Zero­Hedge News

• Is Biden Reen­list­ing In The For­ever Wars?
  Is Biden Reen­list­ing In The For­ever Wars?

  Authored by Pat Buchanan via Buchanan​.org,

  Thurs­day, in its first mil­i­tary action, the Biden Pen­ta­gon sent two U.S. F-​15Es to strike tar­gets of Kataib Hezbol­lah, an Iranian-​backed Iraqi mili­tia just inside the east­ern bor­der of Syria.

  The U.S. strikes were in retal­i­a­tion for a mis­sile attack on a U.S. base in Irbil, cap­i­tal of Iraqi Kur­dis­tan, which killed a con­trac­tor and wounded a U.S. soldier.

  “We’re con­fi­dent that the tar­get was being used by the same Shia mili­tia that con­ducted the strikes,” said Defense Sec­re­tary Lloyd Austin.

  But Demo­c­ra­tic Sens. Tim Kaine and Chris Mur­phy want to know where Pres­i­dent Joe Biden got his author­ity to launch attacks in Syria, where there was no clear or present dan­ger to any U.S. troops.

  Days before the U.S. strike, Kataib Hezbol­lah issued a state­ment deny­ing any com­plic­ity in the Irbil attack: “We absolutely did not tar­get Erbil or the Green Zone and have no knowl­edge of the group that did.”

  Iran has also denied any involve­ment in the mis­sile attack on the Amer­i­cans. On a visit to Bagh­dad, Iran’s For­eign Min­is­ter Javad Zarif called for an inves­ti­ga­tion as to who is ini­ti­at­ing the attacks inside Iraq.

  “We empha­size the need for the Iraqi gov­ern­ment to find the per­pe­tra­tors of these inci­dents,” said Zarif.

  For­eign Min­is­ter Sergei Lavrov said Russ­ian forces in Syria got only four or five min­utes’ notice that U.S. planes were on their way to a strike.

  Bot­tom line: Those con­duct­ing these attacks on U.S. bases and troops in Iraq, pro­vok­ing Amer­i­can coun­ter­strikes, seek to ignite a con­flict between the U.S. and Iran, and its prox­ies in Iraq and Syria.

  And they are succeeding.

  Biden broke with for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump on the latter’s deci­sion to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal and impose “max­i­mum pres­sure” sanc­tions to com­pel Iran to nego­ti­ate a more restric­tive deal. But Biden has yet to reveal his own strat­egy or goals in deal­ing with Tehran.

  Is he will­ing to accept a return to the nuclear deal the U.S., U.K., France, Ger­many, China and Rus­sia nego­ti­ated with Iran in 2015? And if that deal is now no longer ade­quate, how does Biden pro­pose to get Iran to nego­ti­ate and agree to a tougher deal?

  The lever­age we have are the sanc­tions Trump imposed. If Biden lifts those in return for Iran return­ing to the terms of the 2015 deal, he sur­ren­ders all of his lever­age for a new deal cov­er­ing Tehran’s mis­sile devel­op­ment and aid to Shia mili­tias in Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon.

  But if Biden refuses to lift the Trump sanc­tions, Iranis likely to revive its nuclear enrich­ment pro­gram, give up on the U.S. and elect a hard­line regime this year that could adopt a pol­icy of attack­ing U.S. inter­ests and per­son­nel across the region until the Amer­i­cans go home.

  Six weeks into his admin­is­tra­tion, Biden seems in dan­ger of being drawn back indef­i­nitely into the for­ever wars of the Mid­dle East.

  In Afghanistan, under the terms of the peace deal nego­ti­ated with the Tal­iban in 2020, all U.S. troops are to be out of the coun­try by May 1.

  Under that deal, not a sin­gle U.S. sol­dier has been lost in com­bat in the last year.

  If the U.S. announces, as some believe is likely, that we are not going to with­draw all forces by May 1, the Tal­iban, who con­trol half the coun­try, are likely to begin tar­get­ing the remain­ing Amer­i­can troops in the country.

