House Archives - The Automatic Earth

Slouching Out of the Fog Toward Pennsylvania Avenue

Nov 142020

November 14, 2020 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 1:33 pm Finance Tagged with: audit, constitution, courts, Dominion, election, House, Pelosi, re-election, recount, Sidney Powell, States, Trump 21 Responses »

Pierre Dumonstier II The right hand of Artemisia Gentileschi holding a brush 1625

Two Dr. D pieces in one week. That election stuff must be inspiring! I was wondering, after seeing Sidney Powell claim she has evidence of fraudulent things happening in connection with Dominion software, which would be a weird claim if she didn’t have that evidence, that we need to wonder what the next step(s) would be.

Since 29 states use the software, should they all be recounted by hand? Or perhaps only the swing states? Or should there be a nationwide recount, or even a full (hand-counted) re-election? Here’s that video again of Powell, and then Dr. D’s thoughts on it all:

Sidney Powell: “I’m going to release the Kraken”

Michael Flynn attorney Sidney Powell says she has “staggering” statistical evidence and testimony to show Dominion voting machines altered ballots and this deception stems back to Venezuela, Cuba, and China. She’s says “I’m going to release the Kraken.” pic.twitter.com/50mQdHnOuS

— Daniel Chaitin (@danielchaitin7) November 13, 2020

Dr. D: Since this was all set up on a White House supercomputer, with many possible branches on the logic tree, but still generally drifting toward some permutation of election fraud and a Legislative fix, I’m hazily seeing a further possibility materializing out there.

This is hard since you have to get wrapped around the well-defined legal Constitutional process preventing election fraud, and promoting fairness between big and small states, by having an election, set and run by sovereign states, who then affirm their process was legal and true in the State Legislatures before referring them to the Federal level via the Electoral College. So this could go strictly popular vote as it usually does, via state legislature, as has happened, or even via Congressional House of Representative at an impasse, which has also happened. Despite media sputtering, none of this is made-up, none of this is new. It is very well-written and well-defined for exactly the reasons the Framers knew well and we have seen this year. They have even just sat down in a smoky room and made it up outside of all Constitutional processes whatsoever, and as no one objected, there was nothing to prevent it. Other than the people, of course, the real masters, maintaining as they do the overwhelmingly large, real armed body.

So let’s suppose, as seems to be happening now, that there is some election fraud. And although given more than a month, as we know the clock unwinds very quickly in legal terms — like lightning. We are already halfway through. If it were only one state, like Pennsylvania, perhaps that state’s Legislature can and should vote in their own electors. And that appears to be happening as they take the first steps of an Legislative audit, going right ‘round the Governor and Courts. Leaving their legal blocks instantly disarmed.

But Michigan is calling for a Legislative audit too, and Wisconsin looks set for a recount. Georgia is already in one, and there are several others.

This is where people lament “No matter what happens, half the nation will think the election is stolen!” Civil war, all that. Which I doubt, given that for four years half the nation ALREADY thought it was stolen by by a Russian caterer with a $10,000 loan (correct me if I’m wrong) and ALREADY are in violent insurrection to burn down, murder, and expel Federal forces from Portland for 200 days, barely making a mark on the nation nor even much impression on their very-large state.

But that’s only if we WANT it to go that way – there’s no special reason we should. America is that land that “Will always do the right thing, having exhausted every alternative” as Churchill would say.

Suppose, seeing 6 states in Legislative stop of Electors, and 29 states in question due to now widely-reported flaws in the Dominion voting system, the Republicans see an easy victory EITHER by state level voting OR by Congressional election, and in a legal, required, “continent election” it is one state, one vote – perhaps 32 v 18. This question then runs to the House of Representatives, where Nancy Pelosi can even attempt to refuse to seat anyone and refuse to hold such a vote.

But what are we really after here? With the States, the House, the Constitution, the Military on one side, and a critical mass of the people duly annoyed, can they really expect to succeed here? We have a nationwide bad election, Republican Legislature and States have all the leverage, and we have no remaining time.

So what CAN happen is that Pelosi can hold a House vote. Trump can call for one. The Courts will demand one – I fail to see how any other option could exist.

Trump, Pelosi, and Biden COULD, if they feel like it, hold it all off and call for a national recount, even a completely new re-election. Now that would not be “Legal” in a certain sense as the President must be un-seated in January, but in a certain sense the law is something we make up in our heads. And they have already “just done it” once previously. Perhaps the House, with a 2/3 vote would make Trump the acting President instead of President Pelosi for the interim months, perhaps until Election #2 + 30 days = March.

Everyone would have the chance to do this again without massive nationwide fraud, and the concession that reveals this and smooths over the “stolen election/civil war” would go towards a quid pro quo of not arresting everyone involved and hanging them down the long boulevard of Pennsylvania Avenue until the U.S. Military runs out of rope. Everyone sunsets and the nation moves on. …With some laws passed on election integrity. And Presidential power, one hopes.

Such are the level of crazy times we are in now. And that’s sensible, since in such crazy, extreme times, unthinkable things happen. Like wars. Or also unthinkable peaces and reconciliations. Which we must have and have had many times before.

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FBI = Disinformation

Oct 182020

October 18, 2020 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 1:09 pm Finance Tagged with: Comey, disinformation, FBI, Giuliani, House, Hunter Biden, laptop, MSM, Russia, Sidney Powell, Strzok, Supreme Court, Wray 9 Responses »

René Magritte The seducer 1953

USA Today Headline: “A Tabloid Got A Trove Of Data On Hunter Biden From Rudy Giuliani. Now, The FBI Is Probing A Possible Disinformation Campaign

(The FBI is examining whether the material supplied to the New York Post by Rudy Giuliani is part of a disinformation campaign by Russia.)”

Seeing that makes me think: with Comey, Strzok, Lisa Page, McCabe et al gone, who initiates and approves such “examinations”? The aforementioned were all involved in setting up the Special Counsel led by former FBI chief Robert Mueller, and that was the most embarrassing episode in the Bureau’s history. Which is saying something given J. Edgar’s penchant for dressing up in women’s clothing.

The Mueller probe was all predicated on vague and unproven Russian “disinformation”, and it fittingly ended with it too. With absolutely nothing coming out of the probe, that was based on the Steele Dossier which the protagonists knew was false even before the probe started, Mueller and his right-hand Andrew Weismann in the end had nothing left but “13 Russians” and Julian Assange to “justify” their $30 million, 2 year “effort”.

The only people they could lay any -always unproven- blame or suspicion on were those who could not defend themselves against false accusations. And when Concord Management unexpectedly did raise a defense, Mueller was shut down by a US judge in no time. It’s pathetic. Mueller’s a liar and a coward, as I’ve said a dozen times now. He should be exiled to Mars.

But what’s worse than his reputation having been destroyed, is that he and his pals hammered the FBI’s reputation as well. So when I read in October 2020 that “The FBI Is Probing A Possible Disinformation Campaign by Russia”, I’m obliged to ask: where does that come from?

Because apparently at least some things haven’t changed yet, despite the Mueller horror show. What the FBI needs is a thorough cleansing, not another nonsensical politically driven opaque “investigation” of Russians. The obvious problem, of course, is that the same media who edged on that disaster will also report on this one without an inch of actual journalistic curiosity or integrity.

The media are in the same political wing as the FBI. They are all counting down the days until November 3, and they are all counting on their mishaps and misdeeds being forgiven and/or buried deep if Joe Biden wins, something they spare no effort to achieve.

But unlike the Democrats, in their present-day DNC, Hillary, Pelosi et al, setting, and the mainstream media, who have lost all credibility, the FBI will have a role to play in the future of America. All of the above have been caught in scandalous endeavors to halt a presidential candidate and then unseat a president, but unlike in the case of the Democrats and the media, the nation itself actually has the means to change the FBI.

And it will have to. Because it needs a domestic intelligence service that can go after people who attempt to subvert the workings -and laws- of American society. But yes, that means people like themselves. And once the FBI becomes complicit in such subversion, there is no-one left to investigate them. A classic problem, who will investigate the investigators?

Sure, in “normal” times that should be the House, but the Democrat House is also part of the entire “cabal”. Just remember Adam Schiff’s and Jerry Nadler’s shameless statements of having evidence of collusion when they very obviously did not. So that’s not going to happen. Or at least, that’s what they all think. But it must, Biden victory or not.

Ironically, an Amy Coney Barrett confirmation for the Supreme Court, in that regard, may be seen as a move to save the country, to save the integrity and moral fiber of the United States. Because if the House won’t, and the Senate can’t, save the country from the FBI turning rogue and siding with one side of the political system , the Supreme Court will have to. Or else.

A vote for Joe Biden is a vote for the entire DNC-FBI-MSM cabal. Which counts on all they’ve done to magically disappear under President Kamala. And that is not going to happen. If the FBI and Capitol Hill will not see to it, the judicial system will. How big a role Michael Flynn lawyer Sidney Powell will play in that depends on how much people like Bill Barr are willing to take on, but Powell is up to the task.

Of course there are legitimate questions about how exactly the New York Post and Rudy Giuliani got hold of the emails and other Hunter Biden-related material. But the fact that the Biden campaign after three days still hasn’t disputed its veracity is a major tell. All they have done is point to Russian disinformation -again- and now the FBI is “investigating” that. The exact same thing Mueller failed to prove.

In other words, we’re still caught in a circle-jerk, only now Facebook and Twitter have joined in too. But the real question should not be about the Russians, that’s always only been a ruse. It should be: how do we restore the reputation and credibility of the FBI that was so thoroughly annulled over the past 5 years?

If Biden wins, nothing will be restored. Because the FBI helped him win. If Trump wins, there’s a slightly better chance. Then again, Trump’s presidency didn’t change much. Comey, Strzok and McCabe disappeared, but new chief Christopher Wray is out there frustrating declassifications, and approving brainless probes like Russian disinformation in the Hunter Biden laptop case.

Which is not just useless, it’s an active attempt to direct attention away from what is actually there: the contents of the laptop. Which, again, remains uncontested by the Biden campaign.

If the FBI cannot be perceived by the American people as an impartial bureau, that will be a very big problem for many years to come. If people fear that it may -again- turn against a presidential candidate for partisan reasons, and lie through their teeth to achieve their goals, that will be it for the Bureau.

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Click at the top of the sidebars for Paypal and Patreon donations. Thank you for your support.

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Debt Rattle December 18 2019

Dec 182019

December 18, 2019 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 10:09 am Finance Tagged with: Bellingcat, FBI, FISA, House, impeachment, Judaism, Lisa Page, Magnitsky, Pelosi, Senate, Trump 11 Responses »

NPC Skating night, Washington DC 1919

• White House Counsel Didn’t Take Lead On Trump Letter To Pelosi (Hill)

• Donald Trump’s Letter To Nancy Pelosi (ZH)

• Pelosi Calls Trump Impeachment Letter ‘Ridiculous’ And ‘Really Sick’ (Hill)

• The Bee Explains: Impeachment (Babylon Bee)

• FISA Court Slams FBI, Says Worried About ‘Other Warrants’ (ZH)

• McConnell Wants Quick Impeachment Dismissal Vote: ‘We’ve Heard Enough’ (WE)

• Lisa Page Responds To ‘Vile’ Trump Attacks (Hill) /span>

• Latvian Government Flagged ‘Suspicious’ Hunter Biden Payments In 2016 (Solomon)

• House Approves $1.4 Trillion Spending Deal To Avert Shutdown (R.)

• Germany’s Spiegel Brushes Off Browder’s Complaint About Magnitsky Story (RT)

• Newsweek Trusts Bellingcat More Than Reuters – Journalist Who Quit (RT)

• UK Goverment Plans To Ban Boycotting Israel (MPN)

On the day the House is supposed to hold its impeachment vote, it’s inevitable much of the news is about just that, especially after a 6-page letter from Trump to Pelosi was published on Tuesday. First, the involvement of White House counsel leads to some confusion.

