"New front in trade war thumps US markets" by Larry Edelman Globe Columnist, August 5, 2019
The news on Monday morning was especially unsettling: Tensions rising in the Persian Gulf over oil shipments, Hong Kong partially paralyzed by antigovernment protests, mass shootings in Texas and Ohio “shaking a bewildered nation to its core,” as The New York Times headline blared, but the development that really rattled investors — at one point sending the Dow Jones average tumbling nearly 1,000 points — was a decline by China’s currency against the US dollar. The Dow ended the day with a loss of 767 points, or 2.90 percent, the biggest percentage decline of the year.
The ups and downs of the renminbi usually go little noticed outside the foreign exchange market, but these days, investors’ primal fear is that the escalating trade war with China will trip the US economy into a recession.
Can you blame them?
Last week, President Trump said he would impose new tariffs on a huge basket of Chinese goods starting Sept. 1, and US stocks had their worst week of the year.
On Monday, after China let its tightly managed currency hit the lowest level against the dollar since 2008, it sure seemed like retaliation for Trump’s new tariff threat.
A cheaper renminbi serves a dual purpose for Beijing: It makes Chinese exports less expensive for international buyers, easing the impact of American tariffs, and complicates life for US companies as they compete against Chinese rivals.
For good measure, China also stopped making purchases of US agricultural goods, which the Trump administration has been seeking to boost. Then, after the markets closed Monday, the Treasury Department ratcheted up the dispute further, labeling China a currency manipulator.
That was a major escalation.
Deep into July, stocks had been trading at record highs, thanks to hopes for a trade deal, which seemed possible as recently as a week ago. Now the two sides have entered a new, more dangerous phase of the confrontation: currency warfare.
“The response of the equity markets over the last several days to the reignition of protectionist trade policy by the Trump administration toward China has been incredibly negative, and not without reason,” Shannon Saccocia, chief investment officer at wealth manager Boston Private Financial, said in an e-mail. “The economic impact of this potential next round of tariffs could be meaningful, as the goods subject to the next round are consumer focused.”
In March of last year, Trump tweeted “trade wars are good, and easy to win.”
That was early in his attempt to close the trade gap with China and end unfair tactics such as requiring transfers of US technology to Chinese partners. While most investors and economists dismissed the president’s tweet as nonsense, they agreed China’s trade practices were a problem that needed to be addressed.
The reaction on Wall Street was overwhelmingly negative. The economy isn’t growing as fast as it was when the trade spat started. There is less room for error — a fact acknowledged by the Federal Reserve last week when it approved a quarter-point rate cut as insurance against damage from the trade fight.
All part of the $ummer blues.
“Tariffs are taxes; it is as simple as that,” said Luke Tilley, chief economist at Delaware-based Wilmington Trust. “Raising taxes reduces economic growth, just as the tax cut package boosted growth in 2018. . . . First-order impacts of the tariffs wipe out a substantial portion of the tax stimulus that had been created.”
So what happened on Monday?
China allowed its tightly managed currency to fall below 7 renminbi to the dollar, a symbolically important move that could make US products even less competitive against Chinese rivals. The president accused China of deliberately weakening its currency to gain an edge in export markets. China blamed Trump for “unilateralism and trade protectionism.”
Investors just ran for the hills.....
That's when I stopped reading, dropped the paper and ran out the door.
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Looks like things are heating up as "an Olympics construction worker has died of suspected heatstroke after falling unconscious as an intense heat wave batters Japan, causing scores of deaths and fueling worries over Tokyo’s plans to host the Games next summer....."
No concern about the dumping of radioactive cooling water into the ocean at Fukushima, and how many illegals do the Japanese contract?
The situation is ripe for another Gulf of Tonkin incident and major allied offensive in the Pacific. A couple of bombs and it is all over but the payments:
"HIROSHIMA ANNIVERSARY -- A woman placed a candle-lit lantern on a river during an event to commemorate 74 years since the atomic bombing of the city of Hiroshima at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park on Tuesday. The bomb dropped by the United States instantly killed an estimated 70,000 people, and thousands more were affected by radiation the following years. Pope Francis plans to visit the city later this year to offer prayers for the victims."
I was never able to find the actual print photograph (what's oddest of all is the war began and ended on the same day), and you can forget the clutter:
"Welcome to America’s other clutter problem. It’s called self-storage" by Beth Teitell Globe Staff, August 5, 2019
Welcome to America’s other clutter epidemic, the one taking place off-site, and so monstrous it’s fueling an industry with $38 billion in annual revenue, according to SpareFoot, a company that tracks the self-storage industry.
Nearly one out of ten American households rents a storage unit, and with between 45,000 and 52,000 self-storage facilities in the United States, and 1.7 billion square feet of rentable space, according to SpareFoot, is it any surprise there are at least two podcasts devoted to the self-storage trade? (Sample episode from “Sounds of Storage”: How to market to millennials.)
The average price was $105 but you can pay as much as $956 a month.
People regularly spend thousands of dollars a year to store things they don’t want but can’t bring themselves to throw out, said a Boston professional organizer, Cori Bamburg, founder of Ditch the Clutter.
“The storage unit becomes a tomb of things you don’t know what else to do with,” she said.
With their security cameras and hallways of seemingly endless locked doors, storage facilities throw off a prison vibe, but behind some of those doors lies hope, said Kathy Vines, founder of Clever Girl Organizing on the North Shore.
She’s worked with clients struggling with infertility, and for them, selling or donating an inherited crib or toys may mean letting go of a dream.
“Renting a unit lets them live without having to face the reality that what they envisioned for their family life may not happen,” she said.
Who rents space? The better question is who doesn’t. Criminals do, per every TV crime show ever made and also per real-world news headlines. So do people between moves, or renovating, or staging a home for sale, and people with garages already bursting with junk, or no room to keep holiday decorations or skis. Well, those are the clients the storage facilities play up on their websites, at least.
No one in the industry openly boasts about what might be called “guilt renting,” but with baby boomers downsizing, and kids not interested in their brown furniture, it’s definitely a category.
Natalie Ahern, founder of All the Right Moves, a senior downsizing and relocation firm in Hingham, recalled a client who had moved her mother to a memory care unit and promptly became responsible for storing her mother’s belongings, a job she didn’t want but took on because her siblings were unwilling.
“She was the caregiver not only for her mom,” Ahern said, “but also for her mother’s things.”
If we could truly buy ourselves out of the guilt, self-storage debt might be worth it, but as Rhea Becker, founder of the Clutter Queen, noted, “The thing about clutter is that it weighs on you even if you’re not around it.”
Becker and other personal organizers are regularly hired by clients to accompany them to their storage units when they want help culling, a move that typically signals the end is near.
“People get to a point in their lives where they are mentally done with their storage,” Becker said.
Jacqueline Davis, a paralegal in Braintree, is there — so there — right now.
In Rockport, Vivienne Steinbock is also ready to move on, and so the cycle begins again.....
That's the end of this cycle.
--more--"
Learning out some economic clutter of the last week:
"The Federal Reserve said Monday that it will create a real-time payments system, with the goal of making paychecks and money transfers available for use more immediately. The move is aimed at narrowing the amount of time between when money is deposited or transferred into an account and when it is available for use. That gap can span several hours or several days, putting individuals — particularly low-income Americans — at a disadvantage. Community groups, smaller banks and advocates for low-wage earners have been calling for the Fed to limit the delay and to create a public sector option for real-time payments, but some in the banking industry, particularly large banks, have pushed back against the effort over concerns that the Fed’s involvement will compete with their products and potentially crowd out private-sector efforts. The round-the-clock service will be called FedNow and is expected to become available in 2023 or 2024, according to the Fed’s news release."
I can't get my money for four or five more years?
"There wasn’t much to smile about after Monday’s massive sell-off on Wall Street — the worst drop of 2019 — as investors become increasingly alarmed about fraying US-China trade relations. Bright spots were hard to find in the day-long scrum. Gold prices, a fear barometer, jumped. The Japanese yen and Swiss franc, long safe harbors, advanced. ‘‘They are viewed as safe havens when the world falls to pieces because these countries are politically stable,’’ said Joachim Fels, chief economic adviser at Pimco. Utilities, another go-to sector in times of stress, edged into positive territory before succumbing and turning negative late in the day. Investors also flocked to the safety of the 10-year US Treasury bond, evidence of a loss of faith in stocks altogether. The losers were everywhere. Most stocks. Technology. Retail. Oil prices, down. Natural gas, down. Dow transports — a closely watched marker for the economy — fell. Even the Russell 2000 index of small-cap stocks ($2.5 billion and below) was off. The volatility index, VIX, soared 30 percent. Stodgy value stocks like Verizon, Procter & Gamble, PepsiCo, and Johnson & Johnson were hurting, but not as much as such tech stalwarts as Apple, Visa, Facebook, Microsoft, and Google-parent Alphabet. Technology companies, as a whole, accounted for a major share of the day’s losses."
"Stocks closed broadly higher Tuesday as Wall Street regained its footing a day after the market had its biggest decline in a year. The bounce pushed the Dow Jones industrial average more than 300 points higher and snapped a six-day losing streak for the market, though the benchmark S&P 500 recouped only a little more than a third of the losses from Monday. China’s decision to stabilize its currency put investors in a buying mood. News that China had allowed its currency to depreciate against the dollar to its lowest level in 11 years sparked Monday’s steep sell-off. The move helped allay some of the market’s jitters over the escalating dispute between the world’s largest economies at a time when investors are anxious about falling US corporate profits and a global economy that’s showing signs of slowing. ‘‘We’re getting a nice move here, but if you look at what the tone of the market might be for the next few days it still could be under some pressure,’’ said Jeff Kravetz, regional investment director for US Bank Wealth Management. ‘‘Right now investors are quite nervous and the reason for the nervousness is not only the trade issue, but we’re also seeing weakening economic data, not only here, but overseas.’’ Investors have grown more nervous about the impact that the US-China trade war could have on the economy and corporate profits. Those concerns have grown as the conflict heated from a simmer to a boil last week, even as both sides resumed negotiations, but China’s decision to allow its currency to stabilize Tuesday suggests Beijing might hold off from aggressively allowing the yuan to weaken as a way to respond to US tariffs on Chinese goods. That offered some hope that the sides might try to keep the situation from escalating further. ‘‘That’s a big part of why markets are not down big again today,’’ Kravetz said. Technology stocks, which bore the brunt of Monday’s sell-off, accounted for a big share of the market’s gains Tuesday. Apple and Microsoft rose 1.9 percent. The companies get significant revenue from China and have been highly sensitive to swings in the ongoing trade dispute. Financial companies also helped lift the market. Wells Fargo gained 1.7 percent and Bank of America rose 1.2 percent. Solid earnings results helped lift other sectors. Animal health company Zoetis climbed 7.6 percent to lead health care stocks higher. Retail, communications services, and industrial companies’ stocks also notched solid gains. Foot Locker rose 3.4 percent, and Facebook added 1.5 percent. Aircraft components maker TransDigm jumped 13.7 percent after raising its profit forecast and delivering solid quarterly earnings. Energy stocks dropped along with the price of crude oil. A government report suggesting a cooling US job market kept bond yields in check after an early gain. The yield on the 10-year Treasury briefly rose to 1.77 percent, but then declined to 1.72 percent, down from 1.73 percent late Monday. Companies are in the final stretch of the latest round of quarterly earnings reports, and results haven’t been as bad as initially feared, though still down from year-ago levels....."
I'm tired of getting jerked up and down like the market.
"Care.com’s stock plunged Tuesday after the company disclosed that its founder, Sheila Lirio Marcelo, is stepping down as CEO and that revenue for 2019 would probably fall short of the company’s earlier expectations. Marcelo will remain CEO until a successor is found and will then move into the role of executive chair, considered a part-time position by the company. Care.com, of Waltham, wasn’t the first rough day for the stock: The shares have slid more than 65 percent since The Wall Street Journal in March published a story that focused on inadequate vetting of caregivers that used the site. As a result, the company pledged to expand its background checks and to implement other safety measures....."
Which credit card do you plan to pay with?
"When you visit a meat plant, humans are completing tasks like stacking pallets and packing chicken drumsticks, but Tyson Foods Inc. thinks robots can do it all. The meat giant is betting that automation and robotics can alleviate a worker shortage that has long hampered the industry. The company has built the 26,000-square-foot, multimillion-dollar Tyson Manufacturing Automation Center near its headquarters in Springdale, Ark. At the facility, engineers will apply the latest advances in machine learning to meat manufacturing, with the goal of eventually eliminating jobs that can be physically demanding, highly repetitive, and at times dangerous."
Yeah, replacing you is for your own good.
"Amazon’s self-driving robots will be roaming the streets of another neighborhood. The online shopping giant says the six-wheeled robots, about the size of a Labrador, will begin delivering packages in Irvine, Calif. Amazon began testing them in a suburb of Seattle at the beginning of the year. Amazon says the robots, which are light blue and have the Amazon smile logo stamped on their sides, are able to avoid crashing into trash cans or pedestrians. Still, a worker will accompany the robots at first."
That's why FedEx is cutting ties with them.
"A former coal baron is donating $1 million to miners protesting in Kentucky after their employer went bankrupt and their paychecks bounced. Onetime Cumberland Resources Ltd. founder Richard Gilliam said he hopes the money “will act as a bridge” for the miners until they’re paid....."
"The maker of electric trucks in talks to reopen an Ohio car factory that President Trump has championed reported dismal results as vehicle shipments ground to a halt. Workhorse Group had just $6,000 in sales during the three months ended in June, down from about $171,000 a year earlier. The Cincinnati company announced in May that it was in discussions with General Motors Co. to form a new affiliate that would buy the shuttered Chevrolet Cruze car plant in Lordstown, Ohio."
"The number of open US jobs was largely unchanged in June and hiring slipped, suggesting the job market has cooled a bit. The Labor Department said Tuesday that the number of available jobs fell by just 0.5 percent, to 7.35 million. That was down from a record high in November of 7.63 million, but still a healthy level. Total hiring slipped 1 percent to 5.7 million, below a record of nearly 6 million in April."
"Bumble Bee Seafood is considering a bankruptcy filing to ease its financial burden, which stems in part from a 2017 guilty plea to federal price-fixing charges, according to people with knowledge of the plans....."
Can't anyone help fish them out of bankruptcy, or does that take too much energy?
At least Barney's is still open:
"Barneys in Boston will stay open amid national closures, bankruptcy" by Allison Hagan Globe Correspondent, August 6, 2019
Keep calm, local luxury fashion shoppers in need of an $8,000 sport coat or $1,250 sandals — the Barneys New York store in Boston will remain open despite the company’s plan to close most of its shops nationwide in conjunction with a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing.
The struggling department store chain announced Tuesday that 15 of its 22 stores will go dark. The store at Copley Place in the Back Bay, however, will stay in business, along with four other flagship locations in New York and California, and two discount warehouses.
The Barneys in Boston is one of the company’s top-performing locations, a Barneys representative said. The company also still plans to open a restaurant, Freds at Barneys New York, later this year at Copley Place.
Barneys began in New York in 1923 as a discount clothing store, but it has long been known for high-end clothing, beauty products, and home goods from designer brands such as Balenciaga, Givenchy, and Chanel. It features products such as a $10,200 floral-embellished tulle dress from Fendi and a pair of Deakin & Francis skull-shaped cuff links for $7,995.
As with other retailers, the chain’s store sales have been hurt as more consumers do their buying online.
“Like many in our industry, Barneys New York’s financial position has been dramatically impacted by the challenging retail environment and rent structures that are excessively high relative to market demand,” chief executive Daniella Vitale said in a statement.
