Mar 25

Today’s News 25th March 2019

  • Children Make Perfect Propaganda Props

    Need to push through a propaganda campaign to utterly transform society?

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    Want people to not only accept but actively embrace their own impoverishment?

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    Well just get yourself some youthful true believers to do your propagandizing for you!

    Source: The Strategic Culture Foundation

  • The "American Party" Within The Institutions Of The European Union

    Authored by Manlio Dinucci via The Voltaire Network,

    The European Parliament has just adopted a resolution which requires that the Union stop considering Russia as a strategic partner, but rather as an enemy of humanity. At the same time, the Commission sent a warning about the Chinese threat. Everything is unfolding as if the United States were manœuvering the Union into playing a part in their own supremacist strategy.

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    « Russia can no longer be considered as a strategic partner, and the European Union must be ready to impose further sanctions if it continues to violate international law » – this is the resolution approved by the European Parliament on 12 Mars with 402 votes for, 163 against, and 89 abstentions. The resolution, presented by Latvian parliamentarian Sandra Kalniete, denies above all any legitimacy for the Presidential elections in Russia, qualifying them as « non-democratic », and therefore presenting President Putin as a usurper.

    She accuses Russia not only of « violation of the territorial integrity of Ukraine and Georgia », but also the « intervention in Syria and interference in countries such as Libya », and, in Europe, of « interference intended to influence elections and increase tensions ». She accuses Russia of « violation of the arms control agreements », and shackles it with the responsibility of having buried the INF Treaty. Besides this, she accuses Russia of « important violations of human rights in Russia, including torture and extra-judicial executions », and « assassinations perpetrated by Russian Intelligence agents by means of chemical weapons on European soil ».

    After these and other accusations, the European Parliament declared that Nord Stream 2 – the gas pipeline designed to double the supply of Russian gas to Germany across the Baltic Sea – « increases European dependence on Russian gas, threatens the European interior market and its strategic interests […] and must therefore be ended ».

    The resolution of the European Parliament is a faithful repetition, not only in its content but even in its wording, of the accusations that the USA and NATO aim at Russia, and more importantly, it faithfully parrots their demand to block Nord Stream 2 – the object of Washington’s strategy, aimed at reducing the supply of Russian energy to the European Union, in order to replace them with supplies coming from the United States, or at least, from US companies. In the same context, certain communications were addressed by the European Commission to those of its members, including Italy, who harboured the intention to join the Chinese initiative of the New Silk Road. The Commission alleges that China is a partner but also an economic competitor and, what is of capital importance, « a systemic rival which promotes alternative forms of governance », in other words alternative models of governance which so far have been dominated by the Western powers.

    The Commission warns that above all, it is necessary to « safeguard the critical digital infrastructures from the potentially serious threats to security » posed by the 5G networks furnished by Chinese companies like Huawei, and banned by the United States. The European Commission faithfully echoes the US warning to its allies. The Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, US General Scaparrotti, specified that these fifth generation ultra-rapid mobile networks will play an increasingly important role in the war-making capacities of NATO – consequently no « amateurism » by the allies will be allowed.

    All this confirms the influence brought to bear by the « American Party », a powerful transversal camp which is orienting the policies of the EU along the strategic lines of the USA and NATO.

    By creating the false image of a dangerous Russia and China, the institutions of the European Union are preparing public opinion to accept what the United States are now preparing for the « defence » of Europe. The United States – declared a Pentagon spokesperson on CNN – are getting ready to test ground-based ballistic missiles (forbidden by the INF Treaty buried by Washington), that is to say new Euromissiles which will once again make Europe the base and at the same time, the target of a nuclear war.

  • Hunt For Blue November: Democrats Would Sooner Destroy America Than Lose To Trump In 2020

    Authored by Robert Bridge via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    With the likelihood of a Democratic candidate ousting Trump in 2020 looking like mission impossible, the party is resorting to a number of desperate and even dangerous tactics to steal as many voters as possible.

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    Perhaps the best way to gauge the desperation that has overrun the Democratic camp like kudzu in June is the frenzy that has greeted the arrival of Beto O’Rourke, the former lawmaker who recently announced his candidacy for the 2020 election. If the Liberals believed in God, their response to Beto’s arrival would rank up there with the Second Coming of Christ himself, entering stage left on a skateboard, hair trailing behind with a hint of hope and gunge polluting the air.

    Perhaps in other less delusional periods of American history, Beto the marionette, who gesticulates as if his strings were being yanked by an epileptic after a tasing, would be seen for what he is. Exactly what that might be is hard to nail down, but it is certainly not presidential material. Yet the fact that so many Democrats and media have worked themselves into collective hysteria over this guy, whose most notable career moves to date are marrying an heiress, writing exceptionally bad poetry and losing to Ted Cruz in the Texas Senate race, speaks volumes as to how shallow the Democratic bench is, where a host of other unlikely players include Elizabeth ‘Pocohantas’ Warren and Bernie ‘the multi-millionaire Socialist’ Sanders. Then there is Joe Biden, 76, who didn’t need a leaker to spill the beans on his apparent intentions to run. He did it quite nicely all by himself. But one needn’t focus on the Lefts dismal presidential choices; there are many other places to find examples of Democratic decline and degeneration. 

    The Hunt for Blue November

    If ever there was a perfect symbol of the political schizophrenia dividing the nation straight down its frontal lobe, it’s the yet-to-be-built wall on the Mexico border.

    For law and order Republicans, the image of illegal immigrants gate-crashing America’s border is noxious to every tenet of conservative thinking, which has little patience for freeloaders, line cutters and ultra-violent criminals. Ironically, Democrats once-upon-a-time also looked upon the arrival of undocumented immigrants with an equal amount of wariness and alarm, until they realized that the invasion translated nicely into future voters. Then, concerns about a criminal element overrunning the country vanished as Republicans were labeled the racists and fear mongers for having the audacity to defend the border. Now there is even talk among Democrats to give these illegals Social Security!

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    Now that Trump has declared a national emergency and the Pentagon has found the pocket change to plug the border leak, the Democrats have plumbed the democratic depths for new ways to win over voters. And since they have no platform to speak of, aside from Trump bashing, they must resort to unsavory methods. One creative method for robbing the ballot involves ‘robbing the cradle,’ that is, reducing the voting age from 18 to 16 years old. Yes, allow adolescents who are too young to legally drink alcohol, buy smokes and fight in wars to participate in such discussions. Sounds like a genius plan. Although the measure was defeated in the House it shows which way the political winds are blowing. The Democrats understand that the minds of the youth, thanks to the liberal indoctrination they’ve been receiving gratuitously at public schools across the nation, have been for all intent and purposes “captured,” as Nancy Pelosi nicely described it.

    Another effort to capture voters involves a direct attack on the one document Democrats seem to loathe the most, the Constitution, and specifically the 12th Amendment, which mandates that the Electoral College determines the outcome of presidential elections. Their desire to change the structure of the process is understandable since both former Vice President Al Gore and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton both lost presidential elections despite having won the popular vote.

    The Democrats wish to ignore the purpose of the Electoral College, which the Founding Fathers instituted as a means to prevent the country from being overrun by ‘mob rule,’ which it has successfully accomplished since first being implemented in the 1804 election. Without the system in place, the so-called ‘fly-over states’ would disappear from the political radar, while all of the attention would fall on the large urban areas and heavily populated states. Regardless of these considerations, which date back to ancient times and the Greeks, who understood a thing or two about mob rule and tyranny, the Democrats have endorsed the so-called National Popular Vote Compact, which has already been signed by 12 states and the District of Columbia, representing 181 Electoral College electors.

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    Some may argue on this point that the Supreme Court, especially considering its increasing conservative slant, would never allow such a motion to slide. Well, the Liberals have a plan to circumvent that little irritant as well. They will simply pack the Supreme Court with more justices. In other words, mob rule. Problem solved.

    “The Kavanaugh court is a partisan operation, and democracy simply cannot function when stolen courts operate as political shills,” Brian Fallon, director of Demand Justice and a former Hillary Clinton press secretary, told Politico.

    “We are thrilled to… undo the politicization of the judiciary.”

    Especially when that ‘politicization’ does not favor the left.

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    And here is where the whole notion of ‘mob rule’ stands out in stark contrast with the original intentions of Americas Founders. Despite their purported concern about foreign entities, namely Russia, tarnishing the squeaky clean US political machine, the Democrats are totally fine with illegal aliens participating in the election process. Nothing speaks ‘mob rule’ more than that decision, which shows exactly how far the Democrats are willing to subvert the political process, not to mention the rule of law, in order to extend their cultural and political control over the country. These unhinged efforts, which have absolutely nothing in common with democratic principles, must be stopped for the sake of the Republic.

  • San Francisco's 'Super Rich' Dominate A Widening US Wealth Divide

    San Francisco is one of the few places in America where software engineers who earn hundreds of thousands of dollars a year routinely suffer the indignity of accidentally stepping in a steaming pile of human feces as they exit their crappy, overpriced one-bedroom apartments in the Mission District to grab a $20 burrito and $10 latte. That’s part of SF’s charm. After all, there’s a reason it is, by some measures, the most unaffordable major city in the country.

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    And while the gap between the middle class and the wealthy is widening in pretty much every American city, San Francisco’s ‘super rich’ tech industry elite continue to lead the way. According to Bloomberg, the gap between the city’s ‘super rich’ and ‘middle class’ (whatever that means in San Francisco) widened in 2017 by $118,000 to $529,500. On average, the city’s top 5% of earners earned $623,310 in 2017, compared with $102,785 for its middle class.

    Across the US, the gap increased by nearly 50% between 2012 and 2017, widening from $268,000 to $333,000, per the BBG analysis.

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    Of course, SF wasn’t the only city where the gap between the rich and middle-class widened. Of the 100 cities analyzed by BBG, only 1 – Jackson, Mississippi – saw the gulf shrink, thanks to shrinking average income among the top 5%.

    In a testament to the city’s dominance as a posterchild for economic inequality, even when the parameters are adjusted slightly to account for a larger number of people in the ‘wealthy’ category and the bottom rung of the city’s economic ladder. In this, the gap between the wealthiest 20% and the poorest 20%, San Francisco still takes the No. 1 spot, with the income disparity widening by $79,600 to $339,900 in 2017. San Jose, Seattle, New York and San Diego rounded out the ranking’s top 5.

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    In another BBG analysis measuring the income disparities within the middle class (which BBG defines as the difference between households in the 30th percentile vs households in the 80th percentile), SF and neighboring San Jose took the top two spots.

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    And with the cost of living surging across California, it’s hardly surprising that the state has seen the largest net loss of residents as frustrated Californians seek more affordable climes like Nevada and Texas. And many of those who haven’t left wish they could.

  • Are We Already In The Matrix?

    Authored by Riz Virk via HackerNoon.com,

    via GIPHY

    Note: This is one in a series of articles for the 20th anniversary of the release of The Matrix, and the release of my new book, ; The Simulation Hypothesis: An MIT Computer Scientist Shows Why AI, Quantum Physics, and Eastern Mystics All Agree We Are In a Video Game. Here, I’ll review some of the scientific reasons why this may be the case. A version of this article was originally published on scientificinquirer.com.

    From Science Fiction to Science

    This year on March 31 marks the 20th anniversary of the release of the groundbreaking film, The Matrix and the release of my new book, The Simulation Hypothesis. The Matrix was influential in many ways — the incredible special effects, the no holds barred action, etc. Like Star Warsbefore it, it has gone on to become a cultural phenomenon that extends well beyond the film itself. This is partly because of its philosophy; The Matrix is perhaps the most popular incarnation of what we now call “the simulation hypothesis” — which is the idea that we are all living in a giant shared online video game.

    Admittedly, the idea sounds like science fiction. The creators of the Matrix, the Wachowskis, claimed to have been influenced by the work of Philip K. Dick, among others. The many adaptations of Dick’s work are well known, including Blade Runner, Total Recall, the Man in the High Castle, the Adjustment Bureau. In his stories, Dick was often obsessed with what was real and what was fake about reality and about the human experience — dealing with issues of artificial intelligence, simulated reality and fake memories.

    The Matrix, you’ll recall, starred Keanu Reeves as Neo, a hacker who encounters enigmatic references to something called the Matrix online. This leads him to the mysterious Morpheus (played by Laurence Fishburne, and aptly named after the Greek god of dreams) and his team.

    Even if you haven’t seen The Matrix, you’ve probably heard of what happens next, in perhaps its most iconic scene, Morpheus gives Neo a choice: take the “red pill” to wake up and see what the Matrix really is, or take the “blue pill” and keep living his life. Neo takes the red pill and “wakes up” in the real world to find that what he thought was real was actually an intricately constructed computer simulation — basically an ultra-realistic video game!

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    Keanu Reeves in the Matrix (src: Movie Web)

    When the Matrix came out, the idea of living in a video game was squarely in the realm of science fiction. Today, the simulation hypothesis is debated seriously by computer scientists, philosophers, physicists and others. The reason this argument is taken more seriously now is two-fold:

    1. the philosophical “simulation argument”, put forward by Oxford’s Nick Bostrom, and

    2. the “video game simulation argument”, about the rapid development of video games, put forth by, among others, Elon Musk.

    Two Major Developments

    The first was when Oxford professor Nick Bostrom published his 2003 paper, “Are You Living in a Simulation?” Bostrom didn’t say much about video games; instead he made a clever statistical argument. Bostrom theorized that if a civilization ever got the Simulation Point, it would create many ancestor simulations, each with large numbers (billions or trillions?) of simulated beings. Since the number of simulated beings would vastly outnumber the number of real beings, any beings (including us!) were more likely to be living inside a simulation than outside of it! Other scientists, including physicists have taken up this argument.

    In the video game version of this argument, we have the rapid advancement of graphics technology. Elon Musk, speaking at the Code Conference in 2016, asserted that 40 years ago, we had pong, which was essentially two lines and a dot. Today we have VR and AR and MMORPGs — all based on 3D technology. If the pace of video game development continues, in a few decades we would have hyper-realistic games, indistinguishable from reality.

    I call this point the Simulation Point, and in my new book, The Simulation Hypothesis, one part is dedicated towards the stages of technology needed to reach this point. It’s much easier to see a path from today’s VR to something like The Matrix than it was in 1999 when the movie was released. With games like Fortnite, Minecraft, and League of Legends having millions of online players interacting in a shared online world, the idea that we might actually be in a shared connected simulated world doesn’t seem so far-fetched as it might have in 1999.

    In this article, we go beyond Bostrom’s and Musk’s simulation arguments to explore some of the reasons why science might be telling us we are in a simulated reality, like the Matrix.

    1. Pixels, Resolution, Virtual and Augmented Reality

    Today we are already seeing with Virtual Reality that “full immersion” is possible. Anyone who has played a convincing VR game will realize that it’s possible to forget about the real world and “believe” the world you are seeing is real.

    As a great example, I was playing a prototype of a Ping Pong VR game last year (built by Free Range Games), and even though it wasn’t realistic resolution, I lost myself and thought I was playing ping pong for real. So much so that I set the paddle on the ping pong “table” and leaned against the table. Of course, it was a VR table so it didn’t really exist — I ended up dropping the paddle (actually the Vive controller) onto the floor. As I leaned into the “table” I almost fell over before realizing that there was no table. In other words, to quote from The Matrix, there is no spoon.

    The immersion comes not just from the number of pixels, but from the controls and responsiveness that VR is able to achieve. In the novel (and Steve Spielberg film) Ready Player One, which was about a VR world called the OASIS, users had lightweight glasses and wore haptic suits and walked on omnidirectional treadmills to add realism. In that world, the OASIS was preferable to real life.

    The fact that 3D models can be used to create realistic looking objects in films(a glance at movies like Blade Runner 2049 will convince you that we have enough pixel resolution to create realistic looking objects), and that 3D printers can be used to “print” physical objects shows that the physical world can be represented by information, a key part of the simulation hypothesis.

    Where does the responsiveness and fidelity come from? The limitations today are in real-time rendering and in they way that objects interact with each other inside the world. Most games have a physics engine and a rendering engine. The physics engine is never fully realistic (otherwise it would take you too long to go from one part of the game to the other), and the rendering engine is what’s responsible for making you “see” what the world looks like by deciding what color pixels go where. We can easily see that full immersion may be possible in a few years time.

    2. Pixels, Quanta, and Zeno’s Paradox

    Speaking of pixels, could it be that what we call the physical world also consists of pixels?

    I recall late nights at MIT during my undergrad years where I had philosophical debates with my classmates about the nature of reality. This was the first time I’d heard of Zeno’s paradox, who presented it in terms of Achilles and a Tortoise. If Achilles was behind the tortoise, and he always had to make up half the distance, how could he ever get there?

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    Zeno’s parado involved Achilles and the Tortoise.

    Lurking underneath this paradox is the question of whether space is quantized or if it is continuous. The idea was that if space was continuous, like numbers are (you can always find an infinite number of numbers in between any two numbers), how is it possible to touch an object such as the wall? You would always have to cover half the distance and never quite get there.

    This was my first hint that space might be quantized.

    Today’s physicists generally acknowledge Planck constant as being the smallest amount of space that anything can be measure. Moreover, physicists tell us that most of what we think of as a solid object is actually 99% empty space, especially if you look inside the atom. The quanta in quantum physics consists of discrete quantities — of energies or “states” that a particle can exist in. Newton’s equations assumed a continuous amount of space; it turns out the universe may be more quantized than we thought.

    A related question is whether time is quantized? In all computer simulations, there is the idea of “generation” or “steps” in the simulation. These are some multiple of the processor clock-speed, which is the minimum speed at which something could be measured for any simulation running on that processor. Whether time is quantized in the real world is an open question, though there are some that suggest it is, and planck’s time constant (the amount of time it takes the speed of light to travel the planck length) is the minimum quantied time. If so, this would be more evidence that we live in a computation based reality.

    3. The Collapse of the Probability Wave, Quantum Indeterminacy

    In quantum physics one of the most intriguing ideas is the probability matrix, which is an interpretation of how subatomic particles can exhibit properties of both a wave and a solid particle at the same time. At the level of an electron or a photon, the wave is interpreted as a set of probabilities of where the particle might be at any given time. When we observe a particular possibility, then the probability wave is said to “collapse” and we see a single particle in a particular location. This is called Quantum Indeterminacy.

    How does the probability wave collapse? This is one of the biggest mysteries in physics. The best answer physicists have come up with is that consciousness somehow determines the collapse. Max Planck once wrote, “I consider consciousness as fundamental and matter as derivative”.

    An even bigger mystery is why does the universe work this way?

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    The simulation hypothesis provides a pretty good answer. The reason that video games have advanced so far in a few decades is because of optimization techniques. It would be impossible even for today’s computers to render in real time all the pixels of a single 3D world — instead, information is stored as 3D models outside the rendered world and then only what a particular character can see from a certain angle is rendered. The golden rule of video game rendering engines is: render only that which can be observed!

    Many adherents of the simulation hypothesis think that quantum indeterminacy is an optimization technique with the same basic idea: only render that which is being observed.

    The most famous example of this is Schrodinger’s cat, the poor feline who is trapped in a box with radioactive material. After an hour, the probability is that hte cat is either dead or alive. Common sense tells us that the cat is already either dead or alive, and when we open the box we are merely finding out what happened. Quantum physics tells us this is wrong: until we are there to obeserve it, the cat is actually both alive and dead at the same time — what’s called a quantum superposition!

    4. Future Selves, and Parallel Universes

    Another related aspect of Quantum Physics that sounds like science fiction is the Parallel Universes theory, where we branch into different “universes” when we make decisions. If that’s true, then there is a directed graph of multiple universes that are branching out each time we make a decision, resulting in different timelines (in fact, the parallel universes theory was put forward to solve the grandfather paradox of time travel).

    Which of those universes do we branch into? this may have to do with the one that is most “optimal” — meaning these universes may or may not exist as actual physical realities.

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    The Minimax algorithm looks at possible futures, calculating which one is the most optimal for a video game.

    Physicist Fred Alan Wolf, for example, says that information from these possible futures is coming to us in the present and that we send out an “offer wave” into the future, which is interacting with the “offer waves” coming from the future to the present. Which possible future we navigate to depends on which choices we make, and how these two waves super-pose on each other (or cancel each other out). These are startling results. Future probable selves are sending back information to the present, and we are consciously choosing which path to follow.

    This reminded me of the very first video game I made back at MIT. The way that the computer chose the next move was to project the possible futures, and then use a certain algorithm to “rank” those futures, and then bring those values back to the present and then the AI would choose the path to follow.

    Did the possible futures we were calculating in our game actually exist? Or were they just probabilities? I realized that this isn’t too much different from what’s happening at the quantum level, except that in existing games like chess or checkers, we use a simple function (based on the rules of the game) to decide which of the paths is most optimal. We used the “minimax” algorithm in game design, trying to maximize our score and minimize our opponents score at each “turn of the future”.

    Physicist Thomas Campbell, in his 2003 book, My Big TOE (Theory of Everything) also proposes that there is a fundamental function and that we are essential in a computatiuonal universe that branches off possibilities and uses an evaluation function, just like a video game! He and a team from Caltech raised funds in 2018 on kickstarter for a series of experiements to try to prove this!

    5. The Speed of light

    Another big mystery is why the speed of light is one of the few constants, one of the few fundamental values in physics. In fact, all matter has been equated with energy, and energy may be a derivative of light itself. While other things change, including gravity and space-time, Einstein found that the speed of light remains fixed.

    Why would the speed of electromagnetic waves be the same speed at which information can travel through the universe?

    In video games, it turns out that pixels are based on light — they are illuminated for a temporary period, and all communication happens between computers at the speed of light. Just as in relativity where simultaneity cannot really be guaranteed, the same is true video games — each player is working off of his computer and responding to information about the game, which is being sent to cloud servers outside the rendered world. The cloud serve is doing its best to respect simultaneity and order the events, but it may actually be impossible.

    Conclusion

    Along with the statistical simulation argument and the advance in video game technology, these are some of the reasons why scientists are starting to take the simulation hypothesis seriously. In fact, many physicists and biologists are starting to realize that underneath the physical objects they are studying, the universe is actually information.

    Famous physicist John Wheeler in his autobiography wrote “it from bit” — meaning that bits, not matter, are the fundamental “thing in the universe”. In fact, he said physics went through three phases in his career and each phase was an evoluation of our understanding of the universe. The fist phase was that “everything was a particle” (material, newtonian model), then “everything was a field” (quantum probability model), and finally, “everything is information” or bits.

    If everything was information, or bits, then this would not only be consistent with a video game simulation like that in The Matrix, it would explain some of the big unanswered questions in science — why does it work this way?

    While we aren’t able to duplicate The Matrix at this stage of our technology, our computer science and video games have gotten far enough along that we are well on the road to the Simulation Point.

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    Buy Rizwan Virk’s book The Simulation Hypothesis: An MIT Computer Scientist Shows Why AI, Quantum Physics, and Eastern Mystics All Agree We Are In a Video Game, or find out more at www.zenentrepreneur.com

  • NZ On Edge: Festival Evacuated Over 'Far-Right' Tattoo; Crime To Download, Distribute Manifesto

    New Zealand is on edge following the March 15 terror attacks at two Christchurch mosques that left 50 dead. 

    On Saturday, around 5,000 concertgoers were evacuated from the Homegrown Music Festival in Wellington because a festival worker reported someone with a ‘far-right’ tattoo.

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    After the roughly 30 minute evacuation, the tattoo was discovered to be “traditional” instead, according to the New Zealand Herald (h/t Cassandra Fairbanks of Gateway Pundit)

    “Some of the Homegrown crew identified a person that they were concerned about and police made the call that person needed to be found,” said Homegrown spokeswoman Kelly Wright, adding that the incident was an “innocent misunderstanding.”

    “It all happened at the change-over of the music so people were moving around and police couldn’t spot the person immediately so they made the call to evacuate the stage. The person was found and it turned out that is was a completely innocent misunderstanding and everyone was allowed to return.”

    Illegal manifesto

    According to New Zealand’s Chief Censor David Shanks, a so-called manifesto attributed to suspected gunman Brenton Tarrant was ruled “objectionable” on Saturday, making it a crime to possess or distribute it anywhere in the country. 

    “People who have downloaded this document, or printed it, should destroy any copies,” said Shanks. 

    “There is an important distinction to be made between ‘hate speech,’ which may be rejected by many right-thinking people but which is legal to express, and this type of publication, which is deliberately constructed to inspire further murder and terrorism,” said Shanks, adding “It crosses the line.” 

    Prosecutors have also gone after people who shared that video.

    As of Thursday, at least two people had been charged with sharing the video via social media, under a law that forbids dissemination or possession of material depicting extreme violence and terrorism.

    Others could face related charges in connection with publicizing the terrorist attack, under a human rights law that forbids incitement of racial disharmony. –NYT

    “It promotes, encourages and justifies acts of murder and terrorist violence against identified groups of people,” said Shanks. “It identifies specific places for potential attack in New Zealand, and refers to the means by which other types of attack may be carried out. It contains justifications for acts of tremendous cruelty, such as the deliberate killing of children.” 

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    As far as ‘hate speech’ which is ‘legal to express,’ Shanks may want to touch base with police in Masterton, who announced that they were charging a 28-year-old woman with ‘inciting racial disharmony‘ over a Facebook post which contained an “upsetting” message related to “the events in Christchurch and this person’s views on what had occurred.”

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    Senior Sergeant Jennifer Hansen

    “We were made aware that this post had been put up on Facebook which had upset a number of people to the point that they felt uncomfortable taking kids to school because of the comments that had been made,” said Sergeant Jennifer Hansen. 

    Meanwhile, several Kiwis who have shared videos of the Christchurch massacre at work have been fired. 

    Last week, New Zealand authorities have reminded citizens that they face up to 10 years in prison for “knowingly” possessing a copy of the New Zealand mosque shooting video – and up to 14 years in prison for sharing it. Corporations (such as web hosts) face an additional $200,000 ($137,000 US) fine under the same law. 

    Free speech advocates, however, are concerned with Ardern’s censorship-heavy approach.

    “People are more confident of each other and their leaders when there is no room left for conspiracy theories, when nothing is hidden,” Stephen Franks, a constitutional lawyer and spokesman for the Free Speech Coalition, told AP.

    “The damage and risks are greater from suppressing these things than they are from trusting people to form their own conclusions and to see evil or madness for what it is.”

    Speaking about Tarrant’s first-person-shooter-style video, counterterrorism expert Jennifer Breedon told RT that banning such videos does nothing to prevent future attacks.

    “We need to stop putting band-aids on gunshot wounds,” she said. “We’re spending so much time talking about ‘we can’t have videos like this’…rather than answering questions that need to be asked.”

    Into the memory hole

    Meanwhile, journalist Nick Monroe noted that New Zealand news outlet Stuff has deleted an article in which a 30-year-old New Zealand resident converted to Islam and was “introduced to radical Islam at the Al-Noor mosque in Christchurch.”

    New Zealand has also banned books by author Jordan Peterson

    In short, “never let a good crisis go to waste” applies in New Zealand.  

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  • New Jersey Legislators Demand "Huck Finn" Be Removed From State's Schools

    Via The College Fix,

    Here we go again: A pair of lawmakers in New Jersey want the state’s schools to stop using the classic Mark Twain novel “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn“ in their classrooms.

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    As reported by Politico, although the book contains numerous “anti-racist and anti-slavery themes” it also features over 200 mentions of the N-word. New Jersey State Assembly members Verlina Reynolds-Jackson and Jamel Holley contend the latter “can cause students to feel upset, marginalized or humiliated and can create an uncomfortable atmosphere in the classroom.”

    The lawmakers’ non-binding resolution notes various school districts in Pennsylvania, Virginia, Minnesota and Mississippi have ditched the book from their curricula.

    “There are other books out there that can teach about character, plot and motive — other ways besides using this particular book for that lesson,” Reynolds-Jackson told Politico. 

    She noted the catalyst for the measure was a cyber-bullying incident against a black student which featured racist epithets and threats of lynching … but admitted Twain’s novel had nothing to do it.

    According to the American Library Association, “Huck Finn” was the 14th most challenged or banned book from 2000-2009.

    Top 20 Banned/Challenged Books: 2000-2009

    1. Harry Potter (series), by J.K. Rowling
    2. Alice series, by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
    3. The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier
    4. And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson/Peter Parnell
    5. Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck
    6. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou
    7. Scary Stories (series), by Alvin Schwartz
    8. His Dark Materials (series), by Philip Pullman
    9. ttyl; ttfn; l8r g8r (series), by Lauren Myracle
    10. The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
    11. Fallen Angels, by Walter Dean Myers
    12. It’s Perfectly Normal, by Robie Harris
    13. Captain Underpants (series), by Dav Pilkey
    14. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
    15. The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison
    16. Forever, by Judy Blume
    17. The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
    18. Go Ask Alice, by Anonymous
    19. Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
    20. King and King, by Linda de Haan

    From the story:

    The Assembly resolution by Reynolds-Jackson and Holley states that the book’s inclusion in school curricula “in effect requires adolescents to read and discuss a book containing hurtful, oppressive, and highly offensive languages directed towards African-Americans.”

    While the resolution does not state that “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn“ is a racist book, Reynolds-Jackson — who said she read it “many years ago“ — believes it is.

    “I think this is a racist book,” she said. “I think in the climate that we’re in right now, where you have a president that is caging up our children and separating us in this way, I think to use this book in this climate is not doing the African-American community any justice at all.”

    However, Reynolds-Jackson acknowledged that several teachers she spoke with like teaching the book.

    “I think you have to make sure you have a strong instructor to lead that conversation and those technical skills in developing our students,” she said.

    Acclaimed (black) author Toni Morrison, who as a child was disturbed by the novel, said that she grew to appreciate the book in “later readings.” She noted that attempts to censor the classic are “a purist yet elementary kind of censorship designed to appease adults rather than educate children.”

    h/t: RedState

  • House Intel Readies Criminal Referrals For Clinton Operatives Who "Perpetuated This Hoax"

    Just hours after President Trump proclaimed “It began illegally. And hopefully somebody is going to look at the other side. This was an illegal takedown that failed…“

    It seems the “other side” may just get what they deserved.

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    Source: GrrrGraphics

    Here is Nunes from Friday…

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    Rep. Devin Nunes reportedly will make criminal referrals to Attorney General Bill Barr on FBI, DOJ officials who perpetrated this hoax.

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    Nunes earlier tweeted: “The Russia investigation was based on false pretenses, false intel, and false media reports. House Intel found a yr ago there was no evidence of collusion, and Democrats who falsely claim to have such evidence have needlessly provoked a terrible, more than two-year-long crisis.”

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    And now Sperry is reporting that Nunes is preparing criminal referrals: “House Intel has evidence Clinton operatives & hi-level FBI & DOJ officials started Trump-Russia investigation in “late 2015/early 2016″ &that House GOP will be making criminal referrals to AG”

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    The ‘coup’ comes full circle…

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    Source: GatewayPundit

    How long before #LockThemUp starts trending?

  • Tesla Struggles To Compete In European Market

    Authored by Jon LeSage via Oilprice.com,

    CEO Elon Musk and the Tesla team have succeeded in making their company the most widely used electric vehicle brand name, but this has not yet led to global EV sales dominance.

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    Competitor BMW just issued a report conducted by global consulting firm IHS Markit and based on new vehicle registrations from Feb. 2018 to Feb. 2019. BMW has 16 percent of plug-in vehicle market share in Europe, while Tesla tied for fifth place with Volvo, according to the study.

    In its home market of Germany, BMW has 20 percent share with Tesla coming in at 3 percent. Germany is the largest car sales market in Europe, though it doesn’t top EV sales in the region.

    The leading EV market in Europe has been Norway, which is showing another telling trend. BMW has nearly 77 percent of that market, while Tesla recently has seen a sales decline in the country. Norway has become the emblem for banning petroleum-fueled cars in the near future, with EVs making up nearly half of total new vehicle sales in the past year according to the IHS Markit report.

    Other automakers are beating Tesla in European EV sales, which may have something to do with Tesla’s weak retail presence is key markets. With the Tesla Model 3 entering the European market, the company has been expecting to see better results. Tesla has not opened up its popular retail stores in the boot of Italy, in Spain outside Madrid and Barcelona, in most of Germany outside the biggest cities, and in Eastern European countries. France has only two Tesla stores in place.

    Tesla is tied with China’s BYD for first place globally, with Beijing Auto coming in second and BMW third. China will be the major market for determining market leadership in years ahead, where Tesla says it will beginproduction at its Shanghai plant in May. Tesla will be one of several foreign companies allowed to enter free-trade zones in China. That alters the decades-old tradition of requiring manufacturers to forge joint venture companies with Chinese partners.

    BMW is also in a distinct position in China. Last year, the government gave BMW the green light to go outside its China joint venture and increase its ownership to 75 percent in Brilliance China Automotive Holdings from 50 percent. The deal will be closing in 2022 when the government lifts rules capping foreign ownership for all auto ventures. China is the leading global market for auto sales, and BMW doesn’t want to miss out on EV and luxury market sales gains.

    BMW, Tesla, and other vehicle makers are closely following the trade war between the U.S. and China. Moving more of its production to China could help BMW boost its profits. For now, the steep import tariffs are hurting foreign companies shipping to China.

    The study reports that BMW had 6.6 percent of global EV sales over the past year. That compares to 2.7 percent of total new vehicle sales made up by EVs in the global market.

    BMW is also seeing gains in the U.S., where nearly 10 percent of its sales are EVs in a market where EVs only make up about 3.5 percent of total vehicle sales.

    Tesla still holds the lion’s share of the U.S. market. Total EV market sales came in at 361,307 for last year — up 81 percent over 2017. Of that total, 139,782 units were Model 3s in 2018. Including the Model S and the Model X, Tesla had more than 50 percent of total plug-in vehicle sales last year in the U.S.

    The other companies leading global EV sales share include China’s Roewe, Nissan, three other Chinese makers (Chery, JAC, and Jianling EV), Volkswagen, and Hyundai.

    Nissan is going through turbulence since the Japan arrest of its CEO Carlos Ghosn and split from its Renault partnership, which is expected to affect sales. Nissan fired Ghosn, credited with salvaging the company years ago and championing its popular Nissan Leaf, for charges of financial misdeeds.

    German automakers are expected to pick up some of that slack. VW, BMW, and Daimler have launched ambitious EV manufacturing goals that are starting to make their way to dealerships. Being Tesla-competitive has been at the heart of it, along with complying with increasingly stringent government regulations.

    Automakers will be investing 60 billion euros ($68 billion) over the next three years in EVs, the VDA, a German trade group, said in a statement earlier this month ahead of the 2019 Geneva Motor Show. The number of EV models will triple to about 100 different vehicles during that time, according to VDA President Bernhard Mattes. Many of them will have autonomous vehicle features.

    Stricter European Union emissions standards will take effect in 2030, which had led German makers to make ambitious production commitments through the next decade.

    The VDA’s Mattes also called for an expanded EV charging infrastructure and more purchase incentives for electric cars. Installing more public chargers (especially fast chargers) and bringing down the perceived purchase price and ownership cost have been the leading issues for EV adoption in all the global markets.

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Mar 24

Today’s News 24th March 2019

  • Trump's CIA Now Unbound And Back To Its Traditional Hijinks

    Authored by Wayne Madsen via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    Under the directorship of torture and black site maven Gina Haspel, Donald Trump’s Central Intelligence Agency has returned to its traditional roots of conducting “black bag” operations and disrupting electrical grids through cyber-attacks.

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    The Venezuelan government has accused the Trump administration of giving the green light for a series of crippling power failures in Venezuela, which affected 22 of Venezuela’s 23 states, including the capital of Caracas. The long-duration power failures were cited by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as a reason for the US withdrawing its diplomats from Caracas. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced that an international commission assisted by specialists from Russia, China, Iran, and the United Nations would help his country analyze the sources of the Venezuelan electrical grid cyber-attack. Initial cyber-forensics by Venezuela traced some of the cyber warfare being waged against Venezuela to nodes in Houston and Chicago.

    In addition to electricity, water service was disrupted in Venezuela. From Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas, Maduro tweeted on March 12: “From the Presidential Command Post, we monitored minute-by-minute the progress of the recovery of the National Electric System.”

    Cyber-attacks on a country that puts its civilian population in jeopardy might, at first glance, appear to be a violation of the Geneva Conventions on warfare. However, without a Digital Geneva Convention, civilian populations are not covered by the current Geneva Conventions. However, in 2015, the United Nations Group of Governmental Experts on Developments in the Field of Information and Telecommunications in the Context of International Security (UN GGE), which included experts from the United States, China, Russia, France, the United Kingdom, and other nations, agreed that current international law does apply to cyberspace. Most international legal experts agree that the Geneva Conventions require a digital annex to cover the type of cyber-disruption of the Venezuelan electrical grid carried out by the US intelligence services.

    Hybrid warfare against Venezuela, which includes economic, diplomatic, and cyber, has the backing of the neo-conservatives who now call the shots for the Trump White House. They include, in addition to Pompeo, national security adviser John Bolton; Iran-Contra felon Elliott Abrams, Trump’s special envoy to the US-backed opposition-led rump Venezuelan government of Juan Guaido; Cuban-American Mauricio Claver-Carone, the senior director for Western Hemisphere affairs at the National Security Council; and Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio, a Cuban-American, who represents the interests of South Florida’s right-wing oligarch exiles from Venezuela and other Latin American countries.

    While Trump was preparing for his Hanoi summit meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Trump’s second summit with Kim, Haspel’s CIA dug into its old bag of black operations, while also engaging in the more modern form of cyber-attack in targeting North Korea.

    On February 22, 2019, ten males, all wearing masks, broke into the North Korean embassy, which is located in the residential suburb of Aravaca, north of Madrid, Spain, and subjected eight embassy staff members to brutal interrogation tactics, including tying up the diplomats, throwing black bags over their heads (a specialty of Ms. Haspel), and subjecting them to beatings. One female diplomat managed to escape through a second-floor window and her screams alerted a neighbor, who promptly called the police. Two embassy employees required medical attention from their injuries.

    The Spanish police and National Intelligence Center (CNI) linked two of the embassy invaders to the CIA. “El Pais,” a Spanish national newspaper, reported that the CIA issued one of its standard “denials,” however, the paper stated that Spanish authorities found the denial from Langley, Virginia to be “unconvincing.” “El Pais” reported that the invasion of the North Korean embassy by the CIA had severely harmed relations between Madrid and Washington.

    The National Police Corps’ General Commissariat of Information (CGI) and CNI concluded that the attack and occupation of the North Korean embassy was not carried out by common criminals but was the work of a “military cell” that stole mobile phones and computers. Two of the embassy invaders were identified as Koreans and, based on CGI’s and CNI’s analysis of security camera video footage, they were further recognized as Koreans linked to the CIA. Spanish authorities did not rule out the possibility that South Korea’s National Intelligence Service assisted the CIA in the embassy invasion. The embassy invaders escaped from the embassy using two North Korean luxury sedans bearing diplomatic plates. The cars were later found abandoned.

    The criminal inquiry into the incident is now before the Spanish High Court, the Audiencia Nacional, which could order the arrests of the embassy attackers and, if they are in the United States or South Korea, have Spain’s INTERPOL national bureau put out a Red Notice for their arrest and extradition to Spain to stand trial.

    Spanish authorities believe the CIA’s embassy attackers were looking for information on Kim Hyok Chol, the former North Korean ambassador to Spain, who was declared “persona non grata” by the Spanish government in 2017. Kim Hyok Chol, a career diplomat from one of North Korea’s elite families who studied French at the Pyongyang University of Foreign Studies and speaks fluent English, is now one of Kim Jong Un’s trusted diplomatic advisers on nuclear talks with the Trump administration and he traveled with Chairman Kim to the failed Hanoi summit with Trump.

    With certainty, Kim Hyok Chol thoroughly briefed Kim Jong Un on the CIA’s storming of his old diplomatic post in Spain. When Trump and Chairman Kim met in Hanoi on February 27 and if the issue of the CIA’s siege of the North Korean embassy was brought up, that could have been enough to derail the summit. Considering the fact that war hawks like Bolton, Abrams, and Pompeo are now calling the foreign policy shots for the Trump administration, the attack on the North Korean embassy in Madrid, just five days prior to the Hanoi summit, may have been ordered by Washington’s neo-con cell with the intention of scuttling the second meeting between Trump and Kim and put on ice any future meetings.

    There is further evidence that suggests the neo-cons, in cahoots with Haspel at the CIA, set out to disrupt the Hanoi summit. While Trump was meeting with Kim in Vietnam, the CIA is believed to have launched a cyber-attack on the Korean American National Coordinating Council (KANCC) in New York, an organization with ties to the Pyongyang government. KANCC is a non-governmental organization with offices in the Interchurch Center building, near Columbia University in Manhattan. It champions the dropping of US sanctions against North Korea, a sore point in Hanoi between Trump and Kim.

    The Trump-Kim Hanoi summit was reported to have hit a roadblock over North Korea’s request for a partial lifting of US sanctions on North Korea, in return for the continued North Korean moratorium on nuclear testing and a partial freeze on production of fissile material. With the CIA’s attack on the North Korean embassy in Spain still fresh in the minds of the North Korean side and the neo-cons’ insistence, pushed by Bolton and Pompeo, for complete North Korean nuclear disarmament, the Hanoi summit was destined for failure. And, with Bolton, Abrams, Pompeo, and other dangerous neo-cons in charge at the White House and the State Department — and Haspel dancing to their tune at the CIA – North Korea and Venezuela are not the only countries currently in the gunsights of the Trump administration.

  • Visualizing 200 Years Of U.S. Population Density

    At the moment, there are around 326 million people living in the United States, a country that’s 3.5 million square miles (9.8 million sq km) in land area.

    But, as Visual Capitalist’s Jeff Desjardins explains below, throughout the nation’s history, neither of these numbers have stayed constant.

    Not only did the population boom as a result of births and immigrants, but the borders of the country kept changing as well – especially in the country’s early years as settlers moved westwards.

    U.S. Population Density Over Time

    Today’s animated map, which comes to us from Vivid Maps, plots U.S. population density numbers over the time period of 1790-2010 based on U.S. Census data and Jonathan Schroeder’s county-level decadal estimates for population. In essence, it gives a more precise view of who moved where and when over the course of the nation’s history.

    Note: While U.S. Census data is granular and dates back to 1790, it comes with certain limitations. One obvious drawback, for example, is that such data is not able to properly account for Native American populations.

    “Go West, Young Man”

    As you might notice in the animation, there is one anomaly that appears in the late-1800s: the area around modern-day Oklahoma is colored in, but the state itself is an “empty gap” on the map.

    The reason for this? The area was originally designated as Indian Territory – land reserved for the forced re-settlement of Native Americans. However, in 1889, the land was opened up to a massive land rush, and approximately 50,000 pioneers lined up to grab a piece of the two million acres (8,000 km²) opened for settlement.

    While settlers flocking to Oklahoma is one specific event that ties into this animation, really the map shows the history of a much broader land rush in general: Manifest Destiny.

    You can see pioneers landing in Louisiana in the early 1800s, the first settlements in California and Oregon, and the gradual filling up of the states in the middle of the country.

    By the mid-20th century, the distribution of the population starts to resemble that of modern America.

    Population Density Today

    The average population density in the U.S. is now 92 people per square mile, although this changes dramatically based on where you are located:

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    If you are in Alaska, the state with the lowest population density, there is just one person per square mile – but if you’re in New York City there are 27,000 people per square mile, the highest of any major city in the country.

  • Russia Gives US Red Line On Venezuela

    Authored by Finian Cunningham via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    At a high-level meeting in Rome this week, it seems that Russia reiterated a grave warning to the US – Moscow will not tolerate American military intervention to topple the Venezuelan government with whom it is allied.

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    Meanwhile, back in Washington DC, President Donald Trump was again bragging that the military option was still on the table, in his press conference with Brazilian counterpart Jair Bolsonaro. Trump is bluffing or not yet up to speed with being apprised of Russia’s red line.

    The meeting in the Italian capital between US “special envoy” on Venezuelan affairs Elliot Abrams and Russia’s deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov had an air of urgency in its arrangement. The US State Department announced the tête-à-tête only three days beforehand. The two officials also reportedly held their two-hour discussions in a Rome hotel, a venue indicating ad hoc arrangement.

    Abrams is no ordinary diplomat. He is a regime-change specialist with a criminal record for sponsoring terrorist operations, specifically the infamous Iran-Contra affair to destabilize Nicaragua during the 1980s. His appointment by President Trump to the “Venezuela file” only underscores the serious intent in Washington for regime change in Caracas. Whether it gets away with that intent is another matter.

    Moscow’s interlocutor, Sergei Ryabkov, is known to not mince his words, having earlier castigated Washington for seeking global military domination. He calls a spade a spade, and presumably a criminal a criminal.

    The encounter in Rome this week was described as “frank” and “serious” – which is diplomatic code for a blazing exchange. The timing comes at a high-stakes moment, after Venezuela having been thrown into chaos last week from civilian power blackouts that many observers, including the Kremlin, blame on American cyber sabotage. The power grid outage followed a failed attempt by Washington to stage a provocation with the Venezuelan military over humanitarian aid deliveries last month from neighboring Colombia.

    The fact that Washington’s efforts to overthrow the elected President Nicolas Maduro have so far floundered, might suggest that the Americans are intensifying their campaign to destabilize the country, with the objective of installing US-backed opposition figure Juan Guaido. He declared himself “acting president” in January with Washington’s imprimatur.

    Given that the nationwide power blackouts seem to have failed in fomenting a revolt by the civilian population or the military against Maduro, the next option tempting Washington could be the military one.

    It seems significant that Washington has recently evacuated its last remaining diplomats from the South American country. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo commented on the evacuation by saying that having US personnel on the ground “was limiting” Washington’s scope for action. Also, American Airlines reportedly cancelled all its services to Venezuela in the past week. Again, suggesting that the US was considering a military intervention, either directly with its troops or covertly by weaponizing local proxies. The latter certainly falls under Abrams’ purview.

    After the Rome meeting, Ryabkov said bluntly:

    “We assume that Washington treats our priorities seriously, our approach and warnings.”

    One of those warnings delivered by Ryabkov is understood to have been that no American military intervention in Venezuela will be tolerated by Moscow.

    For his part, Abrams sounded as if he had emerged from the meeting after having been given a severe reprimand.

    “No, we did not come to a meeting of minds, but I think the talks were positive in the sense that both sides emerged with a better understanding of the other’s views,” he told reporters.

    “A better understanding of the other’s views,” means that the American side was given a red line to back off.

    The arrogance of the Americans is staggering. Abrams seems, according to US reporting, to have flown to Rome with the expectation of working out with Ryabkov a “transition” or “compromise” on who gets the “title of president” of Venezuela.

    That’s what he no doubt meant when he said after the meeting “there was not a meeting of minds”, but rather he got “a better understanding” of Russia’s position.

    Washington’s gambit is a replay of Syria. During the eight-year war in that country, the US continually proffered the demand of a “political transition” which at the end would see President Bashar al Assad standing down. By contrast, Russia’s unflinching position on Syria has always been that it’s not up to any external power to decide Syria’s politics. It is a sovereign matter for the Syrian people to determine independently.

    Nearly three years after Russia intervened militarily in Syria to salvage the Arab country from a US-backed covert war for regime change, the American side has manifestly given up on its erstwhile imperious demands for “political transition”. The principle of Syrian sovereignty has prevailed, in large part because of Russia’s trenchant defense of its Arab ally.

    Likewise, Washington, in its incorrigible arrogance, is getting another lesson from Russia – this time in its own presumed “back yard” of Latin America.

    It’s not a question of Russia being inveigled by Washington’s regime-change schemers about who should be president of Venezuela and “how we can manage a transition”. Moscow has reiterated countless times that the legitimate president of Venezuela is Nicolas Maduro whom the people voted for last year by an overwhelming majority in a free and fair election – albeit boycotted by the US-orchestrated opposition.

    The framework Washington is attempting to set up of choosing between their desired “interim president” and incumbent Maduro is an entirely spurious one. It is not even worthy to be discussed because it is a gross violation of Venezuela’s sovereignty. Who is Washington to even dare try to impose its false choice?

    On Venezuela, Russia is having to remind the criminal American rulers – again – about international law and respect for national sovereignty, as Moscow earlier did with regard to Syria.

    And in case Washington gets into a huff and tries the military option, Moscow this week told regime-change henchman Abrams that that’s a red line. If Washington has any sense of rationale left, it will know from its Syria fiasco that Russia has Venezuela’s back covered.

    Political force is out. Military force is out. Respect international law and Venezuela’s sovereignty. That’s Russia’s eminently reasonable ultimatum to Washington.

    Now, the desperate Americans could still try more sabotage, cyber or financial. But their options are limited, contrary to what Trump thinks.

    How the days of American imperialist swagger are numbered. There was a time when it could rampage all over Latin America. Not any more, evidently. Thanks in part to Russia’s global standing and military power.

  • UK Coup Erupts: Theresa May Cabinet In Revolt, Plotting Her Imminent Overthrow

    Theresa May may have days, if not hours, left as prime minister of the UK following a full-blown cabinet coup on Saturday night as senior ministers moved to oust the UK prime minister and replace her with her deputy, David Lidington.

    According to the Sunday Times, following a “frantic series of private telephone calls”, senior ministers agreed the prime minister must announce she is standing down, warning that she has become a toxic and “erratic” figure whose judgment has “gone haywire.”

    The plotters reportedly plan to confront May at a cabinet meeting on Sunday and demand that she announces she is quitting. If she refuses, they will threaten mass resignations or publicly demand her head. The “conspirators” were locked in talks late on Saturday to try reach a consensus deal on a new prime minister so there does not have to be a protracted leadership contest.

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    The Sunday Times, which reported that up to 11 cabinet minister confirmed they wanted the prime minister to make way for someone else, said that at six senior ministers want her deputy, David Lidington, to deliver Brexit and then make way for a full leadership contest in the autumn. Lidington’s supporters include cabinet remainers Greg Clark, Amber Rudd and David Gauke. The chancellor, Philip Hammond, also believes Lidington should take over if May refuses this week to seek a new consensus deal on Brexit. Sajid Javid, has agreed to put his own leadership ambitions on hold until the autumn to clear the way for Lidington — as long as his main rivals do the same.

    The relatively unfamiliar – especially outside the UK – Lidington “is understood not to be pressing for the top job but is prepared to take over if that is the will of cabinet. He would agree not to stand in the contest to find a permanent leader.”

    A cabinet source said: “David’s job would be to secure an extension with the EU, find a consensus for a new Brexit policy and then arrange an orderly transition to a new leader.”

    Lidington’s friends want him to pledge to allow the cabinet to decide Brexit policy in order to get Hunt and Gove on board, urging the three cabinet heavyweights to work together to take control of the government.

    Michael Gove, a leading Brexiteer in the 2016 referendum, and Foreign Minister Jeremy Hunt also have some support.

