some firms are providing housing solutions. Taxpayers must realize the feds are funneling their monies to support open borders and operate a complex network of transportation and housing for millions of migrants. Blue-collar workers across the country are waking up to the fact that the feds are perfectly okay with displacing and replacing them with low-cost migrants at factories across small town America.

CBP One

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James O’Keefe has been on top of this. “..millions of dollars in campaign donations to Act Blue that have been laundered through unwitting small donors..”

• 19 GOP AGs Launch Probe Into ActBlue Over Money Laundering Allegations (AmG)

A coalition of 19 Republican state attorneys general have launched a criminal investigation into the Democrat fundraising platform ActBlue over allegations of money laundering. As American Greatness reported in April, multiple independent investigative journalists, including O’Keefe Media Group (OMG) and Election Watch have uncovered what appears to be illegal activity involving millions of dollars in campaign donations to Act Blue that have been laundered through unwitting small donors. The process of breaking up large donations and submitting them under the names of small donors to cover up illegal contributions has been dubbed “smurfing.” Suspicions that ActBlue routinely engages in this type of illicit fundraising have dogged the outfit since at least Joe Biden’s presidential campaign in 2020.

The Committee on House Administration, chaired by Congressman Bryan Steil (R-Wisc.), launched an investigation into Act Blue in November of 2023 to look into reports that the fundraising giant was skirting campaign donation laws and allowing rampant fraud on the site. The committee widened its probe in August 2024. In a letter sent to top officials on the Federal Election Commission (FEC) on August 5, Steil urged them to “immediately initiate an emergency rulemaking to require political campaigns to verify the card verification value (‘CVV’) of donors who contribute online using a credit or debit card, and to prohibit political campaigns from accepting online contributions from a gift card or other prepaid credit cards.”

In September, Steil sent letters to five states, urging them to launch criminal investigations into ActBlue’s alleged illicit activities, citing three specific areas of concern:
– Donations significantly disproportionate to an individual’s net worth or previous giving history.
– Uncharacteristic donations from party-affiliated registered voters suddenly contributing to candidates of the opposing party.
– Unusually frequent donations from elderly individuals or first-time donors.

The number of GOP AGs involved in the effort has since swelled to 19. On Tuesday, the 19 Republican Attorney’s General sent a letter to ActBlue CEO and President Regina Wallace-Jones demanding information and explanations regarding the suspicious donations.

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“This is the first strike in 50 years—these people know how to get to yes,” Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said Thursday [..] “They just need to get to yes.”

• US Port Workers Agree To End Strike After Accepting 62% Wage Increase (ZH)

Late on Thursday, 45,000 striking dockworkers at US East and Gulf coast ports agreed to return to work after port operators sweetened their contract offer, ending a three-day strike that threatened to disrupt the American economy. The International Longshoremen’s Association and port operators, in a joint statement, said they had reached a tentative agreement on wages and union members would return to work. They said the agreement would extend the prior contract, which expired at the start of this week, through Jan. 15, 2025 while the two sides negotiate on other issues, including automation on the docks. The breakthrough came after port employers offered a 62% increase in wages over six years, the WSJ reported citing people familiar with the matter. The new offer, up from an earlier proposed raise of 50%, came after the White House privately and publicly pressed the large shipping lines and cargo terminal operators who employ the longshore workers to make a new offer to the union.

The agreement ends a strike that had closed container ports from Maine to Texas and threatened to disrupt everything from the supply of bananas in supermarkets to the flow of cars through America’s factories, and cost the US economy billions each day in lost commerce. The latest offer would raise the base hourly rate for ILA port workers to $63 from $39 over six years. One of the people said the offer is being made on the condition that dockworkers go back to work and agree to efficiency gains. The offer is less than the union demand for an increase of 77% over the term of the contract but a far larger increase than most major labor contracts, including a contract reached last year covering the separate union representing West Coast longshore workers. Many U.S. dockworkers currently earn more than a $100,000 a year, with baseline hourly wages boosted by work rules and overtime requirements.

The strike came about five weeks from a presidential election where both main candidates are wooing working-class union voters. Both Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump have voiced support for the workers, stressing that the carriers are mostly foreign-owned. Top White House aides have been in frequent contact with the employers, reiterating that Biden doesn’t plan to use his federal power to break the strike. “This is the first strike in 50 years—these people know how to get to yes,” Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said Thursday, speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One. “They just need to get to yes.” The walkout had shut down some of the country’s main gateways for imports of food, vehicles, heavy machinery, construction materials, chemicals, furniture, clothes and toys. Many manufacturers and big retailers, with their busy fall shopping season just starting to kick in, said they could withstand a short strike because they brought in products earlier than usual this year and diverted other cargoes to West Coast ports.

