Oct 06

Today’s News 6th October 2018

  • Russian Military: US Killed Dozens By Bioweapon Disguised As Drug Research

    Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

    The Russian Defense Ministry is accusing the United States of killing dozens of Georgians with a biological weapon after disguising it as drug research. Documents recorded the deaths of 73 people over a short period of time, indicating a test of “a highly toxic chemical or biological agents with high lethality rate.”

    According to RT, the question of what really might have taken place at the secretive United States-sponsored research facility hosted by Russia’s southern neighbor Georgia was raised by the Russian military on Thursday after they studied files published online by a former Georgian minister. Igor Kirillov, commander of the Russian military branch responsible for defending troops from radiological, chemical and biological weapons said that it was not drug research, but a chemical or biological weapon that killed the 73 Georgians.

    The documents relating to the secret lab were published last month by former Georgian minister for state security Igor Giorgadze, who says he obtained 100,000 pages of data pointing to questionable US practices.

    Kirillov has doubts that the tests, which were carried out by the Richard Lugar Center for Public Health Research near the Georgian capital Tbilisi and were said to involve clinical trials of a drug called Sovaldi, which is meant for the treatment of Hepatitis C, were actually done on the drug. The producer of the drug is Gilead Sciences, a California-based biomedical firm that recruited former US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld as a board member in 1988, in between his two tenures as head of the Pentagon.

    “The documents showed many lethal outcomes among the patients. Despite the deaths of 24 people in December 2015 alone, the clinical trials were continued in violation of international standards and the wishes of the patients,” Kirillov claimed according to a report by RT. “This led to the deaths of 49 more people.”

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    Pentagon spokesman Eric Pahon responded to Russia’s allegations, telling RIA Novosti that the US did not conduct bioweapons research in Georgia and called the Russian ministry’s statements part of “a Russian disinformation campaign directed against the West.”

    Russia will take “diplomatic and military action” in response to a perceived threat from US labs, said Vladimir Shamanov, head of Russian parliament’s Defense Committee. He was commenting on accusations by the Defense Ministry. “We cannot simply turn a blind eye to things happening near our southern borders that directly affect our safety,” he told TASS news agency.

  • Texas Robot Brothel Outlawed By City Council; Houston Men Forced To Masturbate Elsewhere

    A Toronto-based sex doll brothel hoping to slip into Houston had cold water poured over its plans, after the City Council on Wednesday updated a rule on sexually oriented businesses prohibiting the use of the silicone seductresses for masturbatory purposes, reports Chron. 

    At Wednesday’s meeting, the council expanded its definition of an “arcade device” — which is used to view adult content — to include an “anthropomorphic device,” or one with human characteristics.

    The city bars sexually oriented businesses, which include “adult arcades,” from operating within 1,500 feet of churches, schools, day cares, parks and residential neighborhoods. KinkySdollS’ proposed location is located a few hundred feet from the city-owned Anderson Park.

    The council also prohibited customers from using arcade devices on company premises, though it still allows companies to sell them.

    Mayor Sylvester Turner said the amendments are intended to update “loopholes to make the ordinance more current,” specifically in dealing with changing technology. –Chron 

    “I think the change in the ordinance will certainly capture businesses of this kind and would prevent businesses from operating in the way that this one has been described,” said Turner, who added that the updated ordinance isn’t targeting “any one business. It is on any businesses that fall within this category.” 

    Construction had already been halted on the KinkySdollS’ retail storefront after city inspectors reportedly found permitting issues. 

    That said, the new ordinance may not prevent KingySdollS’ from setting up shop, as the updated law would only eliminate the “try-it-before-you-buy-it” option. 

    Lewis assured Laster that the modified ordinance “precludes certain behaviors within the shop” that would “not generally be tolerated within any business in the city of Houston.”

    Travis took a more forceful tack, saying that most people are “appalled and insulted” by the business. –Chron 

    After concerns over sex trafficking were raised recently, Councilmember Greg Travis suggested placing cameras around the business after a religious nonprofit raised the proposition – calling on Travis to install cameras “where these people are going to buy dolls.” 

    “Our biggest concern is that this sex brothel with robots is gonna train men to become rapists,” said Micah Gamboah with the religious anti sex-trafficking group, Elijah Rising. “What’s next? Is it child robots? Where’s the line? Where is the boundary?“

    “We’re not legislating morality here. That’s not what we’re doing,” Travis said. “We don’t care what people do in their bedrooms. If somebody wants to order these dolls and have them in their homes, it’s weird, that’s fine, they can do that.” Travis then said that the KinkiSdollS’ “type of enterprise degrades our city.” 

    Turner’s battle with the doll brothel has drawn applause from the Houston Area Pastor Council, which praised him in a press release for his “rapid response to this threat to the decency of the city.” 

  • Shocking New Studies Find Young Americans Are Overweight, Unhealthy, Suicidal, & Addicted To Alcohol And Drugs

    Authored by Michael Snyder via The American Dream blog,

    After reading the information contained in this article, you will probably find yourself questioning if America is going to be able to survive for much longer, because our young people are a complete and total mess.  Yes, all generations of Americans have had their problems, but this generation appears to be particularly screwed up.  Obesity rates are at all-time highs, a third of all American teens have not read a single book within the past year, and the average high school senior spends six hours a day on the Internet.  On top of all that, we are seeing unprecedented levels of suicide, drug overdoses and liver disease (due to heavy drinking) among our young people. 

    Like other empires throughout world history, will we be undone by our own excesses?

    Let’s start by talking about obesity.  At this point, so many of our young people are overweight that military recruiters are having a very difficult time finding enough “suitable candidates for military service”…

    The study, featuring roughly 18,000 randomly selected participants across each of the service branches, showed that almost 66 percent of service members are considered to be either overweight or obese, based on the military’s use of body mass index as a measuring standard.

    While the number of overweight service members is a cause for concern, it correlates with the obesity epidemic plaguing the United States, where, as of 2015, one in three young adults are considered too fat to enlist, creating a difficult environment for recruiters to find suitable candidates for military service.

    Right now, obesity among U.S. adults is at an all-time high, and one of the big reasons for this is because about a third of us are stuffing our faces with fast food on a daily basis.

    The following comes from ABC News…

    A government study has found that 1 in 3 U.S. adults eat fast food on any given day. That’s about 85 million people.

    It’s the first federal study to look at how often adults eat fast food. An earlier study found a similar proportion of children and adolescents ate it on any given day.

    I was absolutely stunned when I saw that.

    85 million people a day are eating fast food?

    No wonder we have such a problem.

    Another brand new study found that one-third of all American teenagers haven’t read a single book in the past year…

    A new study of American teenagers and their reading habits finds that a third haven’t read a book — in hardcopy or on a device like a Kindle — in the past year.

    Researchers from San Diego State University took a look at data from four decades of a “nationally-based lifestyle survey studying teens,” StudyFinds.com reports. In total, more than a million teens provided information.

    To me, this is a tremendous indictment of our system of education.

    Even if these kids are not reading on their own, our schools should be forcing them to read books.

    This really hits home for me, because I love to read.  In fact, I don’t know where I would be today if I had not spent enormous amounts of time reading books on my own while I was growing up.

    Sadly, instead of reading books our high school seniors are spending an average of six hours a day on “social media, texting, gaming and surfing the web”…

    “The meteoric rise of internet-based activities cannot be understated: between social media, texting, gaming, and surfing the web, the average high school senior spent six hours a day online in 2016 — double the time from a decade earlier. Eighth graders (4 hours a day) and tenth graders (5 hours a day) didn’t lag far behind,” the report finds.

    Six hours a day?

    That is almost a full-time job.

    This is one of the reasons why the Internet is the focus of my work.  Yes, I have written a few books, but if we are going to reach the next generation with the truth we have got to reach them where they are.

    And where they are is on the Internet.

    In addition to everything that you have read so far, let me also share with you some numbers from a recent CDC study.

    According to the CDC, drug overdose rates among our young people have been absolutely soaring…

    Among men ages 24 to 35, overdose rates rose by more than 25% each year between 2014 and 2016; nearly 50 out of every 100,000 people in this population died of overdose-related causes by 2016. Women ages 45 to 54 had the most overdoses overall, but those ages 15 to 24 saw the highest rate of increase: about a 19% jump per year between 2014 and 2016.

    And the CDC also found that liver disease (due to heavy drinking) is rapidly rising among young adults…

    Liver disease replaced HIV as the sixth-leading killer of adults ages 25 to 44 in 2016. Among men and women ages 25 to 34, deaths from liver disease and cirrhosis increased by about 11% and 8% per year, respectively, between 2006 and 2016. Older adults, however, still die of liver disease at much higher rates than young adults.

    But the most tragic fact from that entire study is that suicide is now the second leading cause of death for Americans from age 15 to age 24…

    Suicide is now the second-leading cause of death among people ages 15 to 24, increasing by 7% in this group each year between 2014 and 2016. It’s also the third-leading cause of death among people ages 25 to 44, killing almost 17 of every 100,000 people in this population in 2016.

    Whether you like it or not, young people are the future of our country.

    Yes, our country is a huge mess today, but what is it going to look like when they become the “leaders of tomorrow”?

    In order for a nation to be great, it needs to be made up of great people, and at this moment it is very difficult to be optimistic about the future of our nation…

  • Brazil's "Donald Trump" Dominates Key Presidential Debate Despite Absence After Stabbing

    The far-right presidential candidate dubbed as Brazil’s “Donald Trump” – Jair Bolsonaro – is headed for victory Sunday as Brazilians go to the polls to choose among 13 candidates in the October 7 first-round elections, from which two candidates will emerge. This after he was nearly assassinated a mere month ago when a mentally disturbed socialist man stabbed the populist candidate at a campaign rally, puncturing his intestines in three places, sending him to the intensive care unit.

    And incredibly telling was that in spite of being absent from the key most-watched TV Globo presidential debate Thursday night due his continued slow recovery from the severe wounds, his name still managed to dominate the national presidential debate. 

    International media reports widely acknowledged the obvious after the high stakes event — that Bolsonaro was “the main topic — and target” among his fellow contenders — even as a no-show due to doctor’s orders. Though he was merely able to give a televised interview from home, he remains the frontrunner in Sunday’s critical elections. 

    The prospect of a far-right Bolsonaro rapid come-from-behind upset victory has sent a number of media outlets and left-leaning organizations into a frenzied panic, with The Guardian, for example, warning in a Friday headline that the “prospect of Bolsonaro victory stokes fears of return to dictatorship.” And The Intercept lamented that Brazil’s current frontrunner is a “fiery former army captain with a history of homophobic, racist, and misogynistic remarks, including pro-torture statements and support for police killings.” 

    Weeks before the September 6th stabbing incident, The Economist featured a story outlining how the man who reportedly relishes in being compared to Donald Trump is “a threat to democracy” (at the time the publication described him as “a flame-throwing right-winger who is second in the polls”).

    But apparently this deluge of attention — especially after the gruesome stabbing and attempted assassination thrust him into the international media spotlight — has only increased his popularity at the street level even as media elites claim Brazil is on the path of return to dictatorship. 

    Brazilian presidential candidates (left to right): Henrique Meirelles, Alvaro Dias, Ciro Gomes, Guilherme Boulos, Geraldo Alckmin, Marina Silva and Fernando Haddad. Via AFP

    France24 charted the clear focal point of Thursday night’s presidential debate in the following: 

    • Second place candidate Fernando Haddad, who was hand-picked by jailed former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, attacked Bolsonaro’s record as a lawmaker.
    • Third place Ciro Gomes said that electing the far-right hopeful would be like dancing near an abyss.
    • Leftist Guilherme Boulos said he feared a new military dictatorship would begin with a Bolsonaro presidency.

    Currently Fernando Haddad of Lula’s Workers’ Party is a not too distant second behind Bolsonaro in the polls. However, years of corruption scandals and constant media attacks mean Brazilians sitting on the fence, but who by and large reject the Workers’ Party, could turn to Bolsonaro as the most viable alternative. 

    The latest figures have Bolsonaro polling at 35% support, which is a 3 percentage point jump since Tuesday, and Haddad at 22%, and the Datafolha poll has the pair deadlocked in a possible runoff vote. But perhaps most shocking is that support among women has shot up according to reports, with polls finding a 6% rise in support from women, apparently trumping his supposed history of sexism.

    It is not likely that a president will be decided in the first round, something which hasn’t happened since 1998. France24 reports that the latest polls show “Bolsonaro has 39 percent of the valid votes, 11 points short of a majority needed for a first-round victory. Failing that, the two top vote-getters will face off on Oct. 28.”

    Prior to the attack Bolsonaro was losing votes, but the incident brought instant national and international attention, and he’s spent much of September in the hospital.

    The federal congressman has been hospitalized for most of September, and has frequently issued statements while in recovery — all of which appears to have helped him. 

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    “People will start to see Bolsonaro as a victim,” predicted Luiz Roberto Monteiro, an analyst with Renascenca brokerage, in the immediate aftermath of the stabbing. 

    Bolsonaro, once feared by investors because of comments against privatizations and private investments, has become the most viable option against the left. And now he’s dominating even while absent from the campaign trail. 

  • Paul Craig Roberts: The White Heterosexual Male Has Been Renditioned To The Punishment Hole

    Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

    American feminists have finally broken the spirit of the American white heterosexual male. I have been watching for some time the American male, or what little is left of him, meekly accept feminists’ definitions of words and male behavior.

    First the feminists turned the male respect for, and politeness toward, women, respect inculcated into my generation, into “sexism.” Today men no longer stand when a woman enters a room, and they don’t open doors for them unless it is an elderly and feeble relative. Feminists insisted on getting women off the pedestal and into the rough and tumble world of men.

    Feminists also pushed the sexual revolution, especially Cosmopolitan magazine, until women became as sexually promiscuous as men. As sex became casual and as the constraints on male behavior toward women were discredited as “sexist,” boundaries became blurred, and there is plenty of room for confusion. University student sex codes acknowledge the confusion. We see it in the requirements that the male must ask permission for each piece of female clothing he removes from his willing partner.

    All of this was entirely the work of feminists.

    But today it is the feminist redefinition of words and their substitution of feelings for factual evidence that catch men off guard. What convinced me that the era of the male is over is what just happened to University of Massachusetts football coach Mark Whipple. On paper Whipple does not have the profile of a whimp. He was a NFL assistant coach. He led UMass to five winning seasons, elevated the team to the highest level of Division I, and garnered for UMass a Division I-AA national title.

    Last Saturday he unknowingly undid himself when outraged by what he saw as a non-penalty call on pass interference that he thought cost UMass the game, he said:

    “we had a chance and they rape us.”

    All hell broke lose. Whipple was publicly denounced by UMass athletic director Ryan Bamford, a male trained to jump through feminist hoops:

    “On behalf of our department, I deeply apologize for the comments made by head coach Mark Whipple on Saturday after our game at Ohio. His reference to rape was highly inappropriate, insensitive and inexcusable under any circumstance.”

    Whipple groveled:

    “I am deeply sorry for the word I used on Saturday to describe the play in our game. It is unacceptable to make use of the word ‘rape’ in the way I did and I am very sorry for doing so. It represents a lack of responsibility on my part as a leader of the program and a member of this university’s community, and I am disappointed with myself that I made this comparison when commenting after our game.”

    What are we to make of this? Have feminists appropriated the definition of rape to mean only what they say it means: male sexual abuse (undefined) of women? If a male uses the word in any of its other senses, why does he have to grovel and beg forgiveness?

    Whipple is a football coach, not an English professor who could have come up with a word better fitting Whipple’s outrage. Nevertheless, “rape” has meanings other than forced sexual penetration of a female. For example, the Oxford English Dictionary gives this meaning:

    “The wanton destruction or spoiling of a place: the rape of the countryside.”

    There are a number of book titles that use “rape” in the sense of “ruin,” “despoil.” For example:

    The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe’s Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War by Lynn H. Nicholas

    The Rape of the Masters: How Political Correctness Sabotages Art by Roger Kimball

    Are we now to expect scholars Lynn Nicholas and Roger Kimball to grovel like Whipple in the face of feminist tyranny?

    I suppose so.

    Compare Whipple’s public rebuke by his boss, his abject apology, and his temporary suspension from his job for using correctly a word with no intention of offending anyone with Georgetown University associate professor Christine Fair, who intended to offend the Senate Judiciary Committee with her tweeted outrage about Kavanaugh:

    “Look at this chorus of entitled white men justifying a serial rapist’s arrogated entitlement. 
All of them deserve miserable deaths while feminists laugh as they take their last gasps. Bonus: we castrate their corpses and feed them to swine? Yes.”

    There are a number of sources for this extraordinary quote:

    Did professor Fair get sent to sensitivity training? Of course not. Georgetown University quickly rushed to her defense on freedom of speech grounds. In universities, free speech is only denied to heterosexual males and football coaches.

    Linger a bit with Professor Fair. A professor is supposed to be a scholar with respect for facts and evidence, but all Christine Fair is capable of is an outburst of blind hatred. She has no way of knowing who is telling the truth. Clearly the charge is a political one even if true. The Senate Judiciary Committee permitted Kavanaugh’s accuser to present her case. To protect the female accuser from being questioned by male senators, the committee hired a female attorney to question the accuser. The female attorney concluded that Kavanaugh’s accuser did not have a case that could be prosecuted.

    What does this tell us about Christine Fair. It tells us that the only reason that a person who relies on emotion instead of evidence is a tenured member of the Georgetown University faculty is that she is female and was hired in place of several dozen better qualified males to fill a female quota.

    As I have written so often, the American population is insouciant, and that word is an euphemism. They have no awareness of what is happening in front of their eyes as they are eased into a mindset that accepts as fact that the male/female relationship is one of male abuse of the female. Try to imagine what it is like for a male to have a female boss who has been brainwashed by feminism. Try to imagine what it is like for a male to have female subordinates (or colleagues). His very survival depends on many things, such as having the Human Resource Department evaluate the females’ job performance. Even at this distance, most likely the task would have to be performed by a female.

    Female accusation of male abuse is now a powerful political, social and personal weapon. We currently have a porn star accusing President Trump of having consensual sex with her. Why is she doing this? She has already been paid off. Are her ratings dropping? Is this for notoriety? Is she being paid as part of the military/industrial complex/Democratic Party/feminist attack on Trump?

    Look at what has happened to Judge Kavanaugh once he was nominated to the Supreme Court. A woman appears. She partially remembers an incident of three or four decades ago in an unchaparoned home where teenagers were drinking, what house and where it was she does not remember, but she remembers a drunk Kavanaugh throwing her on a bed and tussling with her fully clothed.

    She wasn’t raped. She wasn’t injured. The question totally uninteresting to feminists is: “What was she, a 15-year old, doing there?”

    By the 1980s teenage females in unchaperoned houses with teenage males with harmones on full boil and alcohol present were assumed to be sexually available. Why else were they there? Were her parents uninterested in her whereabouts? Did she lie to her parents about where she was going?

    But to raise such obvious questions is proof that you are a misogynist. Females bear no fault. Only males.

    The main problem with feminism is that it is so totally unscientific that it must assault science. At the University of Durham in the UK, where I was once in distant times interviewed for an appointment, a male has been punished for re-tweeting an article that states that females do not have a penis.

    Such a factual statement goes against the feminist ideology that there are no differences between women and men—not even physical differences. In Sweden a professor is being investigated for saying in a lecture that there are anatomical and biological differences between men and women. A feminist student objected, and so a professor of neurophysiology is being held accountable for stating a scientific fact.

    Anyone who does not realize that feminists are crazed far beyond the meaning of the word crazy, should read this:

    “A Swedish university is investigating a professor for ‘anti-feminism’ and ‘transphobia’ after he said there are biological differences between men and women. He is being urged to retract his comments.”

    In the assault on Kavanaugh, we are witnessing an Identity Politics assault on the White Heterosexual Male, an assault whose purpose is less to block Kavanaugh than to discourage white heterosexual males from standing for office as it is so easy for feminists to ruin a man’s reputation. The plan is to put the “victim groups” of the white male in office so that retribution can be handed out to white males in keeping with feminist professor Christine Fair’s agenda of killing them, castrating their dead bodies and feeding them to swine.

    Perhaps white males have understood this. You see them increasingly with Asian and Hispanic women, not with white women who are increasingly seen with black men. In another generation or two, perhaps the white ethnicities will have disappeared.

    Then to whom will Identity Politics assign the hated role?

  • A Record 37% Of Small Business Owners Are Raising Wages

    A record net 37% of owners reported they are raising overall compensation in hopes of hiring and retaining employees in what is increasingly cited as the tightest labor market in decades, according to NFIB’s latest monthly jobs report. This surpasses the previous record of a net 35% in May 2018.

    The competition for qualified workers is pushing up compensation as there are currently 660,000 more job openings than job seekers.

    “There is extraordinary competition for workers in this historically tight labor market. Small business owners are investing more in their employees to attract and keep qualified workers,” said NFIB President and CEO Juanita D. Duggan. “Thanks to the recent tax cuts and regulatory reform, owners are able and comfortable investing more in their employees and businesses which further strengthens the economy.”

    Down one point from last month, 61 percent of owners reported hiring or trying to hire, with 87 percent of those reporting few or no qualified workers. A separate survey asked about typical reasons for why an applicant was unqualified and 26 percent owners identified the lack of specific skill and 16 percent identified a poor work history. Owners also cited social skills, attitude, and appearance as disqualifiers.

    Thirty-eight percent of owners reported job openings they could not fill in the current period, unchanged from last month. Reports of job openings were the most frequent in construction (56 percent), manufacturing (54 percent), transportation (51 percent), wholesale trades (44 percent), and retail (43 percent).

    “The lack of qualified workers is having an effect, and owners are raising compensation to attract the right workers.” said NFIB Chief Economist Bill Dunkelberg.  “Hopefully this will also induce more individuals to enter or re-enter the labor force and take a job.”

    According to the NFIB, the labor market is tight for both skilled and unskilled workers, with 36% reporting openings for skilled workers and 15% reporting openings for unskilled workers. Down three points from last month, 14% reported using temporary workers.

    A testament to the fiscally-stimulated economy, a seasonally-adjusted net 23% of owners are planning to create new jobs, down three points from last month. Twenty-four percent plan to increase total compensation at their firm and six percent plan reductions. Firms in construction (net 26%), wholesale trades (net 28% ), and manufacturing (net 34%), account for the strength in hiring plans.

    Meanwhile, job creation picked up in September, rising to a net addition of 0.15 workers per firm. A seasonally-adjusted 13 percent reported increasing employment an average of 4.6 workers per firm and 11% reported reducing employment an average of 1.9 workers per firm.

  • Hot Economic Warfare: Scrambling For Rare-Earth Minerals

    Authored by Wayne Madsen via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    Just like the gold rushes of California between 1848 and 1855, Canada’s Klonike of 1896 to 1899, and Western Australia’s of the 1890s, the world is experiencing a frenzy to obtain mining rights in pursuit of today’s “gold,” namely rare earth minerals. Used for components of electric vehicle batteries, mobile telephones, flat-screen televisions, flash drives, cameras, precision-guided missiles, industrial magnets, wind turbines, solar panels, and other high-tech items, rare earth minerals have become the type of sought-after commodity that uranium and plutonium were during the onset of the atomic age.

    Rare earth minerals do not easily roll off one’s tongue in the same manner as gold, silver, and platinum. For example, yttrium oxide and europium, while sounding unimportant, are what provide the red hue in color televisions.

    Nations around the world are scrambling to secure reserves containing rare earth minerals. China, where one-third of the planet’s rare earth minerals are currently found, has severely restricted the export of the minerals to friends and competitors. One of the largest known reserves of rare earths is the Bayan Obo deposit in China’s Inner Mongolia.

    China’s export restrictions have sent nations around the world on search missions to secure both known and untapped rare earth deposits. One such mother lode of rare earth minerals has been discovered in the eastern southern Pacific Ocean. The estimates are that the deep ocean region contains twice the amount of rare earths than found in China.

    Some of these deposits are in undersea geologically active zones, where deep sea floor vents spew rare earth minerals from expulsions of lava and hot gases. The discovery that the South Pacific region is rich in rare earths has led European nations, including France and Britain, which maintain colonies in the area, re-staking their colonial footprints.

    France, for example, is reticent to grant further autonomy or independence to New Caledonia, where an independence referendum is scheduled for November 8, French Polynesia, and Wallis and Futuna. Similarly, Britain has showed a renewed interest in the Pitcairn Islands, where a handful of descendants of the HMS Bounty mutineers continue to live.

    In 2015, Australia stamped out self-government of Norfolk Island, turning the island into a hybrid municipality of New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory. New Zealand has vetoed ambitions by two of its elf-governing “associated states” – the Cook Islands and Niue – for full membership in the United Nations. For these colonial powers, it is not what is about what lies above the sea – island resorts – but what lies under the sea within the marine borders of the territories and that is rare earth minerals.

    With the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet, rare earth reserves have been discovered in Greenland, a “self-governing” territory of Denmark. Moves by the Greenland government to seek independence from Denmark and permit Chinese companies to mine rare earth minerals have met with stiff opposition from Denmark, the United States, and NATO.

    Other countries possessing significant deposits of rare earths include India, Russia, Vietnam, Malaysia, South Africa, Australia, Canada, Brazil, and the United States. These nations, as well as China, all have varying degrees of the necessary political, economic, and military might to protect their rare earth resources.

    However, some developing nations, where rare earths have been discovered, are candidates for ruthless exploitation by multinational firms, some under the direction of governments, to secure exclusive mining rights. In fact, Toyota, which has a tight relationship with the Japanese government, bought a rare earth mine in Vietnam to ensure such exclusivity rights.

    Japan may not have to worry about Vietnam as its major source of rare earths. Earlier this year, a deposit of some 16 million tons of rare earth mineral oxides was discovered in deep sea mud located 1150 miles southeast of Tokyo. The deposit contained much of the rare earths upon which Japan’s consumer electronics industry is reliant: yttrium, dysprosium, terbium, and europium.

    In countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo, columbite-tantalite, a mineral used in the manufacture of semi-conductor chips, is such a hot commodity that rival warlords, some acting on behalf of outside players, including Rwanda, Uganda, Israel, Japan, China, and the United States battle one another for control of the mineral’s extraction and export.

    The Rwanda Mines, Petroleum, and Gas Board signed a deal in 2017 with a major Japanese rare earth extraction firm for the exploration and mining of rare earths, as well as tungsten, in Rwanda. However, Rwandan President Paul Kagame is known to have backed fellow Tutsi rebels in the DRC, who exploit rare earth mines in South and North Kivu provinces and send the stolen minerals to Rwanda. There have been attempts to curtail the trade in “conflict minerals” in the Great Lakes region of Africa, but they have all come to no avail.

    Currently, US and Chinese firms are waging a political and economic influence “war” for access to lithium, cassiterite, and cobalt reserves in the DRC.

    Next door to the DRC, in civil war-ravaged Burundi, there was a discovery of exceptionally high-grade “main vein” of rare earth minerals in 2017. Burundi, which was once a German colony, saw Germany’s ThyssenKrupp move in to exploit the mineral resources. ThyssenKrupp also began building a processing plant in Burundi. The German government has come under attack from human rights groups that accuse it of backing the German mining venture, known as the Gakara Project, even though Burundi’s president, President Pierre Nkurunziza, was dubiously elected to a third term in office. German business groups have countered with the argument that if Germany was not mining Burundi’s rare earths, China would be doing so.

    The French government is not only concentrating its rare earth mining activities in its traditional Francophone sphere of influence in Africa – Morocco, Burkina Faso, Niger, Madagascar, Guinea – but further afield, including the pursuit of joint venture mining activities in Kazakhstan.

    In the United States, the Pentagon has recognized the military importance of rare earths. The Defense Logistic Agency’s Strategic Materials department is tasked to ensure a continued supply of rare earths to US defense contractors. The US Energy Department tracks rare earth discoveries and mining operations around the world, thanks to a constant infusion of intelligence from the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency. The Trump administration has moved to open US federal wildlife areas, national parks, and other lands to exploration and mining of rare earths to private companies, much to the chagrin of environmentalists and Native American tribal governments.

    In a rush to lessen dependence on Chinese exports of rare earths, which have, in any event, been restricted by Beijing, nations and companies around the world have launched a cut-throat competition to gain leverage over the rare earth market. What peaks the interest of gatherers of economic intelligence are references in email, video conferences, phone calls, faxes, and financial documents to such terms as europium, terbium, dysprosium, yttrium, samarium, and other rare earths.

    As the world becomes more dependent on high-tech and an “Internet of things,” consisting of computers, mobile phones, appliances, televisions, security systems, automobiles, etc., the economic war for control of rare earth minerals will increase. There is the extreme possibility that economic warfare could turn into shooting wars, as has already been the case in the DRC.

  • Bioweapon? Scientists Sound Alarm Over DARPA Plans To Spread Viruses Using Insects 

    A team of scientist sounds the alarm in a new Science Policy Forum report about a mysterious US government program that is developing genetically modified viruses that would be dispersed into the environment using insects. The virus-infected or ‘Frankenstein’ insects are being developed as countermeasures against potential natural and engineered threats to the US food supply. The program is operated by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) could be viewed as an attempt to develop an entirely new class of bioweapons that would prompt other nations to seek similar weapons, they cautioned.

    The researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology and the University of Freiburg both in Germany, and the University of Montpellier in France suggest DARPA’s program could likely breach the Biological Weapons Convention, the first multilateral disarmament treaty banning the development, production, and stockpiling of biological and toxin weapons.

    Dubbed the “Insect Allies” program, DARPA began modifying insects in 2017, with the plan to produce more resilient crops to help farmers deal with climate change, drought, frost, floods, salinity, and disease, said Gizmodo. The technology at the center of the program is an entirely new method of genetically modifying crops. Instead of modifying seeds in a lab, farmers would send swarms of insects into their crops, where the genetically modified bugs would infect plants with a virus that passes along the new resilience genes, a process known as horizontal genetic alteration. Hence the technology’s name—Horizontal Environmental Genetic Alteration Agents (HEGAA).

    For HEGAA to work, Gizmodo explains that DARPA labs develop a virus that is inserted into the chromosome of a target organism. Scientists would use leafhoppers, whiteflies, and aphids genetically altered in the lab using CRISPR, or a variant of a gene-editing system, to carry the virus into crops. Each plant would then be infected by the insect, triggering the intended effects of protecting crops from natural and or human-made threats.

    However, the lead author of the report, Richard Guy Reeves from the Department of Evolutionary Genetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, says DARPA’s Insect Allies program is disturbing and an example of dual-use research in which the US government, in addition to aiding farmers’ crops, is also developing a biological weapon.

    Insect Allies is reportedly backed by $27 million of funding. According to Gizmodo, there are four academic research teams currently working on the project, including researchers at the Boyce Thompson Institute in New York, Pennsylvania State University, Ohio State University and the University of Texas at Austin. DARPA maintains that “all work is conducted inside closed laboratories, greenhouses, or other secured facilities,” and that the insects have built-in lifespans to limit their spread. By 2020 or 2021, DARPA is planning on testing the virus-infected insects on crops inside greenhouses at undisclosed locations.

    Reeves said the use of insects as a vehicle for genetic modification is a horrible idea because they cannot be controlled and indicates that traditional overhead sprays to deliver HEGAAs is the safest bet. DARPA says insects are the only practical solution, as overhead spraying of HEGAAs would require increased farming infrastructure — something that is not available to all farmers.

    The report specifies how there is currently no global regulatory framework to support this new way of transporting HEGAAs to crops, which if not supervised correctly, could lead to potential mishaps.

    The scientists of the report interpret DARPA’s insect program as “an intention to develop a means of delivery of HEGAAs for offensive purposes,” such as conducting biological warfare.

    These genetically modified bugs could be implanted with a dangerous plant-killing disease that the Trump adminstration could unleash over farmland in Venezuela, Syria, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and or even China, that would decimate the countries’ food supply.

    The introduction of this potentially dangerous technology, the scientists argue, would usher in an entirely new class of biological, insect-dispatched weapons that could be considered weapons of mass destruction. Scientists warn that this technology would spur rival nations to develop similar insect programs.

    In response to a Gizmodo question, a spokesperson for DARPA said it welcomes academic dialogue about the Insect Allies program, but criticizes the conclusion of the report, saying it is “misleading and peppered with inaccuracies.”

    Blake Bextine, DARPA Program Manager for Insect Allies, rejects many of the claims made by Reeves.

    “DARPA is not producing biological weapons, and we reject the hypothetical scenario,” Bextine told Gizmodo.

    “We accept and agree with concerns about potential dual use of technology, an issue that comes up with virtually every new powerful technology. Those concerns are precisely why we structured the Insect Allies program the way we did, as a transparent, university-led, fundamental research effort that benefits from the active participation of regulators and ethicists and proactive communication to policymakers,” said Bextine.

    The purpose of Insect Allies program, he states, is to prepare for a new era of emerging threats to US agriculture. Brextine added that DARPA is evaluating the potential environmental impacts of HEGAAs.

    “DARPA is extraordinarily sensitive to environmental risks and off-target effects, and has structured the Insect Allies program to identify and mitigate them,” he said. “DARPA has mandated multiple levels of biosafety and biosecurity at each stage of the program.”

    If DARPA’s program succeeds, they will have developed gain-of-function treatments that can be delivered to the “right plants” and the “right tissue,” he said. In other words, DARPA wants precision guided biological weapon insects.

    Jason Delborne, an Associate Professor at North Carolina State University, an expert in genetic engineering, says the concerns seem “appropriate.”

    “The social, ethical, political, and ecological implications of producing HEGAAs are significant and worthy of the same level of attention as exploring the science underpinning the potential technology,” Delborne told Gizmodo.

    “The authors argue persuasively that specifying insects as the preferred delivery mechanism for HEGAAs is poorly justified by visions of agricultural applications. The infrastructure and expertise required for spraying agricultural fields—at least in the U.S. context—is well established, and this delivery mechanism would offer greater control over the potential spread of a HEGAA.”

    DARPA could be on the cusp of obtaining a new biological weapon that would most certainly be used against Venezuela, Syria, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and or even China, to cripple the countries’ food supply and lead to a regime change without firing a signal shot — this the future of warfare.

  • We've "Ruled Out" Satan: Officials Baffled By Mysterious Flaming Hole In Arkansas

    Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

    Experts are still trying to determine the cause of flames that shot out of a hole in the ground in Midway, Arkansas, last month.

    The fire in the hole seemingly erupted spontaneously, shooting out flames of up to 12 feet high.

    Fire chief Donald Tucker responded to the early morning emergency call on September 17.

    He told the Springfield News-Leader what he saw when he got to the scene:

    “When I got there, there were flames 8 or 9 feet high shooting out of a hole about 2 feet in diameter. It burned that way for 30 to 45 minutes before it went out.”

    Tucker told Motherboard that although news reports have said the flames initially reached 12 feet high, he never saw them get to that level. The fire burned red-orange, at about two feet in diameter, Tucker said.

    Why didn’t Tucker take pictures of the fire? “With a fire like that, you don’t know what it is, so you don’t put yourself in danger,” he told Motherboard.

    Apparently, the mysterious fire somehow extinguished itself.

    Before the fire retreated into the hole, it shrunk to a flame about waist high for a few minutes, Tucker said:

    “Then it just went down the hole and went out. For a little bit, there was just a little bit of glow of fire down in the hole.”

    Mickey Pendergrass, the county judge in Baxter County, told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that officials are still investigating the mysterious Midway hole, but one possible suspect has been cleared:

    “As far as the spiritual Satan goes, we’ve ruled that out. He didn’t come up and stick his pitchfork in the ground and blow that hole out.”

    Good to know.

    The volleyball-sized hole has been there for at least 10 years, according to a man who used to mow the grass on the private property along Arkansas 5.

    “It’s kind of like an old groundhog hole, burrow, or armadillo’s,” Pendergrass said. “But it’s been there a long time.”

    What caused the fire remains a mystery, however.

    So far, the following possible causes of the fire have been ruled out:

    • Meteorite

    • Lighting strike

    • Natural gas

    • Utility-related problem

    • Leaking gasoline or propane tanks

    • The Devil

    Could someone have started the fire intentionally? It is possible, Pendergrass said:

    “What kind of fuel did they use to make it so clean and no soot and no damage? And what was used to strike the fire to start with? There are just too many questions for it not to have been done on purpose, whether it was for fun or for giggles. Somebody will talk someday and have to brag about it, and then we’ll find out who did it.”

    Soil samples were taken from the hole, and officials hope that analysis will provide clues. If gasoline or anything else was put in the hole, or if groundwater contamination caused the fire, the soil should help experts determine that.

    It is possible, however, that we will never know what caused the hole to burst into flame.

    “I’ve never seen it before. I hope I never see it again,” Tucker said. “What it was, I have no idea.”

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Oct 05

Today’s News 5th October 2018

  • Mattis Says Russian GRU Caught Red-Handed Hacking OPCW, Vows Cyber Support To Allies

    Russia is facing new multiple wide-ranging charges of hacking as Western officials on Wednesday alleged its intelligence agencies conducted four high profile cyber attacks, including an attempt to spy on the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which is the independent body responsible for investigating chemical attacks in Syria and in the UK.

    The OPCW is headquartered the Netherlands, and according to breaking reports a group that the Dutch government has alleged are Russian operatives may have been caught red-handed in the act. 

    Moscow has dismissed the charges as but more “Western spy mania” while leveling its own accusations that the Pentagon is conducting an illegal and dangerous germ and bio-weapons research program near Russia’s borders. 

    Image via Reuters

    The BBC reports based on Dutch government statements:

    The four suspects identified by Dutch officials had diplomatic passports and included two IT experts and two support agents, officials said.

    They hired a car and parked it in the car park of the Marriot hotel in The Hague, which is next to the OPCW office, to hack into the OPCW’s wifi network, Major General Onno Eichelsheim from the Dutch MIVD intelligence service said.

    Authorities were quick to release photographs of the group’s alleged hacking equipment and computers in the trunk of a car. Police say they are GRU operatives (also known as the Main Intelligence Directorate – the intelligence arm of the Russian military) who planned to intercept login passwords to gain access to OPCW internal files (in what appears to have been a low security environment, given wifi use to store sensitive files). 

    The Dutch government released the above photo which it says proves Russian spies tried to hack OPCW headquarters

    But strangely the four men, identified as spies, were immediately escorted out of the Netherlands as opposed to being detained for further questioning and possible trial. 

    Meanwhile the UK government further accused the GRU of conducting cyber-attacks on private firms in Ukraine and Russia, the US Democratic Party, as well as a small TV network in Britain. 

    U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, addressing the charges on Thursday after a two-day meeting in Brussels, said Russia must be held accountable for its attempts to hack the OPCW office. 

    The Dutch government says the four suspects travelled to the Netherlands on diplomatic passports earlier this year. Image source: Dutch govt.

    “Basically, the Russians got caught with their equipment, with people who were doing it and they have to pay the piper, they are going to have to be held to account. How we respond is a political decision by the nations involved,” Mattis said after meeting with his NATO counterparts. However, in perhaps an attempt to deescalate continued tensions with Russia he noted there wouldn’t necessarily be “tit-for-tat” response by the West.

    Britain and the Netherlands have accused Russia of running a global campaign of cyber attacks to undermine democracies, including a thwarted attempt to hack into the U.N. chemical weapons watchdog while it was analyzing a Russian poison used to attack a spy.

    After both Britain and the Netherlands accused Russia of using aggressive cyber warfare to undermine democracies around the world, Mattis said, “We are ready today to provide cyber support to our allies, I’ve seen enough of the evidence to say that the Dutch and the British are 100 percent accurate in who they have attributed this to.”

    Russia for its part dismissed the OPCW hacking and other claims through its foreign ministry as more “Western spy mania… picking up pace”.

    Perhaps in retaliation or as a counterpoint to the widespread accusations coming from the West, Russian media featured bombshell allegations throughout Thursday that “dozens of Georgians” may have been killed by a toxin or bioweapon as part of Pentagon overseas biological and germ warfare research based in the caucuses.

    The allegations were made by Russia’s Ministry of Defense, and follow extensive investigative reporting by Eastern Europe-based reporter Dilyana Gaytandzhieva, who further produced leaked memos documenting a secretive US bioweapons research program in the region. 

    According to Russia’s RT News, which summarized the charges, the MoD gave a press conference Thursday which detailed the following accusations using photographs and leaked military documents: 

    A US-funded biomedical laboratory in Georgia may have conducted bioweapons research under the guise of a drug test, which claimed the lives of at least 73 subjects, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement.

    The question of what really might have taken place at the secretive US-sponsored research facility hosted by Russia’s southern neighbor was raised by the Russian military on Thursday after they studied files published online by a former Georgian minister.

