Society's ChildS


Stock Down

If banks are celebrating 'record high stocks' why are they slashing nearly 80,000 jobs?

Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge
Fri, 27 Dec 2019 10:35 UTC
stocks
A few days ago, Morgan Stanley laid out why 2019 was an "unusual", bizarre year for equity markets, which hit all time highs around the globe even as bullish strategies underperformed, crippling countless hedge funds who failed to get the mix of assets just right and suffered another round of gut-wrenching redemptions which culminated in the longest streak of hedge fund outflows since the financial crisis.

But for the people who brought you this record performance in stocks - namely the world's traders, bankers, and finance professionals - there is another reason why 2019 was not only perplexing but also painful year: more of them got let go than any other year since 2015!

According to Bloomberg calculations, banks around the world - the institutions that are supposed to benefit the most from rising markets - have unveiled the biggest round of job cuts in four years "as they slash costs to weather a slowing economy and adapt to digital technology." Wait, did Bloomberg just say "slowing economy?" But... but... S&P at all time highs? Oh wait, we almost forgot: all of the S&P's upside in 2019 was due to multiple expansion as earnings declined YoY

Comment: See also:

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Candle

Lee Mendelson, the producer who brought "A Charlie Brown Christmas" to tv & wrote the lyrics to its song, "Christmas Time Is Here," died on Christmas day

Andrew Dalton
ABC News
Sat, 28 Dec 2019 01:32 UTC
Lee Mendelson and Charlie Brown
Lee Mendelson, the producer who changed the face of the holidays when he brought "A Charlie Brown Christmas" to television in 1965 and wrote the lyrics to its signature song, "Christmas Time Is Here," died on Christmas day, his son said.

Mendelson, who won a dozen Emmys in his long career, died at his home in Hillsborough, California, of congestive heart failure at age 86 after a long struggle with lung cancer, son Jason Mendelson told The Associated Press.

Lee Mendelson headed a team that included "Peanuts" author Charles Schulz, director Bill Melendez, and pianist and composer Vince Guaraldi, whose music for the show, including the opening "Christmas Time Is Here," has become as much a Christmas staple as the show itself.

Mendelson told The Cincinnati Enquirer in 2000 that he was short on time in finding a lyricist for the song, so he sketched out the six verses himself in "about 15 minutes on the backside of an envelope."

Comment: Watch and listen to "A Charlie Brown Christmas"

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Eye 2

Another woman comes forward with Jeffrey Epstein sexual abuse claim

Priscilla DeGregory
NY Post
Fri, 27 Dec 2019 19:37 UTC
Epstein
© News SyndicationThe prince said he regretted this 2010 meeting with Epstein
Another woman claims that she was sexually abused by Jeffrey Epstein at his Manhattan townhouse beginning when she was just 14, according to a new lawsuit.

The woman — who filed the Manhattan Federal lawsuit anonymously under the name Anastasia Doe — claims from 2003 through 2006 she was sexually abused and eventually raped by the financier in his East 71st Street mansion.

Anastasia, now 30, says in 2003 she was recruited by her underage friend who told her she could get $300 to give a massage "to a rich man in Manhattan," according to the court papers filed Friday.

When she and the friend arrived, Epstein was laying face down on a massage table where he allegedly told the girls to get naked. He then began touching Anastasia's private parts and abused her with a sex toy, the suit says.
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Cell Phone

Creepy: Colleges using cellphone data to track students, monitor attendance, judge mental health

Jordan Lancaster
Washington Examiner
Thu, 26 Dec 2019 04:13 UTC
RickCarter
© L.G. Patterson/APSpotterEDU chief Rick Carter (left) founded the app in 2015 to monitor athletes.
Administrators tracking someone's personal cellphone to monitor their location sounds like something the Communist Party might do in China. But it's happening right here.

Multiple colleges across the country have started tracking the exact location of their students at all times, according to the Washington Post. In a move that school administrators claim will boost class attendance and student performance, colleges have installed Bluetooth sensors that connect to students' phones to monitor their movements with extreme precision. Universities are now able to abandon traditional attendance-taking measures in favor of this invasive new technology, SpotterEDU.

SpotterEDU was developed by Rick Carter, a former basketball coach who received a protective order from DePaul University for allegedly threatening the school's athletic director and head basketball coach. Carter originally developed the technology in 2015 to monitor student-athletes, but now colleges such as Syracuse University and Virginia Commonwealth University have taken things a step further and are monitoring the student population to track attendance.

The idea of tracking students' locations is already concerning. Invasions of privacy for the purpose of micromanaging adults is a problem even if only used to track attendance. But the app's extreme precision allows administrators to go further in following their students' every move.
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Magnify

Guardian, Atlantic contributor acts as a Syrian terrorist mouthpiece on Twitter, and if you don't like it you're a Russian stooge

Eva Bartlett
RT
Fri, 27 Dec 2019 19:18 UTC
Al-Nusra fighter
© AFP/ Rami Al-SayedAl-Nusra fighter
Giving a sympathetic platform to a terrorist is reprehensible at best, downright criminal at worst, and definitely a bad look for a 'respected' media contributor. Oh, it's for bashing Assad and the Russians? Go ahead, then.

A funny thing happened recently on Twitter. A journalist who contributes to the Guardian, Foreign Policy and the Atlantic tweeted — in a long thread peppered with photos of Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, the leader of an Al-Qaeda branch in Syria — about "the force that dominates" Idlib. Hassan Hassan's initial tweet coyly avoided mentioning that this force is Al-Qaeda in Syria.

And no, its not just us Russian bots who say that Idlib is infested with Al-Qaeda: former US special envoy, Brett McGurk, deemed Idlib "the largest Al-Qaeda safe haven since 9/11."