But executives said a walkout lasting a week or longer would push up shipping costs and might trigger product shortages. The International Longshoremen’s Association said it had agreed to extend the contract until Jan. 15 and work will resume. Container ports from Houston to Miami and up to Boston have been closed since the labor contract between the ILA and the US Maritime Alliance, which represents terminal operators and shipping lines, expired on Tuesday. Dozens of ships carrying containers and autos have anchored off the coast of major trade hubs including New York, South Carolina and Virgina over the past few days. It remains to be seen if other US labor union will also go on strike hoping to repeat the staggering wage gains that were just handed to the Longshoremen. If so, watch as the color drains out of Powell’s face as wage inflation hits double digits in the coming months.

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“..G7 leaders agreed to impose new sanctions on Iran, which will have little impact since Iran is already under so many.”

• Israel Planning Major Attack on Iran (Antiwar)

Israel is planning to launch a “significant retaliation” attack against Iran over the Iranian missile barrage that targeted Israel on Tuesday, which was a response to several Israeli escalations in the region. Israeli officials acknowledged to Axios that the situation could lead to a full-blown regional war, which would involve the US. According to the Axios report, Israel could target oil production facilities inside Iran or other strategic sites. Israeli officials say that if Iran hits back, then all options will be on the table, including strikes on Iran’s civilian nuclear facilities. “We have a big question mark about how the Iranians are going to respond to an attack, but we take into consideration the possibility that they would go all in, which will be a whole different ball game,” an Israeli official told Axios. Other options being considered are attacks on Iran’s air defenses or targeted assassinations. Israel has a history of killing people inside Iran, including the July 31 assassination of Hamas’s political chief, Ismail Haniyeh.

Israel would likely need US military support to launch significant strikes on Iranian territory, and the Israeli officials speaking to Axios say they are coordinating with the Biden administration. Israel wants more US support if it provokes another Iranian attack. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said Tuesday that the US would work with Israel to ensure Iran faces “severe consequences.” President Biden has also said he is working with Israel on a response but said Wednesday that he wouldn’t support strikes on Iran’s nuclear facility. “All seven of us agree that they have a right to respond, but they have to respond proportionally,” he said, referring to the Group of Seven nations. He said G7 leaders agreed to impose new sanctions on Iran, which will have little impact since Iran is already under so many.

Israel acknowledged on Wednesday that Iranian missiles made an impact on several military bases but claimed there was no significant damage. Israel is also claiming there were no major casualties, with only two Israelis suffering minor injuries. One Palestinian was killed in the Israeli-occupied West Bank when shrapnel from an intercepted missile hit him. Iran fired about 180 ballistic missiles at Israel in response to the Israeli assassination of Haniyeh in Tehran and the Israeli killing of Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah and Abbas Nilforoushan, an IRGC commander who was killed alongside Nasrallah.

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The US plays dumb: “..it was never communicated to us..” Not credible. It was their own proposal. Communication lines were open.

• Lebanon: Nasrallah Agreed To Temporary Ceasefire Just Before Assassination (ZH)

In hugely surprising remarks given on American television this week, Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib has stated that Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah issued his agreement to a US and French-proposed 21-day ceasefire with Israel just before Israel killed him by targeting a secretive meeting in south Beirut last Friday. Habib revealed the agreement in a PBS interview. He told PBS/CNN host Christiane Amanpour that “They told us that Mr. Netanyahu agreed on this, and so we also got the agreement of Hezbollah on that. And, you know what happened since then.” An incredulous-looking Amanpour asked: “are you saying that Hassan Nasrallah had agreed to a ceasefire just moments before he was assassinated?” “He agreed, he agreed–yes, yes. We agreed completely.”

The top Lebanese diplomat then followed with: “The Lebanese House Speaker, Mr Nabih Berri, consulted with Hezbollah and we informed the Americans and the French about the agreement. They told us that [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu also agreed to the statement issued by both presidents.” This is all in reference to a Sept.25th joint statement by the US, France, the European Union, Saudi Arabia and other nations urging an immediate 21-day ceasefire during which a more permanent diplomatic solution would be worked out. CNN writes of the interview: “White House senior adviser Amos Hochstein was then set to go to Lebanon to negotiate the ceasefire, Habib continued. “They told us that Mr. Netanyahu agreed on this and so we also got the agreement of Hezbollah on that and you know what happened since then,” the foreign minister added.”

If the Lebanese government account is true, this would have huge implications. However, no specific further evidence that Nasrallah agreed to ceasefire has yet emerged. Reuters’ top foreign correspondent, Idrees Ali, has called the revelation “Pretty stunning.” Further reporting from CNN could point to the accuracy of FM Habib’s statements: “A Western source familiar with the negotiations also said Hezbollah had agreed to the temporary truce shortly before the US released the proposal last week. The source didn’t say whether the decision had come directly from Nasrallah, but said that for the movement to agree, they would have needed his approval. A second source familiar with the talks agreed that the US was aware that Hezbollah was agreeing to the ceasefire.”