The company cited rent costs as a reason why it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. At its flagship store on Madison Avenue in New York City, for example, rent doubled this year to nearly $30 million.
Following the bankruptcy filing — which was widely expected — landlords may be offering the company more attractive lease terms or other incentives to ensure that the spaces don’t become vacant as the holiday season nears, said Lauren Beitelspacher, an associate professor in marketing at Babson College who studies retail management.
Ani Collum, a retail strategist for commerce consultancy Trade Collective, said the company is “making sure the locations they keep alive aren’t super expensive in terms of how they relate back to sales.”
Barneys also said Tuesday that it has secured $75 million in funding to review its current leases, pay employees, and optimize operations as it seeks a buyer.
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Sears not so lucky:
"The padlocks are coming out again for Sears stores. The struggling retailer will shutter 26 more of its large-format Sears and Kmart stores in late October, it revealed on its website. Any of the locations with auto centers will close those divisions in late August, it said. Liquidation sales are expected to start as soon as next week. The Kmart store in Palmer is among those that will close. The once-dominant chain, which has already closed more than 100 locations, is trying to rebuild itself by investing in smaller footprint stores, a key tenet of its turnaround plan."
"A settlement has been reached in a seven-year long dispute between Waffle House Chairman Joseph Rogers Jr. and his former housekeeper, who secretly recorded them having sex. The confidential deal was announced moments after Rogers’s attorney gave his opening statement in a civil trial Tuesday in a Georgia courtroom. News outlets report the terms weren’t disclosed and both sides declined to comment. Rogers accused his former housekeeper Mye Brindle in a lawsuit filed in 2012 of recording their sexual encounters in an attempt to extort him. Rogers also sued Brindle’s attorneys for allegedly conspiring with her. Brindle said she recorded the acts as proof of Rogers’s repeated sexual harassment. Brindle and her attorneys were indicted on unlawful surveillance charges but were cleared last year."
He should have put a lock on it.
He should have put a lock on it.
"The force may be with them, but the bucks, apparently, are not. Walt Disney Co. shares took their worst tumble in nearly four years after the opening of the most highly anticipated theme-park attraction in the company’s history fell flat, hammering results in its latest quarter. Profit at the company’s domestic resorts slumped in the period, which was marked by the ballyhooed opening of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, the largest addition ever to the Disneyland resort in Anaheim, Calif. A second version of the space-themed land opens in Florida this month. The earnings shortfall was a shock to investors who were counting on Disney’s market-dominating theme parks and films to shoulder the burden of growth as the company goes head to head with Netflix Inc. in streaming."
Speaking of Netflix, they will begin filming another movie in Mass. this month, this time on the South Shore. I wonder how much tax loot we will be giving the sickos.
Speaking of Netflix, they will begin filming another movie in Mass. this month, this time on the South Shore. I wonder how much tax loot we will be giving the sickos.
"CVS Health Corp. raised its 2019 earnings forecast for the second time this year after topping Wall Street’s estimates, driven by growing revenue and profit at the drug-benefits unit. The company, based in Woonsocket, R.I., expects adjusted earnings for the year to be $6.89 to $7 per share, an increase from its May forecast of $6.75 to $6.90. CVS’s success as a mix of corner pharmacies, drug-benefit services, and health insurance is a contrast to its competitors. While CVS raised its forecast, retail rival Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. has been slashing costs and closing stores — including Tuesday’s announcement that it would shut down 200 more US locations."
I wonder where they sold the stuff.
I wonder where they sold the stuff.
"The New York Times is having a week from hell. After the publisher drew flak for a headline earlier this week on President Trump and suffered a legal setback against Sarah Palin on Tuesday, the company warned that advertising revenue would decline sharply this quarter. The outlook sent New York Times Co. shares down 20 percent Wednesday — their worst intraday plunge in almost seven years — and cast a shadow on what had been an upbeat year for the Gray Lady. The stock was up 60 percent in 2019 through Tuesday, fueled by signs that the 168-year-old publisher is successfully pivoting to the digital age. The Times expects ad revenue to decrease by a percentage in the high-single digits in the third quarter. The stock rout was another headache in a week full of them. On Monday, presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke slammed the newspaper for running the print headline “Trump Urges Unity Vs. Racism,” which he and other critics said mischaracterized the story in favor of the president. New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet acknowledged to the Daily Beast that it was a “bad headline” but noted that it was quickly changed. On Tuesday, the Times learned that it must face a defamation lawsuit by Palin, the former Alaska governor, over an editorial that linked her to the shooting of Arizona lawmaker Gabrielle Giffords."
Am I $uppo$ed to be feeling $orry for the lead war-mongers of the media?
"Stocks overcame a big loss on Wall Street Wednesday, though the market’s recovery left plenty of signs of worry among investors that the fallout from the US-China trade war will spread. A late-afternoon rally lifted most of the major stock indexes out of the red, reversing most of the early slide that briefly pulled the Dow Jones average down more than 580 points. Technology and consumer staples stocks powered much of the gains, offsetting losses in banking, energy, and other sectors. Even so, the moves in the bond and commodities markets signaled that investors are nervous the escalating trade war may derail the global economy. Bond yields sank around the world, something that happens when investors see a weaker economy and low inflation on the way. The price of oil tanked, and the price of gold shot up to its highest level in six years as traders sought safe-haven holdings, but the markets turned volatile again early Wednesday after central banks in New Zealand, India, and Thailand cut key interest rates. The surprise rate cuts triggered a slide in bond yields around the world as investors scrambled for safety. Some investors saw the big drops Wednesday morning as an opportunity to buy stocks at cheaper prices. ‘‘I see some stocks that look great that I’m buying today,’’ said George Young, portfolio manager at Villere & Co. While investors have been scrambling to adjust to the turns in the trade conflict, the broader US economy continues to grow and add jobs. Unemployment is at the lowest level in decades, and consumer confidence remains strong. Corporate earnings, meanwhile, have been coming in better than expected. Still, the bond market continues to flash a warning signal of recession. It’s a rare occurrence, because investors usually demand bigger yields for tying up their money for longer periods of time, and one rule of thumb says a recession may hit about a year afterward if the gap, or spread, between those two rates persists. Investors are increasingly betting that the Federal Reserve will need to cut short-term interest rates to support the economy given all trade tensions, and traders see a nearly 50 percent chance of three cuts or more by the end of the year. US stocks have been on a wild ride since Jan. 22, 2018, when Trump first imposed tariffs, but they’re virtually back to where they started, with moves often driven by waxing and waning worries about the trade war since Trump tweeted in March 2018 that ‘‘trade wars are good, and easy to win.’’ Banks sustained some of the worst losses Wednesday....."
"Bracing for more trade-war turmoil, 3 countries cut interest rates unexpectedly" by Alexandra Stevenson New York Times, August 7, 2019
(Groan)
"Trump knows he’s vulnerable to a recession — and it could kill his 2020 chances" by Larry Edelman Globe Columnist, August 8, 2019
President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (right), at the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan, on June 29. Will Trump’s trade war with China end up triggering a recession?(Erin Schaff/New York Times)
We’ve got 15 months until the 2020 election, and Democrats are mired in a divisive debate over the best way to beat Donald Trump and pull the country back from the authoritarian abyss.
“Attack hard from the left.” “Appeal to the center.” “Nominate someone electable.”
You won’t hear it from the candidates or party officials, but the biggest threat to Trump isn’t Joe, Elizabeth, Bernie, or Kamala, and it’s not “Medicare for All” or a wealth tax.
It’s a recession. The lesser of two evils, delivered by deus ex machina.
Now economics are the act of God for which he is praying. What a piece of work is this guy.
I know, I know. It’s callous and unseemly to root for a downturn, even if the prospect of a second Trump term has you exploring options for exile, but let’s face it: The election, once again, could come down to a couple hundred thousand votes in a few swing states. Like Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee could easily win the popular vote but lose in the Electoral College. Meanwhile, a recession is more likely to unseat Trump than impeachment: Something goes wrong, the economy sags, the jobless rate climbs, and — like George H.W. Bush in 1992 — DJT is out of a job.
Maybe not. It will be coming too late. Bush's economy was already on the way up, but it hadn't trickled down yet.
Another case of Trump derangement syndrome? Not necessarily.
After winning the first Gulf War, Bush 41 seemed untouchable, but the “jobless” recovery from the oil-shock recession of 1990-1991 was his kryptonite. Even though the economy was on the mend before Election Day, the damage was done, and Bill Clinton moved into 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
It’s impossible to say if and when a recession will hit. Only about 35 percent of economists expect one within the next 12 months, according to a survey by Bloomberg.
Yet Trump knows he’s vulnerable. Why do you think he’s hectoring the Fed to cut interests, even after last week’s unnecessary reduction? He knows his trade war against China could backfire and damage the US economy, and he wants all the downside insurance he can get.
Keep your fingers cro$$ed.
The bond market is acting like a recession is around the corner. Stock market investors have been much more optimistic, pushing prices to new highs throughout the year, but cracks started to appear last week, when the president announced tariffs on an additional $300 billion worth of Chinese goods and Beijing retaliated by allowing its tightly controlled currency to fall to a post-2008 low against the US dollar — a move that hurts US exports.
US stocks rallied on Thursday after China signaled that it would not aggressively cut the value of the renminbi, a step that many investors fear would lead to a currency war.
We’ve gone a record 122 months without a recession, which is defined as two straight quarters of negative growth in the nation’s output of goods and services, but it can’t last. Republicans can cut taxes for the rich and fan the flames of racism and xenophobia, but they haven’t found a way to eliminate the business cycle.
If this the bu$ine$$ cycle, then we need to find another $y$tem, and I'm starting to believe it will never come down. If it does, it is by design because these guys have become masters at manipulating the money supply.
The economy is healthy, having expanded 2.1 percent in the second quarter. The jobless rate, at 3.7 percent, hasn’t been this low since we bid farewell to 1969, but US economic growth slowed from 3.1 percent in the first three months of the year, and there are other ominous signs: Global economies are struggling, US manufacturing has declined for two straight quarters, domestic business investment is waning as executives nervously eye an uncertain world, and the Fed has been unable to boost inflation to its 2 percent target.
What could trigger a recession between now and Election Day 2020?
The world’s a dangerous place. Tensions are heating up in the Persian Gulf as Iran seizes oil tankers. We’ve had more than one recession because of a spike in oil prices. Who knows what Kim Jong-un will do with his rockets. Is Boris Johnson really going to make Brexit work?
But the number one risk is the trade war with China. When and how does that end? China plays the long game; its leaders can hold on to see what happens in the election. Trump? It’s unlikely he will offer a deal the Chinese will accept, and vice versa.
That new round of tariffs, set to take effect Sept. 1, will hit consumers much harder than the earlier rounds, which mostly targeted goods that companies use to make their products, and the consumer is what has been keeping the economy going.
I know what you’re thinking: The Fed will bail out Trump by continuing to cut rates. I have to believe that many Fed officials don’t care what happens to a complainer-in-chief who labels them the enemy, but they won’t stand by and watch the economy go down the toilet.
There is only so much the central bank can do, though. Interest rates are already pretty low by pre-financial crisis standards. Businesses aren’t finding it hard to borrow, but they are concerned about expanding as Trump plays chicken with China. For consumers, mortgage rates are at a three-year low, but the housing market is starting to cool in some places.
See: Prices retreat in some of the costliest markets
Home prices slipped in some of the costliest US markets in the second quarter, a sign that would-be buyers are sitting out the competition for a scarcity of affordable properties, so you will have to $hare a bed.
This is the existential dilemma of our dysfunctional times. We can’t in good conscience hope for a recession. Millions of people would lose their jobs. Millions of homes would be lost to foreclosure, and the pain would be felt the most by blue-collar and low-income workers, but Trump isn’t really helping them now. Most of the economic gains are going to corporations and the wealthy. (And spare me the trickle-down BS.) He hasn’t delivered on his promise to revive manufacturing and coal mining. He’s trying to gut Obamacare, without offering a viable alternative, and it will only get worse if Trump wins reelection.
It will be four more years of the rich gaming the tax code while the rest of us empty our loose-change jars. Four more years of inaction on the environment and climate change. Four more years of fractured politics and corrosive tweets. With the exception of the 2017 tax cut, the economy is growing despite Trump’s policies, not because of them.
The Globe not paying him well?
With all that is at stake, a recession just may be the lesser evil — and, ironically, Trump’s trade war may be the match that starts the fire.....
The le$$er evil is still evil.
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Speak of the devils:
"Democrats struggle to present a united front on Trump’s trade war" by Jeff Stein Washington Post, August 7, 2019
(Groan)
Am I $uppo$ed to be feeling $orry for the lead war-mongers of the media?
"Stocks overcame a big loss on Wall Street Wednesday, though the market’s recovery left plenty of signs of worry among investors that the fallout from the US-China trade war will spread. A late-afternoon rally lifted most of the major stock indexes out of the red, reversing most of the early slide that briefly pulled the Dow Jones average down more than 580 points. Technology and consumer staples stocks powered much of the gains, offsetting losses in banking, energy, and other sectors. Even so, the moves in the bond and commodities markets signaled that investors are nervous the escalating trade war may derail the global economy. Bond yields sank around the world, something that happens when investors see a weaker economy and low inflation on the way. The price of oil tanked, and the price of gold shot up to its highest level in six years as traders sought safe-haven holdings, but the markets turned volatile again early Wednesday after central banks in New Zealand, India, and Thailand cut key interest rates. The surprise rate cuts triggered a slide in bond yields around the world as investors scrambled for safety. Some investors saw the big drops Wednesday morning as an opportunity to buy stocks at cheaper prices. ‘‘I see some stocks that look great that I’m buying today,’’ said George Young, portfolio manager at Villere & Co. While investors have been scrambling to adjust to the turns in the trade conflict, the broader US economy continues to grow and add jobs. Unemployment is at the lowest level in decades, and consumer confidence remains strong. Corporate earnings, meanwhile, have been coming in better than expected. Still, the bond market continues to flash a warning signal of recession. It’s a rare occurrence, because investors usually demand bigger yields for tying up their money for longer periods of time, and one rule of thumb says a recession may hit about a year afterward if the gap, or spread, between those two rates persists. Investors are increasingly betting that the Federal Reserve will need to cut short-term interest rates to support the economy given all trade tensions, and traders see a nearly 50 percent chance of three cuts or more by the end of the year. US stocks have been on a wild ride since Jan. 22, 2018, when Trump first imposed tariffs, but they’re virtually back to where they started, with moves often driven by waxing and waning worries about the trade war since Trump tweeted in March 2018 that ‘‘trade wars are good, and easy to win.’’ Banks sustained some of the worst losses Wednesday....."
"Bracing for more trade-war turmoil, 3 countries cut interest rates unexpectedly" by Alexandra Stevenson New York Times, August 7, 2019
(Groan)
NEW YORK — Central banks in India, Thailand, and New Zealand moved to shore up their economies Wednesday amid fears that global growth will become the biggest casualty in the spiraling trade war between the United States and China.
Monetary authorities in all three countries cut interest rates in a series of unexpected decisions that shook currency markets just two days after China allowed the yuan to weaken, a move that prompted President Trump to label Beijing a currency manipulator.
China’s currency has steadied in the days since it crossed a critical threshold Monday, but the world’s markets are still uneasy. On Wednesday, stocks on Wall Street tumbled at the open. The rate cuts signaled that more countries are bracing for tougher weeks and months ahead.
“This is a defensive action by countries seeking to protect themselves from the collateral damage of rising global trade tensions, amid weakening domestic growth,” said Eswar Prasad, former head of the International Monetary Fund’s China division.