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    Hunt, the foreign secretary, does not support Lidington because he believes he would do a deal with Labour to take Britain into a permanent customs union with the EU, although he has lost confidence in May’s ability to take advice or deliver the deal.

    Meanwhile environment secretary Gove has a leadership team in place and a raft of supporters who have been recruited in a series of secret dinners hosted by Mel Stride, the Treasury minister. Gove is said to be ready to support Lidington if others do but is sceptical that agreement will be reached.

    * * *

    As the Times details, the coup erupted “after a week of mistakes” by May, who delivered a television statement that alienated the MPs whose support she needs for her Brexit deal and then flirted with backing a no deal before performing a U-turn.

    One cabinet minister said: “The end is nigh. She won’t be prime minister in 10 days’ time.”

    A second said: “Her judgment has started to go haywire. You can’t be a member of the cabinet who just puts your head in the sand.”

    Similar to recurring mentions of the 25th Amendment in the US, concerns about May’s mental and physical resilience are widely shared. Officials in parliament were so concerned about May’s welfare they drew up a protocol to extract her from the Commons if she collapsed at the dispatch box.

    For now May has refused to comply with the coup’s demands, and the Times sources at Downing Street say May has not yet come to the conclusion that she should resign and is still being encouraged by her husband Philip to fight on. But she has also lost the confidence of key allies whose job it is to maintain party discipline. Whether she remains or quits, the current Brexit process remains irreparably broken: Julian Smith, the chief whip, believes there is no prospect of the prime minister winning support for her deal unless she announces that she is standing down so the second phase of Brexit negotiations can be conducted by a new leader.

    Smith told May that she should offer to go in the summer. May last night won the backing of Gisela Stuart, the most high-profile Labour supporter of the Vote Leave campaign. Writing in The Sunday Times, Stuart said: “It’s not the deal we want but it is the only deal we have.”

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    But Smith and other senior Tories believe that May’s resignation is a prerequisite to securing the support of key Brexiteers Boris Johnson, Dominic Raab and Jacob Rees-Mogg for the deal — without whom it is doomed to defeat.

    In a desperate last ditch move to save her seat, May’s team is said to be working on a plan to secure the support of the Democratic Unionist Party and Labour MPs by granting them a say on the final trade deal, to be negotiated after Brexit.

    That appears to be too little, too late: MPs claimed that just one member of the whips’ office, Mike Freer, wants May to carry on.

    In an astonishing challenge to her authority one senior whip, Paul Maynard, told May to her face that she should go because she was “betraying Brexit” and “destroying our party”. Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of the 1922 committee of backbenchers, is “at the end of his chain” and also thinks May should resign.

    Another cabinet minister said: “If the prime minister no longer has confidence of the parliamentary party, is badly placed to win over support of other parties and patience with her is almost run out among the EU 27 — then her continuing is a real problem.”

    Meanwhile, in bad news for pound bulls, with May’s authority in freefall, Times sources said it is unlikely that the prime minister will hold a third meaningful vote on her Brexit deal this week. Instead she will be a passenger as MPs vote tomorrow on a motion that will let them seize control of Wednesday’s Commons business to host a series of “indicative votes”, where MPs can express a preference for alternatives to May’s Brexit plan. That could lead to pressure for a new referendum or a Norway-style deal that keeps Britain in the single market.

    The most likely outcome, however, is even more chaos and confusion as in addition to having no real Brexit plans ahead of the (extended) hard Brexit headline in three weeks, the UK will soon be without a real leader.

    * * *

    And so with the UK facing a political coup, much remains unsure, with Times deputy political editor Sam Coates tweeting that:

    • are we really sure that it will be left to an “interim” PM to change direction of the county?
    • still clearly disagreement over timetable from different parts of cabinet
    • no contest involving Tory membership means massive row

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    The report of the political revolt comes, ironically, just hours after hundreds of thousands of Britons poured into the streets of London demanding a second public vote.

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    Marchers,  accompanied by live performances from noted U.K. musicians including DJ Fatboy Slim, clogged the streets of central London as they walked from Hyde Park to Parliament Square to hear from the opposition Labour Party mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and deputy Labour leader Tom Watson.
    Watson promised to back Theresa May’s twice-defeated political deal — breaking from the party’s position — in return for her  agreement to put the withdrawal accord to a public vote.

    “I will support your deal, I will help you get over the line, to help avoid a disastrous no-deal Brexit, but only if you let the people vote on it,” Watson said.

    And while most of the attendees favor Britain staying in the bloc, the rest of the UK reportedly remains sternly against going back to that other vortex of political chaos known as the European Union.

    * * *

    Appendix: for those who still pretend to bother about the Brexit process and where we currently stand, the following flowchart from AFP should give you a rough idea.

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  • SPLC Implodes: President And Legal Director Resign Amid Sexual Misconduct Scandal

    The Southern Poverty Law Center – the “vicious left-wing attack dog” used by the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Google and Amazon to identify “hate groups” – is unraveling. 

    A week after co-founder Morris Dees was ousted over sexual misconduct claims – with two dozen employees signing a letter of concern over “allegations of mistreatment, sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and racism,” the head of the SPLC, Richard Cohen, as well as the organization’s legal director, Rhonda Brownstein, resigned on Friday. 

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    Morris Dees, Richard Cohen, Rhonda Brownstein

    Cohen had been with the organization 33 years and was one of its most prominent figures. 

    At 5:03 p.m. Friday, Cohen sent a message to staff, with the subject line “Stepping Down,” announcing that he, too, would be leaving the organization that he and Dees had turned into a research and fundraising juggernaut.

    “Whatever problems exist at the SPLC happened on my watch, so I take responsibility for them,” Cohen wrote, while asking the staff to avoid jumping to conclusions before the board completes an internal review of the Montgomery, Ala., organization’s work culture. –LA Times

    Earlier this week, the SPLC board of directors appointed Michelle Obama’s former chief of staff, Tina Tchen – who, in an unrelated matter, unsuccessfully tried to pull strings and have the Jussie Smollett case transferred from the Chicago PD to the FBI. Tchen is heading up the inquiry into the sexual misconduct claims.

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    Tina Tchen

    Also out on Friday was Rhonda Brownstein – who had worked with the organization for nearly three decades, according to the Montgomery Advertiser‘s Melissa Brown. 

    Inside the SPLC “Scam”

    As the Washington Examiner‘s Beckett Adams writes, the Southern Poverty Law Center is a “scam,” which has taken ” no care whatsoever for the reputational and personal harm it causes by lumping Christians and anti-extremist activists with actual neo-Nazis.”

    As it turns out, the SPLC is a cynical money-making scheme, according to a former staffer’s blistering tell-all, published this week in the New Yorker. The center’s chief goal is to bilk naive and wealthy donors who believe it’s an earnest effort to combat bigotry.

    The only thing worse than a snarling partisan activist is a slimy conman who merely pretends to be one. –Washington Examiner

    ““Outside of work,” recalls Bob Moser of his days working for the organization, “we spent a lot of time drinking and dishing in Montgomery bars and restaurants about … the hyperbolic fund-raising appeals, and the fact that, though the center claimed to be effective in fighting extremism, ‘hate’ always continued to be on the rise, more dangerous than ever, with each year’s report on hate groups. ‘The S.P.L.C.—making hate pay,’ we’d say.”

    “[I]t was hard, for many of us, not to feel like we’d become pawns in what was, in many respects, a highly profitable scam,” added Moser. 

    The way Moser tells it, the center’s chief founder, Morris Dees, who was dismissed unceremoniously last week for unspecified reasons, discovered early on that he could rake in boatloads of cash by convincing “gullible Northern liberals” that his group is doing the hard work of fighting “hate.”

    But the center’s supposed mission of combating bigotry doesn’t actually matter to its top brass, Moser says. It’s just a business choice and one that has been extremely lucrative throughout the years. Moser’s article reminds readers of the time Dees actually said of the SPLC in an interview with then-Progressive magazine reporter John Egerton, “We just run our business like a business. Whether you’re selling cakes or causes, it’s all the same.” –Washington Examiner

    Moser claims that the SPLC’s business model centers entirely around keeping its precious donors in constant fear using gimmicks such as “hate maps” and “hate lists.” 

    “[T]he center continues to take in far more than it spends. And it still tends to emphasize splashy cases that are sure to draw national attention,” he writes adding the group’s “central strategy” involves “taking on cases guaranteed to make headlines and inflame the far right while demonstrating to potential donors that the center has not only all the right enemies but also the grit and know-how to take them down.” 

    Moser adds there is an inescapable sense of “guilt” that comes with thinking about “the legions of donors who believed that their money was being used, faithfully and well, to do the Lord’s work in the heart of Dixie. We were part of the con, and we knew it.”

    Who knew you could make the big bucks simply by lumping Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Ben Carson with actual, honest-to-God neo-Nazis? –Washington Examiner

    Right wing commentator and Vice co-founder Gavin McInnes is currently suing the SPLC for labeling his right-wing fraternal organization, the Proud Boys, a hate group. 

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    The SPLC has gone from a noble institution genuinely dedicated to eradicating hate to a hate group in and of itself that pretends this country is frothing with bigots desperate to foment World War III,” McInnes said in a press release. 

    McInnes has raised nearly $200,000 out of a goal of $250,000 to continue his lawsuit. From his website Defendgavin.com: 

    I’m suing the SPLC. And it’s not just because they destroyed my career and shattered my reputation. It’s because they could do the same to you. Though this group is often cited as a credible source by the media, nobody who actually knows stuff takes them seriously.

    No, being called an extremist by the SPLC does NOT mean you’re an extremist. No, being called a Hate Group by the SPLC does NOT make you a Hate Group. And no, being called a racist or an anti-Semite or an Islamophobe or a transphobe or a homophobe by the SPLC does NOT make you any of those things. -Gavin McInnes

    We wonder if there will even be an SPLC left to sue by the time it reaches a courtroom. 

  • Don't Shoot The Dogs: The Growing Epidemic Of Cops Shooting Family Pets

    Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

    “In too much of policing today, officer safety has become the highest priority. It trumps the rights and safety of suspects. It trumps the rights and safety of bystanders. It’s so important, in fact, that an officer’s subjective fear of a minor wound from a dog bite is enough to justify using potentially lethal force, in this case at the expense of a 4-year-old girl. And this isn’t the first time. In January, an Iowa cop shot and killed a woman by mistake while trying to kill her dog. Other cops have shot other kids, other bystanders, their partners, their supervisors and even themselves while firing their guns at a dog. That mind-set is then, of course, all the more problematic when it comes to using force against people.

    – Journalist Radley Balko

    The absurd cruelties of the American police state keep reaching newer heights.

    Consider that if you kill a police dog, you could face a longer prison sentence than if you’d murdered someone or abused a child.

    If a cop kills your dog, however, there will be little to no consequences for that officer.

    Not even a slap on the wrist.

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    In this, as in so many instances of official misconduct by government officials, the courts have ruled that the cops have qualified immunity, a legal doctrine that incentivizes government officials to engage in lawless behavior without fear of repercussions.

    This is the heartless, heartbreaking, hypocritical injustice that passes for law and order in America today.

    It is estimated that a dog is shot by a police officer “every 98 minutes.”

    The Department of Justice estimates that at least 25 dogs are killed by police every day. 

    The Puppycide Database Project estimates the number of dogs being killed by police to be closer to 500 dogs a day (which translates to 182,000 dogs a year).

    In 1 out of 5 cases involving police shooting a family pet, a child was either in the police line of fire or in the immediate area of a shooting. For instance, a 4-year-old girl was accidentally shot in the leg after a police officer opened fire on a dog running towards him, missed and hit the little girl instead.

    At a time when police are increasingly inclined to shoot first and ask questions later, it doesn’t take much to provoke a cop into opening fire on an unarmed person guilty of doing nothing more than standing a certain way, or moving a certain way, or holding something—anything—that police could misinterpret to be a weapon.

    All a cop has to do is cite an alleged “fear” for his safety.

    According to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, all it takes for dogs to pose a sufficient threat to police to justify them opening fire is for the dog to move or bark.

    Even in the absence of an actual threat, the perception of a threat is enough for qualified immunity to kick in and for the cop to be let off the hook for behavior that would get the rest of us jailed for life.

    As journalist Radley Balko points out, “In too much of policing today, officer safety has become the highest priority. It trumps the rights and safety of suspects. It trumps the rights and safety of bystanders. It’s so important, in fact, that an officer’s subjective fear of a minor wound from a dog bite is enough to justify using potentially lethal force.”

    The epidemic of cops shooting dogs takes this shameful behavior to a whole new level, though.

    It doesn’t take much for a cop to shoot a dog.

    Dogs shot and killed by police have been “guilty” of nothing more menacing than wagging their tails, barking in greeting, or merely being in their own yard. 

    For instance, Spike, a 70-pound pit bull, was shot by NYPD police when they encountered him in the hallway of an apartment building in the Bronx. Surveillance footage shows the dog, tail wagging, right before an officer shot him in the head at pointblank range.

    Arzy, a 14-month-old Newfoundland, Labrador and golden retriever mix, was shot between the eyes by a Louisiana police officer. The dog had been secured on a four-foot leash at the time he was shot. An independent witness testified that the dog never gave the officer any provocation to shoot him.

    Seven, a St. Bernard, was shot repeatedly by Connecticut police in the presence of the dog’s 12-year-old owner. Police, investigating an erroneous tip, had entered the property—without a warrant—where the dog and her owner had been playing in the backyard, causing the dog to give chase.

    Dutchess, a 2-year-old rescue dog, was shot three times in the head by Florida police as she ran out her front door. The officer had been approaching the house to inform the residents that their car door was open when the dog bounded out to greet him.

    Yanna, a 10-year-old boxer, was shot three times by Georgia police after they mistakenly entered the wrong home and opened fire, killing the dog, shooting the homeowner in the leg and wounding an investigating officer.

    Payton, a 7-year-old black Labrador retriever, and 4-year-old Chase, also a black Lab, were shot and killed after a SWAT team mistakenly raided the mayor’s home while searching for drugs. Police shot Payton four times. Chase was shot twice, once from behind as he ran away. “My government blew through my doors and killed my dogs. They thought we were drug dealers, and we were treated as such. I don’t think they really ever considered that we weren’t,” recalls Mayor Cheye Calvo, who described being handcuffed and interrogated for hours—wearing only underwear and socks—surrounded by the dogs’ carcasses and pools of the dogs’ blood.

    In another instance, a Missouri SWAT team raided a family home, killing a 4-year-old pit bull Kiya. Believe it or not, this time the SWAT raid wasn’t in pursuit of drugs, mistaken or otherwise, but was intended “to check if [the] home had electricity and natural gas service.”

    A dog doesn’t even have to be an aggressive breed to be shot by a cop.

    Balko has documented countless “dog shootings in which a police officer said he felt ‘threatened’ and had no choice but to use lethal force, including the killing of a Dalmatian (more than once), a yellow Lab , a springer spaniel, a chocolate Lab, a boxer, an Australian cattle dog, a Wheaten terrier, an Akita… a Jack Russell terrier… a 12-pound miniature dachshund… [and] a five-pound chihuahua.”

    Chihuahuas, among the smallest breed of dog (known as “purse” dogs), seem to really push cops over the edge.

    In Arkansas, for example, a sheriff’s deputy shot an “aggressive” chihuahua for barking repeatedly. The dog, Reese’s, required surgery for a shattered jaw and a feeding tube to eat.

    Same thing happened in Texas, except Trixie—who was on the other side of a fence from the officer—didn’t survive the shooting.

    Let’s put this in perspective, shall we?

    We’re being asked to believe that a police officer, fully armed, trained in combat and equipped to deal with the worst case scenario when it comes to violence, is so threatened by a yipping purse dog weighing less than 10 pounds that the only recourse is to shoot the dog?

    If this is the temperament of police officers bred by the police state, we should all be worried.

    Clearly, our four-legged friends are suffering at the hands of an inhumane police state in which the police have all the rights, the citizenry have very few rights, and our pets—viewed by the courts as personal property like a car or a house, but far less valuable—have no rights at all.

    So what’s to be done?

    Essentially, it comes down to training and accountability.

    It’s the difference between police officers who rank their personal safety above everyone else’s and police officers who understand that their jobs are to serve and protect.

    It’s the difference between police who are trained to shoot to kill and police trained to resolve situations peacefully.

    Most of all, it’s the difference between police who believe the law is on their side and police who know that they will be held to account for their actions under the same law as everyone else.

    Unfortunately, more and more police are being trained to view themselves as distinct from the citizenry, to view their authority as superior to the citizenry, and to view their lives as more precious than those of their citizen counterparts. Instead of being taught to see themselves as mediators and peacemakers whose lethal weapons are to be used as a last resort, they are being drilled into acting like gunmen with killer instincts who shoot to kill rather than merely incapacitate.

    These dog killings are, as Balko recognizes, “a side effect of the new SWAT, paramilitary focus in many police departments, which has supplanted the idea of being an ‘officer of the peace.’”

    Thus, whether you’re talking about police shooting dogs or citizens, the mindset is the same: a rush to violence, abuse of power, fear for officer safety, poor training in how to de-escalate a situation, and general carelessness.

    It’s time to rein in this abuse of power.

    A good place to start is by requiring police to undergo classes annually on how to peacefully resolve and de-escalate situations with the citizenry. While they’re at it, they should be forced to de-militarize. No one outside the battlefield—and barring a foreign invasion, the U.S. should never be considered a domestic battlefield—should be equipped with the kinds of weapons and gear being worn and used by local police forces today. If the politicians are serious about instituting far-reaching gun control measures, let them start by taking the guns and SWAT teams away from the countless civilian agencies that have nothing to do with military defense that are packing lethal heat.

    Ultimately, this comes down to better—and constant—training in nonviolent tactics, serious consequences for those who engage in excessive force, and a seismic shift in how law enforcement agencies and the courts deal with those who transgress.

    In terms of our four-legged friends, many states are adopting laws to make canine training mandatory for police officers. As dog behavior counselor Brian Kilcommons noted, officers’ inclination to “take command and take control” can cause them to antagonize dogs unnecessarily. Officers “need to realize they’re there to neutralize, not control… If they have enough money to militarize the police with Humvees, they have enough money to train them not to kill family members. And pets are considered family.”

    After all, as the Washington Post points out, while “postal workers regularly encounter both vicious and gregarious dogs on their daily rounds… letter carriers don’t kill dogs, even though they are bitten by the thousands every year. Instead, the Postal Service offers its employees training on how to avoid bites.” Journalist Dale Chappell adds, “Using live dogs, handlers and trainers put postal workers through scenarios to teach them how to read a dog’s behavior and calm a dog, or fend it off, if necessary. Meter readers also have benefited from the same training, drastically reducing incidents of dog bites.”

    The Rutherford Institute is working on a program aimed at training police to deescalate their interactions with dogs rather than resorting to lethal force, while providing pet owners with legal resources to better protect the four-legged members of their household.

    Yet as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, there will be no end to the bloodshed – of unarmed Americans or their family pets – until police stop viewing themselves as superior to those whom they are supposed to serve and start acting like the peace officers they’re supposed to be.

  • Goldman Just Put On The Next "Big Short" Trade

    At the start of March in a span of just 48 hours, several big names in the American mall industry announced they would be slashing store counts to the tune of over 300 stores. Gap said during its earnings call that it is going to shutter 230 locations over the next two years, just hours after JCPenney said that it would close 18 of its department stores. This news came after L Brands said they were going to close 53 Victoria’s Secret stores in North America this year according to Bloomberg. The icing on the cake was when “disruptor” Tesla recently announced all of its sales would be moving online, which was a nice way to say that almost all of its retail locations – many of which are located in malls – were going to close (since then Musk appears to have flip-flopped and as of this moment, the fate of Tesla’s retail operation remains unknown).

    These closures followed a number of high profile bankruptcies in the “bricks and mortar” space: Payless Inc. just went bankrupt for the second time in two years, bankrupt Sears was minutes away from liquidation, while perennial mall tenant Brookstone filed for chapter last August, slashing the size of their operations – and once American mall staples like Gymboree, RadioShack, Bon-Ton Shoes and Wet Seal all filed for bankruptcy over the last half decade. Payless is going to be abandoning its 2500 stores, while Things Remembered will also be closing most of its 400 stores.

    Overall, since 2016, 35 major retail chains, and countless smaller ones, have filed for Chapter 11.

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    So, as a result of this ongoing default tsunami, malls are becoming increasingly mere vacant lots, a few scattered fashion retailers, Apple stores and food courts, primarily just feeding Apple employees. And while the idea of imploding malls is not new, as the industry did seem to stabilize at one point as the cost of gas fell and consumer confidence rose, it now appears that the eye of the hurricane may have passed, and the tide is heading out once again, as vacancy rates at US malls jumped to 9% in the fourth quarter of 2018, up from 8.3% the year prior.

    And, as we said three weeks ago, this relapse in the sector suggests animal shorting spirits may soon re-emerge. Recall that back in 2017 we, and others, dubbed these U.S. retail store closures as “the next big short”. We said that “just like 10 years ago, when the “big short” was putting on the RMBX trade, and to a smaller extent, its cousin the CMBX, some were starting to short CMBS through the CMBX, a CDS index which tracks the values of bonds backed by various commercial properties. We explained our reasoning for putting on this short through CMBX versus stocks:

    The trade, as we discussed before, is not so much shorting the equities where a persistent threat of a short squeeze has burned the bears on more than one occasion, but going long default risk via CMBX or otherwise shorting the CMBS complex. Based on fundamentals, the trade indeed appears justified: Sold in 2012, the mortgage bonds have a higher concentration of loans to regional malls and shopping centers than similar securities issued since the financial crisis. And because of the way CMBS are structured, the BBB- and BB rated notes are the first to suffer losses when underlying loans go belly up.

    The trade lost some of its vigor in early 2018, when it seemed that the lows in CMBX BBB- may have been hit with the tranche trading in a tight range for the past 2 years.

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    However, we concluded that “once the new wave of bankruptcies flows through the mall P&L (or rather, does not) and a new wave of distress hits the mall sector, we fully expect new lows to be observed in this trade which is basically an inverse bet on Amazon’s continued success in stealing market share from pretty much everyone.”

    Just a few days later, we reported that one of the largest credit hedge funds, Canyon Partners, had put a $1 billion bet on CMBX blowing up in the coming months on expectations the commercial real estate bubble would soon blow up.

    Now, three weeks later, none other than Goldman has decided to echo what we said at the start of the month, and is urging its clients join the “big short” bandwagon  by going short CMBX AAA bonds (while hedging in a pair trade by going long five-year investment-grade corporate CDX).

    Noting that US commercial real estate prices have reached expensive levels, with cap rates tight relative to real Treasury rates by historical standards…

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    … Goldman points out a discrepancy, namely that at the same time, spreads on AAA CMBX indices have moved to historically tight levels: tight vs. other fixed income instruments such as CDX IG, and tight even relative to the spreads on the exact CMBS cash bond underliers referenced by the AAA CMBX products.

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    And while that means that the highest-rated commercial mortgage loans are paying off on time now, with few default concerns on the horizon, Goldman’s credit analysts Marty Young and Lofti Karoui fear that this scenario could easily reverse if commercial real estate prices start to decline.

    Citing the bank’s recent review of potential areas of financial imbalance across the US corporate and household sectors, Young notes that stretched CRE valuations ranked near the top in terms of risk level; and while a large and immediate commercial property price downturn is not the bank’s baseline forecast, “a scenario with falling commercial property prices in the next 1-2 years is one to which we would attach non-negligible probability” the analysts caution.

    Of course, there is not just one AAA CMBX series, but rather 7 – from series 6, representing deals issued in 2012, to the on-the-run series 12 which references bonds from deals issued in 2018.

    So what index should investors who wish to put on the big commercial real estate “big short”, bet on dropping?

    According to Goldman, investors looking to hedge near-term CRE distress scenarios may favor buying protection on the older, shorter maturity, series, as spreads are even tighter for these instruments (Exhibit 5). For example, loans in the series 6 deals have 3.3 years remaining maturity on average, and the CMBX 6 AAA spread is just 23bp.

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    As a reminder, when the “big short” commercial real estate trade first emerged in 2017, investors were originally betting on the Markit CMBX Series 6, that references CMBS bonds from 2012, as the series 6 deals have a high (40%) concentration of loans backed by retail properties, a sector facing secular pressures. Vintages after series 6 have less retail exposure, but these later series necessarily have higher exposure to other property types, many of which also have distinct risks. Series 12 deals, for example, have high shares of single-tenant and suburban office properties, and high shares of mortgages which pay interest-only, with no principal amortization.

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    To be sure, unlike some aggressive contrarian investors, Goldman hedges, noting that the dovish pivot by the Fed this year makes the bank reluctant to maintain a large outright short positioning; as a result, Goldman recommends putting on a pair trade “expressing the view that AAA CMBX spreads are too tight via a portfolio that sells protection on the on-the-run 5-year CDX IG contract and buys protection on the CMBX 6 AAA index, at a 1:1 notional ratio.”

    The trade package has positive exposure to corporate credit risk, which we think will continue to benefit from positive momentum in rating actions, as low recession odds and a relatively conservative mindset among BBB corporate issuers keeps downgrade risk idiosyncratic. The long-short portfolio has positive carry; we would recommend implementing the trade with a target return of +2% of notional, and a stop of -2%.

    Why is this notable? Because regular readers will recall that the 2007/2008 financial crisis really kicked in only after Goldman’s prop desk started aggressively shorting various RMBS tranches, both cash and synthetic, in late 2006 and into 2007 and 2008, with the trade eventually becoming the “big short” that was popularized in the Michael Lewis book.

    Will Goldman’s reco to short CMBX-6 AAA be the trigger that collapses the house of cards for the second time in a row? While traditionally lightning never strikes twice the same place, the centrally-planned market is now so broken that even conventional idioms have to be redone when it comes to the world’s (still) most important trading desk. In any case, keep an eye on commercial real estate prices: while residential markets have already peaked with most MSAs sliding fast, commercial may just be the first domino to drop that unleashes a tsunami of disastrous consequences across the rest of the market.

  • Australian Homebuilders Suffering Amid "Sharp Downturn"

    Australian homebuilders and housing industry contractors are feeling the effects of a sharp downturn in the country’s housing market, according to ABC News. 

    “Builders are just battening down the hatches and looking after their costs,” said Greg Zuccala – director at Australian homebuilder Zuccala Homes. 

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    With Melbourne housing prices falling 9.6% from their 2017 peak and new home building permits down nearly 40%, Zuccala has begun to adapt – laying off four workers amid a push to pinch pennies. 

    That huge fall in demand for new home builds meant Mr Zuccala had to find savings.

    To do that, he was forced to lay off four workers.

    “We’ve had to adjust things there to meet the market,” he said.

    “I think a lot of building companies at the moment find themselves in the same situation.” –ABC News

    It isn’t just homebuilders feeling the heat either; electricians such as Ray Sherriff – who employs nine electricians and four apprentices – has noticed the significant slowdown in housing activity. 

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    Electrician Ray Sherriff

    “Two years ago we literally didn’t have time to price all the [residential] jobs that were coming in,” Sherriff explained. “Now it’s rare and there are lots of jobs getting postponed and put back.”

    Residential work used to make up “probably 50 to 60 percent of our business,” according to Sherriff. “Now we’re probably looking at 20 to 30 per cent.” 

    It starts with approvals

    According to the Bureau of Statistics, Australian permit approvals were down nearly 29% in January y/y, with the exceptions of Western australia and Tasmania, where building permits are actually rising. 

    Right now, the rate of contraction in house construction is the fastest it has been in six and a half years, according to figures by the Australian Industry Group’s Performance of Construction Index.

    Activity in apartment construction has fallen for 11 months in a row to its lowest point in six years, at a time when the industry was recovering from the GFC.

    With national house prices down 6.8 per cent since the 2017 peak, and down 13.2 per cent in Australia’s biggest housing market — Sydney — economists say it is no wonder those in construction are feeling the heat too. –ABC News

    “When you have house prices falling as they are at the moment, the risks of entering into that are greater,” said Shane Garrett, chief economist with the Master Builders Association. 

    “That’s one of the reasons why activity is starting to move down … It’s a riskier predicament for all concerned.”

    Work drying up

    Meanwhile, demand for the more than 1 million residential construction sector workers is beginning to weaken. Job ads seeking construction workers dropped by 14% in February. 

    That said, ABC News would like readers to know that not all is lost… while “there is no denying we are in the midst of a downturn, and that is hurting the construction sector, the numbers are still good in a historical context.” 

    Nationally, new home building peaked in 2016 with about 230,000 new dwellings.

    “We see it bottoming out to about 175,000 over the next few years,” notes Garrett. “It’s worth emphasising, that 175,000 as a low point would still be the highest ever low point for new home building on record.”

    Government isn’t helping

    As we reported in February, with the Labour Party looking to wrest back control of the government during elections later this year, things could get worse for Australian housing. The party has pledged to curb tax breaks for property investors that helped drive up home prices (alongside an influx of foreign capital). 

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    Labor leader Bill Shorten has promised to scrap tax refunds worth A$5 billion ($3.6 billion) a year for share investors. The benefits are already being seen in the polls, where Labour is seeing a slight advantage.

    Meanwhile, as home prices have soared, home ownership rates among younger Australians have plummeted.

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    To try and combat this, Shorten proposed that a tax break known as negative gearing which allows homeowners to treat costs associated with owning a rental home as a tax deduction (though, to be fair, that certainly sounds like it could have some unintended consequences for the property market). He has also promised to subsidize rents and build homes.

    If Australia’s progressives are victorious in the May elections, the country’s “sharp downturn” in housing could accelerate. 

  • With RussiaGate Over Where's Hillary?

    Authored by Tom Luongo,

    During most of the RussiaGate investigation against Donald Trump I kept saying that all roads lead to Hillary Clinton.

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    Anyone with three working brain cells knew this, including ‘Miss’ Maddow, whose tears of disappointment are particularly delicious.

    Robert Mueller’s investigation was designed from the beginning to create something out of nothing. It did this admirably.

    It was so effective it paralyzed the country for more than two years, just like Europe has been held hostage by Brexit. And all of this because, in the end, the elites I call The Davos Crowd refused to accept that the people no longer believed their lies about the benefits of their neoliberal, globalist agenda.

    Hillary Clinton’s ascension to the Presidency was to be their apotheosis along with the Brexit vote. These were meant to lay to rest, once and for all time, the vaguely libertarian notion that people should rule themselves and not be ruled by philosopher kings in some distant land.

    Hillary’s failure was enormous. And the RussiaGate gambit to destroy Trump served a laundry list of purposes to cover it:

    1. Undermine his legitimacy before he even takes office.

    2. Accuse him of what Hillary actually did: collude with Russians and Ukrainians to effect the outcome of the election

    3. Paralyze Trump on his foreign policy desires to scale back the Empire

    4. Give aid and comfort to hurting progressives and radicalize them further undermining our political system

    5. Polarize the electorate over the false choice of Trump’s guilt.

    6. Paralyze the Dept. of Justice and Congress so that they would not uncover the massive corruption in the intelligence agencies in the U.S. and the U.K.

    7. Isolate Trump and take away every ally or potential ally he could have by turning them against him through prosecutor overreach.

    Hillary should have been thrown to the wolves after she failed. When you fail the people she failed and cost them the money she cost them, you lose more than just your funding. What this tells you is that Hillary has so much dirt on everyone involved, once this thing started everyone went along with it lest she burn them down as well.

    Burnin’ Down da House

    Hillary is the epitome of envy. Envy is the destructive sin of coveting someone else’s life so much they are obsessed with destroying it. It’s the sin of Cain

    She envies what Trump has, the Presidency.

    And she was willing to tear it down to keep him from having it no matter how much damage it would do. She’s worse than the Joker from The Dark Knight.

    Because while the Joker is unfathomable to someone with a conscience there’s little stopping us from excising him from the community completely., even though Batman refuses.

    Hillary hates us for who we are and what we won’t give her. And that animus drove her to blackmail the world while putting on the face of its savior.

    And that’s what makes what comes next so obvious to me. RussiaGate was never a sustainable narrative. It was ludicrous from the beginning. And now that it has ended with a whimper there are a lot of angry, confused and scared people out there.

    Mueller thought all he had to do was lean on corrupt people and threaten them with everything. They would turn on Trump. He would resign in disgrace from the public outcry.

    It didn’t work. In the end Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen and Roger Stone all held their ground or perjured themselves into the whole thing falling apart.

    Andrew Weissman’s resignation last month was your tell there was nothing. Mueller would pursue this to the limit of his personal reputation and no further.

    Just like so many other politicians.

    Vote Your Pocketbook

    With respect to Brexit I’ve been convinced that it would come down to reputations.

    Would the British MP’s vote against their own personal best interests to do the bidding of the EU?

    Would Theresa May eventually realize her historical reputation would be destroyed if she caves to Brussels and betrays Brexit in the end?

    Always bet on the fecklessness of politicians. They will always act selfishly when put to the test. While leading RussiaGate, Mueller was always headed here if he couldn’t get someone to betray Trump.

    And now his report is in. There are no new indictments. And by doing so he is saving his reputation for the future. And that is your biggest tell that Hillary’s blackmail is now worthless.

    They don’t fear her anymore because RussiaGate outed her as the architect. Anything else she has is irrelevant in the face of trying to oust a sitting president from power.

    The progressives that were convinced of Trump’s treason are bereft; their false hope stripped away like standing in front of a sandblaster. They will be raw, angry and looking for blood after they get over their denial.

    Everyone else who was blackmailed into going along with this lunacy will begin cutting deals to save their skins. The outrage over this will not end. Trump will be President when he stands for re-election.

    The Wolves Beckon

    The Democrats do not have a chance against him as of right now. When he was caving on everything back in December it looked like he was done. That there was enough meat on the RussiaGate bones to make Nancy Pelosi brave.

    Then she backed off on impeachment talk. Oops.

    But the Democrats have a sincere problem. Their candidates have no solutions other than to embrace the crazy and go full Bolshevik. That is not a winning position.

    Trump will kill them on ‘socialism.’

    The Deep State and The Davos Crowd stand revealed and reviled.

    If they don’t do something dramatic then the anger from the rest of the country will also be palpable come election time. Justice is not done simply by saying, “No evidence of collusion.”

    It’s clear that RussiaGate is a failure of monumental proportions. Heads will have to roll. But who will be willing to fall on their sword at this point?

    Comey? No. McCabe? No.

    There is only one answer. And Obama’s people are still in place to protect him. I said last fall that “Hillary would indict herself.” And I meant it. Eventually her blackmail and drive to burn it all down led to this moment.

    The circumstances are different than I expected back then, Trump didn’t win the mid-terms. But the end result was always the same. If there is no collusion, if RussiaGate is a scam, then all roads lead back to Hillary as the sacrificial lamb.

    Because the bigger project, the erection of a transnational superstate, is bigger than any one person. Hillary is expendable.

    Lies are expensive to maintain. The truth is cheap to defend. Think of the billions in opportunity costs associated with this. Once the costs rise above the benefits, change happens fast.

    If there is any hope of salvaging the center of this country for the Democrats, the ones that voted against Hillary in 2016, then there is no reason anymore not to indict Hillary as the architect of RussiaGate.

    We all know it’s the truth. So, the cheapest way out of this mess for them is to give the MAGApedes what they want, Hillary.

    And hope that is enough bread and circuses to distract from the real storm ahead of us.

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Mar 23

Today’s News 23rd March 2019

  • Watergate – The First Deep State Coup

    Authored by Peter Brimelow via The Unz Review,

    James Fulford writes: 

    The Mueller Report, which was supposed to be about alleged “Russian collusion” with Trump, is due out, and many people in the Democrat/Media conglomerate are hoping for a rerun of Watergate, which they think of as a victory for the Rule of Law. It wasn’t, and we need to have one of those famous “conversations” about what it was, and why it mustn’t happen again.

    In 1972, Richard Nixon was reelected with 520 electoral votes. He was running on winning the Vietnam War and also fighting a War on Crime. His opponent, George McGovern (17 electoral votes) was running on a plan to lose the Vietnam War, and surrender on the War on Crime.

    But by August 1974, Nixon was removed from office, and in April 1975, Vietnamese Communist troops occupied Saigon. What finished off South Vietnam was the “Watergate Congress” which voted to cut off all supplies. For details see James Webb’s Peace? Defeat? What Did the Vietnam War Protesters Want?American Enterprise Institute, May/June 1997.

    Who did this? Well, the Democrat-controlled Senate investigated the hell out of a break-and-enter committed by Republicans, which they never did when LBJ, JFK, Truman, and FDR engaged in similar activities. See It Didn’t Start With Watergate , [PDF]by Victor Lasky, published in 1977. On the Senate investigative staff was a young, far-Left Wellesley graduate named Hillary Clinton.

    The Democratic media, which hated Nixon with the same kind of hate they now display towards Trump, did the same thing, led by the famous Woodward and Bernstein, who probably get too much “credit” for this.

    Finally, in something that VDARE.com Editor Peter Brimelow speculated about in his 1981 Policy Review article reposted below, the secret figure of “Deep Throat” (Woodward and Bernstein’s name for an source inside the Government) turned out to Mark Felt, second in command of the FBI. [The Myth of Deep Throat | Mark Felt wasn’t out to protect American democracy and the rule of law; he was out to get a promotion, by Max Holland September 10, 2017]

    Peter Brimelow described this phenomenon of using lawfare to overturn elections by trying to criminalize the victors in his post Manafort, Marlborough, And Robert E. Lee: Criminalizing Policy/ Personnel, Differences— U.S. Politics Regressing To The Primitive.

    Once again, the Establishment is trying, as they did during Watergate, to overturn the results of an election with the aid of a Deep State, and the “foreign policy” establishment. “Deep Throat” Felt thought Nixon was interfering with the “independence” of the FBI, which he thought should be immune to interference by the President of the United States, and apparently James Comey feels the same way.

    If this coup succeeds, instead of the Republic of South Vietnam being overrun by foreign invaders and destroyed, the victim will be the Historic American Nation.

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    Machiavelli Redux

    By Peter Brimelow, Policy Review,Winter 1981

    GO QUIETLY . . . OR ELSE. By Spiro T. Agnew. (Wm. Morrow, New York, 1980)

    THE TERRORS OF JUSTICE. By Maurice Stans. (New York, Everest House, 1978)

    WILL: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF G. GORDON LIDDY. By G. Gordon Liddy. (St. Martins Press, New York, 1980)

    Machiavelli concluded The Prince by quoting Petrarch in an attempt to inspire the rulers of Italy:

    For th’ old Romane valour is not dead
    Nor in th’ Italians brests extinguished.

    Reading these three books by survivors of the Nixon disaster brings home how totally that Administration, which more than any other in recent history would have welcomed comparisons with Machiavelli, departed from his prescription. The reason was not exactly lack of patriotism, but rather a failure to understand the humane, even idealistic spark that animated Machiavelli’s ironic realism. Indeed, the books raise the broader question of whether American society itself is going through the kind of degeneration Machiavelli decried in Italy, so that it no longer supports what might loosely be called the “Roman” or “military” virtues: courage, loyalty, and personal integrity.

    These reflections may seem odd, given that all three authors fought losing bouts with the law. Spiro Agnew resigned the Vice-Presidency and entered a plea of nolo contendere to a charge that he received payments in 1967 which were not expended for political purposes and which were therefore subject to income tax. The prosecution’s statement included forty pages about Mr. Agnew’s alleged bribe-taking while he was Governor of Maryland; Mr. Agnew issued a one-page denial. The judge said, accurately, that both were irrelevant to the case before him, and fined Mr. Agnew $10,000. Maurice Stans, Nixon’s 1972 Finance Chairman, pleaded guilty to two charges of unknowingly accepting illegal contributions and three charges of reporting contributions tardily. He was fined $5,000. Previously Mr. Stans had been found innocent, along with John Mitchell, on ten counts of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and perjury relating to an alleged attempt by financier Robert Vesco to buy protection from the Securities and Exchange Commission. Gordon Liddy was sentenced to twenty years in prison and fined $40,000 for the Watergate burglary, a year and a half for refusing to talk to the Watergate grand jury, and a (suspended) year for contempt of Congress.

    With the exception of Mr. Liddy, who merits separate examination, it will immediately be seen that the infractions that were actually proved were basically technical. The connection between them was a hysterical illusion, and the punishments unusually harsh. This is particularly true for Maurice Stans, who was dealing with a complex law which changed in the course of the campaign, and who was also the victim of a quantum jump in public standards. Mr. Stans makes a convincing case that his CREEP stewardship was at least as respectable as the work of his contemporaries in other campaigns. They too had (less publicized) legal difficulties; Edmund Muskie’s fundraiser even volunteered to testify for Mr. Stans at the Vesco trail.

    If Mr. Agnew did accept rake-offs, as the prosecutors claimed, it should be asked in all fairness whether his conduct varied substantially from accepted Maryland standards—particularly since there is no evidence that the money influenced his decisions. As always where Watergate is concerned, the real question becomes: Why did such practices excite such abnormal attention under Nixon, when Congress and press have shrugged off similar standards before and since? The many disparate Nixonian problems combined to produce a mixture that makes free-base cocaine look safe as chewing gum in comparison, under the influence of mysterious forces similar to those that produced the Grande Peur, or Salem’s witch trials. An instructive parallel might well be Britain’s 1962-63 Profumo crisis, which likewise enabled hostile opinion to l ink wildly unrelated charges, and incinerated an unpopular government.

    As Mr. Agnew has repeatedly pointed out, of course, allegation is not conviction, although it has been treated as such by the media and the IRS, whose demands for back taxes on bribes Mr. Agnew denied taking caused him a cash-flow crisis from which he was rescued by the remarkable generosity of Frank Sinatra. But the irreducible fact of his resignation overshadows any attempted defense. Mr. Agnew ascribes his surrender to the impossibility of receiving a fair trial because of prejudicial publicity, overheated politics, implacably ambitious prosecutors, and impossible costs; and to his own exhaustion and bitterness at his abandonment by Nixon.

    Mr. Agnew also says that Alexander Haig implied he might be killed if he did not “go quietly.” However, this may be the token sensational revelation all Watergate memoirs require, like H.R. Haldeman’ s claim of a mooted partition of China, Gordon Liddy’s contemplated assassinations of Jack Anderson and Howard Hunt, and John Dean’s insinuation that Nixon faked Alger Hiss’ typewriter. Other regular features of this new literary form are dramatic opening scenes, followed by flashbacks; and copious direct speech. On the whole, the results have compared very favorably with other native American genres like Westerns and Perry Mason.

    Mr. Agnew’s story rings sincere when he writes of “the emotional reaction that made me physically ill” on reviewing the prosecutors’ files on his case (obtained years later), or of his wife’s dead faint when he told her he was capitulating. But even after that, he assured conservatives he would fight to the end, although his lawyers were already negotiating terms. This unedifying betrayal of his loyal supporters renders consideration of his guilt or innocence ultimately irrelevant.

    On the other hand, Mr. Agnew had hardly been given a good example by the Nixon White House. Incredibly, President Nixon apparently hoped to induce Mr. Agnew to resign without even discussing the subject face to face. The picture of Mr. Agnew and his staff waiting in his office until 9 p.m. after Attorney General Richardson had revealed the charges to them—hoping desperately for a call from the President or a summons to Camp David (whence, it emerged, he had fled)—is infinitely pathetic. What they got was a meeting with General Haig and Bryce Harlow, who announced that they thought that the President felt that he should resign. Loyalty to Nixon was a one-way proposition. The White House staff was quick to pounce on any of their number who suffered political injury.

    This cult of toughness was naive to the point of stupidity. Even elementary precautions like funding the Watergate burglars’ families were reneged on. It is hardly surprising that the front-line troops mutinied, whereupon the whole structure disintegrated. Machiavelli in a famous passage urged rulers to ensure that the interests of their lieutenants were advanced along with their own; this promoted mutual confidence. This seemingly obvious advice was never more needed. In fact, one of the Administration’s subsequent rationales for its detente policies—that Americans were too engrossed in current gratifications to finance any alternative—can probably best be explained as merely a projection of the leaders’ own short-sighted selfishness.

    All three books make the point that the guarantees of equal justice, due process, and presumption of innocence—generally thought to be intrinsic to our system of justice—are simply not operative in a modern bureaucratic state. Mr. Stans spent $400,000 to defend himself against the Vesco charges. The prosecution probably spent over $1 million, but that was taxpayers’ money. That both Mr. Stans and Mr. Agnew could afford no more defense at that price is quite plausible. The IRS even threatened to have Mr. Agnew’s passport revoked if he attempted to resist their demands—an unbreakable hold on a man forced to earn his living in international business because of his Untouchable status at home. The three books also establish that there are few real checks on the legal bureaucracy once it is determined to bring home a conviction. Judge Sirica’s excesses in Mr. Liddy’s trial featured his seating of a juror who could not understand English—a mistake arising because Judge Sirica truncated the voir dire to prevent defense questions about pretrial publicity. (Judge Sirica used his powe r to seal the record about that incident, which remained a secret.) Mr. Liddy was amused: “I really had to hand it to the old goat; neither of us ever hesitated to use power.”

    Less amusing were the lengths to which the prosecutors went in the Stans and Agnew cases to induce potential witnesses to co-operate. It should be a matter of some concern that Mr. Agnew was brought down by the testimony of men who themselves were guilty of serious crimes, the consequences of which seem to have been palliated by their cooperation. One witness actually had his conviction overthrown because he was able to show that his guilty plea was induced by illegal promises of leniency, which the trial judges chose to ignore. Having indicted Mr. Stans on the basis of two grand jury appearances—which he made after being assured he was not under investigation—the prosecutors launched an incredible nationwide search for evidence. They hauled President Nixon’s brother in from the West Coast ten times, for example, to “review” his testimony on the single point of whether Mr. Stans had asked for Vesco’s contribution in cash. (Answer: No.)

    Worst of all were the constant leaks to the press, from Justice Department and grand jury alike. Maurice Stans found that newspapers routinely printed as fact allegations against him that had been disproved, and that major media outlets like Time refused to carry retractions even when caught in indisputable error. Mr. Stans, whose book is a model of reason and comprehensiveness, suggests thoughtfully that maybe the U.S. media should follow the British system of restricting publicity after indictment, and also that the Supreme Court’s Sullivan ruling went too far in depriving public figures of the means to protect their reputation. He even permits himself to wonder why the media should not (voluntarily) retract untruths in the same way that the Federal Trade Commission compels corporations to correct unsupported advertising claims.

    This is the problem in a nutshell. All three books make it depressingly clear that, yes, there is a New Class. And that class makes its own rules in the struggle with rival powers like corporations and elected officials—of either party; previous attorney generals would not have been defeated in attempts to suppress Billygate.

    Gordon Liddy’s beautifully written book adds a cultural dimension to this struggle within America, although his factual contribution to the Watergate saga appears limited. Mr. Liddy confines himself narrowly to what he personally saw. He says that he waited until the statute of limitations had expired before speaking, to protect his colleagues. (Actually, he is probably still protecting them.) Although he does reveal that the Nixon administration had CIA technical assistance in some operations, he generally supports the thesis that Watergate was after all a second-rate burglary, not a set-up, as some have speculated. The order came from above, he says, and he believes that the purpose was to find out what derogatory material the Democrats had on their opponents. This version is not likely to satisfy everyone. On closer examination, moreover, Mr. Liddy’s account does leave some questions carefully open. Some of these relate to the details of the burglary; others to the extraordinary circumstances that led to the creation of the White House “Plumbers” unit in the first place: the withdrawal (by J. Edgar Hoover) of the FBI cooperation upon which all previous administrations had relied. Mr. Liddy had been proud to be an FBI agent, and stresses his admiration for Mr. Hoover. But he also prints a memo he wrote in late 1971 urging that Mr. Hoover be removed as Director by the end of the year. Mr. Liddy notes laconically that the President praised the memo, but Mr. Hoover survived. As usual, one is left with an eerie feeling that the Watergate affair has a secret history, untold despite the millions of words.

    Mr. Liddy is obviously a cultured man, but his preoccupation with matters of honor, strength, and courage—matters that have been traditional male concerns in almost every society except our own—has rendered him about as comprehensible to the average book reviewer as a Martian. Hence he is ridiculed (by Larry L. King in theNew York Times) or ignored (by the Wall Street Journal, the leading conservative newspaper, which has not reviewed his book—or Mr. Stans’s either, for that matter). The situation is complicated because Mr. Liddy is a cultist, one of the tiny minority of conservatives (and others) who are fascinated by the Third Reich. It is hard to know how serious he is about this. Some of his hints are so blatant (he named the Plumbers group ODESSA, after “a World War II German veterans organization belonged to by some acquaintances of mine”—i.e., the Waffen SS) as to recall his celebrated hand-in-the-flame exhibitions of willpower. Professor Alan Dershowitz of Harvard picked up all these hints, and wrote an angry review in The New Republicasking how a card-carrying Nazi went so far in anyone’s White House. But in fact cultism often has about as much relevance to contemporary politics as transvestism, which it rather resembles. Mr. Liddy supported the liberal Republican who beat him in the New York 25th district primary in 1968, to the chagrin of the Conservative Party, which had nominated him on its own line. His White House career showed a similar pragmatism, except perhaps when his G-man instincts were engaged. And Mr. Liddy obviously liked the blacks he met in prison, finding their harsh society a satisfying substitute for the Korean War he missed through illness, and possibly a rest after the Nixon White House. He quietly but systematically supplies much other evidence of lack of prejudice.

    However repellant Mr. Liddy’s code may be, it has some strengths, notably his evident pride in his handsome family. Men like Mr. Liddy are the falcons of society, to be kept hooded until needed. James E. Mahon, who became Eli Hazeev and died training his gun on the Palestinians ambushing Meir Kahane’s followers in Hebron, was reportedly another example. Both found no place in modern America. We need look no further to explain the fiasco at Desert One.

  • Civilian Passenger Gets Ejected From A French Two-Seat Rafale Jet

Mar 22

Today’s News 22nd March 2019

  • UK Denies Asylum To Christian Convert From Iran Because "Christianity Is Not Peaceful"

    The UK has denied asylum to an Iranian man because he said on his application that he converted from Islam to the “peaceful” religion of Christianity, according to The Independent. 

    The Home Office quoted excerpts from the bible in the man’s rejection letter – saying the book of Revelations is “filled with imagery of revenge, destruction, death and violence,” and concluded that “These examples are inconsistent with your claim that you converted to Christianity after discovering it is a ‘peaceful’ religion, as opposed to Islam which contains violence, rage and revenge.”

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    When contacted by The Independent, the Home Office essentially said “our bad” – claiming that the letter was “not in accordance” with proper policies for claims based on religious persecution, and that it was working to improve employee training. 