    Russia vowed to investigate the Pentagon’s research labs and its activities, and said that threatening US activities would result in  “diplomatic and military action” in response to any perceived threats. “We cannot simply turn a blind eye to things happening near our southern borders that directly affect our safety,” the head of the Russian parliament’s Defense Committee told TASS news agency.

    So in spite of Mattis’ suggesting there will be no “tit-for-tat” action between Moscow and Washington, it appears this is precisely what is set to continue amidst the new claims and counterclaims. 

  • Is Criticizing Terrorism "Mental Illness"?

    Authored by Guy Milliere via The Gatestone Institute,

    • A 615-page report was recently released, written by an adviser to President Emmanuel Macron, Hakim El Karoui, who is in charge of designing the new institutions of an “Islam of France.” The report defines Islamism as an “ideology totally distinct from Islam” and also never addresses the links between Islamism and terrorism. The report also insists on the urgent need to spread “true Islam” in France and adopt the teaching of Arabic in public high schools.

    • The court’s request, for Marine Le Pen to undergo a psychiatric evaluation to determine if she is sane, indicates that French authorities might be reviving the old Soviet use of “psychiatry” to silence dissidents or political opponents.

    • The legal offensive against Marine Le Pen was actually added to the financial offensive. Even if Le Pen is not sent to prison, the law seems to have been used to open the possibility of declaring her ineligible for the European Parliament elections scheduled for May 2019.

    Marine Le Pen (pictured at podium), the leader of France’s right-wing National Front Party, posted tweets critical of the Islamic State terrorist group, including photos of their murdered victims. For this, she was charged with the crime of “disseminating violent images,” and ordered by a court to undergo a psychiatric evaluation to determine if she is sane. (Photo by Sylvain Lefevre/Getty Images)

    On December 16, 2015, a French journalist on a mainstream radio station compared France’s right-wing National Front Party to the Islamic State (ISIS) by saying that there is a “community of spirit” between them and that both push those who support them to “withdraw into their own identity”. Marine Le Pen, the president of the National Front party, speaking of a “unacceptable verbal slippage,” asked the radio station for the right to answer. She then published on Twitter images showing the bodies of victims of the Islamic State and adding: “ISIS is this!”

    The French media immediately accused her of broadcasting “indecent” and “obscene” images, and shortly after that, the French government ordered the Department of Justice to indict her. On November 8, 2017 the French national assembly also lifted her parliamentary immunity.

    A few months later, a judge mandated by the French government, charged Marine Le Pen with “disseminating violent images,” citing article 227-24 of the French Penal Code, which defines the crime of:

    “… disseminating… a message of a violent nature, inciting terrorism, pornographic or likely to seriously violate human dignity or to incite minors to engage in games that physically endanger them, or to commercialize such a message.”

    As part of the proceedings, Marine Le Pen received a letter from the court orderingher to undergo a psychiatric evaluation to determine if she is sane. She refused, saying that showing horrors committed by the Islamic State is not incitement to murder, and that pictures of victims of terrorism cannot be equated with pornography.

    The court’s request indicates that the French authorities might be reviving the old Soviet use of “psychiatry” to silence dissidents or political opponents.

    At the moment, Le Pen can be arrested anywhere, at any time and could face up to five years in prison.

    As a presidential candidate in May 2017, she received 34% of the vote in the second round of voting. Sending her to jail could provoke anger among her supporters, so her arrest is not expected.

    What seems more probable is an effort to intimidate her, and if possible, to destroy her politically. A few weeks ago, the French government asked magistrates responsible for investigating “financial crimes” to seize two million euros ($2.3 million) of public funds granted to Marine Le Pen’s party, which has since ceased almost all public activities. The legal offensive against Marine Le Pen was actually added to the financial offensive. Even if Le Pen is not sent to prison, the law seems to have been used to open the possibility of declaring her ineligible for the European Parliament elections scheduled for May 2019.

    French President Emmanuel Macron knows that today, Le Pen’s party is his main opposition in France and that Le Pen is his main political opponent. He describeshimself as the champion of the “progressive” vision of Europe and the main enemy of those who want to resist Islamization, uncontrolled immigration, and who wish to defend national sovereignty — views he has described as “leprosy” and “evil winds“. He has verbally blasted Italian Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, as well as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who are creating a European alliance of nationalist movements that include Le Pen’s party. On the contrary, Macron supports European sanctions against Hungary and Poland if they refuse to accept more migrants.

    Macron sees that a victory of the Salvini-Orban alliance would not only be a humiliation for him, but that a victory of Le Pen’s party in France could mean the final collapse of his crumbling presidency (his approval rating, which has fallen 6 points in the last month, now stands at 23%). He cannot crush the Salvini-Orban alliance, but he can affect the political process in France.

    Macron’s stance against Le Pen might also be an attempt by his government to ward off more Islamic violence in France. Presently, books and publications that reference the violent dimension inherent in Islam are boycotted and absent from bookstores (the Quran, however, is still widely available). Organizations that fight the Islamization of France and Europe are judicially harassed. Pierre Cassen and Christine Tasin, the leaders of the main French anti-Islamization website, Riposte Laïque (“Secular Response”), must spend a disproportionate amount of time in court and are heavily fined on a regular basis. To avoid having their website closed down, they have had to relocate their website outside both France and the European Union.

    A 615-page report was recently released, written by an adviser to Macron, Hakim El Karoui, who is in charge of designing the new institutions of an “Islam of France.” The report defines Islamism as an “ideology totally distinct from Islam” and also never addresses the links between Islamism and terrorism. The report also insists on the urgent need to spread “true Islam” in France and adopt the teaching of Arabic in public high schools.

    In the French media, any mention of the links between Islam and violence has now been almost completely eliminated. When a Muslim commits a knife attack and shouts “Allahu Akbar” (“Allah is the greatest”), the official message published even before any investigation invariably declares that what happened had “nothing to do with Islam” and “no terrorist character“. All the media then blindly quote the message. In the most recent attack of this kind, on September 9 in Paris, seven people were wounded, four seriously.

    Recently, the author Éric Zemmour spoke on television of the high proportion of young Muslims among France’s prison inmates, and of the rise of Muslim anti-Semitism in France’s suburbs. The Conseil supérieur de l’audiovisuel (CSA), France’s TV and radio regulator, told the station that Zemmour had uttered “stigmatizing remarks about Muslims” and that the station would suffer huge consequences if he ever repeated them. A French talk show host began circulating a petition demanding that Zemmour be totally excluded from the French media. The petition drew more than 300,000 signatures in one week.

    Zemmour wondered if the Soviet gulag would have to be reopened especially for him or if he would have to choose self-exile. He received so many credible death threats that he is now under round-the-clock police protection.

    The political scientist Jean-Yves Camus said that although he does not agree with Marine Le Pen’s views, “Everywhere and always, saying of a political opponent that he is ‘crazy’ opens the doors of totalitarianism”.

    A lawyer, Regis de Castelnau, wrote in the monthly Causeur:

    “There is a country in Europe where the main opposition party, after the seizure of its financial resources, sees its president asked to undergo a judicial psychiatric assessment. Is it Putin’s Russia or Orban’s Hungary? No. It is France”.

    Castelnau added that the law used to charge Marine Le Pen is usually used to indict “perverts” and “psychopaths,” and that “psychiatric expertise” was only asked for because their criminal sentences were often accompanied by an obligation to receive psychiatric treatment.

    “All those who laugh at the troubles of their political opponents,” he said, “would be wise to remember that if they accept attacks on political liberties, it could soon be their turn.”

  • Cyber Criminals Can Buy Passports On The Dark Web For As Little As $15, Study Finds

    Are you a convicted felon who has dreams of traveling abroad? Or a cybercriminal looking to set up a legitimate bank account into which you can deposit your ill-gotten funds? Then buying a passport off the dark web is an option that you should consider!

    But while in the past forged or stolen passports would fetch a hefty sum on the black market, thanks to the modern marvel that is the dark web, prices have fallen significantly. Last month, Comparitech analyzed listings on a handful of illicit marketplaces to try and determine exactly how much a passport or passport scan can fetch in the seediest corners of the Internet. Their analysts scoured  marketplaces like Dream Market, Berlusconi Market, Wall Street Market and Tochka Free Market, among others.

    During their search, they discovered that passport scans, which are often enough for a scammer or criminal to set up a bank account in another person’s name, can be purchased for as little as $15. For slightly more, an aspiring criminal can purchase a passport and drivers license scan – which would be enough to open an account on a cryptocurrency exchange or – better yet – hack into the account of an unsuspecting trader by exploiting password recovery tools.

    However, real passports still fetch a hefty sum, and even forgeries can be prohibitively expensive for some.

    Here are Comparitech’s key findings:

    • The average price of a digital passport scan is $14.71.
    • If proof of address or proof of identification —a selfie, utility bill and/or driver’s license—is added to a passport scan, the average price jumps to $61.27.
    • Australian passport scans were the most common, and yet, the most expensive ($32).
    • The average price of a real, physical passport is $13,567.
    • The average price of a counterfeit, physical passport is $1,478.

    Real or forged, passport scans are typically accompanied by other forms of identification – a utility bill, selfie of the ID card owner holding up their ID or a driver’s license. But they cost significantly more than the passport scan alone – often upwards of $60. But scammers get what they pay for: Because multiple forms of ID are usually required to bypass proof-of-address and proof-of-identification controls on websites. But if a user has one, they can seize control of the account of another individual, assuming the documents are in the correct name.

    The bulk of Comparitech’s analysis focused on digital scans and images of real passports. The site’s researchers found 48 unique listings for real passports scans, 38 of which were not sold with any accompanying proof of ID or address, spanning 20 countries. While they found no discernible pattern in pricing relative to supply or the power of the country’s passport, they did discover the Australian passports were the most common and the most expensive.

    Passport

    And while a wide range of vendors appeared to sell passport scans, only a small handful specialized in providing them.

    Passport

    Passports sold on the dark web came in a few forms:

    • Editable Photoshop templates used for making fake passport scans. These cost very little and are available for almost any Western country. They make up the majority of marketplace listings when searching for “passport”.
    • Digital passport scans. These real scans of actual passports cost around $10 each and are often sold in bulk. They are available for several countries and are fairly common.
    • Physical passport forgeries. We found listings for counterfeit passport forgeries for a handful of European countries. They typically cost north of $1,000.
    • Real, physical passports. These are the real deal (according to the listing), so they are not common nor cheap. Most of them cost more than $12,000.

    Dark web vendors accept payment exclusively in cryptocurrency, typically Bitcoin or Monero. (all pricings in Comparitech’s research were based on conversion rates on Sept. 24 and Sept. 25).

    Most of the physical passports that Comparitech found for sale on the dark web were from European countries, with physical passports coming in two forms: genuine and forgeries. They can be used in fraud-related crimes as well as illegal immigration, human trafficking, and smuggling.

    Authentic passports from Europe are hard to come by and cost a lot, with prices ranging from $8,216 for a German passport to $17,116 for the UK.

    Passports

    Forgeries are about one-tenth the price of real ones – but they still cost in excess of $1,000.

    Six

    Criminals who purchase passport scans typically target one of three venues for fraud-related crimes: cryptocurrency exchanges, payment systems, and betting websites.

    Here’s an example of how a passport scan might be used in an account recovery scam (summary courtesy of Comparitech):

    • The target has an account with a cryptocurrency exchange. They’ve set up two-factor authentication on their account, so a code is sent to an app on their phone to verify logins.
    • Through some other means, the scammer steals the user’s password (perhaps through phishing or a data breach). But because 2FA is enabled on the account, they can’t get in.
    • Instead, the scammer poses as the victim and approaches the cryptocurrency exchange, saying they’ve lost access to their phone and cannot get the authentication PIN, and thus cannot log in.
    • The cryptocurrency exchange requests the account holder send a scan of their ID to prove their identity before resetting the 2FA on the account. In many cases, companies will require the person take a selfie while holding the ID, hence the higher price for passport scans with selfies.
    • The scammer modifies the scans from the dark web as necessary to match the victim’s personal details, then sends it to the exchange, still posing as the victim.
    • Upon receipt of proof of identity, the cryptocurrency exchange resets or removes the 2FA on the account, allowing the hacker to access and drain the victim’s crypto assets. Hackers routinely change the passwords and email addresses associated with accounts to make it harder for the account owner to regain control.

    Cryptocurrency exchanges and individual wallets are becoming popular targets, with more than $1 billion in crypto stolen last year. And as cryptos become more widely adopted, this type of fraud is only going to spread.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Bizarre Cosmic Rays Are Shooting Out Of Antarctica And Physicists Can't Explain It

    Authored by Emma Fiala via TheMindUnleashed.com,

    Just over ten years ago, NASA-affiliated researchers set out to observe cosmic rays showering down on Earth from above. During the experiments in Antarctica, physicists found something unexplainable, something that could change everything we think we know about physics.

    The Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA) balloon experiment began in 2006 when the balloon spent a month hovering over Antarctica’s ice. Using sensors, ANITA began detecting high energy neutrinos interacting with the ice sheet below.

    Neutrinos are unique in that they don’t lose energy as they disseminate throughout the universe. Because of this, neutrinos are capable of providing humans with a peek into the vast expanse of the universe that would otherwise be unavailable.

    According to Motherboard, the Soviet physicist Gurgen Askaryan once theorized that “when a high energy particle interacted with a dense dielectric medium – a type of insulating material that doesn’t conduct electricity – it would produce a shower of secondary charged particles whose radiation can be detected by standard radio antennas. This interaction, now known as the Askaryan effect, allows physicists to detect particles that hardly interact with normal matter (like neutrinos) by observing their secondary effects.”

    During ANITA’s time in the Antarctic, it detected never before seen “upward-pointing cosmic-ray-like events.” The rays detected had horizontal planes of polarization, which may suggest they didn’t originate in space. The detection of these events means a new type of particle may have been evading detection by sophisticated particle accelerators since we began using sophisticated particle accelerators.

    Thanks to the Standard Model, physicists have known that cosmic rays are capable of reaching and penetrating Earth. However, according to the model, those rays shouldn’t be able to pass all the way through our planet. So are the anomalous high energy particles measured by ANITA originating from Earth, or are they actually passing through it?

    Some existing physics models that exist beyond the Standard Model involve theories that the interactions between cosmic rays and ice actually produce micro black holes that open into small dimensions. ANITA’s first mission didn’t detect the black holes, but it did detect the Askaryan effect.

    Last week, a group of researchers posted a new theory about the rays measured by ANITA. The group, led by Pennsylvania State University physicist Derek Fox, suggests ANITA may have found evidence of a particle that lies completely outside of the Standard Model of physics.

    The Standard Model has been successful as long as we’ve been using it, but it hasn’t been able to explain everything. For example, things like gravity and the accelerating expansion of the universe are not adequately explained by the model. That’s where the physics beyond the Standard Model (BSM). Some of those theories include string theory and extra dimensions.

    Fox’s theory relies on a type of BSM called supersymmetry. “We argue that if the ANITA events are correctly interpreted then they require some beyond the Standard Model particle,” Fox told Motherboard. “The likely properties of the particle seem consistent in at least some ways with the predicted properties of the stau in some supersymmetric models.”

    In order to delve further into the unknown when it comes to these upward-pointing cosmic rays, they must also be observed at other locations. Fox and his colleagues took the first step when analyzing data from the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in the Arctic. Despite the difference in detection systems, three events were identified in the data that were analogous to the cosmic rays observed by ANITA in Antarctica.

    Fox’s theory is only one interpretation of the ANITA data. The fourth ANITA mission was launched in 2016 and researchers are hopeful that its data, once completely analyzed, will reveal additional examples of these unusual cosmic rays.

  • 'Intrusion Truth', The Mysterious Group Doxxing China's Hacking Army

    An anonymous group calling itself Intrusion Truth has exposed members of APT10, an elite Chinese hacking unit that has targeted aerospace, engineering, and manufacturing firms to steal trade secrets, including from the US government.

    Since mid-summer, Intrusion Truth has published a list of alleged names of individual APT10 hackers. Sources with knowledge of APT10’s operations told Motherboard some of the details in Intrusion Truth’s blog posts and tweets match other data points on the Chinese group.

    Intrusion Truth’s controversial approach of anonymously unmasking government-backed hackers and exposing a foreign intelligence agency is something new and seen as a method to put pressure on Chinese companies cooperating with state-sponsored hacking efforts.

    “We will work with companies, private analysts, hackers, governments—whoever can provide the data that we need,” a spokesperson of Intrusion Truth told Motherboard via email.

    China has hacked its way to the second largest economy in the world. It has stolen other nation’s manufacturing secrets for years, stealing military fighter jet schematics and information on solar power, among other industrial secrets. The hacking became so bad that former President Obama brokered a deal with Chinese President Xi. In 2015, the two countries reached an agreement to stop hacking focused on the theft of intellectual property. However, the deal did not last long, as China stole 614 gigabytes of submarine secrets from a US Navy contractor earlier this year.

    US officials and security analysts have linked Chinese hackers for years to government-backed hacks into US firms. China has since denied involvement in the hacks.

    Intrusion Truth’s anonymity might be a clue to its identity. Some large corporations and security companies that employ researchers who track China’s hackers might be hesitant to release findings for concern of retaliation from China’s government, said Ben Read, who manages cyberespionage investigations at FireEye Inc.

    On Thursday morning, Bloomberg reported a new massive hack, China used tiny microchips on computer motherboards to gain access to almost 30 US companies’, including Amazon and Apple, technology supply chains.

    This type of wide-spread industrial espionage that Intrusion Truth is motivated against.

    “Intellectual property theft is a global confrontation fought between the West and its online adversaries, mainly China. This theft damages hard-working individuals, their companies and entire economies through lost revenue and competition that is completely unfair,” Intrusion Truth told Motherboard.

    “Until recently, China has been winning—it has acted with impunity, stealing data using commercial hackers that it pays and tasks but later claims are criminals. The use of commercial hackers is a deliberate attempt to circumvent the statements that China has made committing to stop this illegal activity,” the group added.

    In a first, Intrusion Truth unmasked individual alleged Chinese hackers, posted photographs, and even showed their places of work through Uber receipts. There was even evidence that some hackers were traveling to buildings operated by China’s intelligence agency.

    Thomas Rid, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, told Motherboard this kind of internet sleuthing is advance, and the language skills, tools and research abilities to pull off something like this is of a professional.

    “It’s somebody who is professional,” he said, “somebody who knows what they’re doing.”

    According to one theory, the group may work for a corporate victim of Chinese hackers.

    Intrusion Truth has posted 40 tweets to Twitter dating back from April 2017 and more than a dozen articles to the blog site Medium over the past year. In them is evidence linking Chinese companies to a suspected China-backed hacking group known as APT 3 and another known as APT 10, or Stone Panda, giving the public an understanding of the continued threat of Chinese hacking.

    “APT 10 is one of the most active groups we track,” said Mr. Read. The group has hacked multinationals from Japan, Europe, and US.

    Intrusion Truth focused on several Chinese companies, alleging they are connected to government-backed hacking programs.

    “We are focusing our efforts on determining whether these are just ‘companies that hack,’ or would they be better described as fronts enabling the Chinese state to employ hackers who can later be scapegoated as criminals?” Intrusion Truth tweeted in August.

    Last year, Intrusion Truth said two employees of Guangdong Bo Yu Information Technology Co., were part of APT 3. Six months later, US officials indicted the men—Wu Yingzhuo and Dong Hao—saying they were involved in hacking Moody’s Analytics and Siemens AG.

    Intrusion Truth also linked internet domains and email addresses associated with websites used by APT 10 to two other Chinese companies, Tianjin Huaying Haitai Science and Technology Development Co. and Laoying Baichaun Instruments Equipment Co.

    “We will never name ourselves or those who work with us. Our ability to contest China’s despicable activities in Cyberspace is derived precisely from our anonymity,” Intrusion Truth concluded. “That, and our willingness to tell the whole truth.”

    On top of the tit-for-tat exchanges between US-China on economic, political and military fronts, it now seems the battlefield is expanding to cyberspace. As a group of anonymous hackers (most likely tied to corporate America) has launched a counterattack deep within China — exposing a massive cyberespionage ring that has stolen countless secrets from manufacturing, aerospace, and engineering firms over the years.

  • How Globalists Plan To Use Technology And Poverty To Enslave The Masses

    Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

    Tyranny is often seen as a sudden and inexplicable development in a society; the product of a singular despot that rockets to power for a limited window of time due to public fear or stupidity. This is one of the great lies of the modern era.

    The truth is that for at least the past century almost every historically despised “tyrant” was merely a puppet of a larger managerial cabal, and the construction of each totalitarian state was accomplished slowly and quietly over the course of decades by those some financial elitists. From the Bolsheviks, to Hitler and the Third Reich, to Mao Zedong, to most tin-pot dictators across the Middle East and Africa, there has always been an organized group of money men and think tanks fueling the careers of the worst politicians and military juntas of the epoch.

    The rise of a tyrannical system takes extensive time, planning and staging. Human beings do not simply jump right into the arms of a dystopian nightmare regime impulsively at a moment’s notice. We have been told by popular media that this is how it works; that during hard economic or social conditions men with charismatic personalities and evil intentions suddenly rise to the surface and take power by promising a better world in exchange for public fealty. But where did those economic and social crises come from to begin with? Were they a natural consequence of the era, or were they deliberately engineered?

    The reality is that people must be psychologically conditioned to trade freedom for the illusion of safety. Sometimes this takes generations.  Every attempt at a totalitarian framework inevitably elicits a rebellion. Therefore, the most successful tyranny would be one that the public DEMANDS. They have to think it is their idea, otherwise they will eventually fight it.

    Globalist financiers and power addicts need something more than mere military might or bureaucratic force to obtain their ideal slave society. They need 4th Generation warfare tactics. They need to con the masses into accepting their own servitude.

    There are two tools that make this outcome possible: The first is controlled economic decline, the second is the integration of a technological gulag into every aspect of public life.

    Economic Weapons Of Mass Distraction

    It is no coincidence that dictatorial governments gain prominence as the global economy suffers; it is extremely difficult for people to remain vigilant to tyranny when they are completely distracted by their own survival. This is why my focus as an analyst has always been primarily on economics and solutions to fiscal disaster; it all begins and ends with the economy. If the public can be prepped to develop their own alternative economic systems before a crisis occurs, then they will be less distracted by the chaos and more apt to notice when the globalists offer tyranny as a fix-all.

    Without alternative markets at the local level there is no redundancy, no protection from a crash. With most people dependent on the existing system for their livelihoods, the economy becomes a very useful weapon for the globalists.

    Holding the economy hostage creates numerous advantages. Through deflationary pressure wages can be kept low while higher paying jobs disappear. Manufacturing can be phased out or outsourced overseas, as in the U.S. Small business ownership becomes difficult as taxes generally rise while financial conditions decline.

    Through inflationary or stagflationary pressures, low wages and the inadequate job market are combined with exploding prices. This makes survival for many people untenable without government aid.

    In this environment, the working public becomes reliant on the service sector, which provides no useful skill sets. Soon, you have entire generations of people with no production abilities whatsoever. They become drones working in meaningless office and retail jobs squandering away their days knowing that they are accomplishing nothing beyond a meager paycheck.

    The lack of a greater purpose or mission in life and the nagging realization that the average person has no productive capacity creates a palpable atmosphere of desperation. They do not own their own work, and they have nothing much to show for their labor; nothing to point at and say, “I built that.” The public gets to the point that they may even welcome an economic collapse simply to escape the drudgery.

    This is where movements to support totalitarianism come from — the subset of citizens that are fed up with fighting against the economy and have no sense of independence. These people do not know how to solve their own problems, they are always looking for someone else to do it for them. The globalists are happy to suggest their own predetermined solutions to the public once the financial structure hits a point of maximum pain.

    However, after the economy is repaired in exchange for the submission of the citizenry, people might still decide one day that the trade was unfair. Thus, a deterrent is needed to keep them in line.

    The Technological Fish Tank

    It is important to understand that there is no major country in the western OR eastern world that is not building a digital control grid, and this helps to support my position that eastern nations are just as subservient to globalist demands as western nations. All the geopolitical drama surrounding events like the trade war, the Syrian war or various elections, etc.; none of this matters in the end. When determining if the strings of a particular government are being pulled by the globalist cabal, all you have to do is look at how quickly they are implementing oppressive systems that serve globalist interests.

    For example, India’s government has been hitting the news feeds lately as their supreme court recently ruled that the controversial Aadhaar biometric program is legal. In a nation of 1.3 billion people, around 1 billion have already been biometrically profiled in a national database. This data can include fingerprints, iris scans and face scans.

    I have heard it argued that India is a rather odd place to experiment with such a database, considering 60% of the population is under the poverty line and most people barely have basic amenities. But I would point out that this is why it is a PERFECT place for the globalists to start cataloging the world population on larger scale.

    Again, financial desperation and a lack of productions skills tends to produce subservience. Hundreds of millions of poverty stricken people in India’s sprawling urban sewers are voluntarily giving up their biometric data in exchange for government aid programs.

    For the people not anchored down by the poor economy India has instituted other measures, including requiring anyone accessing government services, opening a bank account or signing up for a mobile phone service also give up their biometrics to the government.  In nations not yet impoverished at India’s level, more subversive measures have been instituted for surveillance of the population. Data is simply taken rather than traded.

    In Russia, Vladimir Putin has put the Yarovaya laws he signed in 2016 into effect. All digital data from phone conversations to emails is now recorded and stored by telecoms for government access for a minimum of six months, this includes Facebook and Twitter posts. The 2014 bloggers law also requires any blogger with over 3,000 followers be put on government file and they cannot remain anonymous. Any business operating a public Wi-Fi network is required by law to identify users by ID, which is also stored for at least six months.

    Russia’s FISA-style surveillance grid is vast, yet, many people in the liberty movement seem to ignore this reality with misplaced Putin-worship. As I have noted in numerous articles, Russia is heavily influenced by international financiers.

    Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan are the largest investment banks in the country. Their central bank works closely with the IMF and the BIS. The Kremlin has in the past called for a global currency controlled by the IMF. And Putin even admits in his own biography First Person that he has been friends with New World Order salesman Henry Kissinger since before he became president of Russia. In a latest show of how globalist Russia really is, the Russian Foreign Minister recently criticized the U.S. in a speech to the U.N. general assembly over its “attacks” on the “international order,” including undermining the World Trade Organization and global climate change agreements.

    With the above in mind, it should come as no surprise to anyone that Russia is playing right along with globalist efforts to identify and track every single living person. It should also come as no surprise that Donald Trump, surrounded by globalists within his own cabinet, is continuing and expanding FISA surveillance under his administration.

    At the beginning of 2018 Trump signed a bill renewing the National Security Agency’s warrantless FISA mass surveillance of the American population. Leading Democrats happily supported the action. Despite all of Trump’s rhetoric against FISA recently, it was Trump that made FISA’s continuation possible.

    Major social media companies are cooperating wholeheartedly with mass surveillance efforts as they share personal data with governments around the world regularly.  Facebook alone saw an increase in government requests for data of over 33% in 2017, and the nature of most of this data sharing is not open to public scrutiny.  This is one reason why I’m rather bewildered with the recent conservative fury over social media discrimination – it’s as if personal liberty activists are being tricked with reverse psychology to DEMAND unhindered participation in media sites that spy on them.  Why does anyone still want to sign up for these websites?

    But where is this all going? How does the combination of poverty and digital surveillance translate to tyranny? I believe China’s “social credit” program is the answer.  The system is based on the idea of “maintaining trust”, but whose trust?  Well, the government’s trust, of course.  Trust is measured using a social credit score that is tracked over a citizens life.  Punished behaviors include anything from smoking in a no smoking area to publishing internet content that the powers-that-be disapprove of.

    China is representative of the end game for the globalist ideal for civilization. With mass economic struggle leading to dependency on government welfare programs and employment opportunities, few citizens can afford to be “blacklisted.” China’s social credit system creates an environment in which any and every action on the part of citizens is tracked and then “rated” for acceptance or consequence. This includes how people express attitudes toward the government itself. Obviously, this is the ultimate control mechanism, very similar to the Cheka established by Lenin and Stalin in Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution, but on a massive digital scale.

    This is why mass surveillance is evil, regardless of whether someone is breaking the laws or not. It gives government the power to dictate and mold behavior by inspiring self-censorship rather than holding people directly at gun point. It is tyranny enforced in a less obvious way; a prison in which the prisoners maintain the locks and the chains and the bars.  Individuals do not dare do anything outside of collective norms for fear that it could be interpreted as socially negative. Punishment might include loss of access to the economy itself, and when most people are living from paycheck to paycheck, this could mean death.

    *  *  *

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  • "Eye-Watering" Homeownership Costs In Canada Hit 30-Year High, RBC Says

    Bank of Canada Gov. Stephen Poloz including “home prices” on his list of risk factors that “keep me up at night”, which he shared with an audience of economists at the prestigious Canadian Club earlier this year. But Poloz’s words of caution have not stopped housing costs for Canadians form climbing to precarious new highs. Signs of this stress are already apparent – for example, in Vancouver, where a chasm between bids and asks has caused the local housing market to grind to a halt.

    The latest warning about an impending implosion in the Canadian housing bubble comes courtesy of a quarterly RBC report, which found that the aggregate costs of homeownership in Canada, a category that includes mortgage fees, interest, property taxes and utilities and other miscellaneous costs, have reached their highest levels since 1990.

    The most alarming aspect of this trend, according to the bank, is that rising mortgage costs, not home prices, have been the biggest contributing factor over the past year, with mortgage rates rising in each of the last four quarters.

    RBC

    Rising mortgage rates have, of course, been spurred by the BoC’s rate hikes. Today, the average Canadian would need to spent roughly 54% of their income to buy a home. That’s up sharply from 43.2% three years ago.

    RBC

    But in Canada’s most unaffordable housing markets, these figures are considerably higher.

    “From overheating to correction to the onset of recovery, we’ve seen pretty much everything in the past three years in Canada’s housing market,” economists at the Toronto-based bank said in the report. “Yet an eye-watering loss of affordability has been a constant.”

    In Vancouver, Toronto and even Victoria, RBC’s index of home prices relative to average income has reached 88%, 76% and 65%, respectively. The bank’s data includes costs for condos and detached single-family homes.

    Home

    Courtesy of Bloomberg

    And with the BoC widely expected to continue raising interest rates…

    “We expect the Bank of Canada to proceed with further rate hikes that will raise its overnight rate from 1.50 percent currently to 2.25 percent in the first half of 2019,” the report said. “This will keep mortgage rates under upward pressure and boost ownership costs even more across Canada in the period ahead.”

    …its analysts have warned that a momentous housing implosion looks increasingly likely. Adding a dash of irony to this scenario, the BoC has expressed caution about the housing bubble and cited raising interest rates as a necessary measure to combat it.

    Read the whole report below:

     

    2018.09.30rbcreport by Zerohedge on Scribd

     

  • Is Global Warming A Significant Contributor To America's Wildfires?

    Via Cliff Mass’ Weather and Climate blog,

    During the past several summers there have been major wildfires in Washington State producing a lot of smoke.  And many people have been asking an important question:

    To what degree is anthropogenic global warming contributing to Washington State wildfires?

    If 90% of the blame for Northwest wildfires is due to anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming and 10% is due to fire suppression, poor forest management, or people starting more fires, then the logical response is to put most of  our efforts into reducing atmospheric CO2.   A climate-dominated problem.

    If 90% of the blame is due to past fire suppression, forest mismanagement, invasive species, and human encroachment, then we should put most of our efforts into fixing the forests and other non-climate measures. A surface-management problem.

    And yes, the percentages could be somewhere in between.

    Supporters of the carbon fee initiative (1631) are suggesting that the recent wildfires are mainly the result of anthropogenic climate change and using the fires to push their carbon fee plan.

    And Governor Inslee has stated explicitly that the fires have been made much worse by climate change.

    In contrast, others, including a number of folks in the forestry community, have suggested that poor forest practices are the main cause of most of the wildfires over the eastern side of the state.

    It is important to note that relative role of global warming in influencing the threat of wildfires may change in time.  For example, global warming could be relatively unimportant today for wildfires, but of great importance later in the century when temperatures will be much warmer.

    The Need for Better Information

    There is actually very little limited quantitative information on the role of global warming on Washington State wildfires.   Which is kind of strange considering the importance of the issue and the authoritative statements being made by some.  A lot of hand waving, but not much data.

    So let’s examine the issue in some depth, using a more quantitative approach than most.  But before I do so, let me give you the bottom line.

    Human-caused global warming has played only a minor role regarding  Washington State wildfires through today, but will become much more important later in this century.

    Now let me provide some evidence for this conclusion.

    How Has Global Warming Changed Washington’s Summer Climate?

    Before we look at the correlation of global warming and wildfires, we need to know how much Washington State climate has changed during the past half century or so, and then  estimate how much of that change is due to anthropogenically forced increases in greenhouse gases. To gain some insight into this, I secured the official NOAA/NWS climate division data averaged over Washington State for summer (June through August).

    First, consider daily mean temperatures from 1930 to today..  Very little warming until the mid-70s and then perhaps 2°F overall during the past 40 years.

    Summer average maximum temperatures have similar  pattern of change–again roughly 2F warmer since the mid 1970s.

    There is a substantial research that suggested that the radiative effects of increasing CO2 in the atmosphere became significant for climate forcing something around the 1970s.   And there was an important shift in a mode of natural variability, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PD0) during the mid-70s:  a shift from the cool to warm phase of this oscillation, which would have resulted in warming over the Pacific Northwest.

    Now the question is how much of the recent warming shown above is due to anthropogenic global warming and how much is due to natural variability.

    A group of researchers at the UW (including myself) are working on this question, using the most sophisticated approach applied to date:  an ensemble of high-resolution regional climate runs forced by the best global models.  This is the gold standard for such work.  We started with global climate models driven by the most aggressive increase of greenhouse gases (RCP 8.5) and then ran a high-resolution weather prediction model (WRF) driven by several climate models over time (1970-2100).

    I don’t have this output interpolated to the exact boundaries of WA state (working on this now), but let me show you the projections for summer max temperatures from the high-resolution model for two sides of the state (Hoquiam, HQM, and Spokane, GEG) forced by several climate models (see below in colors).  I also show the observed temperatures during the contemporary period at these location).  Virtually all of our simulation show greater warming at Spokane then along the coast, so let me show you that first.

    Between 1970 and roughly 2000 there is very little change in observed or modeled temperatures at Spokane, and roughly1.7F warming between 2000 and now in most of the simulations.  Since natural variability will differ between the simulations, the 1.7F average of all of the runs is a reasonable estimate of the impact of global warming until now.   And note how the warming revs up later in the century if the aggressive increase in greenhouse gases continue s(about 7F warming!).

    At Hoquiam, near the WA coast, the warming is less for both the recent decades and into the future.  Perhaps 1F of warming through this year.

    Now, I could show you a lot more material, but my conclusions from looking at a lot of high-resolution model data is that anthropogenic global warming due to increasing greenhouse gases may well have warmed up the state as a whole by roughly 1-1.5F during the past half-century, with any additional warming coming from natural variability (e.g., the PDO).   I really doubt that there would be much disagreement about this estimate from members of the atmospheric community.

    What about changes in precipitation?

    Summer (June to August) precipitation has always been relatively modest (4-5 inches) in our state (our summers are very dry), and there appears to be a modest wetting trend through 1980 and some drying since the late 1990s (see below).  In contrast, annual precipitation has been very constant (also below)

    Summer Precipitation for WA State (1930-2017)

    WA State Annual Precipitation

    What do the climate simulations suggest about precipitation trends?

    The annual precipitation will slowly increase according to the models (not shown), but what about summer?  Spokane summer precipitation has always been low (around 2.5 inches typical for June through August) and will remain low.  Any decline is small–a half-inch at most.  The recent dry years look like natural variability.

    Let’s compare that to Seattle on the western side of the State.   Summers are equally dry as Spokane, but there is a more clearcut drying– by roughly 2 inches by 2100, and perhaps .5 inches during the past years.  These results are consistent with previous studies by the UW climate impacts group and others indicating a slow increase of total annual precipitation, but a small downward trend in summer precipitation over our area.

    So to summarize.   Looking at past climate data and the best model information, one concludes that increasing greenhouse gases may well have warmed out state by 1-1.5F during summer (June through August) over the past half century, had little impact on annual precipitation, and perhaps dried an already very dry summer by perhaps .5 inches.

    But how did global warming impact the recent wildfires in Washington State? And how will future warming impact them?

    We are now ready to answer this question.

    But first we needed a list of the annual area burned and number of fires in Washington State over time.  It turns out this is a difficult information to get–which is surprising considering its importance.  I was able to get an Excel file from Josh Clark of WA State DNR with the fire information from 1992 to the present.  The prior period has not been digitized, with fire information in cabinets somewhere.  Oregon and California has done a better job in creating a long-term digital record of their fires.

    OK, we will use what we have.  Here is the number of acres burned by wildfires over WA state since 1992.  A very slow trend upward, except for the HUGE peak in 2015, the year with the big ridge and crazy-warm spring.

    The number of fires (see below) have been nearly constant in the long term, with some ups and downs

    But now the really interesting part.  Let’s plot the acres burned against warm season (June through September) temperatures (see below).

    This is really fascinating.  A very slow increase of fire acres with temperature, with considerable scatter,  showing that acres burned is not that temperature sensitive.  The one big year was the warmest.. 2015 with 61.4 F and nearly 1.2 million acres burned.

    Now, let’s put a regression line on this plot and see how much of the variability is explained by increasing temperature. Temperature only explains 22% of the increase in acres burned…so 78% is explained by something else.

    The bottom line of all this is that warming temperatures can explain only a small portion of the variability in Washington wildfires.

    What about precipitation?   Here is the plot of WA state precipitation for May through Sept since 1992.  A very slight downward trend, with the big fire year (2015) not showing anything anomalous.

    Another “scatterplot”, this time of acres burned versus precipitation, is presented below.  Very poor relationship, with the suggestion of a decline in burned acreage with greater rainfall.  And the precipitation only explains about 2% of the variability of acres burned!  This is not surprising because our region is naturally dry during the summer and being a little drier doesn’t make that much of a difference.   Like being a little more dead.

    The Essential Message Here

    Climate/weather changes do affect wildfires over Washington State.  Warmer temperatures and lesser precipitation correlate with increasing acreage, but the relationship is not a strong one.  The correlation of summer precipitation with wildfire acreage is very, very weak and summer temperature only explains less than a quarter of the variability in wildfire area.  

    Then we look at the look at the amount of climate change produced by human-caused greenhouse warming so far, and we find it is relatively small. Perhaps 1.5F for WA State temperatures and a slight drying over the summer.

    You put the lack of sensitivity together to temperature/precipitation with the small climate changes due to global warming and one has to conclude that human-caused climate change is undoubtedly NOT a major driver of the increased wildfires and wildfire smoke we have seen during some recent years.

    Based on my extensive reading on the wildfire issue, discussions with forestry experts at the UW, and a number of seminars/meetings I have attended, my conclusion is that the real culprits for our invigorated fire/smoke situation include:

    1.   Nearly a century of fire suppression and poor forest management that have produced unnatural, explosive forests, particularly on the dry side of our state.

    2.  Huge influx of people into the urban-wildland interface and forest areas that help initiate fires and make us more vulnerable to them.

    3.  Invasion of highly flammable, non-native species like cheatgrass.

    And we should not forget that fire is a natural part of our east-side forests.

    Claiming the climate change is the big villain in the current wildfire situation, may be a useful tool for some ambitious politicians and for those searching for arguments to support climate-related initiatives, but the truth is probably elsewhere.  In the FUTURE, as temperatures warm profoundly (particularly during the second half of the century), the influence of human-produced global warming on our wildfires will clearly increase substantially.

    Only by a sober, fact-driven approach, such as thinning, debris-removal, and proscribed burning of our east-side forests, with will be able to improve the health of our forests and reduce the potential for megafires and big smoke production.  Even if we could stop anthropogenic climate change in its tracks this year, we still need to  deal with the issues of forest management, human initiation of fires, and human changes at the surface.

    PS:  Although we had considerable background smoke from Canada, the really extreme smoke periods (August 21-22 in Puget Sound) was associated with fires over NE Washington, not Canada.  Same thing in 2017, with WA fires resulting in ash falling on Seattle.

    PSS:  Some folks might bring up the Pine Beetle issue.  I have read several papers and talked to experts in UW Forestry that suggest that rather than lack of cold temperatures, unnaturally dense east-side forests and lack of fire allowed the Beetle kill.  In any case, peer-reviewed papers suggest that pine beetle infestation does NOT contribute to fires.