  Biden could then be pre­sented with this Hobbe­sian choice: Flee Afghanistan under fire, or send more U.S. troops to pro­tect those we left behind. Writes William Ruger, a vet­eran of the war and Trump’s nom­i­nee to be ambas­sador to Afghanistan:

  “Keep­ing our troops in Afghanistan beyond the promised dead­line is push­ing them back in the Taliban’s cross hairs and indef­i­nitely con­tin­u­ing an … unwinnable war, which has already cost more than $2 tril­lion and more than 2,400 Amer­i­can lives …

  “Any­thing less than a full draw­down means that Afghanistan will become Pres­i­dent Biden’s war. He will have to own the pre­dictably ter­ri­ble con­se­quences of con­tin­u­ing a war that can’t be won.”

  Look­ing at our 20 years of mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion in the Mid­dle East, since Osama bin Laden drew us in by bring­ing down the twin tow­ers and hit­ting the Pen­ta­gon, what is on the asset side of our bal­ance sheet?

  Two decades of fight­ing in Afghanistan, yet the Tal­iban enemy we ousted in 2001 seems today des­tined to retake power when we depart.

  Pro-​Iranian Shia mili­tia dom­i­nate the Iraq that we sent an army to lib­er­ate from Sad­dam Hus­sein. In Yemen and Syria, we bear major moral respon­si­bil­ity for two of the worst human­i­tar­ian dis­as­ters of the 21^st cen­tury, and we are fac­ing strate­gic defeats in both theaters.

  In Libya, whose regime we helped to over­throw, Turks and Rus­sians are fight­ing for control.

  And China, which stayed out of all these wars we started — or into which we plunged — has pros­pered in these 20 years as few other nations in mod­ern history.

  Tyler Dur­den Tue, 03/​02/​2021 — 21:25
• “No Inter­est In Stick­ing Around” - Man­hat­tan Lux­ury Home­own­ers Sell Prop­er­ties At loss
  “No Inter­est In Stick­ing Around” - Man­hat­tan Lux­ury Home­own­ers Sell Prop­er­ties At loss

  Manhattan’s lux­ury condo frenzy petered out a few years ago. Own­ers are tak­ing real­ized losses as they offload prop­er­ties at steep losses.

  A prime exam­ple of this is the pend­ing deal at 551 W. 21^st St., where two units listed for a com­bined $26 mil­lion found a buyer after a cou­ple of years on and off the mar­ket, accord­ing to Bloomberg, who cited data from bro­ker­age Olshan Realty. The owner ini­tially acquired the prop­erty in 2016 for $31.3 mil­lion and then attempted to flip it for $40 mil­lion the fol­low­ing year.

  With no suc­cess, the owner is expected to real­ize a 17% loss on the prop­er­ties once the trans­ac­tion is completed.

  Manhattan’s lux­ury condo mar­ket peaked a few years ago and has since devel­oped into a night­mare for sell­ers. Mas­sive sup­ply is quickly erod­ing val­ues as inven­tory builds. In early 2020, half of all new lux­ury condo units con­structed after 2015 in the bor­ough were unsold. A con­flu­ence of macro­eco­nomic head­winds, as well as SALT deduc­tion caps and trans­fer taxes, cooled the mar­ket. Then came the big bad pan­demic that wreaked even more havoc in the borough.

  Donna Olshan, pres­i­dent of the bro­ker­age, said sell­ers in the mar­ket have no inter­est in stick­ing around in “New York if they’re not using the asset or if the asset isn’t giv­ing a return.”

  Olshan said a deal at 80 Colum­bus Cir­cle for a 74^th-​story condo recently listed at $25 mil­lion. The seller com­bined two apart­ments in the tower, one unit pur­chased in 2011 for $17.5 mil­lion, and the other unit (next door) pur­chased in 2014 for $18 million.

  There is some good news in the lux­ury real estate mar­ket — after writ­ing about the down­turn for 18 months and the plunge fol­low­ing the pan­demic, the decline in prices has brought buy­ers to the table.

  With Mayor Bill De Bla­sio doing every­thing he pos­si­bly can to drive both busi­nesses (like Gold­man Sachs) and indi­vid­ual cit­i­zens out of the city, the effects of his colos­sal mis­man­age­ment and gen­eral clue­less­ness have come at a loss for some wealthy elites who bought lux­ury con­dos in the last sev­eral years, think­ing they could flip the unit(s) for a quick buck. Many have trans­formed into baghold­ers, or recently, they want out and are will­ing to take real­ized losses.

