The Ugly Truth

Lest We Forget-- 'Israel planning ethnic bomb targeting only Arabs'

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 14 Mar 2020 13:49:00 +0000

by Uzi Mahnaimi and Marie Colvin for The Sunday Times

ISRAEL is working on a biological weapon that would harm Arabs but not Jews, according to Israeli military and western intelligence sources. The weapon, targeting victims by ethnic origin, is seen as Israel's response to Iraq's threat of chemical and biological attacks.

Yesterday Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi leader, backed away from the brink of war and agreed to resume co-operation with the inspection teams seeking his suspected chemical and biological weapons plants.

Kofi Annan, the United Nation secretary-general, said he believed Iraq had met UN requirements. As Britain and America stood by to bomb Saddam, however, Tony Blair's office said compliance must be unconditional.

The White House, which is threatening Iraq with the biggest onslaught since the Gulf war, said President Bill Clinton's advisers were assessing whether Iraq's offer was adequate. The Pentagon is ready to bomb within days.

Last week Downing Street warned Labour MPs that Saddam could be only weeks away from completing the construction of offensive biological weapons mounted on Scud missiles. Israel was hit by Scuds during the Gulf war and fears it would be the prime target.

In developing their "ethno-bomb", Israeli scientists are trying to exploit medical advances by identifying distinctive genes carried by some Arabs, then create a genetically modified bacterium or virus.

The intention is to use the ability of viruses and certain bacteria to alter the DNA inside their host's living cells. The scientists are trying to engineer deadly micro-organisms that attack only those bearing the distinctive genes.

The programme is based at the biological institute in Nes Tziyona, the main research facility for Israel's clandestine arsenal of chemical and biological weapons.

A scientist there said the task was hugely complicated because both Arabs and Jews are of semitic origin. But he added: "They have, however, succeeded in pinpointing a particular characteristic in the genetic profile of certain Arab communities, particularly the Iraqi people." The disease could be spread by spraying the organisms into the air or putting them in water supplies.

The research mirrors biological studies conducted by South African scientists during the apartheid era and revealed in testimony before the truth and reconciliation commission.

The idea of a Jewish state conducting such research has already provoked outrage in some quarters because of parallels with the genetic experiments of Dr Josef Mengele, the Nazi scientist at Auschwitz.

Dedi Zucker, a member of knesset, the Israeli parliament, denounced the research yesterday. "Morally, based on our history, and our tradition and our experience, such a weapon is monstrous and should be denied," he said.

Some experts said that although the concept of an ethnically targeted weapon was feasible, the practical aspects of creating one were enormous.

Dr Daan Goosen, head of a South African chemical and biological warfare plant, said his team was ordered in the 1980s to develop a "pigmentation weapon" to target only black people. He said the team discussed spreading a disease in beer, maize or even vaccinations but never managed to develop one.

However, a confidential Pentagon report warned last year that biological agents could be genetically engineered to produce new lethal weapons. William Cohen, the American defence secretary, revealed that he had received reports of countries working to create "certain types of pathogens that would be ethnic-specific". A senior western intelligence source confirmed last week that Israel was one of the countries Cohen had in mind.

The "ethno-bomb" claims have been given further credence in Foreign Report, a Jane's publication that closely monitors security and defence matters. It reports unnamed South African sources as saying Israeli scientists have used some of the South African research in trying to develop an "ethnic bullet" against Arabs.

It also says Israelis discovered aspects of the Arab genetic make-up by researching on "Jews of Arab origin, especially Iraqis".

The British Medical Association has become so concerned about the lethal potential of genetically based biological weapons that it has opened an investigation, which is due to report in January.

Dr Vivienne Nathanson, who organised the research, said: "With an ethnically targeted weapon, you could even hit groups within a population. The history of warfare, in which many conflicts have an ethnic factor, shows us how dangerous this could be."

Porton Down, Britain's biological defence establishment, said last week that such weapons were theoretically possible. "We have reached a point now where there is an obvious need for an international convention to control biological weapons," said a spokesman.

Lest We Forget-- 'An Eye for an Eye': The Jews Who Sought to Poison and Murder Six Million Germans to Avenge the Holocaust

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 14 Mar 2020 13:41:00 +0000

Historian Dina Porat explores the story of 'The Avengers,' some 50 young men and women who planned to poison bread loaves and water supplies distributed to German prisoners after WWII

Haaretz

When historian Dina Porat began to research their story, 11 of them were still alive. They opened their diaries and their hearts, and showed her notes, letters, and yellowing papers in Polish, Lithuanian, German, Russian, Yiddish and Hebrew, some of which they had never shown to anyone. Later they told her everything they could, knowing this was the last opportunity to do so. Today only four are still alive; the youngest is 95 years old.

“They don’t regret the terrible thing they planned to do. They explain that only someone who was in their place could understand them, and they want to receive recognition and appreciation for the attempt, which fortunately was unsuccessful,” says Porat.

In recent years Porat has crisscrossed the country on a mission: to document – for the first time in a complete and comprehensive manner – the activity of Abba Kovner’s group Nakam, “The Avengers,” some 50 young men and women, who planned to murder six million Germans after World War II in revenge for the Holocaust.

As far as they were concerned, there was no need for warnings, arrests or trials. They wanted to take revenge – “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” – as is written in the Bible.

“They felt that the world was morally bankrupt, and only this punishment could settle the account and put it in order,” says Porat. “They believed that the laws practiced at the time did not provide a suitable response to the terrible crimes that were committed,” she says.

Calls for revenge against the Germans were already heard during the Holocaust. Starting in late 1942, when the dimensions of the Holocaust started to become clear, the Hebrew newspapers in Palestine were full of letters and articles demanding “revenge against the war criminals.” The headlines were unambiguous: “The Yishuv [pre-state Jewish community] should not remain silent,” “Every hand in Israel should take revenge,” “We will turn our mourning into the fury of revenge,” “Revenge will surely come,” and more. Yitzhak Zuckerman, one of the leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, said later: “I didn’t know a Jew who wasn’t obsessed with revenge.”

Against this backdrop, Kovner’s group began to organize. Its members, who were in their early twenties, emerged from the ghettoes and the forests, the camps and hiding places, each with his own story of tribulations, each with her own family loss. They began to organize in Lublin, the first large Polish city to be liberated at the end of the war. Kovner, the poet and partisan, who was also a gifted speaker, inspired them with his words.

‘They deserved it’

“When I heard about the revenge I was in seventh heaven, because they deserved it,” said Mira (Mirka) Verbin-Shabetzky, in her testimony to Porat, before her death in 2016 at the age of 96. Another member of her group, Tzila (Tesya) Rosenberg, said that Kovner’s words “shouted inside me in an insane tailspin.”

One after the other they told Porat about Kovner’s “hypnotic” ability to express himself and about the fact that he clothed their emotions in words. They added that they were consumed with hatred of the Germans, to the point where there was no need to convince them to sign up for the mission, because they “knew” it was their duty.

Various details about the activity of Kovner’s avengers have been published over the years, but Porat is the first senior historian to research all the written sources in depth, some of which she was the first to see, and meet the last surviving avengers face to face.

They set out in the summer of 1945. The members of the group were equipped with a false identity and forged papers, and were sent to mingle with the Germans. They planned to poison the city water supplies, according to one plan, or to poison loaves of bread that were distributed to German prisoners in POW camps, according to another. Two cities were chosen as targets for revenge: Nuremberg and Munich.

Joseph Harmat (Yulek) was chosen to be in charge of the activity in Nuremberg, one of the symbols of the Nazi regime. “I was grateful to be chosen for this job,” he said before his death in 2017. Working under him was Wilek Shinar, who was hired to work in Nuremberg’s center for distilling drinking water. Porat discovered that he was able to obtain the plans of the water system and in the end even gained control of the main valve.

While the group members were preparing to carry out the mission, Kovner was supposed to provide them with the poison, but he lingered too long during his visit to Palestine. Only in December 1945 did he return to Europe, disguised as a soldier returning from leave. According to his testimony, before boarding the ship friends in the Hagana (the pre-state military force) provided him with poison packaged in tubes of toothpaste and shaving cream. However, on his way back he was detained by the British on the deck, after his forged papers aroused suspicion. The poison, which he was holding, was tossed into the sea.

Plan B: poisoning the bread

After his detention, the aspiring avengers waiting in Europe were determined to act, and switched to Plan B – poisoning the bread of German prisoners of war. The plot was supposed to be carried out simultaneously in the Nuremberg and Dachau detention camps in mid-April 1946.

In advance Leibke Distel, one of the avengers, managed to be hired to work in the Nuremberg bakery that supplied the bread to the captives in the nearby camp. “He first thought to inject poison into the bags of flour in the warehouse, later into the dough mixers, and finally he reached the conclusion, after consulting with the group members, that the poison should be spread on the bottom of the loaves,” writes Porat.

Distel gradually rose through the ranks until he was placed in the bread warehouse and learned how to arrange the loaves for delivery. There he discovered that the black bread was for the German captives, while the American staff received the better, more expensive white bread.

The poison was smuggled to them from a different source. “When the poison arrived we raised a toast,” said Verbin-Shabetzky in her testimony. Distel smuggled the poison to the bakery in bottles stashed under a raincoat. In the bakery he hid them under the wooden floor. At night, after the other workers had left the bakery, the bottles were removed from beneath the floor boards. At the same time other members of the group emerged from the large bread baskets, where they had been hiding and started spreading poison on the loaves with brushes. In the midst of the work, when they had poisoned 3,000 loaves, they paused to kiss each other in joy.

The AP New Agency reported a few days later that 2,000 people had suffered from stomach poisoning, with some in serious condition. However, to the regret of the avengers, none of them died. In 2016, on the 70th anniversary of the affair, the documents of an American investigation committee that was appointed at the time were opened to the public. Porat found that the U.S. authorities had failed to discover who the perpetrators were, but the report said the poison was of high quality and could have killed tens of thousands of people. So what happened along the way? Porat relies on the testimony of the avengers, who found “a failure in the chemical compound.”

Meanwhile, other activists, headed by Simcha Rotem (Kazhik), one of the heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, planned to poison the loaves of bread in the Dachau concentration camp, where Germans were also detained after the war. After months of preparation, they managed to become friendly with Poles who were in charge of the local bakery. Kazik even managed to get the bakery manager drunk, steal the keys from him, duplicate them and return them while he was still drunk. But while they were waiting for the poison in order to spread it on the loaves of bread, the activists were suddenly informed by a messenger that the activity had been called off.

Could the failure and cancellation have been deliberate, after senior officials – perhaps even Kovner himself – realized that they had gone too far? The sources provide no answer. However, it’s not certain that the answer is important.

Porat welcomes the failure of the plan, because of the tremendous damage it could have caused the Jewish people. As a historian, it was difficult for her to reconcile the disparity between the personalities of the avengers – members of the youth movements who had received a Jewish and Zionist education – and the horrifying act they planned to execute.

She asked one of the avengers who had poisoned the loaves, “How can a nice person like you think about such an act, in which innocent women and children would also have certainly been killed.” She says that he replied: “If you had been there with me, at the end of the war, you wouldn’t talk that way.” Another, Yehuda (Poldak) Meimon, said “it’s what they deserved.”

A nationalist response

After the meetings with the avengers she understood, she says, that the revenge they planned was supposed to be, as they saw it, “an overt and nationalist response by a nation that was murdered against a nation that murdered, a revenge that would be publicized all over the world, which would harm millions.” Revenge that would constitute a general warning to all the other nations of the world that “Jewish blood will not be forsaken again.”

“To our regret, the group did not succeed in completing the mission it took upon itself,” wrote several members of the avengers. “But even its establishment and its desire to take revenge against the Germans and to harm them – is an act of great importance.”

In addition to Kovner’s 50 people, whose activity is documented in the new study, several dozen other Jews were involved in acts of revenge against the Germans. While Kovner’s avengers “wanted to act openly and on a huge scale,” others acted clandestinely, choosing individual targets, she says.

Some of the avengers eventually became senior officials in the Israeli defense establishment, such as Chaim Laskov, Meir Zorea, Shimon Avidan and Yisrael Carmi. After the founding of the state, acts of revenge were carried out against former Nazis by members of the Mossad as well. It’s difficult to impossible to determine how many Germans and collaborators were murdered in these acts of revenge.

"We can assume, based on the existing documentation and the overall context of that post-war period, that there were 1,000 to 1,500 at most,” says Porat, who works both at Tel Aviv University and as the chief historian of the Yad Vashem Holocaust History Museum. “There were from 200 to 250 Jews responsible for those deaths, people who “refused to accept the possibility that the idea of revenge would exist only as an emotion and an aspiration,” says Porat.

Her study about Kovner’s avengers was recently published in Hebrew in the book “Li Nakam Veshilem” (“Vengeance and retribution are mine”); the name is taken from the Book of Psalms. Porat says that “the purpose of the title is to say that revenge doesn’t come through the hands of human beings, but through the hands of God.”

Although the study and the book recount the Jews’ aspiration to take revenge against the Germans, Porat notes that “most Jews chose the positive path – rather than the path of revenge. By building the country, starting communities and families.” She views this as a credit to the Jewish people. “Despite everything that was done to them, the vast majority chose life.”

How Their Brains function-- 'Corona virus is G-d's punishment for Trump's peace deal'

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 14 Mar 2020 13:33:00 +0000

ed note--not necessarily wanting to say 'we told ya so', but, yeah we told ya so, going all the way back to 2016.

The Jews don't want any 'peace deal' that hems them in and prevents them from stealing every last centimeter of 'Eretz' Y'Israel' as they believe was 'promised' to them by the violent, racist, vindictive 'god', yahweh. Every American president beginning with JFK who dared wade into the dangerous waters of caging the feral dog Israel with a 'peace deal' met with the same fate, either by being literally assassinated as JFK was or being politically assassinated as were Nixon, Ford, Carter, Clinton, and George H.W. Bush.

And now it is Trump's turn.

How They Do It-- 'The Trump Presidency Is Over'

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 14 Mar 2020 13:21:00 +0000

It has taken a good deal longer than it should have, but Americans have now seen the conman behind the curtain.

The Atlantic

When, in January 2016, I wrote that despite being a lifelong Republican who worked in the previous three GOP administrations, I would never vote for Donald Trump, even though his administration would align much more with my policy views than a Hillary Clinton presidency would, a lot of my Republican friends were befuddled. How could I not vote for a person who checked far more of my policy boxes than his opponent?

What I explained then, and what I have said many times since, is that Trump is fundamentally unfit—intellectually, morally, temperamentally, and psychologically—for office. For me, that is the paramount consideration in electing a president, in part because at some point it’s reasonable to expect that a president will face an unexpected crisis—and at that point, the president’s judgment and discernment, his character and leadership ability, will really matter.

“Mr. Trump has no desire to acquaint himself with most issues, let alone master them” is how I put it four years ago. “No major presidential candidate has ever been quite as disdainful of knowledge, as indifferent to facts, as untroubled by his benightedness.” I added this:

Mr. Trump’s virulent combination of ignorance, emotional instability, demagogy, solipsism and vindictiveness would do more than result in a failed presidency; it could very well lead to national catastrophe. The prospect of Donald Trump as commander in chief should send a chill down the spine of every American.

It took until the second half of Trump’s first term, but the crisis has arrived in the form of the coronavirus pandemic, and it’s hard to name a president who has been as overwhelmed by a crisis as the coronavirus has overwhelmed Donald Trump.