    *  *  *

    A local forest landowner named Michael August has written a very interesting perspective on NW forests and smoke, found here.

  • "Largest Ever Homeless Camp" Suddenly Appears In Minneapolis

    The Associated Press (AP) has revealed a troubling story of the largest ever homeless encampment site mostly made up of Native Americans has quickly erected just south of downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota.

    City officials are scrambling to contain the situation as two deaths in recent weeks, concerns about disease and infection, illicit drug use and the coming winter season, have sounded the alarm of a developing public health crisis.

    “Housing is a right,” Mayor Jacob Frey said. “We’re going to continue working as hard as we can to make sure the people in our city are guaranteed that right.”

    The AP said approximately 300 people are living in the camp that is situated beside 16th Ave S & E Franklin Ave.

    Earlier this month, a team of AP reporters visited the camp and found dozens of tents lining the city street.

    To their amazement, most of the residents were Native American.

    The homeless camp — called the “Wall of Forgotten Natives” because it lined a highway sound barrier, is in a section of the city with a large concentration of American Indians that are suffering from extreme wealth, health, and education inequality. The AP said the tents stand on what was once considered Dakota land.

    “They came to an area, a geography that has long been identified as a part of the Native community. A lot of the camp residents feel at home, they feel safer,” said Robert Lilligren, vice chairman of the Metropolitan Urban Indian Directors.

    The camp illuminates the inequalities (mentioned above) that face American Indians in the state. AP provides a shocking statistic that American Indians make up 1.1% of Hennepin County’s residents, but 16% of the homeless population, according to government data from April.

    It is also a community that is being decimated by opioids. Minneapolis officials in July sued a group of opioid manufacturers and distributors, alleging their actions to promote prescription opioid drugs, such as OxyContin, have caused an addiction crisis straining the city’s resources.

    AP said one end of the camp had been designated for families, while adults — some of whom were high on drugs — were on the other end. In the middle, an organization called Natives Against Heroin, a tent where volunteers handed out bottles of water, food, and clothing. The group also provides addicts with clean needles, and most volunteers carry naloxone to treat overdoses.

    “People are respectful,” said group founder James Cross. “But sometimes an addict will be coming off a high… We have to de-escalate. Not hurt them, just escort them off. And say “Hey, this is a family setting. This is a community. We’ve got kids, elders. We’ve got to make it safe.”

    With hundreds of people living in close quarters, health officials fear an outbreak of infectious diseases like hepatitis A. Local support groups have started administering vaccines. Earlier this month, a woman died when she did not have an asthma inhaler, and one man died from a drug overdose.

    Local government agencies have set up areas to provide medical assistance, antibiotics, hygiene kits or other supplies. There are tents advertising free HIV testing, a place to apply for housing, and temporary showers. Portable restrooms and hand-sanitizing stations had also been positioned around the camp.

    The Minneapolis City Council voted Wednesday to move the camp to a 1.5-acre commercial property owned by the Red Lake Nation. The decision came five days after Mayor Jacob Frey and representatives of ten tribes said the industrial site was the best place to relocate the tent city.

    The new site at 2105-2109 Cedar Ave. South will not be ready until December because demolition work will take several months, according to David Frank, the city’s Community Planning and Economic Development director.

    “We will go as quick as we can to have the interim navigation center operational and ready,” Frank said. “We have our permitting people standing by. We have our housing team, our facilities team and our projects management all lined up to do this work.”

    The cost of preparing the site with living accommodations for dozens of people will be between $2 million and $2.5 million, Frank added.

    Minneapolis’ homeless explosion comes as no surprise. The much larger trend at play is the nation’s homeless population increasing for the first time since 2010 — driven by housing affordability issues, and widening inequalities. But do not tell President Trump the real economy continues to deteriorate.

    In 40 different venues over the last three months, President Trump declared the economy is the greatest, the best or the strongest in US history.

    — Trump, in a speech at a steel plant in Illinois, July 26

    “This is the greatest economy that we’ve had in our history, the best.”

    — Trump, in a rally in Charleston, W.Va., Aug. 21

    “You know, we have the best economy we’ve ever had, in the history of our country.”

    — Trump, in an interview on “Fox and Friends,” Aug. 23

    “It’s said now that our economy is the strongest it’s ever been in the history of our country, and you just have to take a look at the numbers.”

    — Trump, in remarks on a White House vlog, Aug. 24

    “We have the best economy the country’s ever had and it’s getting better.”

    In a recent, Bank of America note titled “The Thundering World,” a major theme in development for the 2020s could be “the epic wealth inequality” that is plaguing the economy.

    BofA says quantitative easing amplified income and wealth inequality over the last decade. The distribution of wealth is the widest ever. The top 1% own 40% of the global wealth; the bottom 80% own 7%.

    What does this all mean? Well, decades of failed economic and social policies are about to come home to roost. The explosion of homelessness in Minneapolis over a short period, is an example of the breakdown of the social fabric that will strain many more municipalities across the country in the years ahead. The America that we knew will not be the same by 2030.

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Oct 04

Today’s News 4th October 2018

  • Russia Says Space Station Hole Was Deliberate Sabotage After Formal Investigation

    After a thorough investigation which included consultation with NASA, Russia is now pointing the finger to deliberate sabotage as causing a hole that created a dangerous oxygen leak on the International Space Station (ISS).

    Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russian space agency Roskosmos, said on Monday that an official investigative report had confirmed their prior theory: “It concluded that a manufacturing defect had been ruled out which is important to establish the truth,” he said. 

    Damage to the craft first uncovered in late August while it was anchored to the International Space Station (ISS) alarmed engineers and raised suspicion of foul play — a possibility at first thought remote — but an air leak was initially thought to be the result of a micrometeorite colliding with the vessel.

    Concerning the drill hole, the Russian space agency chief continued, “Where it was made will be established by a second commission, which is at work now.” The agency is now actively seeking the person or persons responsible for drilling the hole. 

    A report of the new findings in Yahoo news summarizes of prior suggestions that it was a mere accident or assembly defect:

    Now it appears that isn’t the case, and that the hole was created specifically to cause problems for the crew. Who created it remains to be seen, but the Russian space agency is clearly taking this all incredibly seriously and whoever was responsible will likely face some incredibly stiff punishment.

    An initial inquiry from early September, related in Russian media, had described the possibility of a “reckless assembly worker” reported to have made a manufacturing error that had possibly opened up further once in space. However, the latest formal investigation reveals the Russians believe the damage is far beyond a mere manufacturing error, and have thus dismissed the idea that it was accidental or an assembly error. 

    Previously a Russian space program source described to TASS news agency that “There are drilling traces not only inside the living module [of the ISS], but also on anti-meteorite plates.”

    These plates have been described in media reports as “mounted outside of the station’s hermetic hull”. “The one who made the hole in the hull passed straight through it and the drill head hit external non-hermetic protection,” the TASS source explained. “The top of the drill came through the pressure hull and hit the non-gas-tight outer shell.”

    Sergei Prokopyev explained on a video released by Roscosmos last month that his team had located and sealed the tiny hole that created loss of pressure. Image source: AP

    Officials now hope that a secondary investigation will locate a suspect or suspects responsible. The investigation will continue even as Russian media in some instances has speculated on sensational claims that American astronauts secretly sabotaged the Russian vessel docked at the space station; however, such an act could have potentially caused danger to the entire ISS including the American sectors as well. 

    A prior statement between the Russian space chief and NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine had attempted to calm widespread speculation and accusations of foul play: “The Administrator and the General Director noted speculations circulating in the media regarding the possible cause of the incident and agreed on deferring any preliminary conclusions and providing any explanations until the final investigation has been completed,” the statement read. 

    And further, the NASA statement said of Russia-NASA cooperation: “They affirmed the necessity of further close interaction between NASA and Roscosmos technical teams in identifying and eliminating the cause of the leak, as well as continuation of normal ISS operations and NASA’s ongoing support of the Roscosmos-led Soyuz investigation.”

    NASA has denied the possibility that Americans could have had anything to do with it. However, this latest turn certainly adds suspense to an already very bizarre saga playing out dangerously in space. 

  • After Embarrassing Defeat, NATO, EU, & The West Try To Alter Reality In Macedonia

    Authored by Aleksandar Pavic via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    Although the September 30, 2018 name-change referendum in Macedonia, which was supposed to set that ex-Yugoslav federal republic on a path to (certain) NATO and (blithely promised but much less certain) EU membership, failed miserably, with only 36.91% of the voters turning out, well short of the 50% + 1 necessary for it to be valid – one would never know it from the reactions of its Western proponents and impatient beneficiaries. Indeed, a new term may be needed to adequately describe the reactions of the key pillars representing the reliquiae reliquiarum of the Western-led post-Cold War unipolar moment. Fake news simply doesn’t do them justice. Fake reality anyone?

    The US State Department was firmly in denial, releasing the following statement: 

    “The United States welcomes the results of the Republic of Macedonia’s September 30 referendum, in which citizens expressed their support for NATO and European Union (EU) membership by accepting the Prespa Agreement between Macedonia and Greece. The United States strongly supports the Agreement’s full implementation, which will allow Macedonia to take its rightful place in NATO and the EU, contributing to regional stability, security, and prosperity. As Macedonia’s parliament now begins deliberation on constitutional changes, we urge leaders to rise above partisan politics and seize this historic opportunity to secure a brighter future for the country as a full participant in Western institutions.”

    EU Commissioner for European Neighborhood and Enlargement Negotiations Johannes Hahn wasn’t to be outdone in his contempt for the 63% of the Macedonian “deplorables” who stayed home in order to voice their disagreement with renouncing their perceived national identity and country name (it was to become “Northern Macedonia”) in exchange for the double joy of a) becoming NATO’s cannon-fodder in its increasingly hazardous game of chicken with Russia and b) the EU’s newest debt-serfs: 

    “Referendum in Macedonia: I congratulate those citizens who voted in today’s consultative referendum and made use of their democratic freedoms. With the very significant “yes” vote, there is broad support to the #Prespa Agreement + to the country’s #Euroatlantic path. I now expect all political leaders to respect this decision and take it forward with utmost responsibility and unity across party lines, in the interest of the country.” 

    He was seconded the following day, in a joint statement, by Federica Mogherini, High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice President of the EU Commission.

    Understandably, as the most direct public stakeholder, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg was particularly (hyper)active. As the disappointing results began to roll in, Stoltenberg went into immediate damage control, tweeting: 

    “I welcome the yes vote in Macedonia referendum. I urge all political leaders & parties to engage constructively & responsibly to seize this historic opportunity. #NATO’s door is open, but all national procedures have to be completed.” 

    He reinforced his delusional missive the next day, releasing a similar statement co-signed by EU President Donald Tusk. And the day after, during a news conference, Stoltenberg even offered lightning-quick NATO accession to the unwilling Macedonians – January 2019, to be exact – if they would just be so kind as to urgently implement the very agreement that they had just so emphatically rejected. When NATO says it promotes democratic values – it means it!

    But that wasn’t the end of the “democracy mongering” surrounding what may well prove to be NATO’s, the EU’s and the rest of the end-of-history West’s Balkan Waterloo. For example, the EU Parliament’s Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, although “regretting that the turnout was less than 50%,” nevertheless hailed the referendum’s results and “call(ed) on the opposition to respect the expressed will of the majority [sic] of voters.”

    The Group’s leader, Udo Bullmann, while also maintaining that, somehow, a voter turnout of under 37% still represented a “majority,” additionally used the occasion to chastise Macedonia’s President for having the nerve to call for a boycott of the referendum (he committed the crimethink of referring to it as “historical suicide” during his UN General Assembly address), as well as to decry – what else? – “reports about Russian interference in the electoral process.”

    It goes without saying that Bullmann offered absolutely zero proof for his assertion. On the other hand, according to numerous media reports, as September 30 approached, while no high Russian official was to be seen anywhere in the vicinity, a veritable procession of Western political bigwigs made the pilgrimage to Skopje in order to reveal to the natives their “true” best interests: Sebastian Kurz, “Mad Dog” Mattis, the indefatigable Stoltenberg, Federica Mogherini, Johannes Hahn, Angela Merkel. No meddling there, obviously…

    Speaking of Angela Merkel, she also joined her fellow Western democrats’ show of unanimous disdain for the Macedonian voters’ majority opinion, urging the country to “push ahead” with the implementation of the majority-rejected accord, citing voters’ “overwhelming support” [sic], and arguing through the mouth of her spokesman that the required 50% + 1 turnout was actually “very high,” as voter registers purportedly included many people who had long since left the country.

    Coincidentally (?), the same argument was used by Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias, who opined that the “yes” votes cast in the referendum do, in fact, “represent the majority despite the low turnout because Macedonia does not have the 1.8 million voters entered into its electoral rolls but just 1.2 million since 300,000 people have left the country since the voter lists were last updated 20 years ago.” The fallacy of his reality-challenged claim is easily exposed if we just take a glance at the results of Macedonia’s last parliamentary elections (December 2016), in which voter turnout was just under 1.2 million (1,191,832 to be exact) or, officially, 66.79%. If we were to believe Kotzias and Merkel (who lodged no objections at the time), that would have meant that the turnout for the 2016 elections had been 99% – a figure that would make any totalitarian dictator blush with envy. On the other hand, since those elections did produce the “desired result,” enabling the current heavily pro-NATO/EU government led by Zoran Zaev to be formed, that automatically made them “valid” in the eyes of the high priests of democracy in Brussels, Berlin, London and Washington.

    Needless to say, Zaev joined his Western patrons’ charade, hailing the referendum as a “democratic success,” and announcing that he would seek the Macedonian Parliament’s support to amend the constitution and get the agreement with Greece ratified (according to the so-called Prespa Agreement, the Macedonian Parliament must adopt the necessary constitutional amendments by the end of 2018) so that the Greek Parliament can do the same, which would seal the deal. However, Zaev and his Albanian political partners are currently well short of the necessary two-thirds majority (reportedly, they can count on 71 deputies, or 9 short of the needed 80), and will have to call early elections if they don’t soon succeed in securing it.

    Yet, let it not go unsaid that Zaev was singing a rather different tune prior to the referendum, assuring that “citizens will make the decision,” and that Parliament would vote on the necessary constitutional changes only if the referendum is successful. But that was then, when confidence was still high that the usual combination of Western pressure, money and overwhelming domination of the media spectrum would get the job done. And then reality struck on September 30…

    Still, amidst all the faux cheer and public displays of confidence of the pro-NATO/EU crowd, a palpable sense of unease hangs in the air. As a Deutsche Welle opinion piece put it, the “low voter turnout for Macedonia’s referendum is a bad starting point for the country’s future development.” And, according to DW in Serbian, a Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung commentary warned that “politicians who otherwise ceaselessly talk of democracy as a ‘special value’ should not call on the parliament in Skopje to accept the voting results.” In other words, Macedonia’s people (read – a large majority of the majority Slavic population) have “voted with their feet” and rejected the agreement, and no new parliamentary election, no matter the results, can change that unpleasant-but-immutable fact. That alone will delegitimize any Western-led effort to “manufacture consent” by ramming the agreement through the present or future Parliament – although, as we know, NATO doesn’t put too much stock in referenda anyway, while the EU is not averse to making citizens vote as many times as needed to obtain the “right” result.

    But the West has lost more than just legitimacy in Macedonia – it has damaged its reputation, perhaps irretrievably. In the words of former presidential advisor Cvetin Chilimanov,

    “The West has humiliated us… Macedonians have rejected this media, psychological, political and propaganda aggression against the people, and that’s the tragedy of these days, that a large percentage of a people that had been genuinely oriented towards the West has changed its mind and stopped looking at the West as something democratic, something progressive and successful… That is the reason for the boycott. Pressure was applied against Macedonia, a country that had always been open to ties with the West, but which did not want to make this disgusting compromise and humiliate itself before the neighboring countries, before Western countries. We did not understand why that humiliation was needed so that we might become a member of Europe. What’s worst, perhaps that is now the thinking of a silent majority of the people, that they won’t forget this insult and this attack on Macedonia.” 

  • China Is Developing Space Lasers To Detect Submarines 1,640 Feet Underwater

    China is developing a dual-purpose laser-equipped low-Earth orbit satellite. The program was launched earlier this year, is aimed at increasing Chinese surveillance of maritime traffic and unparallel anti-submarine warfare detection in the world’s oceans.

    Project Guanlan, meaning “watching the big waves,” was launched in May at the Pilot National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology in Qingdao, a city in eastern Shandong Province on the east coast of China, said South China Morning Post.

    It is an ambitious project that the US and Russia have failed to acquire fully. China aims to boost its surveillance activities in the South China Sea, East China Sea, Yellow Sea, Sea of Japan, and the Phillippine Sea, according to the laboratory’s website.

    Researchers are currently working on the satellite’s design at the laboratory, but its lasers and internal components are being developed by 20 research institutes and universities across the country.

    Song Xiaoquan, a researcher involved in the project, said if the program is successful, it will enable China to surveil the upper layer of the Ocean.

    “It will change almost everything,” Song said.

    For several decades, countries around the world have been trying to develop a device to detect submarines using LIDAR (light detection and ranging) technology. Both the US and Russia have tools that can recognize submarines 300 feet below the surface of the sea. But this is not enough, as most superpowers have subs that operate at depths of 1,600 feet.

    Recently, NASA and Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency funded projects that could see submarines up to 600 feet below the surface — but still nowhere close to the 1600 feet target zone.

    Lasers that penetrate 1,600 feet depth remain a pipedream for major superpowers. China is attempting to realize this dream.

    Once Project Guanlan’s laser components are assembled. A pilot test of the device could be mounted on a spy plane as well as surveillance satellites.

    Shooting a laser beam from space has been difficult as the beam tends to degrade in the atmosphere and various layers of the ocean. Sunrays do not go more than 600 feet deep in the oceanic water.

    Once completed, Project Guanlan could be manufactured by the Xian Institute of Optics and Precision Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shaanxi province.

    Zhang Tinglu, another fellow researcher, involved in the project, said the primary obstacle for the satellite was the thermocline, a thin layer of water where the temperature changes abruptly, which degrades the effectiveness of the laser.

    Tinglu declined to elaborate on the future of the satellite but noted that thermocline is known to be important for submarine captains because it can reflect active sonar and other acoustic signals. That means a sub could potentially avoid detection in the thermocline, but not by a laser beam.

    Song, Tinglu, and or the lab did not give the South China Morning Post any indication as to when the laser will be completed. Song did say the team has been under pressure. “There’s still heaps of problems that we need to solve,” he added.

    Since President Xi Jinping took office in 2013, China has been investing heavily in military hardware, including anti-submarine technology, as it militarizes the South China Sea.

    With the possible development of Chinese lasers in low-Earth orbit detecting American and allied subs in oceanic waters could be a game-changer in geo-strategic one-upmanship competition as the new Cold War between US-China is a major theme for 2020 and beyond.

  • Blasey Ford's Attorneys Fuming After McConnell Files Friday Cloture On Kavanaugh

    Attorneys representing Christine Blasey Ford sharply condemned the FBI background investigation into Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh late Wednesday, after the agency signaled that their probe was over without interviewing Ford, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell filed for a Friday cloture – a key procedural vote that will pave the way for Kavanaugh’s final confirmation.

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    “An FBI supplemental background investigation that did not include an interview of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford– nor the witnesses who corroborate her testimony– cannot be called an investigation,” said Ford’s attorneys in a statement. “We are profoundly disappointed that after the tremendous sacrifice she made in coming forward, those directing the FBI investigation were not interested in seeking the truth.”

    Two senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee told Fox News on Wednesday that they’ve been instructed to plan on voting Sunday. 

    Sources previously told Fox News that Senators and some aides would be able to start looking at the FBI’s background investigation on Thursday morning and that Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and committee member Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., would be given the first chance to look at the report.

    The bureau’s investigation, ordered last week by President Trump, was designed to look into allegations of sexual misconduct leveled at Kavanaugh, who has been accused by three women of separate alleged incidents. Christine Blasey Ford, the first woman to come foward, testified before the Senate Judiciary last week about her claims. Kavanaugh has denied the allegations against him. –Fox News

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    On Wednesday night, President Trump tweeted: “Wow, such enthusiasm and energy for Judge Brett Kavanaugh. Look at the Energy, look at the Polls. Something very big is happening. He is a fine man and great intellect. The country is with him all the way!” 

    Earlier Wednesday we reported that the FBI was essentially finished with their supplemental report on sexual misconduct allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, after which they will send a single copy to Capitol Hill where it will be held in a Senate Judiciary Committee safe, two senior Senate sources told Fox News. 

    ***

    Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (Il), a member of the Judiciary Committee, said that preparations are underway to review the report on Thursday, while Republicans are putting strict limits on the viewing. 

    According to Durbin, the one copy will be taken from the safe and made available to senators – with each party taking turns viewing it in one-hour increments. 

    “Get this — one copy! For the United States Senate,” he said. “That’s what we were told. And we were also that we would be given one hour for the Dems, one hour for the Republicans. Alternating.

    “We tried to reserve some time to read it. That is ridiculous,” he said. “One copy?!”

    “Bizarre, it doesn’t make any sense,” he added. –The Hill

    A senior Democratic aide confirmed the restrictive viewing conditions to The Hill, which notes that if all 100 senators decide to review the document and it takes each senator 30 minutes to read it, it could take up to 50 hours for the entire chamber to examine it. 

    “Do the math,” said Durbin. “That’s a lot of time.”

    Senator Bob Corker (R-TN) says that Senators will be able to view the FBI report in the “secure compartmented information facility” in the Capitol Visitor Center, which is large enough to hold a large group of senators. Corker has urged Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) to make several copies. 

    Republican aides, however, say that alternating a single copy of an FBI background report between parties is typical practice for judicial nominees. 

    Judiciary Committee Republicans on Tuesday tweeted out a 2009 memorandum of understanding stating that photocopying or other reproduction of the FBI background reports is prohibited.

    It also states that notes and memoranda derived from the contents of the FBI background investigation reports may be made and shall be destroyed or secured in the same manner as the reports themselves.

    Reports are considered confidential Senate Judiciary Committee documents and unauthorized disclosure of them is subject to punishment under the Senate rules. –The Hill

    It is unclear whether any of the FBI report will be made public, however Senator John Thune (R-SD), the third-ranking Republican in the Senate, told Fox News that “some of it will probably make its way out into the public and into the mainstream.” 

    “But most importantly, at least right now, is that all senators who are going to have the responsibility to vote on this nomination have an opportunity to review it, assess it and come to their own conclusions about what’s in there.”

    And regardless of what the FBI concludes, we anticipate it won’t satisfy Democrats, who are already up in arms over the fact that the agency didn’t interview Kavanaugh accuser, Christine Blasey Ford or Kavanaugh as part of the probe, with sources saying that their congressional testimony last week was sufficient. 

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  • Creating A Suspect Society: The Scary Side Of The Technological Police State

    Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

    “If, as it seems, we are in the process of becoming a totalitarian society in which the state apparatus is all-powerful, the ethics most important for the survival of the true, free, human individual would be: cheat, lie, evade, fake it, be elsewhere, forge documents, build improved electronic gadgets in your garage that’ll outwit the gadgets used by the authorities.”—Philip K. Dick

    It’s a given that Big Brother is always watching us.

    Unfortunately, thanks to the government’s ongoing efforts to build massive databases using emerging surveillance, DNA and biometrics technologies, Big Brother (and his corporate partners in crime) is getting even creepier and more invasive, intrusive and stalker-like.

    Indeed, every dystopian sci-fi film (and horror film, for that matter) we’ve ever seen is suddenly converging into this present moment in a dangerous trifecta between science and technology, Big Business, and a government that wants to be all-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful—but not without help from the citizenry.

    On a daily basis, Americans are relinquishing (in many cases, voluntarily) the most intimate details of who we are—our biological makeup, our genetic blueprints, and our biometrics (facial characteristics and structure, fingerprints, iris scans, etc.)—in order to navigate an increasingly technologically-enabled world.

    As journalist Anna Myers notes, “Fingerprint readers, eye scans, and voice recognition are no longer just the security methods of high-tech spy movies. Millions of mobile phone, bank, and investment customers now have these technologies at their fingertips. Schwab uses voice recognition, Apple uses fingerprints, Wells Fargo scans eyes, and other companies are developing heartbeat or grip technology to verify user identity. Whether biometric technology will thrive or meet its demise depends not only on the security of the technology, but also whether the U.S. legal system will adapt to provide the privacy protections necessary for consumers to use it and for companies to invest in its development. Currently there is no federal law and only one state with a law protecting biometric information.”

    Translation: thus far, the courts have done little to preserve our rights in the face of technologies and government programs that have little respect for privacy or freedom.

    Consider all the ways we continue to be tracked, hunted, hounded, and stalked by the government and its dubious agents:

    By tapping into your phone lines and cell phone communications, the government knows what you say.

    By uploading all of your emails, opening your mail, and reading your Facebook posts and text messages, the government knows what you write.

    By monitoring your movements with the use of license plate readers, surveillance cameras and other tracking devices, the government knows where you go.

    By churning through all of the detritus of your life—what you read, where you go, what you say—the government can predict what you will do.

    By mapping the synapses in your brain, scientists—and in turn, the government—will soon know what you remember. 

    By mapping your biometrics—your “face-print”—and storing the information in a massive, shared government database available to bureaucratic agencies, police and the military, the government’s goal is to use facial recognition software to identify you (and every other person in the country) and track your movements, wherever you go.

    And by accessing your DNA, the government will soon know everything else about you that they don’t already know: your family chart, your ancestry, what you look like, your health history, your inclination to follow orders or chart your own course, etc.

    Of course, none of these technologies are foolproof.

    Nor are they immune from tampering, hacking or user bias.

    Nevertheless, they have become a convenient tool in the hands of government agents to render null and void the Constitution’s requirements of privacy and its prohibitions against unreasonable searches and seizures.

    Consequently, no longer are we “innocent until proven guilty” in the face of DNA evidence that places us at the scene of a crime, behavior sensing technology that interprets our body temperature and facial tics as suspicious, and government surveillance devices that cross-check our biometrics, license plates and DNA against a growing database of unsolved crimes and potential criminals.

    Increasingly, we are all guilty until proven innocent as the government’s questionable acquisition and use of biometrics and DNA to identify individuals and “solve” crimes makes clear.

    Indeed, for years now, the FBI and Justice Department have conspired to acquire near-limitless power and control over biometric information collected on law-abiding individuals, millions of whom have never been accused of a crime. 

    Going far beyond the scope of those with criminal backgrounds, the FBI’s Next Generation Identification database (NGID), a billion dollar boondoggle that is aimed at dramatically expanding the government’s ID database from a fingerprint system to a vast data storehouse of iris scans, photos searchable with face recognition technology, palm prints, and measures of gait and voice recordings alongside records of fingerprints, scars, and tattoos.

    Launched in 2008, the NGID is a massive biometric database that contains more than 100 million fingerprints and 45 million facial photos gathered from a variety of sources ranging from criminal suspects and convicts to daycare workers and visa applicants, including millions of people who have never committed or even been accused of a crime.

    In other words, innocent American citizens are now automatically placed in a suspect database.

    For a long time, the government was required to at least observe some basic restrictions on when, where and how it could access someone’s biometrics and DNA and use it against them. 

    That is no longer the case.

    The information is being amassed through a variety of routine procedures, with the police leading the way as prime collectors of biometrics for something as non-threatening as a simple moving violation. The nation’s courts are also doing their part to “build” the database, requiring biometric information as a precursor to more lenient sentences. And of course Corporate America has made it so easy to use one’s biometrics to access everything from bank accounts to cell phones.

    We’ve made it so easy for the government to target, identify and track us—dead or alive.

    It’s like shooting fish in a barrel.

    For instance, in March 2018, Florida police showed up at a funeral home, asked to see the corpse of 30-year-old Linus F. Phillip, and attempted to use the dead man’s finger to unlock his cell phone using his biometric fingerprint. (It turns out, cops unlocking cell phones with dead people’s fingerprints is now relatively common.)

    In 2016, the Department of Justice secured a warrant allowing police to enter a California residence and “force anyone inside to use their biometric information to open their mobile devices.”

    Two years earlier, in 2014, a Virginia court “declared it legal to use criminal suspects’ fingerprints to open up smartphones.”

    This doesn’t even touch on the many ways in which the government is using our DNA against us, the Constitution be damned.

    In 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court let stand the Maryland Court of Appeals’ ruling in Raynor v. Maryland, which essentially determined that individuals do not have a right to privacy when it comes to their DNA.

    Although Glenn Raynor, a suspected rapist, willingly agreed to be questioned by police, he refused to provide them with a DNA sample.

    No problem: Police simply swabbed the chair in which Raynor had been sitting and took what he refused to voluntarily provide. Raynor’s DNA was a match, and the suspect became a convict. In refusing to hear the case, the U.S. Supreme Court gave its tacit approval for government agents to collect shed DNA, likening it to a person’s fingerprints or the color of their hair, eyes or skin.

    Whereas fingerprint technology created a watershed moment for police in their ability to “crack” a case, DNA technology is now being hailed by law enforcement agencies as the magic bullet in crime solving. 

    It’s what police like to refer to as a “modern fingerprint.” 

    However, unlike a fingerprint, a DNA print reveals everything about “who we are, where we come from, and who we will be.”

    With such a powerful tool at their disposal, it was inevitable that the government’s collection of DNA would become a slippery slope toward government intrusion.

    Certainly, it was difficult enough trying to protect our privacy in the wake of a 2013 Supreme Court ruling in Maryland v. King that likened DNA collection to photographing and fingerprinting suspects when they are booked, thereby allowing the government to take DNA samples from people merely “arrested” in connection with “serious” crimes.

    At that time, Justice Antonin Scalia warned that as a result of the Court’s ruling, “your DNA can be taken and entered into a national database if you are ever arrested, rightly or wrongly, and for whatever reason.”

    Now, Americans are vulnerable to the government accessing, analyzing and storing their DNA without their knowledge or permission.

    As the dissenting opinion in Raynor for the Maryland Court of Appeals rightly warned, “a person desiring to keep her DNA profile private, must conduct her public affairs in a hermetically sealed hazmat suit…. The Majority’s holding means that a person can no longer vote, participate in a jury, or obtain a driver’s license, without opening up his genetic material for state collection and codification.”

    All 50 states now maintain their own DNA databases, although the protocols for collection differ from state to state. That DNA is also being collected in the FBI’s massive national DNA database, code-named CODIS (Combined DNA Index System), which was established as a way to identify and track convicted felons and has since become a de facto way to identify and track the American people from birth to death.

    Indeed, hospitals have gotten in on the game by taking and storing newborn babies’ DNA, often without their parents’ knowledge or consent. It’s part of the government’s mandatory genetic screening of newborns. However, in many states, the DNA is stored indefinitely.

    What this means for those being born today is inclusion in a government database that contains intimate information about who they are, their ancestry, and what awaits them in the future, including their inclinations to be followers, leaders or troublemakers.

    For the rest of us, it’s just a matter of time before the government gets hold of our DNA, either through mandatory programs carried out in connection with law enforcement and corporate America, or through the collection of our “shed” or “touch” DNA.

    While much of the public debate, legislative efforts and legal challenges in recent years have focused on the protocols surrounding when police can legally collect a suspect’s DNA (with or without a search warrant and whether upon arrest or conviction), the question of how to handle “shed” or “touch” DNA has largely slipped through without much debate or opposition.

    Yet as scientist Leslie A. Pray notes:

    We all shed DNA, leaving traces of our identity practically everywhere we go. Forensic scientists use DNA left behind on cigarette butts, phones, handles, keyboards, cups, and numerous other objects, not to mention the genetic content found in drops of bodily fluid, like blood and semen. In fact, the garbage you leave for curbside pickup is a potential gold mine of this sort of material. All of this shed or so-called abandoned DNA is free for the taking by local police investigators hoping to crack unsolvable cases. Or, if the future scenario depicted at the beginning of this article is any indication, shed DNA is also free for inclusion in a secret universal DNA databank.

    What this means is that if you have the misfortune to leave your DNA traces anywhere a crime has been committed, you’ve already got a file somewhere in some state or federal database, albeit it may be a file without a name. 

    In other words, you’re a suspect to be watched.

    As Forensic magazine reports, “As officers have become more aware of touch DNA’s potential, they are using it more and more. Unfortunately, some [police] have not been selective enough when they process crime scenes. Instead, they have processed anything and everything at the scene, submitting 150 or more samples for analysis.”

    Even old samples taken from crime scenes and “cold” cases are being unearthed and mined for their DNA profiles.

    Today, helped along by robotics and automation, DNA processing, analysis and reporting takes far less time and can bring forth all manner of information, right down to a person’s eye color and relatives. Incredibly, one company specializes in creating “mug shots” for police based on DNA samples from unknown “suspects” which are then compared to individuals with similar genetic profiles.

    If you haven’t yet connected the dots, let me point the way.

    Having already used surveillance technology to render the entire American populace potential suspects, DNA technology in the hands of government will complete our transition to a suspect society in which we are all merely waiting to be matched up with a crime.

    No longer can we consider ourselves innocent until proven guilty. Now we are all suspects in a DNA lineup until circumstances and science say otherwise.

    Of course, there will be those who point to DNA’s positive uses in criminal justice, such as in those instances where it is used to absolve someone on death row of a crime he didn’t commit, and there is no denying its beneficial purposes at times.

    However, as is the case with body camera footage and every other so-called technology that is hailed as a “check” on government abuses, in order for the average person—especially one convicted of a crime—to request and get access to DNA testing, they first have to embark on a costly, uphill legal battle through red tape and, even then, they are opposed at every turn by a government bureaucracy run by prosecutors, legislatures and law enforcement.

    What this amounts to is a scenario in which we have little to no defense of against charges of wrongdoing, especially when “convicted” by technology, and even less protection against the government sweeping up our DNA in much the same way it sweeps up our phone calls, emails and text messages.

    Yet if there are no limits to government officials being able to access your DNA and all that it says about you, then where do you draw the line?

    As technology makes it ever easier for the government to tap into our thoughts, our memories, our dreams, suddenly the landscape becomes that much more dystopian.

    With the entire governmental system shifting into a pre-crime mode aimed at detecting and pursuing those who “might” commit a crime before they have an inkling, let alone an opportunity, to do so, it’s not so far-fetched to imagine a scenario in which government agents (FBI, local police, etc.) target potential criminals based on their genetic disposition to be a “troublemaker” or their relationship to past dissenters.

    Equally disconcerting: if scientists can, using DNA, track salmon across hundreds of square miles of streams and rivers, how easy will it be for government agents to not only know everywhere we’ve been and how long we were at each place but collect our easily shed DNA and add it to the government’s already burgeoning database?

    It’s not just yourself you have to worry about, either.

    It’s also anyone related to you who can be connected by DNA.

    These genetic fingerprints, as they’re called, do more than just single out a person. They also show who you’re related to and how. As the Associated Press reports, “DNA samples that can help solve robberies and murders could also, in theory, be used to track down our relatives, scan us for susceptibility to disease, or monitor our movements.”

    Capitalizing on this, police in California, Colorado, Virginia and Texas use DNA found at crime scenes to identify and target family members for possible clues to a suspect’s whereabouts.

    Who will protect your family from being singled out for “special treatment” simply because they’re related to you? As biomedical researcher Yaniv Erlich warns, “If it’s not regulated and the police can do whatever they want … they can use your DNA to infer things about your health, your ancestry, whether your kids are your kids.”

    For that matter, how do you protect yourself against having your DNA extracted, your biometrics scanned and the most intimate details of who you are—your biological footprint—uploaded into a government database? 

    What recourse do you have when that information, taken against your will, is shared, stolen, sold or compromised, as it inevitably will be in this age of hackers? We know that databases can be compromised. We’ve seen it happen to databases kept by health care companies, motor vehicle agencies, financial institutions, retailers and intelligence agencies such as the NSA.

    And what about those cases in which the technology proved to be wrong, either through human error or tampering?

    It happens more often than we are told.

    For example, David Butler spent eight months in prison for a murder he didn’t commit after his DNA was allegedly found on the murder victim and surveillance camera footage placed him in the general area the murder took place. Conveniently, Butler’s DNA was on file after he had voluntarily submitted it during an investigation years earlier into a robbery at his mother’s home.

    The case seemed cut and dried to everyone but Butler who proclaimed his innocence.

    Except that the DNA evidence and surveillance footage was wrong: Butler was innocent.

    That Butler’s DNA was supposedly found on the victim’s nails was attributed to three things: one, Butler was a taxi driver “and so it was possible for his DNA to be transferred from his taxi via money or another person, onto the murder victim”; two, Butler had a rare skin condition causing him to shed flakes of skin—i.e., more DNA to spread around, much more so than the average person; and three, police wanted him to be the killer, despite the fact that “the DNA sample was only a partial match, of poor quality, and experts at the time said they could neither say that he was guilty nor rule him out.”

    Unfortunately, we now find ourselves in the unenviable position of being monitored, managed, convicted and controlled by our technology, which answers not to us but to our government and corporate rulers. 

    This is the fact-is-stranger-than-fiction lesson that is being pounded into us on a daily basis.

    While the Fourth Amendment was created to prevent government officials from searching an individual’s person or property without a warrant and probable cause—evidence that some kind of criminal activity was afoot—the founders could scarcely have imagined a world in which we needed protection against widespread government breaches of our privacy on a cellular level.

    Yet that’s exactly what we are lacking.

    Once again, technology has outdistanced both our understanding of it and our ability to adequately manage the consequences of unleashing it on an unsuspecting populace.

    In the end, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, what all of this amounts to is a carefully crafted campaign designed to give the government access to and control over what it really wants: you.

  • California Democrat Sincerely Regrets Listing Maryland Home As His 'Primary Residence'

     

    It wasn’t a case of flagrant carpetbagging – it was just an honest mistake!

    That’s the excuse that one Democratic Congressional candidate in California has offered to justify the fact that he claimed a home in Bethesda Maryland as his primary residence, as the Fresno Bee reported on Tuesday.

    Spokesmen for the campaign of TJ Cox – the candidate in question – said last week that the claim was the result of an “honest mistake” and blamed an error by the state for the “oversight.” Cox has offered to repay a roughly $700 tax credit that he received by claiming the home.

    Cox owns several businesses in the central San Joaquin Valley and is running against Republican Rep. David Valadao for California’s 21st Congressional District seat.

    Cox

    The Bee had previously reported that Cox owned a three-bedroom, four-bathroom house in Bethesda and had claimed the nearly $1 million home as his principal residence. Cox also claimed a Fresno home as his principal residence, however, federal tax laws prohibit claiming more than one home.

    Asked why Cox didn’t notice the oversight, his campaign spokesperson said that Cox’s family was living there.

    “It was an honest mistake that he filled out the principal residence not knowing the legal definitions. His family was living there,” said Campaign Spokesman Phillip Vander Klay.

    “That’s just kind of the situation,” Vander Klay added. “We are working to get this fixed.”

    Cox had reportedly purchased the Bethesda home for his family to live in while his wife, Dr. Kathleen Murphy, studied public health policy at Johns Hopkins University. Cox lived and worked in Fresno while his family lived in Maryland.

    Though Cox’s campaign tried to construe the tax credit claim as a mistake on the state of Maryland’s part, the Fresno Bee found that it had been coded as Cox’s principal residence when he first bought the home – meaning that the credit claim was an oversight on Cox’s part.

    But we’re sure that Cox’s inability to keep track of basic tax-related upkeep will have no bearing on his ability to properly allocate how the tax dollars of his constituents are spent.

     

  • Paul Craig Roberts: How The American Media Was Destroyed

    Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

    In my September 24 column, “Truth Is Evaporating Before Our Eyes,”  I used the destruction of the CBS news team that broke the Abu Ghraib story and the story of President George W. Bush’s non-performance of his Texas Air Force National Guard duties to demonstrate how accusations alone could destroy a Peabody Award winning, 26 year veteran producer of CBS News, Mary Mapes, and the established news anchor Dan Rather.

    I have many times written that it was President Bill Clinton who destroyed the independent US media when he permitted 90 percent of the US media to be concentrated in six mega-corporations that were in the entertainment and other businesses and not in the news business. This unprecedented concentration of media was against all American tradition and destroyed the reliance that our Founding Fathers placed on a free press to keep government accountable to the people.

    Until I read Mary Mapes book, Truth and Duty (St. Martin’s Press, 2005), I was unaware of how this monopolization of the media in violation of the Sherman Anti-trust Act and American tradition had proceeded to destroy honest reporting.

    Here is what happened.

