Celebrated interfaith activist Lord Indarjit Singh has sensationally quit BBC Radio 4 after accusing it of behaving like the "thought police". He alleges that the corporation tried to prevent him discussing a historical Sikh religious figure who stood up to Muslim oppression -- in case it caused offence to Muslims, despite a lack of complaints.
The Sikh peer, who has been a contributor on Radio Four's Thought For The Day programme for more than three decades, is also accusing Radio Four bosses of "prejudice and intolerance" and over-sensitivity in relation to its coverage of Islam, after he says he was "blocked" from discussing the forced conversion of Hindus to Islam, under the Mughal emperors in 17th century India.
The 87-year-old peer's resignation comes as a blow to the show's flagship segment, that has been a part of Radio Four's Today programme since 1970, and has been described by Britain's former chief rabbi, Lord Jonathan Sacks, as "one of the last remaining places in the public square where religious communities are given a voice in Britain."
The segment, originally aired on November 28, 2018 -- and in spite of Singh's script containing no criticism of Islam -- is the latest in a long line of suspect BBC decisions enforced by seemingly over-zealous producers. "It was like saying to a Christian that he or she should not talk about Easter for fear of giving offence to the Jews," Singh said. There were, however, no complaints about the segment reported to OFCOM, the government approved broadcasting watchdog.
After the senior producer's initial objections to the script, Lord Singh said he would rather the slot was left empty "than have Sikh teachings insulted in this way". "The producer in question, reluctantly agreed for the talk to go ahead, rather than have to explain why no one was in the studio that morning," he said... "I can no longer accept prejudiced and intolerant attempts by the BBC to silence key Sikh teachings on tolerance, freedom of belief and the need for us all to make ours a more cohesive and responsible society..."
It also reported that after leaving... Lord Singh complained about his treatment but a review by BBC director of radio James Purnell rejected his complaint.
Lord Singh, a longstanding interfaith activist, said that some contributors to the slot joked among themselves about being subject to the "thought police".
He said: "The need for sensitivity in talking about religious, political or social issues has now been taken to absurd proportions with telephone insistence on trivial textual changes right up to going into the studio, making it difficult to say anything worthwhile. The aim of Thought for the Day has changed from giving an ethical input to social and political issues to the recital of religious platitudes and the avoidance of controversy, with success measured by the absence of complaints. I believe Guru Nanak [the founder of Sikhism] and Jesus Christ, who boldly raised social concerns while stressing tolerance and respect, would not be allowed near Thought for the Day today."
He accused the BBC of "a misplaced sense of political correctness that pushes contributors to bland and unworldly expressions of piety that no one can complain about"...
After the incident last November Lord Singh sent a catalogue of complaints to Mr Purnell, a former culture secretary. The peer said that after the BBC had agreed in 2011 that he could discuss the birthday of Guru Nanak "I was told to scrap it and talk about the forthcoming marriage of Prince William with Kate. I reluctantly agreed to do so, to the upset of many Sikh listeners."
Another time "when I wanted to include the words 'the one God of us all' [central to Sikh teachings], I was told I could not mention this 'because it might offend Muslims' "...
Lord Singh's decision to quit comes after the BBC reversed their own ruling that presenter, Naga Munchetty, breached BBC guidelines in criticising President Donald Trump for "perceived racism".
At the time of the incident, the BBC claimed that Munchetty's comments went "beyond what the guidelines allow for" by taking issue with Trump's statement on Twitter about certain political opponents of his:
"Why don't they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came."
So here is another thought for the day: Why should the BBC – or the rest of the mainstream media -- rely on journalistic accuracy, when a sensationalist misquote will do?
South America, Again, Leads Fight Against Neoliberalism
The presidential election in Argentina pitted the people against neoliberalism and the people won. What happens next will have a tremendous impact all over Latin America and serve as a blueprint for assorted Global South struggles.
The presidential election in Argentina was no less than a game-changer and a graphic lesson for the whole Global South. It pitted, in a nutshell, the people versus neoliberalism. The people won – with new President Alberto Fernandez and former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (CFK) as his VP.
Neoliberalism was represented by Mauricio Macri: a marketing product, former millionaire playboy, president of football legends Boca Juniors, fanatic of New Age superstitions, and CEO obsessed with spending cuts, who was unanimously sold by Western mainstream media as the new paradigm of a post-modern, efficient politician.
Well, the paradigm will soon be evacuated, leaving behind a wasteland: $250 billion in foreign debt; less than $50 billion in reserves; inflation at 55 percent; the U.S. dollar at over 60 pesos (a family needs roughly $500 to spend in a month; 35.4 percent of Argentine homes can’t make it); and, incredible as it may seem in a self-sufficient nation, a food emergency.
“The Head of Macri: How the First President of ‘No Politics’ Thinks, Lives and Leads.”
Macri, in fact the president of so-called Anti-Politics, No- Politics in Argentina, was a full IMF baby, enjoying total “support” (and gifted with a humongous $58 billion loan). New lines of credit, for the moment, are suspended. Fernandez is going to have a really hard time trying to preserve sovereignty while negotiating with foreign creditors, or “vultures,” as masses of Argentines define them. There will be howls on Wall Street and in the City of London about “fiery populism,” “market panicking,” “pariahs among international investors.” Fernandez refuses to resort to a sovereign default, which would add even more unbearable pain for the general public.
The good news is that Argentina is now the ultimate progressive lab on how to rebuild a devastated nation away from the familiar, predominant framework: a state mired in debt; rapacious, ignorant comprador elites; and “efforts” to balance the budget always at the expense of people’s interests.