To be sure, the president isn’t responsible for either the coronavirus or the disease it causes, COVID-19, and he couldn’t have stopped it from hitting our shores even if he had done everything right. Nor is it the case that the president hasn’t done anything right; in fact, his decision to implement a travel ban on China was prudent. And any narrative that attempts to pin all of the blame on Trump for the coronavirus is simply unfair. The temptation among the president’s critics to use the pandemic to get back at Trump for every bad thing he’s done should be resisted, and schadenfreude is never a good look.

That said, the president and his administration are responsible for grave, costly errors, most especially the epic manufacturing failures in diagnostic testing, the decision to test too few people, the delay in expanding testing to labs outside the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and problems in the supply chain. These mistakes have left us blind and badly behind the curve, and, for a few crucial weeks, they created a false sense of security. What we now know is that the coronavirus silently spread for several weeks, without us being aware of it and while we were doing nothing to stop it. Containment and mitigation efforts could have significantly slowed its spread at an early, critical point, but we frittered away that opportunity.

“They’ve simply lost time they can’t make up. You can’t get back six weeks of blindness,” Jeremy Konyndyk, who helped oversee the international response to Ebola during the Obama administration and is a senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development, told The Washington Post. “To the extent that there’s someone to blame here, the blame is on poor, chaotic management from the White House and failure to acknowledge the big picture.”

Earlier this week, Anthony Fauci, the widely respected director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases whose reputation for honesty and integrity have been only enhanced during this crisis, admitted in congressional testimony that the United States is still not providing adequate testing for the coronavirus. “It is failing. Let’s admit it.” He added, “The idea of anybody getting [testing] easily, the way people in other countries are doing it, we’re not set up for that. I think it should be, but we’re not."

We also know the World Health Organization had working tests that the United States refused, and researchers at a project in Seattle tried to conduct early tests for the coronavirus but were prevented from doing so by federal officials. (Doctors at the research project eventually decided to perform coronavirus tests without federal approval.)

But that’s not all. The president reportedly ignored early warnings of the severity of the virus and grew angry at a CDC official who in February warned that an outbreak was inevitable. The Trump administration dismantled the National Security Council’s global-health office, whose purpose was to address global pandemics; we’re now paying the price for that. “We worked very well with that office,” Fauci told Congress. “It would be nice if the office was still there.” We may face a shortage of ventilators and medical supplies, and hospitals may soon be overwhelmed, certainly if the number of coronavirus cases increases at a rate anything like that in countries such as Italy. (This would cause not only needless coronavirus-related deaths, but deaths from those suffering from other ailments who won’t have ready access to hospital care.)

Some of these mistakes are less serious and more understandable than others. One has to take into account that in government, when people are forced to make important decisions based on incomplete information in a compressed period of time, things go wrong.

Yet in some respects, the avalanche of false information from the president has been most alarming of all. It’s been one rock slide after another, the likes of which we have never seen. Day after day after day he brazenly denied reality, in an effort to blunt the economic and political harm he faced. But Trump is in the process of discovering that he can’t spin or tweet his way out of a pandemic. There is no one who can do to the coronavirus what Attorney General William Barr did to the Mueller report: lie about it and get away with it.

The president’s misinformation and mendacity about the coronavirus are head-snapping. He claimed that it was contained in America when it was actually spreading. He claimed that we had “shut it down” when we had not. He claimed that testing was available when it wasn’t. He claimed that the coronavirus will one day disappear “like a miracle”; it won’t. He claimed that a vaccine would be available in months; Fauci says it will not be available for a year or more.

Trump falsely blamed the Obama administration for impeding coronavirus testing. He stated that the coronavirus first hit the United States later than it actually did. (He said that it was three weeks prior to the point at which he spoke; the actual figure was twice that.) The president claimed that the number of cases in Italy was getting “much better” when it was getting much worse. And in one of the more stunning statements an American president has ever made, Trump admitted that his preference was to keep a cruise ship off the California coast rather than allowing it to dock, because he wanted to keep the number of reported cases of the coronavirus artificially low.

“I like the numbers,” Trump said. “I would rather have the numbers stay where they are. But if they want to take them off, they’ll take them off. But if that happens, all of a sudden your 240 [cases] is obviously going to be a much higher number, and probably the 11 [deaths] will be a higher number too.” (Cooler heads prevailed, and over the president’s objections, the Grand Princess was allowed to dock at the Port of Oakland.)

On and on it goes.

To make matters worse, the president delivered an Oval Office address that was meant to reassure the nation and the markets but instead shook both. The president’s delivery was awkward and stilted; worse, at several points, the president, who decided to ad-lib the teleprompter speech, misstated his administration’s own policies, which the administration had to correct. Stock futures plunged even as the president was still delivering his speech. In his address, the president called for Americans to “unify together as one nation and one family,” despite having referred to Washington Governor Jay Inslee as a “snake” days before the speech and attacking Democrats the morning after it. As The Washington Post’s Dan Balz put it, “Almost everything that could have gone wrong with the speech did go wrong.”

Taken together, this is a massive failure in leadership that stems from a massive defect in character. Trump is such a habitual liar that he is incapable of being honest, even when being honest would serve his interests. He is so impulsive, shortsighted, and undisciplined that he is unable to plan or even think beyond the moment. He is such a divisive and polarizing figure that he long ago lost the ability to unite the nation under any circumstances and for any cause. And he is so narcissistic and unreflective that he is completely incapable of learning from his mistakes. The president’s disordered personality makes him as ill-equipped to deal with a crisis as any president has ever been. With few exceptions, what Trump has said is not just useless; it is downright injurious.

The nation is recognizing this, treating him as a bystander “as school superintendents, sports commissioners, college presidents, governors and business owners across the country take it upon themselves to shut down much of American life without clear guidance from the president,” in the words of Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman of The New York Times.

Donald Trump is shrinking before our eyes.

The coronavirus is quite likely to be the Trump presidency’s inflection point, when everything changed, when the bluster and ignorance and shallowness of America’s 45th president became undeniable, an empirical reality, as indisputable as the laws of science or a mathematical equation.

It has taken a good deal longer than it should have, but Americans have now seen the con man behind the curtain. The president, enraged for having been unmasked, will become more desperate, more embittered, more unhinged. He knows nothing will be the same. His administration may stagger on, but it will be only a hollow shell. The Trump presidency is over.

How They Do It-- 'If somebody other than Donald Trump were in the White House, the coronavirus crisis would not be unfolding this way.'

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 14 Mar 2020 13:09:00 +0000

ed note--and, here we go again, ladies and Gentile-men...

The author of this piece, former speechwriter for George W. Bush, David Frum--

Is an avowed, card-carrying, Israel-only, zionist gangster of the NeoCon variety. He--along with fellow gang members Bill Kristol, Jennifer Rubin, Max Boot, Eliot Cohen, the portly Kagan brothers, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and many others, played not only a singular role in helping pull off/cover-up the Israeli-engineered terrorist attacks against America on 9/11, but as well, played THE singular role in selling the 'clash of civilizations'--otherwise known as the 'war on terror', as manifested in perpetual war between the Christian and Islamic worlds--for Israel's benefit.

They have also been unanimous in their opposition to Donald Trump as President.

They opposed and used their considerable influence in trying to prevent his nomination and election as President, and then, having failed thus, have not allowed a second to go by on any given day where that same considerable influence was not used in attempting Trump's removal via impeachment or the 25th Amendment.

And now it is time for 'plan b', a repeat/do-over of the economic meltdown which these same elements brought about in mid-September of 2008 in the interests of getting a war started between the US and Iran so that during an election year, Trump will be knee-capped by a collapsed economy resulting from a medi-induced panic over what was/is more than likely a virus engineered in an Israeli bio-weapons laboratory.

We are forced to point out what are for all intents and purposes 'no-brainers' such as this due to the distressingly high percentage of 'experts' out there who--while claiming to know a thing or 2 about the maneuvers and machinations of the criminal conspiracy otherwise known as Judea Inc, nevertheless, who--for reasons which we won't go into here--refuse to see the obvious for what it is and who have since the earliest days of Trump's presidency inaccurately billed him as the 'favored and chosen' son of Judea who was put into office in order the bring about WW3.

David Frum

At every turn, President Trump’s policy regarding coronavirus has unfolded as if guided by one rule: How can I make this crisis worse?

Presidents are not all-powerful, especially not in the case of pandemic disease. There are limits to what they can do, for good or ill. But within those limits, at every juncture, Trump’s actions have ensured the worst possible outcomes. The worst outcome for public health. The worst outcome for the American economy. The worst outcome for American global leadership.

Trump’s Oval Office speech of March 11 was the worst action yet in a string of bad actions.

Here are the things the president did not do in that speech.

He offered no guidance or policy on how to prevent the spread of the disease inside the United States. Should your town cancel its St. Patrick’s Day parade? What about theatrical productions and sporting events? Classes at schools and colleges? Nothing.

He offered no explanation of what went wrong with the U.S. testing system, nor any assurance of when testing would become more widely available. His own previous promises of testing for anyone who needs it have been exploded as false. So what is true? Nothing.

Layoffs are coming, probably on a very large scale, as travel collapses and people hunker down at home. Any word for those about to lose their jobs? Only the vaguest indication that something might be announced sometime soon.

It’s good to hear that there will be no co-pays on the tests nobody seems able to get. What about other health-care coverage? Any word on that? Nothing.

The financial markets have plunged into a 2008-style crash, auguring a recession, perhaps a severe one. The Trump administration has had almost two months to think about this crisis. It has trial-ballooned some ideas. But, of course, fiscal policy would require assent from the House of Representatives. Trump is still pouting at Speaker Nancy Pelosi. So—aside from some preposterously unconvincing happy talk about the economy—again: nothing.

There was one something in the speech: a ban on travel from Europe, but not the United Kingdom. It’s a classic Trump formulation. It seeks to protect America by erecting a wall against the world, without thinking very hard how or whether the wall can work. The disease is already here. The numbers only look low because of our prior failure to provide adequate testing. They will not look low even four days from now. And those infected with the virus can travel from other countries and on other routes. Trump himself has already met some.

The travel ban is an act of panic. Financial futures began crashing even as Trump was talking, perhaps shocked by his lack of an economic plan, perhaps aghast at his latest attack on world trade. (The speech seemed to suggest an embargo on European-sourced cargo as well, but that looks more like a mental lapse of Trump’s than a real policy announcement. The ban on cargo was retracted by a post-speech tweet, although the ban remains in the posted transcript of the speech.) Among other things, the ban represents one more refutation by Trump of any idea of collective security against collective threats. While China offers medical assistance to Italy, he wants to sever ties to former friends—isolating America and abandoning the world.

This crisis is not of Trump’s making. What he is responsible for is his failure to respond promptly, and then his perverse and counterproductive choice of how to respond when action could be avoided no longer. Trump, in his speech, pleaded for an end to finger-pointing. It’s a strange thing for this president of all presidents to say. No American president, and precious few American politicians, have ever pointed so many fingers or hurled so much abuse as Donald Trump. What he means, of course, is: Don’t hold me to account for the things I did.

But he did do them, and he owns responsibility for those things. He cannot escape it, and he will not escape it.

More people will get sick because of his presidency than if somebody else were in charge. More people will suffer the financial hardship of sickness because of his presidency than if somebody else were in charge. The medical crisis will arrive faster and last longer than if somebody else were in charge. So, too, the economic crisis. More people will lose their jobs than if somebody else were in charge. More businesses will be pushed into bankruptcy than if somebody else were in charge. More savers will lose more savings than if somebody else were in charge. The damage to America’s global leadership will be greater than if somebody else were in charge.

There is always something malign in Trump’s incompetence. He has no care or concern for others; he cannot absorb the trouble and suffering of others as real. He monotones his way through words of love and compassion, but those words plainly have no content or meaning for him. The only thing that is real is his squalid vanity. This virus threatens to pierce that vanity, so he denied it as long as he could. What he refuses to acknowledge cannot be real, can it?

And even now that he has acknowledged the crisis, he still cannot act, because he does not know what to do. His only goal now is to shove blame onto others. Americans have to face the fact that in the grip of this pandemic, the Oval Office is for all practical purposes as empty as the glazed eyes of the man who spoke from that office tonight.

How Their Brains Function-- 'Should the Israelites Drive Out the Palestinians From the Promised Land as instructed by the Torah?'

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 08 Mar 2020 16:33:00 +0000

Breaking Israel News

“By little and little I will drive them out from before thee, until thou be increased, and inherit the land.” Exodus 23:30

Why were the Israelites obligated by God to drive them away from the Promised Land and break down their altars, smash the sacred stones and cut out the images of their false gods? Because those people were God-haters, idol-worshippers and evil-doers! They were opposite to everything God loves, therefore “You must destroy all the people the Lord your God hands over to you. Show them no mercy, and do not worship their gods or they will trap you” (Deuteronomy 7:16; 9:5).

There are many people today who suggest the same action in ridding our promised land of Palestinians because they are dangerous and cruel terrorists, constantly spilling innocent blood of civilian Israelis.

In the Holocaust, during WWII, even Nazis of the fascist Germany did not massacre the Jews and other people in the name of God. In contrast, the Islamic fanatical terrorists have killed Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Yazidis, Muslims and others in the name of Allah.

Is that what they call the holy and peaceful religion which justifies murder of innocent people, including children and women?

God said to Israelites: “If you do not drive out inhabitants of the land, those you allow to remain will be like splinters in your eyes and thorns in your sides. They will constantly fight with you over land in which you live” (Numbers 33:55-56). That is exactly what has happened to the Israelites!

Should the Israelites drive out the Palestinians from the Promised Land, as God commanded, and why?

Yes, they should, because those people do not want to live in peace with the Israelis and dedicate their lives to killing Jews and expropriation of their land.

The God of Israel is a very jealous God. He does not want His Holy Land to be polluted with evil idolaters, who worship a god that cannot save and constantly will fight over the land. They are the opposite to everything God loves and are an abomination in His eyes, therefore “On account of the wickedness of these nations the Lord your God will drive them out before you, as He swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” (Deuteronomy 7:16; 9:5).

The Israelites had failed to obey God’s Commandments. God’s warnings had been transgressed in every detail. They conquered the Promised Land, but did not drive the inhabitants of this land out. Instead, they made the Canaanites and other people pay tribute to them. So the Lord burned with anger against Israel and said: “Because this nation has violated My covenant and has not listened to Me, I will no longer drive out the nations that Joshua left when he died. I will use them to test Israel by them, whether they will keep the way of the Lord to walk in it as their fathers did, or not” (Judges 2:20-22).

The Almighty foretold to the Israelites: “If you do not drive out inhabitants of the land, those you allow to remain will be like splinters in your eyes and thorns in your sides. They will constantly fight with you over land in which you live. And as I plan to do to them, so I will do to you” (Numbers 33:55-56).

This time the Israelites will listen to God and will not repeat the mistakes of the past which caused them to be expelled from the land of their fathers. In the time of the Messiah, the Tribes of Israel will have applied ‘the fist’ of God’s judgments against the aggressive surrounding Arab-Muslim nations. They will defeat and expel them out of the Promised Land, so there will not be “irritants in your eyes and thorns in your sides” (Isaiah 11:14).

As Rabbi Tuly Weisz in the Prayer for Peace says, “May Hashem who neither slumbers nor sleeps crush the evil terrorists and drive them out of our beloved Land of Israel. May the God of Israel grant true and eternal peace to the people of Israel”.

This will be done in accordance with the wish of God: “No longer will the people of Israel have malicious neighbors who are painful briers and sharp thorns. And they shall dwell safely in it, and shall build houses, and plant vineyards; yea, they shall dwell with confidence, when I have executed judgments upon all those that despise them round about them; and they shall know that I am the LORD their God” (Ezekiel 28:24-26).

Halleluyah! Finally the people of Israel will be able to live in peace and security they have dreamed of for a long, long time.