    Lawyers and campaigners said the case demonstrated a “distortion of logic” and a “reckless” approach to asylum seekers’ lives, stemming from a tendency by the department to “come up with any reason they can to refuse” cases. –The Independent

    The asylum seeker’s caseworker, Nathan Stevens, tweeted “I’ve seen a lot over the years, but even I was genuinely shocked to read this unbelievably offensive diatribe being used to justify a refusal of asylum.”

    According to the latest immigration statistics, there has been a marked increase in incorrect asylum refusals – with successful appeals up 5% since 2015-2016. 

    “You can see from the text of the letter that the writer is trying to pick holes in the asylum seeker’s account of their conversion to Christianity and using the Bible verses as a tool to do that,” said legal expert Conor James McKinney – deputy editor of the website Free Movement. McKinney said the case was a symptom of the Home Office’s reputation to “come up with any reason they can to refuse asylum.”

    “The Home Office is notorious for coming up with any reason they can to refuse asylum and this looks like a particularly creative example, but not necessarily a systemic outbreak of anti-Christian sentiment in the department.” -Conor James McKinney

    The case is a “particularly outrageous example of the reckless and facetious approach of the Home Office to determining life and death asylum cases,” said Sarah Teather, director of the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) in the UK. Teather added that JRS frequently encounters cases where asylum has been refused on “spurious grounds,” adding “Some of these cases require more legal knowledge to recognise than this bizarre misquoting of the Bible, but as this instance gains public attention, we need to remember it reflects a systematic problem and a deeper mindset of disbelief, and is not just an anomaly that can be explained away.”

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  • Moment Of Truth Looms For Second Referendum: The Plan All Along Or A Head Fake?

    Authored by Steven Guinness,

    The news that Theresa May has officially requested an extension to Article 50 until the end of June has been in the making since the European Court of Justice announced in December 2018 that the UK has the right to unilaterally revoke the article at any point prior to the UK leaving the EU.

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    In an article published at the time, I argued that the ECJ’s decision was designed to begin the process of the government legislating for a second referendum. To quickly summarise what has happened since, in the past three months the Brexit withdrawal agreement was rejected twice by the House of Commons, Theresa May survived a series of no confidence votes, parliament stated its opposition to both a no deal scenario and holding a second referendum before supporting an extension to Article 50, and finally speaker John Bercow announced that the government would only be allowed to put the Brexit withdrawal agreement to parliament again if it contained a ‘new‘ proposition.

    Regular readers will know that since last year my position on Brexit has been consistent, in that I believe a no deal exit from the EU is the most likely outcome and that a ‘People’s Vote‘ could be used to facilitate this eventuality.

    One explanation for why the Prime Minister has requested only a three month extension to Article 50 is that it would avoid the UK having to take part in upcoming EU parliamentary elections. Whilst this is possible, I do not think it is the primary reason.

    Last week, Independent MP Sarah Wollaston tabled an amendment that called for Article 50 to be extended and for a second referendum on Brexit to be held. The amendment was comprehensively defeated, with the majority of the opposition Labour party abstaining from the vote. Elements of the party and The People’s Vote campaign went on record as saying that the timing of the amendment was too soon, and so as a result they did not rally behind it.

    As with other supposed set backs to another vote, critics rounded on the news believing that the result killed off any prospect of another referendum from materialising. As I have stressed before, this interpretation is I believe premature.

    On the same day as Wollaston’s defeated amendment, parliament voted by a majority to take no deal ‘off the table‘. But this was only in relation to the exit date of March 29th. It did not account for an extension of Article 50 and with that a new exit date.

    It also needs to be stressed that the motions against a no deal and a second public vote were non-binding on the government. What neither did is definitively rule out the possibilities.

    A month ago I wrote how on March 23rd a ‘Put it to the people‘ march is taking place in London that will call for a referendum on the government’s Brexit withdrawal agreement. With just a couple of days to go, the line from the European Union is that a request to extended Article 50 would only be granted by its 27 member states for a specific purpose. To extend in order to just give more time for negotiations on an non-negotiable deal would not be acceptable.

    Tied in with this was House of Commons speaker John Bercow’s announcement that he would dismiss a motion for a third meaningful vote on the withdrawal agreement unless it was markedly different from what has already been rejected.

    Asked by MP Geraint Davies if a meaningful vote would be ‘intrinsically different‘ if it included the provision for the final say going to a public vote, Bercow responded by saying that he would look at the specifics but would ultimately abide by the principle that the proposition should be ‘different‘ and ‘not the same or substantially the same‘.

    In other words, Bercow has left open the possibility. It is highly unlikely that either he or the European Union would reject a proposal that would legislate for an act of ‘democracy‘.

    With the last ‘People’s Vote‘ march this Saturday, it appears to now be designed to move sentiment in favour of a second referendum prior to the original exit day of March 29th. Potential evidence for this comes from EU Commission President Jean Claude Junker, who has strongly intimated that a decision on whether to grant an extension to Article 50 will not be taken until next week,which means after the referendum march. Assuming an extension is approved, the EU may then go on to state that it is a one time deal to accommodate a public vote and that it cannot be extended for a second time.

    As for Theresa May’s proposal of extending Article 50 until June 30th, EU Council President Donald Tusk has said a short extension is possible but would be ‘conditional on a positive vote on the withdrawal agreement in the House of Commons‘.

    Many parliamentarians who twice rejected the withdrawal agreement have indicated that they would support it a third time round if it included the proposition for the public to have the final say. This seems to be the direction of travel and the only way in which the deal would be accepted by the speaker as a new proposition.

    Of more interest to me, though, is the motivation behind an extension to Article 50 that would only last until June 30th.

    It was a few of weeks prior to Donald Trump securing the U.S. presidency that I first mentioned how when the 2016 EU referendum took place, it occurred at the same time central bank chiefs were gathering in Basel for the Bank for International Settlements annual conference. This is a conference that always takes place in the latter part of June.

    At the start of January I raised the suggestion that a June referendum could become a reality. My suspicion is that if a second vote goes ahead, it would take the form of a streamlined campaign, one that would offer the public the options of supporting Theresa May’s deal (assuming it still stands), remaining in the EU or leaving on World Trade Organisation terms. This would mean a second referendum taking place in around twelve weeks time.

    Should this be the case, then the vote would likely coincide with the movements of the BIS once more. And if my prediction of a no deal exit from the EU is proven correct, the economic fallout from this scenario would require close coordination between central banks, given that currency and equity markets would be heavily impacted.

    What Brexit and Trump’s victory showed is that in the background key globalist institutions were convening. Perhaps it is not a coincidence that moves to extend Article 50 are coinciding with the EU Council Summit on March 21st and 22nd – the same two days where a meeting in Cambridge is scheduled between the BIS, the Bank of England, Cambridge University and the University of Basel. The topic? ‘New Economics of Exchange Rate Adjustment‘. The Bank of England and the Federal Reserve also meet this week to decide on interest rates.

    If we assume a third meaningful vote goes ahead next week that included the provision for a second referendum, and that it passes with a majority, the motivation for extending Article 50 would then be clear.

    Something else to consider is that under this scenario, those in parliament who want to remain in the EU would have to vote in support of leaving the union just so they can secure a referendum for which they would campaign to remain in the bloc. The sense of betrayal already felt by swathes of the electorate would only be heightened if they witnessed MP’s using the deal as nothing more than an opportunity to cancel Brexit altogether.

    The next round of theatrics would be over the question on the ballot paper. Recall that in previous weeks the likes of Lord Kerr (author of Article 50 and a member of the Executive Committee of the Trilateral Commission), Chuka Umunna, founder of Best for Britain Gina Miller and ex Prime Minister Tony Blair have all raised the prospect of the ballot containing three options – one of which would be for a ‘hard‘ Brexit.

    The popular consensus is that another referendum would offer just two options, to either leave with the negotiated deal or remain in the EU. This would eliminate from the campaign the possibility of a no deal Brexit, something which I have reasoned is beneficial to globalists as they would use it to scapegoat the vehicles of resurgent nationalism / protectionism as being responsible for a major impending economic downturn, but also as an opportunity to further centralise power.

    For this reason, I expect a no deal option would be presented to the British public. As in 2016, opinion polls all point to the electorate wanting to remain in the EU. They were wrong then and I believe would be wrong again.

    A new leave or ‘hard‘ Brexit campaign would play upon the desires of many to ‘take back control‘ of the United Kingdom from the ‘elites‘ and to talk up the prospects of the country, whereas a remain campaign runs the risk of being condescending to the public by pushing the narrative that they were conned the first time round, or worse were ignorant in their societal outlook.

    In the middle would sit Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement. If indeed it was carried forward to a referendum, it is feasible that it would become a theatrical tug of war between hard ‘Brexiteers‘ and remainers to convert those minded to support the deal over to their side.

    Growing public sentiment is that the establishment have been doing everything it can to overturn the first referendum result. Faith in politicians has never been lower than it is today. In such a febrile atmosphere, if you give voters the option of voicing their discontent through the ballot box, the chances are that they will deliver in kind.

  • DoD Orders New Drone To Simulate Warfare With Russian And Chinese Stealth Jets 

    The Department of Defense (DoD) awarded Sierra Technical Services, Inc. (STS) with a follow-on contract to build a second demonstrator of the 5th Generation Aerial Target (5GAT) stealth drone.

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    The 5GAT is a fighter-size drone that is designed to train U.S. Armed Forces in how to counter Chinese or Russian fifth-generation fighter jets. The Pentagon is studying whether follow-on production versions of the drone can be used for air-to-air and ground-to-air weapons evaluation, pilot training, and ground forces training, reported FlightGlobal.

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    Last March, STS was awarded the initial prime contract on the development of the first 5GAT demonstrator. Both contract awards originated from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Contracting Office.

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    The defense contractor expects the first 5GAT to fly this summer. The second drone is scheduled for flight testing in the second half of 2020.

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    Both 5GAT drones are being manufactured at Tehachapi Municipal Airport, a small airport in Tehachapi, California. The contractor is using composites for the airframe and recycled parts from Northrop T-38s and F-5s, including landing gear and General Electric J85 single-shaft turbojet engines.

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    In a separate 2018 statement, the company told FlightGlobal that 5GAT is a low-cost solution to the Boeing QF-16, a full-scale target drone that uses the General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon airframe. The Pentagon paid STS $15.9 million to complete the first 5GAT. The second contract’s dollar amount was not disclosed in the company’s latest press release.

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    5GAT is equivalent in size to the F-16. It’s designed with fifth-generation characteristics that allow it to travel Mach 0.95 with a maximum operating altitude of 45,000ft. The purpose of the new drone is to train U.S. fighter pilots for dogfights against Chinese or Russian fifth-generation jets.

  • Goodbye To The Internet: Interference By Governments Is Already Here

    Authored by Philip Giraldi via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    There is a saying attributed to the French banker Nathan Rothschild that “Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes its laws.” Conservative opinion in the United States has long suspected that Rothschild was right and there have been frequent calls to audit the Federal Reserve Bank based on the presumption that it has not always acted in support of the actual interests of the American people. That such an assessment is almost certainly correct might be presumed based on the 2008 economic crash in which the government bailed out the banks, which had through their malfeasance caused the disaster, and left individual Americans who had lost everything to face the consequences.

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    Be that as it may, if there were a modern version of the Rothschild comment it might go something like this: “Give me control of the internet and no one will ever more know what is true.” The internet, which was originally conceived of as a platform for the free interchange of information and opinions, is instead inexorably becoming a managed medium that is increasingly controlled by corporate and government interests. Those interests are in no way answerable to the vast majority of the consumers who actually use the sites in a reasonable and non-threatening fashion to communicate and share different points of view.

    The United States Congress started the regulation ball rolling when it summoned the chief executives of the leading social media sites in the wake of the 2016 election. It sought explanations regarding why and how the Russians had allegedly been able to interfere in the election through the use of fraudulent accounts to spread information that might have influenced some voters. In spite of the sound and fury, however, all Congress succeeded in doing was demonstrating that the case against Moscow was flimsy at best while at the same creating a rationale for an increased role in censoring the internet backed by the threat of government regulation.

    Given that background, the recent shootings at a synagogue in Pittsburgh and at mosques in Christchurch New Zealand have inevitably produced strident demands that something must be done about the internet, with the presumption that the media both encouraged and enabled the attacks by the gunmen, demented individuals who were immediately labeled as “white supremacists.” 

    One critic puts it this way, “Let’s be clear, social media is the lifeblood of the far-right. The fact that a terror attack was livestreamed should tell us that this is a unique form for violence made for the digital era. The infrastructure of social media giants is not merely ancillary to the operations of terrorists — it is central to it [and] social media giants assume a huge responsibility to prevent and stop hate speech proliferating on the internet. It’s clear the internet giants cannot manage this alone; we urgently need a renewed conversation on internet regulation… It is time for counter-terrorism specialists to move into the offices of social media giants.”

    It’s the wrong thing to do, in part because intelligence and police services already spend a great deal of time monitoring chat on the internet. And the premise that most terrorists who use the social media can be characterized as the enemy du jour “white supremacists” is also patently untrue. Using the national security argument to place knuckle dragging “counter-terrorism specialists” in private sector offices would be the last thing that anyone would reasonably want to do. If one were to turn the internet into a government regulated service it would mean that what comes out at the other end would be something like propaganda intended to make the public think in ways that do not challenge the authority of the bureaucrats and politicians. In the US, it might amount to nothing less than exposure to commentary approved by Mike Pompeo and John Bolton if one wished to learn what is going on in the world.

    Currently I and many other internet users appreciate and rely on the alternative media to provide viewpoints that are either suppressed by government or corporate interests or even contrary to prevailing fraudulent news accounts. And the fact is that the internet is already subject to heavy handed censorship by the service providers, which one friend has described as “Soviet era” in its intensity, who are themselves implementing their increasingly disruptive actions to find false personas and to ban as “hate speech” anything that is objected to by influential constituencies.

    Blocking information is also already implemented by various countries through a cooperative arrangement whereby governments can ask search engines to remove material. Google actually documents the practice in an annual Transparency Report which reveals that government requests to remove information have increased from less than 1,000 per year in 2010 to nearly 30,000 per year currently. Not surprisingly, Israel and the United States lead the pack when it comes to requests for deletions. Since 2009 the US has asked for 7,964 deletions totaling 109,936 items while Israel has sought 1,436 deletions totally 10,648 items. Roughly two thirds of Israeli and US requests were granted.

    And there is more happening behind the scenes. Since 2016, Facebook representatives have also been regularly meeting with the Israeli government to delete Facebook accounts of Palestinians that the Israelis claim constitute “incitement.” Israel had threatened Facebook that non-compliance with Israeli deletion orders would “result in the enactment of laws requiring Facebook to do so, upon pain of being severely fined or even blocked in the country.” Facebook chose compliance and, since that time, Israeli officials have been “publicly boasting about how obedient Facebook is when it comes to Israeli censorship orders.” It should be noted that Facebook postings calling for the murder of Palestinians have not been censored.

    And censorship also operates as well at other levels unseen, to include deletion of millions of old postings and videos to change the historical record and rewrite the past. To alter the current narrative, Microsoft, Google, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook all have been pressured to cooperate with pro-Israel private groups in the United States, to include the powerful Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The ADL is working with social media “to engineer new solutions to stop cyberhate” by blocking “hate language,” which includes any criticism of Israel that might be construed as anti-Semitism by the new expanded definition that is being widely promoted by the US Congress and the Trump Administration.

    Censorship of information also increasingly operates in the publishing world. With the demise of actual bookstores, most readers buy their books from media online giant Amazon, which had a policy of offering every book in print. On February 19, 2019, it was revealed that Amazon would no longer sell books that it considered too controversial.

    Government regulation combined with corporate social media self-censorship means that the user of the service will not know what he or she is missing because it will not be there. And once the freedom to share information without restraint is gone it will never return. On balance, free speech is intrinsically far more important than any satisfaction that might come from government intrusion to make the internet less an enabler of violence. If history teaches us anything, it is that the diminishment of one basic right will rapidly lead to the loss of others and there is no freedom more fundamental than the ability to say or write whatever one chooses, wherever and whenever one seeks to do so. 

  • Russia Develops Shotgun Drone To Combat Drone Attacks 

    On March 12, the Russian Federal Service for Intellectual Property published the registration of a new unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with a shotgun embedded into its airframe.

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    The unmanned interceptor is a “tail-sitting drone,” said C4ISRNET news. The drone is classified as a Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) vehicle, meaning that it can take off and land vertically, and then fly horizontally. It has a wingspan of 10 ft., weighs roughly 50 pounds, and has an impressive flight time of 40 minutes (flight time is dependent on weather conditions).

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    C4ISRNET says the interceptor drone uses a semi-automatic shotgun to blast enemy drones out of the sky.

    The interceptor patent was granted to the Almaz-Antey defense corporation, a Russian state-owned company, which has been designing the drone for the last several years.

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    “This CUAS drone is in line with in increasing number of technologies and designs created to combat hostile drones,” Samuel Bendett, an adviser at the Center for Naval Analyses told C4ISRNET. “Russians think that it’s important to fight adversary drones not just from the ground via a number of electronic and kinetic countermeasures, but in the air itself. Hence this rifle drone joining the Carnivora cUAS drone.”

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    The registration follows several small armed drone attacks on Russian Khmeimim Air Base in Syria. These were the work of jihadists operating out of Idlib, such as Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, who launched the small makeshift drones in an attempt to penetrate Russian defenses, even targeting the Russian naval facility at the Syrian port city of Tartus.

    Most of the drone attacks occurred in early 2018 were intercepted by Russian air defense systems, but six were landed by electric warfare specialist. 

    It marked the “first time that terrorists massively used unmanned combat aerial vehicles of an aircraft type that were launched from a distance of more than 50 kilometers, and operated using GPS satellite navigation coordinates,” the Russian ministry had said in a statement.

    Small drones are a significant problem on the modern battlefield. No major military has adequately prepared nor has the proper weaponry to combat this new and emerging threat fully. After Russia experienced this threat first hand in 2018, it now seems that a drone-mounted shotgun could be the short-term solution.

  • How To Identify A Globalist Criminal

    Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

    In my work analyzing the behavior and motives of globalists I often hear people question the validity of the label. Sometimes this is done by those who are purely uneducated about the background of what I can only call an organized cabal or criminal syndicate. Sometimes it is done by dishonest people who are seeking to sow the seeds of doubt. To be clear, yes, globalists are a very real group with a very real agenda, and this agenda is not morally or rationally sound.

    The argument then arises – “If globalists are a real threat, then we should identify them one by one…”

    This argument is often a ruse which insinuates that if a person points out the facts surrounding a crime on the part of globalists, his position is still not valid until he names them all in succession. This is a classic Alinsky tactic; to demand that the researcher catalog every person involved in a conspiracy or present a perfect solution to the criminality which may or may not be available, otherwise they should shut up and stop talking about the problem. The intent is to get us caught up in the weeds debating the extent of who is involved or whether one solution is superior to another.

    Acknowledging that a specific agenda exists is the first step before anything else can be accomplished.

    Obviously, one cannot outline a long list of globalist names in every essay or article. This would make each article dozens of pages long and is counterproductive. Naming names might be helpful in some circumstances, as I have done in the past such as in my article ‘Globalist Disinformation Spotlight On – Mohamed El-Erian’. I welcome readers to examine that article because El-Erian is a good example of what a globalist is and the kind of ideology they espouse. It is my feeling though that it is more important to focus on the behaviors, rhetoric, institutional affiliations and beliefs of globalists, because these elitists often hide in plain sight.

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    Not all of them publicly call themselves “globalists”; some of them do. However, they ALL have the same character traits and they all support the same agendas.

    First and foremost I suppose I should address the so called “elephant in the room”; it is important to note that there is a concerted disinformation effort by a small group of people lurking in the corners of the liberty movement to push the notion that globalism is a purely “Jewish conspiracy”. And, as our social and economic structures grow more unstable, people look for easy answers and the idea is starting to gain some traction.  Their claim? It’s all about the Jews, all the globalists are Jewish or somehow secretly related to Jews or are married to Jewish partners, etc. This is simply false, so let’s get this out of the way…

    The Jewish conspiracy narrative, I believe, is 4th generation warfare, a psychological operation, an attempt to mislead liberty movement activists away from a much deeper and darker issue. It also may be an attempt to attach the movement to white supremacy or white identity groups as if they are interchangeable. Frankly, I do not care what other people believe as long as they keep to themselves and leave others alone. If someone takes special pride in their pigmentation or culture, great, I wish them the best of luck. It is true that some cultures function better than others, but this has far more to do with the superior cultures being more free.

    Just because we have a distaste for the race-baiting insanity and hatred of white people or western culture displayed by the social justice left, this does not mean we need to swing to the other extreme and become zealots ourselves. I actually think the ability to discriminate at times is highly useful, but such simplistic divisions based on bias and broad generalizations make us weak, not strong. It makes us easy to conquer, not a formidable opponent to the globalists.

    Here are the facts:

    The vast majority of globalists are not of Jewish origin and are not zionist in their political affiliations. While there are sectors of globalist institutions that have more Jewish people than others (such as the Federal Reserve), this does not indicate a majority or any sort of broad “Jewish conspiracy”. On the contrary, the directorial boards and memberships of most globalist institutions have a small minorities of Jews, and are majority Anglo in origin. One can simply look at the board of directors of groups at the top of the globalist pyramid like the International Monetary Fund, the Bank for International Settlements, or World Bank and verify that this is the case.

    We can also examine the attendees of past globalist summits like the Bilderberg Group, or the World Economic Forum in Davos and see that again, some Jews might be involved, but are not a majority or even in the highest positions of authority. While the Rothschild family (Jewish) gets a lot of attention as being a major power center within globalist circles, we can see they are but one influence among many.

    These people herald from all over the world, and are of every ethnicity and national affiliation one can imagine. So, the broad brush of white identity conspiracy becomes rather useless in helping us figure out who the globalists truly are. It actually misleads us and points us in the wrong direction, and perhaps this is its underlying purpose.

    The fallback argument is that they might not be majority Jewish, but they are all “zionists”; which, again, is simply not true. Zionism is definitely a globalist scheme, but more of a side venture designed to manipulate some Jews and evangelicals into zealotry, to be exploited in supporting efforts like war in the Middle East. Zionism itself actually makes Jewish centers like Israel less safe and more prone to destruction. The globalists only care about Israel or the Jewish people in general in so much as they can be used as a tool for other more important efforts.

    And, while I have criticized the actions of the Israeli government on many occasions (and been accused of being an anti-semite for it), this is not the same as attacking the Israeli people. Globalism threatens them just as much as it threatens others.  I welcome readers to look over the rosters of many of the top globalist organizations; they will find a minority of zionists, not a majority.

    If it’s not about the Jews or zionism, then what is globalism really all about? It is vital that we look at the intent, actions, motivations and beliefs of these people. Hyperfocusing on their genetic backgrounds will get us nowhere.  How do we know when we are dealing with a globalist? Let’s look at some of the real and universal elements that make globalists an organized and identifiable culture, separate, distinct and destructive…

    Globalism As An “Inevitable” Future

    Globalists will often claim that globalism, the centralization of all governmental and economic power, is an inevitable byproduct of “progress”. They will state, without any evidence of course, that globalism represents a pinnacle of evolution in human society. Therefore, anyone that stands in the way of globalism is standing in the way of progress, which is apparently a cardinal sin in the new world order.

    But centralization of power is nothing new, and dreams of global empire ruled by self appointed “elites” goes all the way back to Plato and his “Republic”. Utopia by the elites for the elites is a tale as old as mankind. It does not represent evolution, but regression to an ideology that human beings have been struggling for thousands of years to escape from.

    We should also make the distinction here between globalists and useful idiots. Globalists are people in a position of power adequate enough to help affect the the changes and agendas they describe. Useful idiots (socialist/communists) might espouse globalist rhetoric, but they have no power. They are exploited as a blunt weapon by globalists, but they are not globalists, and will not likely benefit from globalism in the end.

    End Of Sovereignty

    Globalists treat the idea of sovereignty with disdain. Their attacks usually revolve around nationalism and they will incessantly pontificate on the virtues of open borders. They can also sometimes be caught criticizing the concept of individual sovereignty, but they do seem to fancy the idea that THEY are unique and superior individuals. Individuality and freedom are meant for them, but not for the rest of us.

    Single Economic Authority And Monetary System

    A key element of globalism is economic centralization which makes perfect sense when you understand that trade is the root of human civilization and survival. Trade is almost as important as the air we breath and the water we drink. The consistent plan presented by globalists is that the IMF in particular must become the bottleneck point for global economic management, and that all the world’s major currencies will be absorbed by the IMF into their SDR basket system.

    This would give the IMF the ability to dictate currency exchange rates on a whim, allowing them to homogenize currency values until they are so similar that a single world currency becomes a natural next step. This final product would be a cashless society, based on a digital blockchain-based currency or cryptocurrency.

    Single World Government

    Globalists all argue that the answer to most of the world’s ailments is one world governance, or the end of nation states and cultural divisions in the name of “peace”. The UN is so far the impetus of this effort, but it is shadowed by various organizations like the IMF, BIS, World Bank, as well as dozens of think tank organizations like the CFR, Tavistock, the Trilateral Commission, Bilderberg, Darpa, etc., etc. A practice model for this type of government can be seen in the European Union, which is controlled by a supranational bureaucratic machine run by mostly faceless officials who are not elected and who do not answer to the public.

    Globalists have different terms for the shift into a single world government or single currency system.  They call it a “global reset, or a “new world order”, or a “multipolar world order”.  But all of these marketing labels are basically referring to the same thing.

    Close Association

    Any politician that works closely with globalist institutions or think tanks is likely a globalist. Any politician or government official that associates regularly and cooperates with known globalists is probably also a globalist.

    Environmental Crisis As Hegelian Threat

    Not all globalists hit on this topic publicly, but most do.  The strategy, which was planned by the Club Of Rome along with top globalists like former UN Director Robert Muller, was to create the idea of an environmental threat so potentially devastating that the only option would be for the public to accept global governance as the solution.  Global warming and “climate change” became that existential threat.

    It does not seem to matter how often or how brutal the climate change argument is debunked by real data; the globalists desperately push the ideology.  It is a primary key to everything they hope to accomplish in terms of centralization, and their timeline is set for the year 2030.  Globalists also seem to enjoy fabricating fake moral dilemmas which force people to choose between one evil solution or another.  The fake moral dilemma here being that if we do not accept global centralization and elitist management of the planet, we are risking the destruction of our environment on an apocalyptic scale.

    Psychological Similarities Of Globalists

    Probably the most overwhelming epiphany I have come to in my 12 years of analysis into globalism and the nature of evil is that globalists are in fact tied together by a root mental illness or psychological aberration. This occurred during my research on narcissistic sociopathy, or what some circles might call “psychopathy”. Criminology indicates that not all criminals are full blown narcissistic sociopaths, but most full blown narcissistic sociopaths are criminals. Some are simply more successful criminals than others, and this usually depends on their ability to blend in and mimic or manipulate normal people.

    Full blown narcissistic sociopaths (or psychopaths) make up around 1% of any given population, but are responsible for the vast majority of violent crimes or criminal enterprises. The lion’s share of justice system resources are used in dealing with these people, as they are four to eight times more likely than the average person to use violence in daily interactions or as a tool to gain advantage, and twenty-five times more likely to end up in prison.

    There is a long list of character traits that make a narcissistic sociopath, but the defining features are a complete lack of conscience and empathy, a propensity for moral relativism (the ability to rationalize any and all destructive behavior), a desperate need to be adored or admired by everyone around them, a feeling of being “more special” than most people, a feeling of superiority, delusions of grandeur or an inherent right to manage the lives of others, an obsessive need to control and manipulate, impulsive desires and deviant sexual inclinations, and elitist associations (they will only associate with people they feel are like them and are “equally superior”).

    A defining fact of narcissistic sociopathy is that these traits are inborn, not a product of environment. In some cases environment can play a role in activating these traits, but if a person is not born with them, they generally do not adopt them later in life because of a traumatic environment. The following documentaries linked here and here are an excellent overview of high level narcissistic sociopaths.

    Narcissistic sociopaths defy all forms of treatment and cannot be reformed. They have no concrete personality beyond these traits, therefore, if you remove the traits, they are left with nothing else. They are almost anti-human; while most people are born with unique personality combinations, narcissistic sociopaths have none, so they mimic the personalities of those around them, mirroring behaviors and collecting or stealing quirks.

    Their primary drives are to fulfill their fantasies of superiority and godhood, as well as an endless quest to satiate their dopamine addiction. The more deviant the action, and the more successful they are at getting away with it, the more dopamine they generate and the more satisfied they feel. This leads to an endless cycle, seeking out more and more exploitation of others which becomes less and less satisfying, which leads to even greater deviance.

    I came to realize in my studies that these characteristics described almost exactly the observable behaviors of globalists. The difference being that globalists were so high functioning that they had actually built a society of narcissistic sociopaths that operated like a kind of cult, or a corporate entity. The only other historic example I could compare it to would be the mob, or other gangs which have blended into the surrounding normal society and operated in their midst.

    I do not know if a society of narcissistic sociopaths with its own tribal customs, mythologies and beliefs has ever been recorded before. While psychopathic people have been known in the past to organize into groups for mutual benefit, the globalists are something different. They are an anomaly; a well maintained culture of parasites that has blended almost seamlessly within normal society in order to feed off of non-psychopathic and empathetic people. The best fictional representation I can think of is the vampire. They are so similar I sometimes wonder if folklore creatures like vampires were based on narcissistic sociopaths as a way to warn people of their presence.

    Globalists are indeed a culture, a secretive and occult phenomenon that wants so badly to be recognized and worshiped, but fears public scrutiny. Their motivation at bottom is to condition or tear down normal, moral and free society until it becomes a place in which they can openly be what they really are without fear of judgment or consequences. They want to terraform civilization and make it a habitat that will accept them; a habitat for monsters surrounded by willing victims.

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  • Kremlin Says US "Stoking Tensions" By Deploying 6 Nuke-Capable Bombers To Europe

    The Kremlin on Thursday slammed US attempts to “stoke tensions” by flying nuclear-capable bombers near its borders after a series of prior close encounters over the Baltic Sea. 

    This after the US Air Force starting late last week deployed no less than six nuclear-capable B-52 bombers to Europe for what it described as “theater integration and flying training” with regional NATO allies and partners.

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    B-52 readiness exercise. Prior file photo. 

    The training missions are set to occur at various locations across Europe, but on Monday the operation riled Moscow due to four B-52s conducting “flights to several places in Europe, including to the Norwegian Sea, the Baltic Sea/Estonia and the Mediterranean Sea/Greece,” according to an Air Force statement. 

    US Baltic operations puts American and Russian planes in dangerously close vicinity as there’s been a recent spate of instances over the past year where Russian intercepts of US flights have resulted in heightening rhetoric coming from each side.

    For example, in November, the US complained about an “unsafe” intercept of a plane by an Su-27. As video of that incident showed the Su-27 made a pass directly in front of the mission aircraft. Moscow insisted that the pass was indeed safe; however, the Pentagon has consistently condemned the Russian intercepts as “unsafe” and “unprofessional”.

    Two weeks ago the Russian Defense Ministry (MoD) released stunning footage of yet another intercept of a US spy plane over the waters of the Baltic Sea near the Russian border which occurred on an unknown date. 

    On Thursday the Russian MoD confirmed it had it had scrambled two Sukhoi SU-27 fighter jets to intercept a U.S. B-52 strategic bomber picked up on radar flying towards Russia’s borders, however at a considerable distance. 

    No intercept or any close encounters resulted from Thursday’s events, but it suggests the two sides are increasingly willing to play chicken as “red lines” are continually crossed, and this further following this week’s NATO condemnations of Russian “wide-ranging military buildup in Crimea” upon Moscow celebrations of the fifth anniversary of Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine. Western media dubbed the events Putin’s “Crimean annexation party”.

    The US National Security Council on Monday echoed this sentiment, reiterating in a statement that the Crimean situation “continues to pose a threat to our regional allies.”

    Russia’s Defense Ministry acknowledged of Thursday’s B-52 bomber incident that the pair of Russian gets had returned to base without getting close to the American planes. 

    Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters “In general, I will limit myself to only saying that of course such actions by the United States do not lead to a strengthening of an atmosphere of security and stability in the region that directly adjoins Russia’s borders,” and he added: “On the contrary, they create additional tensions.”

  • Mueller-Dämmerung: It Will Not Be "The End Of Everything", Unless…

    Authored by CJ Hopkins via The Unz Review,

    If Nietzsche was right, and what doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger, we can thank the global capitalist ruling classes, the Democratic Party, and the corporate media for four more years of Donald Trump. The long-awaited Mueller report is due any day now, or so they keep telling us. Once it is delivered, and does not prove that Trump is a Russian intelligence asset, or that he personally conspired with Vladimir Putin to steal the presidency from Hillary Clinton, well, things are liable to get a bit awkward. Given the amount of goalpost-moving and focus-shifting that has been going on, clearly, this is what everyone’s expecting.

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    Honestly, I’m a bit surprised. I was sure they were going to go ahead and fabricate some kind of “smoking gun” evidence (like the pee-stained sheets from that Moscow hotel), or coerce one of his sleazy minions into testifying that he personally saw Trump down on his knees “colluding” Putin in the back room of a Russian sauna. After all, if you’re going to accuse a sitting president of being a Russian intelligence asset, you kind of need to be able to prove it, or (a) you defeat the whole purpose of the exercise, (b) you destroy your own credibility, and (c) you present that sitting president with a powerful weapon he can use to bury you.

    This is not exactly rocket science. As any seasoned badass will tell you, when you’re resolving a conflict with another seasoned badass, you don’t take out a gun unless you’re going to use it. Taking a gun out, waving it around, and not shooting the other badass with it, is generally not a winning strategy. What often happens, if you’re dumb enough to do that, is that the other badass will take your gun from you and either shoot you or beat you senseless with it.

    This is what Trump is about to do with Russiagate. When the Mueller report fails to present any evidence that he “colluded” with Russia to steal the election, Trump is going to reach over, grab that report, roll it up tightly into a makeshift cudgel, and then beat the snot out of his opponents with it. He is going to explain to the American people that the Democrats, the corporate media, Hollywood, the liberal intelligentsia, and elements of the intelligence agencies conspired to try to force him out of office with an unprecedented propaganda campaign and a groundless special investigation. He is going to explain to the American people that Russiagate, from start to finish, was, in his words, a ridiculous “witch hunt,” a childish story based on nothing. Then he’s going to tell them a different story.

    That story goes a little something like this …

    Back in November of 2016, the American people were so fed up with the neoliberal oligarchy that everyone knows really runs the country that they actually elected Donald Trump president. They did this fully aware that Trump was a repulsive, narcissistic ass clown who bragged about “grabbing women by the pussy” and jabbered about building “a big, beautiful wall” and making the Mexican government pay for it. They did this fully aware of the fact that Donald Trump had zero experience in any political office whatsoever, and was a loudmouth bigot, and was possibly out of his gourd on amphetamines half the time. The American people did not care. They were so disgusted with being conned by arrogant, two-faced, establishment stooges like the Clintons, the Bushes, and Barack Obama that they chose to put Donald Trump in office, because, fuck it, what did they have to lose?

    The oligarchy that runs the country responded to the American people’s decision by inventing a completely cock-and-bull story about Donald Trump being a Russian agent who the American people were tricked into voting for by nefarious Russian mind-control operatives, getting every organ of the liberal corporate media to disseminate and relentlessly promote this story on a daily basis for nearly three years, and appointing a special prosecutor to conduct an official investigation in order to lend it the appearance of legitimacy. Every component of the ruling establishment (i.e., the government, the media, the intelligence agencies, the liberal intelligentsia, et al.) collaborated in an unprecedented effort to remove an American president from office based on a bunch of made-up horseshit … which kind of amounts to an attempted soft coup.

    This is the story Donald Trump is going to tell the American people.

    A minority of ideological heretics on what passes for the American Left are going to help him tell this story, not because we support Donald Trump, but because we believe that the mass hysteria and authoritarian fanaticism that has been manufactured over the course of Russiagate represents a danger greater than Trump. It has reached some neo-Riefenstahlian level, this bug-eyed, spittle-flecked, cult-like behavior … worse even than the mass hysteria that gripped most Americans back in 2003, when they cheered on the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and the murder, rape, and torture of hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children based on a bunch of made-up horseshit.

    We are going to be vilified, we leftist heretics, for helping Trump tell Americans this story. We are going to be denounced as Trumpenleft traitors, Putin-sympathizers, and Nazi-adjacents (as we were denounced as terrorist-sympathizers and Saddam-loving traitors back in 2003). We are going to be denounced as all these things by liberals, and by other leftists. We are going to be warned that pointing out how the government, the media, and the intelligence agencies all worked together to sell people Russiagate will only get Trump reelected, and, if that happens, it will be the End of Everything.

    It will not be the End of Everything.

    What might, however, be the End of Everything, or might lead us down the road to the End of Everything, is if otherwise intelligent human beings continue to allow themselves to be whipped into fits of mass hysteria and run around behaving like a mindless herd of propaganda-regurgitating zombies whenever the global capitalist ruling classes tell them that “the Russians are coming!” or that “the Nazis are coming!” or that “the Terrorists are coming!”

    The Russo-Nazi Terrorists are not coming. The global capitalist ruling classes are putting down a populist insurgency, delegitimizing any and all forms of dissent from their global capitalist ideology and resistance to the hegemony of global capitalism. In the process, they are conditioning people to completely abandon their critical faculties and behave like twitching Pavlovian idiots who will obediently respond to whatever stimuli or blatantly fabricated propaganda the corporate media bombards them with.

    If you want a glimpse of the dystopian future … it isn’t an Orwellian boot in your face. It’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Study the Russiagate believers’ reactions to the Mueller report when it is finally delivered. Observe the bizarre intellectual contortions their minds perform to rationalize their behavior over the last three years. Trust me, it will not be pretty. Cognitive dissonance never is.

    Or, who knows, maybe the Russiagate gang will pull a fast one at the eleventh hour, and accuse Robert Mueller of Putinist sympathies (or appearing in that FSB video of Trump’s notorious Moscow pee-party), and appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the special prosecutor. That should get them through to 2020!

  • A Major Bank Capitulates: "This May Be The Time For Helicopter Money Drops"

    Long before the Fed was humiliated into reversing its hawkish rate hike policy in January and then again in March, we published – back in June 2015 – “The Blindingly Simple Reason Why The Fed Is About To Engage In Policy Error“, in which we predicted, correctly, that the neutral rate of interest is far too low to allow a lengthy tightening campaign by the Federal Reserve, as the real Fed Funds rate would promptly rise above the neutral rate, further depressing demand, resulting in a policy error.

    More importantly, instead of some arcane calculation of the infamous, convoluted r-star (or neutral rate of interest) we said that one might argue for low “implied” equilibrium short rates via debt ratios. For example, if nominal growth is 3 percent and the debt GDP ratio is 300 percent, the implied equilibrium nominal rates is around 1 percent. This is because at 1% rates, 100% of GDP growth is necessary to service interest costs.

    So to help the Fed and pundits calculate just where r star is in an economy where total debt/GDP is 350% and rising, and where GDP is 2% and falling, we presented – all the way back in 2015 – a sensitivity table which looks at just two simple variables: nominal growth, or GDP, and total debt/GDP. Assuming the current leverage of the US and assuming 2% in nominal growth, the short-run equilibrium real interest rate is just about 0.57%, something which the Fed now appears to have discovered on its own.

    %.

    As an aside, we also said that such a policy error could reinforce itself by causing structural damage that puts additional downward pressure on the equilibrium real rate adding that “in this case the yield curve would flatten meaningfully, at least until the Fed actually reversed course by cutting rates.” This is precisely what happened.

    Now, nearly four years later, some of the brightest minds in the business have reached the same conclusion which this tinfoil blog came to long before the Fed had even started its hiking process. Case in point – Citi’s special economic advisor, Willem Buiter published a report on Tuesday titled “The neutral real interest rate is going nowhere” in which, using a far more convoluted methodology, the career academic concluded that today’s real neutral policy rate for the US is roughly 0.52%, or more generally, between 0.5 and 1.0%.

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    Source: @NickatFP

    We could have told him that four years ago.

    Of course, none of this is news either to us, or to our readers – although it certainly appears to be news to Fed Chair Powell who less than 6 months ago stated that there is a “long way” to the neutral rate, when in reality the real Fed Funds rate was already on top of it, as the Fed found out the very hard way in November and December.

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    What was news, however, is what conclusion Buiter derived from this simple observation. And, in a time when MMT, which as we discussed previously is merely the political camouflage for enacting helicopter money or direct debt monetization by the government, the respected Citi strategist comes to the conclusion that just because the economy now appears to be structurally depressed, it is as good a reason as any to proceed with, drumroll, helicopter money, i.e., MMT. Here is what he “found”:

    Most estimates of today’s neutral real policy rate for the US hover between 0.5% and 1%. For the euro area and Japan many estimates are negative. That represents a dramatic decline from the levels seen before 2000. This situation is unlikely to be reversed any time soon. Despite the fourth industrial revolution lurking in the wings, economy-wide productivity growth is stagnant at best. Ageing populations boost private saving rates and weaken the incentives to invest. Fiscal dissaving and enhanced public sector capital formation can raise the neutral real rate but are constrained, especially in the US, by already excessive general government deficits and a rising public debt burden. A lower real interest rate does, of course, make public debt servicing easier, other things being equal. If the lower neural real interest rate is the reflection of a lower underlying growth rate of potential output, fiscal space may not be enhanced significantly once both drivers of fiscal sustainability are allowed for.

    One implication for monetary policy is that this may be the time for helicopter money drops, a temporary fiscal stimulus funded by a permanent increase in the stock of central bank money. This makes even more sense when inflation continues to undershoot the inflation target, as is the case in the US and even more so in the euro area and Japan. – Source

    And just like that the first official endorsement of helicopter money, pardon, MMT has arrived. It won’t be the last. As Alan Ruskin, chief international strategist at Deutsche Bank AG said during a Bloomberg interview on Wednesday, “don’t count on the hubbub over modern monetary theory dying down soon” adding that “it could get a lot bigger.”

    Here’s why: “What happens if the economy slows down, what happens if we go down to zero interest rates again? The Fed is going to be back in there again responding in essence to what’s gone on on the fiscal side. You get sort of an MMT-lite- type situation.”

    Or, alternatively, scratch the lite part and get full blown helicopter money as one government after next throw in the towel on fiscal conservatism and unleashes the biggest debt-funded spending spree in history, which as so many tragic examples in the past have shown, ends in tears.

    As Ruskin concluded, “The natural constraints are inflation. The question is, what point do you hit inflation?” Well, when it comes to traditional risk assets, we already have runaway inflation. When it comes to conventional inflation as measured by the flawed CPI or PCE baskets, by the time it does register, it will be too late to reverse it, and the consequence will be the end of the monetary system as we know it.

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Mar 21

Today’s News 21st March 2019

  • China’s New Silk Road To Extend To Russia's Crimea

    Russian state sources and officials have confirmed closer cooperation between Beijing and the Crimean peninsula on major Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects, citing Chinese diplomats, which represents a continued significant shift in Moscow’s priorities which have historically pit Russia in economic competition with China. Any future BRI projects involving Crimea would further solidify and fully integrate the peninsula into Russia’s hold after its annexation from Ukraine following the 2014 referendum.

    During a ceremony at the Russian Embassy in Beijing on Monday, the head of the association of Chinese compatriots on the peninsula, Ge Zhili, made the following formal statements: “Our organization is bolstering cooperation ties, exchanges and friendly contacts with the Crimean society.” Not incidentally the event marked the “fifth anniversary of Crimea’s reunification with Russia.”

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    The bridge across the Heilong River (an early BRI cooperative project) will connect Tongjiang city in Heilongjiang province with Nizhneleninskoye in Russia. Image source: Russia Business Today

    Speaking also of increased cultural along with economic contacts, Ge continued to explain the goal “To help people understand what Crimea is, start cooperation with it, establish reliable relations with the peninsula, develop friendly contacts with it and implement joint private projects under the Belt and Road Initiative” — China’s ultra-ambitious development and investment project potentially involving over 150 countries on five continents.

    Chinese statements at the ceremony underscored establishing and deepening “reliable partner ties” at a moment when Moscow is believed to no longer be pursuing closer European integration following US sanctions as well as the unraveling of the INF, and increased NATO expansion.

    It’s also a moment that both Beijing and Moscow are rumored to be contemplating a potential bigger geopolitical alliance just as Washington has continued to hit Chinese exports with tariffs. Russian leaders have been described as more enthusiastically seeking closer cooperation while Beijing has signaled patience.

    However, greater BRI cooperation, especially into the geopolitically sensitive Crimean region would constitute a significant  step in this direction. 

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    Though little has been publicized regarding new potential specific joint BRI projects, other than ongoing projects such as the first cross-river railway bridge connecting China and Russia at Tongjiang, in Heilongjiang province, source RT presented the following: 

    There are also plans to renew cooperation between Crimea and southern China’s Hainan province, as well as between such cities as Yalta and Sanya, Sevastopol and Dalian, Sudak and Heihe.

    Last year Russian President Putin declared himself a firm supporter of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, telling broadcaster CGTN, “President Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative incorporates concepts of the economy and humanity. The essence of the Initiative is to develop both the economy and infrastructure.” 

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    Crimean bridge at night, via most.life/RT

    Concerning warming ties with Beijing, Putin had stressed at the time the BRI held the potential as “a significant step for further eliminating restrictions on economic development and cooperation.”

    Any major future cooperation in Crimea itself will be sure to raise eyebrows in Kiev and among Ukraine’s western allies, especially after last November’s dangerous incident in the Kerch Strait and subsequent threats of military escalation. 

  • Turkey: Tens Of Thousands Prosecuted For "Insulting" Erdoğan

    Authored by Uzay Bulut via The Gatestone Institute,

    • Since Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s 2014 election, there have been 66,691 “insult investigations” launched, resulting in 12,305 trials thus far, and the “numbers are increasing.” – Yaman Akdeniz, professor of law, Istanbul Bilgi University.

    • Ahmet Sever, a spokesperson for Turkey’s former president, Abdullah Gül, authored a book in which he wrote: “We [are] faced with a government or, more precisely, with one man, who considers books to be more dangerous than bombs.”

    • Meanwhile, as Erdoğan continues playing a double game with the West, as part of his decades-long bid to become a member of the European Union. That plan may well be why his justice minister announced in December that he would be unveiling a new strategy for judicial reform. The EU should not fall for this transparent ploy. Instead, it should be demanding that the Turkish government cease prosecuting innocent people — including those whose only “crime” is criticizing Erdoğan.

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    “Insulting the president” is a crime in Turkey. If convicted, violators face up to four years in prison — and longer, when the insult is public. According to Istanbul Bilgi University professor of law, Yaman Akdeniz, since Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s 2014 election, there have been 66,691 “insult investigations” launched, resulting in 12,305 trials thus far, and the “numbers are increasing.” Pictured: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at a rally in Istanbul, Turkey on May 18, 2018. (Photo by Getty Images)

    The criminalization in Turkey of “insulting the president” reached a new low in early March, when a father and daughter in Ankara accused one another of engaging in the punishable offense, as part of an internal family feud.

    According to Istanbul Bilgi University professor of law, Yaman Akdeniz, since Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s 2014 election, there have been 66,691 “insult investigations” launched, resulting in 12,305 trials thus far, and the “numbers are increasing.”

    Özgür Aktütün, chairman of the Sociology Alumni Association, told the independent Turkish daily BirGün that although Turkey has been “a society of informants” since the Ottoman Empire, “what is striking in recent times is the [rampant] use of [whistleblowing] on every issue.”

    “Insulting the president” is a crime according to Article 299 of the Turkish Penal Code, adopted in 1926. If convicted, violators face up to four years in prison — and longer, when the insult is public.

    Human Rights Watch (HRW) decries this practice. In October 2018, Benjamin Ward, HRW acting director for Europe and Central Asia said:

    “Turkish courts have convicted thousands of people in the past four years simply for speaking out against the president. The government should stop this mockery of human rights and respect people in Turkey’s right to peaceful free expression.”

    This was not the first time that HRW called on the Erdoğan government to cease prosecuting people for insulting the president. In a 2015 article on the topic, HRW wrote:

    “Turkish government figures regularly contend that insulting words are not free speech. Bodies including the Council of Europe, the European Commission, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, and human rights groups in Turkey and internationally have repeatedly criticized this position and Turkey’s regular restriction of freedom of expression. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has repeatedly issued rulings on Turkey, finding violations of freedom of expression protected under article 10 of the European Convention…

    “Since the end of 2014 the authorities have pursued a spate of such cases with the justice minister’s permission, including against children, and several have entailed short periods of pretrial detention… Some cases have involved oral statements; others were for criticism on social media. In no case has the accused used or incited violence.”

    It is sadly ironic that “insulting the president” is one of the few issues about which there is no governmental discrimination along socioeconomic, gender or ethnic lines in Turkey. Indeed, people of all walks of life have been subject to investigations or prosecutions over this alleged offense, including high school students. Two teenagers were briefly detained and brought to court in 2015, for instance, after “insulting the president” in their speeches and slogans during an event in Konya.

    The head of the main opposition party, CHP, in Turkey’s parliament, the CEO of bank HSBC Turkey, Turkey’s Fox News anchor, two famous actors, a former judgeand a 78-year-old citizen are all examples of people who have been investigated, prosecuted, sued or jailed for “insulting Erdoğan.”

    Others who have been penalized for the offense are the former co-chair of the opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), who is serving an 18-month prison sentence; another HDP member, who was stripped of his parliamentary seat last year; and Ahmet Sever, a spokesperson for Turkey’s former president, Abdullah Gül, who authored a book in which he wrote: “We [are] faced with a government or, more precisely, with one man, who considers books to be more dangerous than bombs.”

    Erdoğan’s use of Article 299 as an intimidation tactic may be highly effective: if such prominent figures as Sever end up in court for daring to criticize the government, what chance do average citizens have to stand up for their right to express themselves? However, if Erdoğan believes that silencing his people is a way of keeping a stranglehold on his near absolute power, he may not be taking into account the fact that increasing numbers of Turks are frustrated and angry.

    Meanwhile, as Erdoğan continues to imprison anyone who opposes his rule, he is playing a double game with the West, as part of his decades-long bid to become a member of the European Union. That plan may well be why his justice minister announced in December that he would be unveiling a new strategy for judicial reform. The EU should not fall for this transparent ploy. Instead, it should be demanding that the Turkish government cease prosecuting innocent people — including those whose only “crime” is criticizing Erdoğan.

  • Sucking Liberals Into A New Cold War

    Authored by William Blum via ConsortiumNews.com,

    Out of fury against President Trump, many liberals have enlisted in the ranks of the New Cold War against Russia, seeming to have forgotten the costs to rationality and lives from the first Cold War…

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    Cold War Number One: 70 years of daily national stupidity.

    Cold War Number Two: Still in its youth, but just as stupid.

