Great just what we needed.
On November 30, one week after the Washington Post launched its witch hunt against “Russian propaganda fake news“, with 390 votes for, the House quietly passed “H.R. 6393, Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017“, sponsored by California Republican Devin Nunes (whose third largest donor in 2016 is Google parent Alphabet, Inc), a bill which deals with a number of intelligence-related issues, including Russian propaganda, or what the government calls propaganda, and hints at a potential crackdown on “offenders.”
A quick skim of the bill reveals “Title V—Matters relating to foreign countries”, whose Section 501 calls for the government to “counter active measures by Russia to exert covert influence … carried out in coordination with, or at the behest of, political leaders or the security services of the Russian Federation and the role of the Russian Federation has been hidden or not acknowledged publicly.”
The section lists the following definitions of media manipulation:
As ActivistPost correctly notes, it is easy to see how this law, if passed by the Senate and signed by the president, could be used to target, threaten, or eliminate so-called “fake news” websites, a list which has been used to arbitrarily define any website, or blog, that does not share the mainstream media’s proclivity to serve as the Public Relations arm of a given administration.
Curiously, the bill which was passed on November 30, was introduced on November 22, two days before the Washington Post published its Nov. 24 article citing “experts” who claim Russian propaganda helped Donald Trump get elected.
As we reported last week, in an article that has been widely blasted, the WaPo wrote that “two teams of independent researchers found that the Russians exploited American-made technology platforms to attack U.S. democracy at a particularly vulnerable moment, as an insurgent candidate harnessed a wide range of grievances to claim the White House. The sophistication of the Russian tactics may complicate efforts by Facebook and Google to crack down on “fake news,” as they have vowed to do after widespread complaints about the problem.”
The newspaper cited PropOrNot, an anonymous website that posted a hit list of alternative media websites, including Zero Hedge, Drudge Report, Activist Post, Blacklisted News, the Ron Paul Report, and many others. Glenn Greenwald penned an appropriate response two days later in “Washington Post Disgracefully Promotes a McCarthyite Blacklist From a New, Hidden, and Very Shady Group.”
PropOrNot has pushed a conspiratorial thesis, without any actual proof, that the listed websites have been either used directly or covertly by the Russians to spread propaganda.
While the bill passed the House with a sweeping majority, it is unknown if and when the bill will work its way through the Senate and be passed into law, although one would think that it has far higher chances of passing under president Obama than the President-Elect. It is also unclear if it will be used to shut down websites anonymously characterized as “useful idiots” or subversive elements used in disseminating supposed Russian propaganda.
Those interested can read the full “H.R. 6393: Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017″ at the following location” bill that may soon proclaim much of the internet to be criminal “Russian propaganda” at the following link.
Well the emails are pouring in already since our post on the upcoming French elections where our model was showing that “Clearly, the socialists are finished.” We further stated: “They made a two election come back, but that was just a reaction reaching 51.63% compared to their peak at 51.76% in 1981. This suggests they will possibly be out of the final run or this will be their very last time. The 2017 election may simply be Conservatives v FN in 2017.” We warned that our model was shaping up to be a confrontation between the Conservative candidate Francois Fillon and the FN candidate Marine Le Pen.
In what is being called a shocking surprise announcement, President Francois Hollande of France on Thursday said he would not seek a second term next year. He is so unpopular, he is stepping aside in hopes that this will resurrect the Socialist party’s chances. This is the very first time since France’s fifth Republic was created in 1958 that an incumbent president will not seek a second term.
Our computer simply looks not at opinion polls, but at the market performance and the economy. This is three for three so far. It seems to be on a roll with its political forecasting. We have the Netherlands and Germany in addition to the Italian referendum. This is a global trend rejecting politics as we have known it.
If all the old progressives get thrown out maybe there is hope!
Media reports of Agustin Carstens resignation as chief of Mexico’s central bank have left MSM pundits and even business analysts scratching their heads. It appears no-one has any idea why Car…
Source: Trump Effect – Mexico’s Central Bank Chief Resigns…
Update: Speaking during an Ohio “thank you” rally, Donald Trump just confirmed that James “Mad Dog” Mattis will be America’s next Secretary of Defense.
* * *
President-elect Donald Trump has chosen 66-year-old retired Marine General James N. “Mad-Dog” Mattis to be secretary of defense, according to The Washington Post.
An announcement is likely by early next week, according to the people familiar with the decision. Mattis declined to comment. Spokespersons for Trump’s transition team did not respond to requests for comment.
Mattis has also gotten cheers from veterans and Trump supporters online, in the form of celebratory memes dubbing him the Patron Saint of Chaos (Chaos was Mattis’s call-sign in Iraq and Afghanistan), praising his lethal “double knife hands,” and saying that he “Puts the Laughter in Manslaughter.”