What happens next will have a tremendous impact all over Latin America, not to mention serve as a blueprint for assorted Global South struggles. And then there’s the particularly explosive issue of how it will influence neighboring Brazil, which as it stands, is being devastated by a “Captain” Bolsonaro even more toxic than Macri.
Ride that Clio
It took less than four years for neoliberal barbarism, implemented by Macri, to virtually destroy Argentina. For the first time in its history Argentina is experiencing mass hunger.
In these elections, the role of charismatic former President CFK was essential. CFK prevented the fragmentation of Peronism and the whole progressive arc, always insisting, on the campaign trail, on the importance of unity.
But the most appealing phenomenon was the emergence of a political superstar: Axel Kicillof, born in 1971 and CFK’s former economy minister. When I was in Buenos Aires two months ago everyone wanted to talk about Kicillof.
The province of Buenos Aires congregates 40 percent of the Argentine electorate. Fernandez won over Macri by roughly 8 percent nationally. In Buenos Aires province though, the Macrists lost by 16 percent – because of Kicillof.
Kicillof’s campaign strategy was delightfully described as “Clio mata big data” (“Clio kills big data”), which sounds great when delivered with a porteño accent. He went literally all over the place – 180,000 km in two years, visiting all 135 cities in the province – in a humble 2008 Renault Clio, accompanied only by his campaign chief Carlos Bianco (the actual owner of the Clio) and his press officer Jesica Rey. He was duly demonized 24/7 by the whole mainstream media apparatus.
What Kicillof was selling was the absolute antithesis of Cambridge Analytica and Duran Barba – the Ecuadorian guru, junkie of big data, social networks and focus groups, who actually invented Macri the politician in the first place.
Argentina’s new president, Alberto Fernandez, at right, with his vice president, former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. (Screen shot/YouTube)
Kicillof played the role of educator – translating macroeconomic language into prices in the supermarket, and Central Bank decisions into credit card balance, all to the benefit of elaborating a workable government program. He will be the governor of no less than the economic and financial core of Argentina, much like Sao Paulo in Brazil.
Fernandez, for his part, is aiming even higher: an ambitious, new, national, social pact – congregating unions, social movements, businessmen, the Church, popular associations, aimed at implementing something close to the Zero Hunger program launched by Lula in 2003.
In his historic victory speech, Fernandez cried, “Lula libre!” (“Free Lula”). The crowd went nuts. Fernandez said he would fight with all his powers for Lula’s freedom; he considers the former Brazilian president, fondly, as a Latin American pop hero. Both Lula and Evo Morales are extremely popular in Argentina.
Inevitably, in neighboring, top trading partner and Mercosur member Brazil, the two-bit neofascist posing as president, who’s oblivious to the rules of diplomacy, not to mention good manners, said he won’t send any compliments to Fernandez. The same applies to the destroyed-from-the-inside Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Relations, once a proud institution, globally respected, now “led” by an irredeemable fool.
Former Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim, a great friend of Fernandez, fears that “hidden forces will sabotage him.” Amorim suggests a serious dialogue with the Armed Forces, and an emphasis on developing a “healthy nationalism.” Compare it to Brazil, which has regressed to the status of semi-disguised military dictatorship, with the ominous possibility of a tropical Patriot Act being approved in Congress to essentially allow the “nationalist” military to criminalize any dissidence.
Hit the Ho Chi Minh Trail
Beyond Argentina, South America is fighting neoliberal barbarism in its crucial axis, Chile, while destroying the possibility of an irreversible neoliberal take over in Ecuador. Chile was the model adopted by Macri, and also by Bolsonaro’s Finance Minister Paulo Guedes, a Chicago boy and Pinochetist fan. In a glaring instance of historical regression, the destruction of Brazil is being operated by a model now denounced in Chile as a dismal failure.
No surprises, considering that Brazil is Inequality Central. Irish economist Marc Morgan, a disciple of Thomas Piketty, in a 2018 research paper showed that the Brazilian 1 percent controls no less than 28 percent of national wealth, compared to 20 percent in the U.S. and 11 percent in France.
Axel Kicillof in 2014. (2violetas, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)
Which bring us, inevitably, to the immediate future of Lula – still hanging, and hostage to a supremely flawed Supreme Court. Even conservative businessmen admit that the only possible cure for Brazil’s political recovery – not to mention rebuilding an economic model centered on wealth distribution – is represented by “Free Lula.”
When that happens we will finally have Brazil-Argentina leading a key Global South vector towards a post-neoliberal, multipolar world.
Across the West, usual suspects have been trying to impose the narrative that protests from Barcelona to Santiago have been inspired by Hong Kong. That’s nonsense. Hong Kong is a complex, very specific situation, which I have analyzed, for instance, here, mixing anger against political non-representation with a ghostly image of China.
Each of the outbursts – Catalonia, Lebanon, Iraq, the Gilets Jaunes/Yellow Vests for nearly a year now – are due to very specific reasons. Lebanese and Iraqis are not specifically targeting neoliberalism, but they do target a crucial subplot: political corruption.
Protests are back in Iraq including Shi’ite-majority areas. Iraq’s 2005 constitution is similar to Lebanon’s, passed in 1943: power is distributed according to religion, not politics. This is a French colonizer thing – to keep Lebanon always dependent, and replicated by the Exceptionalists in Iraq. Indirectly, the protests are also against this dependency.
The Yellow Vests are targeting essentially President Emmanuel Macron’s drive to implement neoliberalism in France – thus the movement’s demonization by hegemonic media. But it’s in South America that protests go straight to the point: it’s the economy, stupid. We are being strangled and we’re not gonna take it anymore. A great lesson can be had by paying attention to Bolivian Vice-President Alvaro Garcia Linera.