    “He said he absolutely did not meddle in our election. He did not do what they are saying he did.” – President Trump re Russian President Vladimir Putin after their meeting in Vietnam. [Washington Post, Nov.e 12, 2017]

    Putin later added that he knew “absolutely nothing” about Russian contacts with Trump campaign officials. “They can do what they want, looking for some sensation. But there are no sensations.”

    Numerous U.S. intelligence agencies have said otherwise. Former Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, responded to Trump’s remarks by declaring: “The president was given clear and indisputable evidence that Russia interfered in the election.”

    As we’ll see below, there isn’t too much of the “clear and indisputable” stuff. And this of course is the same James Clapper who made an admittedly false statement to Congress in March 2013, when he responded, “No, sir” and “not wittingly” to a question about whether the National Security Agency was collecting “any type of data at all” on millions of Americans. Lies don’t usually come in any size larger than that.

    Virtually every member of Congress who has publicly stated a position on the issue has criticized Russia for interfering in the 2016 American presidential election. And it would be very difficult to find a member of the mainstream media who has questioned this thesis.

    What is the poor consumer of news to make of these gross contradictions? Here are some things to keep in mind:

    How do we know that the tweets and advertisements “sent by Russians” -– those presented as attempts to sway the vote – were actually sent by Russians? The Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), composed of National Security Agency and CIA veterans, recently declared that the CIA knows how to disguise the origin of emails and tweets. The Washington Post has as well reported that Twitter “makes it easy for users to hide their true identities.” [Washington Post, Oct. 10, 2017]

    Russians! Russians! Russians!

    Even if these communications were actually sent from Russia, how do we know that they came from the Russian government, and not from any of the other 144.3 million residents of Russia?

    Even if they were sent by the Russian government, we have to ask: Why would they do that? Do the Russians think the United States is a Third World, under-developed, backward Banana Republic easily influenced and moved by a bunch of simple condemnations of the plight of blacks in America and the Clinton “dynasty”? Or clichéd statements about other controversial issues, such as gun rights and immigration? If so, many Democratic and Republican officials would love to know the secret of the Russians’ method. Consider also that Facebook has stated that 90 percent of the alleged-Russian-bought content that ran on its network did not even mention Trump or Clinton. [Washington Post, Nov. 15, 2017]

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    On top of all this is the complete absence of even the charge, much less with any supporting evidence, of Russian interference in the actual voting or counting of votes.

    After his remark suggesting he believed Putin’s assertion that there had been no Russian meddling in the election, Trump – of course, as usual – attempted to backtrack and distance himself from his words after drawing criticism at home; while James Clapper declared: “The fact the president of the United States would take Putin at his word over that of the intelligence community is quite simply unconscionable.” [Reuters, Nov. 12, 2017]

    Given Clapper’s large-size lie referred to above, can Trump be faulted for being skeptical of the intelligence community’s Holy Writ? Purposeful lies of the intelligence community during the first Cold War were legendary, many hailed as brilliant tactics when later revealed. The CIA, for example, had phony articles and editorials planted in foreign newspapers (real Fake News), made sex films of target subjects caught in flagrante delicto who had been lured to Agency safe houses by female agents, had Communist embassy personnel expelled because of phony CIA documents, and much more.

    The Post recently published an article entitled “How did Russian trolls get into your Facebook feed? Silicon Valley made it easy.” In the midst of this “exposé,” The Post stated: “There’s no way to tell if you personally saw a Russian post or tweet.” [Washington Post, Nov. 2, 2017]

    A Case or Not?

    So… Do the Cold Warriors have a case to make or do they not? Or do they just want us to remember that the Russkis are bad? So it goes.

    An organization in Czechoslovakia with the self-appointed name of European Values has produced a lengthy report entitled “The Kremlin’s Platform for ‘Useful Idiots’ in the West: An Overview of RT’s Editorial Strategy and Evidence of Impact.” It includes a long list of people who have appeared on the Russian-owned TV station RT (formerly Russia Today), which can be seen in the U.S., the U.K. and other countries. Those who’ve been guests on RT are the “idiots” useful to Moscow. (The list is not complete. I’ve been on RT about five times, but I’m not listed. Where is my Idiot Badge?)

    RT’s YouTube channel has more than two million followers and claims to be the “most-watched news network” on the video site. Its Facebook page has more than 4 million likes and followers. Can this explain why the powers-that-be forget about a thing called freedom-of-speech and treat the station like an enemy? The U.S. government recently forced RT America to register as a foreign agent and has cut off the station’s Congressional press credentials.

    The Cold War strategist, George Kennan, wrote prophetically:

    “Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy.”

    Writer John Wight has described the new Cold War as being “in response to Russia’s recovery from the demise of the Soviet Union and the failed attempt to turn the country into a wholly owned subsidiary of Washington via the imposition of free market economic shock treatment thereafter.”

    So let’s see what other brilliance the New Cold War brings us… Ah yes, another headline in the Post(Nov. 18, 2017): “British alarm rising over possible Russian meddling in Brexit.” Of course, why else would the British people have voted to leave the European Union? But wait a moment, again, one of the British researchers behind the report “said that the accounts they analyzed – which claimed Russian as their language when they were set up but tweeted in English – posted a mixture of pro-‘leave’ and pro-‘remain’ messages regarding Brexit. Commentators have said that the goal may simply have been to sow discord and division in society.”

    Was there ever a time when the Post would have been embarrassed to be so openly, amateurishly biased about Russia? Perhaps during the few years between the two Cold Wars.

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    In case you don’t remember how stupid Cold War Number One was…

    • 1948: The Pittsburgh Press published the names, addresses, and places of employment of about 1,000 citizens who had signed presidential-nominating petitions for former Vice President Henry Wallace, running under the Progressive Party. This, and a number of other lists of “communists,” published in the mainstream media, resulted in people losing their jobs, being expelled from unions, having their children abused, being denied state welfare benefits, and suffering various other punishments.

    • Around 1950: The House Committee on Un-American Activities published a pamphlet, “100 Things You Should Know About Communism in the U.S.A.” This included information about what a communist takeover of the United States would mean: ?Q: What would happen to my insurance?? A: It would go to the Communists.? Q: Would communism give me something better than I have now?? A: Not unless you are in a penitentiary serving a life sentence at hard labor.

    • 1950s: Mrs. Ada White, member of the Indiana State Textbook Commission, believed that Robin Hood was a Communist and urged that books that told the Robin Hood story be banned from Indiana schools.

    • As evidence that anti-communist mania was not limited to the lunatic fringe or conservative newspaper publishers, here is Clark Kerr, president of the University of California at Berkeley in a 1959 speech: “Perhaps 2 or even 20 million people have been killed in China by the new [communist] regime.” One person wrote to Kerr: “I am wondering how you would judge a person who estimates the age of a passerby on the street as being ‘perhaps 2 or even 20 years old.’ Or what would you think of a physician who tells you to take ‘perhaps 2 or even twenty teaspoonsful of a remedy’?”

    • Throughout the cold war, traffic in phony Lenin quotes was brisk, each one passed around from one publication or speaker to another for years. Here’s S. News and World Report in 1958 demonstrating communist duplicity by quoting Lenin: “Promises are like pie crusts, made to be broken.” Secretary of State John Foster Dulles used it in a speech shortly afterward, one of many to do so during the cold war. Lenin actually did use a very similar line, but he explicitly stated that he was quoting an English proverb (it comes from Jonathan Swift) and his purpose was to show the unreliability of the bourgeoisie, not of communists. ?“First we will take Eastern Europe, then the masses of Asia, then we will encircle the United States, which will be the last bastion of capitalism. We will not have to attack. It will fall like an overripe fruit into our hands.” This Lenin “quotation” had the usual wide circulation, even winding up in the Congressional Record in 1962. This was not simply a careless attribution; this was an out-and-out fabrication; an extensive search, including by the Library of Congress and the United States Information Agency failed to find its origin.

    • A favorite theme of the anti-communists was that a principal force behind drug trafficking was a communist plot to demoralize the United States. Here’s a small sample:? Don Keller, District Attorney for San Diego County, California in 1953: “We know that more heroin is being produced south of the border than ever before and we are beginning to hear stories of financial backing by big shot Communists operating out of Mexico City.”? Henry Giordano, Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 1964, interviewed in the American Legion Magazine: Interviewer: “I’ve been told that the communists are trying to flood our country with narcotics to weaken our moral and physical stamina. Is that true?”? Giordano: “As far as the drugs are concerned, it’s true. There’s a terrific flow of drugs coming out of Yunnan Province of China… There’s no question that in that particular area this is the aim of the Red Chinese. It should be apparent that if you could addict a population you would degrade a nation’s moral fiber.”? Fulton Lewis, Jr., prominent conservative radio broadcaster and newspaper columnist, 1965: “Narcotics of Cuban origin – marijuana, cocaine, opium, and heroin – are now peddled in big cities and tiny hamlets throughout this country. Several Cubans arrested by the Los Angeles police have boasted they are communists.”? We were also told that along with drugs another tool of the commies to undermine America’s spirit was fluoridation of the water.

    • Mickey Spillane was one of the most successful writers of the 1950s, selling millions of his anti-communist thriller mysteries. Here is his hero, Mike Hammer, in “One Lonely Night,” boasting of his delight in the grisly murders he commits, all in the name of destroying a communist plot to steal atomic secrets. After a night of carnage, the triumphant Hammer gloats, “I shot them in cold blood and enjoyed every minute of it. I pumped slugs into the nastiest bunch of bastards you ever saw. … They were Commies. … Pretty soon what’s left of Russia and the slime that breeds there won’t be worth mentioning and I’m glad because I had a part in the killing. God, but it was fun!”

    • 1952: A campaign against the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) because it was tainted with “atheism and communism,” and was “subversive” because it preached internationalism. Any attempt to introduce an international point of view in the schools was seen as undermining patriotism and loyalty to the United States. A bill in the U.S. Senate, clearly aimed at UNESCO, called for a ban on the funding of “any international agency that directly or indirectly promoted one-world government or world citizenship.” There was also opposition to UNESCO’s association with the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights on the grounds that it was trying to replace the American Bill of Rights with a less liberty-giving covenant of human rights.

    • 1955: A U.S. Army 6-page pamphlet, “How to Spot a Communist,” informed us that a communist could be spotted by his predisposition to discuss civil rights, racial and religious discrimination, the immigration laws, anti-subversive legislation, curbs on unions, and peace. Good Americans were advised to keep their ears stretched for such give-away terms as “chauvinism,” “book-burning,” “colonialism,” “demagogy,” “witch hunt,” “reactionary,” “progressive,” and “exploitation.” Another “distinguishing mark” of “Communist language” was a “preference for long sentences.” After some ridicule, the Army rescinded the pamphlet.

    • 1958: The noted sportscaster Bill Stern (one of the heroes of my innocent youth) observed on the radio that the lack of interest in “big time” football at New York University, City College of New York, Chicago, and Harvard “is due to the widespread acceptance of Communism at the universities.”

    • 1960: U.S. General Thomas Power speaking about nuclear war or a first strike by the U.S.: “The whole idea is to kill the bastards! At the end of the war, if there are two Americans and one Russian, we win!” The response from one of those present was: “Well, you’d better make sure that they’re a man and a woman.”

    • 1966: The Boys Club of America is of course wholesome and patriotic. Imagine their horror when they were confused with the Dubois Clubs. (W.E.B. Du Bois had been a very prominent civil rights activist.) When the Justice Department required the DuBois Clubs to register as a Communist front group, good loyal Americans knew what to do. They called up the Boys Club to announce that they would no longer contribute any money, or to threaten violence against them; and sure enough an explosion damaged the national headquarters of the youth group in San Francisco. Then former Vice President Richard Nixon, who was national board chairman of the Boys Club, declared: “This is an almost classic example of Communist deception and duplicity. The ‘DuBois Clubs’ are not unaware of the confusion they are causing among our supporters and among many other good citizens.”

    • 1966: “Rhythm, Riots and Revolution: An Analysis of the Communist Use of Music, The Communist Master Music Plan,” by David A. Noebel, published by Christian Crusade Publications, (expanded version of 1965 pamphlet: “Communism, Hypnotism and the Beatles”). Some chapters: Communist Use of Mind Warfare … Nature of Red Record Companies … Destructive Nature of Beatle Music … Communist Subversion of Folk Music … Folk Music and the Negro Revolution … Folk Music and the College Revolution

    • 1968: William Calley, U.S. Army Lieutenant, charged with overseeing the massacre of more than 100 Vietnamese civilians in My Lai in 1968, said some years later: “In all my years in the Army I was never taught that communists were human beings. We were there to kill ideology carried by – I don’t know – pawns, blobs, pieces of flesh. I was there to destroy communism. We never conceived of old people, men, women, children, babies.”

    • 1977: Scientists theorized that the earth’s protective ozone layer was being damaged by synthetic chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons. The manufacturers and users of CFCs were not happy. They made life difficult for the lead scientist. The president of one aerosol manufacturing firm suggested that criticism of CFCs was “orchestrated by the Ministry of Disinformation of the KGB.”

    • 1978: Life inside a California youth camp of the ultra anti-communist John Birch Society: Five hours each day of lectures on communism, Americanism and “The Conspiracy”; campers learned that the Soviet government had created a famine and spread a virus to kill a large number of citizens and make the rest of them more manageable; the famine led starving adults to eat their children; communist guerrillas in Southeast Asia jammed chopsticks into children’s ears, piercing their eardrums; American movies are all under the control of the Communists; the theme is always that capitalism is no better than communism; you can’t find a dictionary now that isn’t under communist influence; the communists are also taking over the Bibles.

    • The Reagan administration declared that the Russians were spraying toxic chemicals over Laos, Cambodia and Afghanistan – the so-called “yellow rain” – and had caused more than ten thousand deaths by 1982 alone, (including, in Afghanistan, 3,042 deaths attributed to 47 separate incidents between the summer of 1979 and the summer of 1981, so precise was the information). Secretary of State Alexander Haig was a prime dispenser of such stories, and President Reagan himself denounced the Soviet Union thusly more than 15 times in documents and speeches. The “yellow rain,” it turned out, was pollen-laden feces dropped by huge swarms of honeybees flying far overhead.

    • 1982: In commenting about sexual harassment in the Army, General John Crosby stated that the Army doesn’t care about soldiers’ social lives – “The basic purpose of the United States Army is to kill Russians,” he said.

    • 1983: The U.S. invasion of Grenada, the home of the Cuban ambassador is damaged and looted by American soldiers; on one wall is written “AA,” symbol of the 82nd Airborne Division; beside it the message: “Eat shit, commie faggot.” … “I want to fuck communism out of this little island,” says a marine, “and fuck it right back to Moscow.”

    • 1984: During a sound check just before his weekly broadcast, President Reagan spoke these words into the microphone: “My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you I have signed legislation to outlaw Russia, forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.” His words were picked up by at least two radio networks.

    • 1985: October 29 BBC interview with Ronald Reagan: asked about the differences he saw between the U.S. and Russia, the President replied: “I’m no linguist, but I’ve been told that in the Russian language there isn’t even a word for freedom.” (The word is “svoboda.”)

    • 1986: Soviet artists and cultural officials criticized Rambo-like American films as an expression of “anti-Russian phobia even more pathological than in the days of McCarthyism.” Russian filmmaker Stanislav Rostofsky claimed that on one visit to an American school “a young girl trembled with fury when she heard I was from the Soviet Union, and said she hated Russians.”

    • 1986: Roy Cohn, who achieved considerable fame and notoriety in the 1950s as an assistant to the communist-witch-hunting Sen. Joseph McCarthy, died, reportedly of AIDS. Cohn, though homosexual, had denied that he was and had denounced such rumors as communist smears.

    • 1986: After American journalist Nicholas Daniloff was arrested in Moscow for “spying” and held in custody for two weeks, New York Mayor Edward Koch sent a group of 10 visiting Soviet students storming out of City Hall in fury. “The Soviet government is the pits,” said Koch, visibly shocking the students, ranging in age from 10 to 18 years. One 14-year-old student was so outraged he declared: “I don’t want to stay in this house. I want to go to the bus and go far away from this place. The mayor is very rude. We never had a worse welcome anywhere.” As matters turned out, it appeared that Daniloff had not been completely pure when it came to his newsgathering.

    • 1989: After the infamous Chinese crackdown on dissenters in Tiananmen Square in June, the U.S. news media was replete with reports that the governments of Nicaragua, Vietnam and Cuba had expressed their support of the Chinese leadership. Said the Wall Street Journal: “Nicaragua, with Cuba and Vietnam, constituted the only countries in the world to approve the Chinese Communists’ slaughter of the students in Tiananmen Square.” But it was all someone’s fabrication; no such support had been expressed by any of the three governments. At that time, as now, there were few, if any, organizations other than the CIA which could manipulate major Western media in such a manner. [Sources for almost all of this section can be found in William Blum, Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire (2005), chapter 12; or the author can be queried at bblum6@aol.com].

    NOTE: It should be remembered that the worst consequences of anti-communism were not those discussed above. The worst consequences, the ultra-criminal consequences, were the abominable death, destruction, and violation of human rights that we know under various names: Vietnam, Chile, Korea, Guatemala, Cambodia, Indonesia, Brazil, Greece, Afghanistan, El Salvador, and many others.

    *  *  *

    Originally published on Dec. 6, 2017.

  • Hollywood Is Making Jobs Great Again, Employs More People Than Energy Sector

    Hollywood supports 2.6 million jobs, dishes out $177 billion in wages and directly employs more people across the country than the commodities and energy industries, said the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) in a report published Monday.

    Jobs directly related to producing, marketing, and manufacturing motion pictures, television shows, and video content, employs more people in 34 states than industrial jobs in mining, oil & natural gas extraction, crop production, utility system construction, and rental & leasing services.

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    Bloomberg says MPAA’s report shows how broadly the U.S. entertainment industry has expanded beyond California. Direct wages in television and film account for $76 billion, with salaries that are 47% higher than the national average. The industry also supports 93,000 small business in total, located in every state in the country.

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    The industry has a trade surplus of $10.3 billion, 4% of the country’s total surplus in services, the report showed. The industry exports more than telecommunications, transportation, mining, legal insurance, information, and health-related services, the MPAA said.

    “The impact of the U.S. film and television industry reaches far beyond well-known creative hubs, such as Los Angeles, New York City and Atlanta,” said MPAA chair Charles Rivkin. “This industry supports jobs and businesses in all 50 states and is also highly competitive globally – generating $17.2 billion in exports and a positive balance of trade in every major market in the world.”

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    The use of taxpayer funds has been widely used throughout California to support the industry. Some states have removed or recently revised these tax incentive programs. Meanwhile, California re-upped its subsidies for film and television to draw back film production to the state.

    Besides directly employing 927,000 people, the industry has made $44 billion in payments to local businesses, supporting an additional 2.6 million indirect jobs, a move that has Hollywood making jobs great again.

  • America's Generals Have Learned Nothing From Our Failed Wars

    Authored by William Astore via TomDispatch.com,

    The senior officials responsible for our military failures are guiding us to more of the same.

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    “Veni, Vidi, Vici,” boasted Julius Caesar, one of history’s great military captains. “I came, I saw, I conquered.”

    Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton echoed that famed saying when summing up the Obama administration’s military intervention in Libya in 2011 — with a small alteration. “We came, we saw, he died,” she said with a laugh about the killing of Muammar Gaddafi, that country’s autocratic leader. Note what she left out, though: the “vici” or victory part. And how right she was to do so, since Washington’s invasions, occupations, and interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and elsewhere in this century have never produced anything faintly like a single decisive and lasting victory.

    “Failure is not an option” was the stirring 1995 movie catchphrase for the dramatic 1970 rescue of the Apollo 13 moon mission and crew, but were such a movie to be made about America’s wars and their less-than-vici-esque results today, the phrase would have to be corrected in Clintonian fashion to read “We came, we saw, we failed.”

    Wars are risky, destructive, unpredictable endeavors, so it would hardly be surprising if America’s military and civilian leaders failed occasionally in their endless martial endeavors, despite the overwhelming superiority in firepower of “the world’s greatest military.” Here’s the question, though: Why have all the American wars of this century gone down in flames and what in the world have those leaders learned from such repetitive failures?

    The evidence before our eyes suggests that, when it comes to our senior military leaders at least, the answer would be: nothing at all.

    Let’s begin with General David Petraeus, he of “the surge” fame in the Iraq War. Of course, he would briefly fall from grace in 2012, while director of the CIA, thanks to an affair with his biographer with whom he inappropriately shared highly classified information. When riding high in Iraq in 2007, however, “King David” (as he was then dubbed) was widely considered an example of America’s best and brightest. He was a soldier-scholar with a doctorate from Princeton, an “insurgent” general with the perfect way — a revival of Vietnam-era counterinsurgency techniques — to stabilize invaded and occupied Iraq. He was the man to snatch victory from the jaws of looming defeat. (Talk about a fable not worthy of Aesop!)

    Though retired from the military since 2011, Petraeus somehow remains a bellwether for conventional thinking about America’s wars at the Pentagon, as well as inside the Washington Beltway. And despite the quagmire in Afghanistan (that he had a significant hand in deepening), despite the widespread destruction in Iraq (for which he would hold some responsibility), despite the failed-state chaos in Libya, he continues to relentlessly plug the idea of pursuing a “sustainable” forever war against global terrorism; in other words, yet more of the same.

    Here’s how he typically put it in a recent interview:

    “I would contend that the fight against Islamist extremists is not one that we’re going to see the end of in our lifetimes probably. I think this is a generational struggle, which requires you to have a sustained commitment. But of course you can only sustain it if it’s sustainable in terms of the expenditure of blood and treasure.”

    His comment brings to mind a World War II quip about General George S. Patton, also known as “old blood and guts.” Some of his troops responded to that nickname this way: yes, his guts, but our blood. When men like Petraeus measure the supposed sustainability of their wars in terms of blood and treasure, the first question should be: Whose blood, whose treasure?

    When it comes to Washington’s Afghan War, now in its 18th year and looking ever more like a demoralizing defeat, Petraeus admits that U.S. forces “never had an exit strategy.” What they did have, he claims, “was a strategy to allow us to continue to achieve our objectives… with the reduced expenditure in blood and treasure.”

    Think of this formulation as an upside-down version of the notorious “body count” of the Vietnam War. Instead of attempting to maximize enemy dead, as General William Westmoreland sought to do from 1965 to 1968, Petraeus is suggesting that the U.S. seek to keep the American body count to a minimum (translating into minimal attention back home), while minimizing the “treasure” spent. By keeping American bucks and body bags down (Afghans be damned), the war, he insists, can be sustained not just for a few more years but generationally. (He cites 70-year troop commitments to NATO and South Korea as reasonable models.)

    Talk about lacking an exit strategy! And he also speaks of a persistent “industrial-strength” Afghan insurgency without noting that U.S. military actions, including drone strikes and an increasing reliance on air power, result in ever more dead civilians, which only feed that same insurgency. For him, Afghanistan is little more than a “platform” for regional counterterror operations and so anything must be done to prevent the greatest horror of all: withdrawing American troops too quickly.

    In fact, he suggests that American-trained and supplied Iraqi forces collapsed in 2014, when attacked by relatively small groups of ISIS militants, exactly because U.S. troops had been withdrawn too quickly. The same, he has no doubt, will happen if President Trump repeats this “mistake” in Afghanistan. (Poor showings by U.S.-trained forces are never, of course, evidence of a bankrupt approach in Washington, but of the need to “stay the course.”)

    Petraeus’s critique is, in fact, a subtle version of the stab-in-the-back myth. Its underlying premise: that the U.S. military is always on the generational cusp of success, whether in Vietnam in 1971, Iraq in 2011, or Afghanistan in 2019, if only the rug weren’t pulled out from under the U.S. military by irresolute commanders-in-chief.

    Of course, this is all nonsense. Commanded by none other than General David Petraeus, the Afghan surge of 2009-2010 proved a dismal failure as, in the end, had his Iraq surge of 2007. U.S. efforts to train reliable indigenous forces (no matter where in the embattled Greater Middle East and Africa) have also consistently failed. Yet Petraeus’s answer is always more of the same: more U.S. troops and advisers, training, bombing, and killing, all to be repeated at “sustainable” levels for generations to come.

    The alternative, he suggests, is too awful to contemplate:

    “You have to do something about [Islamic extremism] because otherwise they’re going to spew violence, extremism, instability, and a tsunami of refugees not just into neighboring countries but… into our western European allies, undermining their domestic political situations.”

    No mention here of how the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq spread destruction and, in the end, a “tsunami of refugees” throughout the region. No mention of how U.S. interventions and bombing in Libya, Syria, Somalia, and elsewhere help “spew” violence and generate a series of failed states.

    And amazingly enough, despite his lack of “vici” moments, the American media still sees King David as the go-to guy for advice on how to fight and win the wars he’s had such a hand in losing. And just in case you want to start worrying a little, he’s now offering such advice on even more dangerous matters. He’s started to comment on the new “cold war” that now has Washington abuzz, a coming era — as he puts it— of “renewed great power rivalries” with China and Russia, an era, in fact, of “multi-domain warfare” that could prove far more challenging than “the asymmetric abilities of the terrorists and extremists and insurgents that we’ve countered in Iraq and Syria and Afghanistan and a variety of other places, particularly since 9/11.”

    For Petraeus, even if Islamic terrorism disappeared tomorrow and not generations from now, the U.S. military would still be engaged with the supercharged threat of China and Russia. I can already hear Pentagon cash registers going ka-ching!

    And here, in the end, is what’s most striking about Petraeus’s war lessons: no concept of peace even exists in his version of the future. Instead, whether via Islamic terrorism or rival great powers, America faces intractable threats into a distant future. Give him credit for one thing: if adopted, his vision could keep the national security state funded in the staggering fashion it’s come to expect for generations, or at least until the money runs out and the U.S. empire collapses.

    TWO SENIOR GENERALS DRAW LESSONS FROM THE IRAQ WAR

    David Petraeus remains America’s best-known general of this century. His thinking, though, is anything but unique. Take two other senior U.S. Army generals, Mark Milley and Ray Odierno, both of whom recently contributed forewords to the Army’s official history of the Iraq War that tell you what you need to know about Pentagon thinking these days.

    Published this January, the Army’s history of Operation Iraqi Freedom is detailed and controversial. Completed in June 2016, its publication was pushed back due to internal disagreements. As the Wall Street Journal put itin October 2018: “Senior [Army] brass fretted over the impact the study’s criticisms might have on prominent officers’ reputations and on congressional support for the service.” With those worries apparently resolved, the study is now available at the Army War College website.

    The Iraq War witnessed the overthrow of autocrat (and former U.S. ally) Saddam Hussein, a speedy declaration of “mission accomplished” by President George W. Bush, and that country’s subsequent descent into occupation, insurgency, civil war, and chaos. What should the Army have learned from all this? General Milley, now Army chief of staff and President Trump’s nominee to serve as the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, is explicit on its lessons:

    “OIF [Operation Iraqi Freedom] is a sober reminder that technological advantages and standoff weapons alone cannot render a decision; that the promise of short wars is often elusive; that the ends, ways, and means must be in balance; that our Army must understand the type of war we are engaged with in order to adapt as necessary; that decisions in war occur on the ground in the mud and dirt; and that timeless factors such as human agency, chance, and an enemy’s conviction, all shape a war’s outcome.”

    These aren’t, in fact, lessons. They’re military banalities. The side with the best weapons doesn’t always win. Short wars can turn into long ones. The enemy has a say in how the war is fought. What they lack is any sense of Army responsibility for mismanaging the Iraq War so spectacularly. In other words, mission accomplished for General Milley.

    General Odierno, who commissioned the study and served in Iraq for 55 months, spills yet more ink in arguing, like Milley, that the Army has learned from its mistakes and adapted, becoming even more agile and lethal. Here’s my summary of his “lessons”:

    * Superior technology doesn’t guarantee victory. Skill and warcraft remain vital.

    * To win a war of occupation, soldiers need to know the environment, including “the local political and social consequences of our actions… When conditions on the ground change, we must be willing to reexamine the assumptions that underpin our strategy and plans and change course if necessary, no matter how painful it may be,” while developing better “strategic leaders.”

    * The Army needs to be enlarged further because “landpower” is so vital and America’s troops were “overtaxed by the commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the decision to limit our troop levels in both theaters had severe operational consequences.”

    * The Iraq War showcased an Army with an “astonishing” capacity “to learn and adapt in the midst of a war that the United States was well on its way to losing.”

    The gist of Odierno’s “lessons”: the Army learned, adapted, and overcame. Therefore, it deserves America’s thanks and yet more of everything, including the money and resources to pursue future wars even more successfully. There would, however, be another way to read those lessons of his: that the Army overvalued technology, that combat skills were lacking, that efforts to work with allies and Iraqi forces regularly failed, that Army leadership lacked the skills needed to win, and that it was folly to get into a global war on terror in the first place.

    On those failings, neither Milley nor Odierno has anything of value to say, since their focus is purely on how to make the Army prevail in future versions of just such wars. Their limited critique, in short, does little to prevent future disasters. Much like Petraeus’s reflections, they cannot envision an end point to the process — no victory to be celebrated, no return to America being “a normal country in a normal time.” There is only war and more war in their (and so our) future.

    THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY

    Talk of such future wars — of, that is, more of the same — reminded me of the sixth Star Trek movie, The Undiscovered Country. In that space opera, which appeared in 1991 just as the Soviet Union was imploding, peace finally breaks out between the quasi-democratic Federation (think: the USA) and the warmongering Klingon Empire (think: the USSR). Even the Federation’s implacable warrior-captain, James T. Kirk, grudgingly learns to bury the phaser with the Klingon “bastards” who murdered his son.

    Back then, I was a young captain in the U.S. Air Force and, with the apparent end of the Cold War, my colleagues and I dared talk about, if not eternal peace, at least “peace” as our own — and not just Star Trek’s — undiscovered country. Like many at the time, even we in the military were looking forward to what was then called a “peace dividend.”

    But that unknown land, which Americans then glimpsed ever so briefly, remains unexplored to this day. The reason why is simple enough. As Andrew Bacevich put it in his book Breach of Trust, “For the Pentagon [in 1991], peace posed a concrete and imminent threat” — which meant that new threats, “rogue states” of every sort, had to be found. And found they were.

    It comes as no surprise, then, that America’s generals have learned so little of real value from their twenty-first-century losses. They continue to see a state of “infinite war” as necessary and are blind to the ways in which endless war and the ever-developing war state in Washington are the enemies of democracy.

    The question isn’t why they think the way they do. The question is why so many Americans share their vision. The future is now. Isn’t it time that the U.S. sought to invade and occupy a different “land” entirely: an undiscovered country — a future — defined by peace?

  • Man Gets 6 Months In Prison After Cashing Dead Mom's Social Security Checks…For 37 Years

    A Detroit man has been sentenced to six months in prison (plus three years on probation) for cashing 37 years’ worth of his dead mother’s social security checks – accruing more than $280,000 in benefits to which he wasn’t entitled.

    Though his neighbor, Reginald Carpenter, said he tried to do the right thing by notifying the authorities (“but the checks just kept coming”), 76-year-old Walter Terrell had cashed his mother’s checks, despite the fact that she had been dead since 1981.

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    US Attorney Matthew Schneider

    The scheme was uncovered after Medicare tried to contact his mother to ask why her benefits hadn’t been used. Though Terrell tried to keep them at bay by telling them that his mother was away or on vacation when they called or tried to check on her, he was eventually found out, according to Fox 10.

    Despite Terrell’s neighbors’ insistence that he tried to do the right thing, US Attorney Matthew Schneider didn’t see it that way.

    “Every single time you write the false name on the check, you sign somebody’s name that is not yours, that is a crime,” said U.S. Attorney Matthew Schneider. “Eventually this was direct deposited into his account. So the defendent had to lie to get the direct deposit into his account.”

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    “It was 37 years of fraud. Thirty-seven years of stealing the government’s money,” said Schneider.

    […]

    “And if you’re not entitled to those benefits, what you should expect is prison time.”

    Carpenter claims he spent the money on medical expenses, and that he recently had back surgery (though, presumably, he would also be covered by Medicare).

    While it’s unclear what that money was getting spent on, Carpenter claims it was going toward medical expenses, like the back surgery that Terrell had just underwent.

    All in all, Carpenter was only sentenced to six months in prison for stealing nearly $300,000 from the federal government. We’re no lawyers, but we’d venture a guess that he’ll maybe serve half of that with good behavior. Which begs the question: Would you spend a month in jail for $100,000 (minus a few thousand for lawyers’ fees?)

    Watch the local Fox affiliate’s report on the case below:

  • After Multiple Reports About New Zealanders Turning In Guns, Guess How Many Actually Did It? 

    Following reports that a flood of New Zealand gun owners have been voluntarily surrending their firearms in the wake of last Friday’s Christchurch mosque attack that left 50 dead, the numbers are in on how many Kiwis actually handed over their weapons. 

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    JP LRP-07

    Out of an estimated 1.2 million registered guns, New Zealand police report that as of Tuesday night, 37 firearms have been surrendered nationwide, according to BuzzFeed. 

    No accounting was provided of how many people owned those guns, the types of firearms, or where they were surrendered.

    The reports of citizens disarming themselves came after a Monday announcement by Prime minister Jacinda Ardern that several “in principle decisions” on gun control have been made by Cabinet ministers, while praising residents who have surrendered their guns to police. 

    So far, we know of four people who have; Green Party member John Hart and longtime gun owner “@SirWB” – who each turned in a rifle, a grandmother who goes by the Twitter handle “@FeyHag” who said she requested for her family’s guns to be handed in for destruction, and former New Zealand Army soldier Pete Breidahl – who said he warned local police of extremists at a local rifle club where he said he suspected the shooter was a member. 

    “All I want is to go back to my horses, say goodbye to firearms and the bullshit shooting community and its drama and let the police and government sort this one out,” wrote Breidahl in a Facebook post. “I don’t NEED, want or care about guns. I can happily live my life without them.”

    Most reports cited three tweets, including that of John Hart, a farmer and Green Party member from Wairarapa, who told BuzzFeed News he surrendered his semiautomatic rifle two days after the attack.

    He tweeted a photo of the form he signed to hand over his rifle to the police to be destroyed, saying, “We don’t need these in our country. We have to make sure it’s #NeverAgain.” –BuzzFeed

    Ardern asked residents to surrender their weapons on Monday. 

    “To make our community safer, the time to act is now,” she said. “I want to remind people, you can surrender your gun to the police at any time. In fact I have seen reports that people are in fact already doing this. I applaud that effort, and if you are thinking about surrendering your weapon, I would encourage you to do so.“

    Looks like that was wishful thinking on the part of the Prime Minister.

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    National Rifle Association of New Zealand president Malcolm Dodson (ROBERT KITCHIN/STUFF)

  • Student Debt Is Crushing Net Worth Of Couples In Their 20s

    Young people in their 20s are starting their careers with a negative net worth as a direct result of student loans. With student loan debt burdening a growing number of Americans, a new profile in the Seattle Times recently highlighted one couple’s struggle with having a negative net worth to start their careers, despite both having degrees from prestigious universities and reliable work.

    Today, about 15% of households nationwide have a net worth of zero or less according to Federal Reserve Bank of New York data. Take, for example, Jenni and Sean Gritters. They recently moved to the Seattle area, where Jenni grew up, after earning both bachelor’s degrees and master’s degrees in Boston. Combined, her and her husband owe about $125,000 on student loans, which has plunged their net worth to negative $93,500. The most expensive loan they had was Sean’s $56,000 loan at 6.49% that he used to get a second bachelor’s degree in nursing.

    The difference-maker for their net worth being in the red, versus the black? Student loans. Without them, the couple’s net worth would be in the black by $31,500, which would be above the national median for their age bracket.

    The debt has weighed on them as a couple. Sean described their student loans posing obstacles to their other financial goals as “scary”. He is 28 years old and a nurse in Seattle, earning about $71,000 a year. Jenni is a freelance writer and an editor for various outlets, mainly specializing in health and the outdoors. Her income can vary between $1000 and $12,000 a month.

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    She expects to earn about $100,000 a year before taxes based on her pre-tax payments so far this year. The couple has a really simple balance sheet. They have checking account balances of about $7,500 and savings of about $19,000. They have both taken advantage of retirement plans and, combined, they have about $21,000 in 401(k)s. Jenny has even opened a Roth IRA which has a balance of about $5300. They owe about $15,000 on their car and that represents the only debt they have remaining in addition to their student loans.

    When they settled in Seattle, Jenni thought “It was time to talk to someone about a good plan going forward.”

    They then applied for free financial advice and, working with the Seattle Times, they started to plan a way to come up with a $50,000 emergency fund while adding more to their savings. The $523 a month they were paying on Sean’s $56,000 loan had them thinking that the debt would “forever be a ball and chain” for them. Since then, they have upped those payments to $1000 a month to try and pay off that loan more aggressively, while still making the minimum payments on the other loans.

    Sean is now maxing out his employer’s 401(k) match and Jenni is now contributing the maximum she can to her Roth IRA. At the end of every month, the couple now reviews their finances together. They are still waiting to see how these increased contributions effect their monthly cashflow. “It’s a big financial impact,” Sean said about trying to get aggressive about saving.

    But for now, the young couple feels more empowered and is making progress together. “We’re on the same page,” Jenni concluded. 

  • Did Jeff Bezos Invent A Trump-Saudi Collusion Hoax To Deflect From His Dick-Pic Betrayal?

    Authored by Jordan Satchell via ConservativeReview.com,

    The beginning of February was a rough stretch for Jeff Bezos. The National Enquirer obtained evidence that he was engaged in a long-running extramarital affair, and he knew the paper was moments away from publishing exclusive details from the hugely embarrassing saga. Bezos had a decision to make. He could do the decent thing and apologize for his wrongdoing. Instead, he chose a different path — the warpath.

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    Far from owning up to his misdeeds, the billionaire founder of Amazon and owner of the Washington Post went on offense. In a Medium post published February 4, Bezos concocted a mind-blowing conspiracy involving the Trump administration, Saudi Arabia, and international espionage. He claimed that President Trump and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia were attempting an extensive “extortion and blackmail” campaign against him. He proposed that his ownership of the Washington Post put a target on his back. As owner of the Post, Bezos claimed that he was on Trump’s enemies list. He also insisted that it was no coincidence that President Trump and David Pecker, the publisher of the National Enquirer, had a professional working relationship. Moreover, Bezos claimed that Saudi Arabia must be targeting him due to the Washington Post’s “unrelenting coverage” of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.

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    “For reasons still to be better understood, the Saudi angle seems to hit a particularly sensitive nerve,” Bezos added.

    Team Bezos then launched a campaign in the media, going so far as to accuse the government — on orders from President Trump — of stealing his information. It seemed that Bezos was trafficking the Trump-Saudi-Pecker conspiracy directly through his own reporters at the Washington Post.

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    The seriousness of the Bezos allegation set off a media firestorm. A who’s who of legacy media and NeverTrump personalities, without evidence, began accusing the president, Saudi Arabia, and David Pecker of colluding, sometimes through extrajudicial means, to bring down Mr. Bezos.

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    Evidence never surfaced that the accused entities engaged in an anti-Bezos conspiracy. President Trump and Saudi Arabia have legitimate grievances with the Washington Post’s extremely biased coverage. The Post has been at the forefront of pushing the Trump-Russia conspiracy theory since day one of the Trump administration..

    As for Saudi Arabia, the Washington Post has used the death of its columnist, Jamal Khashoggi, to continue to take shots at Riyadh. I explained their nonstop campaign against the Saudi monarchy in a February 12 column for Conservative Review:

    The Washington Post has taken to extreme measures in publishing unrelentingly negative stories against Saudi Arabia. Following Khashoggi’s death, The Post became weaponized into an open forum for foreign governments and radical Islamist and jihadi groups opposed to Saudi Arabia’s role in the Middle East. The Post routinely falsely categorized its deceased Islamist columnist Khashoggi as a democracy advocate, a journalist, and a voice for reform, none of which is even remotely true.

    As the campaign continued, Bezos never provided any evidence to support his grand conspiracy theory involving hacking, spying, and revenge. Moreover, all of the parties accused of wrongdoing unequivocally denied that they were behind anything having to do with Bezos.

    On Monday evening, the Wall Street Journal cleared up all remaining doubt in what some have come to label Peckergate. The Journal found that there was no grand conspiracy involving President Trump, foreign entities, or Pecker. There was no evidence that Bezos’ information was stolen or that he was hacked.

    “The reality is simpler: Michael Sanchez, the brother of Mr. Bezos’ lover, sold the billionaire’s secrets for $200,000 to the Enquirer’s publisher, said people familiar with the matter,” the Journal reported. This added to other media reports, which also pointed to Sanchez as the man who fed the story to the Enquirer. They were published about one week after Mr. Bezos published his Medium post.

    By all accounts, Jeff Bezos invented a Trump-Pecker-Saudi collusion conspiracy theory out of thin air. Not even the world’s richest man should be allowed to get away with spreading incriminating hoaxes. After all, “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”

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Mar 20

Today’s News 20th March 2019

  • Trump's Beijing Blockade Backfires: Not A Single European Country Has Banned Huawei

    For the past year, as part of Trump’s escalating trade war against China, the Trump administration has been waging a parallel campaign to convince America’s European “allies” (at least until the White House unleashes auto tariffs against Brussles in retaliation for China annexing Italy to the Belt and Road initiative) to bar China’s Huawei Technologies from their telecom networks, a process which so far has culminated with the arrest of the Chinese telecom giant’s CFO in Canada. Bolstered by the success of similar efforts in Australia and New Zealand, the White House sent envoys to European capitals with warnings that Huawei’s gear would open a backdoor for Chinese spies. Last week, the U.S. even threatened to cut off intelligence sharing if Germany ignored its advice.

    So far, the gamble to pressure Europe has backfired: not a single European country has banned Huawei.

    Confirming that Europe and the US are now allies only on paper, was the scathing commentary by Angela Merkel at a Berlin conference on Tuesday: “There are two things I don’t believe in,” Merkel said: “First, to discuss these very sensitive security questions publicly, and second, to exclude a company simply because it’s from a certain country.”

    And just like that, Europe took its place in the grand superpower race: right next to China (and Russia) against the US.

    As Bloomberg notes, Europe, and especially Germany, both of which are extremely reliant on continued open trade with, Beijing has been caught in the middle of the U.S.-China trade war. Trying to remain impartial, Europe has been seeking to balance concerns about growing Chinese influence with a desire to increase business with Trump’s trade nemesis. And in a grand quid pro quo, with no ban in the works so far, Huawei is a budget frontrunner for contracts to build Europe’s 5G phone networks, the ultra-fast wireless technology the continent’s leaders hope will fuel the growth of a data-based economy, while building goodwill and hopefully receiving a few billion in Chinese investments in the process.

    The first salvo against Trump’s diplomatic effort took place last month when the U.K.’s spy agency indicated that a ban on Huawei is unlikely, citing a lack of viable alternatives to upgrade British telecom networks. Next, Italy’s government also dismissed U.S. warnings as it seeks to boost trade with China. In Germany, authorities have proposed tighter security rules for data networks rather than outlawing Huawei. France is doing the same after initially flirting with the idea of restrictions on Huawei.

    “The 5G rollout is one of the most complex and expensive technology projects ever undertaken,” said Paul Triolo, an analyst at Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy. “The challenge for Europe is to find a way that minimizes the security risks linked to Chinese suppliers but not delay 5G, which is so important to the region.”

    Governments have also listened to domestic phone companies such as Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom, and Orange, all of whom have warned that sidelining Huawei would delay the implementation of 5G by years and add billions of euros in cost.

    “We’ve not seen any evidence of backdoors into the network,” said Helen Lamprell, Vodafone’s top lawyer and chief lobbyist in the U.K. “If the Americans have evidence, please put it out on the table.”

    Predictably, the US did not take the rebuke sitting down.

    In February, the White House dispatched representatives to MWC Barcelona, the industry’s top annual trade show, who urged executives and politicians to avoid Huawei and its Chinese peers. At the same time, the U.S. ambassador in Berlin wrote a letter to the German government saying it should drop Huawei or risk throttling U.S. intelligence sharing (Germany’s response was not  exactly calm, cool and collected).

    Then there is the matter of value, and here China beats everyone hands down.

    As Bloomberg notes, while “carriers can also buy equipment from the likes of Ericsson AB, Nokia Oyj, and Samsung Electronics Co., industry consultants say Huawei’s quality is high, and the company last year filed 5,405 global patents, more than double the filings by Ericsson and Nokia combined.”

    The biggest irony: while the US accuses China of back door spying, the world already knows that the US is guilty of just that, thanks to Edward Snowden’s revelation. As a result, European lawmakers have been wary of Cisco, Huawei’s American rival, ever since it was revealed that the National Security Agency’s used U.S.-made telecom equipment for spying on, well, everyone. This is one of the reasons why between 2013 and 2018, Huawei increased its telecom market share by 8 percentage points:

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    Still, neither China, nor Huawei are safe yet. Since China has indeed been walking in the US’ footsteps and has been using its own backdoors to spy on both foes and friends, German hard-liners in the intelligence community realize that the push-pull against Huawei is only there to score political points again Washington. They also admit the company isn’t trustworthy, and updated security rules the government is drafting will make it harder for Huawei to win contracts. Denmark’s biggest phone company, TDC A/S, declined to renew a contract with Huawei and instead picked Ericsson as strategic partner to develop its 5G network. Even as Europe refuses to block Huawei, the Chinese telecom giant has been under increasing pressure to allow greater scrutiny of its technology and increase assurances its equipment can’t be accessed by Chinese spies.

    In response, Huawei told Bloomberg it has “placed cyber security and user privacy protection at the very top of its priorities” adding that safeguarding networks is the joint responsibility of vendors, telecom companies, and regulators.

    But most importantly, despite US insistence, so far there’s little evidence to suggest Europe will shun Huawei. In fact, as Bloomberg adds, the national railway companies in Germany and Austria have bought the company’s equipment, and carriers such as Deutsche Telekom and Telefonica are running 5G test projects with its products.

    As a result of Europe’s rebellion against the US, Huawei’s global revenue growth accelerated in the first two months of the year, climbing by more than a third, founder Ren Zhengfei said last week. And the company says sales of its smartphones doubled in Germany during the same period.

    “We don’t know what the U.S.’s next move is, so it’s not over yet,” said Bengt Nordstrom, CEO of telecom consultancy Northstream. “But whatever market share Huawei may lose in Europe, they’ll win back in China.”

    Meanwhile, the question of how Trump takes defeat in diplomatic pressure with Europe remains open, not to mention how this would translate from mere diplomacy to global economics and capital markets: one thing is certain, should Europe’s rebuke of Washington be overly publicized, tariffs on Europe’s exports – such as automobiles – to the US would appear inevitable, as would the next global recession as globalization takes it next big step backward.

  • Turkey: Putin's Ally In NATO?

    Authored by Burak Bekdil via The Gatestone Institute,

    • On March 7, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Turkey would never turn back from the S-400 missile deal with Russia. He even added that Ankara may subsequently look into buying the more advanced S-500 systems now under construction in Russia.

    • With the S-400 deal, Turkey is simply telling its theoretical Western allies that it views “them,” and “not Russia,” as a security threat. Given that Russia is widely considered a security threat to NATO, Turkey’s odd-one-out position inevitably calls for questioning its official NATO identity.

    • Turkey has NATO’s second biggest army, and its military love affair with Russia may be in its infancy now, but it undermines NATO’s military deterrence against Russia.

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    Turkey has NATO’s second biggest army, and its military love affair with Russia may be in its infancy now, but it undermines NATO’s military deterrence against Russia. Pictured: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, on March 10, 2017. (Image source: kremlin.ru)

    On September 17, 1950, more than 68 years ago, the first Turkish brigade left the port of Mersin on the Mediterranean coast, arriving, 26 days later, at Busan in Korea. Turkey was the first country, after the United States, to answer the United Nations’ call for military aid to South Korea after the North attacked that year. Turkey sent four brigades (a total of 21,212 soldiers) to a country that is 7,785 km away. By the end of the Korean War, Turkey had lost 741 soldiers killed in action. The U.N. Memorial Cemetery in Busan embraces 462 Turkish soldiers.

    All that Turkish effort was aimed at membership in NATO, a seat that Turkey eventually won in February 18, 1952. During the Cold War, Turkey remained a staunch U.S. and NATO ally, defending the alliance’s southeastern flank. Nevertheless, events have changed dramatically since the Islamist government of Prime Minister (now President) Recep Tayyip Erdoğan first came to power in November 2002. The “Turkish retreat” did not happen overnight.

    In April 2009, military teams from Turkey and its neighbor, President Bashar al-Assad’s Syria, crossed the border and visited outposts during joint military drills. That was the first time a NATO army had exercised with Syria’s military.

    In September 2010, Turkish and Chinese air force jets conducted joint exercises in Turkish airspace. That, too, was the first time a NATO air force had military exercises with China’s.

    In 2011, a Transatlantic Trends survey revealed that Turkey was the NATO member with the lowest support for the alliance: just 37% (down from 53% in 2004).

    In 2012, Turkey joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO, whose members are Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan) as a dialogue partner.

    In 2017, a senior Chinese diplomat said that Beijing was ready to discuss Turkey’s membership in the SCO.

    In September 2013, Turkey announced that it had selected a Chinese company (CPMIEC) for the construction of its first long-range air and anti-missile defense system under the then $3.5 billion T-LORAMIDS program. That contract was later scrapped, but Erdoğan then turned to Russian President Vladimir Putin for a replacement: the S-400 long-range air and anti-missile defense system.

    Despite increasing U.S., Western and NATO pressure, Erdoğan since that time has refused to give up the Russian air defense architecture and instead has boldly defended “Turkey’s sovereign decision.” Most recently, on March 7, Erdoğan saidTurkey would never turn back from the S-400 missile deal. He even added that Ankara may subsequently look into buying the more advanced S-500 systems now under construction in Russia.

    Washington is still warning its part-time NATO ally that the Russian deal would have its “grave consequences.” According to CNN:

    “If Turkey takes the S-400s there will be grave consequences,” acting chief Pentagon spokesperson Charles Summers told reporters Friday [March 8], saying it would undermine America’s military relationship with Ankara.

    Summers said those consequences would include the US not allowing Turkey to acquire the F-35 jet and the Patriot missile defense system.

    Turkey, a member of the U.S.-led, multinational consortium that builds the new generation fighter, the F-35 Lightening II, had committed to buy more than 100 of the aircraft.

    Turkey’s choice in favor of Russia (and against NATO) will surely have repercussions on several wavelengths. The U.S. may or may not fully retaliate by expelling Turkey from the Joint Strike Fighter group that builds the F-35. That will be a decision carrying with it economic considerations in addition to military and political ones. Turkey, if expelled, may turn further to Russia for a next-generation fighter solution, which Putin would only be too happy to offer — and create further cracks within the NATO bloc, a move Erdoğan probably believes the U.S. administration (and NATO) cannot afford to risk. Erdoğan’s gambit, however, has a more important message to NATO than just procuring military gear: Turkey’s geo-strategic identity.