    The Texas Air National Guard was a place the elite placed their sons to avoid the Vietnam War draft. Copies of documents written by Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian describing George W. Bush’s ability to jump the large waiting list hoping to avoid the war, Bush’s non-compliance with National Guard requirements and Bush’s unauthorized departure to another state were given to CBS. The CBS team worked for many months to confirm or discredit the documents. The information in the documents proved to be consistent with the interviews of people acquainted with George W. Bush’s time in the Texas National Guard.

    It was a carefully prepared story, not a rushed one, and it fits all the information we now have of Bush’s non-performance.

    The problem for the CBS news team, which might not have been realized at the time, was that the documents were copies, not originals that experts could authenicate as real beyond question. Therefore, although the documents were consistent with the testimony of others, no expert could validate the documents as they could originals.

    The Republicans seized on this chink in the armor to turn the issue away from the truthfulness of the CBS 60 Minutes report to whether or not the copies were fakes.

    CBS had two other problems. One was that Viacom, its owner, was not in the news business, but in the lobbying business in Washington wanting to enrich the company with legislative perks and regulatory permissions. Truthful news from CBS, exposing US torture in the face of the Bush regime’s denials and showing that Bush was too privileged to be held accountable by the Texas National Guard, was damaging Viacom’s highly paid lobbying effort.

    When the right-wing bloggers took after CBS, the Viacom executives saw how to get rid of the troublesome CBS news team. Viacom executives refused to support their reporters and convened a kangeroo count consisting of Republicans to “investigate” the 60 Minutes story of Bush’s failure to comply with his obligations to the Texas National Guard.

    Viacom wanted to get rid of the independent news constraint on its lobbying success, but Mary Mapes and her lawyers thought truth meant something and would prevail. Therefore, she subjected herself to the destructive process of watching the orchestrated destruction of her career and her integrity.

    CBS’ other problem was that, with or without justification, CBS and Dan Rather were regarded in conservative Republican circles as liberal, a designation equivalent to a communist. For millions of Americans the controversy was about liberal CBS trying to harm George W. Bush and leave us exposed to Muslim Terrorism. In right-wing minds, Bush was trying to protect America from Muslim terrorists who blew up the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and CBS was trying to smear President Bush.

    Mary Mapes, Dan Rather, and the CBS news team were too focused on news to take into account the dangerous situation in which they were operating. Therefore, they walked into a trap that served Dick Cheney’s Middle Eastern wars, which served Halliburton and Israel, and into a trap that served conservative hatred of “liberal” news.

    Why didn’t the American media defend CBS’ careful reporting? The answer is that this was a time when TV news media was dying. The Internet was taking over. The rest of the media saw in the demise of CBS a chance to gain that market and have a longer life.

    So the rest of the media took up the fake news that 60 Minutes had presented a report based on fake documents. The media did not realize that they were signing their own death warants. Neither did the right-wing bloggers that the Republicans had sicced on CBS. Today, these bloggers are themselves shut off from being able to express any truth.

    Truth in America is being exterminated, and the destruction of CBS news was the starting point. As Mary Mapes reports in her book, as soon as Viacom was entirely rid of 60 Minutes with the firing of the entire staff, on the very next day Viacom held a triumphant annual investor meeting. Chairman Sumner Redstone was awarded a a $56 million paycheck for 2004. Chief operating officers, Les Moonves and Tom Freston “each pocketed a whoopping fifty-two million for the year.”

    And the CBS news team went without mortgage, car, or health insurance payments.

    Mapes writes:

    “Just a few years ago, this kind of corporate executive largesse was unherd of. Now, these media Masters of the Universe have taken over the public airwares and they have one obligation: making a profit.”

    Ever a larger one, which requires protecting the government and the corporate advertisers from investigative reporting.

    The consequence today is that the American media is totally unreliable. No reader can rely on any report, not even on a New York Times obituary.

  • The American Dream Depends On Your Zip Code

    “The reason they call it the American Dream is because you have to be asleep to believe it,” George Carlin.

    Many are conditioned from birth to believe that America is the land of equal opportunity, but an online data tool offered to the public for the first time on Monday shows how far the distance can be between where you are… and the American dream.

    This map, a screenshot from The Opportunity Atlas, a big data and analytics firm – empowering policymakers and civic leaders to create targeted local policy solutions that revive the American Dream, shows household income in 2014-2015 for 20.5 million Americans born between 1978-1983 who are in their mid-thirties today. In areas that are redder, people who grew up in low-income households tended to stay low-income. In the regions that are bluer, people who grew up in low-income households tend to achieve the dream.

    According to NPR, Harvard University economist Raj Chetty and a team of researchers created this tool – the first of its kind because it blends US Census Bureau data with data from the Internal Revenue Service. The findings are compelling and show the missing link between geographical area and economic mobility.

    Chetty said that people born in the 1940s or ’50s were guaranteed the American dream, but today, for much of the millennials, it is more of a fantasy.

    “You see that for kids turning 30 today, who were born in the mid-1980s, only 50% of them go on to earn more than their parents did,” Chetty says. “It’s a coin flip as to whether you are now going to achieve the American dream.”

    Researchers hope this map will aid communities and knock down barriers that prevent people from climbing the economic ladder. They want policymakers to use this data and offer new solutions on a localized level.

    Chetty explains the information can help pinpoint regions where younger generations are climbing the income ladder and “the places where the outcomes don’t look as good.” He also found that if a person moves out of a neighborhood with worse prospects into to a neighborhood with better outlooks, that move increases lifetime earnings for low-income children by an average $200,000.

    For instance, the household parent income in Cockeysville/Hunt Valley, Maryland is $62,000, but just roughly 20 miles south in decaying Baltimore City, some parts have a parent household income of approximately $19,000 to $29,000. In the last decade, politicians in Maryland have attempted to smooth out the massive inequality in the region by providing Section 8 (housing) to low-income city folks in the county. The report did not touch on Baltimore flight, as many have escaped the opioid and murder-plagued city, the population has hit a 100-year low, exacerbating the inequalities divided by a city/county line. As for Baltimore, obtaining the American Dream depends on if your parents are living in the city or county.

    Glancing at the Rust Belt and Southern US, decades of de-industrialization have decimated the household income of parents, virtually erasing the prospects of obtaining the American Dream for millennials. From Michigan to Georgia, parent household incomes are some of the lowest in the nation.

    The next view is San Francisco and Silicon Valley, where the region has become a widely accepted center of the computer industry since the 1970s. Tech has been influential in the modern economy, thus boosting parent household incomes in the region. In return, strong households have provided an easy glide for millennials to climb the ladder and obtain the American Dream.

    Last month, we explained more than 80% of American families define the American Dream as financial security and homeownership, and more than half think this dream is unattainable, according to the latest State of the American Family Study released by MassMutual.

    The bottom 90% of Americans (remember the middle class was wiped out) are trapped with insurmountable debts, including auto loans, credit card debts, payday loans, and student loans. Only one if four families have enough emergency savings to cover more than six months of expenses.

    The American Dream is starting to look a lot different than before. This time around, there is no white picket fence, and if you were to believe the American Dream — you would need to live in a high-income zip code.

    As for the majority of Americans (living ex. high-income zip codes), the land of equal opportunity does not exist.

  • Why Intellectuals Fall For Socialism

    Authored by Friedrich Hayek via The Mises Institute,

    In all democratic countries, in the United States even more than elsewhere, a strong belief prevails that the influence of the intellectuals on politics is negligible. This is no doubt true of the power of intellectuals to make their peculiar opinions of the moment influence decisions, of the extent to which they can sway the popular vote on questions on which they differ from the current views of the masses. Yet over somewhat longer periods they have probably never exercised so great an influence as they do today in those countries. This power they wield by shaping public opinion.

    In the light of recent history it is somewhat curious that this decisive power of the professional secondhand dealers in ideas should not yet be more generally recognized. The political development of the Western World during the last hundred years furnishes the clearest demonstration. Socialism has never and nowhere been at first a working-class movement. It is by no means an obvious remedy for the obvious evil which the interests of that class will necessarily demand. It is a construction of theorists, deriving from certain tendencies of abstract thought with which for a long time only the intellectuals were familiar; and it required long efforts by the intellectuals before the working classes could be persuaded to adopt it as their program.

    In every country that has moved toward socialism, the phase of the development in which socialism becomes a determining influence on politics has been preceded for many years by a period during which socialist ideals governed the thinking of the more active intellectuals. In Germany this stage had been reached toward the end of the last century; in England and France, about the time of the first World War. To the casual observer it would seem as if the United States had reached this phase after World War II and that the attraction of a planned and directed economic system is now as strong among the American intellectuals as it ever was among their German or English fellows. Experience suggests that, once this phase has been reached, it is merely a question of time until the views now held by the intellectuals become the governing force of politics.

    The character of the process by which the views of the intellectuals influence the politics of tomorrow is therefore of much more than academic interest. Whether we merely wish to foresee or attempt to influence the course of events, it is a factor of much greater importance than is generally understood. What to the contemporary observer appears as the battle of conflicting interests has indeed often been decided long before in a clash of ideas confined to narrow circles. Paradoxically enough, however, in general only the parties of the Left have done most to spread the belief that it was the numerical strength of the opposing material interests which decided political issues, whereas in practice these same parties have regularly and successfully acted as if they understood the key position of the intellectuals. Whether by design or driven by the force of circumstances, they have always directed their main effort toward gaining the support of this “elite,” while the more conservative groups have acted, as regularly but unsuccessfully, on a more naive view of mass democracy and have usually vainly tried directly to reach and to persuade the individual voter.

    The term “intellectuals,” however, does not at once convey a true picture of the large class to which we refer, and the fact that we have no better name by which to describe what we have called the secondhand dealers in ideas is not the least of the reasons why their power is not understood. Even persons who use the word “intellectual” mainly as a term of abuse are still inclined to withhold it from many who undoubtedly perform that characteristic function. This is neither that of the original thinker nor that of the scholar or expert in a particular field of thought. The typical intellectual need be neither: he need not possess special knowledge of anything in particular, nor need he even be particularly intelligent, to perform his role as intermediary in the spreading of ideas. What qualifies him for his job is the wide range of subjects on which he can readily talk and write, and a position or habits through which he becomes acquainted with new ideas sooner than those to whom he addresses himself.

    Until one begins to list all the professions and activities which belong to the class, it is difficult to realize how numerous it is, how the scope for activities constantly increases in modern society, and how dependent on it we all have become. The class does not consist of only journalists, teachers, ministers, lecturers, publicists, radio commentators, writers of fiction, cartoonists, and artists all of whom may be masters of the technique of conveying ideas but are usually amateurs so far as the substance of what they convey is concerned. The class also includes many professional men and technicians, such as scientists and doctors, who through their habitual intercourse with the printed word become carriers of new ideas outside their own fields and who, because of their expert knowledge of their own subjects, are listened with respect on most others. There is little that the ordinary man of today learns about events or ideas except through the medium of this class; and outside our special fields of work we are in this respect almost all ordinary men, dependent for our information and instruction on those who make it their job to keep abreast of opinion. It is the intellectuals in this sense who decide what views and opinions are to reach us, which facts are important enough to be told to us, and in what form and from what angle they are to be presented. Whether we shall ever learn of the results of the work of the expert and the original thinker depends mainly on their decision.

    The layman, perhaps, is not fully aware to what extent even the popular reputations of scientists and scholars are made by that class and are inevitably affected by its views on subjects which have little to do with the merits of the real achievements. And it is specially significant for our problem that every scholar can probably name several instances from his field of men who have undeservedly achieved a popular reputation as great scientists solely because they hold what the intellectuals regard as “progressive” political views; but I have yet to come across a single instance where such a scientific pseudo-reputation has been bestowed for political reason on a scholar of more conservative leanings. This creation of reputations by the intellectuals is particularly important in the fields where the results of expert studies are not used by other specialists but depend on the political decision of the public at large. There is indeed scarcely a better illustration of this than the attitude which professional economists have taken to the growth of such doctrines as socialism or protectionism. There was probably at no time a majority of economists, who were recognized as such by their peers, favorable to socialism (or, for that matter, to protection). In all probability it is even true to say that no other similar group of students contains so high a proportion of its members decidedly opposed to socialism (or protection). This is the more significant as in recent times it is as likely as not that it was an early interest in socialist schemes for reform which led a man to choose economics for his profession. Yet it is not the predominant views of the experts but the views of a minority, mostly of rather doubtful standing in their profession, which are taken up and spread by the intellectuals.

    The all-pervasive influence of the intellectuals in contemporary society is still further strengthened by the growing importance of “organization.” It is a common but probably mistaken belief that the increase of organization increases the influence of the expert or specialist. This may be true of the expert administrator and organizer, if there are such people, but hardly of the expert in any particular field of knowledge. It is rather the person whose general knowledge is supposed to qualify him to appreciate expert testimony, and to judge between the experts from different fields, whose power is enhanced. The point which is important for us, however, is that the scholar who becomes a university president, the scientist who takes charge of an institute or foundation, the scholar who becomes an editor or the active promoter of an organization serving a particular cause, all rapidly cease to be scholars or experts and become intellectuals, solely in the light of certain fashionable general ideas. The number of such institutions which breed intellectuals and increase their number and powers grows every day. Almost all the “experts” in the mere technique of getting knowledge over are, with respect to the subject matter which they handle, intellectuals and not experts.

    In the sense in which we are using the term, the intellectuals are in fact a fairly new phenomenon of history. Though nobody will regret that education has ceased to be a privilege of the propertied classes, the fact that the propertied classes are no longer the best educated and the fact that the large number of people who owe their position solely to the their general education do not possess that experience of the working of the economic system which the administration of property gives, are important for understanding the role of the intellectual. Professor Schumpeter, who has devoted an illuminating chapter of his Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy to some aspects of our problem, has not unfairly stressed that it is the absence of direct responsibility for practical affairs and the consequent absence of first hand knowledge of them which distinguishes the typical intellectual from other people who also wield the power of the spoken and written word. It would lead too far, however, to examine here further the development of this class and the curious claim which has recently been advanced by one of its theorists that it was the only one whose views were not decidedly influenced by its own economic interests. One of the important points that would have to be examined in such a discussion would be how far the growth of this class has been artificially stimulated by the law of copyright.

    It is not surprising that the real scholar or expert and the practical man of affairs often feel contemptuous about the intellectual, are disinclined to recognize his power, and are resentful when they discover it. Individually they find the intellectuals mostly to be people who understand nothing in particular especially well and whose judgement on matters they themselves understand shows little sign of special wisdom. But it would be a fatal mistake to underestimate their power for this reason. Even though their knowledge may often be superficial and their intelligence limited, this does not alter the fact that it is their judgement which mainly determines the views on which society will act in the not too distant future. It is no exaggeration to say that, once the more active part of the intellectuals has been converted to a set of beliefs, the process by which these become generally accepted is almost automatic and irresistible. These intellectuals are the organs which modern society has developed for spreading knowledge and ideas, and it is their convictions and opinions which operate as the sieve through which all new conceptions must pass before they can reach the masses.

    It is of the nature of the intellectual’s job that he must use his own knowledge and convictions in performing his daily task. He occupies his position because he possesses, or has had to deal from day to day with, knowledge which his employer in general does not possess, and his activities can therefore be directed by others only to a limited extent. And just because the intellectuals are mostly intellectually honest, it is inevitable that they should follow their own conviction whenever they have discretion and that they should give a corresponding slant to everything that passes through their hands. Even where the direction of policy is in the hands of men of affairs of different views, the execution of policy will in general be in the hands of intellectuals, and it is frequently the decision on the detail which determines the net effect. We find this illustrated in almost all fields of contemporary society. Newspapers in “capitalist” ownership, universities presided over by “reactionary” governing bodies, broadcasting systems owned by conservative governments, have all been known to influence public opinion in the direction of socialism, because this was the conviction of the personnel. This has often happened not only in spite of, but perhaps even because of, the attempts of those at the top to control opinion and to impose principles of orthodoxy.

    The effect of this filtering of ideas through the convictions of a class which is constitutionally disposed to certain views is by no means confined to the masses. Outside his special field the expert is generally no less dependent on this class and scarcely less influenced by their selection. The result of this is that today in most parts of the Western World even the most determined opponents of socialism derive from socialist sources their knowledge on most subjects on which they have no firsthand information. With many of the more general preconceptions of socialist thought, the connection of their more practical proposals is by no means at once obvious; in consequence of that system of thought become in fact effective spreaders of its ideas. Who does not know the practical man who in his own field denounces socialism as “pernicious rot” but, when he steps outside his subject, spouts socialism like any left journalist? In no other field has the predominant influence of the socialist intellectuals been felt more strongly during the last hundred years than in the contacts between different national civilizations. It would go far beyond the limits of this article to trace the causes and significance of the highly important fact that in the modern world the intellectuals provide almost the only approach to an international community. It is this which mainly accounts for the extraordinary spectacle that for generations the supposedly “capitalist” West has been lending its moral and material support almost exclusively to those ideological movements in countries father east which aimed at undermining Western civilization and that, at the same time, the information which the Western public has obtained about events in Central and Eastern Europe has almost inevitably been colored by a socialist bias. Many of the “educational” activities of the American forces of occupation of Germany have furnished clear and recent examples of this tendency.

    A proper understanding of the reasons which tend to incline so many of the intellectuals toward socialism is thus most important.

    The first point here which those who do not share this bias ought to face frankly is that it is neither selfish interests nor evil intentions but mostly honest convictions and good intentions which determine the intellectual’s views. In fact, it is necessary to recognize that on the whole the typical intellectual is today more likely to be a socialist the more he his guided by good will and intelligence, and that on the plane of purely intellectual argument he will generally be able to make out a better case than the majority of his opponents within his class. If we still think him wrong, we must recognize that it may be genuine error which leads the well-meaning and intelligent people who occupy those key positions in our society to spread views which to us appear a threat to our civilization. Nothing could be more important than to try to understand the sources of this error in order that we should be able to counter it. Yet those who are generally regarded as the representatives of the existing order and who believe that they comprehend the dangers of socialism are usually very far from such understanding. They tend to regard the socialist intellectuals as nothing more than a pernicious bunch of highbrow radicals without appreciating their influence and, by their whole attitude to them, tend to drive them even further into opposition to the existing order.

    If we are to understand this peculiar bias of a large section of intellectuals, we must be clear about two points. The first is that they generally judge all particular issues exclusively in the light of certain general ideas; the second, that the characteristic errors of any age are frequently derived from some genuine new truths it has discovered, and they are erroneous applications of new generalizations which have proved their value in other fields. The conclusion to which we shall be led by a full consideration of these facts will be that the effective refutation of such errors will frequently require further intellectual advance, and often advance on points which are very abstract and may seem very remote from the practical issues.

    It is perhaps the most characteristic feature of the intellectual that he judges new ideas not by their specific merits but by the readiness with which they fit into his general conceptions, into the picture of the world which he regards as modern or advanced. It is through their influence on him and on his choice of opinions on particular issues that the power of ideas for good and evil grows in proportion to their generality, abstractness, and even vagueness. As he knows little about the particular issues, his criterion must be consistency with his other views and suitability for combining into a coherent picture of the world. Yet this selection from the multitude of new ideas presenting themselves at every moment creates the characteristic climate of opinion, the dominant Weltanschauung of a period, which will be favorable to the reception of some opinions and unfavorable to others and which will make the intellectual readily accept one conclusion and reject another without a real understanding of the issues.

    In some respects the intellectual is indeed closer to the philosopher than to any specialist, and the philosopher is in more than one sense a sort of prince among the intellectuals. Although his influence is farther removed from practical affairs and correspondingly slower and more difficult to trace than that of the ordinary intellectual, it is of the same kind and in the long run even more powerful than that of the latter. It is the same endeavor toward a synthesis, pursued more methodically, the same judgement of particular views in so far as they fit into a general system of thought rather than by their specific merits, the same striving after a consistent world view, which for both forms the main basis for accepting or rejecting ideas. For this reason the philosopher has probably a greater influence over the intellectuals than any other scholar or scientist and, more than anyone else, determines the manner in which the intellectuals exercise their censorship function. The popular influence of the scientific specialist begins to rival that of the philosopher only when he ceases to be a specialist and commences to philosophize about the progress of his subject and usually only after he has been taken up by the intellectuals for reasons which have little to do with his scientific eminence.

    The “climate of opinion” of any period is thus essentially a set of very general preconceptions by which the intellectual judges the importance of new facts and opinions. These preconceptions are mainly applications to what seem to him the most significant aspects of scientific achievements, a transfer to other fields of what has particularly impressed him in the work of the specialists. One could give a long list of such intellectual fashions and catchwords which in the course of two or three generations have in turn dominated the thinking of the intellectuals. Whether it was the “historical approach” or the theory of evolution, nineteenth century determinism and the belief in the predominant influence of environment as against heredity, the theory of relativity or the belief in the power of the unconscious- every one of these general conceptions has been made the touchstone by which innovations in different fields have been tested. It seems as if the less specific or precise (or the less understood) these ideas are, the wider may be their influence. Sometimes it is no more than a vague impression rarely put into words which thus wields a profound influence. Such beliefs as that deliberate control or conscious organization is also in social affairs always superior to the results of spontaneous processes which are not directed by a human mind, or that any order based on a plan laid down beforehand must be better than one formed by the balancing of opposing forces, have in this way profoundly affected political development.

    Only apparently different is the role of the intellectuals where the development of more properly social ideas is concerned. Here their peculiar propensities manifest themselves in making shibboleths of abstractions, in rationalizing and carrying to extremes certain ambitions which spring from the normal intercourse of men. Since democracy is a good thing, the further the democratic principle can be carried, the better it appears to them. The most powerful of these general ideas which have shaped political development in recent times is of course the ideal of material equality. It is, characteristically, not one of the spontaneously grown moral convictions, first applied in the relations between particular individuals, but an intellectual construction originally conceived in the abstract and of doubtful meaning or application in particular instances. Nevertheless, it has operated strongly as a principle of selection among the alternative courses of social policy, exercising a persistent pressure toward an arrangement of social affairs which nobody clearly conceives. That a particular measure tends to bring about greater equality has come to be regarded as so strong a recommendation that little else will be considered. Since on each particular issue it is this one aspect on which those who guide opinion have a definite conviction, equality has determined social change even more strongly than its advocates intended.

    Not only moral ideals act in this manner, however. Sometimes the attitudes of the intellectuals toward the problems of social order may be the consequence of advances in purely scientific knowledge, and it is in these instances that their erroneous views on particular issues may for a time seem to have all the prestige of the latest scientific achievements behind them. It is not in itself surprising that a genuine advance of knowledge should in this manner become on occasion a source of new error. If no false conclusions followed from new generalizations, they would be final truths which would never need revision. Although as a rule such a new generalization will merely share the false consequences which can be drawn from it with the views which were held before, and thus not lead to new error, it is quite likely that a new theory, just as its value is shown by the valid new conclusions to which it leads, will produce other new conclusions to which further advance will show to have been erroneous. But in such an instance a false belief will appear with all the prestige of the latest scientific knowledge supporting it. Although in the particular field to which this belief applies all the scientific evidence may be against it, it will nevertheless, before the tribunal of the intellectuals and in the light of the ideas which govern their thinking, be selected as the view which is best in accord with the spirit of the time. The specialists who will thus achieve public fame and wide influence will thus not be those who have gained recognition by their peers but will often be men whom the other experts regard as cranks, amateurs, or even frauds, but who in the eyes of the general public nevertheless become the best known exponents of their subject.

    In particular, there can be little doubt that the manner in which during the last hundred years man has learned to organize the forces of nature has contributed a great deal toward the creation of the belief that a similar control of the forces of society would bring comparable improvements in human conditions. That, with the application of engineering techniques, the direction of all forms of human activity according to a single coherent plan should prove to be as successful in society as it has been in innumerable engineering tasks, is too plausible a conclusion not to seduce most of those who are elated by the achievement of the natural sciences. It must indeed be admitted both that it would require powerful arguments to counter the strong presumption in favor of such a conclusion and that these arguments have not yet been adequately stated. It is not sufficient to point out the defects of particular proposals based on this kind of reasoning. The argument will not lose its force until it has been conclusively shown why what has proved so eminently successful in producing advances in so many fields should have limits to its usefulness and become positively harmful if extended beyond these limits. This is a task which has not yet been satisfactorily performed and which will have to be achieved before this particular impulse toward socialism can be removed.

    This, of course, is only one of many instances where further intellectual advance is needed if the harmful ideas at present current are to be refuted and where the course which we shall travel will ultimately be decided by the discussion of very abstract issues. It is not enough for the man of affairs to be sure, from his intimate knowledge of a particular field, that the theories of socialism which are derived from more general ideas will prove impracticable. He may be perfectly right, and yet his resistance will be overwhelmed and all the sorry consequences which he foresees will follow if his is not supported by an effective refutation of the idees meres. So long as the intellectual gets the better of the general argument, the most valid objections of the specific issue will be brushed aside.

    This is not the whole story, however. The forces which influence recruitment to the ranks of the intellectuals operate in the same direction and help to explain why so many of the most able among them lean toward socialism. There are of course as many differences of opinion among intellectuals as among other groups of people; but it seems to be true that it is on the whole the more active, intelligent, and original men among the intellectuals who most frequently incline toward socialism, while its opponents are often of an inferior caliber. This is true particularly during the early stages of the infiltration of socialist ideas; later, although outside intellectual circles it may still be an act of courage to profess socialist convictions, the pressure of opinion among intellectuals will often be so strongly in favor of socialism that it requires more strength and independence for a man to resist it than to join in what his fellows regard as modern views. Nobody, for instance, who is familiar with large numbers of university faculties (and from this point of view the majority of university teachers probably have to be classed as intellectuals rather than as experts) can remain oblivious to the fact that the most brilliant and successful teachers are today more likely than not to be socialists, while those who hold more conservative political views are as frequently mediocrities. This is of course by itself an important factor leading the  younger generation into the socialist camp.

    The socialist will, of course, see in this merely a proof that the more intelligent person is today bound to become a socialist. But this is far from being the necessary or even the most likely explanation. The main reason for this state of affairs is probably that, for the exceptionally able man who accepts the present order of society, a multitude of other avenues to influence and power are open, while to the disaffected and dissatisfied an intellectual career is the most promising path to both influence and the power to contribute to the achievement of his ideals. Even more than that: the more conservatively inclined man of first class ability will in general choose intellectual work (and the sacrifice in material reward which this choice usually entails) only if he enjoys it for its own sake. He is in consequence more likely to become an expert scholar rather than an intellectual in the specific sense of the word; while to the more radically minded the intellectual pursuit is more often than not a means rather than an end, a path to exactly that kind of wide influence which the professional intellectual exercises. It is therefore probably the fact, not that the more intelligent people are generally socialists but that a much higher proportion of socialists among the best minds devote themselves to those intellectual pursuits which in modern society give them a decisive influence on public opinion.

    The selection of the personnel of the intellectuals is also closely connected with the predominant interest which they show in general and abstract ideas. Speculations about the possible entire reconstruction of society give the intellectual a fare much more to his taste than the more practical and short-run considerations of those who aim at a piecemeal improvement of the existing order. In particular, socialist thought owes its appeal to the young largely to its visionary character; the very courage to indulge in Utopian thought is in this respect a source of strength to the socialists which traditional liberalism sadly lacks. This difference operates in favor of socialism, not only because speculation about general principles provides an opportunity for the play of the imagination of those who are unencumbered by much knowledge of the facts of present-day life, but also because it satisfies a legitimate desire for the understanding of the rational basis of any social order and gives scope for the exercise of that constructive urge for which liberalism, after it had won its great victories, left few outlets. The intellectual, by his whole disposition, is uninterested in technical details or practical difficulties. What appeal to him are the broad visions, the spacious comprehension of the social order as a whole which a planned system promises.

    This fact that the tastes of the intellectual were better satisfied by the speculations of the socialists proved fatal to the influence of the liberal tradition. Once the basic demands of the liberal programs seemed satisfied, the liberal thinkers turned to problems of detail and tended to neglect the development of the general philosophy of liberalism, which in consequence ceased to be a live issue offering scope for general speculation. Thus for something over half a century it has been only the socialists who have offered anything like an explicit program of social development, a picture of the future society at which they were aiming, and a set of general principles to guide decisions on particular issues. Even though, if I am right, their ideals suffer from inherent contradictions, and any attempt to put them into practice must produce something utterly different from what they expect, this does not alter the fact that their program for change is the only one which has actually influenced the development of social institutions. It is because theirs has become the only explicit general philosophy of social policy held by a large group, the only system or theory which raises new problems and opens new horizons, that they have succeeded in inspiring the imagination of the intellectuals.

    The actual developments of society during this period were determined, not by a battle of conflicting ideals, but by the contrast between an existing state of affairs and that one ideal of a possible future society which the socialists alone held up before the public. Very few of the other programs which offered themselves provided genuine alternatives. Most of them were mere compromises or half-way houses between the more extreme types of socialism and the existing order. All that was needed to make almost any socialist proposal appear reasonable to these “judicious” minds who were constitutionally convinced that the truth must always lie in the middle between the extremes, was for someone to advocate a sufficiently more extreme proposal. There seemed to exist only one direction in which we could move, and the only question seemed to be how fast and how far the movement should proceed.

    The significance of the special appeal to the intellectuals which socialism derives from its speculative character will become clearer if we further contrast the position of the socialist theorist with that of his counterpart who is a liberal in the old sense of the word. This comparison will also lead us to whatever lesson we can draw from an adequate appreciation of the intellectual forces which are undermining the foundations of a free society.

    Paradoxically enough, one of the main handicaps which deprives the liberal thinker of popular influence is closely connected with the fact that, until socialism has actually arrived, he has more opportunity of directly influencing decisions on current policy and that in consequence he is not only not tempted into that long-run speculation which is the strength of the socialists, but is actually discouraged from it because any effort of this kind is likely to reduce the immediate good he can do. Whatever power he has to influence practical decisions he owes to his standing with the representatives of the existing order, and this standing he would endanger if he devoted himself to the kind of speculation which would appeal to the intellectuals and which through them could influence developments over longer periods. In order to carry weight with the powers that be, he has to be “practical,” “sensible,” and “realistic.” So long as he concerns himself with the immediate issues, he is rewarded with influence, material success, and popularity with those who up to a point share his general outlook. But these men have little respect for those speculations on general principles which shape the intellectual climate. Indeed, if he seriously indulges in such long-run speculation, he is apt to acquire the reputation of being “unsound” or even half a socialist, because he is unwilling to identify the existing order with the free system at which he aims.

    If, in spite of this, his efforts continue in the direction of general speculation, he soon discovers that it is unsafe to associate too closely with those who seem to share most of his convictions, and he is soon driven into isolation. Indeed there can be few more thankless tasks at present than the essential one of developing the philosophical foundation on which the further development of a free society must be based. Since the man who undertakes it must accept much of the framework of the existing order, he will appear to many of the more speculatively minded intellectuals merely as a timid apologist of things as they are; at the same time he will be dismissed by the men of affairs as an impractical theorist. He is not radical enough for those who know only the world where “with ease together dwell the thoughts” and much too radical for those who see only how “hard in space together clash the things.” If he takes advantage of such support as he can get from the men of affairs, he will almost certainly discredit himself with those on whom he depends for the spreading of his ideas. At the same time he will need most carefully to avoid anything resembling extravagance or overstatement. While no socialist theorist has ever been known to discredit himself with his fellows even by the silliest of proposals, the old-fashioned liberal will damn himself by an impracticable suggestion. Yet for the intellectuals he will still not be speculative or adventurous enough, and the changes and improvements in the social structure he will have to offer will seem limited in comparison with what their less restrained imagination conceives.

    At least in a society in which the main requisites of freedom have already been won and further improvements must concern points of comparative detail, the liberal program can have none of the glamour of a new invention. The appreciation of the improvements it has to offer requires more knowledge of the working of the existing society than the average intellectual possesses. The discussion of these improvements must proceed on a more practical level than that of the more revolutionary programs, thus giving a complexion which has little appeal for the intellectual and tending to bring in elements to whom he feels directly antagonistic. Those who are most familiar with the working of the present society are also usually interested in the preservation of particular features of that society which may not be defensible on general principles. Unlike the person who looks for an entirely new future order and who naturally turns for guidance to the theorist, the men who believe in the existing order also usually think that they understand it much better than any theorist and in consequence are likely to reject whatever is unfamiliar and theoretical.

    The difficulty of finding genuine and disinterested support for a systematic policy for freedom is not new. In a passage of which the reception of a recent book of mine has often reminded me, Lord Acton long ago described how “at all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities, that have prevailed by associating themselves with auxiliaries whose objects differed from their own; and this association, which is always dangerous, has been sometimes disastrous, by giving to opponents just grounds of opposition….” More recently, one of the most distinguished living American economists has complained in a similar vein that the main task of those who believe in the basic principles of the capitalist system must frequently be to defend this system against the capitalists–indeed the great liberal economists, from Adam Smith to the present, have always known this. 

    The most serious obstacle which separates the practical men who have the cause of freedom genuinely at heart from those forces which in the realm of ideas decide the course of development is their deep distrust of theoretical speculation and their tendency to orthodoxy; this, more than anything else, creates an almost impassable barrier between them and those intellectuals who are devoted to the same cause and whose assistance is indispensable if the cause is to prevail. Although this tendency is perhaps natural among men who defend a system because it has justified itself in practice, and to whom its intellectual justification seems immaterial, it is fatal to its survival because it deprives it of the support it most needs. Orthodoxy of any kind, any pretense that a system of ideas is final and must be unquestioningly accepted as a whole, is the one view which of necessity antagonizes all intellectuals, whatever their views on particular issues. Any system which judges men by the completeness of their conformity to a fixed set of opinions, by their “soundness” or the extent to which they can be relied upon to hold approved views on all points, deprives itself of a support without which no set of ideas can maintain its influence in modern society. The ability to criticize accepted views, to explore new vistas and to experience with new conceptions, provides the atmosphere without which the intellectual cannot breathe.

    A cause which offers no scope for these traits can have no support from him and is thereby doomed in any society which, like ours, rests on his services. It may be that as a free society as we have known it carries in itself the forces of its own destruction, that once freedom has been achieved it is taken for granted and ceases to be valued, and that the free growth of ideas which is the essence of a free society will bring about the destruction of the foundations on which it depends. There can be little doubt that in countries like the United States the ideal of freedom today has less real appeal for the young than it has in countries where they have learned what its loss means. On the other hand, there is every sign that in Germany and elsewhere, to the young men who have never known a free society, the task of constructing one can become as exciting and fascinating as any socialist scheme which has appeared during the last hundred years. It is an extraordinary fact, though one which many visitors have experienced, that in speaking to German students about the principles of a liberal society one finds a more responsive and even enthusiastic audience than one can hope to find in any of the Western democracies. In Britain also there is already appearing among the young a new interest in the principles of true liberalism which certainly did not exist a few years ago.

    Does this mean that freedom is valued only when it is lost, that the world must everywhere go through a dark phase of socialist totalitarianism before the forces of freedom can gather strength anew? It may be so, but I hope it need not be. Yet, so long as the people who over longer periods determine public opinion continue to be attracted by the ideals of socialism, the trend will continue. If we are to avoid such a development, we must be able to offer a new liberal program which appeals to the imagination. We must make the building of a free society once more an intellectual adventure, a deed of courage.

    What we lack is a liberal Utopia, a program which seems neither a mere defense of things as they are nor a diluted kind of socialism, but a truly liberal radicalism which does not spare the susceptibilities of the mighty (including the trade unions), which is not too severely practical, and which does not confine itself to what appears today as politically possible. We need intellectual leaders who are willing to work for an ideal, however small may be the prospects of its early realization. They must be men who are willing to stick to principles and to fight for their full realization, however remote. The practical compromises they must leave to the politicians. Free trade and freedom of opportunity are ideals which still may arouse the imaginations of large numbers, but a mere “reasonable freedom of trade” or a mere “relaxation of controls” is neither intellectually respectable nor likely to inspire any enthusiasm. The main lesson which the true liberal must learn from the success of the socialists is that it was their courage to be Utopian which gained them the support of the intellectuals and therefore an influence on public opinion which is daily making possible what only recently seemed utterly remote. Those who have concerned themselves exclusively with what seemed practicable in the existing state of opinion have constantly found that even this had rapidly become politically impossible as the result of changes in a public opinion which they have done nothing to guide. Unless we can make the philosophic foundations of a free society once more a living intellectual issue, and its implementation a task which challenges the ingenuity and imagination of our liveliest minds. But if we can regain that belief in the power of ideas which was the mark of liberalism at its best, the battle is not lost. The intellectual revival of liberalism is already underway in many parts of the world. Will it be in time?

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Oct 03

Today’s News 3rd October 2018

  • UK University Bans Clapping At Performances To Avoid Triggering Students With Anxiety

    In an attempt to make public performances more “inclusive” for people with “disabilities” like anxiety and other sensory issues, the University of Manchester students’ union has voted to ban applause at student union events, and is asking students to use “jazz hands” instead.

    The decision was made to keep the University of Manchester compliant with a 2015 vote in the UK’s National Union of StudeBut students also noted that loud noises like “whooping” or “traditional applause” can create problems for students with anxiety.

    JH

    According to the Guardian, the MSU motion said that “this union notes that since 2015, the National Union of Students (NUS) has been using British sign language (BSL) clapping (or ‘jazz hands’), as loud noises, including whooping and traditional applause, can pose an issue for students with disabilities such as anxiety or sensory issues.”

    One woman who was the leader of the NUS at the time of the 2015 vote admitted that using “jazz hands” was “odd” at first, but that she eventually came to appreciate it.

    The NUS voted to start using BSL clapping in 2015. Speaking at the time, Nona Buckley-Irvine, the then general secretary of the London School of Economics students’ union, told the BBC: “Jazz hands are used throughout NUS in place of clapping as a way to show appreciation of someone’s point without interrupting or causing disturbance, as it can create anxiety.”

    “I’m relatively new to this and it did feel odd at first, but once you’ve used jazz hands a couple of times, it becomes a genuinely nice way to show solidarity with a point and it does add to creating a more inclusive atmosphere.”

    With the “jazz hands” trend apparently spreading throughout the UK university system, we think it’s important that readers become educated on the proper technique.

    Because if you don’t do it right, then you’re a racist.

  • Polarization Of Germany In Pictures: Polls Move In Entirely Predictable Pattern

    Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk,

    About once a week the Greens cheer victory. Alternately, AfD cheers. The Grand Coalition never has any grounds to cheer…

    I have a blast following German polls and pronouncements, especially from the Greens.

    First, let’s take a look at AfD.

    AfD Cheers September 21

    ​

    Greens Cheer September 29

    ​

    AfD Cheers October 1

    ​

    I have been watching this pattern for many weeks and no one seems to have caught on. This next image will explain.

    ​

    AfD Spread Over Greens – Last 6 INSA Polls

    • 3.5
    • 3.0
    • 4.5
    • 3.5
    • 1.0
    • 2.5

    Greens Spread Over AfD – Last 6 Forza Polls

    • 2.5
    • 1.5
    • 3.0
    • 1.5
    • 2.5
    • 1.5

    ​Now that the INSA poll is out of the way, it’s pretty clear the Greens turn to cheer will soon happen again.

    Demise of the Grand Coalition

    Meanwhile note that support for the Union (CDU/CSU) “Grand Coalition” is slowly sinking into the sunset.

    Support is at a new record low in the last two polls

    The lead image shows the overall pattern.

    Coalition Outlook

    If there was an election today, the Grand Coalition would not have a chance according to any recent poll.

    Even the Jamaica coalition, named after colors in the Jamaica flag (black, yellow, green), might not gather, or barely gather, the required 50%.

    INSA has the Union + FDP + Greens total as 26 + 10 + 14.5 = 50.5.

    Civey has the Union + FDP + Greens total as 26.7 + 8.6 + 15.7 = 51.0.

    How long could such a three-way coalition last, assuming it got off the ground in the first place?

  • A Data-Driven Look At Dark Web Marketplaces

    In 2018, ex-Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, made headlines after predicting the internet would eventually split into two halves – one dominated by China and the other by the United States.

    While that vision of the future may come to pass, Visual Capitalist’s Jeff Desjardins notes that the internet already has a noteworthy division (coincidentally related to Google): indexed and non-indexed. The indexed internet is what we’re all familiar with, everything from gif-laden Geocities websites to the webpage you’re reading this on.

    Parts of the non-indexed portion of the internet may be familiar as well. This includes services like online banking, or content behind paywalls or sign-in forms. Most of this part of the internet – referred to as the Deep Web – is non-indexed.

    DIPPING BELOW THE SURFACE

    Beyond easily accessible areas of the internet, lies the Dark Web, which is primarily accessed using specific software such as Tor or I2P. Practically speaking, connection requests via TOR are re-routed several times before reaching their destination. This allows people to maintain their anonymity while accessing dark web content.