Mattis gets the nod ahead of a notable group who were up for the top role..
His bio – as one would expect – is impressive…(apart from the Theranos aspect) (via The Intercept)
Mattis is exactly what Trump is not, a soldier-scholar who knows something of the wider world.
Now 66 years old, Mattis was born in Walla Walla, Washington. His lifelong bachelordom is the source of one of his many nicknames: “warrior-monk.” He served in every major U.S. Middle Eastern conflict from the first Iraq War on. In 2001, as a one-star general, he led 4,000 Marines in a search for Osama bin Laden near the Afghanistan/Pakistan border. In 2004, as a two-star, he led a Marine division into the second battle for Fallujah. He went on to lead combatant commands at the Pentagon and NATO, culminating in two years as the head of Central Command under President Barack Obama, reportedly leaving after disagreeing with Obama’s policy on Iran.
Shortly before his departure, Mattis appears to have weighed in with the Pentagon on behalf of Theranos, Elizabeth Holmes’s troubled biotech firm. He later joined the company’s board. Should Trump nominate Mattis, emails between Mattis and Holmesare likely to come up during his Senate confirmation hearing.
Professor Richard Kohn, a military historian at the University of North Carolina, called Mattis “loyal and discreet. He doesn’t talk out of school. He seeks out top people, and people like working for him.” Trump, Kohn continued, “is going to be advised by a National Security Advisor [Flynn] with some deep flaws. I think that having a legendary and respected retired general in charge of Defense makes a great deal of sense.”
“I think he would be an outstanding candidate,” Michèle Flournoy, widely believed to be Hillary Clinton’s frontrunner for secretary of defense, told NPR. In 2010, Seth Moulton, a decorated Marine captain who served in Iraq, praised Mattis as one of the “leaders who can speak the truth, who aren’t just constrained by the politics of the moment.” Moulton is now a Democratic congressman representing the Sixth District of Massachusetts.
Mattis has also gotten cheers from veterans and Trump supporters online, in the form of celebratory memes dubbing him the Patron Saint of Chaos (Chaos was Mattis’s call-sign in Iraq and Afghanistan), praising his lethal “double knife hands,” and saying that he “Puts the Laughter in Manslaughter.”
Indeed, Mattis is famous for speaking bluntly when it comes to describing the military’s primary function — killing the enemy — and for whistling about his work. He has lived down an eleven-year-old gaffe where he described killing as “a lot of fun, … a hell of a hoot,” but has never backed off from the stance that the military’s core function is not peacekeeping or humanitarian missions but war-fighting. He is widely credited with popularizing the motto of the 1st Marine Division — “No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy” — and turning it into a basic tenet of counterinsurgency doctrine. His letter to the division on the eve of the 2003 invasion is a cool-headed exhortation to “close with those forces that choose to fight, and destroy them.”
William Treseder, a former Marine who now advises startups, said that Mattis is skilled at injecting a fighting spirit into mundane jobs. “The enemy should quiver in fear every time you sign a contract,” was Mattis’s advice to a fellow soldier working in procurement, Treseder said
While Mattis briefly flirted with his own 2016 presidential run, he chose not to leap into politics with the gusto of Flynn or retired Gen. John Allen, both of whom delivered fire-breathing speeches at this year’s major-party conventions. Adm. Mike Mullen, the former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, criticized both Flynn and Allen at a panel discussion last week for injecting politics into the military.
“Too many times when you see retired military individuals … take a very strong political stance, that sends the wrong message to America,” Mullen said. “It sends the wrong message back inside our military. Because it teaches our young ones that it’s okay. And it’s not okay; … it’s a fundamental principal of the United States of America that the military has got to stay apolitical.”
Keeping the military out of politics and under civilian control is one reason that the 1947 National Security Act requires that officers be out of military service for ten years before assuming the mantle of secretary of defense. In 2008, Congress lowered the waiting period to seven years. Congress granted a waiver to Gen. George Marshall, President Truman’s third secretary of defense, in 1950. Mattis would need his own congressional waiver to serve under Trump.
If Mattis and Trump still have disagreements to smooth over, the treatment of Gold Star families, whose children have died fighting for the U.S., would likely be one of them. During the campaign, Trump suffered a blistering attack from the family of Army Capt. Khizr Khan. He chose to push back, suggesting that Khan’s mother was not allowed to speak at the Democratic National Convention. He also appeared to draw an equivalence between his own struggles in business and the sacrifice made by the Khan family.
“I’ve made a lot of sacrifices,” Trump said in an interview with ABC News. “I work very, very hard.”