    The S-400 is an advanced air defense architecture, especially if it is utilized against Western (NATO) aerial assets and firepower. It is an elementary military software fact that Turkey cannot use this system against Russian aggression or Russian-made weapons. With the S-400 deal, Turkey is simply telling its theoretical Western allies that it views “them,” and “not Russia,” as a security threat. Given that Russia is widely considered a security threat to NATO, Turkey’s odd-one-out position inevitably calls for questioning its official NATO identity.

    Turkey has NATO’s second biggest army, and its military love affair with Russia may be in its infancy now, but it undermines NATO’s military deterrence against Russia. Russia, however, would doubtless like nothing better than to see the break-up of a military alliance which ensures that an “armed attack against one” NATO member “shall be considered an attack against them all”.

  • Empire Of Absurdity: Recycled Neocons, Recycled Enemies

    Authored by Major Danny Sjursen (ret.) via AntiWar.com,

    There are times when I wish that the United States would just drop the charade and declare itself a global empire.

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    As a veteran of two imperial wars, a witness to the dark underside of America’s empire-denial, I’ve grown tired of the equivocation and denials from senior policymakers. The U.S. can’t be an empire, we’re told, because – unlike the Brits and Romans – America doesn’t annex territories outright, and our school children don’t color its colonies in red-white-and-blue on cute educational maps.

    But this distinction, at root, is rather superficial. Conquest, colonization, and annexation are so 19th century – Washington has moved beyond the overt and engages in the (not-so) subtle modern form of imperialism. America’s empire over the last two decades – under Democrats and Republicans – has used a range of tools: economic, military, political, to topple regimes, instigate coups, and starve “enemy” civilians. Heck, it didn’t even start with 9/11 – bullying foreigners and overturning uncooperative regimes is as American as apple pie.

    Still, observing post-9/11, post-Iraq/Afghanistan defeat, Washington play imperialism these days is tragicomically absurd. The emperor has no clothes, folks. Sure, America (for a few more fleeting years) boasts the world’s dominant economy, sure its dotted the globe with a few hundred military bases, and sure it’s military still outspends the next seven competitors combined. Nonetheless, what’s remarkable, what constitutes the real story of 2019, is this: the US empire can’t seem to accomplish anything anymore, can’t seem to bend anybody to its will. It’s almost sad to watch. America, the big-hulking has-been on the block, still struts its stuff, but most of the world simply ignores it.

    Make no mistake, Washington isn’t done trying; it’s happy to keep throwing good money (and blood) at bad: to the tune of a cool $6 trillion, 7,000 troop deaths, and 500,000 foreign deaths – including maybe 240,000 civilians. But what’s it all been for? The world is no safer, global terror attacks have only increased, and Uncle Sam just can’t seem to achieve any of its preferred policy goals.

    Think on it for a second: Russia and Iran “won” in Syria; the Taliban and Pakistan are about ready to “win” in Afghanistan; Iran is more influential than ever in Iraq; the Houthis won’t quit in Yemen; Moscow is keeping Crimea; Libya remains unstable; North Korea ain’t giving up its nukes; and China’s power continues to grow in its version of the Caribbean – the South China Sea. No amount of American cash, no volume of our soldiers’ blood, no escalation in drone strikes or the conventional bombing of brown folks, has favorably changed the calculus in any of these regional conflicts.

    What does this tell us? Quite a lot, I’d argue – but not what the neoliberal/neoconservative alliance of pundits and policymakers are selling. See for these unrepentant militarists the problem is always the same: Washington didn’t use enough force, didn’t spend enough blood and treasure. So is the solution: more defense spending, more CIA operations, more saber-rattling, and more global military interventions.

    No, the inconvenient truth is as simple as it is disturbing to red-blooded patriots. To wit, the United States – or any wannabe hegemon – simply doesn’t possess the capability to shape the world in its own image. See those pesky locals – Arabs, Asians, Muslims, Slavs – don’t know what’s good for them, don’t understand that (obviously) there is a secret American zipped inside each of their very bodies, ready to burst out if given a little push!

    It turns out that low-tech, cheap insurgent tactics, when combined with impassioned nationalism, can bog down the “world’s best military” indefinitely. It seems, too, that other regional heavyweights – Russia, China, Iran, North Korea – stand ready to call America’s nuclear bluff. That they know the US all-volunteer military and consumerist economy can’t ultimately absorb the potential losses a conventional war would demand. Even scarier for the military-industrial-congressional-media establishment is the logical extension of all this accumulated failure: the questionable efficacy of military force in the 21st century.

    Rather than recognize the limits of American military, economic, and political power, Bush II, Obama, and now Trump, have simply dusted off the old playbook. It’s reached the level of absurdity under the unhinged regime of Mr. Trump. Proverbially blasting Springsteen’s “Glory Days,” as its foreign policy soundtrack, the Donald and company have doubled down. Heck, if Washington can’t get its way in Africa, Europe, Asia, or the Mideast, well why not clamp down in our own hemisphere, our traditional sphere of influence – South and Central America.

    Enter the lunacy of the current Venezuela controversy. Trump’s team saw a golden opportunity in this socialist, backwater petrostate. Surely here, in nearby Monroe Doctrine country, Uncle Sam could get his way, topple the Maduro regime, and coronate the insurgent (though questionably legitimate) Juan Guaido. It’s early 20th century Yankee imperialism reborn. Everything seemed perfect. Trump could recall the specter of America’s tried and true enemy – “evil” socialism – cynically (and absurdly) equating Venezuelan populism with some absurd Cold-War-era existential threat to the nation. The idea that Venezuela presents a challenge on the scale of Soviet Russia is actually farcical. What’s more, and this is my favorite bit of irrationality, we were all recently treated to a game of “I know you are but what am I?” from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who (with a straight face) claimed Cuba, tiny island Cuba, was the real “imperialist” in Venezuela.

    Next, in a move reminiscent of some sort of macabre 1980’s theme party, Trump resuscitated Elliot Abrams – you know, the convicted felon of Iran-Contra infamy, to serve as Washington’s special envoy to embattled Venezuela. Who better to act as “fair arbiter” in that country than a war-criminal with the blood of a few hundred thousand Central Americans (remember the Contras?!?) on his hands back in the the good old (Reagan) days.

    Despite all this: America’s military threats, bellicose speechifying, brutal sanctions, and Cold War-style conflict-framing, the incumbent Maduro seems firmly in control. This isn’t to say that Venezuelans don’t have genuine grievances with the Maduro government (they do), but for now at least, it appears the military is staying loyal to the president, Russia/China are filling in the humanitarian aid gaps, and Uncle Sam is about to chalk up another loss on the world scene. Ultimately, whatever the outcome, the crisis will only end with a Venezuelan solution.

    America’s impotence would almost be sad to watch, if, and only if, it wasn’t all so tragic for the Venezuelan people.

    So Trump and his recycled neocons will continue to rant and rave and threaten Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba, and so on and so forth. America will still flex its aging, sagging muscles – a reflexive habit at this point.

    Only now it’ll seem sad. Because no one is paying attention anymore.

    The opposite of love is isn’t hate – it’s indifference.

    *  *  *

    Danny Sjursen is a retired US Army officer and regular contributor to Antiwar.comHe 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. Follow him on Twitter at @SkepticalVet.

  • Visualizing How Americans Make And Spend Their Money

    How do you spend your hard-earned money?

    Whether you are extremely frugal, or you’re known to indulge in the finer things in life, how you allocate your spending is partially a function of how much cash you have coming in the door.

    Simply put, as Visual Capitalist’s Jeff Desjardins writes, the more income a household generates, the higher the portion that can be spent on items other than the usual necessities (housing, food, clothing, etc), and the more that can be saved or invested for the future.

    Earning and Spending, by Income Group

    Today’s visuals come to us from Engaging Data, and they use Sankey diagrams to display data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) that helps to paint a picture of how different household income groups make and spend their money.

    We’ll show you three charts below for the following income groups:

    1. The Average American

    2. The Lowest Income Quintile (Bottom 20%)

    3. The Highest Income Quintile (Highest 20%)

    Let’s start by taking a look at the flows of the average American household:

    The Average American Household – $53,708 in spending (73% of total income)

    The average U.S. household has 2.5 people (1.3 income earners, 0.6 children, and 0.4 seniors)

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    As you can see above the average household generates $73,574 of total inflows, with 84.4% of that coming from salary, and smaller portions coming from social security (11.3%), dividends and property (2.6%), and other income (1.7%).

    In terms of money going out, the highest allocation goes to housing (22.1% of spending), while gas and insurance (9.0%), household (7.7%), and vehicles (7.5%) make up the next largest categories.

    Interestingly, the average U.S. household also says it is saving just short of $10,000 per year.

    The Bottom 20% – $25,525 in spending (100% of total income)

    These contain an average of 1.6 people (0.5 income earners, 0.3 children, and 0.4 seniors)

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    How do the inflows and outflows of the average American household compare to the lowest income quintile?

    Here, the top-level statistic tells much of the story, as the poorest income group in America must spend 100% of money coming in to make ends meet. Further, cash comes in from many different sources, showing that there are fewer dependable sources of income for families to rely on.

    For expenditures, this group spends the most on housing (24.8% of spending), while other top costs of living include food at home (10.1%), gas and insurance (7.9%), health insurance (6.9%), and household costs (6.9%).

    The Highest 20% – $99,639 in spending (53% of total income)

    These contain an average of 3.1 people (2.1 income earners, 0.8 children, and 0.2 seniors)

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    The wealthiest household segment brings in $188,102 in total income on average, with salaries (92.1%) being the top source of inflows.

    This group spends just over half of its income, with top expenses being housing (21.6%), vehicles (8.3%), household costs (8.2%), gas and insurance (8.2%), and entertainment (6.9%).

    The highest quintile pays just short of $40,000 in federal, state, and local taxes per year, and is also able to contribute roughly $50,000 to savings each year.

    Spending Over Time

    For a fascinating look at how household spending has changed over time, don’t forget to check out our previous post that charts 75 years of data on how Americans spend money.

  • After Blocking Zero Hedge And Others, NZ Telcos Demand Big-Tech Censorship Surge To "Protect Consumers"

    In the wake of last week’s terror attacks at two New Zealand mosques which left 50 dead, several websites which either reported on the incident, hosted footage of the attacks, or have simply allowed people to engage in uncensored discussion such as Dissenter or Zero Hedge, have been partially or completely blocked in both New Zealand and Australia for the sake of “protecting consumers,” according to the CEOs of three New Zealand telcos.  

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    In the immediate aftermath of the shooting – which was broadcast over Facebook Live by accused gunman Brenton Tarrant to an initial audience of just 200 viewers (none of whom reported it) and had 4,000 overall views before it was taken down – Facebook deleted 1.5 million videos of the attack, of which 1.2 million were blocked at the time of upload. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    A video of the attacks is still freely available to anyone who wishes to download it from bittorrent.

    Twitter has also been aggressively censoring content related to the Christchurch shooting – perhaps most egregiously forcing journalist Nick Monroe to delete a large number of tweets as he covered the incident in real time, just one of which had links to footage of the shooting. Document hosting website Scribd, meanwhile, has been deleting copies of Tarrant’s 74-page manifesto. 

    In addition to documenting the incident, Monroe has been noting the mass censorship surrounding the shootings – as well as things such as the New Zealand herald stealth editing a March 15 article to remove mention of a “well known Muslim local” who “chased the shooters and fired two shots at them as they sped off.” 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    That said, Twitter and Facebook’s suppression hasn’t gone far enough according to New Zealand telecom CEOs, who have penned an open letter to Facebook, Twitter and Google suggesting that they follow European proposals for hyper-vigilant policing of content for the sake of ‘protecting consumers.’ 

    “Consumers have the right to be protected, whether using services funded by money or data. Now is the time for this conversation to be had and we call on all of you to join us at the table and be part of the solution,” reads the letter. 

    Zero Hedge banned… again. 

    Less than a week after Facebook ‘mistakenly’ banned us for two days with no explanation following several reports which were critical of the social media giant, we learned that Zero Hedge has now been banned in New Zealand and Australia, despite the fact that we never hosted video footage of the Christchurch attack. We were not contacted prior to the censorship. Instead, we have received a steady flood of people noting that the site is unavailable in the two countries unless a VPN is used. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    And while Australia and New Zealand account for a negligible amount of traffic to Zero Hedge, the stunning arrogance of NZ and OZ telcos to arbitrarily impose nanny-state restrictions on content is more than a little disturbing, and should – at least in a so-called democracy – be subject to majority vote.

    Also banned down under are the ‘chans‘ and video hosting platform LiveLeak, among others. 

    The letter continues

    “You may be aware that on the afternoon of Friday 15 March, three of New Zealand’s largest broadband providers, Vodafone NZ, Spark and 2degrees, took the unprecedented step to jointly identify and suspend access to web sites that were hosting video footage taken by the gunman related to the horrific terrorism incident in Christchurch,” reads the joint letter from Vodafone’s Jason Paris, and NZ telcos Spark and 2degrees Simon Moutter Stewart Sherriff. 

    “As key industry players, we believed this extraordinary step was the right thing to do in such extreme and tragic circumstances. Other New Zealand broadband providers have also taken steps to restrict availability of this content, although they may be taking a different approach technically,” the letter continues. 

    “We also accept it is impossible as internet service providers to prevent completely access to this material. But hopefully we have made it more difficult for this content to be viewed and shared – reducing the risk our customers may inadvertently be exposed to it and limiting the publicity the gunman was clearly seeking”

    “Internet service providers are the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff, with blunt tools involving the blocking of sites after the fact. The greatest challenge is how to prevent this sort of material being uploaded and shared on social media platforms and forums.

    “We call on Facebook, Twitter and Google, whose platforms carry so much content, to be a part of an urgent discussion at an industry and New Zealand Government level on an enduring solution to this issue.“

    So while the telcos have defended their decision to censor a wide swath of material in order to shield people from dangerous information – and have encouraged social media platforms to commit to European-style information control, Kiwis and Australians will only get to know what the technocracy approves in order to ‘protect consumers.’ 

    Unless they set aside 15 seconds and use a VPN.

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  • "The Era Of Negative Population Growth Is Coming Soon"

    Submitted by Nicholas Colas of DataTrek Research

    Guess which country’s preeminent social sciences think tank wrote in a recent report: “The era of negative population growth is coming soon”. That “soon” is a tell, because this is not from researchers in Japan, Italy, Portugal or Greece. All those countries already show negative population growth.

    The country in question is China. Using expected future fertility rates from the United Nations (which must comport with their own analysis, or they would have used their own numbers), the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences reported that:

    • The Chinese population will peak at 1.442 billion people a decade from now in 2029.

    • From 2030 on, the population base will shrink by 0.3% annually until 2050, at which point it will be 1.364 billion.

    • The trend to a smaller Chinese population will extend to at least 2065, at which point the country will be back to levels last seen in 1996 (1.248 billion).

    • All this assumes fertility rates increase from the current 1.6 children per woman to 1.77 by the end of the forecast horizon. The researchers note that if fertility rates remain constant, China’s population will decrease to 1.172 billion people by 2065, the same as it was in 1990.

    • Link to the report at the end of this section. Google Translate works well here.

    All this stands in stark contrast to United Nations projections for many regions of the world (2000 – 2050):

    • Asia as a whole: +0.7% per annum

    • Africa: +2.3%

    • South/Central America/Caribbean: +0.8%

    • North America: +0.7%

    • Oceana: +1.2%

    • Only Europe is expected to show population declines on a regional basis, at -0.3%.

    China’s “one child” policy, which ran from 1979 – 2015, is one cause of the country’s current demographic challenge. After it was changed to a “two child policy” in 2016, fertility rates did pick up for a year but declined again in 2017 and 2018. Demographers use 2.1 children/woman as a “replacement rate” for the existing population. In 2018, China’s fertility rate was 1.6 children/woman, below the Chinese Academy’s worst-case long-term scenario mentioned above.

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    Now, you’re no doubt aware of the demographic challenges facing the other countries we mentioned at the top of this section, and how those inform macroeconomic policy and long run growth potential. Japan and much of Europe are already shrinking, a significant issue for policymakers from local officials all the way to the European Central Bank. Add to that an associated increase in median age of the population, and you get a gale of headwinds that are hard to redress.

    What’s also interesting to us about the Chinese data: compare the expected median age of the population there in 2050 (30 years from now) to some of the countries/regions we know already face the issue of a shrinking and aging base of citizens:

    • Japan: 48.6 years median age of the population today

    • Europe: 42.7 median age today

    • China’s current median age: 35.6 years

    • China’s median age in 2030: 41.1 years (close to Europe today)

    • China’s median age in 2050: 45.2 years (close to Japan today)

    • Worth noting: North America’s median age is currently 37.5 years, 5% older than China’s current reading. By 2050 projections have it at 42.1 years, 7% younger than China’s population.

    The upshot to all this in 3 summary points:

    #1: Demography is not destiny, but it is always a factor to consider when assessing a country/region’s long-term growth rates. Recent economic history in Europe and Japan shows that when population growth goes negative and median age rises, a host of economic and political stresses come to the fore.

    #2: A country’s potential GDP growth is a function of population and productivity growth, and nothing else. Chinese policy makers know that the impending decline of the local population must come with significant advances in productivity to assure future growth. While the country has scaled back on its “Made in China 2025” rhetoric, it must continue to invest in disruptive technology to enable future productivity gains. Population growth will soon be an outright negative to the GDP equation.

    #3: Unlike China, Japan and Europe, US population growth should remain positive through 2050 and beyond. The US Census Bureau does have a slow decline in percentage terms in their numbers, from 0.70%/year now to 0.40%/year in the out years. That may not seem like much, but it is a notable difference when other major economic centers around the world will be shrinking. Score one more point for favoring US equities, our current (and long-standing) investment position.

    Sources:

    Chinese Academy of Social Sciences report: http://ex.cssn.cn/zx/bwyc/201901/t20190104_4806519_1.shtml

    A New York Times article published just after the report was issued, with more information: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/01/17/world/asia/china-population-crisis.html

    Median Age Projections: https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/figures/median-age-projections

  • Off-Duty Pilot Saved Doomed Lion Air 737 From Nosedive Day Before Deadly Crash

    An off-duty pilot hitching a ride in the cockpit jumpseat of a doomed 737 Max 8 last October reportedly saved the plane just one day before it crashed off the coast of Indonesia while being operated by a different crew, killing 189 onboard. 

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    Lion Air Boeing 737-8 MAX

    According to Bloomberg, the ‘dead-head’ pilot on the earlier flight from Bali to Jakarta was able to explain to the crew how to disable a malfunctioning flight-control system by cutting power to a motor driving the nose of the plane down. 

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    Rescue team members carry wreckage from Lion Air Flight 610 at the Tanjung Priok port in Jakarta, Indonesia, on Thursday. Beawiharta/Reuters

    The previously undisclosed detail supports the suggestion that a lack of training is may be at least partially to blame in the March 10 crash of another 727 Max 8. 

    The previously undisclosed detail on the earlier Lion Air flight represents a new clue in the mystery of how some 737 Max pilots faced with the malfunction have been able to avert disaster while the others lost control of their planes and crashed. The presence of a third pilot in the cockpit wasn’t contained in Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee’s Nov. 28 report on the crash and hasn’t previously been reported. –Bloomberg

    As we noted last week, several pilots had repeatedly warned federal authorities of the Max 8’s shortcomings, with one pilot describing the plane’s flight manual as “inadequate and almost criminally insufficient.” 

    “The fact that this airplane requires such jury-rigging to fly is a red flag. Now we know the systems employed are error-prone — even if the pilots aren’t sure what those systems are, what redundancies are in place and failure modes. I am left to wonder: what else don’t I know?” wrote the captain. 

    After the Lion Air crash, two U.S. pilots’ unions said the potential risks of the system, known as the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS, hadn’t been sufficiently spelled out in their manuals or training. None of the documentation for the Max aircraft included an explanation, the union leaders said. –Bloomberg

    “We don’t like that we weren’t notified,” said Southwest Airlines Pilots Association president Jon Weaks in November. “It makes us question, ‘Is that everything, guys?’ I would hope there are no more surprises out there.” 

    In the Lion Air crash, a malfunctioning sensor is believed to have tricked the plane’s computers to force the nose of the plane down to avoid a stall. Following the March 10 crash less than six months later – which followed a “very similar” track to the Lion Air flight, All Boeing 737 Max 8s were grounded by US regulators following dozens of countries and airlines doing so first. 

    “After this horrific Lion Air accident, you’d think that everyone flying this airplane would know that’s how you turn this off,” said former FAA accident investigation division director Steve Wallace. 

    Meanwhile, investigators are now looking into how the new 737 model was approved. The Transportation Department’s inspector general has begun an inquiry into the plane’s certification, while a grand jury under the US DOJ is also seeking records in a possible criminal investigation of the plane’s certification. 

    “We will fully cooperate in the review in the Department of Transportation’s audit,” said Boeing spokesman Charles Bickers. 

  • The Reality Of Mind-Reading: Neuroscientists Can Predict Your Choices 11 Seconds Before You Make Them

    Authored by Dagny Taggart via The Organic Prepper blog,

    Does free will truly exist?

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    According to a new study, maybe not. It appears that we may have less control over our personal choices than we think. Unconscious brain activity seems to determine our choices well before we are even aware of them.

    Researchers at the Future Minds Lab at UNSW School of Psychology in Australia were able to predict basic choices participants made BEFORE they consciously declared their decisions. Their findings were published last week in the journal Scientific Reports.

    For the experiment, the researchers asked 14 participants to freely choose between two visual patterns – one of red horizontal stripes and one of green vertical stripes –  before consciously imagining them while being observed in a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine (fMRI).

    They were given a maximum of 20 seconds to choose between the patterns. Once they’d made a decision, they pressed a button and had 10 seconds to visualize the pattern as hard as they could. Next, they were asked “what did you imagine?” and “how vivid was it?” They answered these questions by pressing buttons.

    The results were unsettling.

    Scientists were able to predict which pattern people would choose before their thoughts even became conscious.

    Here is an explanation of the results, from the UNSW press release:

    Not only could the researchers predict which pattern they would choose, they could also predict how strongly the participants were to rate their visualizations. With the assistance of machine learning, the researchers were successful at making above-chance predictions of the participants’ volitional choices at an average of 11 seconds before the thoughts became conscious.

    The brain areas that revealed information about the future choices were located in executive areas of the brain – where our conscious decision-making is made – as well as visual and subcortical structures, suggesting an extended network of areas responsible for the birth of thoughts. (source)

    Professor Joel Pearson said we may have thoughts on ‘standby’ based on previous brain activity, which then influences our final decisions without us being aware:

    “We believe that when we are faced with the choice between two or more options of what to think about, non-conscious traces of the thoughts are there already, a bit like unconscious hallucinations.

    As the decision of what to think about is made, executive areas of the brain choose the thought-trace which is stronger. In, other words, if any pre-existing brain activity matches one of your choices, then your brain will be more likely to pick that option as it gets boosted by the pre-existing brain activity.

    This would explain, for example, why thinking over and over about something leads to ever more thoughts about it, as it occurs in a positive feedback loop.” (source)

    The subjective strength of future thoughts was also dependent on activity housed in the early visual cortex, an area in the brain that receives visual information from the outside world. This suggests that the current state of activity in perceptual areas (which are believed to change randomly) has an influence on how strongly we think about things, the researchers explained.

    This study isn’t the first to show that our thoughts can be predicted before we have them.

    While these findings might seem shocking, this study isn’t the first to show that thoughts can be predicted before they are conscious.

    This study builds on previous research, reports Quartz:

    As the researchers note, similar techniques have been able to predict motor decisions between seven and 10 seconds before they’re conscious,  and abstract decisions up to four seconds before they’re conscious. Taken together, these studies show how understanding how the brain complicates our conception of free will.

    Neuroscientists have long known that the brain prepares to act before you’re consciously aware, and there are just a few milliseconds between when a thought is conscious and when you enact it. Those milliseconds give us a chance to consciously reject unconscious impulses, seeming to form a foundation of free will. (source)

    The researchers say that their findings may have implications for mental disorders involving thought intrusions that use mental imagery, such as PTSD. They cautioned against assuming that all choices are predetermined by pre-existing brain activity.

    “Our results cannot guarantee that all choices are preceded by involuntary images, but it shows that this mechanism exists, and it potentially biases our everyday choices,” Professor Pearson said.

    This kind of research could benefit people with certain disorders – but at what cost?

    This kind of mind-reading technology certainly appears to have the potential for abuse and manipulation if it falls into the hands of the wrong people.

    What does this mean for privacy? What does this mean for those being interrogated by law enforcement?

    The list of ramifications could go on and on.

    This is only part of a growing problem with invasive technology.

    Just last month, a team of neuro-engineers at Columbia University reported that they developed a system that can translate people’s thoughts into intelligible, recognizable speech.

    If you are concerned about how far all of this research is going to go, you aren’t alone. As I asked in Science FACT: Mind-Reading Technology Is Now Reality:

    With this rapid progression of technological advancement, one has to wonder…how close are we to technological singularity?

    Oh, and on that note – Facebook is really into the idea of accessing user information directly from their brains. Yes, you read that correctly: Facebook wants to read users’ minds. During a February interviewwith Harvard law school professor Jonathan Zittrain, CEO Mark Zuckerberg mentioned a brain-computer interface (it would look similar to a shower cap) the social media behemoth is researching.

    In response, Zittrain said, “Fifth Amendment implications are staggering.”

    Zuckerberg’s reply will surprise no one: “Presumably, this would be something that someone would choose to use as a product.”

    Despite years of bad press, public outrage over privacy violations, and the loss of millions of users (and counting), Facebook remains determined to infect our lives whether we want it to or not. And if you believe you are safe from the tech giant’s creepy stalker tactics, think again: Even if you have deactivated all of your social media accounts – or never had any in the first place – your privacy is not guaranteed.

    Technology is progressing so rapidly it is difficult to keep up.

    Nearly every day, reports of new and potentially invasive developments are being announced. Scientists and technology companies claim that this research is for the benefit of society, even while warning us about its potential dangers.

    It sure seems like a dystopian nightmare is approaching.

  • Prosecutors Offer To Drop Robert Kraft Prostitution Charges, But There's A Catch

    Several weeks after America gasped in shocked amazement after prosecutors announced that some of the most wealthy and powerful people had been busted in a sting operation targeting a Jupiter, Florida strip mall spa where they paid about $70 for a rub and tug, and were charged with prostitution, on Tuesday Florida prosecutors offered to drop charges against New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and a number of other men – including several Wall Street legends – charged with soliciting prostitution… but there is a catch.

    As the WSJ reports, the settlement offered calls for the men to admit they would have been proven guilty at trial, in other words, unlike a typical SEC settlement where a party can get away with neither admitting nor denying guilt, in this case, the “johns” have to admit guilt.

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    While the proposed deferred prosecution agreement calls for completion of an education course about prostitution, completion of 100 hours of community service, screening for sexually transmitted diseases and payment of some court costs, it also includes the unusual provision for the defendants to review the evidence in the case and agree that, if it were to go to trial, the state would be able to prove their guilt, a WSJ source said.

    It isn’t clear whether Kraft and others would accept such a condition, especially since when the charges were announced, a spokesman for Mr. Kraft denied he engaged in illegal activity.

    Perhaps the proposal is not that bizarre: a spokesman for the Florida attorney’s office said that it is the standard resolution for first-time offenders, or they go to trial.

    While Kraft, whose Patriots won the Super Bowl in February, was one of more than two dozen men charged with solicitation last month in Jupiter as part of a multi-city investigation into multiple South Florida spas, and was charged with two counts of soliciting prostitution, acts prosecutors say were caught on video surveillance.

    Kraft has pleaded not guilty.

    Meanwhile, legal experts have raised questions about the tactics Jupiter, Fla., police used in obtaining search warrants for an investigation they said was intended to stop a growing human trafficking problem.

    Here’s why it is odd: prosecutors and law-enforcement officials described the investigation as a probe into human trafficking and portrayed the men who patronized the spas as contributing to the demand for sex slavery.

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    The front door of the Orchids of Asia Day Spa

    In announcing the charges, Dave Aronberg, the state attorney for Palm Beach County, had called human trafficking “evil in our midst,” echoing the rhetoric of law-enforcement officials. And yet, several weeks later, not one person has actually been charged with human trafficking. In fact, prosecutors’ affidavits have not detailed evidence of human trafficking at Orchids of Asia Day Spa.

    “The police are making this case that this is a major human trafficking ring, and that’s why it’s so serious,” said Duncan Levin, a former federal prosecutor and managing partner of Tucker Levin, PLLC who is not connected to the case. “The fact that they had cameras installed in the locations for so long somewhat undermines the claim that there was an extraordinary danger to the people working in the establishment.”

    As the WSJ further notes, the Jupiter Police Department began its investigation in October, according to affidavits and in January installed covert surveillance equipment.

    Men who visited the spas, including Mr. Kraft, were seen engaging in sex acts and identified after their visits on traffic stops, according to court documents. Legal experts have said the traffic stops could be argued as pretextual.

    Prosecutors alleged they saw Mr. Kraft, 77 years old, enter Orchids of Asia Day Spa, located in a small strip mall, on two occasions and saw him pay cash and receive sex acts, which while striking some as bizarre that a billionaire would frequent a low-grade strip mall rub and tug instead of hiring “perfect 10s”, is hardly the pinnacles of crimes being conducted in US society in recent years. Regardless of the ethical framing, Kraft was identified in a traffic stop after his first visit on Jan. 19, when he was the passenger in a vehicle, and visited the spa again the next day, before the Patriots played the Chiefs in the AFC Championship game.

    * * *

    Even if he were to accept the agreement, Kraft could still face punishment from the NFL, which has said in regards to him that the league’s “personal conduct policy applies equally to everyone.” The league said it would “take appropriate action as warranted based on the facts.” The league has previously disciplined players in cases where they were not prosecuted.

    “I think Kraft’s biggest problem is going to be NFL management,” David Weinstein, a Miami lawyer and former prosecutor in the Southern District of Florida, told the WSJ. “Their standards are far lower than proof beyond a reasonable doubt.”

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Mar 19

Today’s News 19th March 2019

  • Germany Backpedals On NATO Spending Promise As France Goes Full Throttle

    Germany is poised to renege on its promise to boost NATO spending, backtracking on a public commitment last year by Chancellor Angela Merkel to increase German military expenditure to 1.5% of gross domestic product by 2024 – bringing it closer to the 2% level set by NATO themselves, according to the Wall Street Journal.

    If confirmed at a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, the move would mark a fresh step in the gradual estrangement between the U.S. and its erstwhile loyal European ally and comes after Mr. Trump’s repeated attacks of North Atlantic Treaty Organization leaders for not meeting a 2% military-spending target. –WSJ

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    German soldiers during a NATO-led military exercise in October in Trondheim, Norway. PHOTO:JONATHAN NACKSTRAND/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

    Berlin currently spends around €43 billion ($49 billion), equal to just over 1.2% of GDP on defense. Under a new plan unveiled on Monday by the finance ministry, the spending would rise to just 1.37% of GDP next year, then decrease again to 1.33% in 2019, 1.29% in 2022 and 1.25% in 2023.

    “The commitment we have made to NATO states that spending should reach 2% if the budget conditions allow for it. We haven’t abandoned the target but it remains a challenge that the federal government wants to master,” said a senior government official. 

    Berlin’s change of heart is the second recent rebuke of President Trump – who publicly embarrassed Germany during a July 2018 bilateral breakfast over their reliance on Russian energy. 

    Germany is “captive of Russia because it is getting so much of its energy from Russia,” said Trump, adding “The former Chancellor of Germany is the head of the pipeline company that is supplying the gas.” 

    “Ultimately Germany will have almost 70 percent of their country controlled by Russia with natural gas. So you tell me, is that appropriate?” Trump asked. “It should have never been allowed to happen. So Germany is totally controlled by Russia.” 

    Berlin has not taken kindly to Trump’s rhetoric, which includes criticism over Germany’s decision to let Chinese technology giant Huawei build their next generation 5G mobile network.  

    “NATO members clearly pledged to move towards, not away, from 2% by 2024. That the German government would even be considering reducing its already unacceptable commitments to military readiness is a worrisome signal to Germany’s 28 NATO allies,” said the US ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell. 

    France goes the other way

    Speaking at the Atlantic Council in Washington, French armed forces minister Florence Parly said Monday that France “Fully support[s] the US insistence on the 2%,” adding that French President Emmanuel Macron suggested that Europeans might enshrine this objective in a treaty. 

    That said, Parly also knocked the United States for what she described as an increasingly transactional relationship with allies. 

    “NATO’s solidarity clause is called Article 5, not Article F-35,” said Parly, adding “I’m personally more concerned at the notion that the strength of NATO solidarity might be made conditional on allies buying this or that equipment. The alliance should be unconditional, otherwise it’s not an alliance.”

    Last year, Trump said he was willing to help smaller, less-wealthy countries purchase U.S. weapons.

    “We are not going to finance it for them but we will make sure that they are able to get payments and various other things so they can buy — because the United States makes by far the best military equipment in the world, the best jets, the best missiles, the best guns, the best everything,” he said at a news conference.

    In his most recent budget proposal, Trump has also sought to revive a failed effort from the early days of the administration to offer flexible loans to countries to help them purchase everything from trucks to military training to fighter jets and drones. –Defense One

     To help smaller countries buy US military equipment, a State Department official said that it would be seeking up to $8 billion to “make U.S. defense equipment a more competitive and more affordable option for partner countries.”

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  • Expensive & Expansive NATO Celebrates Two Anniversaries

    Authored by Brian Cloughley via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

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    “I never asked once what the new NATO headquarters cost. I refuse to do that, but it is beautiful.” — President Trump

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    According to NATO, the cost of its new building was 1.1 billion Euros (1.23 billon dollars)

    2019 is a year of interesting commemorations, among them the Seventy-Fifth Anniversary of D-Day, the landing of allied troops in France that, along with Russia’s Operation Bagration (which “inflicted the biggest defeat in German military history by completely destroying 28 out of 34 German divisions and completely shattered the German front line”), heralded the end of the Second World War. Then there was the anniversary of the first landing on the moon, which was fifty years ago in July.

    Additionally, on March 9 there was the sixtieth birthday of the Barbie Doll, an expensive puppet-like figurine that can adopt any number of postures.

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    Which brings us to the US-NATO military alliance that celebrates two anniversaries of its own this year in its new headquarters in Brussels that cost 1.23 billion dollars. It commemorates its creation 70 years ago and the occasion when “On March 12, 1999, in the presence of their US counterpart, then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, the foreign ministers of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic finally signed the protocols of NATO accession.”

    Twenty years ago the NATO grouping began its eastwards expansion, purposefully menacing Russia, contrary to assurances given to Mikhail Gorbachev by the Bush administration and other Western leaders in 1990. There were declarations alleging that such a pledge was not given, but researchers have shown these to have been misinformation. Indeed, it has been revealed that “President George HW Bush, West German foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, the CIA Director Robert Gates, French President Francois Mitterrand, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, British foreign minister Douglas Hurd, British Prime Minister John Major, and NATO Secretary-General Manfred Woerner” gave “assurances that NATO would not expand.”

    But expansion is the name of the game, and naturally prompted protests from Russia. For example, at the Munich Conference on Security Policy in 2007, as reported in the Washington Post, President Putin said “I think it is obvious that NATO expansion does not have any relation to modernisation of the Alliance itself or with ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary, it represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. And we have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today? No one even remembers them. But I will allow myself to remind this audience what was said. I would like to quote the speech of NATO General Secretary Mr Woerner in Brussels on 17 May 1990. He said ‘the fact that we are ready not to place a NATO army outside of German territory gives the Soviet Union a firm security guarantee.’ Where are these guarantees?”

    The answer is that the guarantees were subjected to a cynical campaign of attempted deletion, denial and destruction.

    It was a classic set-up, and it is patently obvious, in hindsight, that NATO’s Godfathers had no intention whatever of abiding by the solemn assurance that the alliance would “not expand one inch to the east.” Because eastwards it has advanced, and in 2004 it came smack up against Russia’s borders when Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania (along with Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia) hopped on the bandwagon.

    None of these countries had or has any cause whatever to fear a threat from Russia, which continues to encourage mutual trade and has no intention of taking military action against them.

    Yet the NATO military alliance announced that it “has enhanced its forward presence in the eastern part of the Alliance, with four multinational battalion-size battlegroups in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, on a rotational basis.”

    Of all the countries that have joined NATO in its expansion jamboree, it is Poland that is most intriguing. In this anniversary year, the NATO Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, chose to visit Warsaw where “he praised Poland’s strong commitment to the Alliance, which includes hosting a NATO battlegroup, leading the Baltic Air Policing mission in Lithuania and contributing to NATO’s training missions in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

    Stoltenberg rejoiced that NATO has “been the most successful alliance in history” which is probably the most absurd claim he has ever made, and expressed delight that “Poland is helping to strengthen our Alliance” while being “very grateful for the contribution Poland makes to NATO every day.”

    This is the valuable NATO member that Human Rights Watch notes in its 2019 Report has a government that makes “efforts to undermine the rule of law and human rights protections” with a prime focus on “curbing judicial independence.” Last December the EU Court of Justice ruled that Poland must immediately suspend implementation of legislation that would have resulted in removal of nearly one-third of the Court’s judges.”

    That’s just the sort of country that is important to the US-NATO military alliance. And it’s treasured (literally) in other ways.

    Last March, Reuters reported that “Poland signed the largest arms procurement deal in its history” when it agreed to buy the Raytheon Patriot missile system for $4.75 billion, but has according to Boeing bought only three “Next-Generation 737s” for VIP transport, although they cost a tidy $523 million. And a few weeks ago Poland’s Prime Minister announced purchase of High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems made by Lockheed at a cost of 414 million dollars.

    In September 2018 came news of plans for a permanent US military base in Poland, about which President Trump was enthusiastic, and on March 14 Stars and Stripes told us that “Under Secretary of Defense for Policy John Rood is meeting with his Polish counterparts to work on the plan” so it seems that ‘Fort Trump’ is destined to be a forward stronghold of NATO’s military expansion.

    It does not matter that, as the Guardian observes, “right-wing, nationalist, populist illiberalism . . . has taken root” in Poland, and that even the Washington Post is disturbed that “Poland’s democracy remains in danger: The politicization of the security services, transformation of state-owned media into propaganda organs, and pressure on independent journalists and civil society continue”, because NATO will continue to ignore such evidence of growing subjugation.

    Poland will continue to be accepted as a valuable member, no matter its domestic repression or anything else. And while Trump may insult other NATO members by being “uniquely poisonous” and making such nonsensical declarations as “Germany is a captive of Russia. I think it’s something that NATO has to look at” it is obvious that he has no worries about Poland.

    2019 is a great double-anniversary year for NATO. The fact that it still exists after seventy years shows enormous dedication to maintenance of an organisation that should have been disbanded at the same time as the Warsaw Pact. Its disastrous failures in Afghanistan and Libya have shown the world that it is militarily naïve and administratively incompetent, while its celebration of Poland’s 20-year “strong commitment” is evidence of hypocrisy and desperate devotion to irrelevance. Barbie Dolls would feel comfortable in the new NATO palace in Brussels.

  • How The US Is Pushing Lebanon Into The Arms Of Iran And Russia

    Authored by Elijah Magnier, Middle East based chief international war correspondent for Al Rai Media

    Lebanon is readying to receive US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo this week in his first ever visit at a time when the Lebanese economic-political map is being redrawn and while Lebanon is suffering its most serious economic downturn in recent history.

    Reasons for the deterioration of the local economy include not only the corruption of Lebanon’s political leadership and lower level administration but also US sanctions imposed on Iran. The latest sanctions are the harshest ever imposed. They will also dramatically affect Lebanon so long as President Donald Trump is in power if Lebanon does not follow US policy and dictates.

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    Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, center, escorted by his bodyguards. 2012 AP file photo

    If, as anticipated, Washington declares economic war on Lebanon, the sanctions will leave Lebanon few alternatives. They may force Lebanon to fall back on Iranian civilian industry to overcome US economic pressure, and to rely on the Russian military industry to equip Lebanese security forces.

    This will be the result if Pompeo insists on threatening Lebanese officials, as his assistants have done on previous visits to the country. The consistent message from US officials has been: you’re either with us or against us.

    Politically, Lebanon is divided between two currents, one pro-US (and Saudi Arabia) and another outside the US orbit. The economic situation may well increase internal division to the point that the local population reacts angrily in order to exclude the US and its allies from influence in Lebanon. 

    Such a scenario may still be avoided if Saudi Arabia injects enough investment to reboot the agonizing local economy. Nevertheless, Saudi Arabia fears that those who are not aligned with its policies and those of the US could benefit from its support.

    To date, Riyadh has not fully understood the internal Lebanese dynamic and what it is possible or impossible to achieve in Lebanon. The kidnapping of the Prime Minister Saad Hariri was the most flagrant indication of Saudi ignorance of Lebanese politics. The Saudis’ lack of strategic vision in Lebanon will likely prevent any serious support to the failing economy and may lead the country into serious instability.

    Before 1982, one US dollar was equivalent to 3 Lebanese Lira. This was in part because the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) was spending tens of millions of dollars in the country on its own people and on Palestinian families living in Lebanon. Moreover, United Nations organizations (UNRWA) and other NGOS were also distributing financial support to Palestinian refugees whose homes had been taken by Israel forcing them to leave their country.

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    Pompeo is expected to to push an anti-Iran message in his trip to Kuwait, Israel, and Lebanon this week. Image source: Reuters

    Following the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, the PLO was forced to leave the country. Not much later, one US dollar reached an exchange rate of 3000 Lebanese Lira, later devalued to stabilize at the current rate of 1$ for 1500 L.L. Iran entered the scene to support local Lebanese fighters (the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon, i.e. Hezbollah) to recover their territory from Israeli occupation.

    In the year 2000, Iran began to make a serious investment in Hezbollah as the group managed to force the Israelis out of most Lebanese territory. Iranian financial investment had reached a very high level by the 2006 war when Israel was prevented from disarming Hezbollah to keep its rockets and missiles out of range of Israel.

    In 2013, the Syrian government asked Hezbollah to support the Syrian Army to prevent disintegration of the country and to keep Takfiri militants from taking over. Iran pumped billions of dollars to defeat ISIS and al-Qaeda and to prevent them from overwhelming Syria and Iraq, aware that Iran would be the next target. The budget for Hezbollah troops went sky high. Support for movements of troops, logistics and daily allowances given to fighters, contributed to boosting the Lebanese economy. Hezbollah’s monthly budget went much beyond $100 million per month.

    But after Donald Trump entering the White House and his rejection of the Iran nuclear deal, the US government has imposed the severest sanctions on Iran and halteddonations to the United Nations organisations supporting Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).

    Sanctions on Iran have forced a new budget on Hezbollah, a five-year austerity plan. Forces have been reduced to a minimum number in Syria, movement of troops are slowed accordingly and all additional remunerations are suspended. Hezbollah reduced its budget to a quarter of what it had been without suspending any militants or contractors’ monthly salaries and medical care as stipulated by a personal order from Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s Secretary General.

    This new financial situation will affect the Lebanese economy as cash flow and foreign currency dry up. The consequences are expected to be more noticeable in the coming months, leading to a plausible domestic reaction from the local population that will feel the weight of the failing economy.

    The US and Europe are imposing strict controls on any monies transferred to and from Lebanon. The country is on a financial blacklist and there is tight scrutiny on all transactions. Religious donations from abroad are no longer possible since they expose donors to serious accusations of support for terrorism by western countries.

    As long as Trump is in power, Hezbollah and Iran believe the situation will remain critical; they estimate that the US President will most probably enjoy a second term. The next five years are expected to be hard on the Lebanese economy, particularly if Pompeo’s visit brings messages and dictates that Lebanon cannot obey.

    Pompeo wants Lebanon to give up on its demand to redraw its disputed water borderswith Israel, compromising on blocks 8, 9 and 10 to the benefit of Israel. This request will not be granted and Lebanese officials have said on several occasions that they are relying on Hezbollah’s precision missiles to stop Israel from stealing Lebanese water.

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    Lebanese disputed blocks with Israel

    Pompeo also wants Lebanon to give up on Hezbollah and its role in government. Again, the US establishment seems ignorant that Hezbollah is almost a third of Lebanon’s population, enjoying the support of more than half of Lebanese Shia, Christian, Sunni and Druse, with official members in the executive and legislative authorities of the country. 

    What then is the alternative? If Saudi Arabia moves in, Lebanon doesn’t need one or two or five billion but tens of billions of dollars to resuscitate its economy. It also needs a hands-off policy from the US establishment to allow the country to govern itself.

    The Saudis are already suffering from Trump’s bullying, and its funds are drying up. If Saudi decides to invest in Lebanon, it will seek to impose terms not much different from US demands. Saudi Arabia engages in wishful thinking when it aims to expel Iran’s influence and Hezbollah supporters from Lebanon, an impossible goal to fulfill.

    Lebanon’s remaining choices are few. Lebanon can move closer to Iran to lower its expenditures and the cost of goods, and it can ask Russia to support the Lebanese army if the West fails to do so. China is preparing to move in and can be a positive alternative for the country, using Lebanon as a platform to reach Syria and later Iraq and Jordan. Otherwise, Lebanon will have to prepare to join the list of poorest countries.

    A shadow is hanging over the land of the cedars, a country that has already had to fight for survival in the 21st century. Hezbollah, now subject to US and UK sanctions, is the same force that protected the country from ISIS and other takfiri fighters who threatened to expel Christians from the country, in accordance with French President Sarkozy’s advice to the Lebanese patriarch that Lebanese Christians abandon their homes.

    The takfiri jihadists and NATO shared the same intentions for Lebanon. The failure of the US establishment’s plan to divide Iraq and create a failed state in Syria as part of a “new Middle East” woke the Russian bear from its long hibernation. Today Russia competes with the US for hegemony in the Middle East, obliging Trump to pull out all the stops in an attempt to break the anti-US front.

    It is a battle with no taboos where all blows are permitted. The US is pushing Lebanon into a bottleneck with no alternatives to closer partnership with Iran and Russia.

  • North Korea Denies "Secret" Nuclear Facilities Exist As Door Closing On Future Talks

    A new report by the prominent Japanese daily Asahi has revealed that a key reason talks with the US broke down last month in Hanoi was due to Kim Jong Un’s denial of the existence of “secret” nuclear facilities, resulting in disagreements that have reportedly left Kim disappointed and impatient, to the point that the north last week threatened to shut down talks altogether. 

    Citing the report, which relies on unnamed officials, Bloomberg notes, “The U.S. had requested specific names and locations of facilities to be shut down as part of the talks but North Korea said only that ‘all’ facilities be closed without giving details.”

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    President Donald Trump greeted by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Hanoi, Vietnam, during the February 27 talks. Image source: White House

    The talks broke down prematurely when the US side reportedly demanded the north give up all its nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons before it receives any sanctions relief  — even after Kim Jong Un reportedly made a “historically unprecedented offer” to close all of Yongbyon together with U.S. experts, according to later North Korean foreign ministry press statements. 

    The US side later confirmed that offer was on the table, but stalled as there was severe disagreement over just which facilities were included, as well the scope of Pyongyang’s sanctions relief demands. 

    Last Friday North Korea’s Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui told reporters that Kim was “disappointed” not to make a deal with Trump last month. 

    It appears Kim is fast losing patience, according to Vox’s summary of the content of the press briefing: 

    North Korea threatened to end diplomatic talks with the US as well as its moratorium on missile and nuclear tests — a provocative statement that could end a months-long period of relative harmony between the two nations.

    “We have no intention to yield to the US demands in any form, nor are we willing to engage in negotiations of this kind,” Choe said.

    Expressing Kim’s level of anger and disappointment, Choe said further, “On our way back to the homeland, our chairman of the state affairs commission [Kim] said, ‘For what reason do we have to make this train trip again?’”

    However, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had immediately tried to downplay the threat of pullout, saying Kim “on multiple occasions” had directly assured Trump  he would not lift a self-imposed moratorium on the tests.

    “So that’s Chairman Kim’s word,” Pompeo said late last week. “We have every expectation that he will live up to that commitment.”

  • Why Does The Mainstream Media Purposely Ignore Mass Killings Of Christians Across The Globe?

    Authored by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog,

    Last week, when a deranged lunatic gunned down dozens of Muslims at two mosques in New Zealand it suddenly became the biggest news story in the world, and rightly so. 

    It was a major news event, and it needed to be reported.  But shouldn’t mass killings of Christians be given the same sort of media coverage?  Sadly, we all know that doesn’t happen.  Whenever there is a mass killing of Christians, it is usually entirely ignored by the mainstream media in the United States, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why this is happening.  Those that control the mainstream media consider Christians to be one of the main obstacles to “progress” in this country, and so any story that would put Christians in a positive or sympathetic light simply does not fit any of the narratives that they are pushing.

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    As a result of the lack of media coverage, the vast majority of Americans do not know that “4,136 Christians were killed for faith-related reasons” last year.

    That number breaks down to an average of 11 per day.

    In Nigeria, more than 120 Christians have been gunned down or killed with machetes over the past three weeks, but Breitbart was the only big media outlet to report on it…

    As Breitbart News alone reported among major news outlets, Fulani jihadists racked up a death toll of over 120 Christians over the past three weeks in central Nigeria, employing machetes and gunfire to slaughter men, women, and children, burning down over 140 houses, destroying property, and spreading terror.

    The New York Times did not place this story on the front page; in fact, they did not cover it at all. Apparently, when assessing “all the news that’s fit to print,” the massacre of African Christians did not measure up. The same can be said for the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Detroit Free Press, the LA Times, and every other major paper in the United States.

    And of course Breitbart is not exactly “mainstream” media.

    So why won’t anyone else report on this?

    And this isn’t the first time this has happened.  Last June, twelve entire Christian villages in central Nigeria were completely wiped out…

    In only days, a dozen villages in Nigeria’s Plateau state were wiped out. The affected communities surround the city of Jos—known as the epicenter of Christianity in northern Nigeria’s Middle Belt.

    As many as 200 Christians had been killed, however, some residents fear the death toll may be even higher, as more bodies are yet to be recovered, while others were burned beyond recognition. On Sunday, 75 of the victims were buried in a mass grave.

    I’ll bet that most of you had not heard about that until now.

    On the other side of the world, 20 innocent people were slaughtered when Muslim radicals bombed a Roman Catholic cathedral in January…

    On January 27, Muslim extremists bombed a Roman Catholic cathedral on the Philippine island of Jolo, killing some 20 people and injuring dozens of others.

    Once again, this is yet another mass killing that was almost entirely ignored by the mainstream media.

    Is the anti-Christian bias among the mainstream media so strong that they can’t even bring themselves to report the basic facts to us?