As much as Slavoj Zizek and Chantal Mouffe may dream of Left Populism, there are no signs of progressive anger organizing itself across Europe, apart from the Yellow Vests. Portugal may be a very interesting case to watch – but not necessarily progressive.
To digress about “populism” is nonsensical. What’s happening is the Age of Anger exploding in serial geysers that simply cannot be contained by the same, old, tired, corrupt forms of political representation allowed by that fiction, Western liberal democracy.
Zizek spoke of a difficult “Leninist” task ahead – of how to organize all these eruptions into a “large-scale coordinated movement.” It’s not gonna happen anytime soon. But, eventually, it will. As it stands, pay attention to Linera, pay attention to Kiciloff, let a collection of insidious, rhizomatic, underground strategies intertwine. Long live the post-neoliberal Ho Chi Minh trail.
Forget Narcos, Mexico's National Guard Has A New Target: Uber
In recent weeks, Mexican taxi drivers have blocked access to Uber drivers at some of the country's busiest airports. Cab drivers are furious with Uber and other ride-hailing app companies for disrupting the taxi industry, leading to declining passenger volumes in the last several years.
Thousands of taxi drivers blocked traffic by parking their cars along Reforma Avenue in Mexico City, Monday, October 7, to protest against the private taxi company Uber and others apps for alleged unfair competition. (AFP, AP) pic.twitter.com/kRC8LRTFhW
As a result of the turmoil, the federal government has responded with support for the taxi industry by offering to deploy National Guard troops at major airports across the country to crack down, specifically, on Uber drivers.
Bloomberg cites a federal government press release, which describes a recent meeting held by the Ministry of the Interior and the National Taxi Movement (MNT), to create a new regulatory framework around ride-hailing apps.
The release also states how government troops will be deployed at 56 major airports to make sure only federally permitted taxis are picking up passengers at loading areas.
"It was also agreed that the Ministry of the Interior will coordinate requesting from the Ministry of Communications and Transportation (SCT) and the National Guard (GN) or equivalent, actions in federal areas to carry out revision operations in the 56 airports of the country and areas of federal jurisdiction," the press release read.
The Uber crackdown comes at a time when the country's economy is teetering on the edge of a recession.
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) promised an economic revival through a populist and nationalist agenda when he won the presidential election last year. But one year later, since AMLO won, the economy completely reversed and is now headed for a technical recession.
AMLO, desperate to please voters, appears to be shifting some National Guard troops, ones who were deployed on drug enforcement operations, to now protect the taxi industry from Uber picking people up at major airports. Sounds ridiculous, right?
Social media had a field day with AMLO, and there was immediate backlash on Twitter when this news broke on Wednesday:
So, the National Guard in Mexico is going after UBER instead of the Narco...
Instead of fighting crime. Mexico will use its recently created police force “Guardia Nacional” to enforce a new ban on ridesharing platforms in all airports. @verge@Gizmodo@GizmodoES@Uber forcing passengers to an abusive and mafia-style controlled “authorized taxi” service https://t.co/7hlPSdyvRx
Who Is The Unknown Jihadist Named As Islamic State’s New Caliph?
Submitted by Nauman Sadiq,
Confirming the deaths of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and the Islamic State’s spokesman Abu Hassan al-Muhajir, who was killed in a US airstrike in northwest Syria a day after the killing of al-Baghdadi, the Islamic State’s al-Furqan media has announced Abu Ibrahim Hashemi al-Quraishi as the new caliph of the terrorist organization.
Al-Quraishi is such an obscure jihadist that even national security analysts tracking the details of militant movements in the Middle East don’t have an inkling about his origins or biography. Even his name appears to be an assumed alias rather than a real name. Abu Ibrahim basically means “father of Ibrahim” in Arabic whereas Banu Hashem was Prophet Mohammad’s family and Quraishi means the tribe of Quraish. Both are common surnames in the Islamic World.
In any case, identifying individual militant leaders by name is irrelevant because as in the case of the Taliban and several other jihadist groups, the decisions are collectively taken by the Shura Council of the Islamic State. Excluding al-Baghdadi and a handful of his hardline Islamist aides, the rest of Islamic State’s top leadership is comprised of Saddam-era military and intelligence officials. According to a Washington Post report [1], hundreds of ex-Baathists constitute the top- and mid-tier command structure of the Islamic State who plan all the operations and direct its military strategy.
The title caliph of the Islamic State is simply a figurehead, which is obvious from the fact that al-Baghdadi remained in hiding for several years before being killed in a Special Ops raid on October 26, and the terrorist group kept functioning autonomously without any guidance or directives from its purported chief.
Here, let me try to dispel a myth peddled by the corporate media and foreign policy think tanks that the Islamic State originated from al-Qaeda in Iraq. Many biased political commentators of the mainstream media deliberately try to muddle the reality in order to link the emergence of the Islamic State to the ill-conceived invasion of Iraq in 2003 by the Republican Bush administration.
Their motive behind this chicanery is to absolve the Obama administration’s policy of nurturing the Syrian opposition against the Syrian government since the beginning of Syria’s proxy war until June 2014, when the Islamic State overran Mosul in Iraq and the Obama administration made a volte-face on its previous “regime change” policy of providing indiscriminate support to Syrian militants and declared a war against a faction of Syrian rebel groups, the Islamic State.
Mainstream media’s duplicitous spin-doctors misleadingly try to find the roots of the Islamic State in al-Qaeda in Iraq; however, the insurgency in Iraq died down after “the Iraq surge” of 2007. Al-Qaeda in Iraq became an impotent organization after the death of Abu Musab al Zarqawi in June 2006 and the subsequent surge of troops in Iraq. The re-eruption of insurgency in Iraq was the spillover effect of nurturing militants in Syria, when the Islamic State overran Fallujah and parts of Ramadi in January 2014 and subsequently reached the zenith of its power by capturing Mosul in June 2014.