    The Dark Web lives in the public consciousness as a digital Wild West; a place where every vice can be explored and procured within the vacuum of lawlessness. There’s truth to the reputation, as dark net markets sell everything from illegal drugs to databases of stolen personal information.

    One of the first and most well known of these markets was The Silk Road, which opened at the beginning of 2011. Around the time of its first anniversary, the market reached an estimated $22 million in annual sales.

    THE SHORT SHELF LIFE OF MARKETS

    Not surprisingly, governments are not thrilled at the idea of unregulated (and untaxed) markets operating in the dark web. Law enforcement and three-letter agencies have thrown considerable efforts into shutting them down, though with mixed results.

    A raid on The Silk Road in 2013 did end the reign of the popular marketplace, but it had the effect of spawning dozens of new markets to help fill the void. That said, only a few end up lasting more than a year and the average lifespan of a dark web market is just eight months.

    Some markets close down, or were simply a scam to begin with, but larger markets tend to fall victim to raids by law enforcement. High profile examples include Operation Onymous (2014), and Operations Bayonet and GraveSec (2017), which shut down the popular markets AlphaBay and Hansa. To give an idea of scale, Hansa reportedly offered more than 24,000 drug product listings at its height.

    According to Europe’s drug monitoring organization, EMCDDA, there are currently nine active markets. If history is any guide though, many of them will be gone by year’s end.

    While giants like Google and Amazon may rule the indexed web, the commercial landscape below the surface is shifting constantly.

    Courtesy of: Visual Capitalist

  • The Worst Totalitarian Since Mao

    Authored by Nick Taber via The American Conservative,

    Xi Jinping is ushering in an era of Chinese illiberalism, and with it a chilling clampdown on freedoms…

    This summer, a UN panel received reports of a human rights crisis unfolding in China’s far western Xinjiang province. The information showed that as many as two million people had been subjected to an intense political indoctrination and reeducation program. The backlash has largely focused on the ethno-religious nature of this crisis. Pakistan, China’s closest and most economically dependent ally, has asked China to ease restrictions on Muslims, and Uighurs (the ethnic minority group targeted) living in America are beginning to condemn China’s human rights abuses.

    But over-interpreting the religious aspect of the crackdown distracts from the true nature of repression in China. The crisis in Xinjiang should be interpreted more as an assault on basic freedoms and the expansion of a totalitarian tyranny than an expression of ethnic superiority. To be sure, this is nothing less than a cultural genocide. But as far as we know, the Chinese government is not Sinicizing this group simply because they are Muslim or ethnically Turkic. It is doing so because they are a perceived threat to the power of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

    Intense repression has been rapidly growing throughout the country, cementing the power of the CCP in all corners of society. Indeed, the human rights abuses in Xinjiang are strikingly similar to what’s been happening elsewhere in China since Xi assumed office. Human rights reports of Xinjiang describe mass political indoctrination, the creation of a digital police state, arbitrary detention, and pervasive controls over daily life. Let’s look at each of those components individually.

    Indoctrination: Mass political indoctrination is the central purpose of the reeducation camps established in Xinjiang. Elsewhere in the country, however, the Chinese government has instituted a wide variety of indoctrination programs, with the explicit goal of expanding the CCP’s control over people’s minds. This includes overhauling all of China’s major educational institutions, increasing the ideological content of all media, and controlling the spread of foreign ideas and influences within the country.

    During a speech given at a Beijing kindergarten in 2015, President Xi Jinping outlined his vision of party control over education, saying, “Children should memorize the core socialist values by heart, have them melt in their hearts, and carve them into their brains.” The CCP plans to overhaul the nation’s university system to turn it into an ideological education machine. Students will undergo a hefty political indoctrination program all the way through university. Chinese professors will be forced to teach CCP propaganda. According to recent government plans, university faculty will be judged foremost by their “ideological and political performance.”

    And while indoctrination and reeducation programs outside of Xinjiang do not have the same force and severity as those within the province, they are nonetheless very invasive, and are a core component of the country’s move towards totalitarianism.

    Digital police state: Human rights groups have reported that there’s a digital police state at work in Xinjiang. A hyper-intelligent digital surveillance system is used to control citizens, tracking what they say, read, and do. Such a system, however, is hardly unique to Xinjiang. The government’s digital surveillance network is being implemented throughout the country. It has leveraged the ubiquitous smartphone as an ultra-powerful surveillance device, developing programs to organize phone data and providing granular, real-time intelligence on every citizen, which can be used to guide the actions of the populace and enhance the power of the state. China has also debuted a vast network of video cameras that use artificial intelligence to gather information on everyone’s actions.

    Under the Chinese government, there has been a crackdown even on thought crime. Before Xi came into office, citizens had a moderate degree of freedom to have discussions privately about a variety of social and political topics, so long as they did not organize any movements or events. Those days are long gone. There are increasingly frequent reports of Chinese citizens writing seemingly innocuous messages to friends and family only to be promptly arrested.

    Arbitrary detention: Reports of the Xinjiang crisis show that nearly all of China’s Uighurs are at risk of being forcibly and arbitrarily detained. Yet while more than one fifth of all arrests in China in 2017 occurred in Xinjiang (a region accounting for only 2 percent of the population), arbitrary detention is a major problem throughout China and appears to be on the rise. One of the reasons for this is the vague drafting of Chinese laws, giving authorities leeway to arrest anyone suspected of subversive behavior. Though they previously occupied a gray area where they enjoyed relative freedom, hundreds of journalists and human rights lawyers have been arrested, too.

    Over the last year, there have been many accounts of arbitrary arrests for seemingly harmless behavior, raising concerns that the authorities seek to intimidate the population and encourage self-restraint. In 2017, a man referred to Xi as a coward over Wechat and was jailed for 22 months. Earlier this year, a retired professor from Shandong province was arrested while giving an interview for Voice of America.

    Pervasive controls over daily life: Foreign media and Human Rights Watch allege that the Chinese government is instituting a range of controls over daily lifefor Xinjiang residents, including restrictions on religious practices. Outside of Xinjiang, a similar trend is taking place. Religion throughout the country is under assault: recently there was a crackdown on Christian churches. Christians in Henan province were reportedly forced to take down posters of Christ and replace them with portraits of Xi.

    As another example, the government has increased the list of banned topics and words that can’t appear on internet content. Recently, the viewing or sharing of foreign news media was almost entirely banned. Homosexuals were once given a fair amount of room to quietly enjoy their lifestyle; now the government is becoming less tolerant in a push to reinforce “family values.” At a Dua Lipa concertin Shanghai, police dragged away audience members who held gay pride flags or even stood up to cheer.

    The Chinese government’s assault on basic freedom is not a regional issue but a nationwide phenomenon. Indeed, China has lately moved closer to totalitarianism than at any time since the Mao era.

    The abuses in Xinjiang are a harrowing example of this pattern.

    Repression in Xinjiang is more intense because the threat of regional instability is greatest there since its people have separatist sentiments, and have different ethnicities, religions, and identities. Eliminating these differences would, in their calculus, ensure greater stability. However, there is little reason to believe that if a province that was dominated by Han Chinese experienced a widespread separatist movement, it wouldn’t suffer a similar fate to Xinjiang. Sure, detainees wouldn’t be required to denounce a particular religion. But there would very likely be a system of reeducation camps set up just the same.

    China, then, is not only eager to eclipse the U.S. in global influence; it is increasingly diverging from what Americans recognize as core values. America’s policymaking establishment has long assumed that, as China grows, it will become more like the West in the ways that matter most: respect for individual rights, rule of law, and, perhaps eventually, democracy. That fundamental assumption was wrong. Since 2012, China has in many ways become more like North Korea than America, creating a highly sophisticated system of neo-totalitarianism, with the crisis in Xinjiang a demonstration of that dystopia.

    Congress is justified in seeking to impose sanctions on the officials responsible for the Xinjiang crisis, as it’s currently doing. However, over the long run, it needs more: it needs a strategy to counter the rapid development of Chinese illiberalism.

  • Pompeo And North Korea's Kim To Meet Sunday

    Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is scheduled to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Sunday in Pyongyang as part of his upcoming trip to Asia, the State Department announced on Tueasday. 

    The details of Pompeo and Kim’s discussions have not been revealed, however State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said that the meeting will focus on North Korea’s nuclear program. 

    The two will also likely discuss a second summit between Kim and President Trump, which the White House said was being negotiated in a statement last month. 

    Developing…

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  • Insider Attacks: Retired Army Major Laments US Middle East Policy Blowback

    Authored by Major Danny Sjursen via TomDispatch.com,

    He was shot in the back, the ultimate act of treachery.

    On September 3rd, a U.S Army sergeant major was killed by two Afghan police officers – the very people his unit, the new Security Force Assistance Brigade, was there to train. It was the second fatal “insider attack,” as such incidents are regularly called, this year and the 102nd since the start of the Afghan War 17 long years ago. Such attacks are sometimes termed “green-on-blue” incidents (in Army lingo, “green” forces are U.S. allies and “blue” forces Americans). For obvious reasons, they are highly destructive to the military mission of training and advising local military and security forces in Afghanistan. Such attacks, not surprisingly, sow distrust and fear, creating distance between Western troops and their supposed Afghan partners.

    Reading about this latest tragic victim of Washington’s war in Afghanistan, the seventh American death this year and 2,416th since 2001, I got to thinking about those insider attacks and the bigger story that they embodied.

    Considered a certain way, U.S. policy across the Greater Middle East has, in fact, produced one insider attack after another.

    Short-term thinking, expedience, and a lack of strategic caution (or direction) has led Washington to train, fund, and support group after group that, soon enough, turned its guns on American soldiers and civilians. It’s a long, sordid tale that stretches back decades — and one that, unlike the individual instances of treachery that kill or maim American servicemen, receives next to no attention. It’s worth thinking about, though, because if U.S. policies had been radically different, such green-on-blue incidents might never have occurred. So let’s consider the last decades of American war-making in the context of insider attacks.

    The Ground Zero of Insider Attacks: Afghanistan (1979-present)

    In 1979, the Washington foreign policy elite saw everything through the prism of a possible existential Cold War clash between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Such a focus tended to erase local context, nuance, and complexity, leading the U.S. to back a range of nefarious actors as long as they were allies in the struggle against communism.

    So in December 1979, when the Soviet Union invaded neighboring Afghanistan, Washington knew just what to do. With the help of the Saudis and the Pakistanis, the CIA financed, trained, and armed — eventually with sophisticated anti-aircraft Stinger missiles, among other weapons — a range of anti-Soviet militias. And it worked! Eight years later, having suffered more than 10,000 combat deaths in its own version of Vietnam, the Red Army left Afghanistan in defeat (and, soon after, the Soviet Union itself imploded).

    The problem was that many of those anti-Communist Afghans were also fiercely Islamist, often extreme in their views, and ultimately anti-Western as well as anti-Soviet — and among them, as you undoubtedly remember, was a youthful Saudi by the name of Osama bin Laden.

    It was, then, an easy-to-overlook reality. After all, the Islamist mujahideen (as they were generally called) were astute enough to fight one enemy at a time and knew where their proverbial bread was being buttered. As long as the money and arms kept flowing in and the more immediate Soviet threat loomed, even the most extreme of them were willing to play nice with Americans. It was a marriage of convenience. Few in Washington bothered to ask what they would do with all those guns once the Soviets left town.

    Recent scholarship and newly opened Russian archives suggest that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was driven as much by defensiveness and insecurity as by any notion of triumphal regional conquest. Despite the fears of officials in the administrations of presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, the Soviets never had the capacity or the intent to march through Afghanistan and seize the oil fields of the Persian Gulf. Like so much Cold War-era thinking, this was pure fantasy and the meddling that went with it anything but necessary.

    After the Soviet exit, Afghanistan fell into a long period of chaos, as various mujahideen leaders became local warlords, fought with one another, and terrorized average Afghans. Frustrated by their venality, former mujahideen, aided by students radicalized in madrassas in Pakistani refugee camps (schools that had often been financed by America’s stalwart partner, Saudi Arabia), formed the Taliban movement. Many of its leaders and soldiers had once been funded and armed by the CIA. By 1996, it had swept to power in most of the country, implementing a reign of Islamist terror. Still, that movement was broadly popular in its early years for bringing order to chaos and misery.

    And let’s not forget one other small but influential mujahideen group that the U.S. had backed: the “Afghan Arabs,” as they were called — fiercely Islamist foreigners who flocked to that country to fight the godless Soviets. The most notable among them was, of course, Osama bin Laden — and the rest, as they say, is history.

    Bin Laden and other Afghan War veterans would form al-Qaeda, bomb American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, blow up the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000, and take down the Twin Towers and part of the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. These, though, were only the most well known acts of those anti-Soviet war vets. Thousands of Afghan Arabs left that war zone and returned to their own countries with plenty of zeal and fight still in them. Those veterans would then form local terror organizations that would challenge or help destabilize secular governments in the Middle East and North Africa.

    After 9/11, the question on many American minds was simple enough: “Why do they hate us?” Too few had the knowledge or the sense of history that might have led to far more relevant questions: How did the U.S. contribute to what happened and to what extent was it blowbackfrom previous American operations? Unfortunately, few such questions were raised as the Bush administration headed into what would become a 17-year, still-spreading regional war not on a nation or even a set of nations, but on a tactic, “terror.”

    Still, it’s worth reflecting on America’s complicity in its own 9/11 devastation. In a strange fashion, given Washington’s history in Afghanistan, 9/11 could be seen as the most devastating insider attack of all.

    The Many Iraq Wars (1980-present)

    The 2003 invasion of Iraq — Operation Iraqi Freedom as it was optimistically named — may go down as one of the more foolish wars in American history — and many of the attacks on U.S. troops that followed from it over the years might be considered green-on-blue ones. After all, Washington would, in the end, train and back so many diffuse groups that a number of the members of various terror and insurgent outfits were once on the U.S. payroll.

    It began, of course, with Saddam Hussein, the brutal Iraqi dictator whom the American people would be assured (in 1990 and again in 2003) was the “next Hitler.” In the 1980s, however, the U.S. government had backed him in his invasion of Iran (then as now considered a mortal enemy) and the eight-year stalemated war that followed. The U.S. even gave his forces crucial targeting intelligence for the use of his chemical weapons against Iranian troop formations, embittering the Iranians for years to come.

    The Reagan administration also took Iraq off the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terror and even allowed the sale of components vital to Saddam’s production of those chemical weapons. Nearly a million people died in that grim war and then, just two years after it ended, the U.S. found that, for its efforts, Saddam would send his troops into neighboring Kuwait and threaten to roll over America’s key ally in the region (then as now), Saudi Arabia. That, of course, kicked off another major Iraqi conflagration, again involving Washington: the First Persian Gulf War.

    At the end of that “victory,” President George H.W. Bush encouraged Iraq’s oppressed Shia and Kurdish populations to rise up and overthrow Saddam’s largely Sunni regime. And rebel they did until, bereft of the slightest meaningful support from Washington, they were defeated and massacred. More than a decade later, in 2003, when the U.S. again invaded Iraq — this time under the false pretense that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction — Americans were assured that most civilians (especially the embattled Shia majority) would cheer the arrival of Uncle Sam’s military machine.

    In reality, it took less then a year for Shia militias to form and begin openly attacking U.S. troops (with a helping hand later from the Iranians, who had their own bitter American legacy to recall). You see, those Shia — unlike most Americans — still remembered how Washington had betrayed them in 1991 and so launched their own versions of insider attacks on U.S. soldiers.

    However, from 2003 to 2007 (including the period when I served as part of the U.S. occupation force in Baghdad), the main threat came from Sunni insurgents. They were a diverse lot, including former Saddam loyalists and military officers (whom the U.S. had thrown out onto the street when it disbanded his army), Islamist jihadis, and Iraqi nationalists who simply opposed a foreign occupation of their country. As Iraq fell into chaos — I was there to see it happen — Washington turned to a savior general, David Petraeus, armed with a plan to “surge” U.S. troops into key Sunni regions and lower the violence there before Democrats in Congress lost patience and started calling for an end to the American role in that country.

    In the years that followed, the statistics seemed to vindicate the Petraeus “miracle.” Using divide-and-conquer tactics, he paid off the tribal leaders, who became known as the “Sunni Awakening” movement, to turn their guns on more Islamist-focused Sunni groups. Many of his new allies had only recently been insurgents with American blood on their hands.

    Still, the gamble seemed to work — until it didn’t. In 2011, after the Obama administration withdrew most American troops from the country, the Shia-dominated (and U.S.-backed) government in Baghdad failed to continue to pay the “awakened” Sunnis or integrate them into the official security forces. I’m sure you can guess what happened next. Sunni grievances led to mass protests, which led to a Shia crackdown, which led to the explosion of a new insurgent terror group: the Islamic State, or ISIS, whose origins — talk about “insider” — can be traced back to the inspiration of al-Qaeda and to a group initially known as al-Qaeda in Iraq.

    In fact, it was a dirty secret that many of the Awakening veterans either joined or tacitly supported ISIS in 2013 or thereafter, seeing that brutal group as the best bet for protecting Sunni power from Shia chauvinism and American deceit. Soon enough, the U.S. military was back in action (as it still is today) in response to ISIS conquests that included some of Iraq’s major cities. And if all of that doesn’t qualify as a tale of blowback, what does?

    Yemen, Syria, and Beyond (2011-forever)

    Syria is a humanitarian disaster area and no U.S. administration has demonstrated anything resembling a coherent or consistent strategy when it comes to that country. Torn between Iraq War fatigue and military overstretch, the Obama team waffled on what its policy there should even be and ultimately failed to achieve anything of substance — except to potentially sow the seeds for future insider attacks. Indeed, a paltry (yet startlingly expensive) CIA attempt to arm “moderate” rebels opposed to the regime of Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad turned out to be wholly counterproductive. Some of those arms were ultimately reported to have made their way into the hands of extremist groups like the al-Nusra Front, an al-Qaeda franchise in Syria. In a situation where truth proved more farcical than fiction, the $500 million effort to train anti-ISIS rebels managed to train “four or five” of them, according to the top U.S. military commander overseeing the Syrian effort.

    In Yemen, in a Saudi-led war in which the U.S. has been shamelessly complicit, a brutal bombing campaign waged largely against civilians and a blockade of rebel ports have undoubtedly sown the seeds for future insider attacks. Beyond the staggering humanitarian toll — a minimum of 10,000 civilian deaths, mass starvation, and the outbreak of the world’s worst cholera epidemic in modern memory — there is already strategic blowback that could harm future American security. As the U.S. military provides in-flight refueling of Saudi planes, smart bombs for them to drop, and vital intelligence, it is also undoubtedly helping its future enemies. The chaos, violence, and ungoverned spaces that war has created are, for instance, empowering the al-Qaeda franchise there, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), one of the most active and dangerous jihadist crews around. When, however, AQAP inevitably succeeds in some future strike aimed at Americans or their property, precious few pundits and policymakers will call it by its proper name: an insider attack.

    So, as we lament the death of yet another soldier in a green-on-blue strike in Afghanistan, it’s worth thinking about the broader contours of U.S. policy across the Greater Middle East and Africa in these years. Is anything the U.S. doing, anyone it is empowering or arming, likely to make the Middle East or America any safer? If not, wouldn’t a different, less interventionist approach be the essence of sober strategy?

    It may, of course, be too late. Washington’s military policies since 9/11 have alienated tens of millions of Muslims across the Greater Middle East and elsewhere. Grievances are gestating, plots unfolding, and new terror outfits gaining recruits due to the very presence of the U.S. military, its air power, and the CIA’s drone force in a “war” that is about to enter its 18th year. Seen in this light, it’s hard not to believe that more anti-U.S. “insider” attacks aren’t on the way.

    The question is only where and when, not if.

    *  *  *

    [Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author, expressed in an unofficial capacity, and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.]

  • Italy Folds To Europe, Pledges To Shrink Budget Deficit To 2.0%; Euro Surges

    After two days of brutal punishment by the markets which sent Italian bond yields to 4 years highs and slammed the euro, the Italian government appears to have folded to pressure from Brussels (and the one place in the world where the bond vigilantes still operate, just ask Sylvio Berlusconi), and according to Corriere della Sera, Italy’s draft budget plan will pledge to cut the deficit to 2% in 2021, after Rome reversed a proposal to maintain a 2.4% shortfall in the face of pressure from the EU. As a result, while the 2019 deficit will still rise to 2.4% of GDP in 2019, it will decline by 0.2% to 2.2% in 2020, and another 0.2% the year after.

    In kneejerk reaction, futures lept to fresh session highs, Treasury yields jumped by 2bps to 3.07% and the EURUSD spiked 50 pips higher to 1.1590.

    Italy is not out of the woods yet though: according to Mizuho, the sustainability of the euro’s rebound will depend on whether the EU sees Italy’s latest budget plan as appropriate. It could be that Italy has already made compromise with the EU, but hard to predict whether the euro’s rebound has more legs until we see a reaction from the EU: “It all boils down to the EU’s response”, and if the ongoing war of words is any indication, merely promising to trim the deficit in the next three years will hardly be smiled upon.

    Others were even more skeptical. According to bond fund manager Daintree Capital, “The euro’s definitely reacting to the headlines on Italian budget plans, and it will continue to do so for future headlines.” However, “anyone who believes a populist government is all of a sudden going to be particularly responsible in a fiscal sense, has a misguided view.”

    As a result, Daintree’s Justin Tyler said that “I do see the euro as potentially being a bit of a weak point in G-10. There’s lots of political risks coming out of Italy.”

    Finally, there is Bloomberg’s Mark Cudmore who writes that the “euro reaction is excessive and won’t sustain” because the proposed budget deficit target is still too late “and it’s two years too late anyways. There’s justification for some positivity in that the Italian government are trying to address market concerns. But that’s largely eroded by the fact that this is little more than a token gesture and insufficient to ease Italy’s debt burden. And that suggests that the government still don’t register the severity of the situation.”

    Finally, even if the deficit were to shrink modestly, that only impacts one of the three triggers listed by Goldman earlier today why volatility in Italian bonds won’t sustain. The other two – the phasing out of the ECB’s QE and the collapse in Italian bond volatility – are here to stay, and merely await the next catalyst out of Italy’s populist government to send yields soaring even higher.

    Finally, don’t be surprised if a member of government comes out in the next few hours and denies the whole thing.

  • AI CEO: The Best Way To Avoid Killer Robots Is To Ignore Them

    Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

    The best way to avoid the harm that killer robotics and artificial intelligence can cause is to just ignore it or focus on the good this technology could do for humans “socially,” says CEO Phil Libin.  He even suggests simply “ignoring” the job losses that result from AI.

    Phil Libin, the CEO of All Turtles, a startup that focuses on turning AI-related ideas into commercial products and companies said that humans becoming obsolete should just be ignored and focus should be on the good killer robots can do for society.  In a recent conversation with Business Insider, Libin said this is the same advice he got while learning to ride a motorcycle.

    His instructor taught him that if an accident happened in front of him while he was riding on the highway, such as a semi-truck flipping over, the worst thing to do would be to stare at the truck. Instead, his instructor said, he should focus on the point he needed to get to in order to avoid colliding with the truck.  That advice seems great if you’re on a motorcycle, but when one is discussing AI which will make human labor obsolete, it’s a little more of a tough global concern than that.

    “If you look at what you’re trying to avoid, then you’re going to run into it,” said Libin, who previously founded Evernote. “You’ve got to look at where you want to be,” he said according to Business Insider.  But with singularity quickly approaching, is there time to ignore the obvious negative impacts of AI?

    Jürgen Schmidhuber, who is the Co-Founder and Chief Scientist at AI company NNAISENSE, the Director of the Swiss AI lab IDSIA, and heralded by some as the “father of artificial intelligence” is confident that the singularity “is just 30 years away. If the trend doesn’t break, and there will be rather cheap computational devices that have as many connections as your brain but are much faster,” he said. “There is no doubt in my mind that AIs are going to become super smart,” Schmidhuber says.

    When biological life emerged from chemical evolution, 3.5 billion years ago, a random combination of simple, lifeless elements kickstarted the explosion of species populating the planet today. Something of comparable magnitude may be about to happen. “Now the universe is making a similar step forward from lower complexity to higher complexity,” Schmidhuber beams. “And it’s going to be awesome.”

    But will it really be awesome when human beings are made obsolete by their very creations? -SHTFPlan

    A recent warning from the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) declared that thousands of jobs are already being lost to robots and those with the lowest wages are likely to be hardest hit. As it becomes more expensive to hire people for work because of government interventions such as minimum wage hikes and overbearing regulations, more companies are shifting to robotics to save money on labor.

    Ray Kurzweil, Google’s chief of engineering, has said that the work happening right now “will change the nature of humanity itself.” He said robots “will reach human intelligence by 2029 and life as we know it will end in 2045.”  There is a risk that technology will overtake humanity and make human society irrelevant at best and extinct at worst.

  • Brokers Baffled As Manhattan Luxury Housing Rout Spreads To Broader Market

    When the first signs of stress in Manhattan’s luxury real-estate market started to appear roughly one year ago, we anticipated that the weakness in the high-end would soon spread to the broader market.

    BBG

    And as it turns out, we were right. To wit, the latest evidence that the NYC housing bubble is beginning to deflate comes courtesy of  Bloomberg, which reported on Tuesday that during the three months through September, the number of homes purchased in Manhattan declined for the fourth straight quarter, dropping 11% from a year earlier to 2,987, according to a report Tuesday by appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and brokerage Douglas Elliman Real Estate. Meanwhile, the number of listings climbed 13% to 6,925 homes, the most since 2011.

    Housing

    While the pullback had previously been isolated to the luxury market, which was struggling with an abundance of new supply, even the smaller, cheaper apartments that have typically been favored by members of New York City’s professional class lingered on the market during the third quarter, with inventories rising by about 15% for studios and 21% year-on-year for one-bedroom apartments. Meanwhile, inventories rose 8% for two-bedrooms, and 5% for four-bedrooms.

    Climbed

    Of course, brokers are hoping that this is just a gully and that sellers will ultimately prevail by sticking to their guns. Rising interest rates, as one broker pointed out, are giving sellers time to wait for a better offer, as chances are they are locked in at a lower rate. But the data suggest that this isn’t happening, as the number of sellers cutting prices has climbed to its highest level since 2009 as BAML warns that “existing home sales have peaked.”

    With economic growth accelerating and US stocks at record highs, real estate brokers can’t figure out what’s behind the recent softness, with one calling it “perplexing.”

    “It is somewhat perplexing,” said Garrett Derderian, director of data and reporting for brokerage Stribling & Associates, which also released a report on Manhattan home sales Tuesday. “The financial markets are quite strong. Mortgage rates, while rising, are still at historic lows. But the perception has become that the market is overheating in terms of pricing. No one obviously wants to come in at the top where they’re paying the highest prices as things are going down.”

    But any of our regular readers will know that this pullback in housing prices isn’t “perplexing” in the least: Rather, it’s the result of a confluence of factors, most notably the staggering jump in home price to average earnings ratios accompanied by a drop in foreign capital from China and the former Soviet Union. 

    Danske Bank’s massive money laundering scandal has triggered calls to tighten European banking regulations, threatening to cut off the flow of “dirty money” from the former Soviet Union. At the same time,  China has cracked down on capital outflows, making it more difficult for wealthy Chinese buyers to stash their money in hot property markets. The influx of foreign money over the past 10 years has led to bubble-like valuations, leaving homeownership in markets like NYC (and Vancouver, and London, and Hong Kong…) out of reach for locals.

    One real-estate broker touched on this trend by warning that sellers must now “bring prices closer to where they need to be” in an interview with Bloomberg.

    “For the last eight years, the market has been going up, up, up,” said Bess Freedman, co-president of brokerage Brown Harris Stevens. “But now, it’s really time for sellers to adjust prices to where the market needs to be. I think slowly they’ll do that more and more.”

    We couldn’t have said it better ourselves. And according to brokerage Brown Harris Stevens, previously owned Manhattan homes spent an average of 104 days on the market in the third quarter, compared with 94 days a year earlier. Manhattan co-ops, typically a primary residence of the buyer, have endured falling prices across the board, with three-bedrooms seeing the biggest decline at 17% to $3.13 million. Going forward, not only will real-estate brokers in the city be responsible for matching buyers and sellers, they will also need to better manage sellers’ expectations, or risk a repeat of what’s happening in Vancouver.

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Oct 02

Today’s News 2nd October 2018

  • Erdogan Lashes Out At US: Defiantly Says American Pastor Has "Dark Ties With Terror"

    Addressing his parliament on Monday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan lashed out at the United States over sanctions against Turkey and Iran, which have served to squeeze both countries and resulted in massive inflation. Crucially, he remained defiant over the case of evangelical pastor Andrew Brunson, which have plunged ties with Washington to their lowest, saying the preacher of has “dark ties with terror”.

    “The US has embarked on a false path of solving political problems not through negotiations, but through the language of blackmail and threats,” Erdogan said in a speech. Though the public Ankara-Washington back and forth over the 2-year detained Brunson’s fate throughout the summer appeared to have cooled down over the past month, Erdogan directed his ire at the Trump White House, which he said “lost its credibility engaging in a trade war with the world” in reference to recent sanctions hitting Russia, China, Iran, and Turkey. 

    Erdogan vowed that Turkey will fight within legal and diplomatic frameworks, saying it will not back down on Brunson matter, but that it will persevere through “this crooked understanding, which imposes sanctions using the excuse of a pastor who is tried due to his dark ties with terror organizations.”

    Image source: Reuters

    However he still held out hope that “the US leadership will sooner or later change its wrong attitude towards our country” and that bilateral relations will normalize in the future. 

    He also particularly highlighted Washington’s “unfair” pulling out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal last May: “It’s absolutely wrong to use sanctions when all the issues can be easily solved through monitoring, carried out by the international organizations,” he said. He further explained the domino effect this has set off for all neighbors in the region. 

    “It’s paramount for us that Iran isn’t isolated from political decisions that shape the future of the region,” Erdogan said, and added that the Turkish economy “is strong enough and will not to succumb to threats and attacks” by the Americans.

    Of course, no Erdogan speech could possibly leave out the Kurdish issue either: the Turkish president charged Washington on this front with “continuing to cooperate with terrorist organizations.” He reiterated the longstanding goal of completely eradicating PKK-linked groups from Iraq and Syria — the bulk of which the US is directly aligned with. 

    Perhaps seeking to cool or at least pause tensions last week while attending the United Nations General Assembly, Erdogan had noted that Pastor Brunson’s fate is a judicial matter, distancing himself from the contentious issue which effectively led to a summer long diplomatic war with Washington, resulting in the Turkish lira losing more than 45 percent of its value this year.

    President Erdogan accused American citizen and missionary Pastor Brunson of having “dark ties with terror organizations.”

    In comments made last Wednesday, he said “As the president, I don’t have the right to order his release. Our judiciary is independent. Let’s wait and see what the court will decide.” Erdogan also claimed the severely ailing economy had nothing to do with the diplomatic feud with the US: “The Brunson case is not even closely related to Turkey’s economy. The current economic challenges have been exaggerated more than necessary and Turkey will overcome these challenges with its own resources,” he claimed. 

    But Monday’s speech before parliament is likely an attempt to save face domestically while simultaneously negotiating with Washington. 

    According to a recent report detailing the status of Pastor Brunson’s case in Middle East Eye:

    But the shrill tone and tit-for-tat tariff slapping has lulled lately.

    The calm, according to a Turkish diplomat, comes after Ankara, under pressure to stem the country’s economic freefall, told Washington that the conflict could only be resolved if the public squabbling stopped.

    The Turkish diplomat cited in the report said further, “We knew we had to solve the problem and normalize our relations with the US for the sake of Turkey’s economy, but it was not possible to do that amid challenging statements.” He continued, “So we both decided to prevent any more escalation and solve the problem quietly.”

    Brunson is due in court October 12 and has recently been placed under house arrest pending trial — a concession made by Turkey after Congress voted to halt sale of Lockheed Martin produced F-35 stealth fighter jets — which proves Turkey is willing to bend. 

    Likely, Erdogan’s bark as presented before his own parliament is much worse that his bite in dealing with US officials. 

  • Privatization, The EU, And A Bridge

    Authored by Andrew Spannaus via ConsortiumNews.com,

    A Genoa bridge that collapsed last month killing 43 people is privately owned, but a key factor that has slowed basic infrastructure investment in Italy in recent years is the fault of the EU…

    A little over a month ago, on August 14, a highway bridge collapsed in the middle of the Italian city of Genoa, killing 43 people, damaging the populated areas below, and interrupting a major traffic artery connecting the two sides of the city. The bridge had been built in the 1960s, with a construction technique that had been criticized by some experts over the years, and its decay was obvious; it had already undergone various repairs, and a new round of extraordinary maintenance was planned for this fall.

    The maintenance didn’t come in time. As heavy rain fell in the area, cars and trucks dropped from a height of 150 feet, causing death and injury, and marking a national tragedy that has gripped the country.

    Why did this happen? Italy’s highway company was privatized in 1999, and concessions were then granted to operate the roads. The largest concession-holder (with about 50% of the network) is currently Autostrade per l’Italia S.p.A., controlled by the Benetton family, founders of the eponymous fashion brand. They make a handsome profit off of highway tolls – among the highest in Europe – and they are responsible for maintenance and investments, which have stagnated even as tolls have more than doubled in the past 25 years.

    Autostrade’s defense in regard to the disaster is that while concerns had been raised about the bridge, there was no indication of imminent danger. It’s a weak argument, considering that in Genoa the bridge had been the subject of public debate for years, with some seeing it as “a disaster waiting to happen.” After initial resistance, Autostrade ultimately responded to public pressure by allocating 500 million Euros (575 million dollars) to compensate the families of the victims and rebuild the bridge.

    Collapsed Bridge: Privately owned. (Wikimedia Commons)

    The first response from Italy’s populist government led by the Five-Star Movement (M5S) and the League, was to channel rage against the private company, using popular arguments against the neoliberal policies of privatization and budget-cutting. They are right, of course, that the disaster came on the watch of a private company, which is claimed to be more efficient than the public sector. Italy’s highway system works fairly well, but there’s no ignoring the need for upgrades to the parts of the infrastructure that were built during the economic boom of the 1950s and 60s, which have reached the end of their useful life.

    Yet tolls are already high, and the private concessionaire wants to guarantee its profits; who’s going to pay for all the work that needs to be done?

    The two Deputy Prime Ministers of the Italian Government, Luigi Di Maio of M5S and Matteo Salvini of the League, have led the charge against Autostrade. Di Maio has threatened to revoke the concession and re-nationalize the highways, although the institutional pushback has been strong. Salvini, on the other hand, immediately pointed the finger at European Union (EU) budget constraints: “Investments that save lives… must not be calculated by the strict, cold rules imposed by Europe”, he said on Aug. 15.

    EU Hinders Infrastructure Funding 

    The disaster in Genoa was not a direct consequence of cuts to the public budget, since the section of the highway is run by a private company, as centrist politicians and much of the major media jumped to point out. But Salvini’s broadside pinpointed an essential issue for Italy – and many other European countries – today: massive public investment is needed, but EU budget constraints prevent it.

    Salvini: Leading the charge against Autostrade. (Wikimedia Commons)

    The Italian government is responsible for the public welfare, but it is unable to guarantee that public welfare. There are many reasons for this, starting with the country’s massive public debt – 131 percent  of GDP, among the highest in the world – and the inefficiency of public spending. The construction tender process is slow and complicated, and tangled bureaucracy means that even money allocated is often left unspent for years.

    These are long-term problems that require legislative reforms and the reorganization of priorities. The current government has promised to streamline the tender system, and also to direct available funds to the most urgent projects.

    Yet the key factor that has slowed down basic infrastructure investment in Italy in recent years has been the EU budget rules, which after originally setting a maximum deficit of 3 of GDP, now make it mandatory to fully balance the budget, although countries are allowed to move gradually towards that goal.

    The Italian government is constantly under pressure to cut public spending in order to get closer to a zero deficit every year. This, despite the fact that Italy has run a primary budget surplus (i.e. before interest on the public debt) practically every year since 1992. Public investment has fallen continually over the years; by more than one-third at the national level, down to 2% of GDP, and by as much as one-half over the past ten years when it comes to local governments.

    This happened in particular because in order to meet the EU budget criteria, Italy adopted something called the “Internal Stability Pact,” to go along with the European “Stability and Growth Pact.” The internal version used the budgets of municipalities, provinces and regions to help reach national budget goals. In essence, the local authorities were required to cut spending even if they had money in the bank, so that the government in Rome could count those funds to meet the EU rules.

    The harsh austerity implemented from 2011 to 2014 made things even worse. After the spread between Italian and German bonds on the financial markets spiked in the summer of 2011, leading to fears of financial catastrophe for Italy and the Euro system as a whole, technocratic governments rapidly moved to slash spending even more.

    This policy, dictated by the European Central Bank and the European Commission and enthusiastically implemented by neoliberals in Italy, led to a true disaster. The result was a 25% drop in industrial production, and a sharp rise in unemployment and poverty. And not surprisingly – at least to rational people – the economic contraction ended up making the public debt even larger.

    Who Should Decide?

    When after the bridge disaster in Genoa the government promised to rebuild the country’s road infrastructure no matter what the cost, the reaction was swift. On the one hand, EU officials such as budget commissioner Guenther Oettinger denied Europe is responsible for lack of investment in Italy, and on the other, financial markets rapidly increased the risk premium on Italy’s state bonds.

    The question is: why should financial markets or technocrats decide whether Italy’s roads are safe? The populist government was elected on the promise of challenging EU austerity policies, and the coalition agreement between M5S and the League sets two main priorities in this field: increasing public aid to the poor, through a form of universal income, and simplifying and lowering the country’s high tax rates, to help both businesses and individuals.

    The main fight in the government right now is if they will actually carry through on these promises, despite the pressure to toe the line on the budget criteria. Economics Minister Giovanni Tria seems cowed by the pressure from the bond markets, and clearly fears antagonizing the EU. Di Maio and Salvini insist on keeping their promises, touting the heretical, but true, argument that productive investment actually produces growth. Something has to give. The hope is that it won’t be another bridge.

  • Theresa May Proposes Tax On Foreign Homebuyers As London Property Rout Worsens

    Housing prices in the world’s premier markets – London, New York and Hong Kong, all of which were recently highlighted on the latest UBS ranking of cities with the largest housing bubble risk…

    …. have finally started to retreat after years of unprecedented growth (a trend that can be attributed both to the stupefying price-to-income ratios facing local buyers and the Chinese government’s crackdown on capital outflows, among other factors).

    But these pullbacks, which have mostly manifested over the past year, have had little, if any, impact on rates of homelessness, which have jumped in most urban centers (just look at Seattle). Given the tremendous public pressure for the government to do something to alleviate financial burdens on renters and aspiring buyers, UK Prime Minister Theresa May on Sunday became the latest politician to declare that something must indeed be done.

    London

    And that something, as Bloomberg and the Financial Times reported, is a proposed stamp tax on foreign buyers who don’t pay taxes in the UK, with the proceeds going to initiatives for rough sleepers (a slightly more dignified term for “the homeless”). The London proposal comes one week after officials in British Columbia promised a crack down on the “dirty money” (read Chinese buyers) that has helped make Vancouver’s housing market the most unaffordable in North America.

    Meanwhile, in 2018 house prices in London declined more quickly than the broader UK market, a sign that property prices across high-end markets have peaked, and that homeowners are in for a punishing pullback.

    Home

    FTSE-listed homebuilder stocks including Berkeley, Barratt and Taylor Wimpey were among the biggest losers on the first trading day of the quarter since their operations are concentrated in London, one of the most popular markets for foreigners. 

    Builders

    Here’s the FT with more:

    Speaking at the Conservative Party conference on Sunday, Mrs May announced plans for buyers of UK property who do not pay tax in Britain to be subject to a new stamp duty surcharge of up to 3 per cent, with the proceeds going towards a scheme for tackling rough sleeping. The proposed tax would be levied on both individuals and companies.

    While London house prices have been falling this year, they have risen at a rapid clip in recent years. The high number of luxury housing developments and of homes bought as investments that stand empty, particularly in the capital but also elsewhere in the country, have prompted calls for the government to tackle what is seen as a UK-wide housing crisis and build more affordable housing to accommodate the rising population.

    Mrs May said there was evidence that foreign buyers who do not pay UK taxes had helped push up prices and reduce the rate of home ownership in the UK. When she became prime minister in 2016, she made solving Britain’s housing crisis a priority.

    Of course, housing costs aren’t the only factor contributing to homelessness in the UK (austerity-related cutbacks have also played a role). But some analysts worry that May’s tax might be ill-timed as Britain tries to signal to the world that it’s still “open” to foreigners as Brexit looms.