    People deserve to know what is happening.  Christian persecution is rising in almost every nation on the planet, and this huge ongoing crisis should be on our front pages on a continual basis.

    But instead, we never get to hear any of these stories unless we seek out alternative sources of information.

    Over in China, the persecution of Christians has reached a frightening crescendo.  Recently, officials have been going house to house and replacing pictures of Jesus Christ “with pictures of dictator Mao Zedong and/or China’s current authoritarian president, Xi Jinping”…

    The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continues to harass and persecute Christians and, in recent months, has taken to removing pictures of Jesus Christ from inside homes and replacing them with pictures of dictator Mao Zedong and/or China’s current authoritarian president, Xi Jinping.

    In addition, Communist officials have removed Christian symbols and phrases on the outside of homes and replaced them with phrases praising socialist materialism.

    But they aren’t stopping there.  Bibles are being burned, and any churches that do not “cooperate” with Chinese officials are being either shut down or destroyed.  Earlier in 2019, one of the largest megachurches in the entire country was literally blown to pieces with dynamite…

    Chinese authorities blew up a well-known Christian megachurch earlier this year, inflaming long-standing tensions between religious groups and the Communist Party.

    Witnesses and overseas activists said the paramilitary People’s Armed Police used dynamite and excavators to destroy the Golden Lampstand Church, which has a congregation of more than 50,000, in the city of Linfen in Shanxi province

    We are talking about evil that is on a level that is difficult to comprehend.

    So why won’t the mainstream media talk about any of this?

    Similar things are happening on the other side of the world too.  In Eritrea, Christians are being imprisoned in “small shipping containers in scorching heat”…

    Since 1993, President Afwerki has overseen an authoritarian brutal regime that rests on massive human rights violations. During the 2019 World Watch List reporting period, government security forces conducted many house-to-house raids and imprisoned hundreds of Christians in inhumane conditions, including small shipping containers in scorching heat.

    And in North Korea, Christians are “being hung on a cross over a fire, crushed under a steamroller, herded off bridges, and trampled underfoot”…

    According to charity Aid to the Church in Need, at least 200,000 Christians have gone missing in North Korea since 1953 — many of those have been summarily executed. As to the specific treatment of those persecuted, the 2014 UN Commission of Inquiry report discovered that the North Korean regime has been guilty of “crimes against humanity.”

    According to Christian Solidarity Worldwide, violent incidents against Christians include “being hung on a cross over a fire, crushed under a steamroller, herded off bridges, and trampled underfoot.”

    If you were to replace “Christians” with some other favored group in any of the examples that I have just shared, you would instantly have front page news all over the planet.

    The mainstream media is definitely not “independent”, and they are not looking out for you.

    They have their own agenda, and anything that does not fit that agenda does not get to be part of “the news”.

    So far in 2019, there have been 453 Islamic terror attacks in which 1,956 people have been murdered.  But you will never hear those numbers from the mainstream media.

    Instead, when the mainstream media talks about Bible-believing Christians it is almost always an attack story.  As a recent Breitbart article aptly observed, having “an anti-Christian bias” has become “the last acceptable prejudice”…

    How much mileage can be gained from Muslims murdering Christians, when Christians in America are often seen as an obstacle to the “progress” desired by liberals? The left sees Christians in the United States as part of the problem and seeks to undermine their credibility and influence at every turn rather than emboldening them.

    Anti-Christian bias has been rightly called “the last acceptable prejudice,” one that few bother condemning.

    It is time to turn off the mainstream news for good.

    They quit reporting “the news” a long time ago, and now it is all about promoting one left-wing narrative after another.

    Today, trust in the media is at an all-time low, and it is easy to understand why so many Americans are absolutely sick and tired of being lied to by the big media companies.

  • US, China Clash Over 'Belt And Road' In Afghan Resolution 

    The United States and China unleashed a war of words Friday (Mar 15) over Beijing’s $1 trillion Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) after the United Nation Security Council adopted a resolution extending the mandate of the council’s political mission in Afghanistan for another six months, reported The Washington Post.

    The 2018 resolution extended the council’s mission for a year aimed at strengthening regional economic cooperation involving Afghanistan, including the BRI to connect China to Europe, and Africa. The 2016 and 2017 resolutions had similar BRI language.

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    Council diplomats said China wanted to embed BRI language into the 2019 resolution, but the U.S. strongly objected.

    U.S. deputy ambassador Jonathan Cohen said that “China held the resolution hostage and insisted on making it about Chinese national political priorities rather than the people of Afghanistan.”

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    Cohen said the U.S. rejected China’s demand “that the resolution highlights its belt and road initiative, despite its tenuous ties to Afghanistan and known problems with corruption, debt distress, environmental damage, and lack of transparency.”

    China’s deputy ambassador Wu Haitao shot back at the U.S., informing the council that Cohen’s comments were “at variance with the facts and are fraught with prejudice.”

    “This is an initiative of economic cooperation aimed at achieving common development and prosperity. It has nothing to do with geopolitics,” said Haitao.

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    Haitao told the council since the BRI was launched in 2013, 123 countries and 29 international organizations have signed agreements of cooperation with China on infrastructure development programs.

    The sharp exchange came as Washington and Beijing have canceled a trade summit between President Donald Trump and China’s Xi Jinping to end the trade war. The proposed meeting to sign a trade agreement has been pushed out to June, a move that shows the trade war is deepening.

    Now that the U.S. demands all communication about the BRI be removed from future resolutions. This follows sharp criticism late last year when Vice President Mike Pence said the BRI left countries drowning in debt.

    The Trump administration continues to bash the BRI, but the trade scheme continues to draw massive support from around the world. Expected later this week, Italy will sign a memorandum of understanding to join the BRI officially, a move that has deeply annoyed Washington.

  • "Guaido Is The Most-Hated Man In Venezuela" – On-The-Ground In Caracas Versus The Media Spectacle

    Authored by Paul Cochrane via Counterpunch.org,

    British photojournalist Alan Gignoux and Venezuelan journalist-filmmaker Carolina Graterol, both based in London, went to Venezuela for a month to shoot a documentary for a major global TV channel. They talked with journalist Paul Cochrane about the mainstream media’s portrayal of Venezuela compared to their experiences on the ground.

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    Paul Cochrane (PC): What were you doing in Venezuela, how long were you there and where did you go?

    Alan Gignoux (AG): We went in June 2018 for a month to shoot a documentary; I can’t disclose what channels it will be on right now, but it should be on air soon. We visited the capital Caracas, Mérida (in the Andes), Cumaná (on the coast), and Ciudad Guayana (near the mouth of the Orinoco river).

    PC: How did being in Venezuela compare to what you were seeing in Western media?

    Carolina Graterol (CG): I am a journalist, I have family in Venezuela, and I knew the reality was very different from what the media is portraying, but still I was surprised. The first thing we noticed was the lack of poverty. Alan wanted to film homeless and poor people on the streets. I saw three people sleeping rough just this morning in London, but in Venezuela, we couldn’t find any, in big cities or towns. We wanted to interview them, but we couldn’t find them. It is because of multi disciplinary programmes run by the government, with social services working to get children off the streets, or returned to their families. The programme has been going on for a long time but I hadn’t realized how effective it was.

    PC: Alan, what surprised you?

    AG: We have to be realistic. Things look worn down and tired. There is food, there are private restaurants and cafes open, and you could feel the economic crisis kicking in but poverty is not as bad as what I’ve seen in Brazil or Colombia, where there are lots of street children. Venezuela doesn’t seem to have a homeless problem, and the favelas have running water and electricity. The extreme poverty didn’t seem as bad as in other South American countries. People told me before going I should be worried about crime, but we worked with a lady from El Salvador, and she said Venezuela was easy compared to her country, where there are security guards with machine guns outside coffee shops. They also say a lot of Venezuelan criminals left as there’s not that much to rob, with better pickings in Argentina, Chile or wherever.

    PC: How have the US sanctions impacted Venezuelans?

    CG: Food is expensive, but people are buying things, even at ten times their salary. Due to inflation, you have to make multiple card payments as the machine wouldn’t take such a high transaction all at once. The government has created a system, Local Committees for Production and Supply (known by its Spanish acronym CLAP) that feeds people, 6 million families, every month via a box of food. The idea of the government was to bypass private distribution networks, hoarding and scarcity. Our assistant was from a middle class area in Caracas, and she was the only Chavista there, but people got together and created a CLAP system, with the box containing 19 products. Unless you have a huge salary, or money from outside, you have to use other ways to feed yourself. People’s larders were full, as they started building up supplies for emergencies. People have lost weight, I reckon many adults 10 to 15 kilos. Last time I was in Venezuela three years ago, I found a lot of obese people, like in the US, due to excessive eating, but this time people were a good size, and nobody is dying from hunger or malnutrition.

    PC: So what are Venezuelans eating?

    CG: A vegetarian diet. People apologized as they couldn’t offer us meat, instead vegetables, lentils, and black beans. So everyone has been forced to have a vegetarian diet, and maybe the main complaint was that people couldn’t eat meat like they used to do. The situation is not that serious. Before Hugo Chavez came to power, Venezuela had 40% critical poverty out of 80% poverty, but that rate went down to 27%, and before the crisis was just 6 or 7% critical poverty. Everyone is receiving help from the government.

    PC: So food is the main concern?

    CG: The real attack on the economy is on food. When you have hyperinflation everything goes up in price, but food has become the main source of spending because this is the variable going up in price at exorbitant levels. Bills like water, electricity, public transport haven’t gone up that much and represent a small percentage of any family spending. This is why the distortions in the economy are not intrinsic, but caused by external factors, otherwise everything should have gone up, no matter what it is.

    PC: Alan, did you lose weight in Venezuela?

    AG: No! What surprised me was how many people are growing their own vegetables. It is a bit like in Russia, where everyone has a dacha. Venezuela is tropical, so it is easy to grow produce. Mango trees are everywhere, so you can pick a mango whenever you want.

    PC: So the crisis we read about everyday is primarily due to the US sanctions?

    CG: The sanctions have affected the country. I want to be fair. I think the government was slow to act on the direction the country was being pushed. It was probably not a good idea to pay off $70 billion in external debt over the past five years. In my opinion, (President Nicolas) Maduro decided to honor the external debt, thinking this was the right way to pay our commitments, but at the same time, this economic war started waging internally, and also externally, blocking international loans.

    The government should also have taken action against Colombia for allowing over one hundred exchange houses to be set up on the border with Venezuela. These exchange houses eroded the currency as they were using different exchange rates, and that contributed to the Bolivar’s devaluation. I think they should have denounced the (Juan Manuel) Santos government. If Colombia says that Venezuelan oil that crosses its border is contraband, why not currency? Remember, the biggest industry in Colombia is cocaine – narcotics trafficking – and it has grown exponentially, so they’ve an excessive amount of US dollars and need to launder them, which drained the Venezuelan currency. It is induced hyperinflation. Also, in Miami, the Venezuelan oligarchy created a website called DolarToday about 12 years ago to destroy the Venezuelan economy.

    PC: What else struck you?

    CG: People are still smiling and making jokes about the situation, which I find incredible. People are willing to share, and we were in some tricky situations, like when our car broke down at night.

    AG: Everyone says don’t drive at night in Venezuela. We were on the road, and figured we’d only half hour to go, what could go wrong? Then a transformer burned out. I thought I was about to have my Venezuelan nightmare, stuck in the middle of nowhere on a dark road at night. Who would ever find you?

    CG: As there were no lights we had to use our phones to let big trucks know we were on the road.

    AG: We pretended I was deaf as I couldn’t pass for Venezuelan with my Spanish accent. So, a really old old pick-up truck pulls up, and the occupants looked rather salty, but they were very nice and took us to a petrol station.

    CG: I told you Alan, you are not in the US, you are not going to be shot!

    AG: I was with three women with money, I thought OK I will be shot, but it all turned out fine, and they thought I was deaf.

    CG: We were told we could sleep in a shop but we slept in the car instead, and it was fine.

    PC: What about the power cuts that have plagued the country?

    CG: During blackouts, people told stories, played music, or went out and talked on the streets. It was a paradise, no TVs, smartphones, but real human contact. People cook together. During the day they’re playing board games, dominoes, and kids are having fun. People with kids are possibly more stressed, especially if you live in a tower block, as if you’ve no electricity, you’ve no water. That is why the US hit the electricity grid as it means no water in Caracas – a city of 10 million people. Luckily there are wells with clean water around the city, so people queue up to get it.

    PC: So there was a real discrepancy between the image you were given of Venezuela and the reality?

    AG: Sure, there are queues for oil, but people are not dying of starvation and, as I said, poverty is no where near what it is like in Brazil. I wouldn’t say a harsh dictatorship, people were open, and criticized the government, and the US, but also Chavez and Maduro. The Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV) have admitted they had made bad economic decisions. I thought it would be more repressive, and it wasn’t. People were not fearful about speaking out. I think Venezuelans blame the Americans for the situation more than Maduro.

    PC: What do you make of the hullabaloo in February about US and Canadian aid being blocked by Venezuela?

    AG: It is a Trojan horse, a good way to get the US in, and why international agencies were not willing take part in the plan. Instead there has been Chinese and Russian aid.

    CG: There’s not the chaos US and Trump were expecting. (Opposition leader and self-proclaimed president Juan) Guaidó is the most hated guy in Venezuela. He has to stay in luxury hotel in La Mercedes, an expensive neighbourhood of Caracas. They have electricity there, as they were prepared, so bought generators. That is why Guaidó went there, and has a whole floor of a luxury hotel for him and his family. While people are suffering Guaidó is trying on suits for his upcoming trip to Europe. It is a parallel world.

    AG: You think Guaidó will fail?

    CG: Venezuelans are making so many jokes with his name, as there’s a word similar to stupid in Spanish – guevon. And look at the demonstration in La Mercedes the other day (12 March), the crowds didn’t manifest. It is becoming a joke in the country. The more the Europeans and the US make him a president, the more bizarre the situation becomes, as Guaidó is not president of Venezuela! Interestingly, Chavez predicted what is happening today, he wrote about it, so people are going back to his works and reading him again.

    PC: There’s plenty of material on the history of American imperialism in South America to make such predictions, also, more recently, the Canadians and their mining companies, in Paraguay, Honduras, and now backing Guaidó.

    CG: Exactly. Look at Chile in 1973, what happened to the Sandinistas in El Salvador, in Guatemala.

    It is a well rehearsed strategy to destroy an economy using external forces to drive up prices of supplies and products. When you have such a cycle, it explodes.

    *  *  *

    Alan Gignoux is a photojournalist, with a particular focus on socio-political and environmental issues. Alan’s work has been published in The New York Times, CNN Traveller, The Independent, Reuters and World Photography News, among others (www.gignouxphotos.com).

    Carolina Graterol is a Venezuelan journalist, filmmaker and artist (www.carolinagraterol.com). She has worked for the BBC World Service (Spanish) and Telesur. She is the director of “A Letter from Venezuela” (2019).

  • Teen-Slapping Aussie MP Refuses To Resign After Blaming Muslims For NZ Attack

    “…as far as I’m concerned, it’s just a statement of fact and for some reason I have upset a lot of people…”

    This was the response from Queensland Senator Fraser Anning a day after a teenage protester had egged him for his recent statement implying that Muslim immigration was a reason behind Friday’s mass shooting in New Zealand.

    Stating that he was opposed to “any form of violence,” Anning claimed that the atrocity highlighted the “growing fear over an increasing Muslim presence,” in both New Zealand and Australia.

    The comment prompted an avalanche of criticism, and, as RT reports, at his Saturday press conference in Melbourne, a young protester attacked him with an egg.

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    Footage of the incident shows the teen standing quietly beside the politician. He then pulls up his cellphone before slapping the egg on the back of Anning’s head. The senator then turns to the young man before swinging two punches at his face.

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    The teen is then tackled to the ground and held in a headlock while Anning is led away. People can be heard saying “pick him up and get him out,” and “get the cops.”

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    Of course, since the attack, support for the boy (no, not the senator who was attacked) has flooded in on social media, with many hailing him a “hero” and calling for him to be given awards and medals for his actions.

    A Change.org petition calling for him to be kicked out of the Senate had racked up over one million signatures as of Monday. 

    “There is no place in Australian government for Neo-Nazis. There is no place for bigotry. There is no place for hate speech,” it states.

    However, refusing to bow to social justice warrior demands, RT reports that Anning continued to stand his ground on Sunday, telling a specially arranged press conference that while media had “twisted” his initial statement, he did not feel the need to apologize for what many decried as an ill-timed diatribe.

    “What people took out of context I think was that in the same press release I said that the countries that allow a large-scale Muslim immigration invariably have escalations in crime, violence and terrorist attacks,” Anning said Sunday.

    “Now, as far as I’m concerned, it’s just a statement of fact and for some reason I have upset a lot of people, including Mr Morrison,” the independent senator said, effectively doubling down on his previous remark that landed him in hot water.

    Anning argued that Australia is on course to repeat the fate of European countries like France, Belgium, the UK and Germany, which underwent a spell of terrorist attacks inspired by radical Islam, if it does not stop“Muslim immigration.”

    Asked whether he regrets the timing of his statement, Anning said he did not regret “anything.”

  • Bezos' Babe's Brother Bagged $200k For Selling Sexts To National Enquirer

    In the early days of February, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his allies publicly theorized about how the National Enquirer acquired racy sexts and dick pics he sent his girlfriend, Lauren Sanchez.

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    Speculation was rife with some suggesting the Saudis, others that it was the brother, and the mainstream media hinting that it was The White House.

    Well we have the answer now – and it’s way more obvious than the intrigues suggested at the time… crushing another resistance-supporting, anti-Trump, deep-state-sponsored, Washington Post-fantasized ‘fake’ story…

    On February 8th, WaPo reporter Manuel Roig-Franzia appeared on MSNBC and said that Bezos’s security consultant Gavin de Becker believes that National Enquirer obtained text messages from Bezos through inappropriate means.

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    “They have begun to believe, the Bezos camp, that this publication by the National Enquirer might have been politically motivated,” Roig-Franzia said Thursday.

    “Gavin de Becker told us that he does not believe that Jeff Bezos’s phone was hacked, he thinks it’s possible that a government entity might have gotten hold of his text messages,” he added, strongly hinting that the administration may have been instrumental in the leak of the embarrassing text messages.

    However, just as we asked (and answered) a week before WaPo’s breaking lies:“Did Bezos’ Mistress’s Trump-Loving Brother Leak Explicit Texts To National Enquirer?”, The Wall Street Journal reports that Michael Sanchez, the brother of Mr. Bezos’ lover, sold the billionaire’s secrets for $200,000 to the Enquirer’s publisher, said people familiar with the matter.

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    The inside scoop from WSJ  explains it all – and removes all the farcical Trump-related drama that the liberal media was hoping for (via WSJ):

    Mr. Sanchez, a talent agent who has managed television pundits and reality-show judges, has long been a source for the Enquirer and its top editor, Dylan Howard, the people familiar with the matter said. He has supported President Trump on Twitter and has ties to conservative activists.

    Mr. Sanchez began conversations last fall with the tabloid about his sister’s relationship with Mr. Bezos, the people said. The Enquirer by then had already been investigating whether Mr. Bezos and Ms. Sanchez were having an affair, people familiar with the matter said.

    …

    As the tabloid publisher began negotiations to buy the materials from Mr. Sanchez in October, Mr. Pecker expressed reservations about publishing a story, the people familiar with the matter said. He was concerned Mr. Bezos would sue…

    …

    Mr. Pecker was told by one of his advisers that publishing the story might make it appear he was doing so on behalf of Mr. Trump, who has criticized Mr. Bezos in connection with the Washington Post’s coverage of his administration, one of the people said.

    …

    But, despite his qualms, Mr. Pecker approved the $200,000 deal with Mr. Sanchez that had been negotiated by American Media’s chief content officer, Mr. Howard; its general counsel for media, Cameron Stracher; and others, said people familiar with contract. The amount – higher than the company typically pays sources – reflected the significance American Media placed on Mr. Sanchez’s information.

    read more here…

    Of course, as one would suspect, Mr. Sanchez said he didn’t want to “dignify” the Journal’s reporting on the contract he struck. He described the reporting on the contract as “old rumors” from anonymous sources. A spokesman for Jeff Bezos declined to comment. Lauren Sanchez didn’t respond to requests for comment sent through an employee at her company and an Amazon spokesman.

    We look forward to a Trump tweet reaction to all of this.

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Mar 18

Today’s News 18th March 2019

  • "A Massive War On Autopilot" – US Airstrikes Surge In Secret War In Somalia

    With so many little wars to keep track of, you probably haven’t noticed that the US has quietly been increasing its airstrikes against targets in Somalia.

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    And, as RT’s Polly Boiko points out,  it seems few people in Washington have either.

    In recent months, dozens of Al-Shabaab terrorist suspects have been killed by American drones and planes in Somalia, reportedly thanks to a surplus becoming available from Syria. However, in a familiar pattern, the US military has denied any civilians were harmed, while locals and aid agencies deny that denial.

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    A former US ambassador to Somalia told the New York Times: 

    “It could be there is some well-thought-out strategy behind all of this, but I really doubt it.”

    Another former US government official described Somalia as a “massive war on autopilot.”

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    RT’s Polly Boiko  takes a look at a secret secret war no one’s noticed.

  • Can Russia And China Survive This Unharmonious World?

    Authored by Andre Vitchek via The Nation,

    Does it pay ‘to be good’? Is it still possible to play by the rules in this mad world, governed by brigands?

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    What if the rules are defined and ratified by all countries of the world, but a small group of the strongest (militarily) nations totally ignores them, while using its professional propagandists to reinterpret them in the most bizarre ways?

    Describing the world, I often feel that I am back in my primary school.

    When I was a child, I had the misfortune of growing up in a racist Czechoslovakia. Being born in the Soviet Union, and having an half Russian and half Asian mother, I was brutally beaten up between classes, from the age of seven. I was systematically attacked by a gang of boys, and humiliated and hit for having ‘Asian ears’, for having an ‘Asian mother’, for being Russian.

    During winters, my shoes were taken out into the bitter cold and pissed into. The urine turned into ice. The only consolation was that ‘at least’ I was Russian and Chinese. If I was a Gypsy (Roma) boy, I would most likely not have made it, at least without losing an eye, or without having my hands broken.

    I tried to be polite. I did my best to ‘play by the rules’. I fought back, first only half-heartedly.

    Until one day, when a kid who lived next door, fired his air gun and barely missed my eye. Just like that, simply because I was Russian… and Asian, just because he had nothing better to do, at that particular moment. And because he felt so proud to be Czech and European. Also, because I refused to eat their shit, to accept their ‘superiority’, and humiliate myself in front of them. Both mother and I were miserable in Czechoslovakia, both of us dreamt about our Leningrad. But she made a personal mistake and we were stuck in a hostile, provincial and bombastic society which wanted to “go back to Europe”, and once again be part of the bloc of countries, which has been ruling and oppressing the world, for centuries.

    The air gun and almost losing my eye turned out to be the last straw. I teamed up with my friend, Karel, whose only ‘guilt’ was that at 10, he weighed almost 100 kilograms. It was not his fault, it was a genetic issue, but the kids also ridiculed him, eventually turning him into a punching bag. He was a gentle, good-natured kid who loved music and science-fiction novels. We were friends. We used to plan our space travels towards the distant galaxies, together. But at that point, we said ‘enough’! We hit back, terribly. After two or three years of suffering, we began fighting the gang, with the same force and brutality that they had applied towards us and in fact towards all those around us who were ‘different’, or at least weak and defenseless.

    And we won. Not by reason, but by courage and strength. I wish we did not have to fight, but we had no choice. We soon discovered, how strong we were. And once we began, the only way to survive was to win the battle. And we did win. The kids, who used to torment us, were actually cowards. Once we won and secured some respect, we also began sheltering and protecting the ‘others’, mainly weak boys and girls from our school, who were also suffering attacks from the gang of those ‘normal’, white, and mainstream Czechs.

    *  *  *

    There are self-proclaimed rulers of the world: Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand and Israel.

    And there are two other groups: the nations which are fully cooperating with the West (such as Indonesia, Thailand, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, South Korea, Colombia or Uganda), and those that are decisively refusing to accept Western dictates, such as Russia, China, DPRK, Syria, Eritrea, Iran, South Africa, Venezuela, Cuba, and Bolivia.

    • The first group does almost nothing to change the world. It goes with the flow. It accepts the rule of the bullies. It collaborates, and while it is at it, tries to at least gain some privileges, most of the time unsuccessfully.

    • The second group is well aware of the dismal state of the world. It maneuvers, resists, and sometimes fights for its survival, or for the survival of others. It tries to stick to its principles, or to what used to be called ‘universal values’.

    But can it really survive without confrontation?

    The West does not tolerate any dissent. Its culture has been, for centuries, exceedingly aggressive, bellicose, and extremist: “You are with us, that is ‘under us’, or you are against us. If against us, you will be crushed and shackled, robbed, raped, beaten and in the end, forced to do what we order, anyway.”

    Russia is perhaps the only nation which has survived, unconquered and for centuries, but at the unimaginable price of tens of millions of its people. It has been invaded, again and again, by the Scandinavians, French, Brits, Germans, and even Czechs. The attacks occurred regularly, justified by bizarre rhetoric: ‘Russia was strong’, or ‘it was weak’. It was attacked ‘because of its Great October Socialist Revolution’, or simply because it was Communist. Any grotesque ‘justification’ was just fine, as far as the West was concerned. Russia had to be invaded, plundered and terribly injured just because it was resisting, because it stood on its feet, and free.

    Even the great China could not withstand Western assaults. It was broken, divided, humiliated; its capital city ransacked by the French and Brits.

    Nothing and no one could survive the Western assaults: in the end, not even the proud and determined Afghanistan.

    *  *  *

    A Chinese scholar Li Gang wrote in his The Way We Think: Chinese View of Life Philosophy:

    “Harmony” is an important category of thought in traditional Chinese culture. Although the concept initially comes from philosophy, it stands for a stable and integrated social life. It directly influences Chinese people’s way of thinking and dealing with the world…

    In the ancient classic works of China, “harmony” can, in essence, be understood as being harmonious. Ancient people stressed the harmony of the universe and the natural environment, the harmony between humans and nature, and what is more, the harmony between people…

    Traditional Chinese people take the principle as a way of life and they try their best to have friendly and harmonious relations. In order to reach “harmony”, people treat each other with sincerity, tolerance and love, and do not interfere in other people’s business. As the saying goes, “Well water does not intrude into river water”

    Could anything be further from the philosophy of Western culture, which is based on the constant need to interfere, conquer and control?

    Can countries like China, or Iran, or Russia, really survive in a world that is being controlled by aggressive European and North American dogmas?

    Or more precisely: could they survive peacefully, without being dragged into bloodstained confrontations?

    *  *  *

    The onset of the 21st Century is clearly indicating that ‘peaceful resistance’ to brutal Western attacks is counter-productive.

    Begging for peace, at forums such as the United Nations, has been leading absolutely nowhere. One country after another has collapsed, and had no chance to be treated justly and to be protected by international law: Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya.

    The West and its allies like Saudi Arabia or Israel are always above the law. Or more precisely, they are the law. They twist and modify the law however it suits them; their political or business interests.

    Harmony? No, they are absolutely not interested in things like harmony. And even if a huge country like China is, then it is seen as weak, and immediately taken advantage of.

    Can the world survive if a group of countries plays totally against all the rules, while most of the planet tries to stick, meticulously, to international laws and regulations?

    It can, but it would create a totally twisted, totally perverse world, as ours actually already is. It would be a world of impunity on one end, and of fear, slavery and servility at the other.

    And it is not going to be a ‘peaceful world’, anyway, because the oppressor will always want more and more; it will not be satisfied until it is in total, absolute control of the planet.

    Accepting tyranny is not an option.

    So then, what is? Are we too scared to pronounce it?

    If a country is attacked, it should defend itself, and fight.

    As Russia did on so many occasions. As Syria is doing, at great sacrifice, but proudly. As Venezuela will and should do, if assaulted.

    China and Russia are two great cultures, which were to some extent influenced by the West. When I say ‘influenced’, I mean forcefully ‘penetrated’, broken into, brutally violated. During that violent interaction, some positive elements of Western culture assimilated in the brains of its victims: music, food, even city planning. But the overall impact was extremely negative, and both China and Russia suffered, and have been suffering, greatly.

    For decades, the West has been unleashing its propaganda and destructive forces, to ‘contain’ and devastate both countries at their core. The Soviet Union was tricked into Afghanistan and into a financially unsustainable arms race, and literally broken into pieces. For several dark years, Russia was facing confusion, intellectual, moral and social chaos, as well as humiliation. China got penetrated with extreme ‘market forces’, its academic institutions were infiltrated by armies of anti-Communist ‘intellectual’ warriors from Europe and North America.

    The results were devastating. Both countries – China and Russia – were practically under attack, and forced to fight for their survival.

    Both countries managed to identify the threat. They fought back, regrouped, and endured. Their cultures and their identities survived.

    China is now a confident and powerful nation, under the leadership of President Xi Jinping. Present-day Russia under the presidency of Vladimir Putin is one of the mightiest nations on earth, not only militarily, but also morally, intellectually and scientifically.

    This is precisely what the West cannot ‘forgive’. With each new brilliant electric vehicle China produces, with each village embracing the so-called “Ecological Civilization”, the West panics, smears China, portrays it as an evil state. The more internationalist Russia becomes, the more it protects nations ruined by the West – be it Syria or Venezuela – more relentless are West’s attacks against its President, and its people.

    Both China and Russia are using diplomacy for as long as it is constructive, but this time, when confronted with force, they indicate their willingness to use strength to defend themselves.

    They are well aware of the fact that this is the only way to survive.

    For China, harmony is essential. Russia also has developed its own concept of global harmony based on internationalist principles. There is hardly any doubt that under the leadership of China and Russia, our world would be able to tackle the most profound problems that it has been facing.

    But harmony can only be implemented when there is global concept of goodwill, or at least a decisive dedication to save the world.

    If a group of powerful nations is only obsessed with profits, control and plunder, and if it behaves like a thug for several long centuries, one has to act, and to defend the world; if there is no alternative, by force!

    Only after victory, can true harmony be aimed at.

    At the beginning of this essay, I told a story from my childhood, which I find symbolic.

    One can compromise, one can be diplomatic, but never if one’s dignity and freedom was at risk. One can never negotiate indefinitely with those who are starving and enslaving billions of human beings, all over the world.

    Venezuela, Syria, Afghanistan and so many countries are now bleeding. Soon, Iran could be confronted. And Nicaragua. And DPRK. And perhaps China and Russia themselves could face yet another Western invasion.

    A ‘harmonious world’ may have to be built later; definitely one day, but a little bit later.

    First, we have to make sure that our humanity survives and that Western fascism cannot consume further millions of innocent human lives.

    Like me and my big childhood friend Karel at an elementary school in former Czechoslovakia; Russia and China may have to once again stand up and confront ‘unharmonious barbarity’; they may have to fight, in order to prevent an even greater disaster.

    They do not want to; they will do everything possible to prevent war. But the war is already raging. Western colonialism is back. The brutal gang of North American and European countries is blocking the road, clenching fists, shooting at everyone who dares to look up, and to meet their gaze: “Would you dare?” their eyes are saying.

    “Yes, we would!” is the only correct answer.

  • Misguided Spying And The New Zealand Massacre

    Authored by Suzie Dawson via ConsortiumNews.com,

    While intelligence agencies were looking in all the wrong places, a conspicuous target slipped through the cracks…

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    Now that the bodies of 49 innocent human beings are lying in a Christchurch, New Zealand, morgue — gunned down by a heavily armed terrorist — New Zealand media are asking the obvious questions: why didn’t our intelligence agencies know there were xenophobic, murderous, white supremacists on the loose in Christchurch?

     “Questions are being asked of the nation’s security services in the wake of a mass shooting described as ‘one of New Zealand’s darkest days,” Stuff.co.nz reports and quotes a University of Waikato professor of international law, Alexander Gillespie, as saying:

    “If it’s a cell we need to ask why weren’t they detected, because that’s why we have security services and it may be that those services have been looking under the wrong rocks.’ ”

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    Still from video the gunman shot of his own rampage. (Twitter)

    According to the same article, in response to the terrorist attack, “A crisis meeting of national security agencies was held at Police National Headquarters in Wellington after the shooting.“

    In the NZ Herald, veteran intelligence reporter David Fisher asked many pertinent questions in an opinion piece titled “Christchurch massacre – what did we miss and who missed it?”

    “We need answers,” says Fisher.

    “The NZSIS [New Zealand’s equivalent of the FBI] – and its electronic counterpart, the Government Communications Security Bureau – have more funding than ever, and almost double the staff numbers they had six years ago. They also now have the most powerful legislation they have ever had.”

    We know thanks to the findings of an inquiry by the State Services Commission last December that as many as a dozen government agencies, including the NZ Police, were too busy squandering their resources spying on NGOs such as GreenpeaceNZ; political parties such as the New Zealand Green Party and then-Internet Party aligned Mana Movement, as well as on anti-TPP protesters and activists such as myself.

    As if that weren’t egregious enough, they were even spying on Christchurch earthquake insurance claimants and historical victims of institutional state child abuse.

    An ex-cabinet minister and now chief executive of Greenpeace New Zealand, Russel Norman called it“New Zealand’s Watergate moment.”

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     (Youtube still)

    The government contractor engaged to perform the on-the-ground victimization of targets is the notorious Thompson & Clark Investigations Limited — a company I had been publicly naming since April of 2012 for having targeted my independent media team and me. A company that we now know was illegally granted access to New Zealand police databases on thousands of occasions, and that has been linked to the NZ Security Intelligence Services.

    Their nefarious activities are not isolated to the private sector. The NZ Police have also been found to have made thousands of warrantless data requests.

    In 2014 acclaimed New Zealand investigative journalist Nicky Hager — himself judged by a court to have been wrongfully targeted by the NZ Police as a result of his reporting — revealed in his seminal book “Dirty Politics”that a political network that went as high as the Office of the prime minister of New Zealand– under ex-Prime Minister John Key, who was then minister in charge of the NZ security services — had targeted dozens of journalists,as well as other political targets and issue-based dissenters. 

    What the police and intelligence agencies of New Zealand must recognize is thus: Journalism is not terrorism. Non-violent pro-democratic activism is not terrorism. Dissent is not terrorism.

    Arming yourself with weapons and violently attacking innocent people is terrorism.

    Holding to Account

    Agencies that for too long have been blurring thedistinction between what is and isn’t terrorism, must now be held to account.

    I was spied on for my independent journalism and my legal, pro-democratic activism. Despite having no history of violence, no access to weapons, no weapons training and no extremist ideological beliefs.

    Internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom, founder of the Internet Party of New Zealand, of which I am party president, was spied on by both the New Zealand and United States governments for as little as a suspected civil violation, alleged copyright infringement.

    Yesterday, the mania and obsessive hatred of an actual terrorist in Christchurch in possession of automatic weapons, culminated in his posting a racist manifesto online and then live streaming his hate crime in real time. Yet he was never spied on.

    While the intelligence agencies were looking in all the wrong places, someone who should have been a target slipped through the cracks.

    Let that sink in.

    Some will say that as injured parties of the intelligence agencies, we just have an axe to grind and are exploiting this tragedy to criticize them.

    But as always, it is those very agencies that have failed their charges, who will be first in line to exploit the news cycle in a quest to justify the provision of ever more money, more power, more resources and ultimately, the ability for them to engage in ever more spying.

    The question is, how will they choose to employ those gains once they are inevitably granted?

    In the absence of meaningful intervention by oversight bodies or an official inquiry — and if their recent history is any measure — the answer may well be: poorly, undemocratically, and unjustly.

  • Son Publicly Defends Parents Implicated In Admissions Scandal While Smoking Blunt

    The son of Gregory and Marcia Abbott, two parents involved in the recent college admissions scandal, defended his parents to the New York Post outside of the family’s Fifth Avenue building this week – while smoking a blunt and promoting his latest rap CD.

    “Rapper” Malcom Abbott said about the scandal: 

    “They’re blowing this whole thing out of proportion. I believe everyone has a right to go to college, man.”

    In the midst of smoking a moderately sized blunt, Malcolm continued: “I didn’t go to college”.

    His father is the founder of food and beverage distributor International Dispensing Corporation and his sister was one of the college students in question. She allegedly had her ACT and SAT scores boosted as a result of bribes her parents paid.

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    After he got done defending his parents, the ponytailed Malcolm, who raps under the name “Billa”, then told the New York Post to check out his music. “Check out my CD, ‘Cheese and Crackers,’ ” he said. Upon leaving the building later in the day with his brother, he said that his parents had “got roped into [this by] some guy who f–king cheated them.”

    That defense should hold up in court.

    More specifically, Abbott’s parents are being accused of paying $125,000 in bribes to help their daughter get into college. The man they allegedly paid the bribes to – scheme mastermind William Rick Singer – paid off a test proctor to inflate their daughter’s test scores to a perfect 800 on the SAT math and 710 on the SAT verbal. On the ACT test, her score of 23 out of 36 was changed to a near perfect 35, according to court documents. Both parents were out on $500,000 bail at the time.

    Somewhere, in prison, Martin Shkreli is shaking his head. 

  • Planetary Collapse Looms? New Study Shows More Than 1,200 Species "Will Almost Certainly Face Extinction"

    Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

    We are witnessing a worldwide environmental collapse, and nobody seems to know how to stop it. 

    As you will see below, a study that was just released that looked at more than 5,000 species of birds, mammals and amphibians discovered that nearly a quarter of them “will almost certainly face extinction”.  Never before has our society faced such a massive collapse of life on a planetary scale, and yet the vast majority of the population doesn’t seem concerned about what is happening.  Species after species is being permanently wiped out, and most of us couldn’t care less.

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    The time for action is now.  According to this new study, over 1,200 species will soon be extinct unless dramatic action is taken.  The following comes from the Guardian…

    More than 1,200 species globally face threats to their survival in more than 90% of their habitat and “will almost certainly face extinction” without conservation intervention, according to new research.

    Scientists working with Australia’s University of Queensland and the Wildlife Conservation Society have mapped threats faced by 5,457 species of birds, mammals and amphibians to determine which parts of a species’ habitat range are most affected by known drivers of biodiversity loss.

    Once these species are gone, they will be gone forever.

    And remember, this study from Australia only included larger creatures such as birds, mammals and amphibians.  The situation is far more dire when we look at what is happening to the insect world.  The following is an excerpt from my previous article entitled “Insect Apocalypse: The Global Food Chain Is Experiencing A Major Extinction Event And Scientists Don’t Know Why”…

    Scientists are telling us that we have entered “the sixth major extinction” in the history of our planet. A brand new survey of 73 scientific reports that was just released has come to the conclusion that the total number of insects on the globe is falling by 2.5 percent per year. If we stay on this current pace, the survey warns that there might not be “any insects at all” by the year 2119. And since insects are absolutely critical to the worldwide food chain, that has extremely ominous implications for all of us.

    In case you are wondering, humanity would not survive very long without insects.

    In fact, it has been estimated that if all bees go extinct that most of humanity will be wiped out within ten years.

    The global food chain is literally dying right in front of our eyes, and I cannot understand why more people are not deeply alarmed by this.

    We are facing an unprecedented crisis in our oceans as well.  Researchers in Canada have discovered that levels of phytoplankton have dropped by about 40 percent since 1950…

    The tiny organisms, known as phytoplankton, also gobble up carbon dioxide to produce half the world’s oxygen output—equaling that of trees and plants on land.

    But their numbers have dwindled since the dawn of the 20th century, with unknown consequences for ocean ecosystems and the planet’s carbon cycle.

    Researchers at Canada’s Dalhousie University say the global population of phytoplankton has fallen about 40 percent since 1950.

    Without phytoplankton, our oceans would quickly become giant “dead zones”, and at the pace we are going we don’t have too long before that will happen.

    And the truth is that the frightening drop in phytoplankton levels is already having a dramatic impact on the food chain.  I have shared the following quote from Chris Martenson before, but it is worth sharing again…

    Fewer phytoplankton means less thiamine being produced. That means less thiamine is available to pass up the food chain. Next thing you know, there’s a 70% decline in seabird populations.

    This is something I’ve noticed directly and commented on during my annual pilgrimages to the northern Maine coast over the past 30 years, where seagulls used to be extremely common and are now practically gone. Seagulls!

    Next thing you know, some other major food chain will be wiped out and we’ll get oceans full of jellyfish instead of actual fish.

    Are you starting to understand where I am coming from?

    Our planet is literally dying, and there is only a very, very limited amount of time to do anything about it.

    Meanwhile, western civilization is dying as well.  Paul Joseph Watson has just produced a video entitled “The Collapse Of Western Civilization”, and it is perhaps the finest video that he has created to date.  If you have not seen it yet, I would encourage you to check it out.

    In an accompanying article, Watson listed some of the evidence that our society is in the process of collapsing…

    From spiritual bankruptcy, to mass chemical dependence, to rampant addiction to sensual stimulation.

    Almost every factor that precedes the collapse of great civilizations has been met by the west.

    Our destruction is long overdue.

    Depression is at its highest level ever. Drug addiction is at its highest level ever.

    People identifying as Christians is at its lowest level ever.

    As usual, Watson is right on the money.  We have lost our values, we have no clear direction as a society, and we are deeply, deeply miserable.  Just consider the following numbers from the CDC…

    The number of deaths from alcohol, drugs and suicide in 2017 hit the highest level since federal data collection started in 1999, according to an analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data by two public health nonprofits.

    The national rate for deaths from alcohol, drugs and suicide rose from 43.9 to 46.6 deaths per 100,000 people in 2017, a 6 percent increase, the Trust for America’s Health and the Well Being Trust reported Tuesday.

    Most people do not have a reason to get out of bed in the morning.  Without meaning and purpose, most people drift aimlessly through life, and that must change.

    Time is running out for our exceedingly vacuous society.  We are literally destroying ourselves and everything around us, and here in the western world we have completely lost our values.  We are on a road to nowhere, and we will soon be overtaken by the consequences of our very foolish actions.

  • Smartphone Shipments In China Collapse To Six Year Low

    Months after Apple stunned the market by announcing it would no longer be reporting quarterly iPhone unit sales, we have some insight as to the reason. February saw smartphone shipments in China collapse to their lowest levels in six years, indicating that the super-saturated industry has failed to turn around amidst a global economy that is grinding slower. 

    Shipments to China came in at 14.5 million units for February, down 19.9% from last year, according to Reuters, who cited the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology. It’s the lowest total since February 2013.

    February is traditionally a tough month for Chinese consumer purchases, as the Chinese spend a majority of the month celebrating the new year. However, this year’s drop was more concentrated than past years, as a result of both a slowing economy and the ongoing U.S./China trade war. 

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    When Apple recently cut sales forecasts this year, it blamed China for weighing on its results. To try and stimulate demand, the company paired with China-based Ant Financial to offer interest-free iPhone financing. Other retailers in China have tried similar promos to try and spur demand. 

    This has some manufacturers, like Huawei, looking to corner the higher margin end of the market instead. Huawei saw its market share of China’s $500 to $800 device segment rise to 26.6% from 8.8% in 2018, according to data from Counterpoint Research. Apple, on the other hand, saw its share fall to 54.6% from 81.2%. 

    As an added bonus, we recently reported on Chinese smartphones also emitting the most radiation of any smartphones worldwide. 

    The current smartphone creating the highest level of radiation is the Mi A1 from Chinese vendor Xiaomi. Another Chinese phone is in second place – the OnePlus 5T. In fact, the two companies are represented heavily in a list of “Phones Emitting the Most Radiation” that was recently released by Statista. 8 of the top 16 handsets being made by one of these two companies. Premium Apple phones, such as the iPhone 7 and the iPhone 8 are also here to be seen, as are the latest Pixel handsets from Google.

    Infographic: The Phones Emitting the Most Radiation | Statista

    While there is no universal guideline for a ‘safe’ level of phone radiation, the German certification for environmental friendliness ‘Der Blaue Engel’ (Blue Angel) only certifies phones which have a specific absorption rate of less than 0.60 watts per kilogram. All of the phones featured here come in at more than double this benchmark.

  • Next, New Zealand Firearms: They Never Learn

    Authored by Leesa Donner via LibertyNation.com,

    Knee jerk reaction to tragedy ignores the harsh reality…

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    Getting your hands on a firearm in New Zealand is no easy task. Everyone knows this and yet here we are again having the same old knee-jerk discussion about more gun control, following a shooting at two mosques in Christchurch early Friday.

    At this writing, the death toll stands at 50, and approximately two dozen people remain hospitalized. Like all acts of terror, ‘tis a sad tale, indeed.

    At such times it is a politician’s wont to rush to judgment, to try and fix things and come out of it all looking very moral and heroic. Customarily these efforts result in making the situation worse. Such appears to be the case as the prime minister of New Zealand prepares to “fix” the country’s gun problems with more restrictions in the wake of this tragedy.

    But here’s the rub: New Zealand already has quite a strict gun control policy as it is. Owning a firearm in the land of the Kiwi is not a right but rather a privilege bestowed upon those who are willing to run the gauntlet of gun laws. And they are many. Everyone must be licensed and background checked. They must all take a safety class – it is a long and arduous process to legally own a firearm. If you can think up a gun control law, New Zealand likely already has it on the books.

    It’s Never Enough

    Guess what all these firearm restrictions did to stop Friday’s tragedy? How about nothing. If you look at the facts of the case (and they are difficult to ascertain amid all the vitriol), one could even make the case that New Zealand’s totalitarian gun laws made the situation worse. How so? If you dig into what really happened, you will notice that a heroic bystander wrestled the weapon from the shooter and managed to fire two rounds as the attacker attempted to flee the scene.

    Ah yes – the old good guy with a gun scenario that gun control advocates love to ignore time and again.

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    So, one must ask, what if there were armed people in and around those mosques? What if they had fired upon the perpetrator? Could he have been stopped before so many lives were lost? The logical answer to all these questions is yes, yes and yes.

    Last year the worst car crash in 13 years occurred in New Zealand. The next morning the airwaves in South Taranaki were not filled with people calling for a ban on vehicles. Why? Because a vehicle isn’t a weapon unless someone uses it in that manner. Such is the case with a firearm. But don’t tell the politicians that. They will have no reason to grandstand.

    As it is, the mosque killings have provided ammunition for the anti-gun political class to run amok. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern already has plans to “act swiftly to enact stricter laws” and her cabinet plans to meet on Monday for “proposed reforms,” according to The Guardian.

    More Sheep Than People

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    Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern

    Step aside because the anti-firearm show is about to begin, even though the leftalready loves to point out that, “New Zealand generally has very low levels of gun violence — likely due, in part, to its restrictions on firearms.” Perhaps it’s actually because of a projected population density of only 18.4 people per kilometer by 2020. Fact is, there are about seven times more sheep than people in New Zealand. Might that have something to do with the low homicide rate?

    There is one bit of good news for those who believe in the right to bear arms – approximately 1.2 million people in New Zealand own a gun. That’s about one firearm for every four people. Let’s hope these gun-owners will not be led to the slaughter like their four-hoofed friends; let’s hope they resist all efforts of the do-gooder class to take away their firearms.

  • Doctors' Bills Play Role In Majority Of Personal Bankruptcies 

    Outstanding medical debt has become a common theme among personal bankruptcies in America, according to a March survey in the American Journal of Public Health – with nearly 60% of people admitting a medical expense “very much” or “somewhat” contributed to their bankruptcy – more than the percentage who cited home foreclosure or student loans. 

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    As The Atlantic‘s Olga Khazan notes, this “uniquely American phenomenon” is due to a number of factors, including an increasing lack of insurance, crappy high-deductible insurance, and a woefully erroneous medical billing system. 

    There are as many reasons for the medical-debt crisis as there are diagnostic codes that rule the medical-billing world. In interviews, half a dozen consumer advocates told me they are concerned that the problem will get worse, since the uninsured rate is going up, and more people are signing up for cheaper but skimpier health-insurance plans introduced by the Trump administration. More Americans are also now on high-deductible health plans, many of which require patients to pay thousands before insurance kicks in. Networks of doctors have grown narrower, meaning more providers are likely to be out of network. –The Atlantic

    In other cases, hospitals required by some states to provide charity care to certain low-income and uninsured patients have been caught sending out regular bills instead. 

    “We were seeing hospitals sending debtors to debt collections without saying anything to the debt collectors,” said Emilia Morris – legal direct of Central California Legal Services. “The debt collectors are trying to collect these debts without making charity care available. The patient sometimes gets sued, gets a judgment entered against them, without ever having heard of charity care.“

    In a statement, an American Hospital Association spokesperson told me that in 2017, hospitals provided more than $38 billion worth of care to patients who could not afford it otherwise. “Hospitals across the country strive to find ways to help under- and uninsured patients navigate the health system,” the spokesperson said. “Hospitals offer charity care programs, check public assistance to see if the patient qualifies and provide discounts to these patients when possible. Every day, America’s hospitals treat patients who can make only minimal payment, or no payment at all.” –The Atlantic

    Despite the financial assistance, around 20% of Americans have a medical claim on their credit report, and around the same proportion have an overdue medical bill. In fact, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) reports that medical bills are the most common cause of unpaid bills sent to collection agencies. 

    The most common cause of large medical bills? Emergency-room visits and planned surgical procedures that patients can’t afford to pay, according to advocates. In many cases, a hospital may be covered under a patient’s insurance network, but the individual doctors who work there and the ambulance provider aren’t – often leading to “balance billing” in which patients are billed for the amount insurance will not covered. 

    Advice?

    Consumer advocates tell The Atlantic that patients should ask about financial assistance – including charity care for the uninsured. 

    If that fails, patients can ask whether they can pay whatever the hospital would have charged someone who was on Medicare—typically a lower rate. Hospitals and even collections agencies will often agree to payment plans, or a discount in exchange for a lump-sum payment.

    Still, the current system requires people to independently negotiate on their own behalf with giant corporations over tens of thousands of dollars, often while recovering from a major illness. For those who haven’t done it before, the process can be confounding. “Maybe I didn’t say the right thing before,” Lockett told me. –The Atlantic

    Small outstanding medical debts are now getting sold to debt buyers – who try and collect as much as possible on long past-due debts. 

    “Now we are seeing small-time medical practices get involved in selling their bad debts to debt buyers for pennies on the dollar,” says Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg – legal director at the Legal Aid Justice Center, who adds that at the end of the day, a person who is at imminent risk of having their wages garnished because they’ve been sued for medical debt may find the best course of action to declare bankruptcy.

  • Doug Casey Destroys The Modern Monetary Theory Miasma

    Via CaseyResearch.com,

    The left has a new obsession… Modern Monetary Theory (MMT).

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    MMT is an economic theory which essentially argues that the U.S. government wouldn’t need to collect taxes or borrow money to finance spending. It could simply print more money if necessary.