• White House Counsel Didn’t Take Lead On Trump Letter To Pelosi (Hill)

White House lawyers did not take the lead on President Trump’s scathing letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Tuesday in which he accused Democrats of “interfering in America’s elections” with their impeachment efforts, according to multiple reports. The New York Times reported that the process for the letter was led by Eric Ueland, the director of the Office of Legislative Affairs, who was joined by policy adviser Stephen Miller and Michael Williams, an adviser to acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney.

White House counsel Pat Cipollone wasn’t involved in drafting the letter, the Times reported, while Bloomberg’s Jennifer Jacobs tweeted Tuesday night that Cipollone was “aware” of the letter “from beginning.” An official told CNN that the White House counsel’s office had reviewed the letter but didn’t take the lead on it. ABC News’s Katherine Faulders also tweeted that the counsel’s office put forth edits to the missive, while ABC’s Jonathan Karl reported that White House lawyers were largely cut out of the process.

The letter itself: I picked a part where Trump talks about all the calls for impeachment from day one of his presidency, way before the reason the Dems give for the impeachment, the call with Zelensky, ever took place. But do read the whole thing, please.

• Donald Trump’s Letter To Nancy Pelosi (ZH)

Dear Madam Speaker: I write to express my strongest and most powerful protest against the partisan impeachment crusade being pursued by the Democrats in the House of Representatives. This impeachment represents an unprecedented and unconstitutional abuse of power by Democrat Lawmakers, unequaled in nearly two and a half centuries of American legislative history. The Articles of Impeachment introduced by the House Judiciary Committee are not recognizable under any standard of Constitutional theory, interpretation, or jurisprudence. They include no crimes, no misdemeanors, and no offenses whatsoever. You have cheapened the importance of the very ugly word, impeachment!

[..] Speaker Pelosi, you admitted just last week at a public forum that your party’s impeachment effort has been going on for “two and a half years,” long before you ever heard about a phone call with Ukraine. Nineteen minutes after I took the oath of office, the Washington Post published a story headlined, “The Campaign to Impeach President Trump Has Begun.” Less than three months after my inauguration, Representative Maxine Waters stated, “I’m going to fight every day until he’s impeached.” House Democrats introduced the first impeachment resolution against me within months of my inauguration, for what will be regarded as one of our country’s best decisions, the firing of James Comey (see Inspector General Reports)—who the world now knows is one of the dirtiest cops our Nation has ever seen.

A ranting and raving Congresswoman, Rashida Tlaib, declared just hours after she was sworn into office, “We’re gonna go in there and we’re gonna impeach the motherf’***r.” Representative Al Green said in May, -I’m concerned that if we don’t impeach this president, he will get re-elected.” Again, you and your allies said, and did, all of these things long before you ever heard of President Zelensky or anything related to Ukraine. As you know very well, this impeachment drive has nothing to do with Ukraine, or the totally appropriate conversation I had with its new president. It only has to do with your attempt to undo the election of 2016 and steal the election of 2020!

Congressman Adam Schiff cheated and lied all the way up to the present day, even going so far as to fraudulently make up, out of thin air, my conversation with President Zelensky of Ukraine and read this fantasy language to Congress as though it were said by me. His shameless lies and deceptions, dating all the way back to the Russia Hoax, is one of the main reasons we are here today.

Really sick? Why would she say something like that? To imitate Trump?

• Pelosi Calls Trump Impeachment Letter ‘Ridiculous’ And ‘Really Sick’ (Hill)

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Tuesday derided President Trump’s scathing letter urging her to halt the impeachment proceedings as “ridiculous” and “really sick.” Pelosi told reporters on Capitol Hill that she had not gotten the opportunity to read the full letter, which accused Democrats of waging an “unconstitutional abuse of power” by moving forward with an impeachment vote over Trump’s dealings with Ukraine. “I’ve seen the essence of it, though, and it’s really sick,” Pelosi said as she walked through the halls of Congress. The Democratic-controlled House is prepared to vote on Wednesday on two articles of impeachment charging Trump with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Nearly every Democratic lawmaker is expected to vote in favor of the impeachment articles, which are based on an inquiry largely focused on allegations that Trump urged the Ukrainian president to open politically beneficial investigations.

In anticipation of the vote, Trump sent a six-page letter to Pelosi imploring her and her Democratic colleagues to “immediately cease this impeachment fantasy.” The expansive letter attempts to turn the tables on Democrats, accusing the party’s lawmakers of engaging in the type of conduct they have alleged of Trump. Echoing language he’s used before, Trump called Democrats’ efforts “nothing more than an illegal, partisan attempted coup.” “You are not just after me, as President, you are after the entire Republican Party,” Trump wrote. “You are the ones interfering in America’s election. You are the ones subverting America’s Democracy. You are the ones Obstructing Justice,” he added. “You are the ones bringing pain and suffering to our Republic for your own selfish personal, political, and partisan gain.”

Good stuff from the Bee: “Democrats don’t get the big prize, but they each get a complimentary copy of Impeachment: The Board Game.”

• The Bee Explains: Impeachment (Babylon Bee)

What is impeachment? It’s the official, constitutional method for screaming at the sky because Trump is president.

Why is Trump being impeached? Trump has committed some very serious offenses, from not being a Democrat to being a Republican. He also won the 2016 election, which rises to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors. He also restored the celebration of Christmas after eight years of winter with no Christmas under Obama. This drove Dems up a wall so they drummed up some charges against him.

Why didn’t Democrats include any criminal offenses in the articles of impeachment? There were just so many of them, it was hard to pick one. So, instead of laying out actually impeachable offenses, the Democrats summarized it all with two main articles of impeachment: 1.) Trump is president. 2.) TRUMP IS PRESIDENT.

What does it take to remove the president from office? Faith, trust, and pixie dust.

Will Trump be removed from office? Lol.

If we believe in ourselves and try hard, and Trump is removed, Hillary Clinton becomes president, right? Actually, Mike Pence would become president, basically making the United States into a Handmaid’s Tale-style dystopia.

What happens if Trump is impeached in the House but acquitted in the Senate? Democrats don’t get the big prize, but they each get a complimentary copy of Impeachment: The Board Game.

Once the House votes to officially impeach President Trump, what happens next? Trump wins the 2020 election.

They feel (ab)used.

• FISA Court Slams FBI, Says Worried About ‘Other Warrants’ (ZH)

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court slammed the FBI on Tuesday in a rare public statement over the agency’s handling of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page’s warrant application and subsequent renewals, according to the Wall Street Journal. “In order to appreciate the seriousness of that misconduct and its implications, it is useful to understand certain procedural and substantive requirements that apply to the government’s conduct of electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence purposes,” reads the statement.

The punchline: “The FBI’s handling of the Carter Page applications, as portrayed in the OIG report, was antithetical to the hieghtned duty of candor” required by federal investigators, adding “The frequency with which representations made by FBI personnel turned out to be unsupported or contradicted by information in their possession, and with which they withheld information detrimental to their case, calls into question whether information contained in other FBI applications is reliable,” wrote the court, which called the recent watchdog report from the DOJ’s Inspector General “troubling.” The court ordered the government, by January 10, 2020, to explain what steps it’s was taking to prevent such lapses in the future.

Stop the circus? But the GOP can call a hundred witnesses.

• McConnell Wants Quick Impeachment Dismissal Vote: ‘We’ve Heard Enough’ (WE)

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday he believes the Senate should vote quickly to dismiss two impeachment charges against President Trump and avoid “an embarrassing scene” in the chamber. McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, told Fox News Radio he did not support “a show trial” and believes the Senate “ought to vote and move on” after Democrats present their case and the president’s lawyers respond. The Senate will have to make a decision after hearing the opening arguments from both sides, he said.

“Have we learned enough after listening to all of this to go on and vote on the two very weak articles of impeachment?” McConnell said. “Or do we have a show trial in which both sides try to embarrass the other and put on an embarrassing scene, frankly, for the American people? Obviously, I think we’ve heard enough.” The Senate is poised to take up two impeachment articles in January. Democrats want to subpoena several current and former Trump administration officials, but McConnell rejected their proposal. Democrats oppose GOP witness proposals.

Lisa Page as the victim feels strange. Her anti-Trump mails are public. So, yeah, go on Maddow.

• Lisa Page Responds To ‘Vile’ Trump Attacks (Hill) /span>

Former FBI lawyer Lisa Page spoke out late Tuesday about how she has been treated, including by President Trump, since her texts with former agent Peter Strzok became public, saying she realized that “being quiet isn’t making this go away.” Page spoke with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow about a week after the Justice Department’s inspector general released the findings of its probe into the bureau’s handling of its investigation into Trump campaign associates in 2016. The long-awaited report sharply criticized the FBI over its handling of applications to surveil a former Trump campaign adviser, but undercut a GOP talking point in finding that the probe was not motivated by political bias.

Page called the inspector general’s findings “two years too late.” “It won’t make a difference and it’s two years too late,” she said on MSNBC. “[Investigators] realized what I’ve known from the beginning which is that my personal views had no impact on the course of either investigation” “Two days later, you see Lindsey Graham in the Senate spend 40 minutes reading text messages again,” she added. “These are three years old. They’ve been described as immaterial ultimately by the inspector general and yet we’re still talking about them.”

Ukraine is often labeled one of the three most corrupt nations in the world. Do realize what it takes to reach that spot.

• Latvian Government Flagged ‘Suspicious’ Hunter Biden Payments In 2016 (Solomon)

As the U.S. presidential race began roaring to life in 2016, authorities in the former Soviet republic of Latvia flagged a series of “ suspicious” financial transactions to Hunter Biden and other colleagues at a Ukrainian natural gas company and sought Kiev’s help investigating, according to documents and interviews. The Feb. 18, 2016 alert to Ukraine came from the Latvian prosecutorial agency responsible for investigating money laundering, and it specifically questioned whether Vice President Joe Biden’s younger son and three other officials at Burisma Holdings were the potential beneficiaries of suspect funds.

“The Office for Prevention of Laundering of Proceeds Derived from Criminal Activity … is currently investigating suspicious activity of Burisma Holdings Limited,” the Latvian agency also known as the FIU wrote Ukraine’s financial authorities. The memo was released to me by the Ukrainian General Prosecutor’s Office and confirmed by the Latvian embassy to the United States. Latvian authorities said they did not get any incriminating information back from Ukraine to warrant further investigation and did not take additional action in 2016. But the memo adds to the mounting evidence that there was ongoing investigative activity surrounding Burisma Holdings and Hunter Biden’s compensation as a board member in the weeks just before Joe Biden forced the firing of the Ukraine prosecutor overseeing the Burisma investigation in spring 2016.

The Latvian law enforcement memo identified a series of loan payments totaling about $16.6 million that were routed from companies in Beliz and the United Kingdom to Burisma through Ukraine’s PrivatBank between 2012 and 2015. The flagged funds were “partially transferred” to Hunter Biden, a board member at Burisma since May 2014, and three other officials working for the Ukrainian natural gas company, the Latvian memo said. Arturs Saburovs, the Third Secretary at the Latvian embassy in Washington, confirmed his country flagged the transactions in February 2016 after seeing public reports that Burisma was under investigation in Ukraine and that Hunter Biden served on the company’s board. He said Latvia did not receive any evidence back from Ukraine to further its investigation.

[..] On Feb. 2, 2016, the Ukraine prosecutor general’s office secured a court order to re-seize the assets of Burisma Holdings founder Mykola Zlochevsky. Officers went to the home, placed seizure notices and took items from the home that included a luxury car, officials said. About two weeks later, the Latvian suspicious financial transactions memo was transmitted to Ukrainian authorities. And then in late February, according to U.S. documents recently released under the Freedom of Information Act, Burisma’s American representatives pressed the U.S. State Department to try to help end the corruption allegations against the company. By mid-March 2016, State’s top official for Ukraine policy publicly called for Shokin’s ouster, and less than three weeks later Joe Biden managed to force Ukraine’s president to fire Shokin by threatening to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees.