    “This policy, with its uncomfortable echoes of blaming foreigners for every ill, may make good headlines, but it sends an uncomfortable message to the rest of the world and will do nothing to create more homes for those unable to buy or to rent today,” said Henry Pryor, a U.K.-based luxury real estate broker.

    Back when he was mayor of London, Boris Johnson said it would be “nuts” to deter foreign ownership in London, warning that it could trigger a precipitous collapse in home prices.

    Still, there’s no denying that policies to beat back foreign buyers who have helped inflate property prices are politically popular. And with May’s grip looking increasingly tenuous thanks to her “Chequers plan” and her European partners unwillingness to give an inch in their negotiations over a Brexit deal, the timing of this announcement is hardly surprising.

    Moving forward, if London cracks down on foreign buyers, other property markets like New York City could feel the sting as foreigners worry that “progressive” mayors like Bill de Blasio, who has already pushed through new disclosure laws applying to foreign property buyers, could follow suit. Such measures could risk exacerbating this latest decline in luxury markets, turning it into a full-fledged selloff with echoes of 2007.

  • Major Arms Deal Gets Green Light Ahead Of Russia-India Summit

    Authored by Alex Gorka via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    The Russian-Indian time-tested partnership has experienced an upward trend in all areas of cooperation in recent years. Last year, the two great powers marked the 70th anniversary of diplomatic relations. The leaders meet regularly and hold phone conversations to discuss acute problems. A very important event has just taken place to bring the two nations even closer.

    The Indian Cabinet Committee on Security, chaired by PM Narendra Modi, approved the $6.2 billion S-400 Triumf deal with Russia on Sept.26. It’s rather symbolic that the final decision to purchase the five cutting-edge air defense systems to protect Indian critical infrastructure sites was taken just a few days before the Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to India scheduled on Oct.4-5. The Indian government defied the US threats to impose sanctions for buying Russian weapons in accordance with the 2017 “Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act” (CAATSA) the way it did to “punish” China for buying the same systems and Su-35 combat planes.

    The law allows making a waiver for India but US officials do not guarantee New Delhi will be exempt. It takes a risk by dealing with Russia. India has signed multiple multi-billion deals with US weapons producers. Defense Secretary James Mattis and State Secretary Mike Pompeo tried to talk India out of the S-400 deal during the 2+2 talks in September. Randall G. Schriver, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs, has warned that a waiver is not a slam dunk decision. Indeed, if an exemption is made, others will demand waivers too, but with no sanctions imposed, the CAATSA will be deprived of any purpose. The US has put itself into an awkward situation and has to make a hard choice.

    Russia and India are in talks on the way to make non-dollar payments. They could resort to clearing options, another currency, such as the Singapore dollar, or a go-between based in a third country. The US uses go-betweens to sell arms to the Syrian Kurds.

    The two nations have a 60-year history of military cooperation, with Russia being the single largest supplier of hardware. The sides joined together to develop the BrahMos supersonic anti-ship and land-attack cruise missile. India also fields Russia’s S-300 air-defense system, and its INS Vikramaditya aircraft carrier is made in Russia and uses Russian aircraft.

    The list of Russian weapons used by the Indian military is really long. India is finalizing negotiations with Russia to purchase 48 additional Mi-17-V5 utility helicopters. The agreement on the purchase of four frigates may be signed during the upcoming Russian-Indian October summit. New Delhi also wants to lease a Russian nuclear submarine

    Moscow accounts for 62 per cent of New Delhi’s arms imports. The Russian weapons and equipment in the Indian inventory have to be maintained, modernized, and spare parts have to be supplied. India just couldn’t all of a sudden suspend the military cooperation with Russia even if it wanted to. But it doesn’t. It’s widely believed that the S-400s are the best in the world. Nobody else could offer India a system with comparable specifications. And no American sanctions can prevent the great power, such as India, from buying what serves better its national security interests.

    The Indian government has been already criticized by opposition for getting too close to the United States. The general elections are in April-May 2019. Signing the deal during President Putin’s upcoming visit will be the right step to win voters’ support. India defies the US sanctions anyway by buying Iran’s oil. New Delhi continued to trade with Tehran during previous rounds of restrictions. The EU, Russia, China, and Iran have recently agreed to create a special purpose vehicle (SPV) to bypass US sanctions against Iran. Russia and India could do the same.

    The two great powers are expected to conclude an ‘action plan’ for expanding civil nuclear energy partnership during the upcoming top-level meeting. It will focus on a second site for Russian nuclear plant in the country. Russia’s Rosatom is currently the only foreign investor in India’s civilian nuclear energy sector, with the first two 1,000W units of the Kudankulam power plant already commissioned. The site is scheduled to have six VVER-1000 reactors with an installed capacity of 1,000 MW each. In March, the trilateral agreement was signed by India, Russia and Bangladesh on nuclear energy-related cooperation in personnel training, experience sharing and consulting support.

    Russia played a key role in facilitating India’s entry into the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), or Shanghai Pact, last year. It strongly supports India’s bid for a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council and the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).

    No doubt, the October summit will re-affirm the fact that the traditionally close relationship has been upgraded to a “special privileged strategic partnership” as the world is shifting from a unipolar order to a possible multipolar structure. The decision to purchase the S-400 and defy the US exerting outright pressure proves the Indian government is adamant in its desire to boost cooperation with the old partner and friend. 

  • "They Are Worried About Panic": China Blocks Bad Economic News As Economy Slumps

    China’s Shadow-banking system is collapsing (and with its China’s economic-fuel – the credit impulse), it’s equity market has become a slow-motion train-wreck, its economic data has been serially disappointing for two years, and its bond market is starting to show signs of serious systemic risk as corporate defaults in 2018 hit a record high.

    But, if you were to read the Chinese press, none of that would be evident, as The New York Times reports a government directive sent to journalists in China on Friday named six economic topics to be “managed,” as the long hand of China’s ‘Ministry of Truth’ have now reached the business media in an effort to censor negative news about the economy.

    The New York Times lists the topics that are to be “managed” as:

    • Worse-than-expected data that could show the economy is slowing.
    • Local government debt risks.
    • The impact of the trade war with the United States.
    • Signs of declining consumer confidence
    • The risks of stagflation, or rising prices coupled with slowing economic growth
    • “Hot-button issues to show the difficulties of people’s lives.”

    The government’s new directive betrays a mounting anxiety among Chinese leaders that the country could be heading into a growing economic slump. Even before the trade war between the United States and China, residents of the world’s second-largest economy were showing signs of keeping a tight grip on their wallets. Industrial profit growth has slowed for four consecutive months, and China’s stock market is near its lowest level in four years.

    “It’s possible that the situation is more serious than previously thought or that they want to prevent a panic,” said Zhang Ming, a retired political science professor from Renmin University in Beijing.

    Mr. Zhang said the effect of the expanded censorship strategy could more readily cause people to believe rumors about the economy. “They are worried about chaos,” he added. “But in barring the media from reporting, things may get more chaotic.”

    The directive didn’t appear to affect run-of-mill daily coverage of economic data, which could still be widely found online in China on Friday. Instead, the directive appeared to be aimed at easing the overall tone. Indeed, another notice sent on Friday instructed online news outlets to remove comments at the bottom of news articles that “bad-mouth the Chinese economy.”

    One wonders if any “badmouthers” will automatically be accused of working for the Kremlin as is the case in the US, or simply arrested and never heard from again.

    The topics that are now non grata pertain to “China’s economic downturn,” “China’s stagflation,” “new refugees,” “consumption downgrading” and “other harmful remarks that criticize the development prospects of China,” according to a copy of the notice reviewed by The Times. Consumption downgrading refers to Chinese consumers looking for ways to spend less.

    What is ironic is that even before the crackdown, China’s data was already very much suspect. Mark Williams, chief Asia economist of Capital Economics, said the firm expects the Chinese economy to slow down to 5 to 5.5 percent from 6.9 percent last year. Despite the lower forecast, he stressed that it was “not a weak number” for the Chinese economy.

    “One of the problems is there’s a lot of doubt about official Chinese data,” Mr. Williams said. “And when they come out with these directives, it just raises more questions.”

    Censors have also erased online commentary that contained the phrases “consumption downgrade,” taxes, debt and unemployment, according to the Journalism and Media Studies Center at the University of Hong Kong, which monitors censorship on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like social media service.

    One post that was removed by censors said: “The bad news in the market is exploding, pessimistic viewpoints are spreading, many retail investors are in despair.” Another read: “Will the emergence of robots free up labor or cause unemployment and poverty?”

    And, as NYT notes, China is wasting no time in implementing the new directive.  On Wednesday, Phoenix News Media, a Hong Kong-based outlet with big operations in mainland China, said the Chinese authorities had instructed it to “rectify” its news portal, ifeng.com. The Cyberspace Administration of China, the country’s main internet regulator, said that Phoenix had “disseminated illegal and harmful information, distorted news headlines and shared news information in violation of rules.”

    Two weeks earlier, NetEase, an online news portal, said it had to suspend updating its financial platform “because of serious problems.”

    All of which is funny because in America, one can bash the economy, the deep state and the dysfunctional status quo all they want… as long as they are ready to be blacklisted as “Russian operatives”, get banned from YouTube and Twitter and watch their advertisers flee as a result of peer pressure. Meanwhile, if anyone asks what the true state of the economy is, the answer every single time is “just look at the stock market.”

  • This Is What Donald Trump Must Do To Battle The Deep State And Win

    Via TargetLiberty.com,

    The below essay by long-time political operative Roger Stone is the most important essay I have come across detailing how the Deep State has run counter-operations against Donald Trump, before he was elected president and since. In the essay, Stone also provides suggestions on how Trump should battle the DS.

    The lesson here for libertarians is how government Deep State operatives often use laws created “to protect us”  to instead protect sectors of central power. The only way to stop these power plays is to eliminate the power centers by shrinking government.
    –RW 

    By Roger Stone

    During the Presidential Campaign for the 2016 election, then Candidate Trump responded to the anguished cries of The People when he promised to “Drain the Swamp”.  While Donald J. Trump knew instinctively that there was rampant corruption in Washington, D.C., it is entirely possible that he was surprised by the levels of vindictiveness and wrath he would eventually encounter.

    In a prescient and possibly complicit statement, on January 3, 2017, mere days from Trump’s inauguration, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer warned the soon-to-be sworn-in President Elect. Schumer said that Donald Trump was being ”really dumb” to question US intelligence agency officials in their handling of the alleged “Russian Hacking” fabrications.  Schumer warned: “Let me tell you: You take on the intelligence community – they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you,”.  With the benefit of hindsight, we see that the Obama corrupted FBI with assistance from the Obama corrupted CIA tried more than six different ways, and are still trying even now.

    The Russian Collusion Delusion is a fairly complicated bit of political machinery.  That was by design.  It doesn’t take very much complexity to make most people’s eyes glaze over, which is why we have specialists for almost all complicated endeavors.  Engineers, programmers, chemists, doctors, and a multitude of others makes the fabric of our complex society.  It simply isn’t possible for anyone to become an expert in everything, and this is the principle upon which the Deep State’s coup d’état relies upon.  In order to comprehend what they have done, how they did it, and who they brought in to help them one has to consider so many variables that it forces any who choose to fully understand it to become experts themselves.  Most people don’t have the time or energy to become experts in political machinations and International intrigue, leaving the culprits free to continue exploiting the system.

    Secrecy is the currency of spycraft.  Without secrecy, spying is merely intrusion and can devolve into brute force thuggery. Secrecy is what allows “Covert Operations” to remain covert.  Secrecy can be a legitimate tool of the State for securing the safety of its citizens, but secrecy can also be abused.  Abused secrecy can destroy entire nations.

    In the case of the Russian Collusion FISA warrants against Carter Page, abused secrecy seems clearly to be what happened.  The rational for beginning the overt spying on the Trump Presidential Campaign appears to have begun with a completely fabricated opposition intelligence dossier concocted by Christopher Steele, formerly of British Intelligence M.I.6.   This fabrication, commissioned and paid for by Team Hillary, the DNC, and a complicit FBI, was used to kick-off a FISA investigation against Carter Page.  Due to Carter’s proximity to the Trump Campaign, and the NSA ‘hops’ surveillance method of total information awareness on a ‘target’, everyone within three degrees of separation from the target was surveilled.  Every single person in the Trump Campaign was spied on using Carter Page as the first ‘link’.  Although Carter may not have ever communicated directly with then Candidate Trump, Donald J. Trump himself was under surveillance because he communicated with people who communicated directly with Carter Page, making him just two-degrees of separation.  Since Trump himself was considered only a second-degree separation from Cater Page, it means that EVERY SINGLE PERSON that President Trump communicated with from the time the first FISA warrant was issued in October 2016 WAS ALSO BEING SURVEILLED until the third and final extension expired in October of 2017.  A full year of illegal spying, kept as an abused secret.  Rod Rosenstein was involved every step of the way, and was the final arbiter of the last FISA renewal.  While others are guilty, the buck stops with Rosenstein.

    But spying wasn’t enough.  Spying is only useful for digging up dirt when the target of the spying is dirty.  No such dirt came up on President Trump, and any smaller fish caught up in Mueller’s drag nets had nothing to do with Russia, Collusion, or Team Trump.

    When the initial fabrication fell flat, it became time for Plan B.  In this case, Plan B for the Deep State entailed entrapment.  Using a variety of lures and attack vectors, Team Deep State attempted to set-up and frame Trump campaign members like George Papadopoulos.  Knowing that their actions were highly illegal, the Coup Plotters opted to enlist their allies in British Intelligence to help them conduct operations on British soil, thereby skirting United States law.

    It is easy to see that releasing the unredacted FISA applications and renewals will hurt Team Deep State.  We know how much pain they are in by the way they squeal.  It seems to physically cause them distress that they were ordered to release unredacted testimony from Bruce Ohr, and even more painful, the unredacted text messages of James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, and Lisa Page.

    Already the talking heads are making excuses for the Deep State and saying “oh, out of privacy some names will surely be redacted” or “we need to make sure their sources and methods are not compromised”. News Flash! Rampant criminal corruption which is plain as day to any and all sober minded patriots stares us in the face. It tells us clearly that “their sources and methods” are already gravely compromised and it requires bright sunshine and transparent clarity to fix it.

    The old adage about sunshine being the best disinfectant definitely holds merit.

    President Trump had the right instinct when he ordered the immediate declassification of the Russian Collusion Delusion documents.  He only agreed to delay the release because the DOJ threatened the President that releasing the unredacted documents could harm the Mueller Russia collusion investigations. To Team Deep State, harming the Mueller investigation is tantamount to committing the heinous crime of obstruction of justice.

    Obstruction of justice, as defined in the omnibus clause of 18 U.S.C. § 1503, provides that “whoever corruptly or by threats or force, or by any threatening letter or communication, influences, obstructs, or impedes, or endeavors to influence, obstruct, or impede, the due administration of justice, shall be (guilty of an offense).”  Whoever corruptly influences the due administration of justice shall be guilty of obstruction of justice.

    Cornell Legal Library notes that persons are usually charged under this statute based on allegations that a defendant intended to interfere with an official proceeding, by doing things such as destroying evidence, or interfering with the duties of jurors or court officers.  While defendants are usually the target of obstruction of justice charges, prosecutors can be equally guilty.

    Other activities that also fall under the purview of obstruction of justice:  using the full force of United States Government law enforcement to create and disseminate fraudulent documentation which is then used to support a phony criminal investigation into a political opponent.  THAT is obstruction of justice, and worse, politicizing the entirety of the DOJ, FBI, and the CIA.  If this is what happened, and it appears increasingly likely that it is, then the guilty are multitude and the crimes almost beyond measure.

    President Trump must stand strong on his original ultimatum:  the FISA and investigation documents must be released to the public!  The text messages must be revealed, without redactions!

    A cornered animal is most dangerous. Removing the veil on Team Deep State’s secrecy is a mortal threat to their ability to continue their slow-motion soft coup against President Trump.  A successful coup is the only hope Team Deep State has at regaining control over the leavers of power wrested away from them by the President, so make no mistake, they are “All-In”.  They have even reached out to their partners in crime across the Atlantic at British Intelligence, who dutifully squealed “Grave Concerns” against releasing the unclassified and unredacted documents.  They know that within those documents are details on how Christopher Steele was involved in a brazen attempt to oust the duly elected President of the United States of America.  It is only natural that the British don’t want their M.I.6 guy named, or their frame-job set-up artist Stefan Halper revealed, but alas for them, it is too late.  Certainly, they don’t want it known that the British Government, at behest of the Obama Administration, allowed US directed agents to use British soil to conduct their skullduggery so as to circumvent US Law.  Should this prove to be the case, that is far beyond obstruction of justice, in the worst possibly way. It is conspiracy to defraud the US Government and US People, in addition to horrific rights violations of everyone victimized by this plot.   It also happens to be Treason and Seditious Conspiracy against the Duly Authorized United States Government, which are crimes carrying the potential for the highest of all penalties:  DEATH.

                18 U.S. Code § 2381 – Treason

    Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

                18 U.S. Code § 2384 – Seditious conspiracy

    If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.

    This cat is not going back into the bag and the public awaking will soon be ‘fait accompli’.

    It has often been said that history repeats itself, so turning to history we find a quote from FDR’s first inaugural address, who may have found sardonic humor in our use of his quote today:

    “This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper.”    March 4, 1933 Franklin Delano Roosevelt

  • As Killings Of South African Politicians Surge, ANC Ignores Pleas For Help

    White South African farmers aren’t the only ones who are fearing for their lives in the face of persecution by the African National Congress. Increasingly, members of the party have been struggling to survive amid a surge in violent retribution. As the New York Times reports, South African politicians are being assassinated with alarming frequency as party members hire mercenary assassins to eliminate rivals (or, more often, anti-corruption whistleblowers). Even as murders proliferate and public outrage intensifies, prosecutions are rare. Killings soared under former President Jacob Zuma, but Cyril Ramaphosa, the “reform” candidate who ousted Zuma, has ignored calls to try and stop them, fostering suspicions that these lethal intraparty feuds extend all the way to the party’s leadership.

    With political will to stamp out the killings within the ANC virtually nonexistent, they have become a potent reminder that the rule of law in one of Africa’s largest economies is virtually nonexistent. They’re also a sign of just how far the party has strayed from its roots. One politician who took a stand against corruption in a rural South African province told the NYT that he felt like he was being “hunted like an animal.” In its story, the NYT shares how one local politician, a man named Sindiso Magaqa, was ambushed in his red BMW by a hit squad who riddled him with bullets. He survived the attack, but died a few weeks later from his wounds.

    ANC

    Magaqa’s crime? He tried to expose ANC politicians involved in the construction of a public project to build a new Memorial Hall in Umzimkhulu after obtaining documents showing that the municipality had paid contractors more than $2 million with little to show for it. 

    The documents, which were reviewed by The New York Times, showed that after the contractor won the renovation contract in 2013, worth $1.2 million, the municipality paid the company and its subcontractor nearly two-thirds of the money, even though the project was far behind schedule.

    Two years later, after the company and its subcontractor failed to finish, the municipality hired a different contractor for another $1 million.

    In all, the documents do not unequivocally prove corruption on their own, but they show the municipality spent nearly all of the money it had budgeted for the hall – and ended up with little to show for it.

    Mr. Zulu said he had grabbed the files and promised to pursue the case with his contacts in the police. But over the following months, Mr. Magaqa brandished the documents in the council and challenged leaders of the dominant A.N.C. faction, leading Mr. Zulu to wonder whether his old friend was also trying to use the issue to his personal political advantage.

    The attack that eventually killed Magaqa occurred several months later.

    Meanwhile, a friend of Magaqa’s who is presently in hiding for fear he might be next on the ANC’s hit list compared the party to the Italian mafia.

    All of the assassination targets had one thing in common: They were members of the African National Congress who had spoken out against corruption in the party that defined their lives.

    “If you understand the Cosa Nostra, you don’t only kill the person, but you also send a strong message,” said Thabiso Zulu, another A.N.C. whistle-blower who, fearing for his life, is now in hiding.

    “We broke the rule of omertà,” he added, saying that the party of Nelson Mandela had become like the Mafia.

    One notable aspect of the recent spate of killings that differentiates them from the political violence of the past is that, today, ANC members are killing other ANC members as they struggle for turf and power. In the past, violence was confined mostly to members of rival political parties.

    Political assassinations are rising sharply in South Africa, threatening the stability of hard-hit parts of the country and imperiling Mr. Mandela’s dream of a unified, democratic nation.

    But unlike much of the political violence that upended the country in the 1990s, the recent killings are not being driven by vicious battles between rival political parties.

    Quite the opposite: In most cases, A.N.C. officials are killing one another, hiring professional hit men to eliminate fellow party members in an all-or-nothing fight over money, turf and power, A.N.C. officials say.

    Of all the trappings of corruption now borne by the ANC, the killings are perhaps the most serious, and the most difficult to ignore.

    The party once inspired generations of South Africans and captured the imagination of millions around the world — from impoverished corners of Africa to wealthy American campuses.

    But corruption and divisions have flourished within the A.N.C. in recent years, stripping much of the party of its ideals. After nearly 25 years in power, party members have increasingly turned to fighting, not over competing visions for the nation, but over influential positions and the spoils that go with them.

    Since the beginning of 2016, the rate of killings has almost doubled, prompting police to release data about political killings for the first time earlier this year.

    The death toll is climbing quickly. About 90 politicians have been killed since the start of 2016, more than twice the annual rate in the 16 years before that, according to researchers at the University of Cape Town and the Global Initiative Against Transnational Crime.

    The murders have swelled into such a national crisis that the police began releasing data on political killings for the first time this year, while the new president, Cyril Ramaphosa, has lamented that the assassinations are tarnishing Mr. Mandela’s dream.

    The wave of killings has done so much damage to the national psyche, that some believe the country was better off before it achieved democracy.

    “It was better before we attained democracy, because we knew the enemy – that the enemy was the regime, the unjust regime,” said Mluleki Ndobe, the mayor of the district where Mr. Magaqa and five other A.N.C. politicians have been assassinated in the past year.

    “Now, you don’t know who is the enemy,” he said.

    In a sign that the people could soon act to unseat the corrupt ANC, dissatisfaction has festered even as Ramaphosa has pushed the expropriation of land from white farmers (while also tacitly endorsing violence against white farmers). Markets have lost confidence, too, sending the South African rand spiraling lower earlier this year, though it has begun to claw back some of its losses in recent days. But exactly one year from now, South Africans will have an opportunity to vote out the ANC during a general election in October 2019. But given this propensity for violence, we imagine it wouldn’t go peacefully.

  • Fresh Reports Of Real Estate Rage Signal Turn In Chinese Housing Market

    Via Investing In Chinese Stocks blog,

    Chinese homebuyers have demanded to return their housing in 2008, 2011 and 2014: each time the market price declined, but real estate rage first appeared in 2011. There was a report of real estate rage in Shanghai. The developer had slashed prices by one-third and homebuyers who purchased days or weeks responded by smashing up the sales office.

    “My house’s value has dropped by as much as one-third, and we have lost some 10,000yuan,” a homeowner surnamed Yang told Shanghai Daily.

    Real estate rage returned in early 2014. Angry homeowners in Hangzhou were upset for the same reason as those in Shanghai: the developer slashed prices. They flooded the developer’s office, but police were quickly on the scene.

    “In 2008, 2011, 2014, there were three rounds of very obvious check-outs in the country. As long as the house price fell, the pre-purchasers began to reduce their prices.” Chongyuan Real Estate pointed out that the phenomenon of price reduction “rights” It has appeared from time to time, with 2011 being the most typical.

    According to public information, since September 2011, Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Ningbo and other places have continued to reduce prices and defend their rights. The sales offices of various projects such as Vanke, Longhu and Hesheng have been destroyed, and some project owners have also physical conflict with security guards.

    In September, there were several reports of “real estate rage” across the country. Instead of smashing offices, homeowners are protesting outside to “protect their rights” but the cause of their anger is the same: developers slashing prices to move inventory. While this evidence is anecdotal, there have been many reports about developers moving inventory to recoup cash. More importantly, both the 2011 and 2014 “real estate rage” incidents were coincident indicators of a housing market top.

    Sohu: 房子降价业主就“维权”，房地产要凉透了

    Here’s the most widely covered incident in Hefei. A project by the Taihe group is being protested by homeowners who paid 19,000 yuan per square meter after the company began selling homes at the promotional price of 15,000 yuan per sqm. 

    The latest happening, the lively event is to count the Hefei yard under the Taihe Group. On September 20th, the news of the project “discount sale” was spread from the average price of 20,000/m2 to 15,000/m2, the lowest was 13,000/m2, and the discount range was 25% to 35%.

    After the news came out, the owners collectively went to the sales office to defend their rights. This matter was also confirmed by the Taihe Group. “When the price was raised, the owner did not pay the money to us, but the owner of the price reduction came to defend the rights.” A person in charge of the Taihe Group reported to the 21st Century Business Herald on September 25.

    The person in charge said that the price cuts really existed. Just in the past Mid-Autumn Festival, the Hefei Yard chose to reduce the price of a certain apartment by 4000 yuan/square, but then attracted the old owners to collectively defend their rights.

    Because of the difference in floor plan, orientation and floor, the price of different units in Hefei Yard has a price difference. The average transaction price in the previous period is about 19,000. At present, only the individual units are used for promotion, which is reduced to about 15,000, but the full subscription is required…

    Binjiang New City in Hangzhou was a similar scene.

    This project is located in the Dajiangdong Industrial Cluster of Hangzhou City. The second-phase pre-sale certificate was announced in September. The first-phase owners found that some low-rise large-sized houses had a large price difference with the same room number, up to 350,000 yuan.

    This project was previously purchased by Yaohao. It has launched two batches of lottery houses. The first phase is in late August, 36, 40, 41 buildings, 382 sets of houses, and the area of ​​90 square meters is 16,600 yuan/square meter. The average price of 90~140 square meters is 17,200 yuan / square meter.

    The second phase of the recent registration is to launch 27 buildings and 28 buildings with a total of 155 suites. The number of units is 93~115 square meters, 90~140 square meters, and the average price is 16822 yuan/square meter.

    From the average price point of view, the two opened 90~140 square meters, the price difference is 378 yuan / square meter. However, some netizens have carefully checked that the overall price of the second phase is lower by 887 yuan/square meter.

    On September 15th, about 10 first-time owners went to the future coastal sales office to “defend rights” and demanded to make up the difference, send the parking space or check out the whole amount.

    The article points out that developers aren’t willingly slashing prices. Developers are under financial stress and trying to recoup capital:

    Therefore, in fact, it is not the developer who wants to cut the price. It is completely forced by the situation. In order to recapture capital, price reduction promotion is a common means used by developers.

    21st Century: 房地产价格回归成交低迷，楼市“博傻”时代已过

    As early as June of this year, the sales office of the K2 Shili Spring Breeze Project in Tongzhou District of Beijing was once surrounded by the owners who asked to return their houses. The reason was also that the price of the project was lowered.

    Throughout the history of real estate development in China, the phenomenon of owners defending their rights due to price cuts has occurred from time to time, and most of them appear when the market goes down. The sales offices of large-scale housing companies such as Vanke, Poly, Longhu, etc. have all encountered “siege.”

    Having learned from the past three cycles, developers are using indirect price cuts to hopefully avoid triggering real estate rage:

    This year’s market situation is considered similar to the above three years. Under the prolonged control, developers are increasingly demanding cash flow and collection rates, and price cuts have become a viable option.

    However, some real estate developers have recently reported to the 21st Century Business Herald that “direct price cuts” are usually the last choice for enterprises. Because many years of trading experience tells home buyers, direct price cuts usually lead to similar disputes.

    “If you have to make adjustments, the first choice is ‘downgrade’.” The person said that “downsizing” refers to lowering the standards for decoration, greening and other supporting facilities on the basis of not adjusting the price, thus making up for Loss of profit margin.

    At the same time of “downsizing”, some projects will also reduce prices in disguise, such as reducing the gift area, increasing the price of parking spaces, and improving the price of fine decoration. These practices can also achieve the goal of making up for profit margins. For the first time, the project can choose to open low (low price opening), or price concession strategy. Most of the recent price concessions have occurred in the first open project.

    The person said that choosing a direct price cut usually means that the project has “no choice”, which is a “already lost profits, and now lose reputation”.

    Price cuts often follow in the wake of inflated prices as developers cashed in on the bubble:

    There are many reasons for direct price cuts in real estate projects, but in general, most of them have the phenomenon of excessive pricing in the early stage.

    A housing company in Changsha told the 21st Century Business Report on September 28 that in the past year, housing prices in Changsha have risen sharply, and some projects have increased their prices by more than 50% within half a year. Although there are no good quality projects in good locations, some of the lots and poor quality projects have followed suit.

    This year, Changsha’s control policies have been deepened, and the implementation of “limit orders” has been particularly severe. The price of the project in a good location can be maintained, and suburban projects of poor quality have to undergo price correction.

    Yan Yuejin, director of the think tank center of Shanghai Yiju Research Institute, called this adjustment “return” because “the price increase in the previous period was a irrational behavior.” Under the pressure of regulation, the price bubble must be squeezed out.

    He said that in China’s real estate market, demand has never been released smoothly. Affected by regulatory policies, buying up mentality, etc., market demand usually shows a concentrated release, and then concentrated shrinkage. The supply side response often lags behind the demand side. Therefore, when market demand shrinks, many projects have to adjust the price strategy.

    Analysts see reason for optimism given tight supply in top-tier cities and low inventory in lower-tiers:

    First- and second-tier cities still have support

    As the regulation of the property market continues to deepen, price adjustments may continue to spread. Yan Yuejin pointed out that the decline in project prices will bring more wait-and-see mood. Some housing companies with tight capital conditions will add their projects to the price reduction. He believes that similar cuts will occur in October. But it does not rule out the possibility of a price rebound at the end of the year.

    Ouyang Jie, senior vice president of Xincheng Holdings, agrees with the above view. He pointed out that the risk of large-scale price cuts does not seem to be high. This is because: in the first- and second-tier cities with strict regulation, the demand is long-term depressed, the supply is far from sufficient, the high-end residential is more, the urban growth potential is huge, the land price is reduced, and there is no room for housing prices.

    Ouyang Jie also said that some of the second-tier cities that are not yet severely regulated are also the driving force for rising house prices.

    According to the report of the Shanghai Yiju Research Institute, as of the end of July 2018, the destocking cycle of new homes in 100 cities nationwide was only 9.6 months, which was significantly lower than the reasonable range of 12-16 months. Some of these cities have a de-chemical cycle of less than five months.

    However, with the sinking of the regulatory policies, some third- and fourth-tier cities where house prices have risen too fast in the early period are not optimistic.

    Ouyang Jie said that in the third- and fourth-tier cities where house prices are rising too fast and customer traffic is shrinking too much, there is a high probability of a price correction in the future. He pointed out that in many provinces, the prices of low-energy and low-grade cities are higher than those of high-energy and high-grade cities. In short, the price of county towns is close to or exceeds that of provincial capitals.

    Ouyang Jie said that in September this year, the average price of second-hand housing in Yiwu, Zhejiang Province was 21,519 yuan/m2, up 17.25% year-on-year, and the chain was also rising. This price is already higher than many provincial capital cities in the Midwest. At the same time, the prices in many places in Hebei are higher than those in Shijiazhuang; the prices in Jiangxi Province, Yichang City, Hubei Province, and Wuhu City, Anhui Province are close to their capital cities.

    The aforementioned housing companies also said that the market capacity of the third- and fourth-tier cities is not large in itself, and it has been exhausted in the previous cycle. If the sheds change to a large resurgence of monetization, the demand scale and purchasing power of these cities will be affected, and prices will appear. It is not unexpected to downgrade.

    Whether these markets will hold up or not is no longer a speculative question though, because the market has turned.

    Zhongyuan Real Estate pointed out that in the past three years, house prices in the country have generally risen, investment speculation has risen, and many demand have used higher leverage. Regardless of whether this round of price adjustment will spread, market participants should increase their awareness of risk, because with the normalization of the property market regulation, “the time when the price only rises and does not fall is over.”

  • Brett Kavanaugh Will Not Return To Teaching At Harvard

    Embattled Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh will not be returning to his teaching position at Harvard Law School in January.

    According to Judge Kavanaugh’s biographical page says on the United States Court of Appeals District of Columbia Circuit website. he has taught full-term courses on Separation of Powers at Harvard Law School (each year from 2008 to 2015), and on the Supreme Court at Harvard Law School (2014, 2016, 2017, 2018).

    The Crimson reports that according to an email administrators sent to Law students Monday evening, Associate Dean and Dean for Academic and Faculty Affairs Catherine Claypoole wrote:

    “Today, Judge Kavanaugh indicated that he can no longer commit to teaching his course in January Term 2019, so the course will not be offered.”

    The allegations that have roiled Kavanaugh’s confirmation process, spurred students on the Law School’s campus to call for Harvard to bar him from teaching pending a “full and fair investigation” of his alleged sexual misconduct.

    It is unclear whether this decision is normal practice for a SCOTUS nominee at this stage of the process (i.e. pre-confirmation) or if this is a mutually-agreed separation from Harvard, reflecting what Judge Kavanaugh angrily exclaimed during the latest hearing that his family name “has been totally and permanently destroyed” and his prior life is now “ruined.”

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Oct 01

Today’s News 1st October 2018

  • This Fascinating World Map Was Drawn Based On Country Populations

    It’s likely you’re very familiar with the standard world map.

    It’s shown practically everywhere – you’ll see it online, on the news, in books, and even as a part of company logos. In fact, the world map is so ubiquitous that we don’t even really think about it much at all, really.

    But, as Visual Capitalist’s Jeff Desjardins notes, the economist Max Roser from Our World in Data argues that this familiarity with the world map may lead to complacency in understanding global matters. After all, the typical world map shows us the basic geography of countries and continents, but it doesn’t give any indication of where people actually live!

    INTRODUCING: THE CARTOGRAM

    To get around the challenges of relying on the standard world map, Roser instead has made a population cartogram based on 2018 population figures.

    What’s a population cartogram?

    A cartogram is a visualization in which statistical information is shown in diagrammatic form. In this case, it’s a population cartogram, where each square in the map represents 500,000 people in a country’s population.

    In total there are 15,266 squares, representing all 7.633 billion people on the planet.

    (View this giant map in full resolution to see details )

    Courtesy of: Visual Capitalist

    Countries like Canada or Russia – which have giant land masses but small relative populations – appear much smaller on this kind of map. Meanwhile, a country like Bangladesh grows much bigger, because it has a large population living within a smaller area.

    THE REGIONAL VIEW

    Let’s zoom in on some continental regions to get a sense of what we can learn from a population cartogram done in this fashion.

    Asia and Oceania
    Where did Australia go? The continent is completely dwarfed by neighboring Indonesia and the Philippines.

    Not surprisingly, India and China are the biggest countries on this cartogram, especially looking oversized in comparison to countries in the Middle East like Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, or the United Arab Emirates.

    Europe
    Geographically, Russia is a pretty massive country – but when resized based on population, the nation looks closer in size to many other European nations.

    The Netherlands and Belgium, two countries with higher population densities than most European nations, also appear more prominent on this style of map.

    The Americas
    On the map below, Mexico has exploded to almost 4X the size of Canada. That’s because although the Great White North is the world’s second largest country in size, it only has a fraction of the population of Mexico.

    Meanwhile, it’s evident that Argentina’s population is lower than the country’s giant landmass leads on.

    Africa
    Finally, we’ll look at Africa, which is in the middle of a massive population boom.

    Countries like Namibia, Botswana, and Chad almost disappear.

    Nigeria, which is expected to have the world’s largest city by 2100 with over 88 million residents, is the largest country in Africa using this cartogram method.

  • EU: Politicizing The Internet

    Authored by Judith Bergman via The Gatestone Institute,

    • Even before such EU-wide legislation, similar ostensible “anti-terror legislation” in France, for example, is being used as a political tool against political opponents and to limit unwanted free speech.

    • In France, simply spreading information about ISIS atrocities is now considered “incitement to terrorism”. It is this kind of legislation, it seems, that the European Commission now wishes to impose on all of the European Union.

    • Social media giants — Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Microsoft, Google+ and Instagram — act as voluntary censors on behalf of the European Union.

    • The European Commission states that it is specifically interested in funding projects that focus on the “development of technology and innovative web tools preventing and countering illegal hate speech online and supporting data collection”, and studies that analyze “the spread of racist and xenophobic hate speech in different Member States…”

    The European Union seems fixated, at least for the internet, on killing free speech. And social media giants — Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Microsoft, Google+ and Instagram — act as voluntary censors on behalf of the EU. (Image source: iStock)

    In March, the European Commission — the unelected executive branch of the European Union — told social media companies to remove illegal online terrorist content within an hour — or risk facing EU-wide legislation on the topic. This ultimatum was part of a new set of recommendations that applies to all forms of supposedly “illegal content” online. This content ranges “from terrorist content, incitement to hatred and violence, child sexual abuse material, counterfeit products and copyright infringement.”

    While the one-hour ultimatum was ostensibly only about terrorist content, the following is how the European Commission presented the new recommendations at the time:

    “… The Commission has taken a number of actions to protect Europeans online – be it from terrorist content, illegal hate speech or fake news… we are continuously looking into ways we can improve our fight against illegal content online. Illegal content means any information which is not in compliance with Union law or the law of a Member State, such as content inciting people to terrorism, racist or xenophobic, illegal hate speech, child sexual exploitation… What is illegal offline is also illegal online”.

    “Illegal hate speech”, is then broadly defined by the European Commission as “incitement to violence or hatred directed against a group of persons or a member of such a group defined by reference to race, colour, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin”.

    The EU has now decided that these “voluntary efforts” to remove terrorist content within an hour on the part of the social media giants are not enough: that legislation must be introduced. According to the European Commission’s recent press release:

    “The Commission has already been working on a voluntary basis with a number of key stakeholders – including online platforms, Member States and Europol – under the EU Internet Forum in order to limit the presence of terrorist content online. In March, the Commission recommended a number of actions to be taken by companies and Member States to further step up this work. Whilst these efforts have brought positive results, overall progress has not been sufficient”.

    According to the press release, the new rules will include draconian fines issued to internet companies who fail to live up to the new legislation:

    “Member States will have to put in place effective, proportionate and dissuasive penalties for not complying with orders to remove online terrorist content. In the event of systematic failures to remove such content following removal orders, a service provider could face financial penalties of up to 4% of its global turnover for the last business year”.

    Such astronomical penalties are likely to ensure that no internet company will run any risks and will therefore self-censor material “just in case”.

    According to the European Commission press release, the rules will require that service providers “take proactive measures – such as the use of new tools – to better protect their platforms and their users from terrorist abuse”. The rules will also require increased cooperation between hosting service providers, and Europol and Member States, with the stipulation that Member states “designate points of contact reachable 24/7 to facilitate the follow up to removal orders and referrals”, as well as the establishment of:

    “…effective complaint mechanisms that all service providers will have to put in place. Where content has been removed unjustifiably, the service provider will be required to reinstate it as soon as possible. Effective judicial remedies will also be provided by national authorities and platforms and content providers will have the right to challenge a removal order. For platforms making use of automated detection tools, human oversight and verification should be in place to prevent erroneous removals”.

    It is hard to see why anyone would believe that there will be effective judicial remedies and that erroneously removed content will be reinstated. Even before such EU-wide legislation, similar ostensible “anti-terror legislation” in France, for example, is being used as a political tool against political opponents and to limit unwanted free speech. Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s Front National, was charged earlier this year for tweeting images in 2015 of ISIS atrocities, includingthe beheading of American journalist James Foley and a photo of a man being burned by ISIS in a cage. She faces charges of circulating “violent messages that incite terrorism or pornography or seriously harm human dignity”, and that can be viewed by a minor. The purported crime is punishable by up to three years in prison and a fine of €75,000 ($88,000). Le Pen posted the pictures a few weeks after the Paris terror attacks in November 2015, in which 130 people were killed, and the text she wrote to accompany the images was “Daesh is this!” In France, then, simply spreading information about ISIS atrocities is now considered “incitement to terrorism”. It is this kind of legislation, it seems, that the European Commission now wishes to impose on all of the EU.

    The decision to enact legislation in this area was taken at the June 2018 European Council meeting – a gathering of all the EU’s heads of state – in which the Council welcomed “the intention of the Commission to present a legislative proposal to improve the detection and removal of content that incites hatred and to commit terrorist acts”. It sounds, however, as if the EU is planning to legislate about a lot more than just “terrorism”.