    Now, this concept isn’t new. It’s been around for decades. But its popularity has skyrocketed, thanks to endorsements from Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), the new rising star of the Democratic Party.

    This new breed of socialist Democrats has embraced MMT because it would make all their crazy ideas possible. The national debt, deficits, and inflation concerns would no longer stand in the way of projects like the Green New Deal or universal healthcare/housing/education.

    In short, MMT would give the government a green light to spend money even more recklessly than it does now. That’s a problem.

    So I got Doug Casey on the phone to discuss this matter at length…

    Justin: Doug, what do you make of Modern Monetary Theory? Would this economic framework help or hurt the U.S. economy?

    Doug: MMT centers around the notion that the economy in general, and money in particular, should be the creatures of the State. It’s not a new idea – the meme has been around in one form or another since at least the days of Marx. MMT basically posits that the wise and incorruptible solons in government should create as much currency as they think is needed, spend it in areas they like, and solve any problems that occur with more laws and regulations.

    It’s nothing new. Just a more radical version of the economic fascism that’s dominated the U.S. since at least the days of the New Deal. It’s just another name for an old, and very stupid, set of economic ideas. By stupid I mean, “showing an inability to predict the indirect and delayed consequences of actions.”

    Politicians are now talking about the supposed benefits of MMT. Pseudo-economists are doing their abstruse and incomprehensible mathematical computations about how it might affect the economy. The public will easily be convinced they’ll get something for nothing.

    But what we should be talking about here is moral principle. It’s not a question of whether MMT will work or not work. It won’t. It will work about as well as the economic policies of Venezuela and Zimbabwe. Or Argentina, where I am at the moment. These schemes have never worked in all of history. They result in a vastly lower standard of living, along with social strife.

    MMT is about radically increased government control. The argument shouldn’t be over whether MMT will “work” or not. The argument should be about whether it’s moral and proper for people in the government – whether elected or appointed – to print money to change the economy into something that suits them better.

    Justin: It’s obvious that you find MMT, like other interventionist economic theories, to be immoral. Why is that?

    Doug: Money represents the hours of your life that you spent earning it. That’s the basic principle here. It represents concentrated life – all the things you want to have and do for yourself, and provide for others in the future. When these people destroy the value of money, they’re destroying part of your life.

    “Inflation” isn’t caused by greedy butchers, bakers, and gasoline makers. It’s caused by an excess of purchasing media. MMT will give the State total control of its quantity and quality. If the government increases the money supply by, say, 10 times, general prices will go up by 10 times. The value of your dollar savings will drop 90% – perhaps most Americans won’t care, because they have no savings, just debt.

    In any event, some people will get hold of a lot more of that 10x increase than others. And they’ll get hold of it earlier, before prices really take off. Who? Inevitably cronies.

    Look, absolutely every government intrusion into the economy – whether it’s taxes or regulations or inflation – always benefits the people in and around the government. And damages society as a whole.

    But they’re sold to the voters, to the hoi polloi, to the “head count,” as something that will put them on easy street. Which is a lie, of course.

    But that’s not what the argument should be about. The average guy doesn’t understand economics; he doesn’t think, he feels. Furthermore, nobody talks about whether cockamamie ideas like MMT are morally right or wrong. Instead, they have pointless and ridiculous arguments about whether it works or not. Well, it doesn’t work. But that’s a distraction.

    This matter is essentially a moral question, not a technical question. Does somebody in government have a right to determine your economic destiny? Or not?

    The fact that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez [AOC] – an ambitious, terminally ignorant, morally crippled 29-year-old Puerto Rican bartender – is setting the tone for this whole discussion tells you how degraded the U.S. has become. It’s well on its way to turning into a giant welfare and police state.

    But, as you know, I always look on the bright side. Which is that – if you give yourself a little psychological distance – this is all a comedy. AOC, The Donald, Bolton, Bernie Sanders, Pocahontas, Hillary, Kamala, etc., etc. They’re all dangerous megalomaniacs. But the chimpanzees listen to them, choose teams, hang on to their every word, support them, and are easily incited to hoot and pant at each other. The American public is going to get exactly what it deserves. I have no sympathy for them. Or about as much as I would have had for the Romans in the fifth century, when the empire was collapsing.

    Justin: Doug, you’re correct to point out that AOC has endorsed MMT. Stephanie Kelton, Bernie Sanders’ economic advisor during his last presidential run, is also a proponent of MMT. So this idea is gaining traction with Democrats.

    Of course, neither the White House nor Congress dictates monetary policy. That’s the Fed’s job. And current Fed Chair Jerome Powell has already come out and called MMT “wrong.” Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers also recently called MMT “grotesque.”

    That said, what are the chances MMT or some version of it gets implemented?

    Doug: Interesting. It may be the first thing Summers has ever been right about in his whole life. As for Powell, he’s a non-entity, a lifelong bureaucrat plucked from obscurity – for God knows what reason – by The Donald. Trump has bizarrely bad judgment in the people he surrounds himself with. From that silly woman who was on The Apprenticewith him, to his lawyer Cohen, to Jared and Ivanka, Bolton… it’s like he goes out to the highways and the byways to round up the lame, the halt, and the philosophically blind. Regardless of his rhetoric, he’s very partial to warmongers and Deep State types.

    But back to MMT. The chances of MMT being implemented are extremely high. It will almost certainly happen, at least after the next election, for several reasons.

    One, the government is now running a deficit of roughly $100 billion a month; that will soon be $200 billion. They’ll be desperate for more revenue, which MMT will give them. Second, with demographics – the youth and non-white voters – as they are, the Democrats will get a lot more traction in 2020. Third, the U.S. will be in the midst of a gigantic crisis; it will be blamed on Trump, regardless of how much of it’s his fault. There are a number of other reasons the Democrats will win. But that’s a subject for another conversation.

    They’re going to try every cockamamie idea they can to keep the ball rolling. Lots more controls of all types. More debt. More inflation. MMT is just going to be part of it. I don’t doubt they’ll try for a Constitutional Convention. It’s going to be a desperate situation, ending in a catastrophe. Not in the distant future but the near future. We’re on the cusp of the Greater Depression.

    I know I’ve been saying this for years. But the idea of America has gradually degraded since about the time of Teddy Roosevelt, and the original Progressives. Then faster with World War I, faster yet with the New Deal, faster yet with World War II, the Great Society, the Nixon devaluation, the Reagan deficits, the War on Drugs, the War on Terror.

    The only good news – and it’s super good news – is that science and technology have advanced as well. That’s maintained the general standard of living. Unfortunately, the State always gets first dibs on tech developments, and uses them against society. This long-term trend is now going hyperbolic. 

    The next big example of this is the Social Credit System being implemented in China. And soon everywhere else. It’s a pity that philosophy and morality have meanwhile only advanced at a snail’s pace. In fact, they’ve been going backward. It’s a very dangerous situation when we’re talking about nuclear, and even more advanced, weapons.

    The bottom line? You can practically plan your life around their grasping the straw of MMT.

    Justin: Doug, I know you object to MMT on moral grounds. But let’s face it. Most people don’t see monetary policy this way. They believe the Fed should play a role in guiding the economy, whether it’s through setting interest rates or adjusting the money supply.

    Could you tell me why MMT would be better or worse than the current economic framework that the Fed employs?

    Doug: Yes. Abolish the Fed, and the system of fractional reserve banking. Reduce the size of the U.S. government by about 90%. Default on the national debt, so that future generations of Americans aren’t made into serfs… there are a number of things.

    But the chances of a change in the long-term trend at this point are approximately zero. Put it this way: The chances are slim and none. And Slim’s out of town.

    Justin: Doug, proponents of MMT say it would work because of the U.S. dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency. Basically, they argue that the U.S. borrows in its own currency. Therefore, it can’t go bankrupt because it can just print more dollars when it needs to. What’s wrong with this thinking?

    Doug: The U.S. dollar isn’t going to remain king forever. It’s in the process of being dethroned as we speak.

    The Chinese, the Russians, and basically every other major economic power on the planet want to get rid of dollars. They realize dollars are the unbacked liability of a bankrupt government, even at this point. They don’t like having to use the dollar every time that they want to transfer assets. They don’t like the fact that everything they buy and sell in dollars has to be cleared through New York and is monitored by the U.S. government – their enemy. They understand how foolish it is to keep sending real goods to the U.S. in return for paper dollars, printed in unlimited amounts.

    I suspect the rest of the world – believe it or not – is going back to gold. Simply because a trustworthy money is needed. They don’t trust each other’s currencies any more than the dollar.

    At this point, the question from a practical point of view is, “What should you do with your money?”

    You should own a lot of physical gold and silver. Keep a lot of it outside your home country. At some point within the lifetime of most people reading this right now, the dollar will lose all its value. It’s really serious.

    Of course, I’ve been predicting gloom and doom for many years. It’s happened in slow motion, not an instantaneous catastrophe.

    We’ll see what happens as we enter the trailing edge of the storm. Likely later this year.

    Justin: Thanks for taking the time to speak with me today, Doug.

    Doug: You’re welcome.

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Mar 17

Today’s News 17th March 2019

  • Trump's Coup In Venezuela: What You're Not Being Told

    Authored by Jorge Martin via Venezuelanalysis.com,

    Washington is growing increasingly desperate as its coup efforts go further south in Venezuela…

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    The failure of the February 23 “humanitarian aid” provocation on the Venezuelan border was a serious blow for Trump’s ongoing coup attempt. There were mutual recriminations between self-appointed Guaidó, Colombian President Duque and US Vice-President Pence. The US could not get a consensus from its own Lima Cartel allies in favour of military intervention.

    The coup was losing momentum. Then, on March 7, just days after Guaidó’s anti-climactic return to Caracas, the country was plunged into a nationwide blackout from which it has not yet fully recovered. What caused it? How is it related to the “regime change” attempt? And, most importantly, what are imperialism’s plans and how can they be fought?

    February 23 was supposed to be the coup’s D-Day. The idea was never to actually deliver “humanitarian aid” into the country, but rather to create a “people’s power” moment, where large crowds of opposition supporters on both sides of the border defied the Venezuelan armed forces, which, when faced with a large crowd of peaceful demonstrators, would then switch sides and join Trump’s puppet, Juan Guaidó. On the day, however, things did not go according to Washington’s plan. The crowds of opposition supporters did not materialise in the expected numbers. “Aid” trucks did not cross the border and by the end of the day, Rubio, Abrams and Guaidó were left with egg all over their faces.

    They made a big story about “Maduro burning the aid trucks” at the Santander bridge on the Colombian border. US officials even insisted this justified military intervention under the Geneva Convention. Never mind the fact that the Convention only applies in cases of war, the fact is that the aid truck that was burned was set on fire by a “peaceful” opposition supporter throwing a molotov cocktail at the Venezuelan border guards. Several media outlets (teleSUR, RT) explained that this was the case right from the beginning and even produced video footage to prove it. That did not stop US officials like Marco Rubio and John Bolton from blaming Maduro and the chorus of the world’s bourgeois mass media from parroting the lie:

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    Now, two weeks too late, even the New York Times has been forced to admit that “one [Venezuelan government] claim that appears to be backed up by video footage is that the protesters started the fire.” The same NY Timesinvestigation also concludes that the Venezuelan government was right in saying the US and the opposition were lying about the trucks containing medicine: “the claim about a shipment of medicine, too, appears to be unsubstantiated, according to videos and interviews.”

    The admission by the NY Times, though it is unlikely to be covered as widely as the initial false reports, is very significant. We knew the US was lying, right from the beginning, as there was proof. Now it has been forced to admit it. This should provide a salutary lesson for the next time the US or its Venezuelan opposition make any outrageous claims about the “Maduro regime.” The lesson is: “question everything Washington and the mass media tell you about a government they want to overthrow.”

    That evening, as if on cue, the Venezuelan opposition social media operation started to explode with the hashtag #IntervencionMilitarYA (#MilitaryInterventionNOW), aimed at putting pressure on the US and its allies to launch a military intervention in the country. The campaign is very revealing as to the character of the opposition (pro-imperialist and traitors to their own country), but also as to the morale of their ranks (they do not think they are the agents of “change” but rather invest all their hopes in Trump).

    Having been defeated on February 23, the meeting of the Lima Group of countries in Bogotá the following morning was a further setback. Let us remember that the Lima Group (more accurately known as the “Lima Cartel”) is an ad-hoc group of countries created with the explicit aim of overthrowing the Venezuelan government when the US could not get enough votes at the Organisation of American States for its bellicose resolutions. Before the meeting even started, there were public statements by Chile, Brazil and Paraguay explicitly ruling out military intervention.

    The case of Brazil is noteworthy because there is a major split within Bolsonaro’s cabinet, and between him and the Armed Forces. Under pressure from the generals and his own vice-president, General Hamilton Mourão, the far-right president has been forced to retreat from several of his public statements, specifically, support for the transfer of the Brazilian embassy to Jerusalem and granting the US army access to a military base in Brazil. When the Lima Group decided in January to cut off all contact with the Venezuelan armed forces, the Brazilians kept communication lines open. The Brazilian army went as far as vetoing the presence of US soldiers in the border with Venezuela as part of the so-called “humanitarian aid” operation on 23 February.

    Contrary to the attitude of the Colombian state, which turned a blind eye and even helped the opposition rioters on the border with Venezuela, the Brazilians contained them and prevented clashes. The reason is not that the Brazilian generals are in any way progressive, nor that they stand by the principle of sovereignty, but rather they understand that any major conflict in Venezuela, including the possibility of a civil war, could have a major impact on Brazil, with which it shares a large and inhospitable border. The last thing the Brazilian generals want is accidentally getting sucked into a major armed conflict in Venezuela, which they know would not be a simple affair.

    Faced with such reluctance, the Bogotá meeting on 25 February ended with a statement that used strong words of condemnation and issued unspecified threats, but did not contain any serious commitment to the next steps in the “regime change” operation. The US announced the inclusion of a few more Venezuelan officials on their sanctions list, including four regional governors. Hardly the “military intervention now” that the opposition demanded.

    Media reports have talked of recriminations from Mike Pence (who had cut off his trip to South Korea to attend the meeting) to Guaidó. According to one report, Pence told Guaidó that “everything was failing in the offensive against the chavista regime, the biggest complaint was because of the continued loyalty of the armed forces to Maduro.” Apparently, Guaidó had promised the US that if they were to get “the main world leaders to recognise him… at least half of the high ranking officers would defect. It didn’t happen.” The other main criticism was regarding the Venezuelan opposition’s appraisal that Maduro’s “social base had disintegrated. The crisis revealed that support for the government has in fact diminished, but is not inexistent”.

    Of course, one should take such reports with a pinch of salt as sources are not quoted. However, the general frustration of the US with the Venezuelan coup is very real and makes this particular report plausible. Another reportin the Wall Street Journal talked of Chilean President Piñera and Colombian President Duque also being angry at Guaidó at the meeting:

    “The opposition had publicly sold the plan by promising that an outpouring of Venezuelans on both sides of the border would link up, Mr. Maduro’s security forces would back down and truckloads of aid would enter for hungry Venezuelans. ‘I think they built up expectations that weren’t carried out,’ said an opposition operative who was familiar with the discussions. ‘They built up that there was going to be more aid, that it would get in. And that the military would rise up. And it didn’t happen that way.’”

    The WSJ article is quite detailed:

    “‘As time passed, [Piñera] kept asking Guaidó where are the people who are coming from the other side?’ said the person. The responses weren’t satisfactory, he added. ‘Everything failed: coordination, information, organization,’ said a senior Latin American official.”

    The picture painted here is of an angry exchange in which all blamed Guaidó, when in reality Washington is responsible for the whole design of the coup. The US officials in charge of the coup were so frustrated that they started a completely ridiculous polemic against the media (CNN included), which had started to described Guaidó as “self-proclaimed” or “leader of the opposition” as opposed to giving him the title of “the interim president,” a title that Washington had worked so hard to create:

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    The hawks in Trump’s administration – Bolton, Pompeo and Abrams – made a series of fatal miscalculations.

    First, they assumed Maduro had no support whatsoever, underestimating the strength of anti-imperialist feeling in the face of a brazen US coup attempt, and the fact that, while support for Chavismo has diminished, it still managed to get over 30 percent of the census to vote for Maduro a year ago. Moreover, in the last few weeks, there has been a series of impressive, anti-imperialist mass rallies led by Diosdado Cabello in all states in the country.

    Second, they thought that the opposition was able to mobilise large numbers of people who are prepared to go all the way in an open clash with the government. In fact, the opposition ranks, having been betrayed by their own leaders in 2017 and defeated in their previous attempts in 2013 and 2014, are distrustful of the opposition leaders and sceptical about their own ability to remove the government they hate. They have put all their illusions and hopes in a US-led military intervention and that is a state of mind which can produce a large rally (for instance on January 23) but not a sustained mobilisation to overthrow Maduro.

    The failure of February 23 furthermore left Guaidó abroad, in Colombia. He thought he would come back victorious, at the head of a US convoy of “humanitarian aid,” but found himself having violated a court order not to leave the country and stranded in Bogotá. He started a short tour of Latin America, on board a Colombian plane, but soon the US called him to order. He discarded a plan to continue his tour in Europe and was told in no uncertain terms that he had to return to Venezuela as “he was losing momentum.”

    Again, Abrams, Bolton and Rubio attempted to build up Guaidó’s return as another D-Day, baiting Maduro to arrest him on arrival in order to build a casus belli for foreign intervention. It resulted in another flop. Guaidó returned on March 4, the assembled EU ambassadors received him at the airport and then he went to a rally in the east of Caracas… But to his disappointment and that of his minders in the US, he was not arrested (although he should have been arrested, there were plenty of reasons to do so).

    Blackout

    Then came the blackout. Starting on Thursday, March 7, just before 5pm, a major power failure affected 18 out of the country’s 23 states and the Capital District. In Caracas, the Metro stopped working and tens of thousands had to walk their way home, in the dark. After a few hours it became clear that this was a major incident and power would not be restored quickly. The government decreed Friday a national holiday.

    The country’s main electricity generator, the Simon Bolivar Hydroelectric plant, known as El Guri Dam, had crashed. El Guri produces about 80 percent of the country’s electricity and restoring it is a delicate operation. It is now more than four days since the initial incident and power is only slowly being restored in many parts of the country. Over the weekend, on several occasions, electricity was returned to different parts of the country, only to be switched off again.

    The situation is serious. The government decreed another holiday for March 11 and 12. Back-up electricity generators keep power supply to essential installations, like hospitals, but there are serious problems with public transport. Shops do not accept card payments and many have increased prices and resorted to only accepting payment in dollars. There are also problems with the water supply, telecommunications (phone and internet) are very intermittent, and food stored in fridges and freezers risks being lost, etc.

    The government has blamed the blackout on sabotage at El Guri and of course Washington and the opposition have been quick to reject such idea, blaming the power cut on a wildfire affecting the 765Kv power line between El Guri and the Malena substation. This would have brought down the power line and then in turn triggered a security stoppage at the El Guri Hydro plant. However, the opposition have produced no actual evidence of such a fire and the New York Times correspondent Anatoly Kurmanaev has rejected this hypothesis:

    The government’s claim is that there was a cyberattack against the system that controls the El Guri turbines and regulates power generation and supply down the 765KV line to Malena. The government has also declared that, when power was restored on Saturday, March 9, there was another such attack, and that these attacks have been carried out by US imperialism.

    For those tempted to dismiss these accusations as a “conspiracy theory,” let us look at the following facts. First, the US and the mass media blatantly lied about the burning of the “aid” truck just two weeks ago. Furthermore, what credibility has Marco Rubio got? On March 10, he tweeted there had been an explosion at a “German Dam,” when in reality a Venezuelan opposition journalist by the name of Germán Dam had reported an explosion at a power substation.

    In an even more callous twist, Rubio “reported” 80 babies having died at a hospital in Maracaibo due to the blackout, only to be corrected by the chief of the Wall Street Journal South America Bureau: the hospital had recorded no neonatal deaths. None. Zero. Ninguna. Why should we believe anythingthese people say?

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    Secondly, such an attack is possible and has been carried out before, even on Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition systems that are not online. For those interested, just look up the US-and-Israeli-made Stuxnet virus, which was used to attack Iran’s nuclear power programme in 2010. That virus specifically attacked Siemens control systems, like many of those that run the El Guri turbines. An article in Forbes by a specialist admits:

    “In the case of Venezuela, the idea of a government like the United States remotely interfering with its power grid is actually quite realistic… Given the U.S. government’s longstanding concern with Venezuela’s government, it is likely that the U.S. already maintains a deep presence within the country’s national infrastructure grid, making it relatively straightforward to interfere with grid operations. The country’s outdated internet and power infrastructure present few formidable challenges to such operations and make it relatively easy to remove any traces of foreign intervention. Widespread power and connectivity outages like the one Venezuela experienced last week are also straight from the modern cyber playbook” [my emphasis].

    While the article in the end says a different scenario is highly likely, it nevertheless highlights “the inability to definitively discount U.S. or other foreign intervention.”

    Third, there is the matter of timing. The coup was stalling. Guaidó had returned to the country but was clearly losing momentum. What better time to implement a major attack on the electricity grid, to demonstrate that the government is not in control, turn the population against the government and further intensify the propaganda about “humanitarian crisis” and “chaos”? Minutes after the outage was reported, Rubio, Bolton and Guaidó were already furiously and callously tweeting blame for the government and almost gloating at peoples’ suffering. The blackout has also taken place just days before the arrival of the EU International Contact Group mission which is to investigate in situ whether there is a “humanitarian crisis” or not. How convenient!

    Of course, to any explanation of the blackout, its severity and its prolonged nature, we must add several other factors.

    One is the fact that the Venezuelan grid has been starved of investment and maintenance for several years, something the left wing of the Bolivarian movement has discussed openly. The US is quick to point out this as the main cause, forgetting that sanctions have prevented the country from re-negotiating its foreign debt, which has sucked in an increasing amount of the country’s foreign reserves. We must add that the Maduro government has chosen to pay the foreign debt and hand over preferential dollars to the capitalists rather than use these reserves differently. This means that sabotage is taking place in a system that has already been weakened and therefore can be more easily damaged.

    Another is the fact that thousands of workers have left their jobs in the industry as a result of the economic crisis which has destroyed completely the purchasing power of wages. The first to leave were the more experienced and highly skilled, precisely those who will be needed most now when it comes to bringing back a very delicate and finely tuned system. This process of abandonment was aggravated after the last currency conversion in August 2018, when the government destroyed collective bargaining and wage differentials in the public sector.

    A third is that some of these problems would have been alleviated, or perhaps prevented, had the workers in the industry maintained the levels of workers’ control introduced during the Chavez government. Let us not forget that electricity workers at one point were at the forefront of the struggle for workers’ control, which was undone by the bureaucracy.

    Finally, the more recent US sanctions on PDVSA have prevented Venezuela from importing and producing the fuel needed for the thermoelectric plants that should have provided a back up when El Guri Hydro went down.

    What next for imperialism?

    The situation in Venezuela depends greatly on factors that are developing behind the scenes. It is impossible to say what is actually happening in the military barracks and in the officers’ quarters. The whole policy of US imperialism is designed to put pressure on them, by making the situation in the country unbearable, so that the generals perhaps draw the conclusion that their interests might be best served by removing Maduro from power. This is achieved by sanctions designed to hurt the economy. The latest development on this front are the threats issued by Bolton and Abrams to punish, not only US companies trading with PDVSA or the Venezuelan government, but also financial institutions in third countries. The aim is clear: to completely strangle the Venezuelan economy until it chokes the government into giving up. This is a criminal policy that is hurting the poor and workers of Venezuela first and foremost, completely discrediting the idea that Washington is at all concerned about an alleged “humanitarian crisis.”

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    As we have argued before, this ongoing imperialist coup attempt can only be fought back with revolutionary measures, striking blows against the coup plotters at home and their puppet masters abroad. (Flickr/The White House)

    As for the possibility of military intervention, it is clear that the US would like Latin American countries to front it, but there is no appetite in the Lima Group for military adventures, which can prove costly and damaging. That leaves the US with very few options, the main one being to increase the pressure, through sanctions, sabotage, provocations, etc. This much was admitted by Elliot Abrams in a conversation with two Russian pranksterswhen he thought he was talking to the Swiss president. He said: “We think it is a mistake tactically to give them endless reassurances that there will never be American military action. But I can tell you this is not what we are doing. What we are doing is exactly what you see, financial pressure, economic pressure, diplomatic pressure.”

    To this we have to add the ideas likely harboured by some in the US administration about the creation of a “Free Venezuelan Army” and their “president” getting control of some territory (preferably close to the border, perhaps in Tachira), in a repeat of operations used in Syria and Libya. An article in Bloomberg has revealed that renegade Venezuelan former general Cliver Alcalá had a group of 200 armed men in Colombia ready to cross the border on 23 February, but he was stopped by the Colombians. Rubio has also played up the issue of military defectors and Guaidó met with a group of them in Cúcuta, praising them for “defecting” and warning that “we will have to cross back”.

    There is also a sense of urgency for the likes of Bolton, Pompeo, Abrams and Rubio. They hoped for a quick resolution in this push for “regime change” back in January, but they failed. They probably calculate that they need a resolution well before the 2020 election in the US. Frustration and impatience only make them more dangerous and ready to deploy tricks they have not yet used.

    As we have argued before, this ongoing imperialist coup attempt can only be fought back with revolutionary measures, striking blows against the coup plotters at home and their puppet masters abroad. That means arresting them and putting them on trial. Expropriating the coup-plotting oligarchy as well as the multinationals. Above all, the revolutionary organisation of the people from below needs to be strengthened by arming and developing the militias in every working-class neighbourhood, introducing workers control in all factories and workplaces and generally unleashing the revolutionary initiative of the masses.

    Internationally, we need to continue and strengthen the campaign against our own imperialist governments in the US, the EU and the Lima Group countries, all of whom are, to one degree or another involved in this reactionary plot.

  • Families Are Crossing Southern U.S. Border In Record Numbers

    Undocumented immigrants travelling in family units have been crossing the Southern U.S. border in record numbers, as inferred to by arrest counts from Customs and Border Protection. 

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    In February 2019, more than 36,000 people were apprehended while trying to cross the border with their families, exceeding the number of other apprehended people by almost 6,000. As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz notes, the number of families arrested has pushed total border apprehensions to an 11-year high in February.

    The number of immigrants apprehended with their family in fiscal year 2019 so far (October-February) has also exceeded the record for most family apprehensions in a whole year, set in FY2018.

    Infographic: Families are Crossing Southern U.S. Border in Record Numbers | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    Recently, more immigrants that are coming across the Southern U.S. border have travelled from countries in Central America, like Honduras, Guatemala or El Salvador, while undocumented immigrants from Mexico remain the largest group. These migrants often claim asylum because of political turmoil in their home countries. Family units have been travelling as part of larger groups of up to 100 people, which have been branded as “migrant caravans” by different media outlets.

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    Customs and Border Protection said they had apprehended groups of 100 or more people on 53 occasions since October on the U.S.-Mexico border.

  • Social Media, Universal Basic Income, & Cashless Society: How China's Social Credit System Is Coming To America

    Authored by Brandon Turbeville via The Organic Prepper blog,

    Some well-informed Americans may be aware of China’s horrifying “Social Credit System” that was recently unveiled as a method of eradicating any dissent in the totalitarian state. Essentially freezing out anyone who does not conform to the state’s version of the ideal citizen, the SCS is perhaps the most frightening control system being rolled out today. That is, until you consider what is coming next.

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    Unbeknownst to most people, there appears to be a real attempt to create a system in which all citizens are rationed their “wages” digitally each month in place of a paycheck, including the ability to gain or lose money. This system would see any form of dissent resulting in the cut off of those credits and the ability to work, eat, or even exist in society. It would not only be the end of dissent but of any semblance of real individuality.

    Here’s how the Social Credit System operates in China.

    First, however, for those who are unaware of the Social Credit System as it operates in China, we should briefly describe just what has taken place there. The Social Credit System in China isn’t merely a punishment for criticizing the state as is the case in most totalitarian regimes, the SCS can bring the hammer down for even the slightest infraction such as smoking in a non-smoking zone.

    One summary of the SCS can be found in Business Insider’s article by Alexandra Ma entitled “China has started ranking citizens with a creepy ‘social credit’ system — here’s what you can do wrong, and the embarrassing, demeaning ways they can punish you,” where Ma writes,

    The Chinese state is setting up a vast ranking system that will monitor the behavior of its enormous population, and rank them all based on their “social credit.”

    The “social credit system,” first announced in 2014, aims to reinforce the idea that “keeping trust is glorious and breaking trust is disgraceful,” according to a government document.

    The program is due to be fully operational nationwide by 2020, but is being piloted for millions of people across the country already. The scheme will be mandatory.

    At the moment the system is piecemeal — some are run by city councils, others are scored by private tech platforms which hold personal data.

    Like private credit scores, a person’s social score can move up and down depending on their behavior. The exact methodology is a secret — but examples of infractions include bad driving, smoking in non-smoking zones, buying too many video games and posting fake news online. (source)

    The article points out that violating the “social code,” can result in being banned from flying or using the train, using the internet, decent schooling, getting a job, staying in hotels, and having your pet taken away. China is also taking advantage of the mob mentality by branding violators as “bad citizens.”

    Almost everyone one of these “punishments” have already taken place in China as of the writing of this article and the country has announced its plans to have the system fully in place and functioning by 2020.

    The most frightening part? That system is coming HERE. Soon.

    While most Americans have scarcely noticed their descent into a police state, they are quick to dismiss the idea that such a system could be implemented in the land they still perceive to be free. However, all the moving parts are in place in the United States. They only need to come together to form the Social Credit System here.

    And they are coming together.

    Social media is one important method of judging “social scores.” This is mainly because of the willful posting of social media users on virtually every aspect of their lives. This data is extremely useful to governments who monitor and store the information acquired freely by users who give away the most personal and intimate details of their lives and do so without charge.

    Whether it is political opinions, pictures of yourself and your food, or private conversations over Messenger, that data is being sent directly to the corporation and respective governments then have access to that data via a variety of means and they put that data to good use.

    But despite the fact that social media acts as a giant web, snatching users information and acting as a useful tool of NGOs and governments in engineering social movements and human behavior, major social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter have become ubiquitous and common. They are nearly as essential communication tools for the 21st Century as telephones were for the 20th.

    The Social Credit System goes along with the dark side of social media.

    This is also despite the fact that social media has been proven to make its users depressed, angry, and less social. Much like any other drug, however, social media is addictive, causing real-world loss of quality of life while the user simply cannot tear himself away even when he knows it is best for him to do so. For that reason, it appears social media, whatever platform it may take, is here to stay. It’s also an important part of the structure of the coming technological control grid.

    But beyond the negative effects social media has on the mind of the individual or in the creation of top-down social movements, the “internet mob mentality” has now become a fact of American life. Any celebrity, business owner, or just a regular person can be subject to digital flash mobbing simply as a result of a 2-second picture ( see the MAGA hat kids or the Chipotle girl, for instance) where a person’s reputation is destroyed, their job/business is lost, or their career is over as a result of virtue signaling and “outrage” by masses of people on the internet who are simply following what they believe the rest of the herd is doing. We are in the age of digital lynchings. It doesn’t matter whether the victim was truly wrong. What matters is that he/she is punished as harshly as possible.

    The Social Credit System goes along with the move to a cashless society.

    And then we must address the coming cashless society. Indeed, we already live in a world that is replacing cash with digital currency. In some cases, the move to become cashless is made by social engineering and predatory marketing to convenience. In others, such as India, the cashless society has been brought forward by law.

    As I have written in many articles in the past, cashless programs are almost always first introduced under the guise of convenience. Then, as more and more people take the bait, the older methods of payment are seen as cumbersome and, eventually, are phased out completely. Mandates then replace what was once a personal choice.

    Yet, what is so ironic about these programs is that, while the program is touted as providing so much more convenience, even when putting privacy and Cashless Society issues aside and, with the program running at its optimum, they aren’t often really much more convenient.

    But that doesn’t stop the rollouts and it certainly doesn’t stop the mandates. It’s as if people believe that masses of scientists, corporations, and DARPA are putting their noses to the grindstone for their convenience and not some other purpose. Do we really believe that those organizations have, as their top priority, our health, freedom, convenience, or happiness? Do we really believe this or do we just not think about it at all?

    Regardless, with the disappearance of cash also goes the ability to live outside the mandates of the State which has always been the goal of moving toward a cashless system. The United States is rapidly approaching the phase out of cash as a means of exchange. Don’t believe it? Just go to your local convenience store with a $100 dollar bill.

    Enter the Universal Basic Income scheme.

    Then there’s Universal Basic Income. The UBI has been tossed around as a legitimate solution to poverty and violation of workers’ rights for some time. It’s an old idea and even establishment philosophers/activists like Bertrand Russell espoused it in the early 20th Century. But while economists debate the idea’s success in regards to those two issues, no one seems to notice how the UBI, taken in concert with cashless society and social media addiction, will coalesce to produce just the world mentioned at the beginning of this article.

    Without getting into the details of why a UBI is a bad idea in terms of society and economics, it is still useful to point out that the building blocks of the technological control grid are already in place and, with a UBI, those building blocks form a rather solid foundation.

    Here’s how the Social Credit System is already being used in America.

    With the ubiquitous presence of social media and the current culture of social media outrage, the social credit scheme is already in place. The State only needs to implement a coherent strategy that is no doubt itself already in place and merely waiting to be rolled out. Already, employers are able to check prospective employees’ credit scores on a condition of hiring and many now require social media passwords for the same reason. The SCS is right around the corner.

    Pair the SCS with the UBI, however, and you can easily see how the SCS can be the litmus test for whether or not you receive your “benefits.” This means that, in the very near future, we will see someone who dares say something politically incorrect, makes a bad financial decision, or drinks before 10 am, literally frozen out of society.

    If the government (or some private corporation) is in charge of doling out your “benefits” and the government/corporation is in charge of rating your social credit, what do we think is going to happen to violators? Already, governments are cutting social safety net payments to individuals who do not meet what those governments deem to be “acceptable” healthcare decisions. Similar schemes are in place where recipients are drug tested as part of the requirement for receiving “benefits.”

    This is how society progresses into totalitarianism, by the way.

    There are no doubt some readers of this article who were horrified at the society described within it but who then reached the paragraph above and justified the methods currently used against “welfare families.” The truth is that those readers are just another step in bringing this system about.

    Now a younger generation is being used for the same purposes, manipulated by social engineers and reinforced by the generation before them, of bringing in the technological control grid, one giant leap at a time.

    Of course, many people who read dire predictions such as these may be tempted to laugh at the idea that such a system could be implemented in the United States, one thing is for sure – the Chinese aren’t laughing. And we shouldn’t be either.

  • 10,000 Legal California Marijuana Growers In Jeopardy As State Faces Pot "Extinction Event"

    The cannabis industry in California could be heading for an “extinction event” if a new law granting extensions on temporary licenses doesn’t pass, according to a Sacramento Bee article. This would (obviously) contrast with the optimistic outlook for the potential multibillion industry that has been so widely reported on and followed over the last few years, as the rest of the nation watches California for cues on marijuana legislation.

    California lawmakers are on the hook to pass Senate Bill 67, designed to grant about 10,000 marijuana growers extensions to their licenses in the coming months. The bill has been sponsored by Sen. Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg.

    McGuire recently said in a hearing:

    “The bottom line is this: This bill is going to protect thousands of cannabis farmers, in particular, who did the right thing and applied for a state license after the passage of Prop. 64 but their temporary license is about to expire.”

    As a result of Proposition 64, California regulatory agencies were allowed to grant cannabis businesses a temporary license that was good for 120 days, and that would be eligible for a 90 day extension. A temporary license holder also had the option to apply for a one-year provisional license, in the event of unanticipated delays in becoming compliant with the California Environmental Quality Act.

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    The point was to allow growers to work while working on applying for their permanent license. But this has contrasted with the state’s (lack of) action, which has only granted “just a handful” of provisional and annual licenses. Only 52 full annual licenses have been issued out of more than 6900 applications that were sent to the California Department of Farm and Agriculture.

    Many of the temporary licenses are already starting to expire and the deadline to apply for an extension, December 31, 2018, has already passed. This means that state law needs to change, otherwise these temporary license holders will technically wind up operating illegally again.

    The new proposed legislation will grant a one-year extension to the deadline, pushing it to December 31, 2019.

    McGuire continued:

     “This is the worst way to transition a multibillion-dollar agricultural crop, which employs thousands of Californians. Without legal licenses, there isn’t a legal, regulated market in California. In a time where the Golden State is working overtime to bring the cannabis industry out of the black market and into the light of a legal regulatory environment. We can’t afford to let good actors who want to comply with state law fall out of our regulated market just because timelines are too short and departments have been unable to process applications in time due to the sheer number of applications.”

    Jackie McGowan, whose firm K Street Consulting represents the cannabis industry in California, said: 

    “We’ve named these ‘extinction events. This bill is a bill that the industry is very anxious to see passed.”

    Terra Carver, executive director for the Humboldt County Growers Alliance commented:

    “If nothing is done, there will be dire consequences such as imminent market collapse of hundreds of businesses in the region and through the state.”

  • Researcher Warns: Algos Are "Using And Even Controlling Us!"

    Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

    One researcher is warning everyone that  “we are setting ourselves up for technological domination.” Dionysios Demetis warned that algorithms are “using and even controlling” human beings.

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    Humans are surrounded by algorithms and one researcher is not all that thrilled about the future prospects of technology and its grip on humanity. 

    “Our exploration led us to the conclusion that, over time, the roles of information technology and humans have been reversed,” Demetis, a professor at the Center for Systems Studies at Hull University in Yorkshire England, wrote in an essay for The Conversation. 

    “In the past, we humans used technology as a tool. Now, technology has advanced to the point where it is using and even controlling us.”

    This is not the first time Demetis has tried to warn humanity of the problems with advanced technology either. Demetis built on a paper he published last year with Allen Lee, a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, in the Journal of the Association for Information Systems. The researcher also contends that we are in fact “deeply affected by them in unpredictable ways,” and humans made it that way. 

     “We have progressively restricted our own decision-making capacity and allowed algorithms to take over.”

    Demetis says that the worst case scenario would be a complete takeover of machines and artificial intelligence.  Already, most of the trading in foreign exchange markets is determined by algorithms that call the shots within tiny fractions of a second as opposes to humans, who are now seen as an “impediment.”

     “The people running the trading system had come to see human decisions as an obstacle to market efficiency,” Demetis wrote. Lawyers are also being replaced by artificial intelligence and some recruiters have an over-reliance on third-party tools to “weed out bad candidates.”

    This can set up humanity for a bleak and dystopian future where we will have no control over anything – machines will make all of our decisions for us.  “We need to decide, while we still can, what this means for us both as individuals and as a society.”

  • Housing Slump: Foreclosure Activity Jumps In Austin, Miami, San Diego, And Seattle

    ATTOM Data Solutions noticed that 60 of the 220 major U.S. metropolitan areas posted a y/y increase in foreclosure activity in January 2019, an ominous sign of deceleration in the housing market. 

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    According to the report, the hardest hit areas in January include Orlando, Florida (up 72% y/y); Austin, Texas (up 60% y/y); Miami, Florida (up 41% y/y); San Diego, California (up 12% y/y); and Seattle, Washington (up 10% y/y). 

    Across the U.S., a total of 29,382 U.S. properties started foreclosure proceedings in January, up more than 4% from the previous month and 2% from January 2018. January marked the second consecutive month with a y/y increase in foreclosure starts.

    More than two dozen states including Washington, D.C. posted annual increases in foreclosure starts. States with the highest activity include Florida (up 91% y/y); Texas (up 50% y/y); Washington (up 41% y/y); Hawaii (up 31% y/y); and Arizona (up 28% y/y).

    Mortgage companies repossessed 12,228 homes through foreclosure (REO) in January 2019, up 18% from the previous month but down 54% from 2018. The report notes that repossessions have moved higher for the third consecutive month with an overall y/y decrease. 

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    Zerohedge readers have been well informed on recent housing market gyrations that could undoubtedly make 2019 one of the worst years for real estate in quite some time. Homeowners are struggling to sell their homes as inventory floods that market – forcing prices lower amid higher mortgage rates. Housing affordability continues to plague millions who have been priced out of starter homes. All this comes as the U.S. is expected to rapidly slow as recession fears soar. 

  • A College "Education" Has Little To Do With Education

    Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

    An old friend of mine, who taught political science for 25 years at the University of Colorado, was known to tell his students that the real reason they were there was to marry people from the right social class.

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    While perhaps a little overly cynical, this assessment certainly wasn’t totally wrong. Few parents have ever been overly concerned with the supposed education their children receive at a University like CU. The real concern has primarily been the receipt of a degree from a respectable – although not “elite” in the case of CU – university. And, whether they are consciously aware of it or not, an additional benefit has been to ensure that little Susie and little Johnny also become accustomed to the social mores and habits of a certain socio-economic class.

    Even if Susie doesn’t meet a doctor at college, it’s still best to send Susie to a place where she learns to socialize and interact with the sorts of people who will eventually become doctors and engineers and successful business people. When one is finished with his or her “education,” one has a nice degree to show for it, plus a social circle comprised of  presumably soon-to-be-successful people.

    So, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that it turns out rich Hollywood actors with intellectually and academically mediocre children have become obsessed with getting their children into high-status colleges. They employ bribes and fake test scores to purchase what they’ve always been able to purchase otherwise: a stylish consumer product, which is essentially all a college degree is for most people.

    In a certain way, one has to admire these corrupt, cheating parents because they are too savvy to buy the nonsense that the higher education industry has been peddling for decades.

    As ridiculous as it sounds, there are still people in higher education who spout quaint theories about “liberal education” and how college is a time for self-reflection and becoming “immersed in the great books of the Western Tradition,” and so on.

    There is surely a tiny minority of college students who actually believe this — many of whom grow up to become professional students and college faculty — but college has long been largely about certification.

    While universities were founded in the Christendom of the middle ages with some lofty goals, the vast majority of families who sent their young people to universities didn’t share these goals. They sent their children to universities to attain degrees in subjects like canon law which afforded to the family greater social status and perhaps a coveted job in church or secular government.

    Yes, actually teaching certain skills has been important some of the time. Many of today’s oldest and most venerated universities, for example, were founded to train clergymen. Harvard University, after all, was created to deal with the problem of “an illiterate ministry,” was was thought to be all too common in colonial America. But by the nineteenth century, American universities had been converted to a broader model of education in which specific skills became less important, and the attainment of a degree became more important.

    Over time, training in other professions, such as secular legal studies, became important goals for colleges and universities, largely because the middle classes saw this sort of training as a ticket to prosperity.  Rarely was a college education sold to the middle classes as an exercise in intellectual self improvement or gaining an appreciation of Virgil and Dante. But even then, the educational aspects of a college “education” weren’t the most important part of the experience. Training could often be attained on-the-job in law as in other professions. The college degree, on the other hand, was valuable because it communicated a certain elite status.

    And this is what the middle classes really wanted most. After all, it’s hard to imagine an 1830s middle-class family patriarch, slaving away at the family shipping business, and scraping together tuition money for junior just so he can go have deep thoughts about the implications of the Peloponnesian War.

    On the other hand, there’s no doubt that the upper classes could afford more navel-gazing. Indeed, by the mid nineteenth century, American universities had adopted the ideas of the upper classes from England decades before: that universities are there to prepare members of the elite for “leadership” and “service” by making them broad-minded intellectuals.

    That, however, was never more than a boutique sort of education for the sons of the already-established elites.

    But if that vision of higher education ever reflected reality, it certainly doesn’t now. The idea that students go to college to attain a broad and liberal view of humanity and human history appears almost laughable today. Outside of the college programs that provide real professionally-relevant job skills, such as in engineering and computer science, a college education offers little more than daily recapitulation in learning the ideological views of today’s intellectual class. Outside a narrow worldview shared by a tiny elite of humanities and social science professors, very little is taught at all.

    Wealthy Hollywood types, being relentless and cynical social climbers, likely figured this out years ago. So they’ve now zeroed in on getting out of college all that college has to offer to someone who doesn’t have the intellectual chops to major in electrical engineering: a piece of paper that helps sustain membership in elite social circles.

  • NZ Threatens 10 Years In Prison For 'Possessing' Mosque Shooting Video; Web Hosts Warned, 'Dissenter' Banned

    New Zealand authorities have reminded citizens that they face up to 10 years in prison for “knowingly” possessing a copy of the New Zealand mosque shooting video – and up to 14 years in prison for sharing it. Corporations (such as web hosts) face an additional $200,000 ($137,000 US) fine under the same law. 

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    Terrorist Brenton Tarrant used Facebook Live to broadcast the first 17 minutes of his attack on the Al Noor Mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand at approximately 1:40 p.m. on Friday – the first of two mosque attacks which left 50 dead and 50 injured. 

    Copies of Tarrant’s livestream, along with his lengthy manifesto, began to rapidly circulate on various file hosting sites following the attack, which as we noted Friday – were quickly scrubbed from mainstream platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Scribd. YouTube has gone so far as to intentionally disable search filters so that people cannot find Christchurch shooting materials – including footage of suspected multiple shooters as well as the arrest of Tarrant and other suspects. 

    On Saturday, journalist Nick Monroe reported that New Zealand police have warned citizens that they face imprisonment for distributing the video, while popular New Zealand Facebook group Wellington Live notes that “NZ police would like to remind the public that it is an offence to share an objectional publication which includes the horrific video from yesterday’s attack. If you see this video, report it immediately. Do not download it. Do not share it. If you are found to have a copy of the video or to have shared it, you face fines & potential imprisonment.“

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    Dissenter blocked in New Zealand

    Along with the censorship of online materials and investigation of content sharing platforms such as BitChute and 8chan – where the shooter posted a link to the livestream of his attack, social discussion service Dissenter has been blocked in New Zealand. Created by the people behind Twitter competitor Gab.ai – Dissenter is a browser extension which pops up a third-party comments section for any website where people can discuss content outside of the control of the website owner. 

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    On Saturday, Gab’s official accounts (@gab and @getongab) reported that “New Zealand ISPs have banned dissenter.com until it is “censorship compliant.””

    Update: Shortly after this article published, we were informed that ZeroHedge is unable to be reached by Votafone customers.

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    Milo banned

    Meanwhile, far-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos was banned from Australia in the wake of the New Zealand shootings after he said on Facebook that attacks like Christchurch happen because “the establishment panders to and mollycoddles extremist leftism and barbaric, alien religious cultures.”

    Australia’s immigration minister, David Coleman, said in a Saturday statement that Yiannopoulos’s comments were “appalling and forment hatred and division,” adding “Milo Yiannopoulos will not be allowed to enter Australia for his proposed tour this year.” 

    UK man arrested

    While the Christchurch attacks were utterly reprehensible, supporting them is now punishable in the United Kingdom. On Saturday afternoon, a 24-year-old man from Oldham was arrested on suspicion of sending malicious communications in support of the mosque attacks. It is unclear what he is alleged to have written. 

    The Greater Manchester Police said in a statement that they “became aware of a post on social media making reference and support for the terrible events in New Zealand,” adding “Police have made urgent enquiries and a man aged 24 from the Oldham area is now under arrest on suspicion of sending malicious communications.”

    “It is clear that people are worried and we really understand that… It is truly terrible what happened yesterday. It is hard to put into any form of words,” said Assistant Chief Constable Russ Jackson, who added “We have nothing to suggest any threat locally, but none of this can diminish how people feel and that is why we want to be there to offer more support at this difficult time.”

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  • Firearms Registration Act Introduced In Pennsylvania

    Authored by John Crump via AmmoLand.com,

    A new bill introduced in Pennsylvania would establish a gun registry within the state.

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    HB0768 is known as the Firearms Registration Act. The Democrats that introduced the bill were Mary Louise Isaacson (D), Angel Cruz (D), and Mary Jo Daley (D). Last Friday, the General Assembly referred the bill to the committee on judiciary.

    The bill would require gun owners in the Keystone State to register their firearms with the Pennsylvania State Police. Owners would have to provide the police with the make, model, and the serial numbers of all their guns.

    Along with the application that the gun owner must swear to under oath, the gun owner would have to submit fingerprints, two photographs that are no older than 30 days and go through a background check for each firearm that they own. This background check is the same one that they must go through to purchase a gun.

    In addition to this requirement, they must also provide the Pennsylvania State Police with their home and work address, telephone number, social security number, date of birth, age, sex, and citizenship. This requirement is more information than a person needs to vote.

    If the State Police rejects the person’s application, then they will have ten days to appeal the decision. The owner must turn their firearms into the State Police within three days of receiving notification of the rejection. If a person does not appeal the decision within ten days, their right is forfeit.

    A gun owner cannot transfer any unregistered firearm. Anyone caught with an unregistered gun is guilty of a crime even if they are unaware of the firearm registration status. Also just holding an unregistered firearm at a range is a crime.

    The gun owner must keep all firearms unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock. If a firearms owner doesn’t secure their firearm that way, they would be guilty of a crime. This rule even applies to homes with no children.

    The gun owner has 48 hours to update the State Police if they change jobs, phone numbers, addresses, or anything else on the application. If they do not update the State Police, then they could be prosecuted for violating the law.

    The certificate which will cost $10 per firearm will expire after one year. The gun owner would have to start the process over again to renew their certification. This process must be done 60 days before the certificate expires. The procedure can get confusing for gun owners with large collections.

    The bill makes no mention of how the state will enforce the law.

    Other states that have tried gun registration and bans have seen limited success. New Jersey has had zero magazines turned in since their magazine ban went into effect.

    New York saw nearly one million firearms owners defy the state law to register their “assault weapons.” The same thing played out in Connecticut when only 50,000 out of 350,000 registered their semi-automatic rifles.

    Expanding a registry to all firearms will be impossible to enforce without conducting door to door searches of houses. It is unclear how these Democrats plan to deal with this reality.

    None of the bill’s sponsor responded to our request for comment.

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Mar 16

Today’s News 16th March 2019

  • Pity The Nation: War Spending Is Bankrupting America

    Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

    “Pity the nation whose people are sheep

    And whose shepherds mislead them

    Pity the nation whose leaders are liars

    Whose sages are silenced

    And whose bigots haunt the airwaves

    Pity the nation that raises not its voice

    Except to praise conquerors

    And acclaim the bully as hero

    And aims to rule the world

    By force and by torture…

    Pity the nation oh pity the people

    who allow their rights to erode

    and their freedoms to be washed away…”

    —Lawrence Ferlinghetti, poet

    War spending is bankrupting America.

    Our nation is being preyed upon by a military industrial complex that is propped up by war profiteers, corrupt politicians and foreign governments.

    America has so much to offer—creativity, ingenuity, vast natural resources, a rich heritage, a beautifully diverse populace, a freedom foundation unrivaled anywhere in the world, and opportunities galore—and yet our birthright is being sold out from under us so that power-hungry politicians, greedy military contractors, and bloodthirsty war hawks can make a hefty profit at our expense.