How Their Brains Function-- 'The morality of our conquest'

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 08 Mar 2020 16:31:00 +0000

How Their Brains Function--'Eretz Y'Israel, the center of the world'

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 08 Mar 2020 16:28:00 +0000

Just as the environment for a plant must include the proper nutrients and climate, so it is with man’s location on the various continents and in relation to all tangible things. In Eretz Yisrael there is equilibrium on many levels.

Israel National News

The Holy Land is the center of the world, and Jerusalem is at the center of the Holy Land; the center of Jerusalem is the Holy of Holies and all good and sustenance for the entire world descend there from above, and there is no settled place which is not nurtured from there. [Zohar, Terumah 157a]

Is Eretz Yisrael the Exact Center of the World?

In practice, Eretz Yisrael is not the geographic center of the world. Ibn Ezra writes that the Beit Hamikdash (Temple) “is far from the center of the world.”

Since we cannot understand Zohar’s comments literally, there are two alternatives:

1) Zohar presents a parable, that is, there is some abstract aspect in which the Land is considered as being the exact center of the world and this conveys a principle of faith which is to be learned and understood;

2) Zohar describes the spiritual reality – it is the spiritual Land of Israel which is located in the spiritual center of the world. Perhaps only prophets can actually see this spiritual dimension, yet we are influenced in our mundane world by the spiritual reality of the Land. The same is true of Jerusalem and of the Beit Hamikdash.

Alternately, it is possible to observe the geography of planet earth in a way which clarifies that Eretz Yisrael is indeed the center of our world’s reality. One suggestion is that while in our days all the inhabited continents are separated from each other, when they were connected as a single bloc, Eretz Yisrael was in fact the exact center. We still must explain how it is that Jerusalem is the center of the Land. This can be understood by determining the Land’s boundaries in accordance with Zohar’s comments.

In any event, the substantive question is: What is the significance of Eretz Yisrael being the center of the world? What Divine concept is conveyed by this statement?

First Answer – Eretz Yisrael is the Heart of the World

Vitality Comes from Eretz Yisrael

Babies are born into the world, with their souls coming from the spiritual world. Once a person enters this world, God protects him and maintains him throughout every moment of life. The continuity of life flows, as it were, through Eretz Yisrael and whatever bounty reaches the individual comes through the Land. [Rebbi Naḥman of Braslav] It is for this reason that the Land is called "ארץ החיים" (“the Land of the living”) . This principle is expressed explicitly in Midrash Pesikta Zutrati :

“Your navel is like a round basin” – this refers to the Temple, which is the navel of Eretz Yisrael; and why is it compared to a navel? Just as the navel provides vitality for the fetus, so the Temple is the source of vitality for Eretz Yisrael, “to walk before God in the Lands of the living.”

Similarity to the Heart

Eretz Yisrael serves the same function as the heart does in the human body. Rabbeinu Beḥayye (1255-1340), in his work Cad haKemacḥ, writes: “The essential part of everything in the world is its center … for human beings, the heart is the center of the body … and similarly, Eretz Yisrael is the essence of the world and is its center.” The heart receives oxygen from the lungs and streams it into the blood, pumping the life force, the blood throughout the body. This process is repeated countless times every day. For the heart to be able to pump blood throughout the body, it must be healthy, requiring proper nutrition and rest. The heart’s location in the center of the body facilitates its ability to function properly.

Of course, it would not be difficult for God to have vitality and sanctity flow through the world from any point, and the level of difficulty would not be a factor in the location of the Land at the earth’s center; nonetheless, the Land being the center of the world conveys the truth that Eretz Yisrael is the center of life of the world.

The World was Created from Zion

The basic assumption that God created the universe and then chose the central point of the earth is flawed. Chazal (Our Sages) [Gemara Yoma 54b] teach that the world was created from Zion, as the verse states: “From Zion, the perfection of beauty, God appeared.” The “Foundation Stone,” which is at the center of the Holy of Holies is the place from which God began the creation of the world. Thus, Chazal teach that life came to the world through Eretz Yisrael, the center of the world.

Second Answer – the Equilibrium Which Exists in Eretz Yisrael

We can explain the centrality of Eretz Yisrael in another way: everything in the world has its own characteristics and nature. Everything has its advantages and disadvantages, which result from its qualities and its inclination to different aspects of life. The way of the world is that an object’s physical setting corresponds to its traits. If this were not the case, that object could not develop in a positive manner. Just as the environment for a plant must include the proper nutrients and climate, so it is with man’s location on the various continents and in relation to all tangible things.

Chazal taught us of the correspondence between man and his environment when they stated that (at least when the Beit Hamikdash stood), וכך אמר ר' יצחק: "הרוצה שיחכים - ידרים, ושיעשיר - יצפין, וסימניך: שלחן בצפון ומנורה בדרום" (“One who wants to be wise should go south; one who wants to be wealthy should go north. The sign for this is that the golden table (of the show bread) stood in the north of the Temple and the menorah in the south”) [Gemara Bava Batra 25b].

Of course, there are additional conditions necessary to realize these qualities. Just as the vine can prosper only when it receives the appropriate treatment, so too these traits can be realized only when a proper balance is achieved, for example between worldly endeavors and study, between generosity and wastefulness, etc.

Extremism and lack of equilibrium hamper the ability of anything to achieve its physical and spiritual perfection. Wherever there is greater equilibrium there is a greater ability for powerful forces and greater sanctity to be realized in the world. Maharal of Prague expands on this concept in numerous places, with the source being the comment of Sefer haYetzira: "שש צלעות לששה צדדים והיכל קדוש מכוון באמצע, ברוך כבוד ה' ממקומו, הוא מקומו של עולם ואין עולמו מקומו (“There are six plains for the six sides, and the holy Temple placed in the middle. Blessed be He from His place; He is the Place of the universe, but the universe is not His place”). Kuzari adds “This is an allusion to the Divine Influence which unites the contrasts.”

Kuzari comments further :

'In the desert He arranged them in the manner of the sphere in four standards, corresponding to the four quarters of the sphere, and in twelve tribes, corresponding to the twelve signs of the zodiac, the camp of the Levites being in the center, just as it is stated in Sefer haYetzira: “The holy Temple is exactly in the center, but God carries them all.”

All this points to love.

The sanctity which is at the center of something supports the entire surroundings, and God’s having brought us to His proximity at the center indicates His love for us.

Synthesis Within Eretz Yisrael

In Eretz Yisrael there is equilibrium on many levels. The climate is neither extremely hot nor extremely cold. The Land is neither completely mountainous nor completely plains. Eretz Yisrael has all aspects of topography, from the Judean Desert to Mount Hermon, the coastal plain to the hills of Jerusalem, etc. The national potential of Am Yisrael (the Nation of Israel), which includes the perfect equilibrium of Torah and mitzvot, can be fully realized only in Eretz Yisrael, the Land which, as the center of the world, has the ideal equilibrium of all life forces.

Summary

We saw two reasons that Eretz Yisrael is considered the center of the world:

1) It is the heart of life – vitality reaches the world specifically through Eretz Yisrael, just as the heart pumps blood to all the body’s organs. The Land’s position at the geographic center of the world reflects this.

2) Complete equilibrium of life forces – the physical Eretz Yisrael has a special equilibrium, which requires that it be at the center of the world.

These points clarify the substantive meaning of the statement that Eretz Yisrael is the center of the world.

Returning Forces to their Perfection

Kuzari comments that in exile, Am Yisrael was comparable to the dry bones referred to in Ezekiel’s vision. [Chapter 37] These bones were completely devoid of vitality, so in exile the nation could merely survive from day to day on a basic physical level. Ezekiel prophesied the resurrection of the dry bones, calling upon them to be covered with sinew and flesh and then to be filled with the spirit of God. Israel’s existence in exile was difficult.

Until about sixty years ago, the physical state of Am Yisrael was difficult to comprehend. Housing, health and work were much more difficult than they are today. Nowadays, we are accustomed to the blessings of abundance in all aspects of our lives. This change took place virtually worldwide when Israel returned to its Land.

Am Yisrael’s return to Eretz Yisrael and to Jerusalem strengthened the heart of the nation, as well as the heart of the world in general. The wonderful process of a small nation which had been persecuted building a strong army and a developed country with a vibrant economy in such a short period is unprecedented in world history. None of this would have been possible if not for the unique equilibrium and synthesis of forces which exists in the Land. Am Yisrael is able to achieve this equilibrium through Torah and its inherent propensity for justice.

May it be His will that our eyes see God’s return to Zion, and may He open our eyes to see the unfolding process of redemption, and may we ascend ever higher within the Land of the living. Amen.

Arch NeoCon Bill Kristol--'2nd Trump Term Would Be Very Dangerous'

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 08 Mar 2020 16:13:00 +0000

WBUR

Neoconservative thinker Bill Kristol has been highly critical of President Trump for years, even while many on the right who were once disapproving came to support the president.

In the waning days of the president's Senate impeachment trial, he tweeted over the weekend his support for Democrats.

Bill Kristol✔@BillKristolNot presumably forever; not perhaps for a day after Nov. 3, 2020; not on every issue or in every way until then. But for the time being one has to say: We are all Democrats now.

He says the tweet was meant to be time-sensitive to 2020 and “somewhat jokey,” but also to serve as a warning to Republicans that it’d be “foolish” not to rethink some conservative orthodoxies.

“I'm very honestly just agnostic about what the future looks like,” he says. “I do think in the short term, I think a second term of Donald Trump is very dangerous.”

Kristol has been an important figure in the Republican Party for decades. He served in the Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations, founded the now-defunct conservative Weekly Standard, was a fierce supporter of the Iraq War, and became an influential opponent of former President Bill Clinton's health care reform.

Now, he’s the editor-at-large of the Bulwark, a conservative news and opinion website.

What about the Republican Party he so fondly engaged with in years past? He says right now, the GOP needs to focus on whether the party can be saved after the Trump administration.

“Trump has to be defeated,” he says. “Even then, I think I'm much more pessimistic than I was a couple of years ago that it would be easy or even possible to get beyond Trump."

On what he meant by his tweet on becoming a Democrat--

“I mean that until November 3rd, 2020, at the presidential level, at least, the attempt which I was involved in to recruit a strong Republican challenger to Donald Trump has failed. So if you want to replace Trump as president, it's going to be by a Democrat.”

On his tipping point

“I think I had a series of sort of mini tipping points which added up to one big one. I mean, Trump turned out to have such a stranglehold on the party. And we saw that in the House on the impeachment vote where again, I thought, ‘OK, they're mostly going to stick with Trump, but 10 or 20 I think would desert as happened with Nixon.' [But that] didn't happen. Then in the Senate, I thought, ‘OK, you know, the people who are retiring, who have pretty distinguished careers, do they want to go down with this ship?’ And the fact that they're all rationalizing now a vote to acquit, pretty hard for me to look anyone in the eye honestly and say, ‘Hey, let's join me in the fight to save the soul of the Republican Party.’

“So the combination of what's happened in the country in terms of there being no credible challenger to Trump and what's happened with the congressional Republicans, especially on impeachment, but not only on impeachment, incidentally, the general justification of Trump and the acceptance of Trumpism is almost as bad as the acceptance of Trump, the kind of degeneration of everyone's rhetoric and to Trump-like rhetoric.”

On criticism that Kristol bears responsibility for Washington partisanship after he wrote influential memos telling Republicans not to work with Democrats on health care during the Clinton administration

"I mean at times I've been tactically, certainly against cooperation and who hasn't been in politics? And maybe in some of those times I was wrong, but I think I have a pretty good record on foreign policy especially, including under President Obama, of trying to find times to support Democratic presidents when they did the right thing. We supported Bill Clinton in Bosnia, we supported the surge in Afghanistan.

"There are times I went further than I should have I now think in retrospect, but I don't think I've ever descended to the level of personal invective that Trump routinely does."

On response to The Intercept article that said Republicans wanted to create a new establishment to prevent another Republican from ever stepping down like Nixon did, and whether the stage was set 30 years ago for Trump’s impeachment trial today

"No, ludicrous, I was 21 years old when Nixon was impeached and I was on the side of impeaching him so I don't know what I had to do with that. But no, the conservative counter establishment was mostly a healthy counter establishment, unless the left's view was that there should be no one on the other side. You want a conservative counter establishment. You don't want a bigoted, xenophobic conservatism. Maybe we haven't done as good a job as we might have in fighting that at every stage. But we certainly try to. You know, I was kicking Pat Buchanan out of the Republican Party. I said I would not support Ron Paul in 2008 or 2012 if he won the Republican nomination.”

On whether the Republican Party can be reconstructed without rethinking some larger infrastructure and media outlets

“I mean, it's a free country. And so I left Fox [News], but I can't shut down Fox. And I don't think we want a country where that would be easy to do. The Weekly Standard, the magazine I edited, basically was closed down by its owners because we were anti-Trump. So I don't think the problem is really the infrastructure at this point. The problem is Trump. The Trump problem is the base which has become infected with the kind of xenophobia, authoritarianism. And I will say this: The degree to which elite conservatives though have accommodated and rationalized Trump is very bad.

“So Fox News, they were not as crazy or as conspiratorial certainly 10 years ago, 15 years ago as they are today. They were just conservative, mostly with a sort of some Bill O'Reilly type populism that was mostly rhetorical and semi harmless, I would say, and certainly didn't have the kind of Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingram edge of real bigotry, I don't think. But The Wall Street Journal editorial page, which is a very respectable page, the degree to which it, for example, has rationalized conspiracy theorizing and Trumpism, that has been a bit of a shock for me. And so I don't disagree with what I think is kind of underlying some of your questions, which is that conservatism as a whole has more rethinking to do than just getting rid of Trump. The conservative elites have turned out to be much more susceptible to the appeal of a winning demagogue, much more driven by just hatred of the left than by affection for certain principles and a certain vision of the country. That has been a little startling to me and a little distressing to me and something we need to confront I think.”

Arch NeoCon Aaron David Miller--'I’m a veteran Middle East peace negotiator and Trump’s plan is the most dangerous I’ve ever seen'

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 08 Mar 2020 16:10:00 +0000

ed note--the only thing 'dangerous' about Trump's peace plan is that--

1. It confines Israel to defined, legal borders, something which contradicts DIRECTLY AND EXPLICITLY the very precepts of the same Torah Judaism which functions as the beating heart of the entire 'Jewish state' experiment,

and--

2. That it removes conflict as the energy by which the Jewish state expands her empire, as well as acts as the glue in holding together an organically dysfunctional and abnormal failed state.

Aaron David Miller

Fifteen years ago, I wrote a piece for The Washington Post titled “Israel’s Lawyer.” The conceit was pretty simple, though in some quarters it was seen as highly provocative: For too long, too many senior U.S. officials working on the Arab-Israeli peace process, including myself, had effectively been serving as attorneys for one side instead of working to achieve a peace agreement that was in the best interests of the United States, Israel and the Palestinians.

A decade and a half later, I have come to realize that I was clueless as to how far an administration might actually go in furthering Israel’s narrative at the expense of Palestinians — and how much they could undermine U.S. interests in the process. While negotiation teams I have served on may have acted as a partial broker, the bias of Trump’s peace team makes our missteps seem trivial in comparison.

“Israel’s lawyer” was a term I found in Henry Kissinger’s memoirs and resurrected for Secretary of State James Baker during the nine months leading up to the Madrid Conference in October 1991. Baker loved the idea because he understood that to reach an agreement, he’d need to balance the requirements of both sides. Yes, the United States has a special relationship with Israel, but if that bond became exclusive, America would lose the credibility, leverage and trust it needed from both sides to raise the odds of reaching an accord.