But on an official level, the White House is denying all of this. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller didn’t rule it out entirely, but said that the Hezbollah chief agreeing to a deal is “not something we have heard before. If true, [it] was never communicated to us.” “I can’t speak to whether he ever agreed to it and told somebody inside Lebanon. Obviously, that could be something that happened that we wouldn’t be aware of. I can tell you that, if that’s true, it was never communicated to us in any way shape or form,” Miller said in a Thursday press briefing. Critics of Israel have accused PM Netanyahu of deliberately sabotaging efforts at peace in his drive to decimate Hamas, Hezbollah, and ultimately to weaken archnemesis Iran – all while prolonging his power and rule at home.

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“Israel is not in a position to fight a multi-front war and it does not have the strategic depth to fight wars of attrition. And that’s exactly what it’s got itself into now..”

• ‘Iron Dome Proved to Be a Bust’: Larry Johnson (Sp.)

Iran launched a significant retaliatory attack against Israel late Tuesday night, ending months of speculation about how or whether the country would strike back after its provocative killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. The United States reportedly provided Iran with assurances after the attack against Haniyeh in July that Israel and the US would move constructively towards the establishment of a Palestinian state, ending Israel’s military aggression against its neighbors and Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, where over 42,000 have died according to figures reported by the territory’s health ministry. Tel Aviv’s deadly attack against Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon last week dashed hopes of a cessation of violence as Israel claims it is preparing for a broader invasion of Lebanon. “I’ve seen the videos and you can see the missiles continue to rain down and hit targets. Israel is imposing a news blackout,” former CIA analyst Larry Johnson said.

“They don’t want the knowledge out there about what happened. But Iran made sure that it was not going to hit and run the risk of killing hundreds or thousands of Israeli civilians.” “They were not going to act like the Israelis,” the analyst claimed. “They really consider themselves, if you will, more humane, more honorable, and by virtue of their action, I think they can make that case.” Johnson claimed Iran was forced to strike Israel after false assurances from the United States that Israel would cease attacks on its neighbors after its killing of Haniyeh. Iran previously launched a retaliatory attack on Israel in April after Tel Aviv’s bombing of the Iranian embassy in Damascus, Syria killed two Iranian generals. The codename Operation True Promise was announced for the strike. Iran’s Tuesday attack, dubbed Operation True Promise II, appears significantly more substantial than April’s strike in which the vast majority of Iranian missiles, rockets and drones were intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome.

Iran was reportedly able to successfully strike Israeli military targets Tuesday, including an Israeli air base where multiple US-provided F-35 aircraft were hit. Johnson claimed Israel’s attack against Nasrallah would’ve been launched from an F-35; the fighter jet would be key to any Israeli invasion of Lebanon. The commentator compared Israel’s Iron Dome to the US Patriot missile system, claiming the US is unable to replenish the defense system rapidly enough to allow Israel to fight a long war of attrition.
“Lockheed Martin… can make about one and a half, one and a quarter [missiles] a day,” said Johnson. “I think Israel’s in a similar situation… [Iran] put Israel on notice, ‘If you launch any further strikes against us in any retaliation, we’re going to hit you harder next time and with more lethality.’ So this right now has a chance to really get out of control.”

“I cannot rule out that Israel is going to try to launch some conventional weapons at Iran, but I think they’re going to be defeated,” Johnson claimed. “Israel may be tempted to try to use a nuclear device against an Iranian target,” he warned. “If that happens then we’re going to really be into another dimension, and this is going to get very, very serious. It’s already a serious situation, but it will get absolutely dangerous.” The analyst suggested Israel would not be able to support military engagement against multiple enemies, even with the United States backing it up. “Israel is not in a position to fight a multi-front war and it does not have the strategic depth to fight wars of attrition. And that’s exactly what it’s got itself into now,” Johnson pointed out. “It’s not going to be able to finish off Hezbollah in a week. It couldn’t even finish off Hamas in 12 months. It’s not going to be able to finish off Syria, finish off the Houthis or finish off Iran… That’s what Israel fails to understand.

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“..symptomatic of logical deficiencies—deficiencies encouraged by those shaping and executing the West’s collective foreign policies—such that most of us have very little grasp of the world in which we live..”

• ‘Who Do You Want to Win?’ (Patrick Lawrence)

A friend in England, a dweller in bucolic Somerset along with the Black Angus herds and the sheep, forwards a piece by a Times of London columnist that merits careful consideration. Matthew Syed, who has distinguished himself as a ping–pong champion, titles his commentary, “Israel–Hezbollah conflict hinges on a crude question: Who do you want to win?” Syed, who has also done well writing high-end self-help books (You Are Awesome, 2018; Dare to Be You, 2020) has posed a crude question. He is right about this, if little else. And because it is crude, an essentially unserious question, we must take it seriously. As I read Syed’s column it seemed to me symptomatic of logical deficiencies—deficiencies encouraged by those shaping and executing the West’s collective foreign policies—such that most of us have very little grasp of the world in which we live. Ours is a world, so we are urged to think, divided eternally into two.

