Intelligence Failure or Dogs too Old to Adapt

Week ended November 24, 2023, interesting news items to look at this week were:

1. Intelligence Failure or Dogs too Old to Adapt: The attack by IDF on al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza proved another serious intelligence failure of IDF and added to the many war crimes of Israel. Babies in incubators have to be rushed to Egypt and hundreds of very sick patients died. Under International War Convention schools, hospitals and places of worship are banned area of military operations unless concrete and definitive proof before commencement of attack already exist that proves those places are military command and control centers by the enemy. Such proofs were totally absent in al-Shifa despite a frantic search for Hamas’ presence after the attack (Fig. 1) from the Guardian.

(i) Basement chambers and facilities at the al-Shifa Hospital were well known since 1980’s because Israel built them and were designed by Tel Aviv architects Gershon Zippor and Benjamin Idelson. 11 days before the seige which began on November 11, a Norwegian doctor working in al-Shifa Hospital for the past 4 years went public and said there is no Hamas facilities in the hospital.(Fig. 2).

Alastair Crooke, former British Diplomat, two weeks before the attack of al-Shifa, argued that Hamas could not possibly hide underneath the hospital because the actual Hamas facilities were 70 meters below ground elsewhere with their own hospital, armory and civil engineering tunnel team with full mechanical equipment. The intelligence failure would likely be false information fed deliberately to CIA and Mossad assets, probaly Filipinos working in Hezbollah controlled area in Beirut. Such false fed intelligence had happened before. For details of Alastair Crooke interview, readers can watch a clip from youtube. (Fig. 3)

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBqEgWP2S9M

So it seems a lot of people were in the know, except the Spy Masters themselves.

(ii) Indiscriminate shooting by IDF: This week Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper published a report that IDF would need to carry some responsibilities on Jewish civilian casualties. On October 7^th, the IDF’s Apache Helicopter shooting from mid air at the Nova Music Festival couldn’t possibly distinguish between Hamas and Jewish civilians. (Fig. 4)

This is a second confirmation to the Jewish survivors eye witnessed account on what actually transpired. I reported this incident on my November 10, 2023 Blog.

Some commentators believed the many intelligence failures are signs of desperation of Netanyahu and Biden who both carry potential criminal liabilities for corruption and political misbehavior on top of war crimes. These commentators cautioned a false flag attack may happen in the near future similar to the USS Liberty incident on June 8, 1967. A false flag event could directly bring US into the conflict and may inflame a large scale multinational regional war in the Middle East. (Fig. 5)

 

(iii) Israel’s Gaza Ground Operations is expanding but PR is a Disaster: Israel has attempted to block all channels of communications from Gaza but with today’s technologies, it is an outright impossibility. According to satellite images analyzed by Al-Jazeera, 383 IDF military vehicles (tanks and armored carriers) entered Gaza at the start of the ground operation on October 27. Various reports up to November 18 indicated some 239 IDF vehicles were totally or partially destroyed. So in a matter of 3 weeks some 62% of Israeli military equipment in Gaza suffered damage or destruction. This points to the tough conditions of urban warfare despite IDF’s overwhelming superiority in manpower and firepower. With Turkey sending 1000 ships to Gaza and an ability to post a 2 million strong army within 30 days, whatever original design Israel and US has for a Gaza cleansing operation will be easier said than done. There is a saying among independent military analysts that Pentagon has only two options. The first is the Wrecking Ball option; big swing and civilian infrastructure disappeared. The second is the Samsonite option, when the going gets tough, GIs would pack their bags and leave. My prayer is that the poor Palestinians in Gaza would come out better than this.  

2. Financial Sustainability for Continuous Wars: Figures released by US Treasury showed between January 2022 and September 2023, some $2.57 trillion were pulled by overseas investors (Sovereign Governments, Central Banks and Private Sector) out of US. (Fig. 6).

To meet this liquidation requirement, US investors sold down overseas investments by $1.78 trillion, (Fig. 7)

thus net capital outflow amounted to $790 billion. The composition of the liquidation by Foreign Investors were 71.4% Equity, 19.9% Corporate and Agency Bonds and 8.7% Treasuries. The de-dollarization process were much more severe than just a sell down of US Federal Debt by China and Japan.

(i) The High Stock Market Risk of the Magnificent 7: When one just take a casual look at the broad stock market index, between January 2022 and last Friday, the S&P 500 index only declined by 198 points or 4.15%. (Fig. 8).

On close examination, only 7 stocks provided the support for the S&P 500 Index and there are dark clouds on the horizon over these Magnificent 7. (Fig. 9).

AAPL is being seriously challenged by Huawei, Tesla by BYD (Tesla stock market valuation is 8 times BYD despite BYD has just bypass Tesla as the world’s biggest EV maker), Meta is falling behind Tik Tok, Nvidia faces fresh export ban of its dedicated Chinese AI Chip, Msft just had a management earthquake at OpenAI, and Amzn are on continuous headcount reduction drive. Ever wonder why US hates China so much, because not only has China caught up with the best of the best in US, it looks like given time, surpassing US is a certainty. The combined forward looking PE ratio of these Magnificent 7 is over 30 but the rest of the economy have no room left for these 7 to grow their earnings at double the speed of everyone else. (Fig. 10)

When these 7 are finally brought down to earth, the whole shebang will collapse like a house of cards.   

(ii) The Federal Reserve is in its last days: Weekly financial losses to Nov 15,2003 of the Fed rose to $118.7 billion and cumulative negative net-worth of the Fed would be over $3 trillion before end of November. (Fig. 11).

Using trend-line projections, the Federal Reserve would exhaust its entire Balance Sheet Assets by early Spring 2024. (Fig. 12).

An abandonment of dollar holdings has already begun on top of avoiding dollar settlement for trade. The Global Currency Reset which have been in secret discussions for years is now finally at the door. There will be more visible signs when financial market resumes on Monday.

3. Young Fighting Men in Ukraine are all Gone: Time magazine reported the average age of Ukrainian soldiers has increased from 30-35 at the start of war to 43. (Fig. 13).

So sad, so many young men were sacrificed when a peace treaty could have been signed in Spring 2022. (Fig. 14).

During the talks, Arakhamia added, British then-PM Boris Johnson arrived in Kiev and told Ukrainian officials to keep fighting and not sign any agreements with Moscow.

This week’s financial markets:

A. Stock Market: (Fig. 15): Dow closed at 34,947 for the week, a rise of 443 points or +1.27%, S&P 500 +1.11% and NASDAQ +1.04%.. Thanks Giving Holiday Week in US and year end window dressing rally continued.

B. Debt Market: (Fig. 16): USGG10YR ended the week at 4.472%, an increase of 3.3 basis points.

 

C. Commodities and Precious Metals: Trading results for the week: (Fig. 17) Bitcoin (+4.07%), Silver (+2.40%), GBP (+1.12%), SPX500 (+1.11%), Gold (+1.07%), NASDAQ (+1.04%), Rmb (+0.87%), Uranium (+5.89%), Eur (+0.27%), Rubble (+0.25%), JPY( +0.15%) and Oil (-0.43%).

USD was weak and most currencies and commodities showed price gain against USD except oil as tensions in Gaza eased somewhat with cease fire arrangement.

 

Proverbs 19:9  A false witness will not go unpunished, And he who speaks lies shall perish.