“Trump’s “Space Force,” the first new branch of the U.S. military to be created in more than 60 years.”

• House Approves $1.4 Trillion Spending Deal To Avert Shutdown (R.)

The U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday approved a $1.4 trillion spending package to avert a partial government shutdown that also would raise the U.S. tobacco purchasing age to 21 and permanently repeal several of the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) taxes. The spending package now heads to the Senate, where lawmakers aim to approve it before current government funding runs out on Saturday, avoiding the type of messy budget battle that resulted in a record 35-day interruption of government services late last year and early this year. The legislation, worked out between leading lawmakers and the Trump administration, denies President Donald Trump the full $5 billion he requested to help build his signature wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, keeping funding static at $1.37 billion for border barriers.

White House spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway said Trump is nevertheless expected to sign the $1.4 trillion bill this week. “He’s very happy with what he’s learned the final contents are expected to be,” Conway told reporters at the White House. The crackdown on youth smoking, by changing the minimum age for cigarettes, vaping devices and other tobacco purchases to 21 from the current 18, would give the U.S. Food and Drug Administration six months to develop regulations. The agency would then have three years to work with states on implementing the change. The largest expenditure in the bill is for the Department of Defense, which would get a total of $738 billion for this year, $22 billion more than last year. As part of that defense package, the Senate on Tuesday authorized the creation of Trump’s “Space Force,” the first new branch of the U.S. military to be created in more than 60 years.

So much hangs on the Magnitsky narrative, you’re not supposed to criticize it.

• Germany’s Spiegel Brushes Off Browder’s Complaint About Magnitsky Story (RT)

British investor Bill Browder has lashed out at Der Spiegel weekly by accusing it of distorting the story of the death of his auditor Sergey Magnitsky. The outlet maintains it is Browder who has some questions to answer. Der Spiegel published an investigative bombshell last month, detailing various flaws in the story about Magnitsky’s death that Browder – a US-born investor who became Russian President Vladimir Putin’s self-proclaimed “enemy number one” – used to convince Western governments to impose sanctions against Russian officials over supposedly endemic human rights violations. In his narrative, Browder portrayed the late auditor as a courageous whistleblower, who was heinously and deliberately killed by the Russian authorities in a bid to silence him.

Following a rigorous analysis of a trove of documents linked to the auditor’s death in 2009, including some materials published by Browder’s own people, Der Spiegel’s Benjamin Bidder concluded that significant parts of this story were not actually true. Magnitsky has never been a whistleblower, and he was not a victim of murder, although he did suffer “terrible injustice,” the reporter concluded. He went on to say that Western governments, including those in Washington, Ottawa and London, apparently fell for a “convenient” narrative perpetuated by the man he described as a “fraudster.” What followed was a swift – and angry – reaction from the investor, who made a name for himself in the West through spreading this story and relentlessly lobbying for sanctions against Russia.

Der Spiegel has confirmed that the apparently infuriated investor “has now gone public with his complaints about the Spiegel story in the form of a letter to the news magazine’s editor-in-chief.” Browder did not stop at that and promptly filed a complaint with the German Press Council – a monitoring organization formed by major German publishers and journalistic associations.[..] Yet, Der Spiegel, one of Germany’s major news media outlets, is refusing to be intimidated. In a lengthy piece dealing with the incident, it brushed off the investor’s complaints as having “no basis.”

Bellingcat: February 2020, MH17.

• Newsweek Trusts Bellingcat More Than Reuters – Journalist Who Quit (RT)

Blind trust in controversial ‘citizen investigation’ outlet Bellingcat prompted Newsweek editors to drop a report on the latest OPCW leaks, the author of the piece who resigned from the magazine after the incident told RT. Tareq Haddad announced his resignation from Newsweek last week, accusing the magazine of “suppressing” his attempt to report on a leaked email casting doubts on the results of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) investigation into an April 2018 chemical attack in Douma, Syria, which allegedly killed dozens of civilians. The OPCW sent a fact-finding mission to the site, which pinned the blame for the attack on Damascus.

While witnesses who later spoke in the Hague said the White Helmets’ video of the attack was staged. Haddad also issued a scathing rebuke to the Newsweek – and Western journalism in general – by accusing it of siding with the American warmongers to promote the US wars and obscure the truth. Now he also revealed to RT that it was the editorial board’s quite peculiar pick of trustworthy sources that gave a rise to the whole issue in the first place. Haddad first approached his editors with an OPCW leaks story pitch, citing an opinion piece by Peter Hitchens in The Mail on Sunday. “The fact that another British journalist has published it in a reputable publication, I thought, was more than enough for Newsweek to be able to do that,” he told RT.

The editors simply discarded this idea by calling Hitchens – a man Haddad describes as an “accomplished journalist [working] for more than 12 years” – not trustworthy enough. Instead, they referred him to a Bellingcat article supposedly debunking the whole leak story.

“..an executive order signed by President Trump that reclassifies Judaism as a race and nationality as opposed to a religion..”

I don’t think you can “Declare” a new race by executive order, just because it’s politically convenient. You leave that to science.

• UK Goverment Plans To Ban Boycotting Israel (MPN)

Following the results of the recent UK election, the victorious Conservative party has now declared their intention to make it illegal for public institutions in the country to support non-violent boycotts of the state of Israel in any capacity. On Sunday, the UK Special Envoy for post-Holocaust matters, Lord Eric Pickles, gave a speech in Jerusalem at the International Institute for Strategic Dialogue conference, where he made the Conservatives’ motives clear. Pickles, whose speech garnered “rapturous applause” from conference attendees, stated that the public sector would soon be banned from associating in any way with the Boycott Divest Sanctions (BDS) movement, which uses non-violent means to pressure Israel to follow international law with regards to its military occupation of Palestine and blockade of the Gaza Strip.

The coming ban, as described by Pickles, is set to prohibit government bodies and organizations from supporting BDS in any fashion, which would also prevent them from employing or working with anyone who supports boycotting the Israeli state. Pickles went on to say the reason for the ban is that BDS itself is anti-Semitic (despite BDS having numerous Jewish supporters), stating: “BDS is anti-Semitic, and should be treated as such. Anti-Semitism is an attack on the British way of life and British identity. Without our Jewish citizens, we would be a lesser nation.” Notably, Pickles is also the parliamentary chairman of the U.K. pro-Israel lobby group, Conservative Friends of Israel.

Pickles also made it clear that he conflates Judaism with Zionism, a move that was recently made law in the United States through an executive order signed by President Trump that reclassifies Judaism as a race and nationality as opposed to a religion. Regarding his personal support for Israel, Pickles did not mention Judaism at all, instead championing Zionism and Israel’s ability to “defend its borders.” He referred to himself as “an unapologetic, unreformed Zionist,” before adding that “Israel exists because it can defend its borders, and its people. It is the only place in this region in which governments are elected. It is a civilized, decent place and I’m very proud it exists.” Pickles has previously called Israel a “bastion of democracy.” Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, a long-time activist for Palestinian rights, had been targeted by a massive and relentless smear campaign in the UK, Israel and U.S. media as anti-Semitic for his criticisms of Israel’s government. Pickles’ speech alluded to this effort by asserting that the recent election was essentially a national referendum on anti-Semitism.

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Inquirygate

Oct 042019

October 4, 2019 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 2:07 pm Finance, Primers Tagged with: Bill Barr, Democrats, Durman, Horowitz, House, impeachment, inquiry, Pelosi, Republicans, Russia, Schiff, Trump, Ukraine 6 Responses »

Salvador Dali Crepuscular old man 1918

It took just 4 months after the deplorably failed Mueller probe of alleged Trump links to Russia, for the Democrats to raise the next -faded- red flag, Ukraine. And they do so in a manner that reminds me, personally, a lot of what happens in the UK. That is, the process has now moved on to what is legal or not and who decides what is or not.

Nancy Pelosi apparently has been told by her legal advice that it’s okay for her to move ahead with an inquiry, that she can even label an Impeachment Inquiry, without following established Capitol Hill procedure. Needless to say, them slopes are mighty slippery. Because if true, it would mean she can call the ‘other side’ offside for as long as she wishes.

She would, in effect, prorogate the US House the same way Boris Johnson tried to do Parliament in Britain. And not by shutting it down from the outside (Boris as PM) but from the inside (using her powers as Speaker). It would appear it’s time for every American to pay attention, because this could have grave consequences far into the future.

Pelosi’s plan is to not have a House vote on initiating the inquiry, but to just go ahead and have one, and stealing the name Impeachment Inquiry for it. Why? Because she thinks that way she can have only Democrats ask questions, issue subpoenas etc., while House Republicans could only sit and watch the spectacle (not what they were elected for).

I am not a lawyer, let alone a constitutional scholar, but when I read these things there are a million red hot five-alarms going off in my head. Because this is not about enacting the law, it’s about circumventing it. Just because you have a House majority cannot mean you can simply ignore the minority, or procedure. That would turn democracy into a proxy dictatorship. You don’t want to go there, not even if you’re a desperate Democrat.

But she seems to have made up her mind. So now we face Trump not being allowed to investigate what Joe Biden was up to in the run-up to the 2016 election though Joe’s party could turn that same run-up into a 3-year Special Counsel probe, which turned up less than .. well, you fill it in. It is something to behold.

At the same time, though, there is no Impeachment Inquiry, even if Pelosi calls it that. The White House today will send a letter to a judge contesting exactly that. A House Impeachment Inquiry has a procedure, and if she doesn’t follow that, the White House will deny it’s actually happening, and not respond.

Now, if you follow the headlines this week, you wouldn’t know this. Because they all talk of an impeachment inquiry going on. But you can’t get impeachment without following the official procedure, and Pelosi doesn’t follow it. And the media just go along for the ride without caring about procedure.

And obviously you can’t watch this theater and not think that Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff et al have not thought about stretching out this whole tragedy for another year, right on the eve of the 2020 election, or even beyond. That they think allegations about Russia, Ukraine and China will help them win.

Because it’s clear that flouting procedure the way they try to do in the House will inevitably have to lead to court decisions, and eventually to the Supreme Court. They’re counting on the damage they can do to Trump while the courts decide. But it won’t just be damage to Trump, however it turns out, it will be damage to the entire country.

And you would think both sides of the aisle recognize that (after all, we do), but there are very few if any signs of that. Everyone’s gearing up for a very big fight because everyone else in their echo chamber is. The problem is, whatever happens, and whoever becomes president, the dividing lines will only become deeper and darker.

AG Bill Barr, along with the State Department and DOJ, and whoever else is involved, will release multiple reports from investigations conducted by US Attorney John Durham, DOJ IG Michael Horowitz and potentially others. The Dems and MSM viewpoint appears to be that is was fine to appoint a Special Counsel to investigate Trump’s links to Russia, but not Democrats’ links to, well, anyone at all.

And that is just not okay. I saw this very short clip of John Brennan saying: “I think I suspected there was more than there actually was.” And that’s supposed to atone for 3 years of incessant smearing? It’s ridiculous. Brennan is ridiculous.

And yeah, I know that’s Fox, and I know I’ve on occasion had to turn to right wing media for news because the MSM have closed ranks and ‘report’ only on one side of the story. Sue me for wanting actual news.

None of this negates the fact that we’re in for ever bitter fights, up to and including at the US Supreme Court, ever more, to decide who rules the country. Just like in Britain.

I don’t think this is what the Founding Fathers had in mind. At least, unlike Britain, they cared enough to write a Constitution. A lot of good that did.

Debt Rattle July 24 2019

Jul 242019

July 24, 2019 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:04 am Finance Tagged with: Barr, Boeing, Boris, Deutsche, Epstein, FBI, hearing, House, Malaysia, MH17, Mueller, Nader, Weissmann 13 Responses »

Pablo Picasso Marie-Thérèse Walter 1937

• Mueller In Last-Minute Request For Aide To Be With Him During Testimony (NBC)

• Questions for Mueller (Aaron Maté)

• Robert Mueller, The ‘Magician Of Omission’ On Russia (Solomon)

• Mueller Deputy Andrew Weissmann’s Offer To An Oligarch Could Hurt DOJ (Solomon)

• The Clown Is Crowned As The Country Burns In Hell (G.)