It’s no coincidence that the U.S. has succeeded in the peace process only three times — Kissinger’s three disengagement agreements with Israel, Syria and Egypt, 1973-75; Jimmy Carter’s Camp David Accords and the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty 1978-79; and Baker’s Madrid Conference. In each case, the U.S. lawyered for both sides.

Watching the past three years of the Trump administration’s handling of the peace process, it has become clear that the team that put the “Deal of the Century” together (many of whom were real lawyers) had an additional client far more important than Israel — Donald Trump.

I have worked on teams for U.S. presidents, too — between 1989 and 2000 for George Bush Sr. and Bill Clinton. But we genuinely believed in working toward an outcome tethered to the U.S. national interests, not merely anchored in the political advantage and personal ego of the occupant of the White House.

During the Clinton administration, we had a policy of clearing drafts and positions with the Israelis, and generally gave Israel a much wider margin to influence key issues in the negotiations — especially when it came to security-related matters — than we ever gave to the Palestinians.

This was no secret. At the Camp David summit in July 2000, I vividly remember PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat asking me on the fourth day of the summit what the holdup was in turning over a draft paper that the United States had prepared for the Palestinians review. Erekat added that I should please tell the Israelis to hurry up and review the document so that we could accommodate their changes and get the document (ostensibly representing the U.S. position) back to the PLO.

But whatever mistakes our team made — our pro-Israel bent certainly among them — we tried to honestly wrestle with the tough issues in a way that would allow both Israel and the Palestinians to engage on them.

The Camp David summit was ill advised and ill conceived, and neither we, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak nor certainly Yasser Arafat were prepared. The negotiating parameters that President Clinton put on the table in December 2000 were offered up too late and in the worst possible circumstances. But the substance of the ideas on territory, Palestinian statehood and Jerusalem were seen as serious and credible.

Not surprisingly Arafat, thinking he’d get a better deal from the incoming Bush administration and riding the tiger of Palestinian violence, all but rejected them. But even had Arafat accepted them, it‘s highly arguable whether he or any Israeli leader would have been able to sell them in the environment of the terror-ridden environment of the second intifada.

Still, I look back now and feel that if we had really been acting as Israel’s lawyers, then we clearly failed. If you really want to see lawyers in action, take a look at the peace plan that the firm of Trump, Jared Kushner, Jason Greenblatt and David Friedman have put on the table. It’s neither a basis for immediate negotiations nor a framework that might serve as a future basis for talks. It is the ultimate product of pro-Israel lawyering at its best – an effort to use words like “state” and “capital in Jerusalem” to mask a unilateral effort to bring America’s conception of the final status of the West Bank in line with that of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israel. It is an effort to fundamentally and unalterably drive the final stake through the heart of a two-state solution.

The irony, of course, is that this really hasn’t done the State of Israel any great favors. It’s one thing to tilt toward Israel in a negotiation. It’s quite another to try to so totally move the goalposts and make any kind of agreement with the Palestinians nearly impossible to achieve.

Trump and his lawyers, by trying to paint the GOP as the go-to party on Israel and attack the Democrats as Satan’s finger on earth, have undermined the one strength essential to maintaining the vitality of the US-Israeli relationship: bipartisanship. Sadly they’ve had more than a little help from progressive Democrats playing into their hands with words that have morphed far beyond legitimate criticism of Israel into age-old anti-Semitic propaganda. Sen. Bernie Sanders, having repeatedly used the word racist to describe the Israeli government and prime minister, will afford the Republicans an easy target and enormous opportunity in this regard if he becomes the Democratic nominee for president.

When he has sought my advice during the past couple of years, I have advised Jared Kushner not to become Israel’s lawyer. The last time I met with Kushner, he asked me what, in my view, would constitute success on his part. I made it clear that there was zero chance of reaching a conflict-ending accord, as neither Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas nor Netanyahu were willing or able to make the decisions required to achieve one.

But I also told him that if he wasn’t careful, he could make the situation a great deal worse. The key was to put something out that was credible and would put America in the position of being seen as a party that could be trusted by all sides to work on the issue in the future. Whatever Israel and the Palestinians need to succeed in making peace, what they don’t need is precisely what the Kushner law firm delivered: a framework that may well have hung a closed-for-the-season sign both on a viable peace process and America’s credibility as a fair and effective broker.

Arch NeoCon and intelligence operative for Israel Bill Kristol-- 'The Answer is Simple, Get Rid of Trump by voting for Biden'

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 08 Mar 2020 16:04:00 +0000

William Kristol

You are a normal American. You don’t like demagogues of the right or the left. You want competent, responsible governance somewhere in the vicinity of the broad center. You cherish American exceptionalism, and you know that means rejecting European-style demagoguery of the right and left that exploits people’s anxieties and seduces them with false promises. You dread a future featuring an authoritarian and illiberal party facing off against a socialist and illiberal party. And so you don’t want to face a choice–you don’t want the country to face a choice– between Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders in November.

What are you to do? Well, if you’re a Democrat and live in one of the 14 states voting Tuesday, you can of course participate in your state’s Democratic primary contest. If you live in Alabama, Arkansas, Minnesota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, or Virginia, you might be surprised to learn the Democratic contest is an open primary, and you can participate no matter your party registration or non-party registration. In some of the other remaining states, you can vote if you’re unaffiliated. So an awful lot of you can vote Tuesday. But for whom?

The American process of presidential selection is complex. The Democratic nominating process is complex. Super Tuesday, with 14 very different states operating under somewhat different rules, is complex. A multi-candidate field with proportional representation, but not exactly proportional representation—because there are thresholds at both the state and CD level—makes everything more complex. And so a voter, trying to cast a meaningful vote that will further an outcome he prefers—sane, moderate governance—can feel perplexed.

But although the situation is complex, the answer actually is simple. Whatever the substantive case for either Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren, and despite the flashes of electoral strength each has shown, neither is going to be the nominee. And despite what once seemed a possible, though unconventional, path to the nomination, it’s not going to be Mike Bloomberg either. So it’s Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden. Which means, if you’re inclined toward American constitutional democracy, the rule of law, and a free economic order–as well as a liberal world order anchored by the United States–it’s Joe Biden.

And if you’re not, then it’s Bernie Sanders.

To be sure, there could be cases where, if you live in a particular congressional district with a particular distribution of the vote, you might—if you had perfect advance knowledge—engage in complex calculations that might make you think a vote for one of the other candidates would have more effect. But your calculations are as likely to be wrong as right. It’s much safer to vote your actual preference between the two candidates who have a realistic shot at the nomination, and who represent wildly different paths for the future: Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden.

And that’s a simple choice.

The Coronavirus Is Coming for Trump’s Presidency

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 08 Mar 2020 16:01:00 +0000

Will a nationalist president be undone by his underreaction to a foreign threat?

ed note--No one should doubt for a moment from whence all of this Coronavirus panic is sourced or--more importantly--WHY it is taking place.

Plan 'A'--Prevent Trump getting the Republican nomination in 2016...

Status--FAIL.

Plan 'B'--Prevent Trump winning the Presidency in favor of Hillary Rodham Clinton...

Status--FAIL.

Plan 'C'--Attempt to wear Trump down through a concerted, ceaseless campaign of daily screeching, hollering, heckling, investigations, etc--

Status--FAIL.

Plan 'D'--Recapture the House of Reps in the 2018 elections, move operatives for Judea, Inc into the key Chairmanships of the various Committees such as Judiciary, Intelligence, Foreign Relations, etc, use this as the platform for Impeaching, convicting and removing Trump--

Status--FAIL.

Plan 'E'--Hype a virus less deadly than the normal, yearly flu through uncontested control of the mainstream media, rig the stockmarket to drop perilously as the 'opening act' of a repeat/re-do of the 'run on the banks' that took place in mid-September 2008 in collapsing the economy, blaming it on Trump in an election year and thus affecting a repeat/re-do of what took place in 1992 in bringing Bill Clinton to the White House--

Status--IN PROGRESS

NY Times

On Jan. 31, over a month ago, the Trump administration made an excellent decision: In an effort to limit the spread of the coronavirus, it forbade most foreign nationals from entering the United States if they had recently traveled to China.

This move was immediately attacked in the language of cosmopolitan sophistication, which assumes that because travel bans and quarantines are associated with things liberals consider bad — nationalism, hardened borders, migration restrictions — they necessarily must not work as well.

But this supposed sophistication is really just a superstition. It’s certainly true that the travel ban could not, and did not, prevent the coronavirus from reaching the United States. But as with local quarantines and closings — all of which emphatically do work, whether you’re looking at the history of the Spanish flu or Hong Kong’s success combating the coronavirus today — you don’t need 100 percent effectiveness for travel restrictions to be wise and helpful. What they buy you, above all, is a slower rate of spread, and with it precious time for preparation.

So Trump made the right call, and in so doing he briefly vindicated a case that his supporters have always made for him: He acted like the guy who would make common-sensical choices in the national interest, even when they went against the nostrums of globalization and the supposed wisdom of the do-gooders.

And then his administration took the month that his decision bought the country and completely wasted it.

Obviously the White House isn’t to blame for everything that’s gone wrong with the coronavirus response. Our inability to roll out testing rapidly, even when thousands of cases are probably in circulation, owes a lot to the inherent problems of medical bureaucracy and the regulatory state, and to the decadence that afflicts American institutions at almost every level.

But the president can still be reasonably held responsible for the urgency with which the bureaucracy attacks the problem, the speed at which rules get suspended and workarounds enacted, the pressure brought to bear on state and local authorities to take a possible pandemic seriously, and the use of presidential rhetoric to encourage private citizens to do the same.

And on all counts the White House has been failing. There should have been a public face of the anti-coronavirus effort long before Mike Pence was finally elevated, with the power to respond quickly to bureaucratic bottlenecks. Weeks ago, private laboratories like Quest Diagnostics should have been encouraged to run their own tests for the virus. Weeks ago, the government should have promised to cover the cost of testing, instead of leaving it to the tangle of insurance. Weeks ago, the White House should have begun working with states and cities to devise a uniform response to outbreaks, and with Congress to ready aid packages for regions that need to go into lockdown — and perhaps to prepare a general stimulus as well. Even a specific issue like the production of surgical masks, outsourced like so many things to China, could have been the focus of a Trump-directed mobilization.

Above all, the president’s rhetoric could have been deployed from early February onward to encourage people to take this disease seriously, to focus a political and social response, to prepare the country for the kind of steps that have contained the coronavirus elsewhere.

Instead, Trump fell into the same trap as the cosmopolitan sophisticates — acting as though the specter of panic is worse than the disease itself, focusing on the more reassuring estimates of the virus’s fatality rates instead of recognizing the wide spread of possible scenarios — while mixing in his own short-termist fixation on the stock market. And then when, at last, even the cosmopolitans became alarmed, he took their anxiety as a partisan insult, and lapsed into “hoax” accusations, pulling a certain percentage of his co-partisans into irresponsibility along with him.

Now the time his travel ban bought us has expired, and the next few weeks will be decisive. There is still a chance that state and local efforts to contain the virus can succeed, and there are still ways in which the White House could exert strong leadership to help that happen. But right now we are headed for a scenario of rising death rates and overwhelmed hospitals, shuttered schools and empty stadiums and cancellations everywhere.

Combine this scenario’s inevitable economic consequences with the optics of the president’s blundering and solipsistic response, and the coronavirus seems very likely to doom Trump’s re-election effort, no matter where he casts the blame.

And how ironic that would be. In 2016 we elected a China hawk who promised a “complete shutdown” in response to foreign threats, a germaphobic critic of globalization who promised to privilege the national interest above all.

Now he is in danger of losing his presidency because when the great test came, in the form of a virus carried by global trade routes from Communist China, he didn’t take the danger seriously enough.

How They Do It-- 'Trump Is Counting on the Supreme Court to Save His Presidency'

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 08 Mar 2020 15:51:00 +0000

Sometime before June 29, 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court will either plunge the United States into the severest constitutional crisis of the Trump years—or save Americans from that crisis.

ed note--we'll forego the usual extended commentary that normally attends OpEds of this type in favor of one simple question which we enjoin the reader to ask for him/herself--

If indeed it is true--as we are told now on a regular basis from all sorts of self-degreed 'experts'--that Trump is the 'favored son' of Judea, why then are articles of this type being written by agents/assets of Judea (in this case the arch-NeoCon David Frum, George W. Bush's speechwriter during his administration) obviously aimed at chewing away at Trump's hold on power?

David Frum

Three different committees of Congress, as well as New York State prosecutors, have issued subpoenas to President Donald Trump’s accountants and bankers for his tax and business records. Trump has sued to stop the accountants and bankers from complying. He has lost twice at the district-court level and twice at the appeals-court level. Now he is looking to the conservative majority on the Supreme Court to rescue him.

On March 31, the court will hear oral arguments in the cases of Trump v. Mazars and Trump v. Deutsche Bank. The decision will be rendered sometime between then and the court’s summer break.

Although Trump is suing his accountants and his bankers as a private citizen, his case has been joined by the Department of Justice. Solicitor General Noel Francisco has signed an amicus brief on behalf of the United States. It is an astonishing document. It invites the Supreme Court to junk two centuries of precedent—and to substitute an entirely new system of judicial review of congressional subpoenas that involve a president.

A legislative subpoena must therefore satisfy heightened requirements when it seeks information from the President. At the threshold, the full chamber should unequivocally authorize a subpoena against the President. Moreover, the legislative purpose should be set forth with specificity. Courts should not presume that the purpose is legitimate, but instead should scrutinize it with care. And as with information protected by executive privilege, information sought from the President should be demonstrably critical to the legislative purpose. A congressional committee cannot evade these heightened requirements merely by directing the subpoena to third-party custodians, for such agents generally assume the rights and privileges of their principal, as this Court has recognized in analogous cases.

All the requirements in that above paragraph were devised for purposes of this litigation. None of them has ever been enforced—none of them has ever been imagined—in the previous 230 years of skirmishing between Congresses and presidents. Every must and should and cannot was invented in this very brief, for the immediate legal purposes of this president in this dilemma. The solicitor general might as well have said that subpoenas must be delivered by a sled pulled by flying reindeer, for all the connection between these demands and the previous constitutional history of the United States.

As the House of Representatives noted in the brief it filed, previous Congresses have obtained the bank records of Presidents Andrew Johnson and Jimmy Carter, and the tax records of President Richard Nixon. They have read the diaries of President Ronald Reagan and the law-firm billing records of first lady Hillary Clinton.

It’s never before been the law that a subpoena of the president must be authorized by “the full chamber,” much less that this authorization be “unequivocal”—whatever that means.

It’s never before been the law that the president’s privileges—whatever they are—also extend to his private business agents.

It’s never before been the law that the courts set themselves over Congress as scrutinizers of its subpoenas, approving or disapproving. Until now, instead, courts have always extended the utmost deference to congressional investigations, from the first Washington administration onward.

The Trump administration cannot cite case law for any of its new demands. It quotes few cases, very briefly and tangentially, and strikingly often with ellipses in the middle of the quote. Instead, it bases its argument on its own vision of the awesome and unassailable power of the presidency. “The President faces a unique risk of harassment in response to his official policies or actions,” his lawyers argue. To heighten that risk, they quote the 1952 case involving President Harry Truman’s seizure of steel plants during the Korean War: “In drama, magnitude and finality [the president’s] decisions so far overshadow any others that almost alone he fills the public eye and ear.” They continue, this time quoting the Supreme Court’s language in the Paula Jones lawsuit against President Clinton: “Likewise, the President ‘occupies a unique office with powers and responsibilities so vast and important that the public interest demands he devote his attention to his public duties.’”