The moves come at a time when the global economy is at a crossroads: Last year, every major economy finally appeared to be growing in unison, a decade after the ravages of a global financial crisis. That growth is now increasingly threatened by the bruising trade war between the world’s two biggest economies.
China’s currency move, in particular, could have a profound impact on global finances. If Beijing continues to allow its currency to weaken against the US dollar, more countries could feel forced to respond, leading to a damaging currency war that could revive inflation and further fray the bonds of global trade.
Investors’ worries that Australia’s central bank may be next to act sent the Australian dollar sliding to its lowest level against the US dollar in a decade.
“These moves signal the possibility of the trade wars morphing into a broad currency war that involves not just the main participants in the trade disputes but also countries that are on the sidelines but exposed to the fallout,” Prasad said.
The rate reductions in India and New Zealand were larger than expected, and Thailand’s cut surprised many economists. Caught off guard, investors sold the currencies of all three countries, weakening their value against the dollar.
Last week, the US Federal Reserve cut its benchmark interest rate for the first time in a decade in a precautionary move that may have also helped prompt other central banks to consider rate cuts.
Last week, only days after American and Chinese negotiators met in Shanghai for fresh talks and agreed to meet again in September, Trump threatened tariffs of 10 percent on some $300 billion worth of additional Chinese goods.
“These new tariffs raise recession risks for the US sometime next year due to increased uncertainty, an unwillingness to invest in such an environment, and ultimately an unwillingness to hire,” said Steve Cochrane, chief Asia Pacific economist at Moody’s Analytics. “International trade will slow further and is at risk of an outright decline.”
“It is a new world,” he said.....
"Trump knows he’s vulnerable to a recession — and it could kill his 2020 chances" by Larry Edelman Globe Columnist, August 8, 2019
President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (right), at the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan, on June 29. Will Trump’s trade war with China end up triggering a recession?(Erin Schaff/New York Times)
We’ve got 15 months until the 2020 election, and Democrats are mired in a divisive debate over the best way to beat Donald Trump and pull the country back from the authoritarian abyss.
“Attack hard from the left.” “Appeal to the center.” “Nominate someone electable.”
You won’t hear it from the candidates or party officials, but the biggest threat to Trump isn’t Joe, Elizabeth, Bernie, or Kamala, and it’s not “Medicare for All” or a wealth tax.
It’s a recession. The lesser of two evils, delivered by deus ex machina.
Now economics are the act of God for which he is praying. What a piece of work is this guy.
I know, I know. It’s callous and unseemly to root for a downturn, even if the prospect of a second Trump term has you exploring options for exile, but let’s face it: The election, once again, could come down to a couple hundred thousand votes in a few swing states. Like Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee could easily win the popular vote but lose in the Electoral College. Meanwhile, a recession is more likely to unseat Trump than impeachment: Something goes wrong, the economy sags, the jobless rate climbs, and — like George H.W. Bush in 1992 — DJT is out of a job.
Maybe not. It will be coming too late. Bush's economy was already on the way up, but it hadn't trickled down yet.
Another case of Trump derangement syndrome? Not necessarily.
After winning the first Gulf War, Bush 41 seemed untouchable, but the “jobless” recovery from the oil-shock recession of 1990-1991 was his kryptonite. Even though the economy was on the mend before Election Day, the damage was done, and Bill Clinton moved into 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
It’s impossible to say if and when a recession will hit. Only about 35 percent of economists expect one within the next 12 months, according to a survey by Bloomberg.
Yet Trump knows he’s vulnerable. Why do you think he’s hectoring the Fed to cut interests, even after last week’s unnecessary reduction? He knows his trade war against China could backfire and damage the US economy, and he wants all the downside insurance he can get.
Keep your fingers cro$$ed.
The bond market is acting like a recession is around the corner. Stock market investors have been much more optimistic, pushing prices to new highs throughout the year, but cracks started to appear last week, when the president announced tariffs on an additional $300 billion worth of Chinese goods and Beijing retaliated by allowing its tightly controlled currency to fall to a post-2008 low against the US dollar — a move that hurts US exports.
US stocks rallied on Thursday after China signaled that it would not aggressively cut the value of the renminbi, a step that many investors fear would lead to a currency war.
We’ve gone a record 122 months without a recession, which is defined as two straight quarters of negative growth in the nation’s output of goods and services, but it can’t last. Republicans can cut taxes for the rich and fan the flames of racism and xenophobia, but they haven’t found a way to eliminate the business cycle.
If this the bu$ine$$ cycle, then we need to find another $y$tem, and I'm starting to believe it will never come down. If it does, it is by design because these guys have become masters at manipulating the money supply.
The economy is healthy, having expanded 2.1 percent in the second quarter. The jobless rate, at 3.7 percent, hasn’t been this low since we bid farewell to 1969, but US economic growth slowed from 3.1 percent in the first three months of the year, and there are other ominous signs: Global economies are struggling, US manufacturing has declined for two straight quarters, domestic business investment is waning as executives nervously eye an uncertain world, and the Fed has been unable to boost inflation to its 2 percent target.
What could trigger a recession between now and Election Day 2020?
The world’s a dangerous place. Tensions are heating up in the Persian Gulf as Iran seizes oil tankers. We’ve had more than one recession because of a spike in oil prices. Who knows what Kim Jong-un will do with his rockets. Is Boris Johnson really going to make Brexit work?
But the number one risk is the trade war with China. When and how does that end? China plays the long game; its leaders can hold on to see what happens in the election. Trump? It’s unlikely he will offer a deal the Chinese will accept, and vice versa.
That new round of tariffs, set to take effect Sept. 1, will hit consumers much harder than the earlier rounds, which mostly targeted goods that companies use to make their products, and the consumer is what has been keeping the economy going.
I know what you’re thinking: The Fed will bail out Trump by continuing to cut rates. I have to believe that many Fed officials don’t care what happens to a complainer-in-chief who labels them the enemy, but they won’t stand by and watch the economy go down the toilet.
There is only so much the central bank can do, though. Interest rates are already pretty low by pre-financial crisis standards. Businesses aren’t finding it hard to borrow, but they are concerned about expanding as Trump plays chicken with China. For consumers, mortgage rates are at a three-year low, but the housing market is starting to cool in some places.
See: Prices retreat in some of the costliest markets
Home prices slipped in some of the costliest US markets in the second quarter, a sign that would-be buyers are sitting out the competition for a scarcity of affordable properties, so you will have to $hare a bed.
This is the existential dilemma of our dysfunctional times. We can’t in good conscience hope for a recession. Millions of people would lose their jobs. Millions of homes would be lost to foreclosure, and the pain would be felt the most by blue-collar and low-income workers, but Trump isn’t really helping them now. Most of the economic gains are going to corporations and the wealthy. (And spare me the trickle-down BS.) He hasn’t delivered on his promise to revive manufacturing and coal mining. He’s trying to gut Obamacare, without offering a viable alternative, and it will only get worse if Trump wins reelection.
It will be four more years of the rich gaming the tax code while the rest of us empty our loose-change jars. Four more years of inaction on the environment and climate change. Four more years of fractured politics and corrosive tweets. With the exception of the 2017 tax cut, the economy is growing despite Trump’s policies, not because of them.
The Globe not paying him well?
With all that is at stake, a recession just may be the lesser evil — and, ironically, Trump’s trade war may be the match that starts the fire.....
The le$$er evil is still evil.
--more--"
Speak of the devils:
"Democrats struggle to present a united front on Trump’s trade war" by Jeff Stein Washington Post, August 7, 2019
(Groan)
WASHINGTON — Democrats are divided over President Trump’s increasingly confrontational approach to trade with China, a surprising lack of unity for a party that has stood starkly against most of Trump’s positions.
They say this a month after the catfight and the constant narrative of Democratic infighting.
WTF?
Several of the party’s leading presidential hopefuls have railed against Trump’s trade war, accusing the president of confronting China erratically while causing needless economic pain, but they are also arguing they would prove tougher on China than Trump, a message that may be hard to reconcile with their vows to ease or reverse the damage caused by the widening trade war, and some top Democratic lawmakers have only egged him on, as Trump took an action this week — deeming China a ‘‘currency manipulator’’ — they have long advocated.
‘‘They’re stuck. They want to say the dramatic steps taken by the Trump administration haven’t been effective, but they also say we need to renegotiate with China,’’ said Ernie Tedeschi, who served as a Treasury Department economist in the Obama administration. ‘‘With trade wars, there’s a tension between helping domestic manufacturers and keeping pain away from consumers. That’s their dilemma.’’
On other issues, such as immigration, tax cuts, or sustaining the Affordable Care Act, Democrats have been able to demonstrate a broad consensus against Trump’s policies, even if they have differences among themselves about the best way forward, but as trade becomes a bigger and potentially more calamitous issue going into the election year, with the stock market seesawing and the economy slowing, Democrats could face louder calls to better define their plans and how they differ with Trump.
The tension in part reflects the disparate impact of Trump’s trade war on key voting blocs, analysts and experts say. Union steelworkers, for instance, want the next Democratic president to maintain Trump’s tariffs on imported Chinese steel, which have made the steel business more profitable, but in other parts of the Midwest, farmers are pushing for what amounts to the opposite, demanding the next Democratic presidential candidate resolve the trade conflict so they can resume exporting their products to China.
The Democratic presidential campaigns say they can overcome internal conflicts by arguing that Trump’s trade moves have proven largely unsuccessful, noting that the trade deficit has only risen under his administration and pointing to studies suggesting outsourcing has increased as well. They say they’ll do it better, though exactly how they would accomplish this remains unclear.
‘‘The problem is that, if you’re not listening carefully, Trump correctly identifies the symptom of the trade problem, and the data is the data,’’ said a trade adviser to Democratic presidential campaigns who spoke on the condition of anonymity and was not authorized to speak publicly. ‘‘The challenge is making people understand his solution is not the real one.’’
Yeah, the challenge is how do they fool you into believing they will be tougher when they plan to roll over.
The economic battle between the United States and China flared again last week when the Trump administration vowed to this September slap 10 percent tariffs on $300 billion in Chinese imports after negotiations faltered.
China responded by allowing its tightly controlled currency to depreciate in value, which could hurt US producers by raising the cost of the dollar. The Trump administration retaliated on Monday afternoon by labeling China a ‘‘currency manipulator,’’ alleging the country had improperly manipulated its currency.
An international trade war raising costs for US consumers and imperiling economic growth may appear to be perfect fodder for an opposition party heading into a presidential election cycle.
Part of Democrats’ challenge is that Trump has taken some actions long demanded by labor unions and the party’s liberals, who have for years called for the government to take stricter action to curb Chinese trade practices. Many of the Democratic candidates have offered few concrete pledges to undo specific trade enforcement actions taken by the president, and some of their policy prescriptions would be difficult to enact.
As a result, the party’s presidential hopefuls have sometimes appeared unable to exploit what has consistently proven to be one of Trump’s most risky gambits in the White House.
‘‘They are conflicted. On the one hand, they oppose the harm from Trump’s trade war and how he has waged it,’’ said Steven Kyle, a Cornell economics professor. ‘‘On the other hand, they used to be on his side of this and, in some cases, have long supported using tariffs to confront China. It is a tension.’’
More Democratic hypocrisy?
The Democratic campaigns argue they will try to draw a difference with Trump on trade.
On Friday, former vice president Joe Biden slammed Trump’s ‘‘irresponsible tariff war’’ for hurting farmers, workers, and consumers. Biden has argued the United States should instead work with Europe and other Asian countries to form a coalition that would exert stronger pressure on China, an approach similar in theory to the Trans-Pacific Partnership proposed under President Obama but later scuttled amid Democratic opposition. Biden has said he would renegotiate the TPP if elected.
That's one reason Clinton lost. She had to disown the TPP to win the nomination.
Senator Kamala Harris, a California Democrat, has similarly repeatedly assailed Trump’s tariffs as a ‘‘trade tax,’’ arguing that the ‘‘so-called trade policy’’ has led to billions in additional spending by American families on necessary household items.
Which they don't care about when it is a carbon tax or some other fee they want to slap on to you.
Democratic Senators Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts have spoken favorably about Trump applying tariffs to China, as many labor unions have been supportive of the president’s efforts, but they have also argued they would do more for American workers in negotiations with China, in particular vowing to promote union rights and curb environmental damage.
We hear that all the time, and maybe they would; however, the forces at work seem larger than them.
On Monday, the US stock market sustained its worst losses of the year amid global investor uncertainty about Trump’s next move. None of the top 10 Democratic presidential candidates, as measured by Quinnipiac’s latest polling, commented on the issue on their Twitter accounts that day.
None of them commented on the stock dump and tank?
--more--"
Is it possible that he has outfoxed them all when it comes to rate cuts?
"US moves to ban Huawei from government contracts" by Steve Lohr New York Times, August 7, 2019
(Groan)
(Groan)
The Trump administration on Wednesday took a tactical step in its trade confrontation with China, by releasing a rule that restricts government agencies from doing business with Huawei, the giant Chinese maker of telecommunications equipment and smartphones.
The prohibition was mandated by Congress as part of a broader defense bill signed into law last year. It covers direct purchases of telecom gear and video surveillance equipment and services, and it extends to other Chinese companies that, like Huawei, have raised security concerns inside the US government, including telecom equipment maker ZTE and Hikvision, which develops facial-recognition technology, but Huawei, China’s largest telecom company, has been the main focus of attention for the White House and an on-again, off-again bargaining chip in the administration’s trade battle.
In a statement, Huawei said the White House move was “not unexpected” since it was required by the defense bill. The Chinese company said it would continue to challenge the ban in court and called it a “trade barrier based on country-of-origin, invoking punitive action without any evidence of wrongdoing.”
The administration’s various announcements regarding Huawei have caused confusion for the Chinese company and among its American suppliers.
In May, the Commerce Department put Huawei on a so-called entity list, which bans US corporations from supplying foreign companies deemed potential security threats. The administration has warned that Huawei’s equipment could give the Chinese access to phone calls and other communications, and it has tried to persuade allies not to use the company’s equipment in their build-out of the next generation of wireless networks, known as 5G, but the Commerce Department blacklist, like the rule released on Wednesday, includes openings for exceptions, and after meeting in June with President Xi Jinping of China at the G-20 summit in Japan, President Trump said American companies could sell some technology to Huawei. That easing, he said, came because China had agreed to buy more farm products from the United States.
So the trade war is cooling, 'eh?
What this is really about is not Chinese spying; it's about the Five Eyes spying conglomerate and data collection program being shut out.
So the trade war is cooling, 'eh?
What this is really about is not Chinese spying; it's about the Five Eyes spying conglomerate and data collection program being shut out.
Last month, Trump met with the leaders of companies that supply Huawei with technology like networking chips and smartphone software, including Google, Qualcomm, Intel, Broadcom, and others.
At the time, White House officials said chief executives from the companies “requested timely licensing decisions from the Department of Commerce, and the president agreed,” but in the past week, talks between Chinese and American trade negotiators broke down, the Chinese central bank let the yuan fall, and Beijing said it would temporarily halt purchases of agricultural products from the United States, and on Wednesday, the White House finally released the congressionally mandated rule to prohibit government agencies from buying certain kinds of Huawei equipment. The rule goes into effect on Aug. 13.
"Huawei unveils Harmony, its answer to Android, in survival bid" by Raymond Zhong New York Times, August 9, 2019
(Groan)
DONGGUAN, China — Huawei, the Chinese technology giant, on Friday unveiled its own mobile operating system, Harmony, in an effort to ensure that its fast-growing smartphone business can survive the United States government’s clampdown on the firm.