The borders between Syria and Iraq are highly porous and it’s impossible to contain the flow of militants and arms between the two countries. The Obama administration’s policy of providing money, weapons and training to Syrian militants in training camps located at the border regions of Turkey and Jordan bordering Syria was bound to backfire sooner or later.
Notwithstanding, over the decades, it has been a convenient stratagem of the Western powers with two-party political systems, particularly the US, to evade responsibility for the death and destruction brought upon the hapless Middle Eastern countries by their predecessors by playing blame games and finger-pointing.
For instance, during the Soviet-Afghan jihad of the 1980s, the Carter and Reagan administrations nurtured the Afghan jihadists against the Soviet-backed government in Kabul with the help of Pakistan’s intelligence agencies. The Afghan jihad created a flood of millions of refugees who sought refuge in the border regions of Pakistan and Iran.
The Reagan administration’s policy of providing training and arms to the Afghan militants had the unintended consequences of spawning al-Qaeda and Taliban and it also destabilized the Af-Pak region, which is still in the midst of lawlessness, perpetual anarchy and an unrelenting Taliban insurgency more than four decades after the proxy war was fought in Afghanistan.
After the signing of the Geneva Accords in 1988, however, and the subsequent change of guard in Washington, the Clinton administration dissociated itself from the ill-fated Reagan administration’s policy of nurturing Afghan militants with the help of Gulf’s petro-dollars and Pakistan’s intelligence agencies and laid the blame squarely on minor regional players.
Similarly, during the Libyan so-called “humanitarian intervention” in 2011, the Obama administration provided money and arms to myriads of tribal militias and Islamic jihadists to topple the Arab-nationalist Gaddafi regime. But after the policy backfired and pushed Libya into lawlessness, anarchy and civil war, the mainstream media pointed the finger at Egypt, UAE and Saudi Arabia for backing the renegade general, Khalifa Haftar, in eastern Libya, even though he had lived for more than two decades [2] in the US right next to the CIA’s headquarter in Langley, Virginia.
Regarding the Western powers’ modus operandi of waging proxy wars in the Middle East, since the times of the Soviet-Afghan jihad during the eighties, it has been the fail-safe game plan of master strategists at NATO to raise money [3] from the oil-rich emirates of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE and Kuwait; then buy billions of dollars’ worth of weapons from the arms markets [4] in the Eastern Europe; and then provide those weapons and guerilla warfare training to the disaffected population of the victim country by using the intelligence agencies of the latter’s regional adversaries. Whether it’s Afghanistan, Chechnya, Libya or Syria, the same playbook was executed to the letter.
Raising funds for proxy wars from the Gulf Arab States allows the Western executives the freedom to evade congressional scrutiny; the benefit of buying weapons from unregulated arms markets of the Eastern Europe is that such weapons cannot be traced back to the Western capitals; and using jihadist proxies to achieve strategic objectives has the advantage of taking the plea of “plausible deniability” if the strategy backfires, which it often does. Remember that al-Qaeda and Taliban were the by-products of the Soviet-Afghan jihad, and the Islamic State and its global network of terrorists are the blowback of the proxy war in Syria.
On the subject of the supposed “powerlessness” of the US in the global affairs, the Western think tanks and the corporate media’s spin-doctors generally claim that Pakistan deceived Washington in Afghanistan by providing safe havens to the Taliban; Turkey hoodwinked the US in Syria by using the war against Islamic State as a pretext for cracking down on Kurds; Saudi Arabia and UAE betrayed the US in Yemen by mounting ground offensive and airstrikes against the Houthis rebels; and once again Saudi Arabia, UAE and Egypt went against the ostensible policy of the US in Libya by destabilizing the Tripoli-based government, even though Khalifa Haftar is known to be an American stooge.
If the US policymakers are so naïve, then how come they still control the global political and economic order? This perennially whining attitude of the Western corporate media that such and such regional players betrayed them, otherwise they were on top of their game is actually a clever stratagem that has been deliberately designed by the spin-doctors of the Western mainstream media and foreign policy think tanks to cast the Western powers in a positive light and to vilify adversaries, even if the latter are their tactical allies in some of the regional conflicts.
Fighting wars through proxies allows the international power brokers the luxury of taking the plea of “plausible deniability” in their defense and at the same time they can shift all the blame for wrongdoing on minor regional players. The Western powers’ culpability lies in the fact that because of them a system of international justice based on sound principles of morality and justice cannot be built in which the violators can be punished for their wrongdoing and the victims of injustice, tyranny and violence can be protected.
Leaving the funding, training and arming aspects of insurgencies aside, but especially pertaining to conferring international legitimacy to an armed insurgency, like the Afghan so-called “freedom struggle” of the Cold War, or the supposedly “moderate and democratic” Libyan and Syrian insurgencies of the contemporary era, it is simply beyond the power of minor regional players and their nascent media, which has a geographically and linguistically limited audience, to cast such heavily armed and brutal insurrections in a positive light in order to internationally legitimize them; only the Western mainstream media that has a global audience and which serves as the mouthpiece of the Western deep states has perfected this game of legitimizing the absurd and selling Satans as saviors.
Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based attorney, columnist and geopolitical analyst focused on the politics of Af-Pak and Middle East regions, neocolonialism and petro-imperialism.
After several months of disappointing payrolls prints, October is set for a doozy.