  Tyler Dur­den Tue, 03/​02/​2021 — 21:05
• Drones Are Bring­ing The 19^th Hole To Any Hole
  Drones Are Bring­ing The 19^th Hole To Any Hole

  By Brian Straight of Mod­ern Shipper

  Many golfers wish they could reach for a cold drink moments after hook­ing their sev­enth straight tee shot into the woods. The lack of elec­tric­ity and staffing issues pre­vent golf courses from offer­ing this level of cus­tomer ser­vice on each hole. If you are lucky, your local course may have a vend­ing machine at the ninth hole.

  But that could soon change. At Sun City Coun­try Club in Sun City, Ari­zona, a sig­nif­i­cant devel­op­ment took place this week that may open up the oppor­tu­nity for food and bev­er­age deliv­ery while on the course, lead­ing to increased rev­enue oppor­tu­ni­ties for coun­try clubs and more con­ve­nience for golfers.

  “Suc­cess­fully demon­strat­ing our drone deliv­ery sys­tem at Sun City Coun­try Club was the first cru­cial step in advanc­ing our efforts to pro­duce turnkey drone solu­tions capa­ble of address­ing real-​world com­mer­cial appli­ca­tions on and off the golf course,” Michael Drozd, CEO of AgEa­gle Aer­ial Sys­tems, said.

  Drone provider AgEa­gle part­nered with Valqari, a Chicago-​based startup that is build­ing a drone deliv­ery “mail­box” that allows drones to deliver pack­ages directly into a safe and secure box.

  The com­pa­nies demon­strated their com­bined solu­tion at Sun City. A drone picked up a pack­age with bev­er­ages at the Valqari Drone Deliv­ery Sta­tion out­side the club­house restau­rant and deliv­ered that pack­age to a sec­ond deliv­ery sta­tion located on the course.

  “Sun City Coun­try Club pro­vided us with the ideal venue for con­duct­ing this ini­tial pilot test. We greatly appre­ci­ate their enthu­si­asm for the prospect of enhanc­ing the over­all golf­ing expe­ri­ence for their patrons through drone-​enabled on-​demand deliv­ery of food and refresh­ments to our secure Drone Deliv­ery Sta­tions,” Ryan Walsh, Valqari founder and CEO, said. “This demon­stra­tion of AgEa­gle and Valqari tech­nolo­gies shows just one of the many ways our joint sys­tem can be used to opti­mize fast and secure deliv­er­ies for indus­tries rang­ing from hos­pi­tal­ity to com­mer­cial deliv­er­ies and beyond.”

  Once the drone released the pack­age and departed, the Drone Deliv­ery Sta­tion was acti­vated, relo­cat­ing the pack­age from the top of the sta­tion to a lower com­part­ment for the golfer to retrieve the order.

  “We were very pleased to have Sun City serve as the site for the AgEa­gle and Valqari pilot demo,” Jamey Lewis, Sun City Coun­try Club man­ager, said. “We were duly impressed with their game-​changing approach to deliv­er­ing drinks, food and snacks to golfers and can envi­sion this sys­tem being inte­grated into our course, and per­haps courses world­wide, in the future. It really does take cus­tomer expe­ri­ence and con­ve­nience to an entirely new level.”

  Valqari’s sys­tem allows the cre­ation of an order through an app. A box is inserted into a slot in the Drone Deliv­ery Sta­tion. A global posi­tion­ing sys­tem nav­i­gates the drone to the land­ing pad, where an “ele­va­tor sys­tem” raises the pack­age to the drone to be attached.

  As the drone approaches the des­ti­na­tion, it sig­nals the Deliv­ery Sta­tion to open the stor­age com­part­ment, low­ers itself in and releases the pack­age onto a pad. The pack­age is then low­ered into the cor­rect com­part­ment, where it is locked and secured until pickup.

  The recip­i­ent receives a noti­fi­ca­tion the pack­age is ready for pickup. Upon arrival at the box, the recip­i­ent must ver­ify his or her iden­tity and select the proper pack­age for retrieval. The slot will then open once that is all confirmed.

  Tyler Dur­den Tue, 03/​02/​2021 — 20:45