Huawei has been at the mercy of the Trump administration for the past three months, ever since the Commerce Department began requiring that American companies apply for special permission to sell parts and technology to the Chinese firm, which Washington officials accuse of being a potential conduit for cyberspying by Beijing.
The move effectively choked off Huawei’s access to Google’s Android software and US-made microchips and other hardware components, and put a big question mark over Huawei’s future.
That's funny, because within the last month it has been reported that the action isn't really effecting Huawei at all.
Unveiling Harmony at a Huawei developer conference in the southern city of Dongguan on Friday, Richard Yu, head of the company’s consumer business, said that the new operating system was designed to work not only on mobile phones but on smartwatches and other connected home devices as well.
Indeed, the first Huawei products to run on Harmony will not be smartphones, but “smart screens” that the company plans to release later this year.
Yu said that Harmony would gradually be incorporated into the company’s other smart devices over the next three years, but there is no immediate plan, he said, to release Harmony-based phones.
Huawei’s preference is to continue using Android on its handsets, Yu said, but he added that there was no technical reason Harmony could not also be used to power a phone. “If we are not able to use the Android operating system, then we can activate Harmony anytime,” he said.
Huawei did not make any devices running the new operating system available for testing.
Like Android, which is far and away the world’s most widely used smartphone operating system, Harmony will be released as open-source software.
That means it will be freely available for developers to study, enhance, and redistribute.
--more--"
Can I use it to check the stocks?
"Technology companies powered stocks broadly higher on Wall Street Thursday, driving the S&P 500 to its best day in more than two months and erasing its losses for the week. The rally, which pushed the Dow Jones average up by more than 370 points, followed an early rise in bonds yields after a weekly government report on unemployment claims came in better than economists had expected. Worries that the trade dispute between the United States and China is hurting the global economy roiled the market earlier this week, sending many investors fleeing to safer holdings, such as US government bonds. That pulled bond yields sharply lower. The absence of new worrisome turns in the trade tussle may have also helped keep investors in a buying mood Thursday. China stabilized the yuan on Tuesday and that helped lift US stocks following their worst day of the year....."
"Stocks stumbled Friday as worries flared yet again that President Trump’s trade war with China may be worsening. It was a fitting end to a wild week where markets zoomed down, up, and down again as investors recalibrated by the minute how much the tensions will hurt the global economy. The S&P 500 dropped as much as 1.3 percent Friday after Trump said that it would be ‘‘fine’’ if a meeting on trade with China next month doesn’t happen, before nearly eliminating the loss. It dropped again in the final minutes of trading....."
That is because Trump says he won’t devalue dollar amid trade war with China, even though hawks have been pushing for a direct intervention and peculation has been building among strategists that the US may intervene to forcibly weaken the dollar.
I hope you like blueberries:
"Trade retaliation program unlikely to help Maine wild blueberries" by Patrick Whittle Associated Press, August 10, 2019
PORTLAND, Maine — A federal program designed to help farmers suffering from trade disruptions is unlikely to assist Maine’s wild blueberry growers who are struggling in the face of falling prices, loss of business in China, and competition with the Canadian crop.
Maine is the sole US commercial producer of wild blueberries, which are smaller than cultivated blueberries and are used in a variety of frozen and processed products, but the state competes against Canada. Canada’s weaker dollar puts Maine and its berries at a trade disadvantage, and some growers have started intentionally producing less fruit as a result of poor prices in recent years, Maine Agriculture Commissioner Amanda Beal said in a letter to US Department of Agriculture undersecretary Bill Northey last month.
Beal has called on the USDA to include the crop in its Market Facilitation Program, which is slated to provide billions of dollars to growers negatively affected by foreign trade retaliation, but the USDA told The Associated Press in an e-mailed statement that program is intended for crops that aren’t easily used in school food programs or by food banks. Wild blueberries sometimes fill those needs. The statement said the blueberries are still eligible for other USDA assistance programs, such as one that feeds products into federal nutrition programs when there’s an oversupply in the market. ‘‘That route remains a permanent, viable solution for wild blueberry growers in Maine,’’ the statement said.
I'm not complaining, but see how they shovel off the stuff no one wants to the schools and food banks?
Not only that, the fast food chains are full of excess pork bacon and the GMO corn no one wants is peddled through chips and sweeteners.
‘‘Faced by economic pressures and reduced prices, many growers have drastically cut back on harvesting their crop within the past two years and will continue to do so this coming crop season,’’ Beal’s letter said. ‘‘Some have left the business altogether — a huge blow to local communities and economies in rural Downeast Maine.’’
Wild blueberry growers deserve assistance in part because of a drop in exports to China amid trade hostilities between that country and the United States, said Patricia Kontur, interim director of the Wild Blueberry Commission of Maine, which promotes Maine blueberries.....
It's all the talk in Maine.
--more--"
No oversupply this year, for whatever reason:
"Maine’s wild blueberry industry could be looking at another difficult summer, as the year’s total crop is projected to remain much smaller than just a few years ago. The Pine Tree State is America’s sole commercial producer of the wild berries, which are smaller than the more ubiquitous cultivated blueberries often seen in grocery stores. Maine’s crop exceeded 100 million pounds every year from 2014 to 2016 before plummeting to 50.4 million pounds last year. A cold winter that led to “a substantial amount” of winter kill followed by a wet and cold spring is likely to blame for the lower projections, said horticulturist David Yarborough, emeritus wild blueberry specialist with University of Maine. He said the total harvest might be about the same as last year. “We have had good growing conditions this summer but because of the winter injury the crop in Maine is estimated to be similar to last year, so it may only be about 50 million pounds,” Yarborough said. A “devastating frost” also hindered last year’s crop, Yarborough said. The provinces of Atlantic Canada also harvest wild blueberries, and all were down substantially last year except for Quebec. The weak Canadian dollar has put Maine’s blueberries at a trade disadvantage with the Canadian product....."
That all flies in the face of the climate change narrative, but never mind.
If only they could wipe away the debt:
"Every consumer with credit card debt fantasizes about having it magically wiped away. For customers with Canadian credit cards from JPMorgan Chase, the dream came true: The bank said this week that it had erased their remaining debt as it closes down its credit card business in Canada. Recipients of the windfall reacted with a mix of elation and shock. Chase’s decision is extremely unusual. Sara Rathner, NerdWallet’s credit card expert, said she had never heard of a bank’s simply writing off balances as it shut down a credit card product. More typically, the bank would keep collecting payments or sell the remaining balance to a debt buyer. When HSBC left the US credit card business, for example, it sold its portfolio to Capital One. Chase “felt it was a better decision for all parties, particularly our customers, to forgive the debt,” said a Chase spokeswoman, Maria Martinez. She declined to comment on how much debt had been written off or on how many customers were affected....."
"The Canadian police said Wednesday that they believe they have located the bodies of two teenagers suspected of killing three people in an isolated stretch of British Columbia. Kam McLeod, 19, and Bryer Schmegelsky, 18, had been the subject of an intense two-week manhunt that riveted the country. An autopsy was underway to confirm their identities, Assistant Commissioner Jane MacLatchy, the commanding officer of the Manitoba Royal Canadian Mounted Police, said at a news conference, but she said the police were confident the bodies were the teenagers. The bodies were found in northern Manitoba, the police said. MacLatchy said the investigation had a breakthrough Friday after police officers discovered personal items belonging to the suspects on the shorelines of the Nelson River. The discovery of the personal items led the police into a dense area of brush, where they found the bodies, the assistant commissioner said. The teenagers were suspects in the deaths of Leonard Dyck, a 64-year-old University of British Columbia lecturer, and a young couple: Lucas Fowler, 23, an Australian, and Chynna Deese, 24, an American."
Well, that wraps up the case rather neatly, and the Globe covered it all of three days. The story stinks to high heaven, too.
All of a sudden I'm hungry, though:
"What’s on school menus this fall? Trade mitigation" by Candice Choi Associated Press, August 11, 2019
NEW YORK — School lunch menus already have Meatless Mondays and Taco Tuesdays. Now some may get Trade Mitigation Thursdays.
This fall, some US school cafeterias are expecting shipments of free food, one little known consequence of President Trump’s trade disputes. The products are coming from the Department of Agriculture, which is giving away the $1.2 billion in foods it’s buying to help farmers hurt by trade negotiations.
A Maryland district is awaiting a truckload of canned kidney beans — one of several ‘‘trade mitigation’’ items schools were offered.
‘‘We make our own chili soup, so we knew we had a use for that,’’ said Barbara Harral, a nutrition official for Montgomery County Public Schools.
Kidney beans and blueberries, yum!
All told, she said the district is getting $70,000 worth of free products for the fall, including apples and oranges. Harral, who has been with the district for 22 years, doesn’t recall the USDA offering trade mitigation foods before.
The USDA has long purchased and distributed agricultural products to help farmers, who can face swings in supply and demand in any given year, but the agency is buying even more as a result of Trump’s trade fight, which prompted other countries to take retaliatory actions that curb imports of American farm products.
You may want to check the date on that.
That’s resulting in an unusual bounty for the groups that get government foods, showing one way federal policies influence what people eat.
Oh, man.
The slop that they fob of on the kids is being called a bounty be the elite pre$$.
It's nothing like a richer's buffet, I'm sure of that.
According to the USDA, most food purchased as part of trade-relief efforts is going to programs that help the needy. The Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, for instance, says it’s getting roughly twice as much government food as normal, including rarely donated items like pistachios. Though they may struggle to handle the sudden deluge, food banks say they’re generally happy for the bounty.
Now pistachios are part of the bounty! Good God!
Okay, here is something. Why isn't this food going to the citizenry first? Why is being exported? I know it's all part of the complicated global $y$tem of food production, but that's the whole point. You are starving as foodstuffs are shipped out of country and overseas to please some corporate bottom line.
The USDA says schools are only getting a tiny slice of trade mitigation foods, accounting for a majority of the $27 million of products ordered for child nutrition programs, but at a national convention for school cafeteria employees this summer, agency officials noted the program is expected to continue with additional items.
Already, schools are entitled to annual allotments of USDA foods based on how many students they serve through the national school lunch program, but cafeteria officials who operate on tight budgets say they have always welcomed the ‘‘bonus’’ foods the agency offered in the past, even if the market forces that make the products available isn’t always clear.
Yeah, those market forces! Some esoteric hand fo God stuff, not the product of $elf-$erving money managers and bankers! What $will!
One year, they recall there was bonus almond butter, long before it was popular. Another year, there were frozen catfish pieces. ‘‘At the time, we didn’t have a way to use them,’’ Harral of Montgomery County said of the catfish.
Look at the buffet they are giving you! Catfish, pistachios, blueberries, and kidney beans!
Mmmmmmm!
In the last couple years, the USDA said it hasn’t really offered bonus foods to schools, instead diverting them to programs for the needy. That’s making the trade mitigation items that much more of a treat for school food officials.
Now the "bounty" is a treat!
I'm gagging on the in$ulting eliti$m!
‘‘The room lights up when everyone knows we’ve got new items that are coming,’’ said Scott Clements, director of child nutrition at the Mississippi education department, which ordered two truckloads of trade mitigation pulled pork and four loads of kidney beans.
Doesn't pork contribute to obesity and high blood pressure?
Still, putting bonus foods to use can be tricky for schools, which plan menus far in advance and have to consider factors like procurement contracts and warehouse capacities. Such limitations are likely why schools didn’t take full advantage of the $100 million in trade mitigation foods they were offered for the fall, according to the USDA.
In Alaska, officials only ordered a half truck of free kidney beans.
‘‘There’s only so many ways you can use them,’’ said Sue Lampert, a school food official for the state.
Maybe they can eat $hit.
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Time for dinner, kids!
"The US and world economies are at their riskiest moment since the global financial crisis a decade ago as trade tensions continue to grow, former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said Sunday. He spoke on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS” about a “sadomasochistic and foolish trade conflict” with China under President Trump. “We are losing very substantial amounts in terms of uncertainty, reduced investment, reduced job creation, for the sake of benefits that are very unlikely to be of substantial magnitude,” said Summers, a former president of Harvard University. “I don’t think there’s any question that American workers are going to be poorer, American companies are going to be less profitable, and the American economy is going to be worse off because of the course we’re on.” Summers said that despite the risks, a crisis of the magnitude seen during the previous recession “would be a great surprise.”
One of the architects of globali$m, and a mover-and-$haker who facilitated such things, is now a health, labor, and environmental $ocial ju$tice warrior who says there is a bad moon arising (soon to be blocked by tower), and all we can do is hope everything works out fine.
"Stocks fell sharply on Wall Street Monday, knocking nearly 400 points off the Dow Jones industrial average. The S&P 500 had its worst day in a week as the sell-off put the market deeper into the red for August. The selling was widespread, with technology companies and banks accounting for a big share of the decline. Investors sought safety in US government bonds, sending their yields tumbling. The price for gold, another traditional safe-haven asset, closed higher. The costly trade war between the United States and China has rattled markets this month. An escalation in tensions between the world’s largest economies has stoked worries that the long-running trade conflict will undercut an already slowing global economy. The major indexes are down more than 3 percent for August, but even after this month’s stumble, they are up solidly this year....."
Oh, for a minute I was worried.
Got your running shoes on?
"India revokes Kashmir’s special status, raising fears of unrest" by Jeffrey Gettleman and Sameer Yasir New York Times, August 5, 2019
(Groan)
NEW DELHI — The Indian government said Monday that it was revoking a constitutional provision that had for decades given a unique degree of autonomy to Kashmir, a disputed mountainous region along the India-Pakistan border.
In anticipation of the announcement, which many analysts predicted could set off rioting and unrest, India had flooded Kashmir with thousands of extra troops. Indian authorities also evacuated tourists, closed schools, and cut off Internet service.
For many years, Kashmir has been governed differently than other parts of India, and the government’s decision to revoke parts of Article 370 of the constitution is widely seen as a blow to Kashmir’s special status. India’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party, known as the BJP, has deep roots in a Hindu nationalist ideology, and one of its campaign promises during the election this year had been removing the special status of Kashmir, which is predominantly Muslim.
“Today the BJP has murdered the Constitution of India,” said Ghulam Nabi Azad, a senior leader of the Indian National Congress, an opposition party.
The Indian government also said it would support a parliamentary bill to split the state of Jammu and Kashmir, which includes the Kashmir Valley, into two federal territories — Jammu and Kashmir, which will have a state legislature, and Ladakh, a remote, high-altitude territory, which will be without a legislature.
Amit Shah, the home minister, said the government had the legal authority to change Kashmir’s status, but some analysts said that was not so clear and that the issue would most likely end up before India’s Supreme Court.
A sense of panic has spread across Kashmir as millions of residents woke up Monday to deserted streets. Relatives of Kashmiris who could be reached by phone said that many people were fearful about stepping outside and were waiting in their homes for news about what was going to happen next.
It looks like the Cold War between India and Pakistan is about to get much hotter, and I great such developments with much alarm. These are going to be the front lines of WWIII.
Many Kashmiris had feared that the Indian government, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, would either remove their region’s special status or turn Kashmir into a federally ruled territory.
Separatist groups, including some that are armed and maintain links to neighboring Pakistan, have been chafing for independence from India for years. Analysts say that any steps that reduce Kashmir’s autonomy could demoralize the Kashmir public further and provoke an outburst of violence.
The Pakistani Foreign Ministry condemned the Indian announcement as a violation of United Nations resolutions, saying in a statement Monday that “Pakistan will exercise all possible options to counter the illegal steps.”