The headline jobs number is expected at 85k, a sharp drop from 136K in September, largely influenced by the strike at GM which might have affected as much as 80k workers; the trend rate has held steady in recent months, though recent prints are notably below the 12-month pace, as one would expect amid mixed labor market indicators: the ADP surveyed mixed expectations, and the previous was revised down; initial jobless claims have been flat while job cut announcements rose; the Markit PMI saw the employment sub-index fall at the steepest rate since 2009 while consumer confidence signals were also mixed, with the differential between jobs “plentiful” and “hard to get” widening, boding well, and consumers’ expectations for income prospects rose even as consumers were less confident about the outlook and the expectation for more jobs in the months ahead fell.
Avg. Work Week Hours: Exp. 34.4hrs, Prev. 34.4hrs.
The street expects 85k nonfarm payrolls to be added to the US economy in October, while Goldman expects 75K new jobs, which in addition to a 46k drag from the General Motors strike, expects further declines in the services sector. The three-month trend rate currently stands at 157k, a touch above the six-month pace of 154k, though both are lower than the 12-month average of 179k.
GM EFFECT:
The October report will be adversely affected by strikes at GM. There were around 48k GM workers on weekly and bi-weekly wages, who were paid in the week running up to the strike, and will not be included in the October NFP. The impact on GM supply chains is less clear, with some estimating that as many as 200k workers may have been affected, though this has not been reflected in weekly jobless claims data which signaled just short of 12k workers impacted in key GM states (heading into the September NFP, claims were 212.75k in the NFP survey week, and have risen trivially to 215.75k into the October data). Some of the impact might also be seen in future reports, given that there may be more workers yet to make a claim. As a comparison, the GM strike in 1998 reduced payrolls by 132k, but most expect a more benign outcome in this month’s data, with a figure nearer to 50-80k suggested, analysts have opined. Away from GM, upside may come via census hiring, where 28k of temporary workers have been hired, of a targeted 40k.
ADP EMPLOYMENT:
The ADP's gauge of private payrolls printed 125k (exp. 120k), though the previous was revised to 93k from 135k due to back fitting, rather than an ominous sign for September revisions; Due to methodological differences, the data was not affected by the 50k striking workers at GM. Moody’s economist Zandi said that job growth has “throttled” back over the last year, with the slowdown most pronounced at manufacturers and small companies. Zandi warned that if hiring weakens any further, unemployment will begin to rise.
CHALLENGER JOB CUTS:
Job cuts announced by US employers jumped to 50,275 in October, from 41,557 (down 33.5% Y/Y, however) – the second consecutive month during which cuts were lower Y/Y. Challenger said that job cuts were steady, for the most part, though it did point out increases in certain industries, particularly those experiencing disruptions from new technologies, uncertainty from government regulation or issues with trade. The report also noted that many steel companies announced cuts last month, attributed to a number of reasons, including tariffs on steel, declining demand, and market conditions. In the autos sector, companies have announced 43,025 job cuts this year, 197% higher than the 14,489 announced through the same point last year. Challenger said, however, that hiring plans by US companies were at a record high, and through October, companies announced 1,162,375 hiring plans, 431,781 of which are for the holiday season.
BUSINESS SURVEYS:
We have not had the release of the ISM surveys ahead of the jobs report, whose employment sub-indices give a read on how the labour market is progressing. Markit’s PMI report for October, however, stated that employment numbers fell for a second month, declining at the steepest rate since December 2009, which survey respondents often attribute to more cautious hiring strategies and a lack of new work to replace completed projects. These surveys, however, may also be subject to the GM-effect.
CONSUMER CONFIDENCE:
Within the Conference Board's gauge of US consumer confidence, the differential between jobs plentiful vs jobs hard to get -- which can provide a good signal for the direction of the jobless rate -- rose to 35.1 from 33.2, auguring well for the jobs report, with those judging that jobs were "plentiful" rising to 46.9 from 44.8 (jobs "hard to get" rose very slightly to 11.8 from 11.6). However, the report noted that consumers' outlook for the labour market was less upbeat, with the proportion expecting more jobs in the months ahead decreasing from 17.6 16.9, while those anticipating fewer jobs rose from 15.4 to 17.8. And on their short-term income prospects, consumers expecting an improvement increased from 19.7 to 21.1, while the proportion expecting a decrease holding steady at 6.5.
ARGUING FOR A WEAKER REPORT:
Employer surveys. Business activity surveys were mixed in October (on net stronger for manufacturing but slightly softer for services). And while the employment components generally rose for the manufacturing sector (tracker +2.3 to 53.7), they declined further for the much larger services sector (-1.7 to 51.0). As shown in Exhibit 1, the level of these surveys is consistent with an underlying pace of job growth of around 100-130k per month. Service-sector job growth was 109k in September and averaged 121k over the last six months, while manufacturing payroll employment contracted by 2k in September, below its +3k average over the last six months.
Hurricane Echo. As shown in Exhibit 2, the seasonal factors have evolved in recent years to anticipate incrementally larger October job gains, and we note the possibility that the seasonal adjustment software is fitting to the post-hurricane employment rebounds of October 2017 and 2018. If so, this would imply a higher hurdle for job growth in tomorrow’s report.
GM Strike. As indicated in the BLS strike report, 46k General Motors employees did not work during the October payroll period due to a United Auto Workers strike. The GM strike ended last weekend, meaning that this one-off drop within tomorrow’s nonfarm payroll figures is set to reverse with the November report.
ARGUING FOR A STRONGER REPORT
Labor market slack. With the labor market somewhat beyond full employment, we see the dwindling availability of workers as one factor weighing on job growth this year. In past tight labor markets however, payroll growth tends to reaccelerate in October (for example in 2007 and 1999). Accordingly, we believe some firms likely pulled forward hiring into October, anticipating a shortage of applicants in Q4.