Trump’s words may have served to aggravate a trend that Mattis pointed out in an anthology he recently co-edited about the military-civilian relationship in the U.S., which describes the “atrophying” of empathy for Gold Star families. “What had been a more common experience of loss in previous wars now tends to be an isolating experience for families,” Mattis wrote, with his co-editor.
Should Mattis join the cabinet of such an unusual commander-in-chief, one of his challenges will be to balance the roles of servant and tutor.
Finally, here are 16 quotes (via FreeBeacon) to get a better feel for “mad-dog”…
AP
Flickr
(Mattis’ Letter To 1st Marine Division)
Gen. Mattis in 2006 / Flickr
Gen. Mattis and Gen. Dempsey / Flickr
(CNN)
(Mattis’ Letter To 1st Marine Division)
Erdogan has admitted that he is invading Syria to depose Assad’s government. We reported back on August 25th, 2016 that this was the most likely outcome of his invasion on August 24th. Indeed, August has been the time for starting war. Joe Biden went to Ankara last week on a mission to repair U.S.-Turkey relations, but actually endorsed Turkey’s “Operation Euphrates Shield.” He also claimed that the U.S. provided air power. Obama may lack the support to invade Syria, but he has not given up his quest to create a Middle East War before he leaves office. If he can create a war now, Trump will be saddled with the crisis when he has said no to nation-building ventures like this one.
Given the fact Putin began bombing in support of Syria precisely to the day of the ECM, this highlighted that Syria will be a key focal point for this ECM wave and the War Cycle. So pay attention.
At the start of 2016, many financial pundits mocked Kyle Bass and a handful of other China skeptics for predicting that China’s economic difficulties, and accelerating capital outflows, would translate into a continued devaluation for the Yuan. Less than a year later, with the Yuan plunging to all time lows, just shy of USDCNH 7.00, they were right.
And, as Horseman Capital’s Russell Clark writes in his latest Market Views note, in which he asks if “China is running out of money”, adding that “if Chinese foreign reserves continue to fall and the PBOC wants to maintain control of the exchange rate, they will need to face some difficult choices,” the one most difficult choice facing Beijing may be the one which assures far more weakness for the Yuan in the near future: a devaluation.
Here are Clarke’s thoughts.
IS CHINA RUNNING OUT OF MONEY?
Since the global financial crisis, China has had a very strong currency, even with the recent devaluation of the Chinese Yuan.
China has a managed exchange rate. The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) has had to step in to the exchange market to buy any USD coming into China. To buy the USD coming into China, the PBOC has had to create CNY for this purpose. Typically, to soak up these new CNY, the PBOC has issued CNY bonds, as well as having very high reserve requirements on the banks to control the supply of CNY.
The PBOC is like any other bank, and it needs to match assets with liabilities. On the asset side, by far its biggest assets are foreign reserves. On the liability side are domestic deposits. For many years, foreign reserves were much larger than deposits, but now the gap is shrinking rapidly as foreign currency assets fall.
If Chinese foreign reserves continue to fall and the PBOC wants to maintain control of the exchange rate, they will need to face some difficult choices. First of all, it could raise interest rates to try and make the Yuan more attractive and reduce outflows. This however would be negative for growth, a priority of the Chinese Communist Party. The other option is to reduce the holdings of deposits at the PBOC. The large holdings of deposits at PBOC is driven by the very high reserve requirements of the Chinese banking system, and previous cuts in the reserve requirements have reduced deposits at least temporarily.
This leaves the PBOC with a dilemma. Raising rates will restrict growth but defend the currency, while cutting rates or reserve rates for banks will encourage more currency weakness. One way to think about how high interest rates need to rise to stop a currency from falling is to look at how weak a currency has been over the last twelve months. You then compare this to the difference in 10 year bond rates, and the movement in the exchange rate over the last 12 months to get an idea of the interest rates increase needed to attract US dollars. The idea is that if a currency has been weak, but interest rates are relatively high, then you are being adequately compensated. Conversely, if the currency has been weak, and the interest rates are relatively low, then rates will need to rise. Currently, it suggests Chinese 10 year rates need to be 6.5% higher, to halt currency weakness.
Given the large increase in rates needed to slow Chinese Yuan devaluation, devaluation must start to look like the more likely move. South Korea faced a very similar situation in 1997. In the mid-90s, Korean foreign reserves began to fall, like they are in China today. We have added Japanese foreign reserves to show that the fall in reserves was a Korean specific issue.
Like the Chinese Yuan, the Korean Won was a managed exchange rate that began to depreciate slowly then quickly.
Below we produce the same graphs, but replace Korea with China.
Given the huge increase in debt in China in recent years, such a rate increase seems very unlikely to me. Investors should be prepared for bigger falls in the Chinese Yuan.
The truth is always the first casualty in any conflict!
Trump is already the defacto President so people are falling in line to the new order!
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