• Deutsche Bank’s Problem Derivatives Cloud Recovery (R.)

• Deutsche Bank Flagged Epstein’s Overseas Transactions To US Watchdog (CNBC)

• Berkeley First US City To Ban Natural Gas (G.)

• Libra Scams Are Already Popping Up On Facebook (F.)

• Big Tech Faces Broad US Justice Department Antitrust Probe (R.)

• MH17 Evidence Tampering Revealed by Malaysia (John Helmer)

• Ralph Nader Says Boeing 737 Max Should Never Fly Again (CNBC)

From what I understand Zebley will be sworn in for the Intelligence Committe part, the last part, but not the Judiciary Committee, the first 3 hours. Hints at them knowing at least some of what’s going to be asked.

• Mueller In Last-Minute Request For Aide To Be With Him During Testimony (NBC)

One of former special counsel Robert Mueller’s longtime aides will appear alongside him during his highly-anticipated testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, a spokesperson said Tuesday, but is not expected to be sworn in. Mueller’s team made a last-minute request that Aaron Zebley be sworn in and testify with him during his scheduled hearings before Congress on Wednesday, a congressional source familiar with the request told NBC News. Mueller is slated to testify on his report into Russian interference in the 2016 election and the country’s influence on President Donald Trump for three hours before the House Judiciary Committee, take a break, then appear for at least two additional hours before the House Intelligence Committee.

For the first hearing, Zebley will sit alongside Mueller as his counsel, according to the Judiciary Committee spokesperson. The committee, however, is not updating its guidance to include Zebley as a witness. This means that Zebley will not be sworn in. Mueller can confer with him as he is questioned by the panel, according to committee rules, but cannot answer questions. The ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, Rep. Doug Collins of Georgia, said Tuesday that GOP members had “not gotten assurances from the House Democrats on the committee that he [Zebley] will not speak.”

“He’s not supposed to speak in that role to anyone on the committee or asked questions. And we’re asking, and, frankly, that that be confirmed before the hearing. So we don’t have to waste time with it tomorrow,” Collins said. Jim Popkin, Mueller’s spokesperson, disputed the idea that Zebley’s presence at the hearings amounted to an 11th-hour addition. “Aaron Zebley was the Deputy Special Counsel and had day-to-day oversight of the investigations conducted by the Office,” Popkin said in a statement Tuesday. “He will accompany Special Counsel Mueller to the Wednesday hearings, as was discussed with the committees more than a week ago.”

Mueller’s people asked Barr for guidance on what he can talk about. Wonder how many times they will refer to that guidance when not answering questions. Sort of like taking the fifth.

• Questions for Mueller (Aaron Maté)

”For two years, Democrats have waited on Robert Mueller to deliver a death blow to the Trump presidency,” The New York Times observed on July 20. “On Wednesday, in back-to-back hearings with the former special counsel, that wish could face its final make-or-break moment.” The very fact that Democrats had to subpoena Mueller in order to create this final moment should in fact be the final reminder of what a mistake it was for Democrats to have waited on him. If Mueller had incriminating information yet to share, or had been stymied from doing his work, or if Attorney General William Barr had somehow misrepresented his findings, then it stands to reason that Mueller would be welcoming the opportunity to appear before Congress, not resisting it.

The reality is that Mueller’s investigation did not indict anyone on the Trump campaign for collusion with Russia, or even for anything related to the 2016 election. Mueller’s report found no evidence of a Trump-Russia conspiracy, and even undermined the case for it. That said, there are unresolved matters that Mueller’s testimony could help clarify. Mueller claimed to have established that the Russian government conducted “a sweeping and systematic” interference campaign in order to elect Trump, yet the contents of his report don’t support that allegation. The Mueller report repeatedly excludes countervailing information in order to suggest, misleadingly, that the Trump campaign had suspect “links” and “ties” to people connected with Russia. And Mueller and other intelligence officials involved in the Russia probe made questionable investigative decisions that are worthy of scrutiny.

Horowitz has to finish his report first before Durham can do anything. Today’s hearings are far from the last thing on the topic.

• Robert Mueller, The ‘Magician Of Omission’ On Russia (Solomon)

While most of the political world focused its attention elsewhere, special prosecutor John Durham’s team quietly reached out this summer to a lawyer representing European academic Joseph Mifsud, one of the earliest and most mysterious figures in the now closed Russia-collusion case. An investigator told Swiss attorney Stephan Roh that Durham’s team wanted to interview Mifsud, or at the very least review a recorded deposition the professor gave in summer 2018 about his role in the drama involving Donald Trump, Russia and the 2016 election. The contact, confirmed by multiple sources and contemporaneous email, sent an unmistakable message:

Durham, the U.S. attorney handpicked by Attorney General William Barr to determine whether the FBI committed abuses during the Russia investigation, is taking a second look at one of the noteworthy figures and the conclusions of former special counsel Robert Mueller’s final report. The evidence I reviewed suggests Mueller’s handiwork may be exposed for glaring omissions that, when brought to public light, leave key questions unanswered, especially about how the FBI’s unprecedented probe of the Trump campaign started. Durham is focused on determining whether any government or private figures who came in contact with the Trump campaign in 2016 “were engaged in improper surveillance,” a U.S. official told me when asked about the Mifsud overture.

Is someone going to question Weismann at some point?

• Mueller Deputy Andrew Weissmann’s Offer To An Oligarch Could Hurt DOJ (Solomon)

At the time, pressure was building inside the DOJ and the FBI to find smoking-gun evidence against Trump in the Russia case because the Steele dossier — upon which the early surveillance warrants were based — was turning out to be an uncorroborated mess. (“There’s no big there there,” lead FBI agent Pete Strzok texted a few days before Weissmann’s overture.) Likewise, key evidence that the DOJ used to indict Firtash on corruption charges in 2014 was falling apart. Two central witnesses were in the process of recanting testimony, and a document the FBI portrayed as bribery evidence inside Firtash’s company was exposed as a hypothetical slide from an American consultant’s PowerPoint presentation, according to court records I reviewed.

In other words, the DOJ faced potential embarrassment in two high-profile cases when Weissmann made an unsolicited approach on June 4, 2017, that surprised even Firtash’s U.S. legal team. To some, the offer smacked of being desperately premature. Mueller was appointed just two weeks earlier, did not even have a full staff selected, and was still getting up to speed on the details of the investigation. So why rush to make a deal when the prosecution team still was being selected, some wondered. Second, Weissmann’s approach was audaciously aggressive, even for a prosecutor with his reputation.

According to a defense memo recounting Weissmann’s contacts, the prosecutor claimed the Mueller team could “resolve the Firtash case” in Chicago and neither the DOJ nor the Chicago U.S. Attorney’s Office “could interfere with or prevent a solution,” including withdrawing all charges. “The complete dropping of the proceedings … was doubtless on the table,” according to the defense memo.

“So we beat on, against the sun, borne back ceaselessly into hell.”

• The Clown Is Crowned As The Country Burns In Hell (G.)

Well, here we are then. Someone who could easily be rejected as a Guess Who character for looking too ridiculous is now to lead the country. A man whose DNA profile is the exact same as a Bernard Manning joke. A man who mentioned the 20 hustings he had taken part in, approximately 30 seconds after Conservative party chairman Brandon Lewis talked of the 16 hustings held. With 8,000 members of the Johnson family watching on – and Jeremy Hunt, looking for all the world like a sub who’s never gonna get off the bench and knows it – Boris Johnson was announced as the new leader of the Conservative party, and, in short order, the new prime minister. Elected by a staggering 0.2% of the nation, we can’t say it isn’t the will of the people.

It’s quite extraordinary, isn’t it, when the new leader of the country opens his inaugural speech with: “There may be people here who wonder quite what they have done!” – having to address the fact that many people in the room are coming to terms with the fact they’ve got shit on their shoe. “Do you look daunted?!” he boomed, “You don’t look remotely daunted to me!” Which was met with a Spectoresque wall of silence, a number of faces as white as Elizabeth I’s, and a solitary cry of: “No!”.

[..] I don’t really know what to say myself. I don’t understand how a man can lie his way about bananas and condoms to high office. I don’t understand how a man whose entire prep for anything seems to consist of drawing a cock and balls – but in Latin! – on a sheet of paper, ends up in high office. I don’t understand how a man can be recorded offering to facilitate the assault of a journalist and reach high office. I don’t understand how a man can be fired twice for cavalierly making stuff up and reach high office. I don’t understand how a man whose entire personality is a job-lot sold off from a closing down joke shop can reach high office. A racist, an inveterate liar, a man who makes Machiavelli look misunderstood and Pinocchio button-nosed. It’s 33C outside in London. You can’t tell whether people are crying or sweating. We can’t do anything until we get a say – which, this time, we did not. So we beat on, against the sun, borne back ceaselessly into hell.

There will not be a recovery. The only thing they can so is prolong the agony.

• Deutsche Bank’s Problem Derivatives Cloud Recovery (R.)

Deutsche Bank’s turnaround strategy rests in large part on shedding 288 billion euros of unwanted assets. Three bank insiders said it will take years, tying up capital that could have generated income of 500 million euros ($557 million) a year. The opportunity cost of holding the assets, which has not been previously reported, underscores the challenges facing Chief Executive Christian Sewing as he attempts to turn around the bank and restore confidence among investors who have seen the value of their shares decline by 75% in the past four years. Sewing said earlier this month that Deutsche, Germany’s largest lender, would set up a bad bank to house the assets, which include equity, credit and interest-rate derivatives.

The bank said it wants to offload most of its derivatives by 2020. Executives managing the book can either sell positions or allow them to gradually wind down over time, depending on which is more profitable. The bank is planning an auction of its short-dated equity derivatives book, having already received “significant expressions of interest,” the sources familiar with the matter said. However, its long-dated interest rate and credit derivatives are expected to be much harder to offload, the sources said. Deutsche Bank has held on-and-off talks with potential buyers of some of those assets over the past two years, three people said. The sales did not happen because the prices offered would have resulted in hundreds of millions of euros in losses for the bank, they said.

What, laundering as well?

• Deutsche Bank Flagged Epstein’s Overseas Transactions To US Watchdog (CNBC)

Deutsche Bank notified U.S. financial watchdogs about suspicious transactions by accused child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein — a customer of the bank — according to a new report Tuesday. The transactions, which involved Epstein moving money out of the United States, were flagged after Deutsche Bank discovered them while looking for indications that the wealthy financier was using his money for sex trafficking, The New York Times reported. Epstein had been a client of Deutsche Bank’s private banking division since at least 2013, five years after he pleaded guilty to prostitution-related charges involving a teenage girl filed by Florida state prosecutors, the Times noted.

That guilty plea led to Epstein — a former friend of Presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton — being required to register as a sex offender. According to the new article, an anti-money laundering compliance officer in Deutsche Bank’s office in New York and Florida raised concerns about the bank’s relationship with Epstein in 2015 and 2016. Those officers also reportedly put together a suspicious activity report on potentially illegal activity in an Epstein account at the time, which had moved money outside of the U.S. The Times said it was not clear if that report was ever filed with the financial crimes division of the U.S. Treasury Department. But the latest suspicious transactions were reported this year, according to the article.

But but.

• Berkeley First US City To Ban Natural Gas (G.)