    In May 2016, the European Commission and Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Microsoft, agreed on a “Code of Conduct on countering illegal online hate speech online” (Google+ and Instagram also joined the Code of Conduct in January 2018). The Code of Conduct commits the social media companies to review and remove, within 24 hours, content that is deemed to be “illegal hate speech”. According to the Code of Conduct, when companies receive a request to remove content, they must “assess the request against their rules and community guidelines and, where applicable, national laws on combating racism and xenophobia…” In other words, the social media giants act as voluntary censors on behalf of the European Union.

    The European Council’s welcoming of a legislative proposal from the European Commission on “improving the detection and removal of content that incites hatred” certainly sounds as if the EU plans to put the Code of Conduct into legislation, as well.

    At the EU Salzburg Informal Summit in September, EU member states agreed to, “step up the fight against all forms of cyber crime, manipulations and disinformation”. Heads of member states were furthermore invited, “to discuss what they expect from the Union when it comes to… preventing the dissemination of terrorist content online” and “striking the right balance between effectively combating disinformation and illegal cyber activities and safeguarding fundamental rights such as the freedom of expression”.

    At the same time, however, the European Commission, under its Research and Innovation Program, has a call out for research proposals on how “to monitor, prevent and counter hate speech online,” with a submission deadline in October.

    In the call for proposals, the Commission says that it is “committed to curb the trends of online hate speech in Europe” and underlines that “proposals building on the activities relating to the implementation of the Code of Conduct on countering hate speech online are of particular interest”.

    The Commission states that it is specifically interested in funding projects that focus on the, “development of technology and innovative web tools preventing and countering illegal hate speech online and supporting data collection”; studies that analyze “the spread of racist and xenophobic hate speech in different Member States, including the source and structures of groups generating and spreading such content…”; and projects that develop and disseminate “online narratives promoting EU values, tolerance and respect to EU fundamental rights and fact checking activities enhancing critical thinking and awareness about accuracy of information” as well as activities “aimed at training stakeholders on EU and national legal framework criminalising hate speech online”. One just wonders which member states and what “hate speech” will be held accountable — and which not.

    The EU seems fixated, at least for the internet, on killing free speech.

    *  *  *

    The European Commission writes in its call that it would like the funded projects to have the following results:

    • Curbing increasing trends of illegal hate speech on the Internet and contributing to better understanding how social media is used to recruit followers to the hate speech narrative and ideas;

    • Improving data recording and establishment of trends, including on the chilling effects of illegal hate speech online, including when addressed to key democracy players, such as journalists;

    • Strengthening cooperation between national authorities, civil society organisations and Internet companies, in the area of preventing and countering hate speech online;

    • Empowering civil society organisations and grass-root movements in their activities countering hate speech online and in the development of effective counter-narratives;

    • Increasing awareness and media literacy of the general public on racist and xenophobic online hate speech and boosting public perception of the issue.

  • China's Bond Market Cracks: 2018 Will Be A Record Year For Onshore Bond Defaults

    Back in June, we asked if it was time to “start worrying about China’s debt default avalanche” when we reported that according to research firm Rhodium Group LLC, there have already been least 14 corporate bond defaults in China in 2018, a shockingly high number for a country which until recently had never seen a single corporate bankruptcy, and a number which is set to increase as Chinese banks pull pull back from lending to other firms that use the funds to buy bonds, exacerbating the pressure on the market.

    As we discussed last year, as part of Beijing’s crackdown on China’s $10 trillion shadow banking sector, strains had spread from high-yield trust products to corporate bonds as the lack of shadow funding has choked off refinancing for weaker borrowers. Separately, Banks’ lending to other financial firms, a common route for funds and securities brokers to add leverage for corporate bond investments, has continued to decline since reaching a peak at the start of 2018, and is now down to the lowest level since late 2016.

    The deleveraging campaign is also depressing bond demand: “Unlike the U.S., where the majority of buyers of bonds are mutual funds, individuals and investment companies, in China, the key holders of bonds are bank on-and off-balance sheet positions,” said UBS analyst Jason Bedford, who noted that Chinese banks are buying far fewer bonds as a result.

    There is another reason why the traditional bond buyers have been missing from the market: according to a new report from Goldman, the threats to the Chinese bond market continue to rise with 2018 shaping up as a record year for onshore bond defaults.

    According to Goldman’s calculations, just in August and September of this year, there had been no less than 8 new defaults, a troubling trend “despite the introduction of a number of policy loosening measures in early July.” This compares to only 11 new defaults between January and July (per Goldman’s definition) this year, with all the recent defaults coming from privately owned enterprises:

    • Neoglory Holding Group – A conglomerate from the Zhejiang province. On Sept. 25, the company failed to fully repay the principal payment on a RMB 1bn commercial paper and the put payment on a RMB 2bn corporate bond. According to Wind, the company has RMB 12.8bn of domestic bonds outstanding. 

    • Jilin Liyuan Precision Manufacturing – The company is listed on the Shenzhen stock exchange and is a manufacturer of aluminum products, based in Jilin province. The company was unable to make the interest payment on its RMB 740mn corporate bond on Sept. 25. This is the company’s only bond outstanding. 

    • Gangtai Group – A conglomerate from Shanghai, the company was unable to meet the put payment on a RMB 500mn corporate bond. According to Wind, the company has RMB 2bn of domestic bonds outstanding. They also have a USD 100mn offshore bond that was issued in March this year and matures in Sept. 2019.

    The recent cluster of defaults has brought the number of new defaults this year to 19, surpassing the previous full year record of 18 defaults recorded in 2016. In terms of the notional amount of bonds that defaulted, it has reached RMB 91.4bn, equivalent to 0.5% of corporate bonds outstanding at the start of 2018, and 69.6% higher than the RMB 53.9bn recorded for all of 2016. Therefore 2018 will be a record year for China onshore bond defaults, both in terms of the number of new defaults and the notional amount of bonds outstanding, as the following Goldman chart shows.

    It could have been worse: according to Bloomberg, Qinghai Provincial Investment Group (“Qinghai Provincial”) was able to wire funds to meet the principal and interest payments on its $300MM bond due on Sept. 26. This is notable because the last minute repayment meant that a first bond default by a China Local Government Financing Vehicle was averted, as there had been uncertainties as to whether the company had sufficient funds to make the payments, as reported by Bloomberg. That said, the day of reckoning may have only been delayed for now: the company has $1.15BN of USD bonds still outstanding, of which $300MM are coming due on Dec. 11 this year. As such there is potential refinancing risks for the company going forward, and will need to be closely watched.

    In any case, despite the good news on the LGFV front, sentiment is likely to stay mixed as credit differentiation gathers pace. To Goldman, Chinese credit investors remain cautious due to a number of reasons, the most important of which are the lingering concerns on defaults. Meanwhile, Chinese policymakers remain determined to push through financial sector reforms, including continuing efforts to rein in shadow banking activities, and the rise in defaults over the past two months is reflective of that. As such, sentiment is likely to stay mixed, and we expect defaults to continue and there to be further credit differentiation – a trend that has been occurring over recent months given the selloff in riskier credits and the outperformance of higher-rated names.

    There is another potential risk: Chinese companies face 2.7 trillion yuan in bond maturities in the onshore and offshore market in the second half of this year, and together with another 3.3 trillion yuan of trust products set to mature in the second half, the funding problems will likely get worse, as already more than eight high-yield trust products have delayed payments so far this year.

    To be sure, Beijing will do everything in its power to avoid a default waterfall, but another emerging – pardon the pun – risk is that as negative sentiment towards Chinese corporates grows, it could become the next headwind for EM debt, even as the crises in Argentina, Brazil and Turkey appear to have settled for the time being, resulting in another significant capital outflow from Emerging Markets, and even more pained complaints from EM central bankers begging the Fed to halt its tightening, or else.

  • Iran Launches Ballistic Missiles Into Syria Against Terror Camps East Of Euphrates

    It’s a huge development in an extremely volatile environment: overnight Sunday Iran launched multiple ballistic missiles toward Syria against targets east of the Euphrates river. 

    Footage released through official state channels show missiles launched by Iran from its Kermanshah region in western Iran towards Syria, targeting ISIS positions east of the Euphrates in revenge for the September 22 attack on a military parade in Ahvaz, which killed 25 and injured scores more. 

    However, the United States will no doubt interpret the action as highly provocative as the US Army maintains bases precisely in the broad region targeted east of the Euphrates in Syria. 

    In the early morning hours of Monday (local time) Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) published an official statement saying that its Aerospace Division targeted the “headquarters of the terrorists” east of the Euphrates in Syria.

    A photo set showing a series of near simultaneous surface-to-surface launches was published alongside the statement. 

    Videos of the launch were uploaded and circulated widely in Middle East social media. Early unconfirmed reports and video suggest that a total of eight missiles were fired; however, at least two appear to have crashed shortly after launch. 

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    “The headquarters of those responsible for the terrorist crime in Ahvaz was attacked a few minutes ago east of the Euphrates by several ballistic missiles fired by the aerospace branch of the Guardians of the Revolution,” the IRGC said on their official Sepah website.

    The launch comes soon after Iranian President Hassan Rouhani called the United States a “sponsor” of those that funded the terrorist attack on Avhaz in southwest Iran — one of the deadliest in Iran’s recent history. The IRGC also vowed “a crushing and devastating response” during last Friday prayers in Tehran. 

    A second video of the launch has been released by the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI) official channels:

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    Washington has denied any involvement in the Avhaz attack, which was immediately claimed by both a local Avhaz separatist group and official ISIS media channels. 

    But Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said in the aftermath that “US masters” and regional terrorist forces should be held accountable for the bloodshed. 

    Iran’s top cleric and supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei also pointed the finger at the West, condemning what he labelled “plots hatched by US stooges in the region.”

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    Hours after the highly provocative launch into Syria, it is unclear whether any among the missiles impacted inside Syria, and Syrian state sources have yet to issue a report or confirmation of the strike. 

    Iran’s official English language PressTV claimed the following, however, citing the IRGC:

    According to the statement, the strike took place in early Monday by the IRGC’s Aerospace Division, killing and injuring a large number of Takfiri terrorists and ringleaders of the September 22 attack.

    While there’s yet to be any confirmation of these claims of casualties on the ground,  video quickly surfaced purporting to show two of the locations where missiles crashed early after the launch.

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    At least one Iranian state TV report suggested the missiles flew over central Iraq near the city of Tikrit and landed in the vicinity of Abu Kamal, in southeast Syria.

    Iranian state news sources promoted images and graphics purporting to show the flight path throughout the morning in a clear signal to regional enemies Saudi Arabia and the UAE, as well as the United States and Israel. 

    developing…

  • Is Erik Prince Pointing The Way Out Of Afghanistan?

    Authored by James Durso via RealClearDefense.com,

    The tab to date: over $840 billion for military operations, $126 billion for reconstruction, probably another $1 trillion for veterans’ health care, over 2,400 dead, and over 20,000 wounded.

    In August, U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis kiboshed Erik Prince’s plan to privatize the war in Afghanistan which Prince called “an expensive disaster for America.” But with Mattis’s  tenure in doubt, we may not have seen the last of the Prince plan, which is forthrightly titled “An Exit Strategy for Afghanistan.”

    U.S. forces arrived in Afghanistan two weeks after the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. and are still there seventeen years later. The tab to date: over $840 billion for military operations, $126 billion for reconstruction, probably another $1 trillion for veterans’ health care, over 2,400 dead, and over 20,000 wounded. The annual cost is $50 billion, more than the defense budget of the U.K.

    Despite the cost in dollars and lives, there hasn’t been much progress. The Afghan central government controls or influences under 60% of the country and “opium production in Afghanistan increased by 87 percent to a record level of 9,000 metric tons in 2017 compared with 2016 levels” according to the latest report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.

    President Trump was channeling many Americans when he asked his national security advisor, “What the f**k are we doing there?” Though Trump didn’t promise to leave Afghanistan during the campaign, his advisors, some of them mired in the conflict for the past two decades, convinced him to authorize an additional 4000 troops for training and counter-terrorism missions.

    In parallel with the troop increase, the administration slashed assistance to Pakistan, the state sponsor of the Taliban. This won’t change Pakistan’s behavior in Afghanistan, but at least America won’t be insulting itself by funding its enemy.

    U.S. diplomats have started direct talks with the Taliban while reiterating that the end to the conflict will only come through an intra-Afghan settlement. At the same time, Uzbekistan’s diplomats hosted talks with Taliban representatives as part of Tashkent’s initiative to include Afghanistan in Central Asia, and to give the Taliban an interlocuter other than Pakistan.

    Trump’s pro-intervention advisors probably want to block him from deciding to withdraw and upsetting the Afghan presidential election on 20 April 2019 (parliamentary elections are on 20 October 2018), and to give the new NATO commander time to make progress (known as “calendar creep”). But Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s opponents in the Coalition for the Salvation of Afghanistan may hand Trump an opportunity to break out.

    The Coalition, an assembly of the minority Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazara, with Pashtun leadership, will be a serious challenge to Ghani in the April 2019 election, but it may try to invalidate the October 2018 parliamentary election and call a traditional Loya Jirga to unseat Ghani. If the Coalition uses the extra-legal Loya Jirga to oust Ghani, Trump has the justification he needs to go to the American people with his decision to quit and cut America’s considerable losses, especially if he is bolstered by a pessimistic National Intelligence Estimate.

    So now comes Erik Prince, the man everyone loves to hate, with a plan to privatize and streamline the tasks now being performed by about 14,000 American and 8,000 NATO troops and over 26,000 contractors. Prince earned his notoriety in Iraq when his security company, Blackwater Worldwide, was involved in a shooting incident at Baghdad’s Nisour Square that left seventeen innocent bystanders dead and caused Blackwater’s expulsion from the country. Prince, in his defense, claims he never lost a client which, if you were protected by his teams, is probably the most significant criterion.  

    Prince proposes to replace the NATO forces and their support contractors with 6,000 contractors, all special operations veterans, and 2,000 U.S. special operations troops, who will provide QA for the contractors, and unilateral direct-action capability. The mentor-contractors will stay with their assigned Afghan National Army battalions for a minimum of three years. 2,000  contractors will operate aircraft for medical evacuation and close air support and will staff two western-style combat surgical hospitals that would also treat wounded Afghan soldiers. The contractors and U.S. forces would be subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice and Afghan law, and contractor medical care would be provided by Defense Base Act insurance, which is current practice for contingency contracts.

    The plan includes a governance support unit that will provide logistics to the force and, very importantly, prevent payment to Afghanistan’s “ghost soldiers” and the skimming of soldiers’ pay by their commanders, perennial corruption problems in Afghanistan’s military.

    The most remarked upon feature of the plan was Prince’s suggestion that the effort be led by a “viceroy” who would answer directly to the President and command all military, diplomatic, and intelligence assets in Afghanistan. This is known as “unity of command,” and has never existed in America’s long project in Afghanistan. That person would need experience with the military and intelligence agencies, but no candidate may satisfy all the bureaucracies so the President (and Congress) will have to back it up by giving the viceroy hire-and-fire authority and control of the budgets.  

    Another noted feature was contracting the effort under Title 50 of the United States Code which is the authority for the security services, such as the Central Intelligence Agency, but also for most military operations. This may expedite the contract award process, but particular attention will be required for “contract administration,” that is, ensuring the vendor completes the terms and conditions of the contract. As the military, the diplomats, and the reconstruction officials have been unable to define “success” in Afghanistan, the contracting officer and the vendor may be left to their own devices.   

    And using contractors has one big benefit for a government: their deaths are pretty much off the radar, especially if they aren’t American (and a share of Prince’s force will be non-American). The media reports the death of every deployed military member, even if he dies in a vehicle accident on base, but dead contractors go unnoticed. 257 American contractors died in Iraq from 2003 to 2011 but received far less attention than the soldiers they supported.      

    The opportunity to mine Afghanistan’s trove of rare earth elements was highlighted in Prince’s plan which immediately drew accusations of plunder. Yes, there is wealth to be had: Russian, British, and American geologists have found that Afghanistan has enormous untapped mineral resources, possibly valued at $3 trillion. The minerals are there, but there’s no way to mine them, so they’re effectively worthless. And there’s no way to get them out because the country is violent and corrupt which scares away investors. Outsourcing may be the last chance to recover Afghanistan’s mineral wealth for its people. It will also chip away at China’s control of a significant share of the world’s rare earths.

    Moreover, Afghanistan’s government has some concerns the U.S. must address:

    1. Is the plan legal under international law?

    2. Will using foreign contractors encourage local warlords to circumvent the newly-formed democratic institutions in the country?

    3. Who will be accountable for the success or failure of outsourcing a military campaign? How will the government of Afghanistan provide oversight of military operations on its territory?

    4. Will outsourcing be seen as a for-profit corporation taking control of the conflict and selling war as a product, dooming prospects for peace and reconciliation in the country?

    5. The regional powers, China and Russia, and the active neighbors such as Pakistan and Uzbekistan, may stop their support to the peace process if they interpret outsourcing as indicative of the waning interest by the U.S.

    Criticism of Prince’s plan runs up against the ticking clock that is close to chiming “20 years” so   Trump may soon run out of patience and present Kabul (and U.S. officials) with a “take it or leave it” proposal. There’s no voting constituency in the U.S. for continued loitering in Afghanistan and Trump won’t lose any votes in 2020 if he says he gave it his best shot but getting out now is best for America. Secretary Mattis is concerned that outsourcing may make NATO allies jump ship, but how many American lives and dollars should we pay for Latvia’s thirty-seven troops?

    Detractors of a new approach may say the sacrifice of our GIs will be dishonored by resorting to “mercenaries,” but the sunk cost of the dollars, dead, and wounded shouldn’t stop us from examining alternatives after 17 years fighting a war we are “not winning” according to  Secretary Mattis.  

    Prince has suggested a “test drive” of his proposal which would see contractor deployments to Nangarhar and Helmand provinces. Nangarhar is an egress route to and from safe havens in Pakistani, and Helmand is the Taliban’s financial center of gravity where one-third of the arable land is used for poppy cultivation. That would give the U.S. some interesting lessons learned whatever the outcome but, given internal resistance in the U.S. government, it will require an impartial evaluator who will also consider Afghan concerns.

    Another test drive option was suggested by Gary Anderson, a former reconstruction advisor in Iraq and Afghanistan: “the provision of construction security for the Ring Road in the remote northwestern region.” The Ring Road would like it possible to travel from the western city of Herat, which borders Iran and Turkmenistan, to Mazar e-Sharif in the north of the country and close to Uzbekistan. It would spur economic activity, increase access to education, and allow Kabul to extend its writ to the far north and west of the country, and thus be more consequential to “winning” than killing another bunch of Taliban. It would also mute “plunder” allegations and encourage Afghanistan’s Central Asia neighbors to continue their effort to integrate the country into the region.

    Erik Prince’s plan gives the U.S. the opportunity to try a new strategy in Afghanistan instead of spending another year while yet another new NATO commander get acquainted with his job. It may prompt Washington to consider three options: Prince’s original plan, Anderson’s infrastructure-focused plan, or the “decent interval” option, providing mentoring and training to the Afghan army so, if worse comes to worst, the U.S. will be several years removed from a Taliban takeover.

  • Chinese Manufacturing Growth Grinds To A Halt As Exports Tumble

    Two weeks after the latest economic data dump from China showed a continued slowdown in the local economy, the latest PMI surveys confirmed that the weakness in China’s manufacturing sector was accelerating.

    According to the official NBS manufacturing PMI which was released on Sunday, sentiment dropped further in September, despite what has been a mild upward seasonal bias in recent years. All sub-indexes showed weaker growth momentum. The Caixin manufacturing PMI also declined in September, reflecting the nation’s economic slowdown and fallout from the trade war with the U.S. The NBS non-manufacturing PMI was stronger, however, due entirely to a surge in the construction PMI.

    China’s NBS manufacturing PMI fell to 50.8 in September, from 51.3 in August and below the Bloomberg consensus of 51.2. While this was the first September drop since the NBS manufacturing PMI series was released, it was also the 26th consecutive month of prints above the 50-point mark that separates growth from contraction.

    Looking at the components, all the major sub-indexes showed weaker growth momentum in September. The production sub-index moderated 0.3pp to 53.0 and the new order sub-index was 0.2pp lower at 52.0. Trade indicators softened as well—the new export order sub-index fell to 48.0 from 49.4, and the imports sub-index declined 0.6pp to 48.5. Both indexes were at the weakest levels since February 2016. The employment sub-index fell 1.1pp to 48.3, and the suppliers’ delivery times sub-index rose 0.1pp to 49.7 (higher suppliers’ delivery times imply weaker demand conditions). The raw material inventories index was 0.3pp lower, and the finished goods inventory index was unchanged vs August. Inflationary pressures increased mainly at the input level – the input price index rose 1.1pp to 59.8, and the output prices index was unchanged at 54.3.

    Separately, the Caixin manufacturing PMI – which better reflects sentiment among smaller, private firms – declined to 50 from 50.6, the lowest since May 2017 and ending 15 months of expansion, with export orders falling the fastest in over two years as U.S. tariffs are starting to take a toll on the economy.

    The output sub-index fell 1.4pp to 51.1, and the new orders sub-index was 50.1, 0.5pp lower the August. Similar to the NBS manufacturing survey, new export order index in the Caixin manufacturing survey softened in September, with companies citing “the China-US trade war and subsequent tariffs” as contributing factors according to the Caixin survey.

    “The further slowdown in China’s official manufacturing PMI in September reflects the intensifying impact of the U.S.-China trade war on China’s manufacturing export sector,” said IHS Markit APAC chief economist Rajiv Biswas. “The near-term outlook for the Chinese manufacturing export sector remains weak, albeit the Chinese government may apply some further stimulus measures to support growth.”

    It was not all gloom, however: the official non-manufacturing PMI picked up to 54.9, signaling that domestic demand for services and construction remains strong enough to mitigate some of the external headwinds that the economy is facing, largely the result of the bubble housing sector. While the services PMI reading was the same as August at 53.4, the construction PMI spiked to 63.4, 4.4pp higher from August (which might reflect the unwinding of previous drag from adverse weather conditions). That construction uptick, if sustained, could be a sign that the measures aimed at boosting infrastructure investment are starting to kick in.

    According to Goldman’s Maggie Wei, the decline in the manufacturing PMI surveys “indicates that growth faced increased downward pressures in the manufacturing sector, driven by weaker export growth, possibly due to a combination of slower global demand and increased trade tensions, has possibly weighed on activity growth in the manufacturing sector.”

    Goldman’s assessment is that as a result, “more policy easing measures (such as targeted RRR cuts as discussed in the recent state council meeting) could be announced in the near future to help buffer growth downside.”

    Others agreed: “the government’s support policy will start to have an impact in the fourth quarter, which could offset the damage of the trade war,” said Gao Yuwei, a researcher at Bank of China. “The efforts to shore up infrastructure investment has been driving up construction activity, and services industries normally perform better in the third and fourth quarter.”

    As Bloomberg notes, officials have promised fiscal stimulus in the form of tax cuts and infrastructure spending to buffer the domestic economy somewhat from the effects of the trade dispute. Analysts also expect China’s central bank will continue topping up liquidity in the financial system to support economic growth.

    And while there are pockets of strength, primarily within construction, whatever stimulus China has injected has yet to reach the broader economy.

    While private companies fared worse than state-owned enterprises, discrepancies in that data suggest that the picture for Chinese manufacturers may be worse than officially-reported growth rates show, according to Bloomberg.

    More ominously, the official PMI report also indicates rising unemployment in the manufacturing sector, with CIC Corp’s Wenqi Liu writing that she will “continue to closely watch infrastructure and property investment growth, as they might lead the cyclical stabilization.”

    For now, however, the attention of China’s manufacturing sector remains squarely focused on the growing danger of escalating trade war with the US, and as long as there is little hope of a solution, sentiment will continue to deteriorate.

  • The US Military-Industrial Complex's Worst Nightmare: The S-300 May Destroy & Expose The F-35

    Authored by Federico Pieraccini via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    The tragic episode that caused the death of 15 Russian air force personnel has had immediate repercussions on the situation in Syria and the Middle East. On September 24, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu informed allies and opponents that the delivery of the S-300 air-defense systems to the Syrian Arab Republic had been approved by President Vladimir Putin. The delivery had been delayed and then suspended as a result of Israeli pressure back in 2013.

    In one sense, the delivery of S-300 batteries to Syria is cause for concern more for Washington than for Tel Aviv. Israel has several F-35 and has claimed to have used them in Syria to strike alleged Iranian weapons transfers to Hezbollah. With the S-300 systems deployed in an updated version and incorporated into the Russian command, control and communications (C3) system, there is a serious risk (for Washington) that Israel, now incapable of changing the course of events in Syria, could attempt a desperate maneuver.

    It is no secret that Greece purchased S-300s from Russia years ago, and that NATO and Israel have trained numerous times against the Russian air-defense system. Senior IDF officials have often insisted that they are capable taking out the S-300s, having apparently discovered their weaknesses.

    Tel Aviv’s warning that it will attack and destroy the S-300 battery should not be taken as an idle threat. It is enough to look at the recent downing of Russia’s Il-20 surveillance aircraft to understand how reckless a desperate Israel is prepared to be. Moreover, more than one IDF commander has over the years reiterated that a Syrian S-300 would be considered a legitimate target if threatening Israeli aircraft.

    At this point, it is necessary to add some additional information and clarify some points. Greece’s S-300s are old, out of maintenance, and have not had their electronics updated. Such modern and complex systems as the S-300s and S-400s require maintenance, upgrades, and often replacement of parts to improve hardware. All this is missing from the Greek batteries. Secondly, it is the operator who uses the system (using radar, targeting, aiming, locking and so forth) that often makes the difference in terms of overall effectiveness. Furthermore, the system is fully integrated into the Russian C3 system, something that renders useless any previous experience gleaned from wargaming the Greek S-300s. No Western country knows the real capabilities and capacity of Syrian air defense when augmented and integrated with Russian systems. This is a secret that Damascus and Moscow will continue to keep well guarded. Yet two years ago, during the operations to free Aleppo, a senior Russian military officer warned (presumably alluding to fifth-generation stealth aircraft like the F-35 and F-22) that the range and effectiveness of the Russian systems may come as a surprise.

    The following are the words of Russian defense minister Sergei Shoigu concerning the deployment of the S-300 to Syria and its integration with other Russian systems:

    “Russia will jam satellite navigation, onboard radars and communication systems of combat aircraft, which attack targets in the Syrian territory, in the Mediterranean Sea bordering with Syria. We are convinced that the implementation of these measures will cool hotheads and prevent ill-considered actions threatening our servicemen. Otherwise, we will respond in line with the current situation. Syrian troops and military air defense units will be equipped with automatic control systems, which have been supplied to the Russian Armed Forces. This will ensure the centralized management of the Syrian air defense forces and facilities, monitoring the situation in the airspace and prompt target designation. Most importantly, it will be used to identify the Russian aircraft by the Syrian air defense forces.”

    If the Israelis will follow through with their reckless attempts to eliminate the S-300 (if they can find them in the first place, given that they are mobile), they will risk their F-35s being brought down. The US military-industrial complex would suffer irreparable damage. This would also explain why Israel (and probably the US) has for more than five years put enormous pressure on Moscow not to deliver the S-300 to Syria and Iran. The US State Department’s reaction over the future purchase by Turkey and India of the S-400 confirms the anxiety that US senior officials as well as generals are experiencing over the prospect of allies opting for the Russian systems. This would allow for a comparison with weapons these allies purchased from the US, leading to the discovery of vulnerabilities and the realization of the US weapons’ relative inferiority.

    Given Tel Aviv’s tendency to place its own interests above all others, it would not be surprising to find them using the possibility of attacking the S-300 with their F-35s as a weapon to blackmail Washington into getting more involved in the conflict. For the United States, there are two scenarios to avoid.

    The first is a direct involvement in the conflict with Russia in Syria, which is now unthinkable and impractical.

    The second – much more worrying for military planners – concerns the possibility of the F-35’s capabilities and secrets being compromised or even being shown not to be a match against air-defense systems nearly half a century old.

    An illuminating example of how the United States operates its most advanced aircraft in the region was given in eastern Syria around Deir ez-Zor. In this part of Syria, there is no threat from any advanced air-defense systems, so the US is often free to employ its F-22 in certain circumstances. The Russian military has repeatedly shown radar evidence that unequivocally shows that when Russian Su-35s appear in the same skies as the F-22, the US Air Force simply avoids any confrontation and quickly withdraws such fifth-generation assets as the F-22. The F-35 is not even ready in its naval variant, and has yet to be deployed on a US aircraft carrier near the Middle Eastern theater or the Persian Gulf; nor is it present in any US military base in the region. The US simply does not even consider using the F-35 in Syria, nor would it risk its use against Russian air defenses. Israel is the only country that so far may have already used these aircraft in Syria; but this was before the S-300 came onto the scene.

    The F-35 program has already cost hundreds of billions of dollars and will soon reach the exorbitant and surreal figure of over 1 trillion dollars. It has already been sold to dozens of countries bound by decades-long agreements. The F-35 has been developed as a multi-role fighter and is expected to be the future backbone of NATO and her allies. Its development began more than 10 years ago and, despite the countless problems that still exist, it is already airborne and combat-ready, as the Israelis insist. From the US point of view, its employment in operations is played down and otherwise concealed. The less data available to opponents, the better; though the real reason may lie in a strong fear of any revelation of potential weaknesses of the aircraft damaging future sales. At this time, the Pentagon’s marketing of the F-35 is based on the evaluations provided by Lockheed Martin, the manufacturer, and on the tests carried out by the military who commissioned it to Lockheed Martin. Obviously, both Lockheed Martin and the US Air Force have no interest in revealing any weaknesses or shortcomings, especially publicly. Corruption is a big thing in Washington, contrary to common assumptions.

    The combination of Israel’s ego, its inability to change the course of events in Syria, coupled with the loss of its ability to fly throughout the Middle East with impunity due to Syria now being equipped with a superior air defense – all these factors could push Israel into acting desperately by using the F-35 to take out the S-300 battery. Washington finds itself in the unenviable position of probably having no leverage with Israel over the matter ever since losing any ability to steer events in Syria.

    With the Russian air-defense systems potentially being spread out to the four corners of the world, including China, India, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and who knows how many other countries waiting in the queue, Russia continues to increase its export capacity and military prestige as it demonstrates its control of most of the Syria’s skies. With the introduction of the the S-500 pending, one can imagine the sleepless nights being spent by those in the Pentagon and Lockheed Martin’s headquarters worrying about the possibility of an F-35 being taken down by an S-300 system manufactured in 1969.

  • BofA's "Best Leading Indicator For Global EPS" Just Crashed

    After briefly turning negative in April of this year, South Korean export growth – described by BofA’s Josh Hartnett as “a notoriously good global cyclical indicator” – just collapsed, flashing bright red warning signals for global profit and economic growth.

    In April Korean exports dipped modestly negative…

    But tonight the September print came in at -8.2% YoY – dramatically worse than the 5.5% drop expected) with exports to US plunging:

    • Exports to China at $14.59b, +7.8% y/y

    • Exports to US at $5.82b, -11.8% y/y

    • Imports from China at $7.89b, -6.5% y/y

    • Imports from US at $4.31b, +5.8% y/y

    And while Semiconductor exports soared, autos and ships/vessels plunged…

    • Semiconductor exports at $12.43b, +28.3% y/y

    • Steel exports -43.7% y/y

    • Automobiles exports at $2.97b, -22.4% y/y

    • Ship/Vessel exports at $1.39b, -55.5% y/y

    And, as a further reminder, the last time South Korean export growth turned negative in the downward direction was just around the time of China’s devaluation in the summer of 2015, when global markets were on the verge of a 20% bear market, and only the Shanghai Accord of February 2016 prevented a free fall in risk assets.

    If the South Korean “advance indicator” is as accurate as it has always been, forget about soaring earnings for the coming quarters: an earnings depression is just around the corner!

  • Kavanaugh College Friend To Detail His "Violent, Drunken Behavior" To The FBI

    With Washington in a frenzy over the FBI’s probe of Judge Kavanaugh, which according to Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley would be no more than a week long and would be limited solely to “current credible allegations”, a new and potentially explosive allegation has emerged.

    Late on Sunday, Charles Ludington, a former varsity basketball player and friend of Kavanaugh’s at Yale, told the Washington Post that he plans to deliver a statement to the FBI field office in Raleigh on Monday detailing violent drunken behavior by Kavanaugh in college.

    Ludington, an associate professor at North Carolina State University, provided a copy of the statement to The Post.

    In it, Ludington says in one instance, Kavanaugh initiated a fight that led to the arrest of a mutual friend: “When Brett got drunk, he was often belligerent and aggressive. On one of the last occasions I purposely socialized with Brett, I witnessed him respond to a semi-hostile remark, not by defusing the situation, but by throwing his beer in the man’s face and starting a fight that ended with one of our mutual friends in jail.”

    What prompted this latest last minute memory “recollection” by a peer of Kavanaugh’s? According to the report, Ludington was deeply troubled by Kavanaugh appearing to blatantly mischaracterize his drinking in Senate testimony.

    “I do not believe that the heavy drinking or even loutish behavior of an 18 or even 21 year old should condemn a person for the rest of his life,” Ludington wrote. “However … if he lied about his past actions on national television, and more especially while speaking under oath in front of the United States Senate, I believe those lies should have consequences.”

    The NYT also got an interview out of Ludington, and reported that Ludington said he frequently saw Judge Kavanaugh “staggering from alcohol consumption” during their student years. He said he planned to tell his story to the F.B.I. at its office in Raleigh, N.C., on Monday.

    Kavanaugh told outside counsel Rachel Mitchell during the hearing that he has never “passed out” from drinking. “I’ve gone to sleep,” he said. “But I’ve never blacked out, that’s the allegation. And that’s, that’s wrong.”

    During last Thursday’s hearing, Kavanaugh was agitated by questions from Democratic senators about his history with partying and drinking, at one point asking Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) if she has ever blacked out due to alcohol consumption.

    “I like beer,” he said in response to one of Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse’s (D-R.I.) questions. “Do you like beer, senator? What do you like to drink?”

    While this latest statement to the FBI does not corroborate the testimony of Ford, or the sexual assault allegations of several other women, Democrats have called for the FBI to take a broader look at “whether Kavanaugh may have misled senators by minimizing his carousing behavior in high school and college or by mischaracterizing entries in his high school yearbook that could indicate a penchant for drunken and misogynistic behavior.”

    Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), speaking on CNN, said Kavanaugh’s claims that he had never blacked out or suffered any memory loss while drinking don’t “quite make sense to me” and said she hoped the FBI would interview friends to determine whether that was credible.

    She added that the FBI could also interview high school friends of Kavanaugh’s to determine whether his innocent explanations for portions of his yearbook entry are accurate.

    “I’ve never heard that the White House, either under this president or other presidents, is saying: ‘Well, you can’t interview this person; you can’t look at this time period; you can only look at these people from one side of the street,’” she said. “I mean, come on.”

    It is unclear if his testimony will play a role in the weeklong FBI investigation into allegations of sexual assault against Kavanaugh, the Times reported.

    Several other classmates in recent days have accused Kavanaugh of misleading Congress over his alcohol consumption. Former FBI Director James Comey in a Times op-ed published Sunday charged Kavanaugh with “lying” under oath.

    And while it is too early to determine what, if any, impact this latest statement to the FBI will have on Kavanaugh’s candidacy, it would stand to reason that there is only so much opposition that the Supreme Court candidate can take before even he decides that the SCOTUS seat is just not worth the constant anguish and media spotlight. At least, that’s what democrats are hoping.

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Sep 30

Today’s News 30th September 2018

  • Paul Craig Roberts: Where Does Our Attention Belong – Kavanaugh Or Yemen?

    Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

    There are reports that the Washington-initiated and militarily-supported Saudi Arabian war against Yemen have a starving Yemeni population eating leaves.

    The Saudis, with Washington’s GPS support, continue to target school buses, massacring children as an element of the terror assault against the population, trying to break Yemeni resistance by murdering children on school buses. Washington continues to supply the Saudis with the weapons to target school buses and the diplomatic support to protect the criminal Saudi regime from war crimes charges.

    The European cowards turn their heads. Even Russia is silent. Putin’s “partnership” with the criminal state of Saudi Arabia is more important.

    Isn’t this a far greater offense, an offense that most definitely does not lack evidence, than the accusation that Kavanaugh, a nominee to the US Supreme Court attempted to rape a women 30 or 40 years ago, for which there is no evidence, only accusation, an accusation that the female defense attorney who questioned for the Senate committee the woman claiming abuse found insufficient for an indictment. 

    Of course, this report could be fake news. As in America fake news has taken over from truthful news, we have no way of knowing. All we can conclude is that America has again made a world-wide fool of herself. Thanks to the Identity Politics of the Clinton-corrupt Democratic Party, in the eyes of the world America has assembled a Supreme Court of serial sexual abusers. Makes one wonder why it is so important to the Russian government that Russia joins the West.

    If Kavanaugh attempted to rape someone, why didn’t it come up in his previous judgeship appointment or in his other appointments? Is the reason that these appointments were not relevant to Roe vs. Wade? Is all the MeToo and Democratic Party hysteria over fear that Kavanaugh will help a conservative court overturn Roe vs. Wade and force women into more responsible sex?

    I have never understood why women have considered the termination of life to be a Woman’s Issue as if it is some kind of moral cause. However, I am certain that Roe vs. Wade will not be overturned. After all these years, there are squatters’ rights in women’s ability to choose abortion. The right has existed too long for statutory law to override common law.

    Perhaps, instead, the opposition to Kavanaugh is that he is a white heterosexual male, thereby making the time too delayed before the Identity Politics Democrats can load up the Supreme Court with MeToo feminists, transgendered whatever they are, lesbians, homosexuals, and white-hating blacks in order to “bring justice to the white male exploiter.”

    It was left to a Russian publication to ask why CNN published a fifth accuser’s accusation after the accuser had withdrawn the accusation.

    The real question before the American people is why are they, the media, the government, MeToo feminists, the Identity Politics Democrats and liberal-progressive-left, and conservatives stone silent while Washington enables Saudia Arabia to murder the Yemeni people to the point that Yemenis have to eat leaves in a desperate attempt to survive.

    Clearly, the American idiots have no idea whatsoever what a moral issue is.

  • Officials Promise "Dirty Money" Crackdown As Vancouver Housing Market Grinds To A Halt

    Thanks to an influx of demand from Chinese nationals and other foreigners, Vancouver’s housing market soared in the post-crisis years, with prices more than doubling to levels that were clearly unsustainable, cementing the Pacific Northwest metropolis’ status as the most unaffordable housing market in North America. But the torrid growth ground to a halt earlier this year as home sales plummeted, along with construction of new homes and apartments.

    Vancouver

    The typical single-family home in Vancouver costs more than C$1.5 million ($1.15 million) – roughly 20x the median household income.

    In an effort to let some air out of one of the continent’s most egregious property bubbles, British Columbia’s government has announced an unprecedented crackdown on money laundering in Vancouver’s property market in an attempt to stop a housing-market collapse from taking the city’s GDP with it.

    BC

    The initiative, launched by Attorney General Daid Eby, seeks to create more transparency to expose all the “numbered corporations” (often used as fronts for foreign investors) buying property in Vancouver. The probe will also examine horse-racing and luxury car sales. 

    Attorney General David Eby said that his office is launching an independent review into potential money laundering in real estate, horse-racing and luxury car sales. The review comes in response to recommendations from a previous review into money laundering in the province’s casinos. In addition, Finance Minister Carole James has appointed an expert panel to look directly at money laundering in the housing sector. Both probes will be done by March.

    “There is good reason to believe the bulk of the cash we saw in casinos is a fraction of the cash generated through illicit activities that may be circulating in British Columbia’s economy,” Eby told reporters Thursday in the capital of Victoria. “We cannot ignore red flags that came out of the casino reviews of connections between individuals bringing bulk cash to casinos, and our real estate market.”

    […]

    “Our goal is simple, as you’ve heard: Get dirty money out of our housing market,” James said. “When the real estate market is vulnerable to illicit activity and unethical behavior, people, our communities and our economies suffer. This is something we have to tackle.”

    Still, the success of these initiative will be constrained by the fact that they’re only meant to learn the mechanics of how money is laundered via the Vancouver property market, and then make recommendations about how to stop it. Indeed, it’s entirely possible that, by the time anything is actually done, criminals will have changed their strategies or shifted to different markets. Meanwhile, a study by Transparency International found that it’s impossible to identify the owners of nearly half of the most expensive properties in Vancouver.

    However, it’s only a matter of ti me before prices begin their dramatic descent as sellers finally capitulate and drop their ask down to the highest bid.