That's where my print copy ceased firing.
Politicians across the political spectrum urged the Pakistani government to come up with a strong, swift, and effective diplomatic response.
Shahbaz Sharif, president of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz political party, said that Pakistan should call for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council. “The people of Kashmir cannot be left alone at this moment,” he said. “We will go to every extent to defend the human rights and legal rights of Kashmiris.” Sharif added, “Kashmir is the jugular vein of Pakistan, and anyone laying a hand on our jugular vein and honor will meet a frightful end.”
Both nations have nuclear weapons, I might add.
Before the Indian announcement, as anxiety was building in Kashmir, Prime Minister Imran Khan of Pakistan said that the only road to lasting peace in South Asia ran through the region. In a Twitter post Sunday, Khan said that President Trump had offered to mediate the Kashmir dispute when the two leaders met in Washington last month. “This is the time to do so as situation deteriorates there and along the LOC with new aggressive actions being taken by Indian occupation forces,” Khan wrote, referring to the Line of Control, the name of the disputed border between Pakistan and India. “This has the potential to blow up into a regional crisis.”
It kind of already is, and has anyone noticed that this is what supremacist regimes do? Occupy other lands?
Why don't the Kashmiris get a vote and a chance to exercise self-determination per the U.N. charter, the same way Kosovo and Sudan were allowed to? Why do the Kashmiris and Palestinians not get a vote, and why is the Crimea's castigated for such a thing?
Over the last few days, authorities in Kashmir had been issuing satellite phones to senior police officers so they could communicate in case the cellphone network was disrupted, which happened around midnight going into Monday, according to widespread news reports. Authorities have also restricted the movements of prominent Kashmiri political leaders, including Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti, according to many reports in the Indian news media.
Gee, who disrupted the cellphone network, huh, and politicians under house arrest you say?
Mufti, the most recent chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, said in an interview before Shah’s announcement Monday that Kashmiri politicians were coming together to defend against any possible moves by India to remove the special laws that grant limited autonomy to Kashmir under the Indian Constitution. “There will be chaos if our identity is compromised,” Mufti said. “We will go to any extent to preserve that identity guaranteed under the India Constitution.”
Over the last year, activists say, the hunt for separatists has intensified, pulling ordinary Kashmiris into the fold.
They are rounding up everybody, and yet the world and pre$$ has been silent up until this point.
Indian army officials said Friday that they had specific information about a planned attack by Pakistan-based militants on Hindu pilgrims and tourists, but many Kashmiris were skeptical of those claims and wondered whether there was another explanation for the sudden troop buildup in the region, already one of the most heavily militarized areas in the world.
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"India faces criticism over its move to revoke Kashmiri autonomy" by Jeffrey Gettleman and Kai Schultz New York Times, August 6, 2019
(Groan)
NEW DELHI — India-administered Kashmir remained in lockdown Tuesday, and India faced mounting criticism, a day after New Delhi stripped the disputed territory of its autonomy.
The prime minister of Pakistan, which claims part of Kashmir and has fought two wars with India over it, lashed out at his counterpart, Narendra Modi, accusing him of promoting “an ideology that puts Hindus above all other religions and seeks to establish a state that represses all other religious groups.”
While Modi’s decision was welcomed by many Indians, some analysts were sharply critical, calling it another attack on India’s secular identity, and part of a populist streak that plays to the prejudices and fears of its Hindu majority. Kashmir is majority Muslim.
Seems to be a characteristic of those regimes friendly to Israel.
“There are times in the history of a republic when it reduces itself to jackboot. Nothing more and nothing less. We are witnessing that moment in Kashmir,” wrote Pratap Bhanu Mehta, a columnist at The Indian Express. “This is not the dawn of a new constitutional settlement, designed to elicit free allegiance. It is repression, plain and simple.”
Reaction was muted again Tuesday in Kashmir, where all telephone and Internet services remained suspended, and schools were closed. With tens of thousands of Indian soldiers patrolling the streets and enforcing a curfew, few people dared to venture outside.
Pakistan’s army chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, said Tuesday, “We are prepared and shall go to any extent” to help Kashmiris. Most analysts, though, believe that Pakistan, with its economy on the skids and its eagerness to find some help from Western allies, won’t do anything aggressive and will mostly complain.
(Blog editor frowns as chin sinks to chest. There is no one to defend the poor Kashmiris)
For decades, Kashmir has suffered along the India-Pakistan border, a mountainous territory claimed by both nuclear-armed countries and the site of intense border clashes, but Monday, India’s government announced it had found a new solution. Amit Shah, India’s home minister, delivered the stunning news on the floor of Parliament that the central government was unilaterally revoking the special status that Jammu and Kashmir had enjoyed as a semiautonomous state since 1947 and splitting the state into two federal territories.
Shah insisted this would bring better governance, a flood of investment, and, most importantly, peace. Many Indians support him, including progressive political leaders from other parties who seem to sense how well stern action on Kashmir plays into nationalist feelings, but some Indians say that turning Kashmir into a federally controlled territory, which has never before happened to an Indian state, will demoralize Kashmiris and damage India’s democracy. The way this was done, they say, was like a coup.
A bloodless coup, right?
For Kashmir, peace would be welcome, amid a status quo of militant attacks, repression, and protests that has destroyed the economy, but with the information lockout, it has been virtually impossible for Kashmiris to share their views on the new arrangement.
There is also the peace of the grave, or the peace of totalitarian repression.
Some analysts warned that if Modi succeeds in his strategy with Kashmir he might then move to other even more religiously polarizing issues. These include wiping out Muslim marriage and inheritance laws and building a Hindu temple in Ayodhya on the ruins of a Muslim mosque.
This guy has been hanging out with too many Zionists!
“This is a government that feels they have got this massive mandate,” said Harsh V. Pant, a professor of international relations at King’s College London, referring to the election in May. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, known as the BJP, won close to two-thirds of the vote. “They believe their agenda is now a mainstream agenda. “Clearly now, in the first few months,’’ he added, “they’re moving full steam ahead.”
The changing attitudes are reflected in the BJP’s campaign manifestos. In 2014, when Modi first ran for prime minister, his party vowed to revoke Kashmir’s special status but said it would “discuss this with all stakeholders.” In the 2019 manifesto, that stakeholder phrase was omitted, a sign of things to come.
On the floor of Parliament on Tuesday, Shah called the government’s decision a “golden moment” in the history of the Indian Parliament. Shortly thereafter, lawmakers in the lower house of Parliament gave final approval to the reorganization by an overwhelming majority.
What do you do when psychopaths run a nation?
“This is a constitutional tragedy,” said Manish Tiwari of the Indian National Congress, one of the few opposition parties to speak out. “What kind of constitutional precedent are you establishing? This is an attack on India’s federal character.”
India’s move seems destined to be tested in court. On Tuesday, a veteran public interest lawyer filed the first legal challenge to the government’s actions in the Supreme Court, which has a history of blocking government laws and administrative decisions.
Yeah, the courts will stop them.
How many troops and guns they got?
Kashmir has always been an anomaly in India. It was a princely state, ruled by a Hindu maharajah but with a population that was majority Muslim. It chose to remain apart from India and Pakistan, but shortly after those two countries were granted independence from Britain in 1947, militants from Pakistan invaded Kashmir, sending the maharajah running to India for help.
That led to a federation with India, whose special status was enshrined in Article 370 of the Indian Constitution. That article guaranteed Kashmir a fair degree of autonomy from the central government and allowed it to pass its own land and criminal laws. One such law made it illegal for non-Kashmiris to own land — a virtually existential issue for natives of the Muslim-majority territory, who fear being swallowed up by India’s Hindus.
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"Pakistan vows to punish India for Kashmir move" by Kai Schultz and Suhasini Raj New York Times, August 7, 2019
(Groan)
NEW DELHI — Pakistan announced plans on Wednesday to punish India for unilaterally wiping out the autonomy of Kashmir by ending bilateral trade, downgrading diplomatic ties, and expelling India’s high commissioner to the country.
A statement from a national security committee headed by the Pakistani prime minister, Imran Khan, said the changes would be put in place because of “illegal actions” by the Indian government regarding Kashmir.
Khan denounced Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, accusing his government of promoting “an ideology that puts Hindus above all other religions and seeks to establish a state that represses all other religious groups.”
The statement on Wednesday from the committee headed by Khan said that India’s stripping of Kashmiri autonomy would also be raised by Pakistan with the United Nations Security Council, which recognizes the region as disputed.
I wouldn't hold my breath, especially that high up.
In addition to ending bilateral trade, which has been valued at several billion dollars annually, Pakistani officials said the government might close the country’s airspace to Indian aircraft and recall its top diplomat in India. The statement said all bilateral agreements would also be reviewed.
Alyssa Ayres, a senior fellow for South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, said that suspending trade was an unusual, perhaps unprecedented, move by Pakistan, even though its effect would most likely be muted.
“This will not frankly have any economic impact on either country,” she said, noting that trade volume was still relatively low between India and Pakistan. “But under any circumstances, I’d rather see diplomatic and symbolic steps like these than terrorism.”
The Indian Parliament overwhelmingly approved a bill on Tuesday that split the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir into two federal territories. The move puts Kashmir under tighter control of the central government.
India and Pakistan, both of which have nuclear arms, have fought several bitter wars over Kashmir, a mountainous, predominantly Muslim territory claimed by both countries.
Low-intensity conflict has become a fact of life in the region, stunting development, leaving its people deeply alienated and providing the backdrop to a stubborn battle for independence by a few hundred militants against tens of thousands of Indian troops.
For decades, Hindu nationalists from the Bharatiya Janata Party, now led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, have vowed to curtail special freedoms enjoyed by Kashmir under Article 370 of the Indian Constitution. Defanging the provision was central to their broader agenda of moving India closer to a Hindu nation.
Many analysts said Pakistan cannot afford to go to war and has limited latitude on Kashmir. The country has a history of providing support to militant groups in the region, despite repeated calls from allies to stop such assistance.
Iltija Javed, the daughter of a prominent Kashmiri politician and one of the few people who has managed to send updates, said the city was under a “complete information blackout” and expressed concern that the situation would only get worse. “The way we are being treated is absolutely appalling,” she said in a voicemail message on Wednesday. “We don’t even know if everyone has enough food supplies, enough medicinal supplies to last them for this indefinite curfew.”
Somehow, the web version managed to get more out:
In a speech in the Pakistani Parliament before the measures were announced, Fawad Chaudhry, the science and technology minister, called India a “fascist regime” and said another war over Kashmir, where decades of fighting has killed tens of thousands of people, was not off the table. “Pakistan should not let Kashmir become another Palestine,” Chaudhry said. “We have to choose between dishonor and war.”
He has it about right.
The call for action comes after Amit Shah, the Indian home minister, announced on Monday that the Indian government was revoking Kashmir’s special status, which served as a foundation for most of the contested region joining India as an autonomous area more than 70 years ago. Shah said removing the region’s semiautonomous status, which included a provision barring non-Kashmiris from owning land, would spur investment and encourage peace building. The government framed its plans as “purely administrative.”
Asrar Sultanpuri, a Kashmiri writer who lives in New Delhi, said he could not reach his wife and son, who recently went to Kashmir to meet relatives. He sobbed in a telephone interview. “I am angry and sad and worried,” he said. “We should at least have been allowed to communicate with our families.”
An official in the Ministry of Home Affairs, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said on Wednesday that Section 144, a part of India’s criminal code that allows bans on gatherings of more than four people, was in place. She said that people in Jammu and Kashmir were free to move around.
Many top Indian politicians, including Modi and Shah, were focused on attending funeral ceremonies on Wednesday for a former foreign minister, but in Srinagar, Kashmir’s biggest city, the few people who were able to transmit messages said that they were still terrified and that stores were closed and streets empty. Indian soldiers were patrolling barricaded intersections, and curfew passes were required. One Kashmiri resident said that there had been sporadic incidents of stone pelting in south Kashmir, though there were no confirmed reports of serious injuries.
Your paperz, please!
--more--"
What gets me is there is not one peep from the world community on this.
"As Modi addresses India, protests flare in Kashmir" by Jeffrey Gettleman and Kai Schultz New York Times, August 8, 2019
(Groan)
(Groan)
NEW DELHI — India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, addressed the nation Thursday night for the first time about his government’s unilateral decision to revoke Kashmir’s autonomy, speaking against a backdrop of rising protests, mass arrests, and escalating tensions with Pakistan.
Modi defended the action, arguing that it would make the restive territory more secure.
“A new era has begun,” he said, but in Kashmir, a disputed territory between India and Pakistan, protests were exploding as Indian security forces, which had already cut off Internet service, mobile phone calls and even landlines, clamped down harder.
More than 500 people were detained in nighttime raids across Kashmir and taken to makeshift detention centers, rights activists said. In several areas, Kashmiris pelted security officers with stones and the officers fired back, with reports that some demonstrators had been killed.
If they were migrants from South America or Africa they would be getting a lot more pre$$.
If they were migrants from South America or Africa they would be getting a lot more pre$$.
Modi, who seldom makes national addresses, made no mention of the protests. He said that revoking the statehood of Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state, and turning it into a federally controlled territory would bring a cleaner, less corrupt government, more security, and a stronger local economy.
India's government is one of the most corrupt in the world!
India's government is one of the most corrupt in the world!
Modi’s government announced Monday that it was eliminating the special status granted to the state of Jammu and Kashmir, which includes the restive Kashmir valley. The move instantly exacerbated tensions with Pakistan.
Pakistan, which claims part of Kashmir and has already fought two major wars with India over it, responded Wednesday by halting trade with India and expelling the Indian ambassador.
On Thursday, it followed that up by shutting down a cross-border train, the Samjhauta Express, which has been running for more than 40 years but is often suspended when relations between the nuclear-armed neighbors turn icy.
Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, the Pakistani minister responsible for railroads, said he expected tensions to remain high for at least a year. “There can even be war,” he said. “I am not saying that we want war, but we should be prepared for it.”
Most analysts dismissed that possibility. Pakistan’s economy is on the skids and it has become something of a pariah state.
Since when?
Since when?
The locus of resistance is expected to be in the Kashmir valley, home to about 7 million people, where a small but dogged insurgency and a lot of resentment exist. Despite the tight security lockdown, protesters managed to mobilize.
Police officials reached by telephone said that crowds in Kargil, a mountain town, had hurled rocks at members of the security forces, wounding several, including the district’s top official. Residents of Srinagar, Kashmir’s biggest city, said that at least three men had been killed during demonstrations there, but their report could not be immediately confirmed.
Where do they think they are, Hong Kong?
Where do they think they are, Hong Kong?
At times, Modi’s speech Thursday seemed willfully disconnected from reality. While he spoke about improving Kashmir’s connectivity and its digital communication, his security forces had rendered it incommunicado.
In addition to the communications blockade, India has flooded the streets with soldiers and imposed a strict curfew. Already, some Indian news outlets have reported, some families are beginning to run out of food.
Modi did not directly address any of this in his speech, saying only that, “Some people are in favor of this decision and some will have a different opinion.”
Instead, he spoke affectionately of Kashmir’s fabled alpine scenery, saying, “If the situation normalizes, people will come from all over the world to shoot films in Jammu and Kashmir,” and, without elaborating, he implied the region could be returned to statehood at some point. “If things improve, Jammu and Kashmir doesn’t have to be a union territory always,” he said.
How much tax loot are you giving them?
How much tax loot are you giving them?
That was cold comfort for Kashmiris and most human rights activists, who have called the move one of the most undemocratic, unconstitutional, and authoritarian steps any Indian government has ever taken.