Berkeley this week became the first city in the United States to ban natural, fossil gas hook-ups in new buildings. The landmark ordinance was passed into law on Tuesday, after being approved unanimously by the city council the previous week amid resounding public support. Although Berkeley may be pushing the vanguard, the city is hardly alone. Governments across the US and Europe are looking at strategies to phase out gas. In California alone, dozens of cities and counties are considering eliminating fossil fuel hook-ups to power stoves and heat homes in new buildings, while California state agencies pencil out new rules and regulations that would slash emissions. Natural gas, it seems, has become the new climate crisis frontline. Berkeley’s ordinance, which goes into effect on 1 January, will ban gas hook-ups in new multi-family construction, with some allowances for first-floor retail and certain types of large structures.

The reasons behind the decision are multifold. Energy use in buildings accounts for about 25% of greenhouse gas emissions in California. If the state is to meet its goal of 100% zero-carbon energy by 2045, the gas will have to go. For decades, gas was considered among the preferred energy sources for buildings and embraced as a bridge from dirtier fossil fuels to a green energy future. “There’s been a lingering perception that burning gas was cleaner than electricity, which might have been true 20 years ago when electricity came from burning coal,” said Pierre Delforge, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council . “When we look at electrification policies, we need to think about what the grid will look like in 10 or 20 years, not what it looked like yesterday.”

Not the Onion.

• Libra Scams Are Already Popping Up On Facebook (F.)

As Facebook faces skepticism from regulators that it can handle launching its cryptocurrency Libra, a raft of fake accounts and scams purporting to sell Libra have cropped up on its own platform, according to the Washington Post. At least a dozen fake pages and websites on Facebook and Instagram claim to be associated with Facebook’s Libra, which has yet to be officially launched. One video offered a discount on Libra coins that have been distributed to early investors. Another linked to a realistic-looking fake website called “buylibracoins.com.” The website remains online. The scams even spread to YouTube and Twitter, according to the Washington Post. Facebook says Libra will allow people to send money to each other without a traditional middleman, such as a bank.

A digital wallet, called Calibra, will also be available as a stand-alone app on Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. A Facebook spokesperson told Forbes that it “removes ads and Pages that violate our policies when we become aware of them, and we are constantly working to improve detection of scams on our platforms.” Key Background: In 2018, Facebook banned advertisements involving cryptocurrency or initial coin offerings to combat the proliferation of scams and bogus ICOs cropping up as the price of Bitcoin soared. Over the last few months, Facebook has been softening the ban in the run up to the announcement of Libra—and it appears scammers are taking advantage. Libra scams may not help Facebook convince lawmakers and regulators that it can protect user privacy and prevent the digital currency from being used in criminal activity.

I’ll believe it when I see it. Because Big Tech=CIA.

• Big Tech Faces Broad US Justice Department Antitrust Probe (R.)

The U.S. Justice Department said on Tuesday it was opening a broad investigation of major digital technology firms into whether they engage in anticompetitive practices, the strongest sign the Trump administration is stepping up its scrutiny of Big Tech. The review will look into “whether and how market-leading online platforms have achieved market power and are engaging in practices that have reduced competition, stifled innovation, or otherwise harmed consumers,” the Justice Department said in a statement. The Justice Department did not identify specific companies but said the review would consider concerns raised about “search, social media, and some retail services online” — an apparent reference to Alphabet Inc, Amazon.com Inc and Facebook Inc, and potentially Apple Inc.

[..] The announcement comes a day before the Federal Trade Commission is set to announce a $5 billion penalty to Facebook for failing to properly protect user privacy. Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, said the Justice Department “must now be bold and fearless in stopping Big Tech’s misuse of its monopolistic power. Too long absent and apathetic, enforcers now must prevent privacy abuse, anticompetitive tactics, innovation roadblocks, and other hallmarks of excessive market power.” In June, Reuters reported the Trump administration was gearing up to investigate whether Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Alphabet’s Google misuse their massive market power, setting up what could be an unprecedented, wide-ranging probe of some of the world’s largest companies.

The FBI tried to steal the black boxes, but Malaysian secret service had already ‘smuggled’ agents into the Donbass ahead of other countries. Oh, and literally everybody has been caught lying. What a story this is becoming,

• MH17 Evidence Tampering Revealed by Malaysia (John Helmer)

A new documentary from Max van der Werff, the leading independent investigator of the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 disaster, has revealed breakthrough evidence of tampering and forging of prosecution materials; suppression of Ukrainian Air Force radar tapes; and lying by the Dutch, Ukrainian, US and Australian governments. An attempt by agents of the FBI to take possession of the black boxes of the downed aircraft is also revealed by a Malaysian National Security Council official for the first time. The sources of the breakthrough are Malaysian — Prime Minister of Malaysia Mohamad Mahathir; Colonel Mohamad Sakri, the officer in charge of the MH17 investigation for the Prime Minister’s Department and Malaysia’s National Security Council following the crash on July 17, 2014; and a forensic analysis by Malaysia’s OG IT Forensic Services of Ukrainian Secret Service (SBU) telephone tapes which Dutch prosecutors have announced as genuine.

The 298 casualties of MH17 included 192 Dutch; 44 Malaysians; 27 Australians; 15 Indonesians. The nationality counts vary because the airline manifest does not identify dual nationals of Australia, the UK, and the US. The new film throws the full weight of the Malaysian Government, one of the five members of the Joint Investigation Team (JIT), against the published findings and the recent indictment of Russian suspects reported by the Dutch officials in charge of the JIT; in addition to Malaysia and The Netherlands, the members of the JIT are Australia, Ukraine and Belgium. Malaysia’s exclusion from the JIT at the outset, and Belgium’s inclusion (4 Belgian nationals were listed on the MH17 passenger manifest), have never been explained.

The film reveals the Malaysian Government’s evidence for judging the JIT’s witness testimony, photographs, video clips, and telephone tapes to have been manipulated by the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU), and to be inadmissible in a criminal prosecution in a Malaysian or other national or international court. For the first time also, the Malaysian Government reveals how it got in the way of attempts the US was organizing during the first week after the crash to launch a NATO military attack on eastern Ukraine. The cover story for that was to rescue the plane, passenger bodies, and evidence of what had caused the crash. In fact, the operation was aimed at defeating the separatist movements in the Donbass, and to move against Russian-held Crimea. The new film reveals that a secret Malaysian military operation took custody of the MH17 black boxes on July 22, preventing the US and Ukraine from seizing them. The Malaysian operation, revealed in the film by the Malaysian Army colonel who led it, eliminated the evidence for the camouflage story, reinforcing the German Government’s opposition to the armed attack, and forcing the Dutch to call off the invasion on July 27.

Not the first time he’s said it, but this time it’s directly to the FAA.

• Ralph Nader Says Boeing 737 Max Should Never Fly Again (CNBC)

Consumer advocate Ralph Nader on Tuesday urged the Federal Aviation Administration to permanently ground Boeing’s 737 Max jet. “The plane cannot be refixed,” said Nader, whose grandniece was killed in a March crash of a 737 Max jet in Ethiopia. “It has to be recalled” and permanently taken out of service, he said. Regulators worldwide ordered airlines to ground their 737 Max planes in mid-March after the crash in Ethiopia and one in Indonesia that occurred within five months of one another, killing a total of 346 people. Since then, Boeing has been preparing to get the Max back in the air. Airlines have canceled thousands of flights due to the grounding and are planning to do so until at least November, a move that Boeing said it took a $4.9 billion charge for in its second quarter.

But the planemaker needs to “take their losses” on the jet, Nader said in an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.” Crash investigators have pointed to an issue with the jets’ software, for which Boeing said it has developed a fix, as the cause behind the two fatal crashes. But once a software upgrade is submitted to the FAA, it will likely take at least another month before the planes are back in operation. On the software fix, Nader said it shouldn’t be trusted since executives are “stuck in their bad decision” and are “ignoring preventable aerodynamic design.” “It’s a new plane; they can’t say it’s just a little bit changed,” he said. “It needs full certification.”

The Failure Of Party Politics

Mar 272019

March 27, 2019 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 6:26 pm Primers Tagged with: constituents, dissolve, disunited, evil, failure, House, parliament, politics, Tintenfische 2 Responses »

Robert Frank Funeral, St. Helena, South Carolina 1955

Bit unusual, but why not. I was reading British press earlier, trying to figure out what the fcuk is going on in London two days before March 29, and in an article in the Guardian I saw this comment, and thought it should be saved for posterity.

Since the article is/was one of those live updates ones, which tend to get very long, and moreover at the point I read it it already had well over 11,000 other comments, posting it here seemed to be the way to go to achieve that.

It was posted by someone who named themselves Tintenfische (German for squid, octopus?!), and that’s all I know about this person(s), who imagines a speech someone should stand up and deliver in the house. I think it says exactly what needs to be said, what politicians should say, in Britain where civil unrest is much closer than anyone wants to see, in the US where very similar scenarios are playing out, and in many other countries.

The failure of party politics is everywhere to be seen.

Tintenfische: Speech I wish someone would have the courage to give.

As I stand in Parliament today I see the faces of friends and colleagues I’ve worked alongside, struggled alongside, triumphed and lost alongside. Good men and women all from both sides of the house.

We and the parties we represent have fought for our beliefs and battled for our constituents for centuries. We’ve done what we believed to be right, we’ve fought battles we believed should be fought and shown the people across the globe how democracy when at its best is the only route to freedom. In this place too I’m confronted with history. It was here that our predecessors decided to stand up to fascism, where we ended slavery and wrote into law that no man or woman, no matter their race, colour, who they fall in love with or who they pray to is less than any other of us. We declared as a house that injustice must be fought, that evil opposed and democracy triumphed.

Great things have been done in this place, great things by great men, great women and even greater parties. However my friends that legacy is now at an end.

We have failed.

We have failed and our failure has broken this house and the institution we love. We have failed and with that too comes the failure of party politics.

None of us can run from that reality, none of us can hide, deny or challenge that reality. We have through partisan means on both sides of this house broken government of this once united nation. I could list the decisions, the politics, the loyalties which delivered this rupture. I could name names, point out lies and tell of moments when through advantage, greed or idiocy we decided to do what was best for our parties rather than our country, what was best for us rather than our constituents. I could list all those many many occasions when we as servants of the people failed the people, but what would be the point?

The truth is none of us are innocent, none of us escape blame. We as the leaders of this country could have stopped a collapse but we all chose this place and control over it as being more important than those outside. We chose ourselves and our parties ahead of our people.

But what else could we do? We could have stood up, we could have protested, we could have denied our own leaders but to what end? We all believe that we and the parties we represent are best placed to do what is right for this country. We all think that the shared policies, morals and ethics of ourselves and our parties are the right way for a country to be run. If we didn’t believe we knew best we wouldnt be here. But there’s the problem, circumstance has shown this not to be the case. Now we stand atop of a divided, fractured nation one which may never be able to be reformed and that has happened because of us. It is our fault. By following those certainties of righteousness and rightness both of ourselves and of our parties we have precipitated this collapse. We are now the problem.

So what’s to be done? We could just carry on, we could just continue down this same path which every day makes this country more divided, more ungovernable, more leaderless. We certainly could do that and looking around this room it’s easy to see so many of us already resigned to the path of destruction. Resigned to a rapid decline because we’re all too Cowed too timid to say no.

But we could also say no. We could as one house say to the country “I’m sorry but no. We can’t make these decisions, we’re not good enough. We can’t do anything but fail you or your future from here on in”. The people elected us to represent them it is true but we’re no longer capable of that, our parties are no longer capable of that. It is no longer in the national interest that we continue to represent the people when we can’t even govern ourselves.

We need to change ladies and gentlemen, we need to be better. We need to be greater than the sum of our parts. Each and everyone of us needs to decide who and what we our, who we represent. We need to turn away from the saftey and comradeship of party loyalty and act and vote on what we believe to be right, what we believe to be in the best interests of our nation, not what our leaders tell us is best because if we’ve failed then our leaders are double damned by their double failure.

What I’m asking is extreme, I’m asking you my fellow members to destroy the parties you all represent. I’m asking you for the sake of the nation to walk away from rosette loyalty and remember your oaths. I’m asking you to do the right thing.