The history-minded reader will recall that Truman lost the steel-seizure case, and that Clinton likewise lost his fight to be immune from civil liability for sexual harassment. Oftentimes, such effusive compliments to the office of the presidency in the language of a Supreme Court decision serve as consolation prizes for some rebuffed claim of presidential power. But Trump’s Department of Justice deploys the compliments as if they constituted the law itself, not the wrapping paper around the law.

The House brief hits back with actual precedents from pertinent law—and this bottom line: “In more than twenty cases concerning the scope of Congress’ power to investigate, this Court has only once held that a Congressional inquiry exceeded its constitutional limits.” That case—Kilbourn v. Thompson—dated from 1880 and dealt with the aftermath of the bankruptcy of a big bond house, J. Cooke and Sons. And even that case was effectively overruled in 1962. “At most,” the Supreme Court said, “Kilbourn is authority for the proposition that Congress cannot constitutionally inquire ‘into the private affairs of individuals who hold no office under the government’ when the investigation ‘could result in no valid legislation on the subject to which the inquiry referred.’” But otherwise, as the Supreme Court held in 1951, for a court “to find that a committee’s investigation has exceeded the bounds of legislative power it must be obvious that there was a usurpation of functions exclusively vested” elsewhere.

All told, the record supports the dry opening of the House brief: “Many momentous separation-of-powers disputes have come before this Court,” it reads. “This dispute, regarding four document subpoenas to third parties for records not covered by any privilege, is not one of them.” The only thing remarkable about the Mazars and Deutsche Bank cases, the House adds, “is the extraordinary breadth of the arguments that President Trump and the Solicitor General make about the supposed power of a President to thwart investigations in furtherance of Congress’s Article I legislative and oversight functions."

By all rights, these cases should end in the kind of defeat for Trump nicely described by a favorite joke of Chief Justice John Roberts. When asked how a certain case could have been decided against a petitioner 9–0, Roberts is said to have replied: “You must remember, there are only nine justices on the Supreme Court.”

But this is the Trump era. The courts are partisan and getting more so. Although Trump lost every previous round of this litigation, one appellate judge did agree with him on the merits: his own appointee to the D.C. Circuit, Neomi Rao.

In her dissent from the majority opinion against Trump, Rao advanced an arresting new claim: “When Congress seeks information about the President’s wrongdoing, it does not matter whether the investigation also has a legislative purpose … Allegations that an impeachable official acted unlawfully must be pursued through impeachment … [and] cannot be investigated by Congress except through impeachment.”

This is wild talk that would shut down almost all congressional investigations. It asks that Congress decide whether an act was unlawful before it begins its investigation of that act. It’s an argument that cannot be applied in real life—and is probably not meant to be applied in real life beyond this one and only application: shutting down an unwanted investigation of President Trump.

Plainly, there is something in those documents that Trump dreads letting the world see. We now seem on track to one of three possible outcomes of this dispute.

The first is that precedent and law prevail. Trump loses his lawsuit against his accountants and bankers, and the subpoenaed documents are surrendered to Congress.

The second is that the political imperative to save Trump that swayed Rao will sway the conservative justices on the Supreme Court—and that Trump’s secrets will be protected by a 5–4 decision.

The third is that Trump loses—but continues to devise new delays to thwart the subpoenas and defy not only Congress but also the courts.

Every one of these possible outcomes leads to explosive controversy in the summer before the 2020 election.

In the first case, we are surely plunged into a screaming hurricane of Trump scandals.

In the second, the legitimacy of the Supreme Court will be called into doubt in a way not seen in decades, if ever.

And in the third, we confront a full-blown crisis of the rule of law.

Under all three scenarios, the issues raised by impeachment in early 2020 come roaring back for the election finale. Trump’s evident corruption, the questions over his thralldom to the Putin regime in Russia, the refusal of the Republican Party to uphold law when inconvenient to Trump—you thought we’d talked them to death during impeachment? There is so much more to come.

Kushner: 'Trump's Peace Deal aimed at preventing settlement expansion'

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 08 Mar 2020 14:38:00 +0000

Senior White House adviser reportedly tells senators that peace plan aims to end situation in which Israel expands settlements.

ed note--as we have counseled for many, many years--and particularly in divining what it is that DJT, POTUS has in mind with regards to coming to some sort of PRACTICAL resolution to what has been up to this point a completely intractable situation involving the Jews and the Arabs in the MENA--it is of utmost importance that people NOT allow themselves to get caught up in their emotions, NOT surrender their capacity for rational/independent thought to whatever groupthink happens to pervade the identity politics they happen to embrace, and to instead step back and look at the bigger picture in getting a better grasp of just what the hell it is that Trump, Inc is trying to do here.

First, the popular notion that DJT POTUS is merely a 'tool' for Judea is patently false and all anyone need do in figuring out the very simple political math involved in this is to consider--again, without all the emotionalism and identity politics groupthink--how those institutions/groups which are owned lock/stock/barrel by Jewish interests have dealt with him since he announced his candidacy. The NeoCons--from Kristol to Frum to the Kagans to Rubin to Cohen to Boot and ALL THE INSTITUTIONS THEY CONTROL, including the JMSM and all the apparati used in seducing the American people into accepting the 'war on terror'--despise him and were the operating force first in trying to scuttle his election as POTUS and then, having failed thus, have functioned as the operating force in getting him Impeached. They are all singularly united in bringing up Biden from the rear in trying to rob DJT of the overwhelming electoral mandate he is sure to receive in any political contest with Bernie Sanders and are the driving force behind the manufactured Corona virus panic and subsequent attempted collapse of the market in order to usher in a true 'puppet' for OJI in the person of Joe Biden or whoever.

Having said this, the comments attributed to Kushner concerning DJT's 'peace plan' and in particular how it aims to halt Jewish settlement (theft) of Palestine is of VITAL importance for several reasons, to wit--

1. A very simple and rudimentary examination of the 'birth' of the Jewish state reveals many things, but the most important within the context of this discussion is the fact that all territorial gain in creating the Jewish state has been done as a result of one thing--WAR. Whether it is pre-partition, '48, '67' or whatever, Israel NEEDS war like a vampire needs blood in order to not only expand her borders, but as well to hold together what would otherwise be a failed state, just as every other attempt throughout history to bring about a stable political system based upon the precepts of Torah Judaism has failed from within and from without.

Having said this, it is obvious then why there has been OVERWHELMING opposition to DJT and to his plans involving the Middle East and in creating the one thing which Judea, Inc has never/does not now/never will recognize--BORDERS.

Nexto--

2. The commonly chirped statement on the part of identity politickers that Trump's peace deal was done to 'please' Benjamin Netanyahu is categorically false. Yes, Nutty Netty clapped his hands, smiled, said nice things about Trump's 'ultimate peace deal' but it was all theatrics and yet another manifestation of the 'by way of deception, we shall make war' paradigm that governs all Judaic maneuvering.

The details of this plan being unveiled immediately before the elections in Israel was the equivalent of Trump handing Netanyahu a bomb with a lit fuse, given that the largest base of support Netanyahu enjoys in Israel are the right-wing religious nutters who CATEGORICALLY reject any and all discussion of a 'Palestinian' state, whether it is in Palestine or on Pandora, the fictional planet featured in the movie Avatar.

Now, HAVING SAID THIS, it is obvious then why Judea, Inc and all its tentacled operatives have moved as one body, spoken as one mouth and thought with one mind when it comes to the person of DJT, POTUS, and not based upon his policies on immigration, the 2nd Amendment, his 'racism' or his 'misogyny,' but rather due to his plans in caging the monster of the MENA known as Judea in the interests of preventing universal, global Armageddon.

Israel National News

White House senior adviser Jared Kushner on Wednesday briefed senators behind closed doors on the Trump administration's Middle East peace plan, White House officials told Barak Ravid of Channel 13 News.

According to the report, Kushner told a bipartisan group from the Senate Foreign Relations committee that the international reaction to the plan was encouraging despite the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) swift rejection of the plan.

Kushner’s briefing was part of an effort to build support for the plan in Washington and overseas, reported Ravid.

Using a power point presentation, Kushner pointed to two factors making a solution harder to reach: Increased dependence of Palestinian leaders on foreign aid, and increasing expansion by Israeli leaders of communities in Judea and Samaria.

“Kushner’s message was that every time negotiations failed the Palestinians got more money and Israel was able to keep expending the settlements, but the peace process became a false notion and didn’t solve anything. Both parties' leaderships just kept getting what they want without improving the lives of the people," said a senior White House official.

According to Ravid, the presentation was the same one Kushner used two weeks ago at a closed meeting of the UN Security Council. His main argument is that the status quo is broken and something else has to be tried.

Kushner argued in his presentation that the lingering Israeli-Palestinian conflict is being used as the pretext for more radicalization in the Middle East.

He reportedly told senators the White House wanted to use the plan not only to try to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but also to bring Israel and the Arab and Muslim worlds closer together.

Kushner also presented the senators with a list of reforms he said the Palestinians must undertake to achieve statehood and reduce the risk of creating a failed state in Judea, Samaria and Gaza.

While the Palestinians consider the plan a non-starter, Kushner emphasized that there were indications it could still move forward. His case:

--The two main political leaders in Israel support the plan and it didn’t become a controversial issue in the Israeli elections.

--There were several positive statements about the plan from Arab countries.

--The Palestinians push against the plan stalled at the UN.

A White House official slammed the Palestinian response to the plan, telling Ravid, "They don't have a real detailed idea of what they want."

"It has exposed the Palestinian leadership who is defending the status quo. We are moving the debate to discussing the technical challenges and the details as opposed to romanticizing about things that people know will never happen,” added the official.

Palestinian Arab officials have been pressuring countries, particularly in Europe, to officially recognize “Palestine”, in a move meant to bypass direct peace talks with Israel. Those calls have grown since President Donald Trump unveiled his peace plan.

Lest We Forget--Rep. Paul Kanjorski spills the beans about Israel's attempted economic 9/11 in 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 29 Feb 2020 19:47:00 +0000

ed note--it is our theory that this is exactly what Judea, Inc is planning to do again in the midst of the Corona virus hype and subsequent crash of the markets taking place right now, much in the same manner as the Twin Towers were brought down (via pre-placed explosive charges) immediately after being struck by the hijacked airliners on the morning of 9/11.

U.S. Signs Peace Deal With Taliban After Nearly 2 Decades Of War In Afghanistan

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 29 Feb 2020 16:15:00 +0000

ed note--please keep in mind 2 important items associated with this development--

1. Israel is not pleased,

and--

2. The number of 'experts' out there in the '9/11 truth movement' who--for almost 4 years now--have claimed (and continue to claim) that Trump is the favored son of Judea who was put into the WH in order to 'start WWIII for his Jewish masters'.

NPR

The U.S. and the Taliban have struck a deal that paves the way for eventual peace in Afghanistan. U.S. Special Representative Zalmay Khalilzad and the head of the militant Islamist group, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, signed the potentially historic agreement Saturday in Doha, Qatar, where the two sides spent months hashing out its details.

Under the terms of the deal, the U.S. commits to withdrawing all of its military forces and supporting civilian personnel, as well as those of its allies, within 14 months. The drawdown process will begin with the U.S. reducing its troop levels to 8,600 in the first 135 days and pulling its forces from five bases.

The rest of its forces, according to the agreement, will leave "within the remaining nine and a half months."

The Afghan government also will release up to 5,000 Taliban prisoners as a gesture of goodwill, in exchange for 1,000 Afghan security forces held by the Taliban.

"We owe a debt of gratitude to America's sons and daughters who paid the ultimate sacrifice in Afghanistan, and to the many thousands who served over the past nearly 19 years," Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a statement celebrating the deal, which comes on the heels of a seven-day "Reduction in Violence" agreement in Afghanistan.

"The only responsible way to end the war in Afghanistan is through a negotiated political settlement. Today is a reflection of the hard work of our Nation's military, the U.S. Department of State, intelligence professionals, and our valued partners," he added. "The United States is committed to the Afghan people, and to ensuring that Afghanistan never becomes a safe haven for terrorists to threaten our homeland and our Allies."

The U.S. intends, along with members of the United Nations Security Council, to "remove members of the Taliban from the sanctions list with the aim of achieving this objective by May 29, 2020" — and Washington, in particular, aims to remove the group from U.S. sanctions by Aug 27, 2020.

The U.S. has pledged to seek the Security Council's recognition and endorsement of the plan.

The Afghan government will also begin negotiations with the Taliban to map out a political settlement which would establish the role the Taliban would play in a future Afghanistan. These negotiations are expected to start next month. One of the first tasks in these intra-Afghan talks will be to achieve a lasting ceasefire in Afghanistan.

Separately, in Kabul, Afghanistan, U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg signed a joint declaration with the Afghan government — represented by President Ashraf Ghani — that commits the Afghans to these up-coming negotiations with the Taliban and to provide Afghanistan with security guarantees as this process unfolds.

The deal signed Saturday has been 18 months in the making.

There were nine rounds of on-again, off-again talks in Doha — the Qatari capital where the Taliban maintains an office — which began in 2018. The U.S. and Taliban had reached an agreement last summer, but President Trump walked away from those talks after a U.S. service member was killed in a September car bombing in the Afghan capital, Kabul.

Only the U.S., led by its chief representative, Khalilzad, and the Taliban have taken part in the negotiations, an arrangement that New York University's Barnett Rubin says was designed by the Taliban and resisted until recently by the U.S.

"Since 2010 [the Taliban] always insisted there would be two stages: international and then intra-Afghan," says Rubin, who served from 2009-2013 as special advisor to the State Department's Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan and now directs the Afghanistan Pakistan Regional Program at NYU's Center on International Cooperation.

The Taliban's rule in Afghanistan, which lasted just five years, ended abruptly with the invasion of a U.S.-led military coalition shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Their overthrow was a reprisal for having harbored Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaida, whose militants hijacked and crashed four American airliners in those attacks.

President Trump has repeatedly vowed to end America's involvement in the war in Afghanistan, the most prolonged of all U.S. conflicts. Within months of assuming the presidency, though, Trump added 4,000 U.S. troops to the 8,900 American forces already deployed there.

More than 2,400 Americans have died in Afghanistan during nearly 18 years of fighting, at an estimated cost to the U.S. Treasury of nearly $1 trillion. In recent years, despite the surge in troop levels, the Taliban have fought U.S. and Afghan forces to what Milley has called "a state of strategic stalemate."

This past month has seen less bloodshed than usual in the country, as Taliban fighters promised to suspend major attacks and U.S. forces agreed to suspend offensive operations — except attacks against Islamic State insurgents — during the recent weeklong "reduction in violence" period.

"We have seen just these last six days a significant reduction in violence in Afghanistan," Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on Friday, shortly before flying to the Doha signing ceremony. Earlier in the week, Pompeo called the partial truce "imperfect," but said "it's working."

Here are some of the key elements in that political resolution:

1. A withdrawal of U.S. troops

The success of February's seven-day partial truce has been seen as a crucial first step to the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops, with aspirations for a full pullout contingent on the Taliban's "performance" over the coming months, according to a senior State Department official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

"Part of the process of making peace is to begin to take down the edifice [of sanctions], but the language is carefully constructed to be conditional, depending on Taliban performance," says the official. "If the Taliban don't do what we hope they'll do, our requirements to begin to take down that edifice are vitiated."

Michael O'Hanlon, a Brookings Institution scholar and longtime supporter of the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan, points out that the initial drawdown brings the troop levels back to roughly the same number that were in the country under President Obama.

"So, it's not a huge change," O'Hanlon tells NPR. "It's just a reduction from the sort of mini-Trump buildup."

He warns this agreement cannot repeat what the U.S. signed with the North Vietnamese in the 1973 Paris peace talks, "where we basically take on faith that the enemy is going to behave itself once we're gone."