Scope for revisions. Because August and September tend to be weak in the preliminary release—likely reflecting a recurring seasonal bias in early vintages—we note the possibility of upward revisions accompanying tomorrow’s report. Indeed, job growth over the prior two months has been revised up with the October report in 4 of the last 5 years (average revision of +35k).
NEUTRAL FACTORS
Jobless claims. Initial jobless claims were roughly unchanged in the four weeks between the payroll reference periods—averaging 216k—and are consistent with a very low pace of layoffs. Continuing claims rose by 27k from survey week to survey week, the largest sequential increase since June.
ADP. The payroll-processing firm ADP reported a 125k increase in October private employment, 15k above consensus and just below the 132k average pace over the three prior months. While the ADP report was somewhat stronger than our estimates and suggested that the underlying pace of job growth remains decent, we expect additional factors including the General Motors strike to weigh on Friday’s employment numbers.
Job availability. The Conference Board labor market differential—the difference between the percent of respondents saying jobs are plentiful and those saying jobs are hard to get—rebounded by 1.6pt to +35.1 in October, not far from its cycle-high. Other job availability readings were softer: JOLTS job openings declined further to a 17-month low (-123k to 7,051k in August) and the Conference Board’s Help Wanted Online index fell (-1.4pt to 103.0 in September).
UNEMPLOYMENT RATE:
The unemployment rate likely rebounded a tenth to 3.6%. While the participation rate still appears somewhat elevated (63.2%, vs. 6-month average of 63.0%), continuing claims rebounded by 27k from survey week to survey week, and their level...
... suggests scope for a partial reversal of last month's 50-year low in the jobless rate. At the margin, seasonal distortions in continuing claims would also argue for a higher underlying stock of unemployed workers. Note that the BLS treats striking workers as “employed not at work,” so we do not expect the strike to affect the jobless rate.
US Army Major (ret.): Trump's Antiwar Speech Deserved A Better Reception
Authored by Danny Sjursen via TruthDig.com,
There were parts of President Trump’s latest speech on Syria, which, if read without the sound of The Donald’s gruff, bombastic voice, sounded a whole lot like Bernie Sanders might’ve delivered it.
That’s right, sandwiched between Trump’s standard braggadocio about how he single-handedly secured “a better future for Syria and for the Middle East,” and his cynical pivot to decry his opponents’ supposed desire to accept “unlimited migration from war-torn regions” across the U.S. border, was one of the strongest blasts of antiwar rhetoric delivered by a sitting U.S. president since Dwight Eisenhower.
If any other president—think Obama—or major liberal political figure had spoken so clearly against endless war and so poignantly diagnosed the current American disease of military hyper-interventionism, CNN and MSNBC would’ve gushed about Nobel Peace Prizes. It must be said, of course, that Trump has hardly governed according to these peacenik proclamations—he has, after all added more troops in the region, especially in Saudi Arabia, and merely reshuffled the soldiers from Syria across the border to Iraq. Nevertheless, even if the president’s actions don’t match his words, the words themselves remain important, especially from a 21st century, post-9/11 commander in chief.
No doubt, Trump’s partial withdrawal from Syria was initially clumsy, and it’s extremely difficult to parse out any sort of coherent doctrine in his muddled Mideast policy. Reducing troop levels in Syria isn’t much of an accomplishment if it’s followed, as it might be, by a shift toward drumming up or executing a Saudi/Israeli-pressured war with Iran. Still, the speech, though problematic in several areas, deserved a fairer reception from the corporate media establishment.
Beyond the intellectual dishonesty of some press outlets’ displays of reflexive anti-Trumpism, there’s the salient fact that none of the president’s critics have proposed a practical, long-term alternative strategy for the U.S. military in Northeast Syria. Crocodile tears for the Kurds are naught but a cynical cudgel with which to attack the president; there was never any established plan to permanently carve out a viable Kurdish statelet in Syria, or serious weighing of the military, diplomatic and economic costs of such an endeavor.
So, since none of the mainstream networks were willing to do it, let’s review some of the sensible things Trump said in the meat of his speech, nuggets of earthy wisdom that this forever war veteran, for one, wishes Trump would follow through on:
The same people that I watched and read — giving me and the United States advice — were the people that I have been watching and reading for many years. They are the ones that got us into the Middle East mess but never had the vision or the courage to get us out. They just talk.
This is demonstrably true. The politicians (Democrat and Republican), failed retired generals, and Bush/Obama era intelligence community retreads are the very people who crafted the failed, counterproductive interventionist policies that Trump inherited. They never had answers to the tough questions regarding why their countless military missions never stabilized the region, what the endgame of these endless wars would be, or how, exactly, the U.S. would or could extricate its troops from the Greater Middle East. Why does anyone still listen to these establishment clowns?
How many Americans must die in the Middle East in the midst of these ancient sectarian and tribal conflicts?
That’s a hell of a good question, Mr. President. If the term is, indeed, “must,” then the logical and ethical answer should be zero. And that should preclude any absurd, future war with Iran—if only Trump would follow through with his still-unfulfilled campaign promises.
Across the Middle East, we have seen anguish on a colossal scale. We have spent $8 trillion on wars in the Middle East, never really wanting to win those wars. But after all that money was spent and all of those lives lost, the young men and women gravely wounded — so many — the Middle East is less safe, less stable, and less secure than before these conflicts began.