We are no longer able to govern, we cannot lead and we cannot decide. We must return the question of our place in the world back to the people and once that’s done we must dissolve this house and our parties and a new slate be mined because right now not one of us is fit to stand in this place and claim leadership of this disunited kingdom.

The House Hit A New Low

Feb 282019

February 28, 2019 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 5:12 pm Primers Tagged with: collusion, Congress, credibility, House, Michael Cohen, pornstar, Putin, Red Square, Roger Stone, Russiagate, Stormy Daniels, Trump, virility 17 Responses »

Leonardo da Vinci Ginevra de’ Benci 1474-78

Perhaps against better judgment, I just can’t keep silent about the Michael Cohen’s in da House show performed on February 27. I was watching it and increasingly fearing for the future of America. We had all been able to read his prepared statement before he opened the party with it, and therefore we all knew there was nothing there. So why did this thing take place, and why were all the cameras and reporters there? Do we live in split realities these days?

Both before and after the gruelling -for the viewer- session, words like ‘explosive’ and bombshell’ were all over, so I thought I’d watch, since I might have missed something, but no, there was nothing, there wasn’t even a there there. Apparently, US House members are by now immune to being revealed as nutcases frantically phishing for evidence of accusations they formerly made but could never prove.

A phishing expedition with a willing whale in the center who sort of volunteered to be harpooned, and still came up with absolutely nothing but blubber. And then like 4 hours of that. There’s never been a more convincing picture of what US politics and media have become. But they’re all entirely impervious to it. They’re discussing nothing for hours on end with millions watching, and they see it as normal.

Now, I’ve been following the decay of the American press ever since Trump entered politics stage right, and I’ve written a hundred thousand words about it, but it really hit home during the Cohen session. Tellingly, the Republican House members were exclusively focusing on Cohen credibility, since he had been caught lying to Congress before, and the Supreme Court just days ago disbarred him.

But this was not about the man’s credibility, and sure, I felt sorry for him too, it was about the fact that he had nothing at all to say, but Republicans had nothing on that. They instead joined the Dems in questioning him about nothing, pretending it was big and explosive and stuff. If anything has ever resembled the Emperor’s new clothes, it was that charade there yesterday.

If you insist, we can walk through a few of the topics. A nice example that was not in the prepared statement was that Cohen claimed he had never wanted a White House job, but even the CNN pundits were saying he had wanted one for a long time, and was very insulted when he didn’t get it. Poof! went the last shred of his credibility. Well, not for the House members, they have shorter memories even than CNN talking heads.

Second, the issue of a Trump Tower in Moscow, about which Cohen allegedly lied earlier on, in that the plans were shelved later than he had claimed. But the only thing that really interests the House, because even they understand that wanting to build a hotel in the city is not some criminal thing, is Russiagate, invented out of thin air but still popular stateside.

The one thing related to this that collusion ‘experts’ emphasize time and again, and it came up again in the Cohen thing, is that Trump supposedly planned to gift a penthouse apartment in a potential Trump hotel on Red Square to Vladimir Putin. Conveniently, not a single American appears to have wondered whether Putin would be interested in such a gift.

And I can assure you he wouldn’t. Putin can get -just about- any piece of real estate he wants on Red Square, besides he already has the Kremlin, and he can get anything built there which he might desire. Accepting a free dwelling from a US builder makes no sense. Why should he? Still, this is one of the main items Russiagaters keep coming up with. It makes no sense, and that’s fitting, because neither do they.

Second, pornstar pay-offs. Male politicians worldwide and through the ages have had affairs, and in modern times (re: JFK) there’s been an understanding that the media leave these things alone. On the one hand, it’s proof of virility, something voters like in their candidates, and on the other it shows infidelity, something they don’t. A battle no-one can win, hence the understanding.

In France, this all plays out a bit more openly, though never in the open, but in the US you can break the pact if you want. And since the initial story was that campaign funds had been used to pay Stormy Daniels, there was a potential criminal angle. But we now know that that angle was fake, so no there there either. Trump paid so it (true or not) didn’t become a big campaign story, and that he did so just before an election is irrelevant, because the whole topic is irrelevant. Unless you want to exhume JFK.

Third and what pisses me off more than anything, is that Cohen both volunteered, and was coaxed into, talking about Roger Stone’s alleged contacts with Julian Assange. Cohen talked about a conversation between Stone and Trump on July 18-19 2016, in which Stone allegedly said he had talked to Assange who told him WikiLeaks was going to release a big batch of Hillary-related mails.

The DNC convention was July 25-28, the WikiLeaks release July 22. Looks like a slam-dunk collusion story, right? Except that Assange had said 5 weeks earlier, on June 12 2016, that such a batch would be released. So even if Stone had talked to him, there was no news there. Moreover, both Assange and WikiLeaks have repeatedly denied the conversation ever took place. And of course Assange can’t defend himself against anything anyone says anymore.

And we can keep going: the assertion that the DNC mails were hacked has been refuted many times, and if they were stolen it was by someone inside the DNC. No story, no collusion, no there there. Only hour after tedious hour of Michael Cohen House testimony about nothing at all.

It felt a lot like a new low point in US political history, but you need to be careful with such classifications these days, since competition’s stiff and still picking up. I liked the following lines from an article in the Guardian this morning to appropriately describe the goings-on:

“Trump’s former fixer cautioned that he could not prove the “collusion” with Moscow that the president vehemently denies. Still there was, Cohen said, “something odd” about the affectionate back-and-forth Trump had with Vladimir Putin in public remarks over the years.

Here’s the best thing Cohen could do in the entire time wasted on the topic:

“There are just so many dots that seem to lead in the same direction,” he said.”

How does that not make you want to scream? No collusion, only “something odd”, and “so many dots”. A thorough analysis out of the mouth of an at least questionable character who worked closely with Trump for a decade. That’s all the US House of Representatives had to show for the show it put on. And that’s a really big problem, but there’s no-one in sight to address, let alone rectify, it.

There are a thousand things wrong with Donald Trump, but even though that would not necessarily disqualify him for the presidency, the Democrats and the mainstream press have opted to go all-in on the Russia collusion theme, which even two years and change of Mueller hasn’t been able to prove.

Whether this will be the winning ticket for the Democrats in a next election is very doubtful, and what the press hope to get other than a few more readers and viewers addicted to scandals is anyone’s guess. But more importantly: why do they do it? Why focus on all the made-up stories instead of going out and finding the real ones?

Even if the Cohen show not constitute a new low, it was certainly scraping the gutter of American political reality, and someone better do something, or entirely new and thus far unimaginable lows will be attained. Not a single national political system can survive on entirely trumped-up accusations for long, let alone that of the globe’s most powerful nation. Does anyone ever wonder what the Dems will do if Trump wins again in 2020? Where can they flee to?

I’ll leave you with a few Twitter voices who also see no there there. Note: the first one is dated July 7 2016, some two weeks before Stone -unverifiably- said he talked to Assange (who always denied it, but it wouldn’t matter even if he had) :

Cohen said the purported conversation between Trump and Stone took place on July 18 or 19. Here's WikiLeaks promoting the upcoming release of Hillary-related emails on its *public Twitter account* on July 7! Idea that Stone ever had special foreknowledge is totally unsupported pic.twitter.com/FBZ1W7eA3O

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) February 27, 2019

STATEMENT on Michael Cohen testimony to Congress: WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange has never had a telephone call with Roger Stone. WikiLeaks publicly teased its pending publications on Hillary Clinton and published > 30k of her emails on 16 March 2016. https://t.co/XcH75u3kbu

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) February 27, 2019

The DNC was July 25-28, 2016. Assange announced the first of many times an upcoming leak on June 12, 2016. Therefore Cohen testifying to hearing about it in a meeting in a July, “days” before the DNC (how many days?), doesn’t speak to “advance” knowledge in any real sense. https://t.co/H1VU3FaMXi

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) February 27, 2019

Do Russiagate peddlers get how bad this has gone? Cohen:

– "I do not" have collusion evidence
– "Trump did not directly tell me to lie to Congress" (cc @BuzzFeedBen)
– Stone told Trump public info re: WL & false info re: Assange

& we haven't even heard his Prague denial yet.

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) February 27, 2019

Debt Rattle January 4 2019

Jan 042019

January 4, 2019 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 10:24 am Finance Tagged with: Amazon, Apple, Brazil, Brexit, Democrats, Deutsche, House, impeachment, Monsanto, rainforest, Roundup, Tories, UBS 11 Responses »

Yasuhiro Ishimoto Untitled, Chicago 1950

• Congratulations! Apple Loses Record $463 Billion in Market Cap in Three Months (Mish)

• Apple Just Lost A Facebook (CNBC)

• Apple Suffers Its Biggest Single-Day Loss In 6 Years (CNBC)

• Why This Time Is Different (MooTrades)

• Democrats Introduce Impeachment Articles On 1st Day In The House (RT)

• Canada Says 13 Citizens Detained In China Since Huawei CFO’s Arrest (R.)

• UBS Chairman Pours Cold Water On Deutsche Bank Merger Talk (R.)

• Google Shifted $23 Billion To Tax Haven Bermuda In 2017 (R.)

• Over Half Of Tory Members Consider Quitting Party Over May’s Brexit Deal (BI)

• US Judge Limits Evidence In Trial Over Roundup Cancer Claims (R.)

• New Brazil President Bolsonaro Launches Assault On Amazon Rainforest (G.)

Losing half a trillion in 3 months should be no surprise now central banks have killed the negative feedback from a functioning market. It’ll be runaway wild swings till it is restored.

• Congratulations! Apple Loses Record $463 Billion in Market Cap in Three Months (Mish)

Apple set a record that will take a long time to beat. The first $ trillion company lost nearly half that in 3 months. On, August 2, Apple became the World’s First Trillion-Dollar Company at $207.05 per share. Hooray! On October 3, Apple had a peak market cap of about $1.138 trillion. Today, Apple’s market cap is about $675 billion. That’s a record market cap loss of $463 billion in three short months. Expect more stories similar to this, but this may be hard to top. Amazon has a chance but it needs a big disaster soon.

• more than double the size of Wells Fargo • more than three times the size of McDonald’s • more than five times the size of Costco • more than 10 times the size of Raytheon.

• Apple Just Lost A Facebook (CNBC)

In only three months, Apple has lost $452 billion in market capitalization, including tens of billions on Thursday as the tech giant’s stock sank further. Apple shares have fallen by 39.1 percent since Oct. 3, when the stock hit a 52-week high of $233.47 a share. With its market cap down to about $674 billion, those losses are larger than individual value of 496 members of the S&P 500 — including Facebook and J.P. Morgan. Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet and Berkshire Hathaway are the only S&P 500 members with larger market caps than Apple’s loss since its recent high.

To put the Apple market value plunge in context, $446 billion is: • more than double the size of Wells Fargo • more than three times the size of McDonald’s • more than five times the size of Costco • more than 10 times the size of Raytheon. Apple gave a sudden warning to investors on Wednesday afternoon, lowering its fiscal first-quarter revenue guidance. Wall Street reacted, with one analyst saying this will represent Apple’s “biggest miss in years” and another saying the company’s announcement “raises more questions than answers.” Apple CEO Tim Cook’s letter to investors blamed a variety of factors for the guidance cut, including declining iPhone revenue and China’s weakening economy.

Only 6 years? That makes it sound cookie cutter.

• Apple Suffers Its Biggest Single-Day Loss In 6 Years (CNBC)

Apple stock cratered almost 10 percent Thursday, a day after slashing revenue guidance in a rare acknowledgement of waning sales. The stock ended trading at $142.19, its lowest price level since July 2017. The plunge makes for Apple’s worst day of trading since January 2013, and it extends a painful year-end trend for Apple into 2019. The stock, which once traded above $230 per share, shed 30 percent in the fourth quarter of 2018. Thursday’s losses push Apple’s market valuation below $700 billion and behind the market cap of Alphabet to become the fourth most valuable publicly traded U.S. company — down from the top spot just two months ago. The company has lost $450 billion in market value since its peak of about $1.1 trillion last year.