There are good guys and bad, the benevolent and the malevolent—democrats and autocrats in the Biden regime’s terms. And so there must be winners and losers, just as Matthew Syed supposes. It is hopeless, or nearly. Such a view of our world misses the point most of humanity, 24 years in, wishes to make about the 21st century. Two points, actually. One, the 20th century, a century of binary enmities, is indeed over. We must finally leave it behind. Two, the thought of winners and losers is beyond retrograde. In our time we will all win or we will all lose. Matthew Syed is wholly representative of those who simply cannot grasp these realities. Israel must win, Hezbollah must lose. And as Israel’s long-running hostility toward Iran drifts toward the war the Zionist state has long sought, the Israelis must win, the Iranians lose. To dispense quickly with a minor matter of logic, the intensifying conflict between terrorist Israel and Hezbollah, the Lebanese political party and armed resistance movement, does not hinge in the slightest on which side you or I want to emerge the victor.

The outcome depends on the relative strengths and weaknesses of the Israeli and Lebanese forces, the wisdom or otherwise of their political leaders, the sense or otherwise of their military and diplomatic strategies, and, not least, the extent to which either side has the support of other powers. To suggest the great “you” Matthew Syed addresses will determine how Israel’s regional confrontations will turn out is the very height of narcissism. And the narcissism prevalent in the West is one of the problems Syed’s commentary requires us to confront. Syed is unambivalently a clash-of-civilizations man. And like others of this persuasion, he does not think we ought to look at matters too closely. He proposes we consider Israel’s barbarities—in Lebanon, Gaza, the Occupied Territories, who knows where next—as another case of the West against the rest.

Russia will invade Europe when it finishes in Ukraine. China is “an ancient and impressive civilization now run by a totalitarian clique.” Hezbollah is a terrorist organization. This is all we need to know as we address the question Syed’s headline poses, who do we want to win? He writes: “So perhaps you’ll forgive me for saying something that doesn’t get into the details of any single dispute, doesn’t opine on the precise logic of Israel’s killing of Hassan Nasrallah or its broader response to the October 7 attacks, doesn’t get into the weeds of Western policy over Ukraine; instead, it makes a simpler but, I hope, not simplistic point. In the conflagration that is coming, I back Israel 100 per cent, the West 100 per cent, civilization 100 per cent, progress 100 per cent. “There are hinge moments in history,” Syed writes to round off his point, “where simplicity is an asset.”

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They don’t see the benefit to themselves. Of the Constitution, SupremeCourt, democracy…

• Musk Slams US Democrats Over Freedom Of Speech (RT)

Tech mogul Elon Musk has accused the US Democratic Party of trying to stifle free speech in the country by claiming to combat hate speech and misinformation. The billionaire made the comment following Tuesday’s vice-presidential debate between Democratic candidate and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Donald Trump’s running mate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, where they discussed a number of issues, including free speech and censorship. Walz stated during the debate that he does not believe that hate speech, threatening language or misinformation is protected under the First Amendment, which grants US citizens the right to free speech. “You can’t yell ‘fire’ in a crowded theater, that’s the Supreme Court test,” Walz said, referring to a 1919 quote from Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Writing on X on Wednesday, Musk, a self-described free speech absolutist, warned that “the Democratic Party openly wants to take your freedom of speech under the guise of what THEY deem to be ‘hate.’” During the debate, Vance argued that censorship, which was being carried out by Big Tech companies and supported by Kamala Harris and US President Joe Biden, was a “much bigger threat to democracy than anything we’ve seen in the last four years,” including the January 6 Capitol Hill riots, which the Democratic Party has repeatedly cited as proof of the threat to democracy posed by Trump. “We do have a threat to democracy […] It’s big technology companies silencing their fellow citizens, and it’s Kamala Harris saying that rather than debate and persuade her fellow Americans, she’d like to censor people who engage in misinformation,” Vance said.

The Republican VP hopeful also accused the Biden-Harris administration of trying to get Americans banned from platforms like Facebook for criticizing government mask mandates for toddlers amid the Covid-19 pandemic. “That’s not yelling ‘fire’ in a crowded theater, that is criticizing the policies of the government, which is the right of every American,” Vance argued. Back in August, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted that the Biden administration had pressured Facebook to “censor” some Covid-19 content, and that the FBI had ordered the platform to suppress a New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop in the lead-up to the 2020 election.

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“The company management did not specify how many of the company’s 120,000 employees in Germany would be laid off.”