That’s the rub, now, isn’t it? Though the $8 trillion figure might be a tad high, Trump isn’t far off. The Cost of War Project at Brown University came to the same general conclusions after an exhausting and ongoing study of the outlays and outcomes of America’s post-9/11 wars. In fact, the reality is even worse than Trump claimed in the speech. By a lowball estimate, researchers at Brown demonstrate that these region-shattering wars have killed 244,000 civilians and 6,950 U.S. soldiers, and they have created 21 million refugees. For all that, Trump is correct to note that, even by State Department global terrorism statistics, the region isless safe, less stable and infused with more Islamist “terrorists,” who’ve multiplied faster than America’s beloved troopers could ever hope to kill them.
The job of our military is not to police the world. Other nations must step up and do their fair share. That hasn’t taken place.
Also true, or at least it ought to be. Unfortunately, “policing” the world is precisely what Bush II and Obama (and Trump himself) has had me and my fellow soldiers doing since at least October 2001. And it hasn’t worked, hasn’t made America safer, hasn’t made the world a better place. Quite the opposite.
As for Syria, at least now—much to the chagrin of the bipartisan establishment elite—Russia, Turkey, the Assad regime and the Kurds are negotiating an admittedly messy settlement in their near abroad. And if it is truly a mess, as it’s all but certain to be, then what’s so bad about having Putin mired in it? All this talk of “surrendering” Syria to Putin is so much exaggerated malarkey. Syria has always been a Soviet, and then Russian, client state, home to a longstanding naval base at Tartus, and clearly in Moscow’s orbit. In that sense nothing has changed, and as before, Syria—even if ruled by an Assad and backed by a Putin——presents no tangible, let alone existential, threat to the United States, unless, that is, Islamic State does reconstitute. However, Russia and Assad, at least, have a distinct interest in avoiding that outcome.
Taken as a whole, Trump’s remarks included some profound and piercing antiwar material, along with the usual nonsense one expects from this president. As such, accompanying the quite appropriate criticism of the speech, an honest media doing its job ought to have cheered the parts of value and generated a national conversation about Trump’s appraisal of the woes of American forever war. Then, a functioning press should’ve held the president’s feet to the proverbial fire and asked him why his practical actions so rarely cohere with his, in this case, sensible words. That the media has not, and will not, take antiwar rhetoric seriously and grapple with real questions of militarist policy is further proof that it, along with Congress and the generals, was bought and sold long ago by the military-industrial complex.
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Danny Sjursen is a retired U.S. Army Major and regular contributor to Truthdig. His work has also appeared in Harper’s, The L.A. Times, The Nation, Tom Dispatch, The Huffington Post and The Hill. He served combat tours with reconnaissance units in Iraq and Afghanistan and later taught history at his alma mater, West Point. He is the author of a memoir and critical analysis of the Iraq War, “Ghostriders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge.” He co-hosts the progressive veterans’ podcast “Fortress on a Hill.” Follow him on Twitter at @SkepticalVet.
Xanax Patients Anxious Over 'Contamination' Recall
People who take the highly addictive anti-anxiety medication sold under the brand name Xanax have a new worry; contaminated medication.
Mylan Pharmaceuticals has issued a voluntary nationwide recall of a Alprazolam tablets (USP C-IV 0.5 mg, generic), in a lot distributed between July and August of this year, according to Newsweek.
The affected batch is lot number 8082708 and was sold in 500-pill bottles with an expiry date of September 2020. The recall has been issued on account of possible contamination with a foreign substance.
As of right now, the decision to recall sales of lot number 8082708 appears to be a precautionary action. According to a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) statement published Saturday, any adverse health effects relating to the batch have yet to be reported. -Newsweek
That said, "Clinical impact from the foreign material, if present, is expected to be rare, but the remote risk of infection to a patient cannot be ruled out," according to the company.
Anyone who has experienced medical issued they believe may have been caused by the drug is advised to speak with a medical professional, and can be reported to the FDA's MedWatch Adverse Event Reporting program.
A powerful benzodiazepine, Xanax works by targeting gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) receptors, making patients more relaxed and less anxious. It is incredibly easy to become addicted to the drug, and quitting cold turkey can result in life-threatening symptoms such as seizures.
Stephen Cohen and I emphasize that the state of tension today between the United States and Russia is more dangerous than during the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union. For calling needed attention to the risk of nuclear war heightened by the current state of tension, both Cohen and I have been called “Russian dupes/agents” by PropOrNot, a website suspected of being funded by an element of the US military/security complex.
Cohen and I emphasize that during the Cold War both sides were working to reduce tensions and to build trust. President John F. Kennedy worked with Khruschev to defuse the dangerous Cuban Missile Crisis. President Richard Nixon made arms control agreements with the Soviet leaders, as did President Jimmy Carter. President Ronald Reagan and Gorbachev worked together to end the Cold War. President George H.W. Bush’s administration gave assurances to Gorbachev that if the Soviets agreed to the renunification of Germany, the US would not move NATO one inch to the East.
These accomplishments were all destroyed by the Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama neoconized regimes. President Donald Trump’s intention to normalize US/Russian relations has been blocked by the US military/security complex, presstitute media, and Democratic Party.
The Russiagate hoax and currently the illegitimate impeachment process have succeeded in preventing any reduction in the dangerous state of tensions between the two nuclear powers.
Those of us who lived and fought the Cold War are acutely aware of the numerous occasions when false warnings of incoming ICBMs and other moments of high tension could have resulted in nuclear Armageddon.