Hard not to think that people working in finance still can’t believe the industry doesn’t function. They keep trying to explain what happens, from inside their faulty models.

• Why This Time Is Different (MooTrades)

We have seen the last three bull markets catalyzed largely by loosening liquidity conditions during the bear markets that preceded them by central banks — in more and more of a globally coordinated fashion. This has led me to believe that the expansion of liquidity is the primary driver for consistent risk asset upward price revisions (aka bull markets). More than economic developments, earnings or political discourse. As a result it is crucial to realize that the ‘punch bowl’ of quantitative easing, the veritable liquidity spigot that juiced markets higher over the last 9.5 years, is not only running dry, but going in reverse (taking liquidity from markets). The impact of this reversal cannot overstated. It will be the primary catalyst that drives this bear market in equities lower. Only a reversal of tightening liquidity conditions will drive risk assets higher again.

Macro: • $1 of US GDP growth now costs $4 of debt, and is only growing as we push on the string of debt to borrow forward demand to today. • US now has $200 trillion of unfunded liabilities over the next 10 year period. • Debt monetization isn’t just important, it will become a necessity. Otherwise rates normalize and the party ends in a very bad way (insolvency and/or extreme austerity measures).

Everybody is getting ready for a fight. Just not one that would benefit their voters.

• Democrats Introduce Impeachment Articles On 1st Day In The House (RT)

Democrats are flexing their muscles as the incoming majority in the US House of Representatives, introducing articles of impeachment and even quixotic constitutional amendments even though they have no hope of passing. Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) introduced articles of impeachment on the first day of the 2019 Congress, starting with a resolution demanding President Donald Trump be impeached for “threatening, and then terminating” then-FBI Director James Comey in 2017. Reserving the option to introduce more articles later, Sherman told CNN he wanted to be able to “force the conversation on impeachment” when (if?) the Mueller report is released, “challenging” his Democratic colleagues who haven’t yet chosen to support Trump’s impeachment.

Sherman filed the exact same impeachment resolution in 2017 but could only muster one supporter, Rep. Al Green (D-TX), who later filed his own articles of impeachment. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) didn’t even wait until she was seated as a congresswoman to go after the president’s job, publishing an op-ed on Thursday entitled “Now is the time to begin impeachment proceedings against President Trump.” “We already have overwhelming evidence that the president has committed impeachable offenses,” she wrote, accusing Trump of “abuse of power and abuse of the public trust” along with a laundry list of crimes. In person, she was even more direct, reportedly telling a MoveOn.org reception, “We’re gonna impeach that mother**ker.”

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has been noticeably reticent on impeachment, telling NBC on Thursday that Democrats should wait for the Mueller report before making any moves. “We shouldn’t be impeaching for a political reason, and we shouldn’t avoid impeachment for a political reason,” she said. Many rank-and-file Democrats ran on pro-impeachment platforms, but with polls indicating only a third of Americans support the idea and a two-thirds majority in the Republican-controlled Senate required to remove the president, they are unlikely to make any sudden moves.

“..there are almost 900 Canadians in a similar situation in the United States..”

• Canada Says 13 Citizens Detained In China Since Huawei CFO’s Arrest (R.)

Canada has said 13 of its citizens have been detained in China since the Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou was arrested in December in Vancouver at the request of the US. “At least” eight of those 13 have since been released, a Canadian government statement said, without disclosing what charges if any had been laid. Prior to Thursday’s statement, detention of only three Canadian citizens had been publicly disclosed. Diplomatic tensions between Canada and China have escalated since Meng’s arrest on 1 December. The Canadian government has said several times it sees no explicit link between the arrest of Meng, the daughter of Huawei’s founder, and the detentions of Canadian citizens. But Beijing-based western diplomats and former Canadian diplomats have said they believe the detentions were a “tit-for-tat” reprisal by China.

Meng was released on a C$10m ($7.4m) bail on 11 December and is living in one of her two Vancouver homes as she fights extradition to the US. The 46-year-old executive must wear an ankle monitor and stay at home from 11pm to 6am. The 13 Canadians detained included Michael Kovrig, Michael Spavor and Sarah McIver, a Canadian government official said on Thursday. McIver, a teacher, has been released and returned to Canada. Kovrig and Spavor remain in custody. Canadian consular officials saw them once each in mid-December. Overall there are about 200 Canadians who have been detained in China for a variety of alleged infractions and continue to face on-going legal proceedings. “This number has remained relatively stable,” the official said. In comparison there are almost 900 Canadians in a similar situation in the United States, the official said.

Who’s going to save Deutsche? It’s far too big not to be saved. But it would drag down any other bank with it. Let the German government do it.

• UBS Chairman Pours Cold Water On Deutsche Bank Merger Talk (R.)

Swiss bank UBS is not looking to merge with any other bank, Chairman Axel Weber told the Tages-Anzeiger newspaper, dismissing speculation that UBS could join forces with Deutsche Bank. “There is a lot of talk in Europe and the United States about mergers but nothing happens. These are all simulation games,” he said in an interview published on Thursday. Asked specifically about whether UBS, the world’s largest wealth manager, was running simulations about Germany’s biggest lender, Weber said: “Every company has to think things over, but it makes little sense to consider mergers at group level now. These paralyze companies for years.

“UBS is much stronger today than before the financial crisis, but combining with another bank — no matter which — would be premature at this moment. We want to grow primarily organically and we surely have to be able to walk before we want to run.” Weber, a former Bundesbank chief who joined UBS in 2012, said he could imagine remaining in his post until 2022. Asked how long Chief Executive Sergio Ermotti might stay, he said UBS wanted an orderly leadership transition and was under no pressure to act while it ensured the right talent was in place.

The Dutch finance minister published a list of tax havens a few days ago. Holland wasn’t on it. These people don’t give a sh*t about their credibility.

• Google Shifted $23 Billion To Tax Haven Bermuda In 2017 (R.)

Google moved 19.9 billion euros ($22.7 billion) through a Dutch shell company to Bermuda in 2017, as part of an arrangement that allows it to reduce its foreign tax bill, according to documents filed at the Dutch Chamber of Commerce. The amount channeled through Google Netherlands Holdings BV was around 4 billion euros more than in 2016, the documents, filed on Dec. 21, showed. “We pay all of the taxes due and comply with the tax laws in every country we operate in around the world,” Google said in a statement. “Google, like other multinational companies, pays the vast majority of its corporate income tax in its home country, and we have paid a global effective tax rate of 26 percent over the last ten years.”

For more than a decade the arrangement has allowed Google owner Alphabet to enjoy an effective tax rate in the single digits on its non-U.S. profits, around a quarter the average tax rate in its overseas markets. The subsidiary in the Netherlands is used to shift revenue from royalties earned outside the United States to Google Ireland Holdings, an affiliate based in Bermuda, where companies pay no income tax. The tax strategy, known as the “Double Irish, Dutch Sandwich”, is legal and allows Google to avoid triggering U.S. income taxes or European withholding taxes on the funds, which represent the bulk of its overseas profits.

“76% of Tory members said that warnings about no deal Brexit — like those on food & medicine — are “exaggerated or invented, and in reality leaving without a deal would not cause serious disruption.”

• Over Half Of Tory Members Consider Quitting Party Over May’s Brexit Deal (BI)

Conservative party members overwhelmingly want MPs to vote down Theresa May’s Brexit deal, with more than half saying they have even considered ripping up their membership over it, according to a new poll. A survey of 1,215 Tory party members published on Friday found that 59% of Conservative party members oppose the Withdrawal Agreement May has negotiated with the European Union, while just 38% support it. Among all Conservative party members, more than half (56%) said they had considered quitting the party over May’s deal, according to YouGov polling for leading academics at the ESRC-funded Party Members Project.

The findings will spook figures in Downing Street who had hoped that Conservative MPs would return from their constituencies over Christmas having been urged by party members to get behind May and her deal. The prime minister was forced to postpone a parliamentary vote on her deal after more than 100 of her MPs announced that they planned to oppose it. [..] The Tory party membership is particularly supportive of leaving the EU without a deal, despite the myriad warnings from ministers about the disruption it would cause across multiple aspects of life in the UK, including food and medicine. A whopping 76% of Tory members said that warnings about a no deal Brexit are “exaggerated or invented, and in reality leaving without a deal would not cause serious disruption.” Just 18% said the warnings were realistic.

The -legal- power of Monsanto should never be underestimated.

• US Judge Limits Evidence In Trial Over Roundup Cancer Claims (R.)

A federal judge overseeing lawsuits alleging Bayer’s glyphosate-based weed killer causes cancer has issued a ruling that could severely restrict evidence that the plaintiffs consider crucial to their cases. U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria in San Francisco in an order on Thursday granted Bayer unit Monsanto’s request to split an upcoming trial into two phases. The order initially bars lawyers for plaintiff Edwin Hardeman from introducing evidence that the company allegedly attempted to influence regulators and manipulate public opinion.

Thursday’s order applies to Hardeman’s case, which is scheduled to go to trial on Feb. 25, and two other so-called bellwether trials which will help determine the range of damages and define settlement options for the rest of the 620 Roundup cases before Chhabria. But Hardeman’s lawyers contended that such evidence, including internal Monsanto documents, showed the company’s misconduct and were critical to California state court jury’s August 2018 decision to award $289 million in a similar case. The verdict sent Bayer shares tumbling though the award was later reduced to $78 million and is under appeal. Under Chhabria’s order, evidence of Monsanto’s alleged misconduct would be allowed only if glyphosate was found to have caused Hardeman’s cancer and the trial proceeded to a second phase to determine Bayer’s liability.

Time to cut all ties with Brazil.

• New Brazil President Bolsonaro Launches Assault On Amazon Rainforest (G.)

Hours after taking office, Brazil’s new president, Jair Bolsonaro, has launched an assault on environmental and Amazon protections with an executive order transferring the regulation and creation of new indigenous reserves to the agriculture ministry – which is controlled by the powerful agribusiness lobby. The move sparked outcry from indigenous leaders, who said it threatened their reserves, which make up about 13% of Brazilian territory, and marked a symbolic concession to farming interests at a time when deforestation is rising again. “There will be an increase in deforestation and violence against indigenous people,” said Dinaman Tuxá, the executive coordinator of the Articulation of Indigenous People of Brazil (Apib).

“Indigenous people are defenders and protectors of the environment.” Sonia Guajajara, an indigenous leader who stood as vice-presidential candidate for the Socialism and Freedom party (PSOL) tweeted her opposition. “The dismantling has already begun,” she posted on Tuesday. Previously, demarcation of indigenous reserves was controlled by the indigenous agency Funai, which has been moved from the justice ministry to a new ministry of women, family and human rights controlled by an evangelical pastor. The decision was included in an executive order which also gave Bolsonaro’s government secretary potentially far-reaching powers over non-governmental organizations working in Brazil.

Of Course The Fed Is Crazy

Oct 112018

October 11, 2018 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 1:22 pm Finance Tagged with: AAA, crazy, Fed, GOP, Growth, House, income tax, inequality, millionaires, naked, rates, Senate, Trump 6 Responses »

Pieter Bruegel the Elder The Triumph of Death 1562

Finally financial ‘markets’ go through a substantial dip, which Steve Mnuchin claims is just temporary and Donald Trump says is caused by the fact that the Fed is ‘loco’. Mnuchin may well be right, but it won’t be because he knows something you don’t.

And Trump is certainly right, but in reality the Fed has been loco for many years, so why be surprised if it acts crazy now? The reason Mnuchin and a million other ‘experts’ may be right without realizing it is that the Fed has been crazy enough to kill the financial markets.

Or at least killed what made the markets functional, and beneficial to society. And that may well be exactly what Jay Powell is trying to repair, but he may well not be aware of that either. Looked at from a ‘benign’ angle, Powell is perhaps raising rates so people can regain insight into what they’re buying.