A senior Afghan official tells NPR that the U.S. forces that do remain would focus on the three missions they are currently carrying out: counter-terrorism operations, training of Afghan forces and air support for Afghan ground forces.

A drawdown of the approximately 7,000 forces from other NATO member states in Afghanistan would take place in tandem with the departure of U.S. troops.

2. A commitment by the Taliban to end support for U.S.-deemed "terrorist organizations"

U.S. officials insist the troop withdrawal timeline will depend primarily on one condition: the degree to which the Taliban fulfills its commitment in the peace deal not to allow Afghanistan to be used as a base of operations by insurgencies such as al-Qaida and the Islamic State.

"The Taliban must respect the agreement, specifically regarding their promises of severing ties with terrorists," Pompeo said earlier this week at the State Department. "We have our deep counterterrorism interest there, making sure that the homeland is never attacked. It's one of the central underpinnings of what President Trump has laid before us."

The Taliban's renunciation of ties with al-Qaida, though, may be more easily said than done.

"This is a complex issue because the Haqqani network is often seen as a strong affiliate of al-Qaida and it's also part of the Taliban leadership," says O'Hanlon. "So we don't really quite know what that means, but presumably, core al-Qaida and the Taliban would not be allowed to speak [to each other] and we would be listening with all of our electronic capabilities to make sure that was the case."

The Haqqani network is one of Afghanistan's most experienced insurgent groups, long thought to be responsible for some of the more sophisticated and large scale attacks, especially in Kabul. Its leader, Sirajuddin Haqqani, is the Taliban's current deputy and recently penned an op-ed in the The New York Times.

The State Department recognizes there are concerns about the Taliban's historical bonds with al-Qaida.

"We think this is a decisive and historic first step in terms of their public acknowledgment that they are breaking ties with al-Qaida," says one official. "That's going to be a work in progress."

Just as the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan is the Taliban's main demand in this agreement, the U.S. has made the Taliban's forswearing of ties to other insurgencies its top ask.

"We went into Afghanistan with NATO after 9/11 because of the threat to the United States and our allies," the State Department official says. "We are still there because we are concerned about the terrorist threat."

But one former senior U.S. official suggests the Trump administration may be exaggerating that threat.

"In my estimation, we have largely achieved our counter-terrorism objective today. Al-Qaida is much diminished in Afghanistan and Pakistan, with most of its senior leaders killed and those who remain marginalized," retired Army Gen. Douglas Lute, who served as point man for the Afghan war effort in both the Bush and Obama White Houses, recently wrote in prepared Congressional testimony.

"There is a branch of the so-called Islamic State in Afghanistan, but I have seen no evidence that it presents a threat to the U.S. and it is under pressure from the Afghans, including from the Taliban."

3. Maintaining a communications channel

The U.S. and the Taliban are expected to continue the lines of communications they have already established during the talks in Doha, both to support implementation of the agreement and to de-conflict their respective military operations against ISIS in eastern Afghanistan.

Suspicions that there was a secret annex to the deal that also involved sharing intelligence with the Taliban prompted a cautionary letter to Pompeo and Defense Secretary Mark Esper this week from 22 House Republicans. They demanded that any deal between the U.S. and the Taliban be made public with no secret annexes or side deals, including one for intelligence sharing or a joint counterterrorism center with the Taliban.

"This would be a farce," the lawmakers wrote, "and put American lives at risk."

A State Department official on Thursday denied the U.S. was entering into any kind of "cooperative partnership" with the Taliban.

4. Prisoner swaps

The exchange of prisoners between the Afghan government and the Taliban is intended as a way of building trust between the two sides.

A State Department official expressed admiration for the care Taliban leaders have shown for freeing their fighters, adding: "The agreement makes explicit that those who are released need to make commitments that they won't go back to the battlefield and that they will support the agreement."

While noting the need for early action on releasing prisoners to build confidence among the Taliban in the peace process, the official said both the numbers of prisoners and the timeline for their release are "aspirational" and will depend on "Taliban performance."

5. Intra-party talks among Afghans

A second phase of the peace process would bring together Afghan government officials, opposition figures, civil society representatives and the Taliban to discuss a political road map for bringing an end to the war.

The talks are expected to take place in Oslo, Norway, to begin around mid-March. The U.S. will be present along with others, including Germany, Indonesia and the U.N., but only in the role of supporting and facilitating the talks.

"It's not like the Taliban are endlessly evil or that this will bring flowers and roses and doves overnight," says one U.S. official. "We've reached a point where there's a critical mass on all sides where people want to change, want a better future, want a better option, and our job is to continue to create the incentives, continue to create the momentum for people to move forward and change the negative trajectory."

A host of difficult issues are to be addressed in the intra-Afghan talks, including:

a. A long-term cease-fire

The reduction in violence of the past week is intended to be a step toward an overall cessation of hostilities to be worked out in Oslo.

"The agreement explicitly calls on the Taliban to sit down with the other Afghans in the intra-Afghan negotiations, where they will discuss the modalities and the timing of a comprehensive and permanent cease-fire," says a State Department official. "There's a lot of mistrust, decades of fighting, so it's not going to be easy."

This would likely entail a dismantling of the Taliban's military force with the aim of either demobilizing or integrating its members into the Afghan security forces — a goal O'Hanlon considers daunting.

"I think the only realistic way to handle the security forces is that you keep all the different forces more or less in place," he says. "The Taliban continue to hold the parts of the country where they're most influential in certain rural areas, the Afghan army and police control the cities and major highways, and maybe there's a U.N. observation force making sure they don't fight each other."

b. Power sharing

Yet to be determined is the role the Taliban might play in Afghanistan's political future.

The nation continues to roil over results of the disputed September presidential election. Ghani was declared the winner in mid-February. But that result is not recognized by his challenger, Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, and a planned swearing-in of Ghani for a second term has been postponed until March 10, at the request of the U.S.

"You have a very fragmented country right now within Afghanistan, even apart from the Taliban and the central government who are clearly at war," says Bahar Jalali, who directs the women's mentoring program at the American University of Afghanistan.

"There's a lot of consternation with the Taliban coming back and re-emerging as viable political actors. What's going to happen with that?"

c. Women's rights

After women were prohibited under Taliban rule from attending school, working or appearing in public without a male relative as escort, they've won back those rights and gained others in areas no longer dominated by the Taliban.

In his opinion piece last week, Haqqani, the deputy Taliban leader, appeared to play down concerns that women would lose their restored freedoms.

"I am confident that, liberated from foreign domination and interference, we together will find a way to build an Islamic system in which all Afghans have equal rights," Haqqani wrote, "where the rights of women that are granted by Islam — from the right to education to the right to work — are protected, and where merit is the basis for equal opportunity."

But many are skeptical of the Taliban's intentions and doubt such assurances.

"We saw what the Taliban's version of Islam looked like in the late 1990s and early 2000s, right before the U.S. military intervention," says Jalali. "That gives nobody any good sense of comfort about the Taliban upholding the rights of women under Islamic law."

Jalali fears the U.S. is simply looking for a way out of Afghanistan before November's election.

"That really speaks to Trump's burning desire to exit from Afghanistan and to say, hey, I ended the Forever War, you know, I can claim credit for that," she says. "I keep saying [it's a] low threshold for peace and a low threshold for ending the war."

For O'Hanlon, the Doha peace agreement is only a start.

"It's a tiny step forward," he says. "It's a good step forward, but it doesn't really mean that phase two or round two is going to follow naturally."

Corona Virus and it's direct impact on economic activity

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 29 Feb 2020 15:52:00 +0000

As long as U.S. consumers continue to spend, the economy will continue to expand, and there’s little risk of recession. If the stock market tumbles further, however, all bets may be off.

By Michael Walden, Professor of Economics, North Carolina State University

Fears are growing that the new coronavirus will infect the U.S. economy.

U.S stocks are headed for their worst week since the 2008 financial crisis; companies including Apple and Walmart have been warning of potential sales losses from COVID-19 and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told Americans to prepare for the outbreak to spread to the United States, with unknown but potentially “bad” consequences.

Lately, many people have asked me, as an economist, a question I haven’t heard in years: Could a virus really send the global and U.S. economies into recession – or worse? Put more pertinently, will COVID-19 trigger an economic meltdown?

What a virus can do

The worry is understandable; viruses are scary things. I’ve read my share of medical thrillers based on some new virus spreading throughout the globe killing millions, destroying businesses and almost ending civilization until heroes – super or not – contain it at the last minute.

While these are works of fiction, we only have to look back 100 years to find a real example of what an unchecked virus can do.

The 1918-1919 influenza pandemic, also known as the Spanish flu, killed at least 50 million people worldwide, with some estimates putting the number as high as 100 million. In the U.S., almost 1 of every 3 people became infected, and 500,000 died. Even for those who survived, there were numerous cases of long-term physical disability.

Fortunately, the adverse economic impacts were short-lived. With today’s more mobile and interconnected world, however, some suggest any large-scale pandemic would be much more severe, with costs in the trillions.

To date, deaths from the coronavirus have been very small, totaling a little over 2,700 worldwide, out of more than 80,000 known cases – or only about 3.4%. Almost all of the deaths have been in China, where the virus was first detected. Rapid actions to quarantine infected individuals have likely limited the spread.

Yet even if the death rates are relatively low, the economy can still suffer. These economic impacts would likely come in four forms: shortages of products from China, reduced sales to China, a drop in consumer spending based on fears about the virus and falling stock prices.

Let me evaluate the potential impact of each, but bear in mind that they are all interconnected, and a drop in just one can affect the others.

Product shortages

The U.S. imports over $500 billion of products each year from China, everything from smartphones and televisions to clothing and machine parts. Sick people in China can’t work, which means they can’t make products. Closing off parts of the country from other areas also curtails production.

The reduced availability of Chinese products could slow some segments of the U.S. economy, with the computer and electronics industries being the most vulnerable. For example, many smartphones sold in the U.S. are assembled in China. Although U.S. retailers have some inventory, shortages will likely appear if the pandemic persists.

Americans are already beginning to see some impacts: for example, in shortages of dozens of drugs and other medical products and longer wait times for a variety of products such as bicycles and board games.

It’s too early to say how severe it will get, but the dependency of U.S. supply chains on China is a major concern. It shows how something like the coronavirus could become a huge problem in the modern economy.

Sales may take a hit

On the flip side, U.S. companies sell well over $100 billion of products to China annually, with the most important being technology like computer chips and agricultural products such as soybeans.

These sectors have already taken a hit from the tariffs imposed by China during the U.S.-China trade war of the last two years. The recent thaw in the conflict – and a limited deal with China – had created optimism for U.S. factories and farms that increased sales were around the corner.

That corner may be harder to reach as a result of the coronavirus outbreak and its significant impact on the Chinese economy. More U.S. companies are now worrying about their sales to China as a result.

Consumers still spending

Ultimately, more than anything, the spending of consumers drives the U.S. economy, accounting for roughly 70% of growth. Economists, policymakers and traders will be closely watching measures of this to help them understand how worried they should be.

Significant declines in spending are usually the most direct cause of a recession and often signal falling incomes and higher unemployment. But consumers also reduce spending as a result of fear – such as when they see traders panicking on Wall Street. That is, nothing actually bad has to happen to reduce spending, and this fear-induced penny pinching can have real-world consequences and even trigger a recession.

We saw this happen with the SARS virus in 2003, which resulted in 700 deaths worldwide. Consumer confidence about the future dipped, and so did spending, especially on durable products like appliances, vehicles and furniture. Fortunately, the dip was short-lived, and no recession resulted.

Although coronavirus-related deaths already exceed those from SARS, consumer confidence has not yet been affected. The latest data, released on Feb. 25, shows it continued to rise in February, albeit at a slower-than-expected pace and based on a survey taken before the recent stock market swoon. And measures of consumer spending like retail sales are also still growing, if at a subdued rate.

Also, there could be two positive offsets from the virus that will boost consumers. One is a reduction in interest rates that has already occurred and will be welcome news for people borrowing money for a home or vehicle. Second is a drop in oil – and, ultimately, gas – prices that will mean less money to be paid at the pump.

So it appears, for now, that consumers are more focused on jobs, incomes and gas prices than on COVID-19.

A rocky road for stocks

Lastly, let’s look at the impact on stocks.

One thing traders and investors absolutely do not like is uncertainty. And that’s what we have right now: No one, not even me, knows how bad the outbreak will get or what the impact will be on companies, consumers and the economy.

Until we have a good idea of how much the virus will spread and whether containment efforts will be successful, markets could remain wobbly. The Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index has plunged more than 10% since Feb. 21, ending a bull market that lasted 12 years.

A falling stock market could affect the real economy in a number of ways, including by sapping consumer confidence and reducing their spending.

But just as a bout of bad news can send markets into a tailspin, a reason for optimism could cause a rebound just as fast.

Brace for impact – and uncertainty

For now, we’ll all – traders, companies, consumers – have to just live with uncertainty, not knowing just how bad it will get.

The best all of us can do is monitor the situation and take precautions to prevent its spread – and be ready if it does.

A key measure to watch is the trend in the number of new cases reported worldwide. A reduction is often a sign the virus is running its course. However, a jump in cases could be cause for alarm, especially if the increase is large.

Companies and industries in the U.S. having strong ties to China or other countries with major infections could be in for a rocky road ahead, but with any luck the challenges will last weeks or months – not years. As long as U.S. consumers continue to spend, the economy will continue to expand, and there’s little risk of recession. If the stock market tumbles further, however, all bets may be off.

How They Do It-- 'As US Stock Market crashes, the day of reckoning has finally arrived for Trump'

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 29 Feb 2020 15:34:00 +0000

Dana Milbank

As markets continued their dizzying downward spiral and other countries took heroic measures to fight coronavirus, President Trump sat down at the White House Thursday evening with two leading public-health authorities: Diamond and Silk.

Trump told the online provocateurs and other African American supporters about his “incredible,” “very good,” “great,” “best” and “fantastic” response to the virus.

“It’s going to disappear. One day it’s like a miracle,” he told them.

The real problem, he said, is Democrats and the press, who aren’t giving him “credit,” who are trying to “build this up,” and who are demanding a bigger federal response. Amid an extended attack on Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, Trump said: “Politics is fine, but when it comes time to talk about pandemics you’ve got to get away from politics.”

If only he could heed his own advice.

Sure, some Democrats are taking political advantage, but mostly they’re demanding the Trump administration do more. And so are Republicans.

The one playing politics is Trump, cheerleading about miracles and silencing those trying to prepare the public. It won’t work — investors obviously see through the happy talk — and by playing down the crisis, he’s causing preparedness and monitoring to lag, which will worsen the spread.

What Americans need now is massive federal mobilization. Instead, Trump has pulled out the usual tricks, contradicting experts, blaming the “fake news media” for the market plunge, condemning opponents and even some of his own appointees (at the Federal Reserve), changing the subject, and making things up.

Thursday night, the New York Times reported that the White House has ordered officials to seek approval from Vice President Pence’s office before speaking publicly about the epidemic — apparently a move to muzzle public-health officials and scientists.

In his first major remarks after taking over the coronavirus response, Pence spoke Thursday to the CPAC convention, a conservative gathering: “I’m here for one reason and one reason only, and that is our movement, our party and America need four more years of President Donald Trump in the White House!” He seemed oblivious to the absurdity that 73 seconds earlier, he had declared that, because of coronavirus, “This is not the time for partisanship.”

It’s standard when losing a political argument to protest that the other side is playing politics. But it was Sen. Richard Shelby (Ala.), a Republican, who warned that the administration is “lowballing” the amount needed to respond to an emerging pandemic and “will pay for it later.”