Former CIA official Ray McGovern reminds us that on October 27, 1962, during the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, a single Soviet Navy submarine captain, Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov, prevented the outbreak of nuclear war. Arkhipov was one of two captains on Soviet submarine B-59. After hours of B-59 being battered by depth charges from US warships, the other captain, Valentin Grigorievich Savitsky readied a 10-kiloton nuclear weapon capable of wiping out the entire USS Randolph carrier task force, to be readied for launch. It didn’t happen only because Arkhipov was present and countermanded the order and brought the Soviet submarine to the surface. Ray McGovern tells the story here:
...and you can read it in Daniel Ellsberg’s book, The Doomsday Machine. The really scary part of the story is that US intelligence was so incompetent that Washington had no idea that Soviet nuclear weapons were in the combat area on a submarine undergoing debt-charging by the US Navy. The brass thought they could teach the Soviets a lesson by sinking a submarine and came close to getting the United States destroyed.
Another Soviet hero who prevented nuclear war was Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov who disobeyed Soviet military protocol and did not pass on reports of incoming US ICBMs. He did not believe that there was a military/political basis for such an attack and concluded it was a malfunction of the Soviet satellite warning system, which it was.
Many times both Americans and Soviets overrode warnings on the basis of judgment. My colleague, Zbigniew Brezezinski told me the story of being awakened at 2AM with reports of incoming Soviet ICBMs. It turned out that a simulation of an attack had in some way gotten into the warning system and was reported as real. It was a very close call. Someone doubted it enough to detect the error before Brezezinski woke the president.
Today with tensions so high and neither side trusting the other, the probability of human judgment prevailing over official warning systems is much lower.
Over the years I have tried to correct the widespread misunderstanding and misrepresentation of President Reagan’s military buildup/starwars hype and hostility toward Marxist, or perhaps merely leftwing reform movements, in Granada and Nicaragua. With his economic program in place and stagflation on the way out, Reagan’s plan was to bring the Soviets to the bargaining table by threatening their broke economy with the expense of an arms race. The plan also depended on preventing any Marxist advances in Central America or offshore islands. The Soviets had to see that there were no prospects for communist expansion and that they needed to get down to peace in order to free resources for their broken economy.
Reading Ben Macintyre’s The Spy and The Traitor, the story of KBG colonel Oleg Gordievsky, an asset of Britain’s MI6, made me aware for the first time how dangerous Reagan’s plan was. American intelligence was so far off-track that Washington did not realize that a plan designed to scare the Soviets into peace was instead convincing them that the US was readying an all-out nuclear attack.
At the time the Soviet leader was the former KGB chief, Yuri Andropov. The ABLE ARCHER NATO war game during the first part of November 1983 simulated an escalating conflict culminating in a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. The Soviets did not see it as a war game and regarded it as American preparation for a real attack. What prevented Soviet preemptive action was Gordievsky’s report to MI6 that the Americans were raising Soviet anxiety to the breaking point. This woke up Reagan and Margaret Thatcher to the threat they were creating with their bellicose words and deeds. The CIA later confessed: “Gordievsky’s information was an epiphany for President Reagan . . . only Gordievsky’s timely warning to Washington via MI6 kept things from going too far.”
In my seasoned opinion and in that of Stephen Cohen, with Hillary almost elected president branding the president of Russia as “the New Hitler,” with constant provocations and demonizations of Russia and her leaders, with the accumulation of nuclear-capable missiles on Russia’s borders, with an orchestrated Russiagate by US security agencies blocking President Trump from normalizing relations, things have already gone too far. The kinds of false alarms and miscalculations described above are more likely to have deadly consequences than ever before.
Indeed, this seems to be the intention. Why else are people such as Stephen Cohen and myself branded “Russian agents” for telling the truth and giving accurate heartfelt warnings about the danger of such high tensions when neither side trusts the other?
It is reckless and irresponsible to demonize people of integrity such as Stephen Cohen and myself as “Russian agents.” When telling the truth becomes the mark of being a disloyal American, what hope is there?
Beijing To Link Facial Recognition System With Social Credit Score In New Metro Security Checks
Officials in Beijing will combine the country's state-of-the-art facial recognition technology with a version of their controversial 'credit system' to speed up security checks in the city's overcrowded metro system, according to HKFP.
Long queues and commuters arguing with staff over slow security procedures are common sites during rush hour in the metro system of the 20 million-strong metropolis. -HKFP
Cameras set up at the entrance to subway stations will scan the faces of passengers, sorting them into different security channels, according to the director of the Beijing Rail Traffic Control Center, Zhan Minghui.
He added that the plan will involve the creation of a "passenger credit system" in which 'white-listed' individuals will enjoy expedited security clearance. Those who receive "abnormal feedback" after their face scans will be subject to extra security measures.
"The technique aims to improve the efficiency of security checks and includes both body checks and luggage screening when large numbers of passengers enter the station," Zhan said on Thursday at an urban transportation forum in Beijing.
In May, the Beijing subway announced that it had started "deducting credit points" from passengers who eat in metro cars.
Officials did not announce a timeline for the rollout.
Beijing's subway system currently handles approximately 12 million trips on an average workday - a figure expected to increase to 17 million within the next two years.
China's use of facial recognition is becoming more commonplace. The Beijing Universal Studios amusement park which is currently under construction will admit visitors without a ticket - and will use cameras that scan their faces to determine whether they have paid for a ticket.
Meanwhile, a new law published on the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) website and distributed to all Chinese telecom carriers on Sept. 27th requires that "all telecom carriers must use facial recognition to test whether an applicant who applies for internet connection is the owner of the ID that they use since Dec. 1. At the same time, the carriers must test that the ID is genuine and valid."
If that wasn’t Orwellian enough, Chinese scientists have recently developed an artificial intelligence (AI) enabled 500 megapixel cloud camera that’s capable of panoramic capture of an entire stadium with the ability to target a single individual in an instant, Global Timesreported.