• EU Car Industry Faces ‘Horror Fall’ – Bild (RT)

EU automakers are facing their worst months since the Covid-19 pandemic, the German tabloid Bild reported on Thursday, citing a prominent industry expert. Car sales within the bloc have fallen by 200,000 vehicles in the first eight months of 2024 compared to the same period last year and things are set to get worse, Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer told the outlet. Dudenhoeffer is the founder and former director of the Center for Automotive Research (CAR) – a private institute specializing in industry analysis and transport policy. Sales of electric cars are down 8.3% from last year, the economist pointed out, with 140,000 fewer models sold through August. ”Important large car markets such as Germany and Italy were already slightly down in the first eight months of the year,” he noted, warning that things “are not getting better.”

According to Dudenhoeffer, car manufacturers are now seeking to compensate for their losses by increasing prices. The 20 most popular gasoline-powered car models are already approximately 10% more expensive, he told Bild. “The next few months will be very difficult for the industry. Worse than it was during [the Covid-19 pandemic],” he predicted. Germany is about to be hit particularly strongly, according to the expert, with the market not expected to recover before 2026. Last month, the EU’s biggest carmaker – Volkswagen – announced that it would consider plant closures or layoffs in Germany for the first time in its 87-year history. The company also announced it would be forced to end its employment security program, which had been set up to postpone all job cuts until at least 2029.

In early September, Volkswagen Group CEO Oliver Blume called the situation the automobile market was facing “highly challenging and serious,” adding that the possibility of “plant closures are no longer excluded.” The company management did not specify how many of the company’s 120,000 employees in Germany would be laid off. Germany had already suffered a recession in late 2023. Europe’s largest economy also contracted in the second quarter of this year, according to official statistics. Weakness in the automotive sector became the main driver behind the decline in the country’s industrial production in July, Reuters reported in September, adding that the nation could face another recession.

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“..see it as their duty to defend democracy by ensuring that the party that gets the most votes gets completely sidelined. Why? Because, Hitler. Duh.”

• Another Right-Wing Election Winner Is Sidelined in the EU (Marsden)

The elites in Austria, like elsewhere in Europe, see it as their duty to defend democracy by ensuring that the party that gets the most votes gets completely sidelined. Why? Because, Hitler. Duh. According to the Associated Press, Austria’s Freedom Party secured the “first far-right national election win since World War 2.” And we all know which famous Austrian is synonymous with the Second World War. How subtle. “EU rocked as far-Right party founded by Nazi WW2 veterans storms to victory,” noted one British tabloid, the Express. “Herbert Kickl’s Freedom Party is on for a huge victory in Austria according to early projections.” Interesting how Nazi history is omitted entirely when Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Azov movement runs around with Nazi symbol flags and tattoos to kudos from the same establishment.

For those looking for a different way to smear Austrian voters other than comparing them to Hitler, there’s apparently also the opportunity here to compare them to the Führer’s World War 2 enemies: Russia. NBC is calling this “far-right” vote by average Austrians fed up with the establishment’s antics a “boost for Putin.” Looks like all the “bad guy” bases are covered across the entire spectrum of Western establishment propaganda. So how did this party actually win? The former Austrian minister who took the helm of the Freedom Party in 2021 constantly spoke of the average citizen suffering from an inability to pay for basic life necessities, like electricity and food. Doesn’t he understand that if Austrians are able to put food on the table, then Putin wins? Apparently not. And it doesn’t seem like voters get it either. And since this this guy and his party are increasingly resonating with voters’ objective reality while the elites dissociate from it, it’s translating into electoral wins.

It’s as simple as voters taking a look around at their lives and coming to the conclusion that his assessment aligns with their own more than the version presented by the establishment parties. Another big issue for Austria has been the large number of refugees per capita, one of the highest in Europe, with the issue resonating through incidents like the Islamic State threats to the Taylor Swift concert in Vienna over the summer, police raids ahead of the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks in the US, and refugee riots on Halloween a couple of years ago. The asylum issue in particular is one that Kickl, the former interior minister who now leads the Freedom Party, would be well-positioned to tackle. What exactly about his past could possibly qualify him for that in the minds of voters?

Maybe the fact that he was forced to step down from the job in 2019 for saying that he wanted to test the parameters of European human rights rules that “prevent us from doing what’s necessary” with asylum seekers – a subject that even the establishment left had to admit was an issue, but only saying that they’d merely reduce asylum applications. There’s considerable daylight between the positions of “we’re full” and “get out”, with the latter already being the actual position staked out by the so-called bleeding heart leftists, who only managed to get 21% of the vote.

Obviously a large number of Austrians didn’t clutch their pearls at Kickl’s remarks like the Austrian establishment did, awarding him nearly 29% of the popular vote. Kickl has called Ursula Von der Leyen, the unelected European Commission president, a warmonger. And, well, Austrian voters also handed his Freedom Party the most votes in the European parliamentary elections earlier this year. Nice little throne-warming gift, there. The party’s mandate from voters seems clear: to take on the national and European establishments that have made such a mess of things. Just like everywhere else in Europe where anti-establishment parties have been surging, particularly on the right. So who are they going to form a government with, in respect of the people’s choice? According to the establishment-right chancellor, no one. Because, well, screw them.