Sen. Mitt Romney (Utah), another Republican, says he’s “very disappointed in the degree to which we’ve prepared for a pandemic.”

Sen. John Neely Kennedy (La.), also a Republican, expressed incredulity at the administration’s lack of information.

And Republican Sen. Mike Braun (Ind.), when asked on MSNBC whether Trump’s past action left the country less ready than it could have been, said: “I think you could make that argument.”

Clearly. Last year, Trump disbanded disease-security groups in the National Security Council and Department of Homeland Security created during the Ebola outbreak. He has attempted dramatic cuts to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He has disparaged the expertise and thinned the ranks of scientists throughout the government.

Now, we see a depleted federal government struggling to respond to coronavirus: flawed diagnostic tests and disagreements about lab capabilities; fewer than 500 tested in the United States as of midweek, compared to 7,100 in Britain (with one-fifth the population); inadequate protection for health-care workers; infighting in the administration; and a president who seems not to know what he’s talking about.

At his briefing Wednesday evening, Trump declared “This is a flu,” and that Americans, like him, should “bail out as much as possible when there’s sneezing.”

A questioner pointed out that the death rate for seasonal flu is 0.1 percent, compared to 2 percent to 3 percent for coronavirus.

“The flu is much higher than that,” Trump replied, incorrectly.

In previous crises of this magnitude, Trump’s predecessors dropped everything else. George W. Bush unified the country after the 9/11 attacks in a bipartisan rethinking of national security. Barack Obama relied on members of Bush’s team, such as Ben Bernanke and Tim Geithner, to spare the country a second Great Depression.

Now Trump faces his first major crisis. And he’s sitting down with Diamond and Silk, meeting with actors from a “low-budget conservative play” called “FBI Lovebirds: Undercovers,” firing off “caronavirus” tweets attacking Democrats and the media, and holding a political rally where he calls the coronavirus a “hoax.”

But a reckoning has come for Trump’s politics of distraction, deception and blame. The markets see through it. And Americans will hold him responsible if he doesn’t do more, fast, to protect us.

Coronavirus fears cause stocks to plunge in worst week since 2008 financial crisis

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 29 Feb 2020 15:30:00 +0000

ed note--once again, we have been asked what our 'take' is on the Corona virus and whether it is a 'Joo bug' deliberately concocted to advance the political agenda of Judea Inc, a question to which our response has been/is an unequivocal

'YES'.

Not in the same sense however as 'Captain Tripps' (the fictional virus engineered by the US GOV that featured in the Stephen King novel 'The Stand') but rather that 'Corona' is being hyped at this time by the JMSM for political reasons all aimed at bringing down Trump, Inc before DJT POTUS can get too far with his plans of implementing his peace deal in the Middle East and bringing an end to the 'never-ending wars' in that region into which the US was dragged by Israel following 9/11.

And indeed, as we predicted, this is precisely what is taking place. Despite the obviously-orchestrated hype campaign running full-bore 24/7 on the JMSM, (as well as within 'alternative' media outlets owned and operated by nutters kooks, cranks and carnival barkers such as Jeff Rense et al) the numbers just aren't there to support the panic. The normal, yearly, ordinary flu kills 50 to 60 thousand people a year--just in the US--which, spaced over the 3 month period where the flu peaks, is about 20,000 a month which is about 700 PER DAY. A normal flu season in America sees between 30-40 MILLION people coming down with it, numbers that DWARF the handful of people who have contracted Corona.

Now, based upon the orchestrated honking campaign taking place within the JMSM and the subsequent crashing of the markets it is obvious where the powers that be intend to take all of this. Trump's approval numbers (and thus the likelihood of his being re-elected) are based for the most part on the economic good mood which seems to be in full swing right now, but with a crashing market and what may come of it (as was deliberately done to George H.W. Bush in '92) this can turn on a dime, which is exactly what Organized Jewish Interests want to see take place in an election year.

What's potentially worse is the following, and remember, you read it here first--

A crashing market provides the perfect pretext and cover for something much bigger, and particularly a 're-do' of what took place in mid-September of 2008, where an electronic 'run' on the banking system occurred which saw the evaporation of half a trillion dollars within the span of only 2 hours that--had it not been stopped--would have led to the COMPLETE COLLAPSE of the United States economy, an event that would have been used as the pretext for launching a war against Iran, Russia, or whoever was on the receiving end of Judea's accusations in the same manner as the 'war on terror' was launched against Iraq in the aftermath of 9/11.

We fear--and with good justification--that this is exactly what Judea, Inc is planning with all of this Corona virus business--panicked selling in the markets that presages 'the big bang' of another electronic run on the banking system that will be used not only in removing Trump from office, but as well, will be blamed on those enemies whose demise Judea, Inc has been planning for a long, long time.

It is important to note within this context that Iran is at present the country with the highest number of Corona virus infections after China and for which Trump specifically (and the US generally) has been accused vis deliberately infecting that country. Thus, what we see is a pre-staging through official narrative Iran's 'motive' for some act of war against the US, in this case hacking into the US banking system as Israel did in 2008 and causing the 'electronic run' which would then be used in collapsing the banking system, the economy, and thus initiating a panic that would force DJT into a corner where the only option would be striking militarily.

And remember, Purim, the yearly Jewish celebration of the destruction of Persia--modern day Iran--takes place in little over one week.

Wall Street headed for worst week since the 2008 financial crisis

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 28 Feb 2020 17:10:00 +0000

CNBC

U.S. stock futures were pointing to sharp decline for the Dow on Wall Street, pushing blue chips further into a correction. However, Dow futures had been down 600 points earlier. Fears of a possible coronavirus pandemic crushed stocks this week, with the Dow tracking for its worst weekly performance since the 2008 financial crisis. (CNBC)

Investors are dumping global stocks as well, with markets from Europe to Asia down 3% to 5%, and they’re pouring money into the perceived safety of bonds. The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield, which moves inversely to price, hit another record low below 1.2%. (CNBC)

The carnage in stocks and plummeting Treasury yields are raising market expectations of a Federal Reserve interest rate cut. Ex-Fed Governor Kevin Warsh told CNBC this morning he sees a coordinated global central bank action soon in response to coronavirus. (CNBC)

Warsh denied accusations that he’s angling to be the central bank’s next chairman. Warsh caught the market’s attention Thursday with his Wall Street Journal op-ed urging his former colleagues to cut interest rates in response to the coronavirus outbreak. (CNBC)

The U.S. economic calendar this morning bought data on January personal income and spending and January core personal consumption expenditure, or PCE, inflation, the Fed’s favorite gauge of prices pressures. February’s Chicago PMI is out at 9:45 a.m. ET. The University of Michigan issues its final February reading on consumer sentiment. (CNBC)

The World Health Organization today reiterated its warning that the coronavirus could reach every country on Earth. Infections continued to rise in hot spots outside of China. The U.S. has about 60 cases. The vast majority of infections and deaths are still in China, where officials increased cases to nearly 79,000 with fatalities approaching 2,800. (CNBC)

Heading into Saturday’s South Carolina primary, former Vice President Joe Biden was leading in the polls after poor results in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada. A pro-Biden super PAC invested in key Super Tuesday states. Biden is third so far in the delegate count, behind Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and ex-South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg. (CNBC)

The FCC is seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in fines from the country’s leading mobile phone carriers, according to The Wall Street Journal. Officials found that the companies failed to safeguard information about customers’ real-time locations, the Journal reported Friday.

Cisco Systems (CSCO), one of the 30 components of the Dow, has reportedly started a new round of job cuts. The Wall Street Journal reported that the company faces the possibility of slower sales. Cisco did not give the Journal a number on the layoffs.

Beyond Meat (BYND) reported quarterly revenue that topped expectations but disappointed investors by falling short of a second profitable quarter. Shares of Beyond Meat, which surged 40% year to date as of Thursday’s close, were down 14% in Friday’s premarket trading. (CNBC)

Dell (DELL) dipped in the premarket after the company missed earnings estimates for the fourth quarter. Dell narrowly beat forecasts on revenue. The company also announced a share buyback program of up to $1 billion over the next 24 months.

AMC Entertainment (AMC) shares shot up in extended trading after the company announced a common stock repurchase of up to $200 million over the next three years. The company’s senior officers are also taking pay cuts in exchange for shares.

Bed Bath & Beyond saw its stock whipsaw in extended trading after the company announced that it is cutting around 500 jobs, or 10% of its corporate workforce. The cuts comes as part of a larger restructuring plan in an attempt to trim expenses.

Trump faces ‘black swan’ threat to the economy and his hoped-for reelection

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 28 Feb 2020 15:34:00 +0000

Even Trump‘s leading allies acknowledge the deadly coronavirus could present an existential political threat for the president in an election year.

Politico

Stock markets tumbled around the world. The number of coronavirus cases mushroomed in advanced nations like Italy, Japan and South Korea. And travel bans expanded as leaders confronted the nightmarish prospect of a spreading virus swallowing their nations.

President Donald Trump’s top aides faced an increasingly urgent threat Monday with potentially monumental implications: a global outbreak knocking down the U.S. economy and walloping markets in an election year, all against accusations about whether the Trump administration had mismanaged and underfunded a critical response with American lives on the line.

A swift drop in the stock market — the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell more than 1,000 points, its largest slide in two years — jolted officials in the White House and across Washington, delivering implications from the long-simmering coronavirus threat to a wider swath of Americans.

“The view in the White House is that this is one of those classic black swan events, and all we can do is control the health issues in the U.S.,” said Stephen Moore, an informal economic adviser to the Trump team.

The still-mysterious coronavirus — which is hard to detect, poses high risk to the elderly and may in some cases be transmitted by people who show no symptoms — has infected more than 78,000 people abroad, although only 53 people now in the United States are confirmed to have contracted the virus, almost entirely overseas.

With the possibility of a U.S. outbreak growing by the day, Trump allies and advisers have grown increasingly worried that a botched coronavirus response will hit the U.S. economy. Even Donald Trump Jr. has mused to associates he hopes the White House does not screw up the response and put the president’s best reelection message at risk, said two individuals with knowledge of his comments.

“Trump’s reelection effort is so closely tied to the strength of the stock market and the economy,” said Moore, a distinguished visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation and 2016 Trump campaign adviser. “Anything that shakes us off of that pro-growth track is a concern, but I think the view of officials in the White House is that this will be contained.”

“Once the virus is contained, the market will bounce right back,” Moore added.

Trump himself took a break from his two-day trip to India to weigh in on coronavirus, tweeting that the virus was under control in the United States. “We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!” he wrote late Monday afternoon.

The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!

But inside the White House, officials have been quietly studying models of the pandemic’s potential effect on both the U.S. and the global economy, said one Republican close to the White House. Among policy aides, there‘s widespread concern that the spread of the coronavirus will hit a slew of industries including manufacturers, airlines, automakers and tech companies, slowing down both the U.S. and Chinese economies. Aides fear the White House has few economic tricks it can deploy to lessen the impact.

Meanwhile, officials like acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and domestic policy chief Joe Grogan have turned their fire on HHS Secretary Alex Azar, who’s leading the coronavirus response, arguing that Azar has poorly coordinated the strategy, failed to escalate the potential risks to Trump and pushed for a multibillion-dollar emergency-funding request that they initially viewed as extreme, said four individuals familiar with the matter.The Trump administration on Monday night announced a request for $2.5 billion in emergency coronavirus cash, which would also shift at least $535 million in previously committed funds.

Funding the response had been a major sticking point between the White House and Azar, who lobbied to request additional funds from Congress before he makes four separate hearings on the Hill this week. Officials had spent days jockeying over the final figure for the emergency package, veering anywhere between $1 billion to $5 billion. The package also is expected to face resistance from Democrats, who have warned the Trump administration against shifting money away from existing commitments.

The White House and HHS both maintained that the task force is working in tandem and defended Azar’s leadership.

“There is zero disagreement between HHS, [National Security Council], the White House, and other members of the task force,” Mulvaney said in a statement. “Secretary Azar is the right person to lead this effort, and any reporting to the contrary is just false.”

"OMB and HHS have been in lockstep throughout this entire process," said Derek Kan, a top White House budget deputy who's also working on coronavirus efforts. An HHS spokesperson denied that the White House and Azar had disagreed over the emergency-funding request.

But the pressure-packed coronavirus fight has reopened year-old cracks between the White House and Azar, who has few allies in the White House and was seen as weakened by his own recent feud with Medicare chief Seema Verma. Two of Azar’s allies said they worried that the secretary’s job is at risk if the coronavirus response goes poorly.

Administration officials also have traded blame over the evacuation of 14 Americans from a cruise ship who were confirmed to have coronavirus, fueled by Trump’s anger over the episode. The decision to evacuate the Americans — who were placed on a plane with other Americans, over the objections from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — has sparked finger-pointing and second-guessing for days. Japanese officials didn’t inform their U.S. counterparts that the 14 had tested positive until they were already aboard buses with the other American cruise ship passengers heading for the airport.

Some officials worry that the U.S. is missing potential coronavirus infections of its own, especially as clusters of cases emerge in countries like Iran, prompting that nation's neighbors Turkey, Pakistan and Armenia to close their borders. The U.S. surveillance effort has been hampered by the failure of the health department’s tests, with public health labs on Monday asking for permission to use their own homegrown tests rather than wait on the CDC.

“If we have an outbreak in the United States and didn’t pick it up, that’s going to be a public health mistake of historic proportion,” said a former senior HHS official.

Some White House officials also remain frustrated by the Chinese government’s handling of the outbreak, but Trump has been hesitant to publicly criticize President Xi Jinping. Democrats have seized on Trump’s wariness, with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Monday calling on Trump to demand that Xi “end the secrecy and suppression of facts around coronavirus.” China spent more than three weeks rebuffing U.S. offers to send health officials to help with its outbreak and delayed reporting key details of the epidemic.

Public health groups have chastised the Trump administration for not moving faster to fund a response. “Major investments are needed to assist in this global health security challenge, which is directly impacting our nation’s health,” the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials and three other organizations wrote on Monday.

Advocates also criticized the administration’s significant cuts to pandemic preparedness — including a proposal to cut $1.3 billion from CDC’s discretionary spending in the president’s recent budget blueprint — which they say have left the nation less prepared to deal with an outbreak.

With the Trump administration now staring down a potential pandemic, urgency — and an immediate funding infusion — are essential to ensure that the U.S. is prepared, experts said.

“Every day that goes by is another day that you don’t have money to partner with private entities to develop vaccines, to invest in equipment,” said Chris Meekins, a Raymond James analyst and former HHS emergency-preparedness official in the Trump administration. “Time is not your friend in these situations — especially if you assume that the virus is not going to dissipate in the summer.”

Lest We Forget-- 'The Economy that defeated George H. W. Bush's re-election bid'

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 28 Feb 2020 15:31:00 +0000

Yahoo Finance

The late President George Herbert Walker Bush was an expert in and sometimes seemed more comfortable with foreign affairs rather than domestic policies — particularly the markets and economics. In fact, it was the weak economy which likely cost him the 1992 presidential election where he lost to Bill Clinton.

Clinton based his campaign on the catchphrase “It’s the economy stupid,” which originally was an internal reminder for campaign workers created by Clinton strategist James Carville, but along with Carville’s other two messages — “Don’t forget health care” and “Change vs. more of the same thing” —it became public facing and key to Clinton’s victory.

A tepid economy was also critical.

In March 1991, immediately before the invasion of Iraq, 90% of Americans polled approved of Bush’s job performance. By August 1992, his approval rating fell to 64% as Americans seemingly blamed the president for the recession, which ironically had already ended.

But the recovery was anemic. And Bush later blamed then Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan for not lowering rates aggressively enough to pull the economy out of recession fast enough.