Critics have pinned their hopes on the Indian Supreme Court, which has emerged in recent years as the main counterweight to Modi and Hindu nationalism and as a defender of Indian secularism. Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, which was incorporated more than 50 years ago and revoked by the Modi administration Monday, had guaranteed Kashmir a fair degree of autonomy from the central government and allowed it to pass its own laws on land and criminal activity.
The article says that any changes to Kashmir’s status must be made in consultation with the region’s Constituent Assembly. Though that assembly disbanded in the 1950s, not long after the article was passed, several legal scholars said the clear spirit of the law was to allow Kashmiris a say in how they were governed. The Modi administration’s unilateral action violates that spirit, they say.
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"Confusion, rage, and protest grip cutoff Kashmir" by Sameer Yasir, Suhasini Raj and Jeffrey Gettleman New York Times, August 10, 2019
(Groan)
SRINAGAR, Kashmir — On the streets of Srinagar, Kashmir’s biggest city, security officers tied black bandannas over their faces, grabbed their guns and took positions behind checkpoints. People glanced out the windows of their homes, afraid to step outside. Many were cutting back on meals and getting hungry.
Kashmir has been turned into the West Bank.
A sense of coiled menace hung over the locked-down city and the wider region Saturday, a day after a protest erupted into clashes between Kashmiris and Indian security forces.
Shops were shut. ATMs had run dry. Just about all lines to the outside world — Internet, mobile phones, even landlines — remained severed, rendering millions of people incommunicado.
The New York Times gained one of the first inside views by a news organization of life under lockdown in Kashmir and found a population that felt besieged, confused, frightened and furious.
People who ventured out said they had to beg officers to cross a landscape of sandbags, battered trucks, and soldiers staring at them through metal face masks. Several residents said they had been beaten up by security forces for simply trying to buy necessities like milk.
India’s swift and unilateral decision Monday to wipe out Kashmir’s autonomy significantly raised tensions with its archrival, Pakistan, which also claims parts of Kashmir. The territory lying between the two nuclear armed nations was already one of Asia’s most dangerous and militarized flashpoints, smoldering for decades.
Anything dramatic or provocative that happens here — and India’s move was widely seen as both — sends a jolt of anxiety across the region.
On Friday afternoon, witnesses said tens of thousands of peaceful demonstrators were moving through the streets of Srinagar, chanting freedom slogans and waving Kashmiri flags, when Indian forces opened fire.
The crowd panicked and scattered. Sustained bursts of automatic weapon fire could be heard in videos filmed during the protest, and at least seven people were wounded, hospital officials said, some sprayed by buckshot in the eyes.
Afshana Farooq, a 14-year-old girl, was nearly trampled in the stampede.
“We were just marching peacefully after prayers,” said her father, Farooq Ahmed, standing over her in a Srinagar hospital bed. “Then they started shooting at us.”
India has put Kashmir, home to about 8 million people, in a tightening vise, after India’s Hindu nationalist prime minister, Narendra Modi, swept away the autonomy that this mountainous, Muslim-majority region had enjoyed for decades.
His decision was years in the making, the collision of India’s rising nationalist politics, frustration with Kashmir’s dogged separatists, and a long-running rivalry with Pakistan.
For the past three decades, the Kashmir Valley, part of the region controlled by India, has been a conflict zone, a restive area chafing for independence. In the 1990s, Pakistan opened the floodgates for jihadis to cross the border, setting off years of heavy fighting.
Many Kashmiris see India as an oppressive and foreign ruler. They resent all the changes over the years that have diluted what was supposed to be an autonomous arrangement for Kashmir, settled in 1947, when the region’s maharajah agreed to join India with guarantees of some self-control.
No one disputes that Kashmir needed change. Tens of thousands of people have been killed here and the economy lies in ruins.
Modi has said the new terms will make Kashmir more peaceful and prosperous. In a televised speech Thursday, he insisted that turning Kashmir into a federal territory would eliminate corruption, attract investment, and move it “forward with new hopes.’’
How could the Kashmiris not want that?
In the valley, nearly all of about 50 Kashmiris interviewed said they expected India’s actions to increase the sense of alienation and in turn feed the rebellion.
Tens of thousands of troops from the Indian army, the Central Reserve Police Force (a paramilitary unit), and the Kashmiri state police have been deployed in just about every corner of the valley.
The lock-down’s effects are visible everywhere. Schools have been closed. Parks are deserted. Baby food is running out. In many areas, residents needed to produce a curfew pass to leave their homes.
India has a Gestapo, 'eh?
Kashmiris said that of all the crackdowns they have lived through, this was the worst.
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"India detains local politicians in Kashmir, deepens crackdown" by Niha Masih and Joanna Slater Washington Post, August 12, 2019
(Groan)
SRINAGAR, India — Ever since India announced a move to strip Kashmir of its autonomy one week ago, residents of this disputed region have been unable to make phone calls, access the Internet, or move freely.
They also have heard nothing from local political leaders because many of them have been detained and held incommunicado, part of an unprecedented clampdown that has helped muffle the public response to India’s decision.
The world community is just as silent, according to my pre$$.
On Monday, the major Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha was a tense and muted affair instead of a joyous occasion as security forces flooded the streets of Srinagar, the Kashmiri capital. The festival passed without violent protests, as some had feared.
The region has remained on edge ever since Prime Minister Narendra Modi revoked autonomy for Indian-controlled Kashmir, fulfilling a major campaign pledge of his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party but raising the likelihood of unrest in India’s only Muslim-majority region.
To maintain control in the wake of the decision, India has sent thousands of additional troops to Kashmir and detained hundreds of local politicians and party workers. They include two of the highest-profile leaders in the state: Mehbooba Mufti, who until last year was the chief minister of Jammu & Kashmir, and Omar Abdullah, one of her predecessors in that post.
‘‘I’ve no idea what is in store for our state, but it doesn’t look good,’’ wrote Abdullah to his 3 million Twitter followers in the wee hours of Aug. 5. He has not been heard from since.
Kashmir is home to a long-running insurgency against Indian rule waged by militant groups seeking independence or merger with Pakistan, but the politicians who have been detained since Aug. 5 are not militants or separatists but mainstream leaders who advocate for Kashmir’s future inside India with a degree of autonomy.
A hotel and conference hall on the shores of Srinagar’s Dal Lake has been converted into an improvised detention center. On a recent afternoon, the metal entrance gates were draped in black plastic to obscure the view. Nuzhat Ishfaq, 34, came to try to find her husband and father, both members of the Jammu & Kashmir National Conference party. Her husband was a member of the state legislature from the district of Ganderbal.
She said her husband was put under house arrest on Aug. 5. Two days later, the police arrived at their home and told him to pack some clothes. Since then, the family has not gotten word from him. The guards allowed her and her two sons, 12 and 14, inside the center for 45 minutes. She said she was taken into a conference hall and glimpsed her husband from a distance, but officials did not permit her to speak to him.
‘‘There is a volcano waiting to erupt,’’ she said. ‘‘Earlier militants or separatists were picked up, but now India has taken away those who were pro-India.’’ She continued, ‘‘This is injustice. We are not militants. What is our crime?’’
Simply existing, ma'am.
Adnan Ashraf Mir, a spokesman for the Jammu & Kashmir People’s Conference, said that its leader, Sajjad Lone, was placed under house arrest on Aug. 4. The following day Lone was transferred to the makeshift detention center on Dal Lake and has been held incommunicado ever since.
One wonders if they are being tortured at the black site.
The party’s entire top leadership is either detained or under house arrest, said Mir, and he estimated that more than 200 party workers across the state had also been taken into custody. ‘‘It’s just appalling how they have treated these people,’’ said Mir, who left Srinagar several days ago. The government is ‘‘trying to silence every voice they think would be able to mobilize opinion on the ground.’’
Mrinal Sharma, a policy adviser with Amnesty International India, said that the authorities could be using two statutes to carry out the detentions. The first is Kashmir’s Public Safety Act, which activists say facilitates arbitrary detentions. The second is a provision in the Indian criminal procedure code that allows police to take people into custody to prevent breaches of the peace.
The latter is often used to prevent possible riots, said Sharma, but ‘‘detaining political leaders while a decision is being made on the fate of their constituencies is just unprecedented.’’
Why is AI running cover for the government and taking a soft line on this?
Outside a hillside home belonging to former chief minister Mufti, security personnel declined to answer questions about her detention. They also refused to allow The Washington Post to meet with her daughter, Iltija Iqbal. In previous interviews, Iqbal said that her mother was detained on Aug. 5 and she has not been able to communicate with her since.
New York Times got inside, or so we were told, and the Washington ComPost soon followed.
A spokeswoman for India’s Home Ministry did not reply to requests for comment on the detentions or the whereabouts of Mufti and Abdullah. A senior government official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss matters with reporters, twice declined to answer queries about the detained politicians.
Isn't that stonewalling?
That's what the print version did with the rest of the article.
The police are ‘‘effectively maintaining peace and public order, taking local decisions on detentions,’’ the Jammu & Kashmir government said in a news release Monday. A senior police official said there had been ‘‘minor localized incidents’’ during Eid and two people were injured in the clashes.
On Friday, things turned ugly when police fired tear gas and pellets at a crowd of thousands of protesters, according to a half-dozen eyewitnesses and interviews with the injured at a hospital. The government has denied any firing incidents took place.
Government officials declined to say when the restrictions on communication and movement would be lifted, repeatedly stating that the situation was fluid. Fizalah Kawoosa, a 32-year-old immunologist in Srinagar, said that recent events had left her ‘‘blood boiling.’’ She has not been able to reach her mother, who lives in the same city, and three attempts to visit have been thwarted at police checkpoints.
Kawoosa said she hopes and prays that her infant daughter will grow up in peace. ‘‘There is no family in Kashmir that has not lost a relative to violence,’’ she said. ‘‘I wanted to see a calm future for our children, but it is only going to be worse.’’
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Not only is the world silent, but so is the Globe on this day.
--more--"
"Confusion, rage, and protest grip cutoff Kashmir" by Sameer Yasir, Suhasini Raj and Jeffrey Gettleman New York Times, August 10, 2019
(Groan)
SRINAGAR, Kashmir — On the streets of Srinagar, Kashmir’s biggest city, security officers tied black bandannas over their faces, grabbed their guns and took positions behind checkpoints. People glanced out the windows of their homes, afraid to step outside. Many were cutting back on meals and getting hungry.
Kashmir has been turned into the West Bank.
A sense of coiled menace hung over the locked-down city and the wider region Saturday, a day after a protest erupted into clashes between Kashmiris and Indian security forces.
Shops were shut. ATMs had run dry. Just about all lines to the outside world — Internet, mobile phones, even landlines — remained severed, rendering millions of people incommunicado.
The New York Times gained one of the first inside views by a news organization of life under lockdown in Kashmir and found a population that felt besieged, confused, frightened and furious.
People who ventured out said they had to beg officers to cross a landscape of sandbags, battered trucks, and soldiers staring at them through metal face masks. Several residents said they had been beaten up by security forces for simply trying to buy necessities like milk.
India’s swift and unilateral decision Monday to wipe out Kashmir’s autonomy significantly raised tensions with its archrival, Pakistan, which also claims parts of Kashmir. The territory lying between the two nuclear armed nations was already one of Asia’s most dangerous and militarized flashpoints, smoldering for decades.
Anything dramatic or provocative that happens here — and India’s move was widely seen as both — sends a jolt of anxiety across the region.
On Friday afternoon, witnesses said tens of thousands of peaceful demonstrators were moving through the streets of Srinagar, chanting freedom slogans and waving Kashmiri flags, when Indian forces opened fire.
The crowd panicked and scattered. Sustained bursts of automatic weapon fire could be heard in videos filmed during the protest, and at least seven people were wounded, hospital officials said, some sprayed by buckshot in the eyes.
Afshana Farooq, a 14-year-old girl, was nearly trampled in the stampede.
“We were just marching peacefully after prayers,” said her father, Farooq Ahmed, standing over her in a Srinagar hospital bed. “Then they started shooting at us.”
India has put Kashmir, home to about 8 million people, in a tightening vise, after India’s Hindu nationalist prime minister, Narendra Modi, swept away the autonomy that this mountainous, Muslim-majority region had enjoyed for decades.
His decision was years in the making, the collision of India’s rising nationalist politics, frustration with Kashmir’s dogged separatists, and a long-running rivalry with Pakistan.
For the past three decades, the Kashmir Valley, part of the region controlled by India, has been a conflict zone, a restive area chafing for independence. In the 1990s, Pakistan opened the floodgates for jihadis to cross the border, setting off years of heavy fighting.
Many Kashmiris see India as an oppressive and foreign ruler. They resent all the changes over the years that have diluted what was supposed to be an autonomous arrangement for Kashmir, settled in 1947, when the region’s maharajah agreed to join India with guarantees of some self-control.
No one disputes that Kashmir needed change. Tens of thousands of people have been killed here and the economy lies in ruins.
Modi has said the new terms will make Kashmir more peaceful and prosperous. In a televised speech Thursday, he insisted that turning Kashmir into a federal territory would eliminate corruption, attract investment, and move it “forward with new hopes.’’
How could the Kashmiris not want that?
In the valley, nearly all of about 50 Kashmiris interviewed said they expected India’s actions to increase the sense of alienation and in turn feed the rebellion.
Tens of thousands of troops from the Indian army, the Central Reserve Police Force (a paramilitary unit), and the Kashmiri state police have been deployed in just about every corner of the valley.
The lock-down’s effects are visible everywhere. Schools have been closed. Parks are deserted. Baby food is running out. In many areas, residents needed to produce a curfew pass to leave their homes.
India has a Gestapo, 'eh?
Kashmiris said that of all the crackdowns they have lived through, this was the worst.
--more--"
"India detains local politicians in Kashmir, deepens crackdown" by Niha Masih and Joanna Slater Washington Post, August 12, 2019
(Groan)
SRINAGAR, India — Ever since India announced a move to strip Kashmir of its autonomy one week ago, residents of this disputed region have been unable to make phone calls, access the Internet, or move freely.
They also have heard nothing from local political leaders because many of them have been detained and held incommunicado, part of an unprecedented clampdown that has helped muffle the public response to India’s decision.
The world community is just as silent, according to my pre$$.
On Monday, the major Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha was a tense and muted affair instead of a joyous occasion as security forces flooded the streets of Srinagar, the Kashmiri capital. The festival passed without violent protests, as some had feared.
The region has remained on edge ever since Prime Minister Narendra Modi revoked autonomy for Indian-controlled Kashmir, fulfilling a major campaign pledge of his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party but raising the likelihood of unrest in India’s only Muslim-majority region.
To maintain control in the wake of the decision, India has sent thousands of additional troops to Kashmir and detained hundreds of local politicians and party workers. They include two of the highest-profile leaders in the state: Mehbooba Mufti, who until last year was the chief minister of Jammu & Kashmir, and Omar Abdullah, one of her predecessors in that post.
‘‘I’ve no idea what is in store for our state, but it doesn’t look good,’’ wrote Abdullah to his 3 million Twitter followers in the wee hours of Aug. 5. He has not been heard from since.
Kashmir is home to a long-running insurgency against Indian rule waged by militant groups seeking independence or merger with Pakistan, but the politicians who have been detained since Aug. 5 are not militants or separatists but mainstream leaders who advocate for Kashmir’s future inside India with a degree of autonomy.
A hotel and conference hall on the shores of Srinagar’s Dal Lake has been converted into an improvised detention center. On a recent afternoon, the metal entrance gates were draped in black plastic to obscure the view. Nuzhat Ishfaq, 34, came to try to find her husband and father, both members of the Jammu & Kashmir National Conference party. Her husband was a member of the state legislature from the district of Ganderbal.