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The picture changes. You can no longer trust Telegram.

• Telegram Shares User Details With Governments – Durov (RT)

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov revealed on Wednesday that the messenger service has been complying with privacy policies in several countries and has been disclosing information about criminals to authorities for the past six years. The Russian tech billionaire has remained unable to leave France after he was arrested in Paris in late August and charged with multiple offenses, such as operating a platform used for organized crime and refusing to cooperate with French authorities. Last month, Durov, who is also a co-founder of the company, announced an update to the platform’s Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, which he said would make it clear that IP addresses and phone numbers of those who violate the messenger’s rules “can be disclosed to relevant authorities in response to valid legal requests.”

In a follow-up post on his Du Rove’s Channel on Wednesday, the Telegram CEO noted that the new policy does not constitute a “major shift” in how the platform works and that it had already been sharing with relevant authorities the details of criminals abusing it. “Since 2018, Telegram has been able to disclose IP addresses/phone numbers of criminals to authorities, according to our Privacy Policy in most countries,” Durov explained, noting that whenever the platform received a “properly formed legal request via relevant communication lines,” it would verify it and disclose the IP addresses/phone numbers of dangerous criminals. Durov revealed that in Brazil, for example, Telegram had disclosed data for over 200 legal requests since the start of the year, and nearly 7,000 in India over the same period.

He also noted that there has been an uptick in the number of “valid legal requests” in Europe in recent months, suggesting that this could be attributed to the fact that more EU authorities have started to use the correct communication line for such requests. Durov explained that the recent update to the platform’s privacy policy was only meant to streamline and unify it, and stressed that Telegram’s core principles have not changed. “We’ve always strived to comply with relevant local laws – as long as they didn’t go against our values of freedom and privacy,” he said, adding that Telegram was built to “protect activists and ordinary people from corrupt governments and corporations” and has never allowed criminals to abuse the platform or evade justice.

Durov was detained after landing at a Paris airport in late August and released on bail several days later. He was charged on 12 counts, including complicity in distributing child porn, drug dealing and money laundering. The charges stem from the accusation that Telegram’s lax moderation rules allow for the widespread misuse of the messenger service. The businessman has vehemently denied the accusations, stressing that Telegram has always strived to work with state regulators to establish “the right balance between privacy and security.” He also noted that the platform takes down “millions of harmful posts and channels every day,” and publishes “daily transparency reports” about actions taken against the dissemination of illegal content.

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https://twitter.com/i/status/1841651197264199766

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cow

 

 

Cat win
https://twitter.com/i/status/1841588065321591132

 

 

Cat yoga

 

 

Shells

 

 

 

 

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Volkswagen and China: A Perfect Fit

Nov 062015
 
 November 6, 2015  Posted by at 9:30 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  1 Response »


Jack Delano Long stairway in mill district of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 1940

If Angela Merkel wants to get rid of one of her major headaches, we suggest she should tell Volkswagen to move its operations from Wolfsburg to China. It may seem a strange thing to do at first blush, with 750,000 German jobs on the line, but bear with us here, because this could well be the only way to preserve at least some value for VW’s stock- and bondholders.

And several layers of German government, as well as German pension funds, are major investors. In a company that has now lost 40%, over €32 billion, of its market cap, and, according to an estimate by UBS, faces €35 billion or more in costs over the various emissions scandals. Count your losses, German pensioners! And the way things are going, and the way the scandal is widening, this may still be a conservative number.

Here’s the ‘thing’: after the most recent admissions coming from the carmaker and its affiliates it may well have become impossible for -international- lawmakers and lawyers alike to not go after Volkswagen with all they’ve got. First the EPA found a few days ago that defeat devices were installed in larger diesel engines too, those used in Porsche and Audi cars, instead of just the smaller ones whose testing by the University of West Virginia started this whole Teutonic drama.

Now we find that for VW’s petrol engines, too, various emissions have gone severely underreported. Porsche’s official reaction to the new diesel findings was that the company was ‘surprised’. Maybe that has something to do with the fact that the new Volkswagen CEO, Mueller, ran Porsche before being promoted to his present gig?! ‘Surprised’?

Other than that ‘surprise’ comment, both Audi and Porsche have reportedly flatly denied the very existence of the defeat devices in their products, even as the EPA research looks solid. Perhaps they should have been advised by their vast legal staffs that flat denial at this point in the game is a dangerous move.

VW has had ample time to come clean, with the EPA, with German regulators, as well as with a wide range of other regulators across the globe. But it’s abundantly clear they haven’t come clean. Moreover, thus far they’ve mostly been allowed to do their own in-house testing. And yes, that is as crazy as it sounds.

If and when the company is found to not have spoken the truth and nothing but the truth after the initial EPA findings (which, remember, followed a multi-year period of blatant lies, denial and deceit), replacing a CEO or pointing fingers at employees will no longer suffice. Heads will have to roll, and they will have to roll straight into prison cells.