    Don’t be fooled into thinking that your hard-earned tax dollars are being used for national security and urgent military needs.

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    It’s all a ruse.

    You know what happens to tax dollars that are left over at the end of the government’s fiscal year? Government agencies—including the Department of Defense—go on a “use it or lose it” spending spree so they can justify asking for money in the next fiscal year.

    We’re not talking chump change, either.

    We’re talking $97 billion worth of wasteful spending.

    According to an investigative report by Open the Government, among the items purchased during the last month of the fiscal year when government agencies go all out to get rid of these “use it or lose it” funds: Wexford Leather club chair ($9,241), china tableware ($53,004), alcohol ($308,994), golf carts ($673,471), musical equipment including pianos, tubas, and trombones ($1.7 million), lobster tail and crab ($4.6 million), iPhones and iPads ($7.7 million), and workout and recreation equipment ($9.8 million).

    So much for draining the swamp.

    Anyone who suggests that the military needs more money is either criminally clueless or equally corrupt, because the military isn’t suffering from lack of funding—it’s suffering from lack of proper oversight.

    Where President Trump fits into that scenario, you decide.

    Trump may turn out to be, as policy analyst Stan Collender warned, “the biggest deficit- and debt-increasing president of all time.”

    Rest assured, however, that if Trump gets his way—to the tune of a $4.7 trillion budget that digs the nation deeper in debt to foreign creditors, adds $750 billion for the military budget, and doubles the debt growththat Trump once promised to erase—the war profiteers (and foreign banks who “own” our debt) will be raking in a fortune while America goes belly up.

    This is basic math, and the numbers just don’t add up.

    As it now stands, the U.S. government is operating in the negative on every front: it’s spending far more than what it makes (and takes from the American taxpayers) and it is borrowing heavily (from foreign governments and Social Security) to keep the government operating and keep funding its endless wars abroad.

    Certainly, nothing about the way the government budgets its funds puts America’s needs first.

    The nation’s educational system is pathetic (young people are learning nothing about their freedoms or their government). The infrastructure is antiquated and growing more outdated by the day. The health system is overpriced and inaccessible to those who need it most. The supposedly robust economy is belied by the daily reports of businesses shuttering storefronts and declaring bankruptcy. And our so-called representative government is a sham.

    If this is a formula for making America great again, it’s not working.

    The White House wants taxpayers to accept that the only way to reduce the nation’s ballooning deficit is by cutting “entitlement” programs such as Social Security and Medicare, yet the glaring economic truth is that at the end of the day, it’s the military industrial complex—and not the sick, the elderly or the poor—that is pushing America towards bankruptcy.

    We have become a debtor nation, and the government is sinking us deeper into debt with every passing day that it allows the military industrial complex to call the shots.

    Simply put, the government cannot afford to maintain its over-extended military empire.

    “Money is the new 800-pound gorilla,” remarked a senior administration official involved in Afghanistan. “It shifts the debate from ‘Is the strategy working?’ to ‘Can we afford this?’ And when you view it that way, the scope of the mission that we have now is far, far less defensible.” Or as one commentator noted, “Foreclosing the future of our country should not be confused with defending it.”

    To be clear, the U.S government’s defense spending is about one thing and one thing only: establishing and maintaining a global military empire.

    Although the U.S. constitutes only 5% of the world’s population, America boasts almost 50% of the world’s total military expenditure, spending more on the military than the next 19 biggest spending nations combined.

    In fact, the Pentagon spends more on war than all 50 states combined spend on health, education, welfare, and safety.

    The American military-industrial complex has erected an empire unsurpassed in history in its breadth and scope, one dedicated to conducting perpetual warfare throughout the earth.

    Since 2001, the U.S. government has spent more than $4.7 trillion waging its endless wars.

    Having been co-opted by greedy defense contractors, corrupt politicians and incompetent government officials, America’s expanding military empire is bleeding the country dry at a rate of more than $32 million per hour.

    In fact, the U.S. government has spent more money every five seconds in Iraq than the average American earns in a year.

    Then there’s the cost of maintaining and staffing the 1000-plus U.S. military bases spread around the worldand policing the globe with 1.3 million U.S. troops stationed in 177 countries (over 70% of the countries worldwide).

    Future wars and military exercises waged around the globe are expected to push the total bill upwards of $12 trillion by 2053.

    The U.S. government is spending money it doesn’t have on a military empire it can’t afford.

    As investigative journalist Uri Friedman puts it, for more than 15 years now, the United States has been fighting terrorism with a credit card, “essentially bankrolling the wars with debt, in the form of purchases of U.S. Treasury bonds by U.S.-based entities like pension funds and state and local governments, and by countries like China and Japan.”

    War is not cheap, but it becomes outrageously costly when you factor in government incompetence, fraud, and greedy contractors.

    As The Nation reports:

    For decades, the DoD’s leaders and accountants have been perpetrating a gigantic, unconstitutional accounting fraud, deliberately cooking the books to mislead the Congress and drive the DoD’s budgets ever higher, regardless of military necessity. DoD has literally been making up numbers in its annual financial reports to Congress—representing trillions of dollars’ worth of seemingly nonexistent transactions—knowing that Congress would rely on those misleading reports when deciding how much money to give the DoD the following year.

    For example, a leading accounting firm concluded that one of the Pentagon’s largest agencies “can’t account for hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of spending.”

    Unfortunately, the outlook isn’t much better for the spending that can be tracked.

    A government audit found that defense contractor Boeing has been massively overcharging taxpayers for mundane parts, resulting in tens of millions of dollars in overspending. As the report noted, the American taxpayer paid:

    $71 for a metal pin that should cost just 4 cents; $644.75 for a small gear smaller than a dime that sells for $12.51: more than a 5,100 percent increase in price. $1,678.61 for another tiny part, also smaller than a dime, that could have been bought within DoD for $7.71: a 21,000 percent increase. $71.01 for a straight, thin metal pin that DoD had on hand, unused by the tens of thousands, for 4 cents: an increase of over 177,000 percent.

    That price gouging has become an accepted form of corruption within the American military empire is a sad statement on how little control “we the people” have over our runaway government.

    Mind you, this isn’t just corrupt behavior. It’s deadly, downright immoral behavior.

    The U.S. government is not making the world any safer. It’s making the world more dangerous. It is estimated that the U.S. military drops a bomb somewhere in the world every 12 minutes. Since 9/11, the United States government has directly contributed to the deaths of around 500,000. Every one of those deaths was paid for with taxpayer funds.

    The U.S. government is not making America any safer. It’s exposing American citizens to alarming levels of blowback, a CIA term referring to the unintended consequences of the U.S. government’s international activities. Chalmers Johnson, a former CIA consultant, repeatedly warned that America’s use of its military to gain power over the global economy would result in devastating blowback.

    Those who call the shots in the government—those who push the military industrial complex’s agenda—those who make a killing by embroiling the U.S. in foreign wars—have not heeded Johnson’s warning.

    The U.S. government is not making American citizens any safer. The repercussions of America’s military empire have been deadly, not only for those innocent men, women and children killed by drone strikes abroad but also those here in the United States.

    The 9/11 attacks were blowback. The Boston Marathon Bombing was blowback. The attempted Times Square bomber was blowback. The Fort Hood shooter, a major in the U.S. Army, was blowback.

    The transformation of America into a battlefield is blowback.

    All of this carnage is being carried out with the full support of the American people, or at least with the proxy that is our taxpayer dollars.

    The government is destabilizing the economy, destroying the national infrastructure through neglect and a lack of resources, and turning taxpayer dollars into blood money with its endless wars, drone strikes and mounting death tolls.

    As Martin Luther King Jr. recognized, under a military empire, war and its profiteering will always take precedence over the people’s basic human needs.

    Similarly, President Dwight Eisenhower warned us not to let the profit-driven war machine endanger our liberties or democratic processes.

    “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. […] Is there no other way the world may live?”

    We failed to heed Eisenhower’s warning.

    The illicit merger of the armaments industry and the government that Eisenhower warned against has come to represent perhaps the greatest threat to the nation today.

    It’s not sustainable, of course.

    Eventually, inevitably, military empires fall and fail by spreading themselves too thin and spending themselves to death.

    It happened in Rome. It’s happening again.

    The America empire is already breaking down.

    We’re already witnessing a breakdown of society on virtually every front, and the government is ready.

    For years now, the government has worked with the military to prepare for widespread civil unrest brought about by “economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters.”

    For years now, the government has been warning against the dangers of domestic terrorism, erecting surveillance systems to monitor its own citizens, creating classification systems to label any viewpoints that challenge the status quo as extremist, and training law enforcement agencies to equate anyone possessing anti-government views as a domestic terrorist.

    We’re approaching critical mass.

    As long as “we the people” continue to allow the government to wage its costly, meaningless, endless wars abroad, the American homeland will continue to suffer: our roads will crumble, our bridges will fail, our schools will fall into disrepair, our drinking water will become undrinkable, our communities will destabilize, our economy will tank, crime will rise, and our freedoms will suffer.

    So who will save us?

    As I make clear in my book, Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we’d better start saving ourselves: one by one, neighbor to neighbor, through grassroots endeavors, by pushing back against the police state where it most counts—in our communities first and foremost, and by holding fast to what binds us together and not allowing politics and other manufactured nonrealities to tear us apart.

    Start today. Start now. Do your part.

    Literally and figuratively, the buck starts and stops with “we the people.”

  • Australians Are Furious About Google's Delivery Drone

    Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc. is on the verge of launching what the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) says will be the world’s first commercial drone delivery service in Australia. 

    Wing, a subsidiary of Alphabet has been testing its drone delivery service over Bonython, a suburb of Tuggeranong, a township in southern Canberra. The year-long trial, called Project Wing, wrapped up last week; now the company is planning for a commercial launch in June.

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    Wing says its drones will be able to deliver small items, such as food and medication, but residents of Canberra, where the program was tested and will soon be ready for commercial flight, are furious about drones buzzing above.

    Here is how Wing’s drone works 

    Alphabet and Wing are expected to face a fierce fight before the delivery program takes off, according to ABC.

    In response to the public backlash, Wing recently tested a quieter version of its delivery drone.

    “We’re trying to be as transparent and as open as we can,” Project Wing CEO James Burgess told the Canberra Times.

    Many Bonython residents told local Government officials the invasive drones had brought people to madness, and residents told police if the government did not intervene, they would shoot the drones out of the sky.

    “It is not inevitable, if the Government can be convinced that the great majority of Canberrans don’t want it,” local Neville Sheather said.

    Sheather leads Bonython Against Drones, a group that is trying to stop the progress of Alphabet and Wing from commercializing the delivery service.

     

    Even some advocates of drones, like Professor Roger Clarke, have said Project Wing had developed too quickly.

    “We’ve got to get the different segments of the public represented in these discussions, and they haven’t been,” Professor Clarke said.

    Clarke said Project Wing had been rushed through testing and is not following the traditional process of assessing new technologies.

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    “Things fall out of the sky, it’s quite hard to get drones to work properly, it’s quite hard to deal with drones when they lose communications … we should be treating it that way and applying the precautionary principle and getting out ahead of the problem.”

    Australian Capital Territory Minister Andrew Barr denied claims the government was allowing Project Wing to be expedited during the testing phase. 

    Instead, he warned that if Canberra and its residents did not accept the drone delivery service, it would fall behind the technological curve.

    “Our choice is are we involved, are we trialing, are we engaging, are we finding ways to make this technology work in a way that benefits people, or are we just going to sit back and let it happen?” he said.

    Wing and Google are currently waiting for government approval to begin their next test in Gungahlin, limited to five suburbs: Crace, Palmerston, Franklin, Gungahlin, and Mitchell.

    The company expects to start drone deliveries midway this year.

    Just wait until drone delivery services come to the US. The public backlash will be much worse.

  • A Skeptic's Guide To The Russiagate Fixation

    Authored by Aaron Maté via TheNation.com,

    Robert Mueller has yet to allege collusion, and Democrats who accuse Trump of being a Kremlin conspirator are silent when his policies escalate tensions with Russia…

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    As we await the rumored delivery of special counsel Robert Mueller’s final report, it is looking increasingly unlikely that the document will allege a Trump-Russia conspiracy. To date, Mueller’s numerous indictments and voluminous court filings have not accused a single American of collusion with Russia. And, tellingly, prominent media and political voices, who have spent two years raising expectations that Mueller will find collusion, are now quietly moving the goalposts.

    A significant hurdle in the hunt for collusion is that every close associate to “flip” on President Donald Trump has stated that they did not witness it.

    In his recent congressional testimony, former Trump fixer Michael Cohen said that he has seen no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion, and knocked down several pillars of the conjecture surrounding it. In re-avowing that he has never been to Prague, Cohen rebuked a central claim of the Steele dossier that he traveled there to pay off Russian hackers. Cohen’s denial deals a serious blow to the credibility of the dossier’s author, Christopher Steele. It also underscores the credulousness of FBI officials, members of Congress, and the many news outlets that relied on and amplified Steele’s material. Cohen also poured cold water on suspicions fueled by Steele that Russians have compromising material on Trump.

    There are differing perspectives on how Cohen addressed another “bombshell” at which he was at the center. In January, Buzzfeed Newsreported that Mueller has evidence that President Trump directed Cohen to lie to Congress about the failed Trump Tower real-estate project in Moscow. The story triggered wall-to-wall news coverage until Mueller’s office issued an unprecedented statement that called Buzzfeed’s reporting “not accurate.” Cohen echoed Mueller’s denial by asserting that “Trump did not directly tell me to lie to Congress.” When pressed on why he never corrected the Buzzfeed story and the multiple outlets that echoed it, Cohen responded, “We are not the fact-checkers for BuzzFeed.”

    Buzzfeed nonetheless claimed vindication because Cohen also told Congress that he had lied after inferring from Trump’s public and private statements that the president wanted him to. Buzzfeed’s editor in chief, Ben Smith, argued that Cohen had confirmed the story because one of its “core central pieces” was that “Cohen thought he had been told to lie.” But that is not what Buzzfeed had originally reported: The story claimed—and prompted impeachment talk as a result—that Trump had suborned perjury by “explicitly telling [Cohen] to lie” and because he “personally instructed [Cohen] to lie.” Assigning those actions directly to Trump hardly conforms to Cohen’s explanation that he had merely intuited or interpreted Trump’s intentions.

    However one construes Cohen’s comments, his testimony also undercut the innuendo and conjecturetriggered by reports that the Trump Organization planned to offer Vladimir Putin a $50 million penthouse apartment. Cohen dismissed it as “a marketing stunt” proposed by his colleague Felix Sater, and deflated speculation that Trump was involved.

    As Cohen fails to offer a collusion smoking gun, proponents of the collusion theory continue to hope one emerges in the case of former campaign chair Paul Manafort. In January, it emerged that Mueller has accused Manafort of lying to his team about sharing Trump polling data with his Ukrainian-Russian fixer, Konstantin Kilimnik, at some point during the 2016 campaign. According to Mueller, the FBI assesses that Kilimnik has an unspecified “relationship with Russian intelligence.” The alleged lie, a Mueller prosecutor told the court, goes to “the heart” of the special counsel’s mandate.

    No indictments have resulted from this issue, and it makes no appearance in Mueller’s two sentencing memos in Manafort’s case. There is also the fact that, although sharing polling data with a Russian associate could theoretically go to “the heart” of the Mueller probe, Manafort’s actual case has nothing to do with it. As Virginia Judge T.S. Ellis noted at Manafort’s first sentencing last week, Manafort “is not before this court for anything having to do with collusion with the Russian government.” Manafort was instead accused and convicted of financial crimes stemming from his lobbying work in Ukraine. In sharing the polling data, The New York Timesnoted, Manafort “might have hoped that any proof he was managing a winning candidate would help him collect money he claimed to be owed for his work on behalf of the Ukrainian parties.”

    If the the polling data is evidence of Trump-Russian collusion, or even if Kilimnik is an actual Russian intelligence official, then Mueller has yet to allege it. Manafort’s attorneys previously asked Mueller for any discovery showing contacts between Manafort and “Russian intelligence officials,” but were told that “there are no materials responsive to [those] requests.” The DC judge overseeing the case, Amy Berman Jackson, says, “Whether Kilimnik is tied to Russian intelligence or he’s not… I have not been provided with the evidence that I would need to decide.” Jackson has only ruled that Manafort’s alleged lie is material to the scope of Mueller’s inquiry. The language in Mueller’s appointment order, she ruled, “is sufficiently broad to get over the relatively low hurdle of materiality in this instance.”

    That makes any relevance of the polling-data issue to collusion entirely speculative, but that is not how it has been treated. Virginia Democratic Senator Mark Warner, the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, dubbed Manafort’s sharing of polling data “the closest we’ve seen yet to real, live, actual collusion.” If Warner is correct, then his assessment only makes clear just how far the Russia probe remains from actual collusion.

    Warner’s House Intelligence counterpart, Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA), does not fare better. Asked by CBS News if he has “direct evidence” of Trump-Russia collusion, Schiff cited the infamous e-mail sent by music publicist Rob Goldstone offering Donald Trump Jr. compromising information about Hillary Clinton on the Russian government’s behalf. But by Goldstone’s own account, his overture to Trump Jr. was “publicist puff,” and his claims of Russian government support for Trump were invented out of thin air: “I had no idea what I was talking about,” he told NPR last year. To date, Mueller has given us no reason to challenge that assessment. Goldstone and every other participant in the Trump Tower meeting has been questioned by Congress or Mueller; none have faced any charges related to it. In short, if Goldstone’s letter is “direct evidence” of a crime, Mueller has yet to allege it.

    If this is the most damning evidence that the Democrats’ top Russia investigators can adduce, it is no wonder that the bipartisan Senate Intelligence probe has “uncovered no direct evidence of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia,” as NBC News reported last month. And amid rumblings that Mueller is wrapping up his investigation, it is also no wonder that Schiff and others who have ceaselessly promoted the Trump-Russia collusion theory are preparing their audiences for a letdown.

    While insisting that there is “pretty compelling evidence” of collusion, Schiff now hedges by cautioning that Democrats should not attempt to impeach Trump “in the absence of very graphic evidence.” Asked by ABC News if he would accept it if Mueller “says definitively we find no collusion,” Representative Jerry Nadler (D-NY) said that we can “agree or disagree. But this investigation goes far beyond collusion.” After two years of our hearing about the “beginning of the end” for Trump, several outlets now proclaim that it’s in fact “the end of the beginning.” CNN legal analyst Renato Marrioti instructs his followers that “Mueller’s report will almost certainly disappoint you, and it’s not his fault. It’s your fault for buying into Trump’s false narrative that it is Mueller’s job to prove ‘collusion.’” It certainly cannot be the fault of pundits like himself who have argued that “collusion” has already been established, or even charged.

    Both Schiff and Nadler have now launched what two major outlets have described as “turbocharged” and “supercharged” congressional probes of Trump’s ties to Russia and alleged corruption. Perhaps they will uncover evidence that federal investigators have missed. Given that both probes are covering ground that the exhaustive and more powerful Mueller inquiry has already traversed, it would be wise not to get our hopes up.

    Caution seems all the more prudent as Trump-Russia innuendo continues to overshadow the very real dangers in US-Russia relations. There has been a noted absence of media and political pushback (with some exceptions) to Trump’s withdrawing the United States from the INF Treaty with Russia, despite the increasing threat of a renewed arms race between the two Cold War powers. The Trump administration is escalating its opposition to the Nord Stream 2, a massive German-Russia pipeline project, by reportedly preparing to impose sanctions on it. More than two-dozen Senate Democrats have endorsed a bill that joins Trump in calling for the project’s cancellation. Trump’s ongoing coup attempt against Russia’s ally Venezuela has not only received a tepid Democratic response (also with some exceptions), but even support from party stalwarts including Representatives Schiff (CA), Nancy Pelosi (CA), Eliot Engel (NY), former vice president Joe Biden, former president Bill Clinton, and Senators Chuck Schumer (NY) and Dick Durbin (IL).

    Democratic support for the hawkish foreign policy of a Republican White House is nothing new. The current dynamic, however, is unprecedented. Democrats and their media partisans frequently accuse the president of being soft on Russia or even a Kremlin conspirator, while simultaneously falling silent—or even offering an endorsement—when his reckless policies build tensions. That Trump’s dangerous moves against Russia are being overlooked amid the drive to prove that he and Putin are secretly in cahoots is one more reason to treat the Russiagate fixation with skepticism. Based on what it has yielded to date, the Mueller probe’s outcome may soon be another.

  • Trump Races To Secure Billions For Hypersonic Missiles 

    The Pentagon has requested a record-breaking $718 billion in its fiscal 2020 budget, a 5% increase over what Congress allocated for fiscal 2019, as per the Russian Times. 

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    The White House published the details of President Donald Trump’s new fiscal budget request on Monday, requesting a massive $750 billion for national defense. About $30 billion for nuclear weapons programs under the Department of Energy.

    The $718 billion budget includes a base budget of $544.5 billion, $9.2 billion for the border wall and $164 billion for foreign wars.

     A sizeable portion of the funding will be used to operate multiple research and development programs, as the Pentagon is determined to mature and launch series production for new weapons and technologies, such as hypersonic missiles and fifth-generation fighters. 

    “With the largest research and development request in 70 years, this strategy-driven budget makes necessary investments in next-generation technology, space, missiles, and cyber capabilities,” Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick M. Shanahan said.

    The funding boost is needed to “strongly position the US military for great power competition for decades to come,” he added.

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    The funding includes $2.6 billion for hypersonic missiles that “complicate adversaries’ detection and defense,” another $3.7 billion for unmanned and even autonomous systems suitable for “contested regions. 

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    Hypersonic missiles cruise at Mach 5 or faster, or about five times faster than the speed of sound. As of 2019, the Pentagon doesn’t have missile defense systems that can stop a hypersonic attack nor has hypersonic missiles that are deployed with forces.

    On the other hand, Russia last year sent its hypersonic weapons into series production and has already deployed missiles to its forces stationed around the country.

    The threat of a hypersonic missile attack made the Pentagon cut the word “ballistic” from its recent iteration of the “Missile Defense Review,” which was published last month. The last review, in 2010, was titled, “Ballistic Missile Defense Review.”

    “We are now recognizing the nature of missile threats to both the United States homeland, as well as to friends and allies abroad and our deployed forces go beyond just ballistic missiles,” said Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy David J. Trachtenberg said February 1 at CSIS.

    It’s now clear that the Trump administration and Pentagon are urgently requesting billions of dollars in taxpayers funds to build hypersonic missiles before the next conflict explodes. 

  • Here’s How Much Your Healthcare Costs Rise As You Age

    Submitted by Priceonomics

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    Imagine working your entire life with the plan to retire at the age of 65, only to declare bankruptcy due to medical costs and losing all your assets.

    This isn’t some unlikely nightmare scenario; the rate of senior citizens declaring bankruptcy has more than doubled since 1999, and the leading cause is high healthcare costs. Despite the existence of Medicare insurance for seniors, it doesn’t cover all costs and healthcare can be extremely expensive, especially as you age.

    In this analysis, we decided to look at the most recent data on how healthcare spending increases as you age along with Priceonomics customer RegisteredNursing.org. The goal of this is for people to understand just how much higher healthcare costs are the older you get and how sensitive they are to medical inflation rates.

    By the time you reach 65 years old, average healthcare costs are $11.3K per person, per year in the United States. This is nearly triple the annual average cost of when you’re in your 20s and 30s. During your adult lifetime, average spending for women is nearly twice as high as for men. Healthcare spending for minority groups like Black and Hispanic Americans is approximately 30% less than on White Americans.

    During one’s lifetime, over $400K will be spent on the average American’s healthcare in today’s dollars. And that is if medical costs rise as the same rate as inflation. If medical costs rise at 3% more than inflation, your healthcare will cost over $2MM, the vast majority of which will take place after the age of 45.

    Even if your insurance company or Medicare covers most of that bill, the typical American can still be on the hook for a very large sum of money to cover their healthcare costs as they age.

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    The Department of Health and Human Services commissions a detailed survey of medical costs dating back to 1999 all the way up to 2016 most recently. The data set, The Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS), provides detailed healthcare spending data segmented by age and demographics, among other things. The spending figures noted as total average spending per individual, regardless of who is paying it (the insurance company, the individual directly, or some combination between).

    When budgeting for your retirement, it’s tempting to think your costs may be much lower in old age. Afterall, your kids may (hopefully) be financially self-sufficient adults and the mortgage on your home may be paid off.

    But the big unknown is healthcare expenses. It turns out as you age, your annual healthcare costs go up a lot and despite having insurance you may be on the hook for copays, deductibles, and all sorts of things that aren’t actually covered.

    The MEPS data set shows the average spending per person in the United States based on their age group.

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    It turns out being born is somewhat expensive and childhood costs peak when you’re under five years old. Healthcare costs are lowest from age 5 to 17 at just at $2,000 per year on average. From then on it’s a steady increase, however, with costs rising to over $11,000 per year when you’re over 65 years old.

    The costs of your care may be mostly covered by private insurance or Medicare, but not all costs are always covered and an unexpected bill can have devastating effects on your finances. As one senior citizen relates on their traumatic experience with health insurance:

    “My bankruptcy started with back surgery. I had several medical tests that my insurance did not cover. This caused me to fall behind in my medical payments. The next thing I knew, the bills began piling up. I got to the point I owed more than I was making on Social Security.”

    Healthcare costs are not evenly distributed. You could be among the tragically unlucky with much higher costs. But not only that, but healthcare spending varies substantially by gender and demographic.

    At each stage of life, health care spending for women is substantially higher than for men. The need for more gerontology nurse practitioners and wnhp in the coming years will be vitally important to the success of healthcare programs.

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    During time period of age 18 to 44, health spending for females is 84% higher than men for years. Yes, much of this is due to the expense of childbirth, but from age 44 to 64 spending for women is 24% higher than for men and even at age 65+ spending for women is 8% higher.

    According to this data, women will need to budget more than men for health care expenses each year. Not only that but women tend to live two more years than men in the United States which requires additional savings. The MEPS data also reveals tremendous inequality in healthcare spending by race and demographic. The following chart shows average spending by demographic group for adults in America:

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    There is an average of $3.6K annual healthcare spending on white adult Americans, approximately 70% higher than for Asian, Black, and Hispanic Americans. The root cause and implications of this unequal spending should be studied much further to see if their remedy can improve healthcare outcomes for all.

    So if we add up all these annual spending figures how much will your healthcare cost over the course of your lifetime? In today’s dollars, if you’re “average”, you can expect it to cost $414K.

    The following chart shows this total spending during various ages in your life. Nearly two-thirds of one’s healthcare spending takes place after your 45th birthday:

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    However, there is a lot of reason to believe this estimate of $414K spent on your healthcare is being conservative. First of all, it’s for the “average” person. If you have a health catastrophe, your healthcare spending may be tremendously higher. Second, the above figures assume that healthcare costs in the future increase as the same rate as inflation to arrive at the $414K spending in today’s dollars.

    There is a lot of data to suggest that healthcare costs in the United States have been increasing much faster than inflation. One estimate is that over the last two decades, healthcare costs have increased twice as fast as inflation.

    Since projecting future healthcare costs is an impossible task to pinpoint with any accuracy, let’s show how much the cost of your healthcare will be under various assumptions about healthcare cost growth rates. The following chart shows how much your lifetime healthcare spending will be if healthcare spending grows at the same rate as inflation versus if it grows slightly faster.

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    If healthcare costs increase just one percentage point faster than inflation, the total bill for your healthcare will be $710K, and even that could be a conservative estimate. If healthcare costs rise at three percentage points more than inflation your lifetime healthcare costs will exceed two million dollars!

    If this chart isn’t a good reason for why healthcare in America needs to be reformed, perhaps nothing is. Even small increases in healthcare spending rates result in runaway costs for your lifetime healthcare bill. You and your insurance company might be able to plan for a scenario where your lifetime healthcare bill is half a million dollars, but how about if it’s more than seven million dollars?

    ***

    As this analysis shows, your healthcare spending is tremendously expensive. Perhaps you might have great health insurance, but if money is spent on your healthcare, someone is paying for it. In large part you pay for it via healthcare premiums, but if that doesn’t cover it then other people’s premiums or taxes will. Either way, high healthcare costs mean high spending for someone. Not only that, but even with the best health insurance, senior citizens are often hit with expensive co-pays or need drugs that their plans won’t cover. These unexpected and large expenses can often wreck one’s finances and result in bankruptcy. As you save up for retirement, it’s important to understand the value of having savings for your future medical expenses, which would be much higher than they are today.

  • Libya's "Gaddafi 2.0" Eyes Military Takeover Of Tripoli, Could Rattle Global Oil Markets

    Libya is coming apart again — though of course it was never put back together in the first place after NATO’s regime change war to topple Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 in the first place. Since then it’s been a jihadist wasteland of three, or at times up to four, competing governments vying for control of land and resources. 

    And now, as Bloomberg reports this week “Libya’s most powerful warlord has his sights on the capital” of Tripoli and “even his international backers are nervous.” Who are Khalifa Haftar’s international backers? He was for a couple decades believed to be on the CIA’s payroll while living in suburban Virginia outside Washington, D.C. in exile during Gaddafi’s rule. He’s also financed by the UAE and quickly emerged as a main player collecting the spoils in the aftermath of the US-French-NATO bombing campaign in support of the rebels. 

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    Libyan General Khalifa Haftar. Image source: Middle East Monitor

    Based in Libya’s oil-rich east, Haftar’s militia has already captured much of the country’s oil resources, especially after a successful blitz to take much of the south this year.

    And now he reportedly has his eye on the capital of Tripoli in the west — home to the UN-recognized Government of National Accord (GNA) and Libya’s state-run National Oil Corporation, which when combined with small subsidiaries under its direction accounts for some 70% of the country’s oil output. 

    But has an increasingly powerful Haftar gone rogue, outside the bounds of his international political and financial backers? Or is he actually the external brokers’ “solution” to impose order after years of post-Gaddafi chaos? Are we witnessing the rise of Libya’s new strongman — a Gaddafi 2.0 who will be amendable to western and gulf interests? 

    Bloomberg reports the growing alarm of his international backers:

    Alarmed, international powers are clamoring to avert a military showdown that could rattle global oil markets and sow further chaos in a divided country already struggling to defeat Islamic State and stem the flow of migrants toward Europe.

    The UAE has reportedly tried to intervene with Haftar, urging him to put on the brakes and negotiate a power sharing situation, but to no avail. 

    Haftar’s forces, known as the Libyan National Army (LNA), have continued bulldozing their way across the country at lightning pace:

    But Haftar has continued to indicate that an offensive on Tripoli is looming, according to three Western diplomats who declined to be named. Rumors his self-styled Libyan National Army is building up troops and weapons in the west are adding to the anxious mood. LNA spokesman Ahmed al-Mismari said as recently as February that elections could only take place once the whole country was secure.

    “We should be in no doubt that everything Haftar has done until now has been to get to Tripoli, to be the man in Tripoli,” said Mohamed Eljarh, co-founder of Libya Outlook for Research and Consulting, a think-tank based in the east. He’s likely to continue planning for a takeover “whether peacefully or violently.”

    Interestingly, Haftar has also enjoyed the political backing of an unlikely assortment of powerful countries that include Russia, France, and Egypt. This is due to his purported secular identity and political platform, and his willingness to fight the jihadists, including Libyan ISIS. 

    As a “secular autocrat” with external backing and potentially “West-friendly”, he precisely fits the model of a nationalist type dictator uniting the various large feuding tribes in the mold of Gaddafi (the late Libyan 42-year ruler himself at various times enjoyed the backing of European powers). 

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    Libyan oil fields, pipelines, refineries and storage, via Wiki Commons.

    Bloomberg reports further his LNA already has immense leverage as a potential military and political showdown with Tripoli GNA officials looms:

    Already in control of Libya’s main oil-exporting terminals, the LNA has secured its biggest oil field since beginning its southern campaign in January. That puts Haftar in control of more than 1 million barrels of production a day, giving him crucial leverage over the OPEC member’s key source of income as well as command of its most powerful fighting force.

    Post-Gaddafi Libya has been largely forgotten about in the media after its “liberation” by NATO and Islamist militants, and since 2011 has existed in varying degrees of anarchy and chaos. Libya has remained split between rival parliaments and governments in the east and west, with militias and tribes lining up behind each, resulting in fierce periodic clashes. 

    The most significant of these warring militias nationwide has long been Haftar’s LNA, which has for the past couple years controlled much of eastern Libya and emerged as the chief rival to the UN-backed GNA in the western half of the country. 

    Haftar has since 2017 been reported to be planning a move on Libya’s vital “oil crescent region” while bolstering his forces with Chadian mercenaries, according to prior local reports. Now largely successful in this endeavor, control of the capital would constitute the endgame allowing him to solidify rule over all portions of the country. 

    Prior the 2011 Libyan war and NATO military intervention which ultimately led to the field execution of Muammar Gaddafi, the country produced about 1.6 million bpd, but years of turmoil and political instability in the aftermath have slashed that to 550,000 barrels per day as of 2018 output numbers. 

  • FEMA Contractor Arrested For Cocaine Distribution… To Kids

    Authored by John Paul Hampstead via FreightWaves.com,

    Joseph Lipsey III, CEO of Chattanooga-based transportation companies Lipsey Logistics and Lipsey Trucking, was arrested on Tuesday in Aspen, CO, for distribution of cocaine to a minor, three counts of serving alcohol to a minor, possession of drug paraphernalia, and providing nicotine to minors. Lipsey’s wife Shira and son, Joseph Lipsey IV, were arrested Monday on similar counts.

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    Under Colorado law, if convicted of the distribution charge, the Lipsey parents would each face a mandatory sentence of between eight and 32 years in prison.

    The Lipseys were each released on $100,000 cash-only bonds. In January, Joseph Lipsey IV was charged with two counts of vehicular assault after a Tesla SUV he was alleged to have been driving careened off the road, injuring himself and four other teens in the car.

    The Lipseys saw an opportunity in freight brokerage when the second Bush administration began privatizing and outsourcing disaster relief, where previously the federal government had leaned on the military.

    A small water company in the family’s portfolio helped the Lipseys secure an award to provide bottled water for hurricane relief.

    In 2003, Lipsey had engaged UPS for Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) logistics and transportation support for disaster relief, but almost immediately Hurricane Isabel hit the global logistics conglomerate realized that the task of providing disaster relief logistics was more realistic with an asset-based truckload provider than through independent brokerage capacity. UPS handed over the business to US Xpress, which managed relief logistics on behalf of Lipsey.

    Joe Lipsey soon realized that there was a lot of money to be made in using brokerage capacity and by the 2005 hurricane season, the Lipseys had launched their own brokerage to move water and ice on a cost-plus basis for the government.

    Lipsey Logistics has been investigated on numerous occasions for failure to comply with federal rules around deadlines, botched paperwork, and according to a government investigation, in billing more than $800,000 in unsupported Federal payments.

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    On September 5, 2017, Lipsey Water was awarded a $143 million FEMA contract to provide bottled water. As of October 2017, Bloomberg reported that Lipsey won at least $215 million in FEMA relief services since Hurricane Harvey.

    “Lipsey Logistics’ sister company, Lipsey Water, has numerous State and Federal emergency contracts providing Disaster Relief Services to communities affected by disasters, both natural and manmade. While working with thousands of carriers for FEMA relief, Lipsey quickly realized the need for a reliable logistics organization to manage the delivery of water, ice, and durable goods. Thus, Lipsey Logistics Worldwide was formed,” the company said on its website.

    If the cocaine charges stick, Lipsey’s government contracts could be under threat. FreightWaves estimates that Lipsey was able to build a nearly $200 million per year transportation and logistics operation on the back of FEMA and state government contracts. Not all of Lipsey’s logistics business is from FEMA. The firm, benefitting from being located in Chattanooga, has hired brokerage and trucking staff from truckload giants US Xpress, Covenant Transport, and Coyote Logistics. Major clients that Lipsey have provided 3PL services include Home Depot, Niagara Waters, and Proctor & Gamble.

    Reporting by the Aspen Times based on police accounts depicted the Lipsey’s’ Aspen home as a sordid drug den. According to a police affidavit, during a February 19 search of the Lipsey home, officers and deputies found charred tin foil, a crystalline powder-caked spoon, baggies of white powder that tested positive for cocaine, unprescribed Xanax pills, and codeine syrup.

    Needless to say, the prospect of multiple felony drug convictions, especially ones involving kids, puts Lipsey Logistics’ federal contracts under threat.

  • China's Looming Liquidity Shortage (Or Why Endless Stimulus Isn't Working)

    Chinese Premier Li promised yet more stimulus measures overnight from tax cuts to focused rate reductions (but, he admitted, not blanket liquidity provision).

    But, after over 60 different ‘stimulus’ measures in the last few months and last night’s promises, nothing seems to be working as China’s economic data continues to tumble.

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    As Goldman’s Andrew Tilton (Chief Asia Economist) suggested:

    “There are reasons to be concerned [that easing is becoming less effective]. Local government officials who typically implement infrastructure spending and other forms of stimulus are facing conflicting pressures. The emphasis in recent years on reducing off-balance-sheet borrowing, selecting only higher-value projects, and eliminating corruption has made local officials more cautious. But at the same time, the authorities are now encouraging local officials to do more to support growth, like accelerate infrastructure projects. President Xi himself recently acknowledged the incentive problems and administrative burdens facing local officials.”

    And Nomura’s Ting Lu has an explanation for why China stimulus i snot working…

    Chinese easing- / stimulus- escalation being a likely requirement for any sort of “reflation” theme to work beyond a tactical trade: 

    yes, more RRR cuts are coming eventually (a better way for Chinese banks to obtain liquidity vs borrowing from MLF or TMLF, bc it’s cheaper and more stable)…

    …but that the timing of such a cut is primarily dependent on the Chinese stock market, as the “re-bubbling” happening real-time in Chinese Equities (CSI 300 +26.8% YTD; SHCOMP +24.4%; SZCOMP +34.0%)  likely then constrains the room and pace of Beijing’s policy easing / stimulus

    This “Chinese Equities rally effectively holding further RRR cuts hostage” then could become a serious “fly in the ointment” for near-term / tactical “reflation” (or bear-steepening) themes, as Q2 is on-pace to see a significant liquidity shortage.

    Ting estimates the liquidity gap could reach ~ RMB 1.7T in Q2 due to the following factors:

    • The size of the upcoming MLF maturities (est to be ~RMB 1.2T in Q2);

    • The size and pace of (both central and local) government bond issuance (Nomura ests a target of ~ RMB 1T for Q2);

    • Tax season effects; and

    • The shortage of money supply through the PBoC’s FX purchases

    CHINA’S COMING Q2 LIQUIDITY-SHORTAGE:

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    So, simply put, China is merely refilling a rapidly leaking bucket of liquidity, as opposed to sloshing more into the bath of global risk – even if Chinese stocks were embracing it.

  • Artificial Intelligence Or Real Stupidity?

    Authored by David Robertson via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

    It’s hard to go anywhere these days without coming across some mention of artificial intelligence (AI). You hear about it, you read about it and it’s hard to find a presentation deck (on any subject) that doesn’t mention it. There is no doubt there is a lot of hype around the subject.

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    While the hype does increase awareness of AI, it also facilitates some pretty silly activities and can distract people from much of the real progress being made. Disentangling the reality from the more dramatic headlines promises to provide significant advantages for investors, business people and consumers alike.

    Artificial intelligence has gained its recent notoriety in large part due to high profile successes such as IBM’s Watson winning at Jeopardy and Google’s AlphaGo beating the world champion at the game “Go”. Waymo, Tesla and others have also made great strides with self-driving vehicles. The expansiveness of AI applications was captured by Richard Waters in the Financial Times [here}: “If there was a unifying message underpinning the consumer technology on display [at the Consumer Electronics Show] … it was: ‘AI in everything’.”

    High profile AI successes have also captured people’s imaginations to such a degree that they have prompted other far reaching efforts. One instructive example was documented by Thomas H. Davenport and Rajeev Ronanki in the Harvard Business Review [here]. They describe, “In 2013, the MD Anderson Cancer Center launched a ‘moon shot’ project: diagnose and recommend treatment plans for certain forms of cancer using IBM’s Watson cognitive system.” Unfortunately, the system didn’t work and by 2017, “the project was put on hold after costs topped $62 million—and the system had yet to be used on patients.”

    Waters also picked up on a different message – that of tempered expectations. In regard to “voice-powered personal assistants”, he notes, “it isn’t clear the technology is capable yet of becoming truly useful as a replacement for the smart phone in navigating the digital world” other than to “play music or check the news and weather”.

    Other examples of tempered expectations abound. Generva Allen of Baylor College of Medicine and Rice University warned [here], “I would not trust a very large fraction of the discoveries that are currently being made using machine learning techniques applied to large sets of data.” The problem is that many of the techniques are designed to deliver specific answers and research involves uncertainty. She elaborated, “Sometimes it would be far more useful if they said, ‘I think some of these are really grouped together, but I’m uncertain about these others’.”

    Worse yet, in extreme cases AI not only underperforms; it hasn’t even been implemented yet. The FT reports [here], “Four in 10 of Europe’s ‘artificial intelligence’ startups use no artificial intelligence programs in their products, according to a report that highlights the hype around the technology.”

    Cycles of inflated expectations followed by waves of disappointment come as no surprise to those who have been around artificial intelligence for a while: They know all-too-well this is not the first rodeo for AI. Indeed, much of the conceptual work dates to the 1950s. In reviewing some of my notes recently I came across a representative piece that explored neural networks for the purpose of stock picking – dated from 1993 [here].

    The best way to get perspective on AI is to go straight to the source and Martin Ford gives us that opportunity through his book, Architects of Intelligence. Organized as a succession of interviews with the industry’s leading researchers, scholars and entrepreneurs, the book provides a useful history of AI and highlights the key strands of thinking.

    Two high level insights emerge from the book.

    One is that despite the disparate backgrounds and personalities of the interviewees, there is a great deal of consensus on important subjects.

    The other is that many of the priorities and concerns of the top AI researches are quite noticeably different from those expressed in mainstream media.

    Take for example, the concept of artificial general intelligence (AGI). This is closely related to the notion of the “Singularity” which is the point at which artificial intelligence matches that of humans – on its path to massively exceeding human intelligence. The idea has captured people’s concerns about AI that include massive job losses, killer drones, and a host of other dramatic manifestations.

    AI’s leading researchers have very different views; as a group they are completely unperturbed by AGI.

    Geoffrey Hinton, Professor of computer science at the University of Toronto and Vice president and engineering fellow at Google said, “If your question is, ‘When are we going to get a Commander Data [from the Star Trek TV series]’, then I don’t think that’s how things are going to develop. I don’t think we’re going to get single, general-purpose things like that.”

    Yoshua Bengio, Professor of computer science and operations research at the University of Montreal, tells us that, “There are some really hard problems in front of us and that we are far from human-level AI.” He adds, “we are all excited because we have made a lot of progress on climbing the hill, but as we approach the top of the hill, we can start to see a series of other hills rising in front of us.”

    Barbara Grosz, Professor of natural sciences at Harvard University, expressed her opinion, “I don’t think AGI is the right direction to go”. She argues that because the pursuit of AGI (and dealing with its consequences) are so far out into the future that they serve as “a distraction”.

    Another common thread among the AI researches is the belief that AI should be used to augment human labor rather than replace it.

    Cynthia Breazeal, Director of the personal robots group for MIT media laboratory, frames the issue: “The question is what’s the synergy, what’s the complementarity, what’s the augmentation that allows us to extend our human capabilities in terms of what we do that allows us to really have greater impact in the world.”

    Fei-Fei Li, Professor of computer science at Stanford and Chief Scientist for Google Cloud, described, “AI as a technology has so much potential to enhance and augment labor, in addition to just replace it.”

    James Manyika, Chairman and director of McKinsey Global Institute noted since 60% of occupations have about a third of their constituent activities automatable and only about 10% of occupations have more than 90% automatable, “many more occupations will be complemented or augmented by technologies than will be replaced.”

    Further, AI can only augment human labor insofar as it can effectively work with human labor.

     Barbara Grosz pointed out, “I said at one point that ‘AI systems are best if they’re designed with people in mind’.” She continued, “I recommend that we aim to build a system that is a good team partner and works so well with us that we don’t recognize that it isn’t human.”

    David Ferrucci, Founder of Elemental Cognition and Director of applied AI at Bridgewater Associates, said, “The future we envision at Elemental Cognition has human and machine intelligence tightly and fluently collaborating.” He elaborated, “We think of it as thought-partnership.” Yoshua Bengio reminds us, however, of the challenges in forming such a partnership: “It’s not just about precision [with AI], it’s about understanding the human context, and computers have absolutely zero clues about that.”

    It is interesting that there is a fair amount of consensus regarding key ideas such as AGI is not an especially useful goal right now, AI should be applied to augment labor and not replace it, and AI should work in partnership with people. It’s also interesting that these same lessons are borne out by corporate experiences.

    Richard Waters describes how AI implementations are still at a fairly rudimentary stage in the FT [here]:

    “Strip away the gee-whizz research that hogs many of the headlines (a computer that can beat humans at Go!) and the technology is at a rudimentary stage.”

    He also notes, “But beyond this ‘consumerisation’ of IT, which has put easy-to-use tools into more hands, overhauling a company’s internal systems and processes takes a lot of heavy lifting.”

    That heavy lifting takes time and exceptionally few companies are there. Ginni Rometty, head of IBM, characterizes her clients’ applications as “Random acts of digital” and describes many of the projects as “hit and miss”. Andrew Moore, the head of AI for Google’s cloud business, describes it as “Artisanal AI”. Rometty elaborates, “They tend to start with an isolated data set or use case – like streamlining interactions with a particular group of customers. They are not tied into a company’s deeper systems, data or workflow, limiting their impact.”

    While the HBR case of the MD Anderson Cancer Center provides a good example of a moonshot AI project that probably overreached, it also provides an excellent indication of the types of work that AI can materially improve. At the same time the center was trying to apply AI to cancer treatment, its “IT group was experimenting with using cognitive technologies to do much less ambitious jobs, such as making hotel and restaurant recommendations for patients’ families, determining which patients needed help paying bills, and addressing staff IT problems.”

    In this endeavor, the center had much better experiences: “The new systems have contributed to increased patient satisfaction, improved financial performance, and a decline in time spent on tedious data entry by the hospital’s care managers.” Such mundane functions may not exactly be Terminator stuff but are still important.

    Leveraging AI for the purposes of augmenting human labor collaborating with humans was also the focus of an HBRpiece by H. James Wilson and Paul R. Daugherty [here]. They point out, “Certainly, many companies have used AI to automate processes, but those that deploy it mainly to displace employees will see only short-term productivity gains. In our research involving 1,500 companies, we found that firms achieve the most significant performance improvements when humans and machines work together … Through such collaborative intelligence, humans and AI actively enhance each other’s complementary strengths: the leadership, teamwork, creativity, and social skills of the former, and the speed, scalability, and quantitative capabilities of the latter.”

    Wilson and Daugherty elaborate, “To take full advantage of this collaboration, companies must understand how humans can most effectively augment machines, how machines can enhance what humans do best, and how to redesign business processes to support the partnership.” This takes a lot of work that is well beyond just dumping an AI system into a pre-existing work environment.

    The insights from leading AI researchers combined with the realities of real-world applications provide some useful implications. One is that AI is a double-edged sword: The hype can cause distraction and misallocation, but the capabilities are too important to ignore.

    Ben Hunt discusses the roles of intellectual property (IP) and AI in regard to the investment business [here], but his comments are widely relevant to other businesses. He notes,

    “The usefulness of IP in preserving pricing power is much less a function of the better mousetrap that the IP helps you build, and much more a function of how neatly the IP fits within the dominant zeitgeist in your industry.

    He goes on to explain that the “WHY” of your IP must “fit the expectations that your customers have for how IP works” in order to protect your product. He continues, “If you don’t fit the zeitgeist, no one will believe that your castle walls exist. Even if they do.” In the investment business (and plenty of others), “NO ONE thinks of human brains as defensible IP any longer. No one.” In other words, if you aren’t employing AI, you won’t get pricing power, regardless of the actual results.

    This hints at an even bigger problem with AI: Too many people are simply not ready for it. 

    Daniela Rus, Director of the Computer science and artificial intelligence laboratory (CSAIL) at MIT, said, “I want to be a technology optimist. I want to say that I see technology as something that has the huge potential to unite people rather than divide people, and to empower people rather than estrange people. In order to get there, though, we have to advance science and engineering to make technology more capable and more deployable.” She added, “We need to revisit how we educate people to ensure that everyone has the tools and the skills to take advantage of technology.”

    Yann Lecun added, “We’re not going to have widely disseminated AI technology unless a significant proportion of the population is trained to actually take advantage of it”. 

    Cynthia Breazeal echoed, “In an increasingly AI-powered society, we need an AI-literate society.”

    These are not hollow statements either; there is a vast array of free learning materials for AI available online to encourage participation in the field.

    If society does not catch up to the AI reality, there will be consequences.

     Brezeal notes, “People’s fears about AI can be manipulated because they don’t understand it.” 

    Lecun points out, “There is a concentration of power. Currently, AI research is very public and open, but it’s widely deployed by a relatively small number of companies at the moment. It’s going to take a while before it’s used by a wider swath of the economy and that’s a redistribution of the cards of power.”

    Hinton highlights another consequence, “The problem is in the social systems, and whether we’re going to have a social system that shares fairly … That’s nothing to do with technology.”

    In many ways, then, AI provides a wakeup call. Because of AI’s unique interrelationship with humankind, AI tends to bring out its best and the worst elements. Certainly, terrific progress is being made on the technology side which promises to provide ever-more powerful tools to solve difficult problems. However, those promises are also constrained by the capacity of people, and society as a whole, to embrace AI tools and deploy them in effective ways.

    Recent evidence suggests we have our work cut out for us in preparing for an AI-enhanced society. In one case reported by the FT [here], UBS created “recommendation algorithms” (such as those used by Netflix for movies) in order to suggest trades for its clients. While the technology certainly exists, it strains credibility to understand how this application is even remotely useful for society.

    In another case, Richard Waters reminds us, “It Is almost a decade, for instance, since Google rocked the auto world with its first prototype of a self-driving car.” He continues [here]: “The first wave of driverless car technology is nearly ready to hit the mainstream — but some carmakers and tech companies no longer seem so eager to make the leap.” In short, they are getting pushback because current technology is at “a level of autonomy that scares the carmakers — but it also scares lawmakers and regulators.”

    In sum, whether you are an investor, business person, employee, or consumer, AI has the potential to make things a lot better – and a lot worse. In order to make the most of the opportunity, an active effort focusing on education is a great place to start. If AI’s promises are to be realized it will also take a lot of effort to establish system infrastructures and to map complementary strengths. In other words, it’s best to think of AI as a long journey rather than a short-term destination.

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