She said her husband was put under house arrest on Aug. 5. Two days later, the police arrived at their home and told him to pack some clothes. Since then, the family has not gotten word from him. The guards allowed her and her two sons, 12 and 14, inside the center for 45 minutes. She said she was taken into a conference hall and glimpsed her husband from a distance, but officials did not permit her to speak to him.
‘‘There is a volcano waiting to erupt,’’ she said. ‘‘Earlier militants or separatists were picked up, but now India has taken away those who were pro-India.’’ She continued, ‘‘This is injustice. We are not militants. What is our crime?’’
Simply existing, ma'am.
Adnan Ashraf Mir, a spokesman for the Jammu & Kashmir People’s Conference, said that its leader, Sajjad Lone, was placed under house arrest on Aug. 4. The following day Lone was transferred to the makeshift detention center on Dal Lake and has been held incommunicado ever since.
One wonders if they are being tortured at the black site.
The party’s entire top leadership is either detained or under house arrest, said Mir, and he estimated that more than 200 party workers across the state had also been taken into custody. ‘‘It’s just appalling how they have treated these people,’’ said Mir, who left Srinagar several days ago. The government is ‘‘trying to silence every voice they think would be able to mobilize opinion on the ground.’’
Mrinal Sharma, a policy adviser with Amnesty International India, said that the authorities could be using two statutes to carry out the detentions. The first is Kashmir’s Public Safety Act, which activists say facilitates arbitrary detentions. The second is a provision in the Indian criminal procedure code that allows police to take people into custody to prevent breaches of the peace.
The latter is often used to prevent possible riots, said Sharma, but ‘‘detaining political leaders while a decision is being made on the fate of their constituencies is just unprecedented.’’
Why is AI running cover for the government and taking a soft line on this?
Outside a hillside home belonging to former chief minister Mufti, security personnel declined to answer questions about her detention. They also refused to allow The Washington Post to meet with her daughter, Iltija Iqbal. In previous interviews, Iqbal said that her mother was detained on Aug. 5 and she has not been able to communicate with her since.
New York Times got inside, or so we were told, and the Washington ComPost soon followed.
A spokeswoman for India’s Home Ministry did not reply to requests for comment on the detentions or the whereabouts of Mufti and Abdullah. A senior government official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss matters with reporters, twice declined to answer queries about the detained politicians.
Isn't that stonewalling?
That's what the print version did with the rest of the article.
The police are ‘‘effectively maintaining peace and public order, taking local decisions on detentions,’’ the Jammu & Kashmir government said in a news release Monday. A senior police official said there had been ‘‘minor localized incidents’’ during Eid and two people were injured in the clashes.
On Friday, things turned ugly when police fired tear gas and pellets at a crowd of thousands of protesters, according to a half-dozen eyewitnesses and interviews with the injured at a hospital. The government has denied any firing incidents took place.
Government officials declined to say when the restrictions on communication and movement would be lifted, repeatedly stating that the situation was fluid. Fizalah Kawoosa, a 32-year-old immunologist in Srinagar, said that recent events had left her ‘‘blood boiling.’’ She has not been able to reach her mother, who lives in the same city, and three attempts to visit have been thwarted at police checkpoints.
Kawoosa said she hopes and prays that her infant daughter will grow up in peace. ‘‘There is no family in Kashmir that has not lost a relative to violence,’’ she said. ‘‘I wanted to see a calm future for our children, but it is only going to be worse.’’
--more--"
Not only is the world silent, but so is the Globe on this day.
And just over the border:
"Taliban say differences resolved on US troop withdrawal" by Cara Anna and Kathy Gannon Associated Press, August 6, 2019
KABUL — The United States and the Taliban have resolved differences in peace talks over the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan and guarantees from the insurgents that they will cut ties with other extremist groups, a Taliban official said Tuesday.
The US side did not immediately provide details about the latest round of talks held in Qatar, where the Taliban maintain a political office, but Zalmay Khalilzad, the American envoy who has been leading the talks since they began late last year, tweeted that they had made ‘‘excellent progress.’’
The two sides have been meeting for the last two days, and technical teams were continuing discussions on Tuesday in Doha. The Taliban official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss details of the negotiations.
Khalilzad, who has been tasked with finding a peaceful resolution to the nearly 18-year war — America’s longest conflict — has made intra-Afghan talks and a permanent cease-fire priorities in the negotiations, but the Taliban have continued to sideline the Kabul government, dismissing it as a US puppet and refusing to recognize it.
I haven't highlighted anything because I don't take any of this seriously. Every time there is peace talk in my war pre$$ -- now there is an oxymoron for you -- I dismiss it. In this case, the talks are being led by a PNAC signatory. Gimme a break.
The Taliban have kept up a near-daily rate of deadly attacks, despite holding several rounds of peace talks with Khalilzad since his appointment almost a year ago. The Taliban now control roughly half of Afghanistan and are at their strongest since 2001, when the US-led invasion toppled their government after it harbored Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
Well, somebody is keeping up the daily rate of attacks. Every time there are peace talks the violence flares up. How convenient for some, and if the Taliban are the strongest they have been since 2001, we have lost. Now peace is being negotiated and all they are getting is a guarantee!
WTF was it all for anyway?
The US and the Taliban now appear to be closing in on an agreement under which US forces would withdraw in exchange for guarantees that Afghanistan would not become a haven for other terrorist groups. Khalilzad has said he is hoping for a final agreement by Sept. 1 that would allow the roughly 20,000 US and NATO forces to leave.
Yeah, well, I'm not holding my breath on it. Even if we officially leave, Trump plans to leave behind intelligence assets and private contractors to continue the fight.
The United States and NATO formally concluded their combat mission in 2014, but the American and allied troops continue to train and build the Afghan military. Separately, US forces also assist Afghan troops in airstrikes and raids on the Taliban and against the Islamic State group’s affiliate in Afghanistan.
See? It's all a question of semantics!
President Trump has often expressed his exasperation with America’s continued involvement in Afghanistan and his desire to bring troops home.
Yeah, he was talked out of withdrawing despite his instinct and here we still are.
Also on Tuesday, the Taliban called on fellow Afghans to boycott next month’s presidential election and warned them to stay away from rallies ‘‘that could become potential targets.’’
So says my war pre$$. It's not like I believe anything I read anymore, so it will have to be independently verified and confirmed. Fuck them.
The Taliban dismissed the Sept. 28 election, which has been delayed this year over security and organizational concerns, calling it a ‘‘sham.’’ President Ashraf Ghani, who is seeking a second term in office, is among more than a dozen candidates.
The president’s office issued a statement calling on the Taliban to prove they are serious about peace and ‘‘stop intimidating the public.’’
In Kabul on Tuesday, a bomb targeted a van carrying employees of the Interior Ministry’s counternarcotics division. The blast killed five people and wounded another seven, Interior Ministry spokesman Nasrat Rahimi said. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.
See?
First one wonders it it really happened, but if so, by whom?
--more--"
And like clockwork:
"Taliban suicide blast in Kabul kills 14 people, wounds 145 others" by Rahim Faiez and Cara Anna Associated Press, August 7, 2019
That's odd because my print copy gave me New York Times slop.
KABUL — A Taliban car bomb aimed at Afghan security forces ripped through a busy Kabul neighborhood on Wednesday, killing 14 people and wounding 145 — most of them women, children, and other civilians — shortly after the extremist group and the United States reported progress on negotiating an end to Afghanistan’s nearly 18-year war.
C'mon, hey!
Cui bono?
Oh, and stop waving women and children in front of us to push your agenda, you pos war pre$$, while ignoring so many others.
The bombing during morning rush hour was one of the worst attacks in Kabul this year, and it again raised fears among Afghans about what will happen once the estimated 20,000 US and NATO troops in their country go home.
Well, it was just reported this month that allied forces killed more civilians than the Taliban for the first six months of the year, so I imagine the fear will be replaced by relief that their will be no more night raids or airstrikes!
The explosives-packed car detonated at a security checkpoint outside police headquarters in a minority Shiite neighborhood in western Kabul, police spokesman Firdaus Faramarz said. The Taliban said they had targeted a recruitment center for security forces.
Oh, man, this absolutely reeks of an inside job false flag situation -- if it happened at all.
Ninety-two of the wounded were civilians, Deputy Interior Minister Khoshal Sadat told reporters. Four police officers were among those killed, he said.
The attack took place as many Kabul residents were preparing for the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha, which begins Sunday. A large plume of smoke rose over the city. Some nearby buildings were left in rubble. Shopkeepers later swept up broken glass. ‘‘I was having breakfast in a restaurant when the explosion happened,’’ said Mohmmad Qasem. As windows shattered, he and others rushed into the busy street.
Just casts more doubt as to who really did it, for no pious Muslim would commit such an act on such a day.
Cui bono?
Even as the US-Taliban peace talks continue and the Taliban say they will do more to protect civilians, a growing number of them are being killed. July saw the highest number of civilian casualties in a single month since 2017, with more than 1,500 killed or wounded as insurgent attacks spiked, the United Nations said earlier this month.
Oh, so not only have the allies killing more during the first six months of the year, but July was the bloodiest slaughter yet as it gets worse!
Yeah, but the Afghans fear occupying forces leaving, right. More like they will be waving goodbye to them!
Any Taliban attack is a barrier to the peace process, presidential spokesman Sediq Seddiqi told reporters, vowing that ‘‘Afghan security forces are strong and can protect the Afghan population.’’
This is surreal given the U.N. numbers.
President Ashraf Ghani’s government said such attacks apparently are meant to strengthen the Taliban position at the negotiating table but would not succeed.
How does it strengthen their hand by causing doubt about the U.S. leaving? The logical and rational thing to do is to hold your fire until the occupier leaves! Not give him a reason to stay!
On Tuesday the Taliban warned Afghans to boycott the Sept. 28 presidential election and avoid campaign rallies, which ‘‘could become potential targets.’’ The vote already has been delayed for months over security and organizational concerns.
The Taliban have been staging near-daily attacks against Afghan forces across the country, saying the war will continue as long as US and NATO forces are still in Afghanistan.
The Taliban now control roughly half of the country and are at their strongest since 2001, when the US-led invasion toppled their government after it harbored Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
As you can see a lot of this is regurgitated shit and conventional myth garbage.
Another round of US-Taliban talks continues this week in the Gulf Arab state of Qatar, where the insurgents maintain an office.
Zalmay Khalilzad, the US envoy tasked with finding a peaceful resolution to America’s longest war, this week reported ‘‘excellent progress’’ in the talks. A Taliban official said differences had been resolved over the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan and Taliban guarantees that they will cut ties with other extremist groups. The United States wants to make sure that Afghanistan will not become a launching pad for attacks against it.
That's the official story anyway. We know better now.
Khalilzad condemned Wednesday’s bombing, saying in a Twitter post that ‘‘the focus should be on immediately reducing violence as we move closer to intra-Afghan negotiations that will produce a political roadmap and a permanent ceasefire.’’
Yeah, cui bono?
Looks like Taliban hand was weakened!
Khalilzad has said he is hoping for a final agreement by Sept. 1, but major challenges remain as the Taliban refuse to negotiate with the Kabul government, dismissing it as a US puppet.
Oh, just after I got my hopes up.
More civilian casualties were reported on Wednesday in the western city of Herat, where a sticky bomb wounded at least eight people, including women and children, said Abdul Ahid Walizada, spokesman for the provincial police chief.
Now that is a hallmark on an intelligence service operation, most likely Mossad, and once again we are having women and children waved in front of us.
Another threat in Afghanistan is the local Islamic State group affiliate, which also has carried out several large-scale attacks in Kabul, frequently targeting minority Shiites.
It's amazing how they always pop up when the U.S. needs to invade, occupy, or focus on a region!
On Wednesday, security officials said an overnight raid in eastern Kabul targeted three locations in residential areas from which the Islamic State group has been launching attacks. Three members of the security forces and two of the extremists were killed, the officials said, and bomb-making materials were seized, and in northern Baghlan province, a suicide bomber in a Humvee tried to attack an Afghan base but was killed by security forces, said Jawed Basharat, spokesman for the provincial police chief.
Yeah, if you say so. Now pass the salt shaker.
--more--"
Thankfully, the US military is run by guys from Boston.
Also see:
"A car packed with explosives detonated in downtown Cairo on Monday, killing at least 20 and injuring 47, Egypt’s Interior Ministry said. It was the highest terrorism-related death toll in the capital in more than two years. The government initially said the early-morning blast was caused by the collision of four cars, but later in the day, the Interior Ministry said the explosives-filled car was actually on its way to commit an attack in another part of the capital. The ministry said in a statement that added that the car was stolen a few months ago from the province of Menufia, 55 miles north of Cairo. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the blast, but Egyptian authorities were quick to blame Hasm, a militant group that emerged three years ago and has claimed several attacks. Egypt accuses Hasm of being the militant arm of the banned Muslim Brotherhood. The Islamist movement, once a political force, has denied the allegations. The blast started a fire that triggered the partial evacuation of the National Cancer Institute, the capital’s main cancer hospital, according to Egypt’s Health Ministry....."
Guess which intelligence service was behind that one, and I guess the air alert has been called off.
Also see: A special safety case allows for the display of historical documents
That's all that will be left, but whose version?
You can come out of your caves now:
"US to delay some China tariffs until stores stock up for holiday shoppers" by Ana Swanson New York Times, August 13, 2019
(Groan)
WASHINGTON — President Trump on Tuesday unexpectedly put off new tariffs on many Chinese goods, including cellphones, laptop computers, and toys, until after the start of the Christmas shopping season, acknowledging the effect that his protracted trade war with Beijing could have on Americans.
The nonprofit Reshoring Initiative found fewer than 30,000 jobs that companies said they would relocate to the United States because of President Trump’s tariffs.(Anna Moneymaker/New York Times)
He backed down again, huh?
Trump pushed a 10 percent tariff on some imports to Dec. 15, and excluded others from it entirely, while facing mounting pressure from businesses and consumer groups over the harm they say the trade conflict is doing.
The stock market soared after the announcement, following weeks of volatility driven by fears that the standoff between the world’s two largest economies could hamper global economic growth.
The decision was the latest twist in a dispute during which China and the United States have alternately escalated tensions with tit-for-tat tariffs and softened their positions as they sought a deal.
Trump continued to insist on Tuesday that the trade war was hurting only China, but he also admitted that there was potential for the new tariffs to inflict economic pain closer to home.
“Just in case they might have an impact on people,” the president told reporters, “what we’ve done is we’ve delayed it so that they won’t be relevant for the Christmas shopping season.”
Yeah, another bad Chri$tma$ $ea$on would hurt his reelection chances.
Trump, frustrated that negotiations had failed to yield an agreement, said on Aug. 1 that the United States would impose the 10 percent tariff on $300 billion worth of Chinese imports on Sept. 1. That would be in addition to a 25 percent tariff already imposed on $250 billion of Chinese goods, but on Tuesday, the US Trade Representative’s Office said that while a substantial amount of Chinese imports would be subject to the Sept. 1 levy as planned, various consumer electronics, shoes, and other items would be spared until mid-December.
The office also said it was dropping 25 types of products from the tariff list altogether “based on health, safety, national security, and other factors.” The items include car seats, shipping containers, cranes, certain fish, and Bibles and other religious literature, a spokesman said.
Your Bible is made in China?
Stocks rallied immediately on the news, with the S&P 500 climbing nearly 2 percent in morning trading before ending the day up 1.5 percent. The benchmark index was lifted partly by shares in retailers and computer chip producers that have been especially sensitive to the trade tensions.