The thread smacked of giving a platform to terrorist propaganda. After extensively quoting Jolani, Hassan weighed in with his own thoughts on the situation in Syria and his Al-Qaeda "rebels".
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Arrow Down

Mural of Tina Turner is defaced with a red swastika outside a North Carolina record store

Leah McDonald
Daily Mail
Fri, 27 Dec 2019 18:12 UTC
Tina Turner mural
Employees in North Carolina were left shocked after a mural of pop star Tina Turner was defaced with a red swastika outside their record store.

The mural is outside Static Age Records in downtown Asheville and it was defaced after the store closed on the evening of December 23.

Store owner Jesse McSwain said someone unconnected to the store apparently covered the mural in a black sheet before he could address the situation.

Static Age called police and later contacted the Southern Poverty Law Center, WLOS reported.

The swastika was eight feet tall, and also drawn the wrong way, with three of the four arms pointing counterclockwise.
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Boat

Freedom Flotilla will make its 35th attempt to sail to Gaza in 2020

Ramzy Baroud
MintPress News
Wed, 25 Dec 2019 00:00 UTC
Freedom Flotilla Gaza
© @GazaFFlotilla
What is Gaza to us but an Israeli missile, a rudimentary rocket, a demolished home, an injured child being whisked away by his peers under a hail of bullets? On a daily basis, Gaza is conveyed to us as a bloody image or a dramatic video, none of which can truly capture the everyday reality of the Strip - its formidable steadfastness, the everyday acts of resistance, and the type of suffering that can never be really understood through a customary glance at a social media post.

At long last, the chief prosecutor of the International Court of Justice (ICC), Fatou Bensouda, has declared her 'satisfaction' that "war crimes have been - or are being - committed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip." As soon as the ICC statement was made on December 20, pro-Palestinian groups felt a rare moment of relief. Finally, Israel will stand accused, potentially paying for its recurring bloodbath in the isolated and besieged Gaza Strip, its military occupation and apartheid in the West Bank, and much more.

However, it could take years for the ICC to initiate its legal proceedings and render its verdict. Moreover, there are no political guarantees that an ICC decision indicting Israel would ever be respected, let alone implemented.

Comment:

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Sherlock

Russian news agency claims explosion at apartment building in Magnitogorsk was terror attack, not gas leak

Todd Prince
RFE/RL
Sat, 28 Dec 2019 04:43 UTC
Magnitogorsk apartment explosion
© Sputnik / Ministry of Emergency Situations of RussiaCollapsed apartment building in Magnitogorsk
Russian investigative journalists claim an explosion last year in the Urals town of Magnitogorsk that killed 39 people was a terrorist attack.

Russian authorities have never given a definitive reason for the blast that ripped through an apartment building on Karl Marx Street in the steel town on December 31, 2018.

Russia's Investigative Committee said shortly after the blast that it was focusing on a gas leak as the most likely cause.

However, Baza, an independent online news agency that focuses on investigations, on December 27 published a 40-minute video detailing its yearlong probe into the explosion, concluding that at least three men set out to blow up the apartment building and possibly detonate other bombs in the city that day.

Baza did not give a reason for the men's actions but said that two of them had recently taken a greater interest in Islam and that they were facing financial difficulties.

The Islamic State (IS) extremist group claimed responsibility in mid-January for the Magnitogorsk explosion, but gave no proof to back it up.

Comment: More on the Magnitogorsk explosion:

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Yellow Vest

Iraqi protesters shut down southern Nassiriya oil field


Sputnik
Sat, 28 Dec 2019 18:08 UTC
iraq protesters
© REUTERS / Khalid al-Mousily
Over 450 people have been killed in Iraq since mass protests started in the country in early October; demonstrators accuse the political system of being "corrupt".

Protesters broke into an oil field in the city of Nassiriya in southern Iraq on Saturday, forcing employees to cut off electricity from its control station, Reuters reported, citing sources.

The oil field produces 90,000 barrels of crude per day. The protesters chanted "no homeland, no oil" as they broke into the facility, the agency quotes sources as saying.

Although protesters had previously blocked entrances to refineries and ports, this is the first time they have shut down an oil field.

Iraq has been gripped by mass protests since October when activists took to the streets to demand a change in the country's "corrupt" political system. More than 450 people have been killed in the protests since then.
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Black Cat

Anti-Semites everywhere! Second Jewish cemetery vandalized in a month in Slovakia


RT
Sat, 28 Dec 2019 17:50 UTC

Comment: Watch as no one is caught doing these attacks either...

42 acts of vandalism in 1.5 years: Jewish cemeteries are being systematically desecrated in Alsace, France, but not a SINGLE arrest has been made


jewish cemetary vandalized Slovakie
Vandals have targeted an old Jewish cemetery in the small Slovakian town of Rajec, toppling over 20 tombstones. A similar incident happened just two weeks ago about 70km away.

The vandalism in Rajec may have happened in mid-December, since the cemetery has few visitors.

"Unfortunately, very few people visit the tombs of their relatives in Jewish cemeteries because there are very few relatives alive," Jewish publicist and journalist Konstanty Gebert told Ruptly. "The hatred must be powerful enough that insulting the dead, even if no living are insulted, gives satisfaction."


Comment: Yeah. That or it made it easier for agents provocateurs to carry it out.


Comment: Other countries have seen an uptick in 'anti-Semitic vandalism' recently - some might be 'legit' in the sense that Jew-haters targeted them, but a LOT of them appear to be manufactured for the purpose of eliciting sympathy and clamping down on civil rights:

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