“I think that if the interest rates had been lowered more dramatically that I would have been re-elected president because the [economic] recovery that we were in would have been more visible,” Bush told interviewer David Frost. “I reappointed him, and he disappointed me.”

Bush was already famous for grappling with economics before he became president. In 1980 while running against Ronald Reagan for the GOP presidential nomination, Bush criticized Reagan’s supply-side economics policies as “voodoo economics.” Later of course, Bush would become Reagan’s vice president.

And later, when running for president, Bush became famous for the line: “Read my lips: no new taxes,” and then later changed his mind and raised some taxes.

Then there was the story — later debunked — about how the patrician Bush was amazed to see a supermarket check-out scanner in action during the 1992 campaign. It turned out that the technology he was looking at was brand new and he wasn’t particularly amazed. But it fit the narrative of Bush being an out of touch rich guy who didn’t care enough about the recession and no doubt some small damage was done.

Lest We Forget-- 'George H. W. Bush blames Fed Chief Greenspan for his re-election defeat in 1992 by refusing to cut interest rates'

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 28 Feb 2020 15:22:00 +0000

NY Times

Alan Greenspan, who was chairman of the Federal Reserve for nearly two decades, in a long-awaited memoir, is harshly critical of President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and the Republican-controlled Congress, as abandoning their party’s principles on spending and deficits.

In the 500-page book, “The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World,” Mr. Greenspan describes the Bush administration as so captive to its own political operation that it paid little attention to fiscal discipline, and he described Mr. Bush’s first two Treasury secretaries, Paul H. O’Neill and John W. Snow, as essentially powerless.

Mr. Bush, he writes, was never willing to contain spending or veto bills that drove the country into deeper and deeper deficits, as Congress abandoned rules that required that the cost of tax cuts be offset by savings elsewhere. “The Republicans in Congress lost their way,” writes Mr. Greenspan, a self-described “libertarian Republican.”

“They swapped principle for power. They ended up with neither. They deserved to lose” in the 2006 election, when they lost control of the House and Senate.

As officials leave the Bush administration, there is no shortage of criticism of this White House: Disenchanted hawks are writing that Mr. Bush has abandoned the certainties of the first term and taken too soft a line on North Korea and Iran; from the other side of the spectrum, former officials are telling tales about how the administration bent rules on torture or domestic spying.

But Mr. Greenspan, now 81, is in a different class, by dint of his fame, his economic authority and his service across party lines. His critiques are likely to have more resonance among Mr. Bush’s base.

His book was provided to The New York Times by his publisher, Penguin Press, under an agreement that nothing would be reported until its publication date, on Monday. But The Wall Street Journal, saying it had purchased a copy from a retailer, published excerpts on its Web site on Friday night, freeing other news organizations to do the same.

Much of the book concerns Mr. Greenspan’s reflections on markets, globalization and the media’s fascination with the thickness of his briefcase on the way to meetings of the Federal Open Market Committee, which sets interest rates.

He praises President Bush for letting the Fed stay independent of political pressure, saying he was scrupulous in not trying to interfere with monetary policy — which he contrasts sharply with the pressure exerted by his father, George H. W. Bush, in the early 1990s. For years, the first President Bush has blamed Mr. Greenspan for contributing to his defeat in 1992 by failing to prevent a recession by cutting interest rates.

Of the presidents he worked with, Mr. Greenspan reserves his highest praise for Bill Clinton, whom he described in his book as a sponge for economic data who maintained “a consistent, disciplined focus on long-term economic growth.”

It was a presidency marred by the Monica Lewinsky scandal, he writes, but he fondly describes his alliance with two of Mr. Clinton’s Treasury secretaries, Robert E. Rubin and Lawrence H. Summers, in battling financial crises in Latin America and then Asia.

By contrast, Mr. Greenspan paints a picture of Mr. Bush as a man driven more by ideology and the desire to fulfill campaign promises made in 2000, incurious about the effects of his economic policy, and an administration incapable of executing policy.

The White House is clearly not eager to get into a public argument with Mr. Greenspan, whom President Bush reappointed to a fifth term in May 2004. But they pushed back at Mr. Greenspan’s central themes.

“The Republican leadership in the House and Senate kept to our top number,” Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman, said. Veto threats worked, he said, to keep spending within caps set by the White House. “We’re not going to apologize for standing up the Department of Homeland Security and fighting terror.”

Mr. Greenspan described his own emotional journey in dealing with Mr. Bush, from an initial elation about the return of his old friends from the Ford White House — including Mr. Cheney and Donald H. Rumsfeld, secretary of defense — to astonishment and then disappointment at how much they had changed.

ImageMr. Greenspan writes in his memoir that President Bush was blinded by politics.

Mr. Greenspan writes in his memoir that President Bush was blinded by politics.

Credit...Penguin Press, via Bloomberg News

“I indulged in a bit of fantasy, envisioning this as the government that might have existed had Gerald Ford garnered the extra 1 percent of the vote he’d needed to edge past Jimmy Carter,” Mr. Greenspan writes in his memoir. “I thought we had a golden opportunity to advance the ideals of effective, fiscally conservative government and free markets.”

Instead, Mr. Greenspan continued, “I was soon to see my old friends veer off in unexpected directions.” He expected Mr. Bush to veto spending bills, he writes, but was told that the president believed he could control J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois, the Republican speaker of the House, better by signing them.

“My friend,” he writes of Mr. O’Neill, “soon found himself to be the odd man out; much to my disappointment, economic policymaking in the Bush administration remained firmly in the hands of the White House staff.”

He was clearly referring to the political team led by Karl Rove at the White House. Mr. Rove was a neighbor of Mr. Greenspan in a leafy enclave near the Potomac River, but the two men almost never had a conversation.

In responding to Mr. Greenspan, Mr. Fratto of the White House disputed the accusation that Mr. O’Neill’s economic arguments were ignored. “Just because you don’t carry the day doesn’t mean your views weren’t considered,” Mr. Fratto said.

Though Mr. Greenspan does not admit he made a mistake, he shows remorse about how Republicans jumped on his endorsement of the 2001 tax cuts to push through unconditional cuts without any safeguards against surprises. He recounts how Mr. Rubin and Senator Kent Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota, begged him to hold off on an endorsement because of how it would be perceived.

“It turned out that Conrad and Rubin were right,” he acknowledges glumly. He says Republican leaders in Congress made a grievous error in spending whatever it took to ensure a permanent Republican majority.

Mr. Greenspan has critics as well, and they are likely to weigh in as soon as the book is published. Though he publicly disagreed with Mr. Bush’s supply-side approach to tax cuts, urging Congress to offset the cost with savings elsewhere, he refrained from public criticism that could have shifted the debate. His willingness to criticize now, 18 months after leaving office, may open him to the accusation of failing to speak out when it could have affected policy.

Today, Mr. Greenspan is indignant and chagrined about his role in the Bush tax cuts. “I’d have given the same testimony if Al Gore had been president,” he writes, complaining that his words had been distorted by supporters and opponents of the cuts.

Mr. Greenspan, of course, had been the ultimate Washington insider for years, and knew full well that politicians cited his words selectively to suit their agendas. He was also legendary for ducking delicate issues by, as he once said, “mumbling with great incoherence.”

Mr. Greenspan’s memoir describes at some length the monetary policies that many economists say fostered the extraordinary economic boom of the 1990s. In what is widely regarded as a brilliant insight, Mr. Greenspan became convinced the United States could grow faster than generally thought because productivity was climbing much faster than the official statistics implied.

Mr. Greenspan writes briefly about what may become a more troubling legacy, the housing bubble, and now the bust, that was fueled by low interest rates and risky mortgages in the last six years.

Some economists argue that Mr. Greenspan deserves considerable blame, because the Fed slashed interest rates to rock-bottom lows and kept them there for three years after the stock market collapse and the recession in 2001.

The Fed was “a prime culprit in creating the crisis,” wrote Steve Forbes, publisher of Forbes magazine, in a just-published commentary. But other economists, including critics of Mr. Greenspan, say the housing bubble resulted from much broader forces, including a dramatic drop of interest rates around the world and an explosion of mortgages that required no money down, no income verification and deceptively low initial teaser rates.

Mr. Greenspan generically defends the Fed’s action, writing: “I believed then, as now, that the benefits of broadened home ownership are worth the risk. Protection of property rights, so critical to a market economy, requires a critical mass of owners to sustain political support.”

The book appears in stores on Monday, the day before the Fed is expected to lower interest rates in an effort to prevent the collapsing housing market from taking the rest of the economy down with it.

How They Do It-- 'Trump's economy just caught coronavirus'

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 28 Feb 2020 15:17:00 +0000

Dana Milbank, Washington Post

Just two weeks ago, President Trump’s acting budget director stood in the White House briefing room and proclaimed that the spreading coronavirus hadn’t clouded the administration’s rosy economic outlook.

“Our view is that, at this point, coronavirus is not something that is going to have ripple effects,” said the official, Russell Vought.

This was in line with Trump’s claim to Fox News’s Sean Hannity that “we pretty much shut it down coming in from China.” As he departed for India on Sunday, Trump proclaimed that China’s president “will solve the problem” and offered assurances: “We have it very much under control in this country.”

Mission accomplished!

Wall Street begged to differ. The Dow Jones industrial average lost more than 1,000 points Monday, or 3.5 percent, the worst rout in two years and part of an international sell-off. That erased gains for this year, just five days after Trump, in the latest of hundreds of such boasts, announced the “Highest Stock Market In History, By Far!”

Goldman Sachs, citing the dangerous virus, cut its growth forecast for the U.S. economy to 1.2 percent for the first quarter, well below the 2.3 percent rate in 2019. J.P. Morgan noted that a number of large U.S. companies have cautioned about impacts from the virus. And this is nothing compared with what would happen if the virus gets a solid foothold here; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday reported the number of U.S. cases had reached 53, up by 18.

Even if Trump hasn’t acknowledged the gravity of the epidemic, The Post reports that his aides are considering asking Congress for an emergency spending package of as much as $1 billion. That’s a start, but Asha George, director of the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense, tells me that “a billion is not going to do it,” particularly because agencies need to replenish some $200 million they have already taken from other programs to fight coronavirus.

George says a spending package of $3 billion is needed immediately to fund public and private research on vaccines and antidotes, stockpiling medical supplies, manufacturing medicines to overcome shortages caused by China’s supply disruption, getting accurate diagnostic kits to hospitals and doctors, and more planning and guidance for worst-case scenarios. George also thinks there needs to be an ongoing disease-response fund so there isn’t another scramble when the next Zika, MERS, SARS, H1N1 or covid-19 inevitably arrives.

This is a felicitous case in which doing the right thing is also in Trump’s short-term political interest. If his administration can expand surveillance (beyond haphazard screening at a few airports) and react quickly and effectively when clusters of the disease pop up, then disruptions to the economy will be minimal. But if his administration fails at surveillance and control, the United States could be in for China-style closings of schools and businesses, travel disruption, hundreds of thousands of people catching the virus and thousands dying from it. That would mean a big hit to the economy as Trump approaches reelection.

“If the government does its job,” George says, “we should never get to a Wuhan scenario.” If doing the right thing isn’t Trump’s first instinct, he now has what for him is the most powerful incentive: His reelection.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told CNBC over the weekend that “based upon everything we see now this will be manageable.” That’s true — if the administration actually manages the illness rather than treating Americans with happy talk.

Trump has continued to declare that “it’s going to work out fine” and to congratulate himself for his sensible move to halt travel from China. “Sixty-one percent of the voters approve of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus,” he told one audience this month.

Even as markets began their tumble Monday, Trump told a vast crowd in India that “we have the greatest economy ever in the history of the United States.” He later tweeted “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA." Now that coronavirus clearly threatens the U.S. economy — and Trump’s reelection — hopefully he will push for a more robust attempt to fight it.

The administration is already taking additional steps — to protect Trump. Acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney was scheduled to accompany Trump to India, but at the last minute he was told to stay home, CNN reported, because he had a cold and “White House doctors advised against having him travel in such proximity to the president.”

How thoughtful of the White House to spare Trump his aide’s sniffles! Now how about protecting all of us from something worse?

2008 once more? The world may be headed for another global economic crisis

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 28 Feb 2020 15:08:00 +0000

Given the current economic situation—mainly, the US-China trade war, and the breakdown of corona virus—the world may be headed for another global economic crisis

Financial Express

At the end of last week, I was pondering over how the “respectable” crop of the-world-is-ending analysts seemed to have gone remarkably quiet in the past several months—the crazies, of course, are always there on the internet, forecasting, for instance, that gold will hit $2,500 in 2020, and $3,000 in 2021. I also noticed that gold has crossed $1,600 an ounce for the first time since 2013, representing a huge (37%) jump from its low of $1,170 in August 2018.

Over the weekend, gold continued to shimmer and US Treasury yields slid sharply—both clearly a flight to safety—and, finally, US equities took a hit.

Has the real impact of the corona virus started?

For some years now, many analysts have believed that the next major global crisis would start in China, because it was suspected to be hugely overleveraged; equally, if not more important, nobody knew what was really going on. However, with central banks keeping the money feed so easy, markets all over the world kept rising.

Judging from the way equity markets are behaving today, could that time have come?

It is, perhaps, significant that the long rally in US equities since the taper tantrum in 2015 was interrupted only when Trump began braying about a trade war with China in 2018. The Dow fell 15% in a couple of weeks, highlighting the fact that the health of the US economy—and certainly US equity markets—is very tightly linked to the China relationship.

With the trade war having gone on slow, equities once more jumped on the low interest rate train, and the Dow continued to rise, reaching an all-time high of just shy of 30,000 a couple of weeks ago, a rise of over 40% in the two years since the “start” of the trade war.

But, now, with this new game in town—and huge amounts of anecdotal evidence pointing to a squeeze on, and in some cases, a complete collapse of global supply chains—perhaps the day of reckoning is here. And, given that there is still a huge amount of uncertainty about whether the virus is contained, and the rate of its continuing spread across the world, it would stand to reason that the decline—in markets at least—would be much worse than what we saw when the trade war broke out.

Thus, 25% seems a shoo-in—this would take the Dow to 22,000—and it could certainly be even worse. The 2008 financial crisis saw US equities fall by 50%, and I think we have to be prepared for as much (taking the Dow to 15,000). What is worse, this time, is that most global central banks (not counting the Fed, fortunately) have zero room to cut interest rates. Equally, the tightening of supply chains suggest that domestic prices in many countries would rise, making it that much more difficult for central banks to come to the “rescue”.

All this suggests that the impact on sentiment, and the real economy could be even worse than in 2008-09.

For India, specifically, there could be three different impacts. First of all, of course, is the supply chain effect. Our largest imports from China include electronic equipments (smartphones, etc), machines, engines, pumps, organic chemicals, fertilisers, iron and steel, plastics, and medical and technical equipments. Thus, any or all of these could see hold-ups in shipments resulting in shortages and/or price rises. There are already reports that pharma raw materials are being held up, and there are anecdotal reports of sharp price rises in the sector.

The second impact would be positive for companies that compete against Chinese manufactures; I checked with a friend of mine who is in that situation, and while he is too much a gentleman to celebrate anyone else’s difficulties, he did say that February has been a bumper month for sales. The question, however, is how long that will continue if the overall economy comes under a global squeeze (on top of its already self-inflicted blows).

And, finally, since clarity and transparency are now at even more of a premium than in “normal” circumstances, India’s backsliding on its data integrity, the stone wall of economic planning from the government, and the increasing political unrest suggest that India may suffer more than most.

The rupee has wobbled a bit, but, thus far at least, remains underpinned. How long this will last is anybody’s guess.