Best Buy, which gets many of the products it sells from China, was among the best-performing stocks in the S&P 500, rising more than 6.5 percent. Apple, whose iPhones and computers would have been subject to the tariffs, climbed more than 4 percent. The technology-heavy Nasdaq composite index ended the day up more than 2 percent.
The tariff announcement followed what Trump described as a “very productive” call involving Liu He, China’s vice premier and its lead trade negotiator; Robert Lighthizer, the US trade representative; and Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary.
Liu is on the outs, though.
Trump has been pressing Beijing since last year for an agreement that would, among other things, strengthen protections for American intellectual property, open Chinese markets to American business, and result in China’s buying large quantities of American energy and agricultural goods, but negotiators have made little progress since May. The stumbling blocks included whether the White House would roll back the tariffs already in place and whether Beijing would enshrine in law the changes it pledged to make.
As his reelection campaign gears up, Trump is increasingly focused on ending the conflict in order to maintain his support among farmers, who have lost some of their main export opportunities as China ordered state-owned companies to stop buying American soybeans, but he has also expressed an unwillingness to accept a deal with China that falls short of his goals.
It's not like he would honor it, either.
The president has tried to persuade China to buy large amounts of American farm goods before an agreement is reached, but that hasn’t happened. He continued to berate China on Tuesday for not making such purchases and suggested that the tariffs might force it to do so.
“As usual, China said they were going to be buying ‘big’ from our great American Farmers,” he wrote on Twitter. “So far they have not done what they said. Maybe this will be different!”
Chinese officials and state media outlets have responded to Trump’s prodding by taking an increasingly strident tone and threatening to punish US firms.
Among corporate leaders, Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, has been particularly active in lobbying the president and Lighthizer against the tariffs. Apple, which builds most of its products in China, has been hit by the tariffs on some smaller products like the Mac Mini, computer parts, and cables, but the latest round of proposed levies significantly raised the stakes for the company.
So far, Apple has not raised prices because of the initial tariffs, and the company would probably try to absorb a 10 percent levy on iPhones at first, too, Daniel Ives, a technology analyst for Wedbush Securities, said in a research note Tuesday, but if the tariffs continue into next year, he said, “Apple will have no choice but to pass this incremental $75 to $100 per smartphone to US consumers.
They make enough billions to absorb the costs!
Trump’s tariffs have been front and center for corporate executives and investors since the trade war flared anew in May, and the topic had often been cited on earnings calls between company leaders and shareholders.
With the most onerous levies — those set for Sept. 1 — not yet in place, retail executives have mostly played down their effect on profits, at least publicly. The biggest retailers, including Best Buy, Macy’s, Target, and Walmart, are scheduled to report earnings for the most recent quarter starting this week.
--more--"
Related:
Stocks rebound on US plan to delay some China tariffs
The latest turn in the US-China trade war helped the market make up much of the losses from the previous two days, even as a key measure of consumer prices unexpectedly accelerated in July in a broad-based advance, signaling inflation may be firming as the Federal Reserve debates whether to lower interest rates further.
What about jobs?
"Trump’s push to bring back jobs to US shows limited results" by Jim Tankersley New York Times, August 13, 2019
(Groan)
WASHINGTON — From tax cuts to relaxed regulations to tariffs, each of President Trump’s economic initiatives is based on a promise: to set off a wave of investment and bring back jobs that the president says the United States has lost to foreign countries.
Trump’s tax cuts unquestionably stimulated the US economy in 2018, helping to push economic growth to 2.5 percent for the year and fueling an increase in manufacturing jobs, but statistics from the government and other sources do not support Trump’s claim about his policies’ effectiveness in drawing investment and jobs from abroad.
Foreign investment in the United States grew at a slower annual pace in the first two years of Trump’s tenure than during Barack Obama’s presidency, according to Commerce Department data released in July. Growth in business investment from all sources, foreign and domestic, accelerated briefly after Trump signed a $1.5 trillion tax-cut package in late 2017 but then slowed. Investment growth turned negative this spring, providing a drag on economic output.
The NYT is more concerned about foreign investment as a measure of the economy, and all these qualifiers ("but") undercut their agenda-pu$hing advocacy.
In Trump’s first two years in office, companies announced plans to relocate just under 145,000 factory jobs to the United States, according to data and modeling by the Reshoring Initiative, a nonprofit group. That is a record high in the group’s data, which dates back to the late 1980s, but it adds up to less than one month of average job gains in the United States in its decadelong expansion. More than half of those jobs — about 82,000 — were announced in 2017, before Trump’s tax cuts took effect.
They won't give him credit for a damn thing except when he wages war for Israel!
Good God!
Moreover, the Reshoring Initiative data show fewer than 30,000 jobs that companies say they will relocate to the United States because of Trump’s tariffs on imported steel, aluminum, solar panels, washing machines, and a variety of Chinese goods. Researchers at A.T. Kearney said in July that Trump’s trade policies, including tariffs, had pushed factory activity not to the United States but to low-cost Asian countries other than China, like Vietnam.
Well, they don't have to worry about that anymore, and btw, why was all that crime scene WTC steel sent over to China to be melted down?
Manufacturers of primary metals, which include steel and aluminum, have added fewer than 15,000 jobs since Trump took office, with more than half of those gains coming before Trump imposed tariffs on foreign-made metals last year.
Never mind that they were losing jobs under Obama.
I'm far from a defender of the Orange Ogre who is nothing but a Zionist tool, but c'mon!
Now manufacturing is struggling amid a global slowdown and fallout from the trade war, which Trump has escalated by imposing additional tariffs on Chinese goods and by labeling China a “currency manipulator.”
A May report by researchers at the International Monetary Fund concluded that the investment impact of the tax bill “has been smaller than would have been predicted based on the effects of previous US tax-cut episodes” and that the strongest effects on investment were likely to have shown up in the first year after the law was enacted. Morgan Stanley’s Business Conditions Index shows companies’ plans for new investment plummeted this summer.
The tax law reduced the corporate income-tax rate to 21 percent from a top rate of 35 percent, and it overhauled the way the United States taxes multinational companies. Data show those changes have encouraged multinational companies to shift hundreds of billions of dollars in profits to their American operations, essentially for accounting purposes, through a process known as repatriation.
No wonder the stock market is at record highs.
Trump often cites repatriation figures as if they reflected direct investment in the United States. That’s wrong, said Brad Setser, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who tracks international investment flows.
The IMF, the CFR, these are the globali$t experts to whom the NYT turns!
Commerce Department statistics show that the repatriated funds came mainly from low-tax countries like Ireland and Bermuda, where companies had booked profits to minimize tax liability, and not from China or other economic competitors like Japan. That flow of money “doesn’t mean all that much,” Setser said. “You’re not in any way seeing a shift in real activity back to the United States.”
Then send some of it my way, eliti$t puke!
Researchers from Wall Street financial firms and the Federal Reserve have concluded that companies used repatriated funds mostly to buy back stock.
Then it is an inflated stock market based on illu$ion, huh?
Mi$$ Obama yet?
Administration officials contend that those selling shares will soon invest their proceeds from the buybacks into startups, business expansions, or other forms of economic activity. The officials also assert that tariffs are helping to create jobs. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told a conference in Washington in July that the positive effects of Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs “can be measured on the factory floor.”
That flies in the face of the NYT analy$i$, and also calls into question why Trump backed down.
Jim Lentz, who oversees North American operations for the Japanese automaker Toyota, has cited the company’s plans to invest $13 billion in American operations over the next several years. “Thank you, Mr. President, for having such a strong economy for allowing us to be able to do that,” Lentz said at the White House in July.
At a summit in June, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan handed Trump a chart showing Japanese investments in the United States that would yield just under 22,000 new jobs. While Trump hailed the figures, Commerce Department data show that the rate of Japanese investment growth in the United States has slowed under Trump, compared with Obama’s second term, and companies like Toyota have warned that the president’s determination that foreign autos pose a national-security threat and may be subjected to tariffs could discourage additional investment.
--more--"
Related:
"The world’s biggest oil tanker has begun a 12,400-mile voyage to a fuel-storage zone in Asia, the latest movement of a vessel that’s intrigued the shipping market and fuel traders for months. More than 1,200 feet long, 16 years old, and able to hold roughly a day of France’s and Britain’s combined oil consumption, Oceania will arrive at Sungai Linggi in Malaysia at the end of September, according to recent signals from the vessel. Oceania has been accumulating cargoes in the Mediterranean Sea since about March."
That is going to cross some red lines:
"Chaos grips Hong Kong’s airport as police clash with protesters" by Mike Ives, Ezra Cheung and Elsie Chen The New York Times, August 13, 2019
(Groan)
HONG KONG — Bearing batons and pepper spray, Hong Kong riot police officers clashed with anti-government protesters who crippled the airport Tuesday for the second straight day, chaos that underscored the deepening unrest gripping the city.
The mayhem at the airport — in the Asian financial hub known for efficiency and order — came hours after mass protests forced the airport to suspend check-ins, as it had done Monday. The city’s embattled leader, Carrie Lam, had pleaded earlier for order after days of escalating street violence.
Thousands of demonstrators had occupied parts of Hong Kong International Airport’s departures and arrivals halls Tuesday afternoon, with some using luggage trolleys to block travelers from reaching their departure gates.
Oh, yeah, that is going to win people over!
The feeling here is the protests have reached their end with these desperate measures.
Monday was the first day that demonstrators had seriously disrupted operations at the airport, one of the world’s busiest. The escalation of the protests is another sign that the two-month-old movement is turning to increasingly desperate measures, amid threats from Beijing and the refusal of Lam, Hong Kong’s chief executive, to meet their demands.
Hong Kong is facing its worst political crisis since the former British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997 as a semiautonomous territory. The intensifying unrest this month has stoked widespread anxiety in the financial hub, in part because Beijing has started to warn protesters in increasingly strident terms to stand down or face consequences.
President Trump on Tuesday weighed in via tweet, saying “our intelligence has informed us that the Chinese Government is moving troops to the border with Hong Kong.”
It is unclear what information, if any, Trump has. Although Chinese security forces have conducted large-scale operations across the border from Hong Kong in Shenzen in recent days, they appear to mainly be a nationalistic show of force.
Oh, now the NYT is doubting the intelligence!
Maybe it is time to run for the hills and get as far away from them as possible.
Of course, that's where all the people who have the guns live.
The clashes at the airport began late in the evening when police vans arrived outside the departures hall, which was full of black-clad protesters.
Some of the protesters went outside, blocked the vans with makeshift blockades and threw plastic bottles at them. At one point, some officers in riot gear began running after protesters who were outside the terminal, wrestling some to the ground with batons.
A group of protesters surrounded a police officer inside the terminal. They took his baton and beat him with it, retreating after he appeared to pull a gun.
With tensions running high at the airport late Tuesday, a group of demonstrators surrounded and attacked a man they accused of being a mainland Chinese police officer impersonating a protester, causing him to faint. His identity could not be immediately confirmed.
Oh, a Chinese agent provocateur (except that is not their shtick!).
As midnight neared, bands of black-clad protesters were still in the airport, while bewildered travelers, fresh off arriving flights, walked past them and into the sweltering night. The protest crowd later thinned, as did the police presence.
The continued disruptions at the airport Tuesday left some travelers frustrated and angry. Some described themselves as supporters of the protest movement who had grown disillusioned with it.
I think even they are finally realizing who is ultimately behind the destabilization campaign.
Maisa Sodebayashi, who is from Brazil and works in a car factory in Japan, said that although she understood the protesters were fighting for democracy, she also wanted to catch her flight to Rio de Janeiro. She had been stranded in the airport for about 24 hours. “Honestly, I don’t know what to do,” Sodebayashi said, standing beside a customer service desk.
Yeah, by acting like a bunch of thugs and vandals!
The protesters at the airport have been particularly angered by the tactics used by police against demonstrators Sunday, including firing tear gas into a train station and sending officers into crowds dressed as demonstrators to make arrests.
On Tuesday, the UN human rights chief, Michelle Bachelet, said there was evidence that Hong Kong police had violated international standards for the use of less-lethal weapons like tear gas.
Oh, the final paragraph provides confirmation that is an EUSraeli effort!
So when is Israel going to be called out for such things, or the French for doing the same to the Yellow Vests?
Yeah, that's what I thought!
In a news conference with combative reporters Tuesday morning, Lam, Hong Kong’s leader, urged protesters to obey the law. “The stability and well-being of 7 million people are in jeopardy,” Lam said, her voice breaking slightly. “Take a minute to think about that. Look at our city, our home. Do we really want to push our home to the abyss where it will be smashed into pieces?”
This taken a toll on her.
The wave of protests began in early June, in opposition to legislation that would have allowed extraditions to mainland China, where the courts are controlled by the Communist Party. They have since morphed into calls for more direct elections, a call for Lam to resign, and an investigation of the police, among other demands.
Yeah, the legislation was simply the excuse to get the covert destabilization program going.
Beijing, which views the unrest as a direct challenge to its authority, has warned protesters to stop and has leaned on Hong Kong’s political and business elite to close ranks behind Lam, a career civil servant.
Is it not?
--more--"
Related:
Flights restart at Hong Kong airport
Also see:
"The Kremlin on Tuesday broke weeks of silence on opposition protests and police violence in Moscow, saying that President Vladimir Putin does not see the increasing wave of discontent as anything significant. The Russian capital has been gripped by three consecutive weekends of large-scale opposition protests, with police arresting and detaining more than 1,000 people. Saturday's rally was believed to be the largest in eight years. The huge protests followed some smaller demonstrations earlier this summer Giving the Kremlin's first official comments on the protests in Moscow, spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday that Putin has not spoken out about the demonstrations because he does not think there is anything "exceptional" about them. "Protests happen in many countries," he said, adding that there are more important events in Russia for the president to care about. Peskov rejected suggestions that the protests have plunged the Kremlin into a political crisis and defended police response at the three weekends of protests. "We believe that a disproportionate use of force by law enforcement officers is absolutely unacceptable but we think that the police response in clamping down on rioting was totally justified," Peskov told reporters. Some of the opposition gatherings in the past weeks did not receive official permission, and authorities deployed a sizeable police force to disperse peaceful protesters. Police officers were seen using force on individuals who were merely standing on the street and who did not put up resistance during arrest. The Moscow protests originally started last month as a reaction to authorities' refusal to register a number of independent candidates for the upcoming election to the Moscow city legislature. They later gained momentum to reflect widespread frustration with Russia's tightly controlled politics....."
That's another covert destabilization effort by the U.S., but one with much less success. Has all the hallmarks of it.
"Malaysian police said Tuesday the family of a missing 15-year-old London girl has positively identified a naked body found near the nature resort where she disappeared over a week ago. Police believe the teen, who has learning and physical disabilities, climbed out through an open window in the living room of the resort cottage. They listed her as a missing person but said the investigation included possible criminal aspects of the case. The girl’s family says she isn’t independent and wouldn’t wander off alone, and was likely to have been abducted. Negeri Sembilan police chief Mohamad Mat Yusop told reporters at the hospital morgue that a senior pathologist will conduct a post mortem Wednesday morning to determine the cause of death....."
Are they going to keep it secret like Epstein's?
Related: Iran Says Tanker Seized at Gibraltar Will Be Released Soon
Finally, cooler heads are prevailing.
UPDATE:
Dow sinks 800 points as signs of recession loom
FURTHER UPDATE:
At least 5 police officers shot in Philadelphia
That will get everyone's attention of the Dow!
That your only play in the playbook these days?
JESUS!