The pre-Powell Fed pushed up asset prices (don’t let’s say ‘values’) to such heights nobody has any insight anymore into what anything is truly worth. And in what was formerly known as the financial markets that was not important, because what were formerly known as investors were making heaps of money regardless.

Surely they must all have known that this wouldn’t continue?! That it’s just a matter of timing, of knowing when it would end? Oh, but that’s not really possible, is it, without the very price discovery process the Fed successfully strangulated?

Still, there must also be tons of people left thinking the Fed can kick that can six times to the moon and back, or sixty. If only because they’ve never bothered to think about price discovery, and what role it plays in the very ‘markets’ they volunteer to spend their money in.

And along those same lines, many acknowledge housing bubbles in Sydney and Vancouver but think the US has learned its lesson a decade ago. And the loco Fed plays its role there too: mortgage rates have been ultra-low, enticing the last left batch of greater fools not mortally wounded by the last fire to jump in this time. Wolf Richter’s Case-Shiller graph says plenty in that regard:

But of course things tend back to normalcy, and it doesn’t take all the overleveraged stock- and home buyers longing for price discovery; it takes just a few to get the engine started. And then everyone will be along for the ride. So from that angle Jay Powell looks anything but crazy raising rates, we just can’t be sure if he knows what the consequences will be.

Not that it matters all that much what he does or does not know. What was formerly the market is like a pendulum swung so far out of balance that it costs ever more effort and money to keep it from moving towards equilibrium, and that process has only one possible outcome.

For mortgage rates, it looks something like this, and to make anyone able to buy any home at all higher rates will of necessity mean lower prices. You can’t, nobody can, not the Fed or the government can, keep that pendulum away from its tendency towards equilibrium forever.

For stocks it looks much the same. So why try, you’d think?! To prevent incumbents and ruling classes from being exposed as swimming naked, that’s why. They invented a way to make the entire nation swim naked, thinking they’d never be found out because the water levels were so high.

Whether yesterday’s 831-point Dow dip is temporary or not is of little interest. Much more important is that the entire asset prices situation is temporary. It doesn’t matter if the Fed pumps $1, $10, or $100 trillion into what once were markets, in the end it all comes down to how many people can pay how much money for the assets.

And since there is never an unending supply of greater fools, we know where this is going. The easy money and low rates and asset purchases at central banks and stock buybacks by companies can and will result only in more profits and more wealth for a few, and sheer endlessly less for the many.

Inequality in the US has now reached such extremities that the country’s AAA rating threatens to be taken away –as Moody’s indicated-; the government has so many people it must support financially (or let perish) that its financial position comes under pressure. Which is, again, negative for the many, for the few; they don’t care about that rating.

Yes, too many people are on some form of welfare in America. And Washington would love to throw many of them off of it. The many have no representation on Capitol Hill anymore. Just about any senator and congress(wo)man is a millionaire or certainly well-off.

How can the country get its rating back, or at least not lose it due to its increasing inequality? There seem to be two ways: let the 80 million now on welfare die by the side of the road, or provide them with jobs that allow them a fruitful life. That may sound like socialism or something, but it’s really the exact opposite.

It’s not the government’s role to give people jobs, but it is its role to make sure conditions are in place for the private sector to provide them. Trump’s ‘trade wars’ look crazy to many, but the intent is to get jobs back to the US. But there is much more.

America was once prosperous. What changed?

Here’s one thing: In what was -arguably?- America’s wealthiest time as a nation, the post-World War II period, income taxes for the richest were as high as 90% (1952: 92%); they were slowly brought down towards 70%. Only when Ronald Reagan took over in 1980 did they really fall (1982: 50%). This was ‘justified’ by lowering the highest income bracket (1982: $85,600, it had been between $200,000 and $400,000 for years).

In 1988, the top rate plunged to 28%, and the highest bracket to $29,750. Today, the top rate is 39.6% and the high bracket $400,000. In a graph, the consequences look like this:

The corporate tax rate, meanwhile, pulled this one, and don’t get started on tax havens etc.:

And that situation has led to a huge financial crisis, to the Fed going crazy and handing out trillions to the exact wrong part of society, those who already have a lot of money, and the result has been an absolute disaster, at least for the country; not so much for its elites.

But as even Moody’s now recognizes, you can’t run an AAA-rated country on elites alone. Despite the crazy Fed trillions, the US has achieved negative growth (imagine where it would be without):

Something must be done. Problem is, with only those millionaires in charge in the House and Senate, the likelihood of boosting income tax levels up to where they were when America was most prosperous is extremely low. And Trump’s tariffs are not on their own going to bring back the jobs; they can’t rebuild the lost infrastructure, for one thing.

Something must be done, and it’s entirely unclear what, or rather, who’s going to do it. The Democrats have nothing, or nothing but frustrated millionaires and Bernie Sanders. The GOP has only Trump. None of these people are going to vote to double their income taxes.

Much of what needs to be done will be classified as socialism, ridiculed and thrown out the window, even if the country was anything but socialist under Eisenhower and Kennedy, during its -at least economic- Golden Age.

It’s a nice puzzle, isn’t it? Well, maybe not so nice after all.

America’s Looming Abyss

Sep 252018

September 25, 2018 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 12:55 pm Primers Tagged with: accusations, Axios, Blasey Ford, Democrats, elections, House, Kavanaugh, MSM, Mueller, Rosenstein, Sessions, sex, Trump, virgin 6 Responses »

Salvador Dali Galatea of the Spheres 1952

Axios reporter Jonathan Swan “broke” the story yesterday morning that Rod Rosenstein was going to resign before he would be fired, and he was on his way to the White House for that. Just about every would-be journalist in the US followed suit with speculation and ‘updates’ by anonymous sources either close to the White House or to Rosenstein.

Through the day it became clear that Swan’s entire story was pure speculation (though he just published an alleged resignation letter), and at the end of the day Rosenstein is still the Deputy AG, scheduled for a talk with Trump on the entire matter on Thursday. In short, Jonathan Swan dented Axios’ credibility by more than he will admit. So who has any credibility left by now? It’s not a long list anymore. Where can you get your news? Not where you used to.

Several voices volunteered that the White House had pumped the Rosenstein story in order to deflect attention from the Kavanaugh narrative. That made little sense: why would they do that? There may be some who think that Kavanaugh means a whole lot of trouble from Trump, but are they really paying attention, or merely thinking wishfully?

Kavanaugh himself didn’t look all that destroyed in his interview last night. And he made a very bold move: he said he was a virgin until well past high school. All it would take to break down that claim is one woman to step forward and say she had sex with him. And if he did have consensual sex even just once, nothing to do with assault, he’d still be exposed as a liar, so why make such a claim unless it’s true?

All this puts the allegations made against him in an eery light. Christine Blasey Ford’s story looked shaky from the start, because of all the things she said she couldn’t remember, but many people were granting her the benefit of the doubt. Then Deborah Ramirez added an allegation that if anything looked even less coherent. Even the New York Times could find no-one to corroborate her story, and she herself couldn’t, either.

Now, for all we know Kavanaugh may have been an adolescent monster, but we would still need proof of that before we nail him to a cross, or, worse still, keep him off the Supreme Court. Which is, obviously, what got the whole circus started.

Thursday will be yet another eventful day in the guaranteed to be always entertaining presidency of Donald Trump, and we wonder in eager anticipation how Axios and all the other news outlets will cover the events. Their Kavanaugh narrative looks shot right now, but we’d expect another woman, or two, or ten, to pop up with inflammatory tales.

Look for the one about consensual sex, that would seem to have a better chance than another assault with a penis chapter, and he set it up himself last night by his virgin declaration. Also, look for desperate attempts to smear the judge. There are still many people in Washington and beyond who really really don’t want him confirmed.

But then, everything they tried so far has backfired, even if that’s not what they see. That same thing may well happen in the Rosenstein saga. It’s no secret, never has been, that Trump has different opinions than Rosenstein, or for that matter Jeff Sessions, have on several matters. But they’re both still in their jobs.

Trump appointed Rosenstein, and he appointed Sessions, who turned around and recused himself from the Russian collusion case, putting Rosenstein in charge of that. Rosenstein appointed former FBI chief Robert Mueller as Special Counsel, though it was obvious from miles away that the FBI was heavily involved in the case.

Now, after all the Strzok/Page mails and the Andrew McCabe bumbling, we know that Robert Mueller, after almost two years, still hasn’t found any proof of collusion. We know this because he hasn’t presented any, which he would have been obliged to do if he had any, simply because the allegation of working with a foreign government to undermine the US is so serious; you can’t hold back that sort of information.

That all said, is it so strange that Trump has perhaps had enough of this? That he might like an actual Attorney General who actually takes charge of the case, and a Deputy AG who has some distance from Mueller and asks him to finish up the investigation which hasn’t produced anything but tax evasion charges for Manafort and 14 days in jail for Papadopoulos, who presumably pled guilty because, like Michael Flynn, he couldn’t afford to defend himself?

There are times one gets the impression the whole thing only continues because newspapers and TV channels make so much money off of painting Trump as the modern Antichrist. And while the man undoubtedly is full of flaws, that’s not what they’re all aiming for. They go for Russiagate, because it sells to have an archenemy to talk about, and they go for Stormy Daniels and Kavanaugh’s penis, because sex sells more than anything.

Along with all the anti-Trump rhetoric, there is a running story about a Blue Wave that will hand the Democrats back control over the House and perhaps the Senate. But while I think it might be good to restore some balance in Washington, if only so people must actually talk, I also think that Blue Wave thing is perhaps the biggest mistake America’s formerly left can make.

Because the Democrats, no matter how they see themselves, have no identity. Other than they’re not Trump and they hate the man. We saw that loud and clear the other day when they helped the GOP push a record military budget through the House. They’re merely a flipside of a coin. They have nothing of their own.

Yes, there’s Ocasio-Cortez and a handful others who try to define something different, but surely they must know that when you call yourself Socialist in America you’re tying an arm and a leg behind your back. Kudos for trying, but that’s not going to work. Bernie Sanders is done after allowing Hillary’s DNC to push him aside; people remember such things.

That leaves the usual suspects, Schumer, Pelosi, Feinstein, calcifying in their seats, with Hillary in the wings for a glorious return to viability in 2020. And they think that combo will make them win elections, and win them big, just because voters are so sick of Trump? Methinks perhaps they have started to believe their own stories, while neglecting those of their one-time voters.

But sure, let’s see what happens on Thursday, and before, with Blasey Ford and Kavanaugh’s testimonies, and with Rosenstein’s friendly chat with the President. I’m thinking there’s nothing so bizarre I would count it out, but I may have to rethink that. Maybe Robert Mueller will resign tomorrow before Rosenstein can be fired -assuming Trump would want to-, maybe Kavanaugh had sex with an entire boys’ choir twice a week, leaving him technically still a virgin.

Our fantasy is just about endless. But that’s the exact biggest problem with everything about this: there’s far too much fantasy involved, far too many allegations that remain unproven but leave traces left and right, far too many accusations that nobody is made to own up to.

One last thing: if it turns out Christine Blasey Ford can prove none of her accusations vs Kavanaugh, and he’s been telling the truth all along, what does that mean for all the women who’ve told their stories of rape and assault under the #WhyIDidntReport hashtag? How betrayed will they feel, how tricked? Or will they continue to insist that he must be guilty even if there is zero proof?

And no, it’s not Just the Democrats, it’s Washington as a whole, egged on by despairing media who see their revenues and credibility plunge and resort to cheap tricks. The Republicans with their inane plans to re-open the hunt on grizzlies are just as bad. Want to Make America Great Again? Start with protecting the grizzlies and manatees and moose and eagles. They are what makes the country rich. There won’t be anything great about a barren desert land devoid of life.

But the urgent question in Washington right at this moment is, in light of Rosenstein and Kavanaugh: how deeply can you divide a country, for political ends, before it bursts? And what will it take, what can still be done today, to pull it away from the looming abyss?