At the same time, the company will be ordered, by regulators, lawmakers and judges, to pay fines so hefty its very existence will be in danger. VW lost 40% of its market cap and stands to lose 40% more in fines. An attractive investment? Only until the next lie gets exposed, one would presume.

This is no longer about the cost of repairs. And it’s no longer about greater fools still buying VW cars either. You can’t keep on lying to disguise your earlier lies and expect to get away with it just because you’re a large corporation.

That may not seem obvious or intuitive in today’s environment, but because attacks on VW will come from a multitude of sources -a dozen countries and ten dozen lawyers from all over the world-, regulators won’t want to be found going easy on VW as -some of- their peers go for the jugular. At some point, it gets to be about credibility.

Credibility of the EPA, and of all the other regulators. South Korea and Japan sales are plummeting, and India of all places is now getting on the bandwagon. This is not just a Merkel headache, it’ll be a migraine attack soon. Move the whole thing to China, Angela! Cut your losses…

Why China? We first thought of the VW-China connection because of this Jen Sorensen comic, but thought right away that it would be even much more applicable to China than it is (and it very much is, of course) to the US. That is, the idea of a political system with a built-in defeat device. China’s defeat device is its ‘official numbers’. The government says it wants X% growth, and that’s what comes out a year later.

What defeat device? Well, for one thing, Chinese President Xi Jinping looks to be starting a new personality culture in the vein of Mao, and presumably to that end last week introduced a new 5-year plan. But let’s be frank, these are things that don’t fit in a 2015 economy that relies on trade with the entire world.

The 2016-20 plan, which spans all corners of nation-building, represents Xi’s best chance to enact his reforms and establish a legacy before party retirement rules compel him to clear the way for a successor in 2022. “It bears Xi Jinping’s fingerprints, as does everything else in the Chinese government now. He is the top man, not first among equals, just first. One-man rule is back in China,” said Stein Ringen, a professor of sociology and social policy at the University of Oxford. “This is Xi saying, ’I am in charge and I will continue to be in charge.’”

That Xi goes down this path anyway shows us that he still seeks total control in the Mao or Deng Xiao Ping tradition, even though that is not remotely possible in an even half-open economic system. In China’s economy today, GDP growth can neither be planned nor fabricated. But the numbers still can! Which is where the defeat device comes in.

Xi Jinping cannot resist the temptations of a personality culture and at the same time demands a minimum 6.5% GDP growth over the next five years. A volatile combination. Question then is: what happens if and when growth is much lower than that? Who is Xi going to blame? And who are the Chinese people going to blame? What are the odds that a sub-6.5% growth rate will lead to mayhem?

But that’s just one side of the tale. There are many western observers, quite a few of them quite knowledgeable, who put Chinese GDP growth already at much less than 6.5 %. Lombard Street, Chris Balding, the Li Keqiang Index, Capital Economics, Danny Gabay, you just Google them, there are far too many critical views to ignore. And they on average put REAL China GDP growth at less than half XI’s 6.5% number.

And so again: what will happen when Mao-wannabe Xi can no longer fudge the numbers enough to make his 1.3 billion people believe? What will happen when the PBoC cannot buy sufficient assets with sufficient printed mullah to keep markets appear steady that haven’t been steady in ages?

The 5-year plan calls for GDP to double from 2010-2010, and for per capita income to do the same. Imagine if the US or EU set such goals. There’s no prediction, whether from the OECD or IMF or one of various central banks that comes even close to being correct after just one year, let alone five.

Xi Jinping’s 5-year plan should be read in the same way that one reads Alice in Wonderland. It is wishful thinking devoid of any sense of reality, and it’s only the inbuilt ‘official number’ defeat device that can provide it with an air of importance.

Apparently, China’s emissions numbers follow the same path, and the link to Volkswagen is again awfully easy to make in that respect too:

China has been consuming as much as 17% more coal each year than reported, according to the new government figures. By some initial estimates, that could translate to almost a billion more tons of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere annually in recent years, more than all of Germany emits from fossil fuels.

The adjusted data, which appeared recently in an energy statistics yearbook published without fanfare by China’s statistical agency, show that coal consumption has been underestimated since 2000, and particularly in recent years. The revisions were based on a census of the economy in 2013 that exposed gaps in data collection, especially from small companies and factories.

Illustrating the scale of the revision, the new figures add about 600 million tons to China’s coal consumption in 2012 — an amount equivalent to more than 70% of the total coal used annually by the United States.

In other words, the deceit is built-in, it’s a feature not a flaw. That goes for both China’s and Volkswagen’s emissions models, and it goes for Xi Jinping’s 5-year plan. One common element seems to be desperation, the knowledge that certain aspired conditions cannot be met, and the subsequent decision to then fudge and cheat. That decision is made necessary by one thing only: incompetence.

We don’t want to harp this horse to death, the overall idea should be clear by now. But while writing, we do get new ideas popping up. Like those 750,000 Germans who depend on Volkswagen, directly or indirectly, for their jobs, can all move to China, and settle in some of the abundant ghost cities.

Their homes in Wolfsburg et al can then be made available to the 1 million or so refugees that Germany expects to settle in this year. Win win win, everybody happy.

But we remain anxious about what will happen if and when it becomes clear that the Chinese doubling of GDP and incomes is just a weird fantasy of a man who feels omnipotent enough to think he can control global financial markets. China has malinvested to such an extent that major busts are inevitable.

The British steel industry knows exactly what we mean. And predictions are that a year from now, all US aluminum smelters will be closed. China exports deflation. And that is being felt in its domestic economy too. So it looks like either Xi will need to crack down on his people, or they will crack down on him. Neither is an enticing prospect.

But he can’t tell the truth either, because it’s too far removed from the fairy tales he’s been telling. Just like Volkswagen.

Merkel’s Next Big Headache: Volkswagen’s ‘Defeat Device’

Sep 222015
 
 September 22, 2015  Posted by at 8:26 am Finance Tagged with: , , , ,  7 Responses »


NPC Oldsmobile Golden Rocket 88 Holiday Sedan for 1957, Columbus GA 1908

Angela Merkel has another huge headache on her plate. She seems to attract those these days. And given how she’s been dealing with the last few migraines coming her way, perhaps she deserves them.

For now, it’s a story of one carmaker, Volkswagen. And in one country, the USA. A country in which the diesel engine is somewhat of an orphan, making up just a few percent of the total car market. But the “defeat device” scandal will not stop there.

In Europe, diesel accounts for about half of all vehicles sold. And there’s no reason to presume VW didn’t use the same software tricks in Europe that it did in America. Nor, for that matter, does it seem reasonable to think VW is the only carmaker to apply sleight of hand to its emissions tests. The competition would have had to be profoundly asleep at the wheel not to know about the “device”.

What Volkswagen has been caught cheating on concerns emissions of nitrous oxide. As for its CO2 levels, who knows what can, and maybe will, be found? The crucial question perhaps is, are we ever going to know?

Volkswagen spent the past few years as the biggest carmaker in the world. It’s safe to put that in the past tense now. But given the size of the company, it’s equally safe to assume that Merkel’s people are cooperating with the company on damage control. Whoever may come down hardest on VW, it won’t be Merkel. There’s too much at stake, economically and therefore politically.

Perhaps France, where way more than half the cars are diesel powered, will see an opportunity to bash VW in order to provide a boost to its own automobile industry. But Merkel would see that coming from miles away, and threaten Hollande into submission. Moreover, how ‘clean’ are French engines? Can Hollande be confident about that?

Perhaps this will not go anywhere unless private investors and citizens align in massive litigation, class action suits. That might work, but it also might take many years to move through court.

The EPA has acted at least somewhat faster, though not as fast as you might think. It has forced VW to recall 500,000 cars in the US, and suspend all further sales. However, it took over a year of EPA pressure for Volkswagen to even admit to what it was doing.

And it took a while before that for the EPA to pick up on research conducted by the California Air Resources Board. Who in turn had joined up with studies already underway at West Virginia University and the non-profit International Council on Clean Transportation, which started ‘investigating’ diesel emissions two years ago.

The fact that the EPA has ordered recalls of vehicles dating back as far as 2009 is an indication of how long’s it’s taken to get this thing to the surface.

Sales of diesel luxury cars are set to plummet; not only Volkswagens, and not only in the US. Which is a big headache, too, for the likes of Mercedes, Renault, Peugeot-Citroën, and a handful of Japanese carmakers.

It’s time for everyone, government agencies, environmental groups, to engage in very thorough testing. We at least know what to look for, and at, now. Or let’s say we know at least one thing that requires severe scrutiny.

But this risks turning into one big political game, being conducted from Merkel’s offices in Berlin. Carmakers are powerful corporations, as of course are diesel producers.

We must first of all look at the reasons why Volkswagen went as far as to develop specialized software systems to hide real emissions. Surely it must have tried to develop engines that would not emit the 10-40 times legal limits they have been found to do at present, before turning to its programmers to ‘solve’ the issue.

And if Volkswagen couldn’t make those engines, why should other carmakers be able to? They all have the ability to take each other’s vehicles apart and find out exactly how they function. It’s not an industry that has too many secrets lying around. Once your product’s on the market, your secrets are too.

Investigators should go talk to the programmers who wrote the software, see what they have to say about why they did it, and who ordered them to. There must be pockets of deep shame and guilt, and fear of repercussions, among programmers and engineers alike. Someone’s bound to give up the goods.

If anything, this could be a good test of the transparency of our societies, our legal systems, and the political clout of major corporations. And that last bit should temper our expectations.