  • Fragility Of Middle-East Alliances Becomes Ever More Apparent

    Authored by James Dorsey via MidEastSoccer blog,

    Three recent developments lay bare the fragility of Middle Eastern alliances and a rebalancing of their priorities: the Russian-Turkish compromise on an assault on the rebel-held Syrian region of Idlib, thefate of troubled Abu Dhabi airline Ettihad, and battles over reconstruction of Syria.

    These developments highlight the fact that competition among Middle Eastern rivals and ultimate power within the region’s various alliances is increasingly as much economic and commercial as it is military and geopolitical. Battles are fought as much on geopolitical fronts as they are on economic and cultural battlefields such as soccer.

    As a result, the fault lines of various alliances across the greater Middle East, a region that stretches from North Africa to north-western China, are coming to the fore.

    The cracks may be most apparent in the Russian-Turkish-Iranian alliance but lurk in the background of Gulf cooperation with Israel in confronting Iran as well as the unified front put forward by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

    Russia, prevented, at least for now, a rupture with Turkey, by delaying an all-out attack on Idlib despite Iranian advocacy of an offensive. Turkey, already home to three million Syrians, feared that a Syrian-Russian assault, would push hundreds of thousands, if not millions more across its border.

    If Iran was the weakest link in the debate about Idlib, it stands stronger in its coming competition with Russia for the spoils of reconstruction of war-ravaged Syria.

    Similarly, Russia appears to be ambivalent towards a continued Iranian military presence in post-war Syria, a potential flashpoint given Israel’s opposition and Israeli attacks that led earlier this month to the downing of a Russian aircraft.

    By the same token, Turkey, despite its backing of Qatar in its 15-month-old dispute with a Saudi-UAE-led alliance that is boycotting the Gulf state diplomatically and economically, poses perhaps the greatest challenge to Qatari efforts to project itself globally by operating one of the world’s best airlines and positioning itself as a sports hub.

    Turkey, despite its failure this week to win the right to host Euro 2024 and its lack of the Gulf’s financial muscle, competes favourably on every other front with Qatar as well as the UAE that too is seeking to project itself through soft as well as hard power and opposes Mr. Erdogan because of his Islamist leanings, ties to Iran, and support of Qatar. Turkey wins hands down against the small Gulf states when it comes to size, population, location, industrial base, military might, and sports performance.

    That, coupled with a determination to undermine Qatar, was likely one reason, why the UAE’s major carriers, Emirates and Etihad that is troubled by a failed business model, have, despite official denials, been quietly discussing a potential merger that would create the world’s largest airline.

    Countering competition from Turkish Airlines that outflanks both UAE carriers with 309 passenger planes that service 302 destinations in 120 countries may well have been another reason. Emirates, the larger of the two Emirati carriers, has, a fleet of 256 aircraft flying to 150 destinations in 80 countries.

    These recent developments suggest that alliances, particularly the one that groups Russia, Turkey and Iran, are brittle and transactional, geared towards capitalizing on immediate common interests rather than shared long-term goals, let alone values.

    That is true even if Russia and Turkey increasingly find common ground in concepts of Eurasianism. It also applies to Turkey and Qatar who both support Islamist groups as well as to Saudi Arabia and the UAE who closely coordinate policies but see their different goals put on display in Yemen.

    The fragility of the alliances is further underwritten by Turkish, Russian and Iranian aspirations of resurrecting empire in a 21st century mould and a Saudi quest for regional dominance.

    Notions of empire have informed policies long before realignment across Eurasia as a result of the focus of the United States shifting from the Middle East to Asia, the rise of China. increasingly strained relations between the West and Russia, and the greater assertiveness of Middle Eastern states like Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Iran.

    Then president Suleyman Demirel told this author already in the 1990s in the wake of the demise of the Soviet Union and the emergence of independent, mostly ethnically Turkic Central Asian republics that “Turkey’s world stretches from the Adriatic to the Great Wall of China.”

    In a world in which globalization is shaped by geopolitical zones rather than individual countries, Russia’s imperative is to be a region by defining itself as an Asian rather than a European power that would be on par with China, the European Union, and a US zone of influence.

    “Putin does not think along national lines. He thinks in terms of larger blocks, and, ultimately in terms of the world order,” said former Portuguese minister for Europe, Bruno Macaes in a recently published book, The Dawn of Eurasia.

    In doing so, Russia is effectively turning its back on Europe as it reinvents itself as an Asian power on the basis of a Eurasianism, a century-old ideology that defines Russia as a Eurasian rather than a European power.

    The Eurasian Economic Union, that groups Russia, Kazakhstan. Kyrgyzstan, Belarus and Armenia, is a vehicle that allows Russia to establish itself as a block in the borderland between Europe and Asia.

    Similarly, Eurasianism has gained currency in Turkey with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who enabled by the demise of the Soviet Union and the re-emergence of a Turkic world, projects his country as a crossroads between Europe, Africa and Asia rather than a European bridge to Asia.

    In that vein, Turkish columnist Sinan Baykent projected this week’s fence-mending visit to Germany by Mr. Erdogan and his proposal for a summit on Syria of Turkish, Russian, German and French leaders as a Eurasian approach to problem solving.

    The meeting between Mr. Erdogan and German chancellor Angela Merkel was meant “to pave the way for a Eurasian solution for the region… There is a new axis forming today between Berlin, Moscow, Ankara, Tehran and maybe Paris… All of these countries are fed up with American unilateralism and excessive policies displayed by the Trump administration.,” Mr. Baykent said.

    If Turkey and Russia’s vision of their place in the world is defined to a large extent by geography, Iran’s topology dictates a more inward-looking view despite accusations that it is seeking to establish itself as the Middle East’s hegemon.

    “Iran is a fortress. Surrounded on three sides by mountains and on the fourth by the ocean, with a wasteland at its centre,” noted Stratfor, a geopolitical intelligence platform. Gulf fears are rooted not only in deep-seated distrust of Iran’s Islamic regime, but also in the fact that the foundation of past Persian empire relied on control of plains in present-day Iraq.

    As a result, the manoeuvring of Gulf states, in contrast to Turkey and Russia, is driven less by a conceptual framing of their place in the world and more by regional rivalry and regime survival. Countries like Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE walk a fine line focusing geopolitically on an increasingly unpredictable United States and economically on China and the rest of Asia, including Russia, Korea and Japan.

    What the plight of Idlib, potential change in aviation and competition for reconstruction contracts highlight is the brittleness of Middle Eastern alliances that threatens to be reinforced by economics becoming an increasingly important factor alongside geopolitics.

    “Stakes for all parties are starting to divert from each other in Syria and the prospects of cooperation with Russia and Iran are becoming more challenging,” said Turkish columnist Nuray Mert commenting on the situation in Idlib. Her analysis is as valid for Idlib as it for the prospects of many of the Middle East alliances.

  • Chinese Air Force Holds Live-Fire War Drill In South China Sea Days After US Exercise

    China Central Television, as per the Twitter account of the official People’s Daily newspaper, reported Saturday that the Chinese military deployed fighter jets and bombers to conduct live-fire war drills in the disputed South China Sea, just days after the Japan Air Self-Defense Force and nuclear-capable US B-52 strategic bombers held exercises over the East China Sea and the Sea of Japan on September 27.

    The report said dozens of jet fighters from the People’s Liberation Army Naval Air Force from the Southern Theater Command on early Saturday conducted “live-fire drills to tests pilots’ assault, penetration and precision-strike capabilities at sea,” said The Japan Times.

    Beijing on Thursday blasted the US and Japan exercise over the East China Sea, calling them a “provocation.”

    “China’s principle and standpoint on the South China Sea are always clear,” Defense Ministry spokesman Ren Guoqiang said, according to Chinese state-run media. “China firmly opposes U.S. military aircraft’s provocation in the South China Sea, and will take all necessary measures.”

    Japan’s Mainichi Shimbun News said the joint drills between the US and Japan were highly “unusual,” as what we pointed out last week, a China-Japan maritime crisis is inevitable over the disputed Senkaku Islands.

    It seems that Thursday’s move was aimed at keeping China in check amid increasing tensions between Beijing and Washington, including an intensifying trade war. 

    But in a tit-for-tat effort, China hit back with war drills of their own on Saturday.

    Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang criticized unnamed countries (US, United Kingdom, and France) for using freedom of navigation and overflight as excuses to disrupt other countries’ sovereignty and security, disturbing regional peace and stability.

    In August, US bombers conducted similar exercises over the South China Sea. In addition to those exercises, the warplanes integrated with the Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture-based Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group in the region.

    In June, China’s Foreign Ministry said no military in the world could scare China from the South China Sea when the US flew planes in the heavily disputed waters miles from its militarized islands.

    Washington and Beijing have unleashed a series of war drills over the militarization of the South China Sea, where China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and the Philippines all have active claims.

    Washington and Beijing have yet to clash over the region — the area includes critical shipping lanes through which over $3 trillion in global trade passes each year — and where China has constructed a series of militarized islands. China claims the area with its so-called nine-dash line, which encompasses most of the economic zones. 

    At a moments notice, the region could become unstable and war break out. All eyes on the East Asian maritime region.

  • Elizabeth Warren Hints At 2020 Presidential Run

    Pocahontas is almost ready to make it official.

    Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren said Saturday during a town hall meeting that she would consider a run for the Democratic nomination in 2020 once the midterms are over.

    “After Nov. 6, I will take a hard look at running for president,” Warren told the crowd in Holyoke, Mass., provoking uproarious applause.

    During the meeting, the Democrat shared her views on President Trump’s agenda and the state of the country in the Trump era, while also weighing in on the controversy surrounding Trump’s SCOTUS pick, Brett Kavanaugh and the allegations of sexual misconduct that have forced the postponement of his confirmation vote pending the outcome of a limited FBI background-check probe, as USA Today reported.

    “I watched powerful men helping a powerful man make it to an even more powerful position,” Warren said, according to the newspaper. “And I thought, ‘Times up'”. “It’s time for women to go to Washington and fix our broken government and that includes a woman at the top.”

    After she declared what was essentially a soft declaration of her 2020 campaign, the crowd responded with a standing ovation, as video of the event showed.

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    Previously, Warren had stayed quiet on her 2020 plans, telling NBC’s “Meet the Press” back in March that she wanted to focus on her current job, and denied wanting to run (though her name has consistently been ranked among the likely contenders for the Democratic nom in what remains a wide-open field).

    “I am in this fight to retain my Senate seat in 2018. That’s where I’m focused. That’s where I’m going to stay focused,” Warren told MTP. “I’m not running for president.”

    However, Warren refused to “pledge” to serve out her full six-year term.

    Watch the video below:

    According to RealClearPolitics, Warren, who will be defending her seat in 2018, currently boasts a double-digit lead over her Republican challenger, Beth Lindstrom.

    Warren

    The Boston Globe pointed out that Warren has been campaigning for Democrats in battleground states and making other moves that could presage a presidential run. According to federal filings, she has $15.6 million in her campaign war chest.

    Meanwhile, at a rally in West Virginia, President Trump urged the crowd to vote for Republicans on Nov. 6, saying Warren is “conservative” compared with the new base of the Democratic Party.

    “They’ve gone crazy. They’ve gone loco.”

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  • CNN Founder Ted Turner: Network "Sticking With Politics A Little Too Much"

    In a rare interview on CBS Sunday Morning with CNN founder Ted Turner, the billionaire and former media mogul said his former network now focuses “too much” on politics, and that he wishes the company would strive for more “balanced” programming between politics and other news.

    Turner told veteran anchor Ted Koppel that he rarely follows the news, and only watches his former news channel occasionally.

    Echoing many complaints that CNN has become a left-wing echo chamber with a clear political bias and agenda, Turner told Koppel that “I think they’re sticking with politics a little too much. They’d do better to have a more balanced agenda. But that’s, you know, just one person’s opinion.”

    Turner left Time Warner, the company that owns CNN, in 2006 after the company bought the cable network 10 years earlier. Turner launched CNN in 1980, and grew it to become a global news network viewed in hundreds of countries.

    In the interview that is set to air on Sunday, the 79-year-old Turner also  said he’s suffering from Lewy body dementia, a progressive brain disease similar in effects to Alzheimers and which leaves him tired and forgetful.

    “It’s a mild case of what people have as Alzheimer’s,” Turner told Ted Koppel in an interview due to air on CBS. “It’s similar to that. But not nearly as bad. Alzheimer’s is fatal.”

    Turner, who was interviewed on his 113,000-acre ranch near Bozeman, Montana, told Koppel that symptoms previously blamed on manic depression were in fact caused by Lewy body dementia. The late comic Robin Williams also is believed to have suffered from the disease.

    He also discussed his past deliberations about running for president, which he said occurred during his marriage to then-wife Jane Fonda: “Well, the closest I came to running for office was when I was married to Jane Fonda. And when I discussed it with her – she was married to one politician,” Turner says in the interview. “And she said, you know, ‘If you run for, for office, you run alone.'”

     

     

     

  • One Step Closer To Recession, And Jay Powell's Looming Whiplash

    Authored by James Rickards via The Daily Reckoning,

    As you know by now, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates again this week, its eighth increase since the rate hike cycle began in 2015.

    In his post-announcement press conference, Jerome Powell cited a strong economy, low unemployment, solid growth, etc. He said that “It’s a particularly bright moment” for the economy.

    Barring significant developments, the Fed may raise rates again in December and perhaps three times next year.

    Meanwhile, the Commerce Department announced that second quarter U.S. GDP expanded at a 4.2% annualized rate, confirming the earlier estimate.

    On the surface it might look everything is great, that it is a particularly bright moment for the economy. But if you take a hard look behind the numbers, a different picture emerges.

    A lot of the cheerleaders say Trump’s programs of tax cuts and deregulation will produce persistent trend growth of 3–4% or higher.

    Such growth would break decisively with the weak growth of the Obama years. It would also make the U.S. debt burden, currently at 105% of GDP, more sustainable if GDP were to grow faster than the national debt.

    There’s one problem with the happy talk about 3–4% growth. We’ve seen it all before.

    • In 2009, almost every economic forecaster and commentator was talking about “green shoots.”

    • In 2010, then-Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner forecast the “recovery summer.”

    • In 2017, the global monetary elites were praising the arrival (at last) of “synchronized global growth.”

    None of this wishful thinking panned out. The green shoots turned brown, the recovery summer never came and the synchronized global growth was over almost as soon as it began.

    Any signs of trend growth have been strictly temporary (basically moving growth from one quarter to another through inventory and accounting quirks) and are quickly followed by weaker growth. In the first quarter of 2015, growth was 3.2%, but by the fourth quarter that year growth had fallen to a near-recession level of 0.5%.

    In the third quarter of 2016 growth was 2.8%, but it fell quickly to 1.2% by the first quarter of 2017. In the third quarter of 2017 growth was 3.2% but then returned to 2.0% by the first quarter of 2018, about the average for the past nine years.

    This pattern of temporarily strong growth followed by weak growth has been characteristic of the entire recovery that began in June 2009 and entered its 10th year a few months ago. In fact, we’ve seen even more extreme reversals in the recent past.

    In the third quarter of 2013, growth was 4.5%. But by the first quarter of 2014, just six months later, growth was actually negative, -2.1%, comparable to some of the worst quarters in recent recessions.

    Growth was 5.0% in the third quarter of 2014, but then fell off a cliff and was barely positive, 0.2%, in the first quarter of 2015.

    You get the point. Strong quarters have been followed by much weaker quarters within six months on six separate occasions in the past nine years. There’s no reason to believe this trend will end now.

    The longer-term view of the entire recovery is more revealing. The recovery is currently 109 months old, the second-longest since the end of the Second World War. The average recovery since 1980 (a period of longer-than-average expansions) is 83 months.

    So this expansion has been extraordinarily long — far longer than average — indicating that a recession should be expected sooner rather than later.

    But the current expansion has also been the weakest recovery on record. Average annual growth during this expansion is 2.14%, compared with average annual growth for all expansions since 1980 of 3.21%. That 3.21% figure is what economists mean by “trend” growth.

    Even with the latest GDP numbers, the current expansion does not even come close to that trend. The “wealth gap” (the difference between 3.2% trend growth and 2.1% actual growth) is now over $4 trillion. That’s how much poorer the U.S. economy is due to its inability to achieve sustainable trend growth.

    As for the Trump bump, growth in the first quarter of 2018 was 2.0%, slightly below the average since June 2009. Growth for all of 2017, Trump’s first year in office, was 2.6%, slightly above the 2.14% average in this recovery but not close to the 3.5% growth proclaimed by Trump’s supporters.

    In short, growth under Trump looks a lot like growth under Obama, with no reason to expect that to change anytime soon. In fact, the head winds caused by the strong dollar, the trade wars and out-of-control deficit spending may slow the economy and bring future growth down below the average of the Obama years.

    I’ve said repeatedly that the Fed is tightening into weakness. But it’s more than the rate hikes. The Fed is also winding down its balance sheet, and the pace is scheduled to accelerate next year.

    Far from printing money, the Fed is destroying base money at a rapid pace. The Fed is basically burning money. They’re doing this by not rolling over maturing Treasury and mortgage securities they hold on their balance sheet. That’s a “double whammy” of tightening.

    When a security held by the Fed matures and the issuer pays it off, the money sent to the Fed just disappears. It’s called quantitative tightening, or QT.

    When the Fed started QT in late 2017, they urged market participants to ignore it. They said the QT plan was on autopilot, the Fed was not going to use it as an instrument of policy and the money burning would “run on background” just like a computer program that’s open but not in use at the moment.

    It’s fine for the Fed to say that, but markets have another view. Analysts estimate that QT is the equivalent of two–four rate hikes per year over and above the explicit rate hikes.

    Bearing in mind that monetary policy works with a 12–18-month lag, this extraordinary tightening policy in a weak economy is almost certainly a recipe for a recession.

    And expected results are beginning to show up in the markets. Mortgage interest rates are up, mortgage refis are sinking like a stone and housing affordability is suffering.

    This will eventually result in fewer new home purchases, slower household formation and a weakening economy. The Fed will have to reverse course and cut rates, or at least “pause” in raising rates much sooner than they think.

    The Fed knows a recession will happen sooner rather than later and is desperate to acquire some dry powder (in the form of higher rates and a reduced balance sheet) so it can use it when the time comes.

    The problem, of course, is that by pursuing these policies, the Fed will cause the recession it is preparing to cure.

    The single most important factor in my analysis is that when the Fed realizes its mistake of tightening into economic weakness, it will have to turn on a dime and shift to an easing policy.

    Easing will come first through forward guidance and pauses in the rate hike tempo, then possibly actual rate cuts back to zero and finally reversing their balance sheet reductions by expanding the balance sheet through QE4 if needed.

    Jay Powell seems determined to continue rate hikes on an aggressive path and possibly to accelerate the hikes. But he might be in for a severe case of whiplash when he has to make a hard pivot to easing.

    But by then, the damage will have been done.

  • UT Professor's Laptop Plays Porn In Front Of Packed Lecture Hall With 500 Students

    A professor at the University of Toronto’s Scarborough Campus accidentally played a porno to a lecture hall filled with approximately 500 students last week, according to multiple reports. 

    On September 24, a video surfaced that appears to show UTSC psychology professor Steve Joordens playing a pornographic video on the projector screen by accident.

    The incident, which apparently took place at the start of the lecture, was recorded by one of the students in the class via a Snapchat video and subsequently posted onto Reddit, where, along with many memes made about the event, it instantly went viral.

    …

    The class, which was reportedly PSYA01: Introduction to Biological and Cognitive Psychology, had about 500 students in the lecture hall. As seen in the video posted by the student, many students in the class were laughing, though others could be seen walking out of the room.

    …

    “When I saw the [pornographic] video, I was surprised,” the original poster, a first-year student studying Philosophy, wrote. –The Varsity

    “I was not expecting that especially this early in the morning… I found the whole situation funny and he made a lot of people laugh,” said the student. 

    Professor Steve Joordens – who joined UTSC in 1995, responded to the incident – telling The Varsity: “With respect to the event that happened prior to my class on Monday the 24th, I want to be clear that what happened was completely unintentional and I feel absolutely terrible about it,” adding “I have apologized to my class and now I want to move on. Thanks to my students, colleagues and my amazing family for their support and understanding.”

    Surprisingly, the professor didn’t cancel the lecture or really do anything apart from taking the video down and, according to students, said “well that was awkward” and resumed teaching. At face value, it seemed that was the end of the story. Though many students are convinced it’s actually a part of something bigger. –Narcity

    “Everyone makes mistakes so I can’t blame him,” said the student who posted the video. “I hope nothing bad happens in the future and this can just be a thing to laugh about, I hope his job isn’t affected or anything in his personal life either.”

    That said, not everybody think the porn was an accident… 

    One Reddit user who claims they were a student of the professor’s back in 2008 believes the whole thing was staged. This is because a similar odd instance had happened in their own class with the professor, that had been part of a skit meant to enhance the lesson that was being taught that day: 

    Surprisingly enough, it turns out that using pornography as lecture material isn’t a foreign concept. It’s actually been used as educational material in Psychology, Sociology, Gender Studies and sexuality-based courses. But, when you start including that kind of media in your lecture, it is common practice to give students the option not to participate. –Narcity

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  • Your Semi-Annual Golden Week Reminder…"They Are Really Pushing It"

    Authored by Jeffrey Snider via Alhambra Investment Partners,

    It’s that time of year. September, the leaves start to turn and the air grows crisp. Autumn smells arrive; the Chinese prepare for their nationalist Golden Week. Ever since 2014 and the dollar’s rise, that is, eurodollar tightening especially in Asia, these holiday bottlenecks are never boring. To be shut down for an entire week in early October, the banking system in China builds up a liquidity stockpile in September.

    There were actually three Golden Weeks up until 2007. The middle one, surrounding Communists’ infatuation with May Day, was quietly dismissed on the recommendation of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC). These long holiday breaks were being viewed as disruptive to economic flow.

    In September 1999, the State Council devised the original Golden Week holiday system as a way to standardize vacation time (Communists’ infatuation with sameness, which is very different from equality). It was also intended to boost tourism and economic activity. Economists are the same whether Communist or Western; they all think they can increase spending by changing the most arbitrary factors.

    The biggest factor in the December 2007 elimination of the third week was obvious interruption. Cai Jiming, the project leader for the CPPCC in 2007, told government officials that (translated):

    There are data showing that since the implementation of the Golden Week Vacation system, the pulling effect on consumption has not been great, but it has brought a series of negative effects, such as increasing short-term costs for businesses, declining service quality, and increasing government public management costs.

    China’s National Tourism Administration agreed, so on December 16, 2007, the Chinese Central Government announced a revised Regulation on Public Holidays for National Annual Festivals and Memorial Days. There would now be just the pair in China, two economic disturbances better than three.

    The banking system felt them as much as the real economy, but adjusted well enough. When money was plentiful, no big deal. But as things have really tightened the last four years, the Golden Weeks have become eventful. China’s weeklong New Year every January has tended to be the greater of the two, but October’s celebration of the Communist takeover has contributed its share of interesting behaviors.

    These haven’t been limited to mainland China. Tightening and volatility ahead of the October festival has been witnessed in Hong Kong, too. It’s one of the most obvious changes to the interconnection between CNY and eurodollars.

    September 2018 has taken it one step further still.

    The overnight HIBOR rate, the cost of borrowing Hong Kong dollars unsecured by collateral, spiked higher nearly two weeks ago – right on schedule. On September 13, it was almost 2% and remained at that elevated level through yesterday. Today, the overnight rate fixed at nearly double that, 3.85%.

    The Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the city’s currency board, which has acted as a de facto central bank this year given what’s happened with HKD, refused to comment publicly. They would only note privately, in emails obtained by several local media outlets, that “market participants” were watching “elevated interbank rates.”

    They would have to given what’s happened to the currency:

    A reverse from the bottom range of the allowed band should be a welcome sign to Hong Kong’s beleaguered monetary officials. The HKMA has really struggled this year in ways it wasn’t expecting.

    But a surge all at once isn’t what anyone in Hong Kong wants to see. Volatility is always and everywhere the real killer for anything in the banking system. It doesn’t discriminate. Risk perceptions were already challenged by HKD’s sharp decline earlier this year.

    As a technical matter, the dearth of liquidity in the city has apparently brought a rush of funds into the area to take advantage of the surge in rates – HIBOR though unsecured being viewed universally as still at least a low risk if not as before completely risk-free. Near 7.85, sure. But all the way to 7.80?

    The real question is where those funds are coming from. There haven’t been any similar moves in any major currency partners, especially CNY. The closest thing has been the euro’s rebound, though it began back in mid-August (with CNY’s stabilizing).

    Instead, we are left to suspect China’s latest approaching Golden Week. Banks in the hoarding stage can only become more desperate if hoarding is hard to accomplish.

    These holidays have always been disruptive, but the last few years they are really pushing it.

    “They.”

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Sep 29

Today’s News 29th September 2018

  • EU, UK, Russia, & China Join Together To Dodge US Sanctions On Iran

    Authored by Peter Korzun via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    The UN General Assembly (UNGA) in New York is a place where world leaders are able to hold important meetings behind closed doors. Russia, China, the UK, Germany, France, and the EU seized that opportunity on Sept. 24 to achieve a real milestone.

    The EU, Russia, China, and Iran will create a special purpose vehicle (SPV), a “financially independent sovereign channel,” to bypass US sanctions against Tehran and breathe life into the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which is in jeopardy. “Mindful of the urgency and the need for tangible results, the participants welcomed practical proposals to maintain and develop payment channels, notably the initiative to establish a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) to facilitate payments related to Iran’s exports, including oil,” they announced in a joint statement. The countries are still working out the technical details. If their plan succeeds, this will deliver a blow to the dollar and a boost to the euro.

    The move is being made in order to save the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. According to Federica Mogherini, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, the SPV will facilitate payments for Iran’s exports, such as oil, and imports so that companies can do business with Tehran as usual. The vehicle will be available not just to EU firms but to others as well. A round of US sanctions aimed at ending Iranian oil exports is to take effect on November 5. Iran is the world’s seventh-largest oil producer. Its oil sector accounts for 70% of the country’s exports. Tehran has warned the EU that it should find new ways of trading with Iran prior to that date, in order to preserve the JCPOA.

    The SPV proposes to set up a multinational, European, state-backed financial intermediary to work with companies interested in trading with Iran. Payments will be made in currencies other than the dollar and remain outside the reach of those global money-transfer systems under US control. In August, the EU passed a blocking statute to guarantee the immunity of European companies from American punitive measures. It empowers EU firms to seek compensation from the United States Treasury for its attempts to impose extra-territorial sanctions. No doubt the move will further damage the already strained US-EU relationship. It might be helpful to create a special EU company for oil exports from Iran.

    Just hours after the joint statement on the SPV, US President Trump defended his unilateral action against Iran in his UNGA address. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo condemned the EU initiative, stating:

    “This is one of the most counterproductive measures imaginable for regional global peace and security.”

    To wit, the EU, Russia, and China have banded together in open defiance against unilateral steps taken by the US. Moscow and Beijing are in talks on how to combine their efforts to fend off the negative impacts of US trade tariffs and sanctions. A planned Sept 24-25 visit by Chinese Vice-Premier Liu, who was coming to the United States for trade talks, was cancelled as a result of the discord and President Trump added more fuel to the fire on Sept. 24 by imposing 10% tariffs on almost half of all goods the US imports from China. “We have far more bullets,” the president said before the Chinese official’s planned visit. “We’re going to go US$200 billion and 25 per cent Chinese made goods. And we will come back with more.” The US has recently imposed sanctions on China to punish it for the purchase of Russian S-400 air-defense systems and combat planes. Beijing refused to back down. It is also adamant in its desire to continue buying Iran’s oil.

    It is true, the plan to skirt the sanctions might fall short of expectations. It could fail as US pressure mounts. A number of economic giants, including Total, Peugeot, Allianz, Renault, Siemens, Daimler, Volvo, and Vitol Group have already left Iran as its economy plummets, with the rial losing two-thirds of its value since the first American sanctions took effect in May. The Iranian currency dropped to a record low against the US dollar this September.

    What really matters is the fact that the leading nations of the EU have joined the global heavyweights — Russia and China — in open defiance of the United States.

    This is a milestone event.

    It’s hard to underestimate its importance. Certainly, it’s too early to say that the UK and other EU member states are doing a sharp pivot toward the countries that oppose the US globally, but this is a start – a first step down that path. This would all have seemed unimaginable just a couple of years ago – the West and the East in the same boat, trying to stand up to the American bully!

  • NJ Pension Fund Could Dump $44 Million Nike Stake Over Kaepernick Ads

    Even as Nike stock has outperformed its benchmarks so far this year, contributing to a badly needed 9% return last year for New Jersey’s $78 billion public worker pension fund, the board supervising the fund is considering dumping its roughly $44 million stake at the behest of representatives of the state’s retired police and firefighters, who have complained that the company’s Colin Kaepernick ad campaign is deeply offensive.

    New Jersey’s pension fund is among the worst-funded in the country (you can catch up on our analysis of its ongoing troubles here). Its finances are in such dire straights that even though Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy allocated $3.2 billion to the fund as part of his budget for the 2018 fiscal year – the state’s largest contribution in ages – that amount is only 60% of the full amount called for by the actuaries.

    Pensions

    Still, NJ.com reported that Marty Barrett, a representative of retired police officers and firefighters, asked the State Investment Council to consider divesting from its Nike holdings because of the ad – a request that was readily honored, with the board voting unanimously to review its holdings, which include 311,500 equity shares valued at $26 million and 20 million principal valued at $18 million.

    As Bloomberg pointed out earlier this month, four other public pension funds that manage police pensions (in Colorado, Wisconsin, Ohio and Oregon) also own Nike stock.

    Pensions

    Barrett declared during his presentation to the council that Nike made “one of the worst business decisions of all time” when it created the ad campaign.

    Nike’s use of the sports figure, whose protests of police brutality during the National Anthem drew controversy, has triggered boycotts of the brand.

    Barrett said Thursday that Kaepernick’s protest disrespects members of the military and first responders who were killed on 9/11.

    Nike “made one of the worst business decisions of all time” in making Kaepernick the face of its ad campaign, Barrett said.

    Perhaps unsurprisingly for a blue state, New Jersey’s SIC has divested stakes in gun manufacturers and private-prison companies following pressure from left-wing groups.

    But will they grant the same courtesy to police and firefighters that they did to high school students and the Latin American community? Of course, the fund’s decision to dump the stake could also dampen Nike’s banner performance this year. And once the first domino falls, others could soon follow.

  • Can Trump Still Save The United States?

    Authored by William Craddick via DisobedientMedia.com,

    Two years into his Presidency, Donald Trump’s accomplishments are constantly lauded by his followers. America’s finance and business worlds are on the road to recovery and diplomatic relations with North Korea are improving so substantially that a peace accord on the peninsula may be in store down the road. ISIS, while still maintaining a global network that threatens the United States, has been routed from much of the territory they once openly occupied in the Middle East.

    But Trump’s tenure has also revealed the presence of a number of flaws. He overemphasizes his economic recovery, ignores attacks on his supporters in the real and digital world, is apparently unaware that his own officials are likely waiting till the end of his administration to pursue negative foreign policy objectives, and seems unwilling to go after his former friends, business colleagues and social acquaintances. All of these factors, combined with his constant desire to be well liked by even his enemies are beginning to create the very real risk of undermining goals of the movement that elected him.

    I. Overemphasis On Economy While Supporters Marginalized

    While the rapid growth of American economy and a rising stock market have created wealth and opportunity, it has come at the cost of the attention President Trump gives to his constituents. While Trump’s Twitter feed is a ticker tape of Fox News headlines and recent stats about the booming economy, he very rarely, if ever tweets about violence directed towards his supporters.

    Attacks or threats of attacks on members of Trump’s movement have occurred as recently as September 11th, 2018 without comment from the President. Social media giants such as Facebook and Google directly allow foreign interests such as China to take a leading role in censoring communications of any right wingers, populists or anti-war proponents. This collaboration has dire implications for US security. Trump has yet to take action against groups targeting his base outside of strong words or probes that have not yielded real solutions to these problems.

    Discriminatory focus on particular topics isn’t an anomaly for Trump. He also criticizes certain criminal, terrorist or extremist groups such as ISIS or MS-13, yet never mentions others like Antifa or Mexican cartels, giving these groups more space to operate due to decreased scrutiny. A walking contradiction, Trump will intervene in a foreign country over his concern for injured children yet not take similar forceful action against rampant crime and trafficking in Sanctuary Cities such as Chicago.

    The tendency to ignore the pain of his people to spotlight the economy makes for a hollow victory. Trump himself frequently mentions that his economic recovery is fragile and could be immediately reversed by his predecessor. There is, however, an even more dangerous element likely not being considered by either Trump or his base:

    Dramatic economic recovery can be a precursor to the outbreak of war.

    Observers seeking to guess at which countries America might engage with militarily need only look where US sanctions are being applied – locations such as Iran, Syria, Turkey, China, Venezuela, Russia, or the European Union where anti-American sentiment has been on the rise. Sanctions provide valuable intelligence on the ability and resolve of a targeted country to respond militarily and economically in a conflict.

    It’s doubtful that Trump is actively seeking to start foreign wars with these countries himself. A booming economy, sanctions and a newly robust military are all useful tools to employ in immediate negotiations with foreign states. But many groups delayed by Trump’s election will still proceed with their goals when he leaves the Oval Office. Trump’s tenure will only be another two to six years. The various factions who make up the bureaucratic class play the long con and will continue to exist after his administration has run its course.

    The DNC has openly admitted that they can rig their primary process if they please. After Trump stormed the GOP in 2016, there is little doubt that they too will take steps to ensure that such an upset could never happen again. Anti-war supporters expecting that Trump’s successor to be a non-interventionist along the lines of Rand Paul are fooling themselves. The President after Trump will likely be open to entanglement in war. They will care even less about Trump’s base despite the fact that the “Resistance” openly state their long term goals of wiping out the opposition. Trump’s Presidency is merely delaying the inevitable.

    II. Lack Of Resolve To Go After Old Acquaintances

    Trump has done nothing to go after individuals undermining his administration, though in some cases he has publicly espoused a supposed desire to take strong action. A blatant example of this are the Clintons, who Trump and his family have a historied friendship with. Trump’s long time friend Bill Clinton encouraged Trump to run for President in 2015. Ivanka Trump, who has been accused of leaking administration secrets in the past, was also an old pal of Chelsea Clinton’s. The hard truth is that despite Trump’s bluster about Hillary Clinton and the crimes she is claimed to have committed nothing will ever happen to her.

    Billionaire philanthropist and political activist George Soros is one of Trump’s biggest opponents, dumping millions into various organizations of the Resistance movement. He has been accused of attempting to foster a color revolution to destabilize the United States. But Trump has not mentioned Soros’ name once since the 2016 Presidential debates. He has never mentioned Soros on Twitter.

    Indeed, the President did business with Soros, who leant the real estate mogul capital for the construction of his tower in Chicago. When Trump became active in the Tea Party movement, he openly defended Soros from criticism. Upon assuming the Presidency, he brought on Steve Mnuchin, who worked for Soros-backed SFM Capital Management and Soros Fund Management LLC, as Secretary of the Treasury.

    Trump doesn’t seem to be planning to go after a single former social or professional contact he maintained in his old life.

    This is no more obvious than in the case of Jeffery Epstein, the billionaire philanthropist caught running an underage sex trafficking ring, sometimes recording encounters between adults and underage women for the purposes of blackmail. Epstein was let off the hook with a single charge of soliciting a minor. None of the other individuals accused of wrongdoing in the scandal faced legal repercussions, though some cases were hotly debated in the legal community. The attorney who cut such an atrocious deal for Epstein is now serving as Trump’s Secretary of Labor.

    Trump certainly knew what Epstein was doing, surely as he must know what some of his other acquaintances in New York were involved with – Disobedient Media has previously reported the known history of connections between philanthropic events and child trafficking networks. It would seem that such a case would be ripe for review by an avowed anti corruption administration. Yet he has not gone after high profile offenders even as his administration leads a major charge to clean up the trafficking networks themselves. Are these connected and influential figures simply above the law, even in Trump’s “great” America?

    III. Will The Right Solve It’s Own Problems?

    None of this is put forward to suggest that Trump doesn’t care about the United States, or doesn’t love his country. But it does show that for all the appeal to his supporters, Trump is a flawed individual. His Presidency was heralded as a new era of reform. A more realistic outlook began to set in when Trump made the hypocritical decision to bomb Syria in the first few months of his Presidency despite decrying such a move previously.

    Trump is the dam holding back the floodwaters of total chaos that are bubbling over in the United States. When he is gone, no one with any meaningful power will lift a finger to stop the establishment’s inevitable purge of conservative, nationalistic and patriotic Americans. The great gulf that has begun to divide the country will soon be beyond repair.

    This administration is likely the United States’ last chance to fix its systemic issues before real calamity sets in.

    Many don’t wish to acknowledge this. They don’t want to accept the very real danger represented by corrupt and incompetent establishment figures still active in the administration, and their stagnation in the face of a resurgent far Left. There is more interest in maintaining the excitement of a nonstop pep rally than acting to secure the country. Trump’s personality and desire to be liked by demographics who will never accept him are preventing his supporters from realizing their potential and achieving anything that will have a lasting effect.

    For a true return to an American golden age, the ‘Make America Great Again’ movement must learn to accomplish their goals in spite of their beloved leader and his flaws.

  • Watch: Japanese Rovers Record First Video Ever Shot On Asteroid's Surface

    A pair of Japanese rovers have sent back a group of photos and the first-ever video recorded on the surface of an asteroid, Gizmodo reports.

    Watch the footage below:

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Japan’s MINERVA-II rovers – MINERVA II2 and MINERVA II1 – traversed the surface of Ryugu, an asteroid located 174 million miles from Earth’s surface and documented what they found. Minerva stands for Micro Nano Experimental Robot Vehicle for Asteroid (2nd generation).

    The robots took a series of snapshots as they bounded across the asteroids surface, taking advantage of the low gravity to travel more than 50 feet per leap, a journey that would take up to 15 minutes to complete.

    The rovers were sent by Japan’s Hayabusa2 space probe, which has been orbiting the asteroid since June.

    Rover

    Rover

    The 15-frame video was captured by MINERVA-II2, also known as Rover 1B, on September 23, the same day that it and its companion, MINERVA-II1, landed on Ryugu, an asteroid located 174 million miles (280 million kilometers) from Earth. The rovers were dispatched by Japan’s Hayabusa2 space probe, which arrived in orbit around the asteroid back in June.

    Asteroid

    According to RT, the 900m-wide Ryugu (also known as asteroid 162173) is believed to be a relic from the earliest days of our solar system. The mission was intended to examine the space rock in the hopes of finding more clues about the formation of Earth.

  • Washington's Sanctions Machine

    Authored by Philip Giraldi via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    Perhaps it is Donald Trump’s business background that leads him to believe that if you inflict enough economic pain on someone they will ultimately surrender and agree to do whatever you want. Though that approach might well work in New York real estate, it is not a certain path to success in international relations since countries are not as vulnerable to pressure as are individual investors or developers.

    Washington’s latest foray into the world of sanctions, directed against China, is astonishing even when considering the low bar that has been set by previous presidents going back to Bill Clinton. Beijing has already been pushing back over US sanctions imposed last week on its government-run Equipment Development Department of the Chinese Central Military Commission and its director Li Shangfu for “engaging in significant transactions” with a Russian weapons manufacturer that is on a list of US sanctioned companies. The transactions included purchases of Russian Su-35 combat aircraft as well as equipment related to the advanced S-400 surface-to-air missile system. The sanctions include a ban on the director entering the United States and blocks all of his property or bank accounts within the US as well as freezing all local assets of the Equipment Development Department.

    More important, the sanctions also forbid conducting any transactions that go through the US financial system. It is the most powerful weapon Washington has at its disposal, but it is being challenged as numerous countries are working to find ways around it. Currently however, as most international transactions are conducted in dollars and pass through American banks that means that it will be impossible for the Chinese government to make weapons purchases from many foreign sources. If foreign banks attempt to collaborate with China to evade the restrictions, they too will be sanctioned.

    So in summary, Beijing bought weapons from Moscow and is being sanctioned by the United States for doing so because Washington does not approve of the Russian government. The sanctions on China are referred to as secondary sanctions in that they are derivative from the primary sanction on the foreign company or individual that is actually being punished. Secondary sanctions can be extended ad infinitum as transgressors linked sequentially to the initial transaction multiply the number of potential targets.

    Not surprisingly, the US Ambassador has been summoned and Beijing has canceled several bilateral meetings with American defense department officials. The Chinese government has expressed “outrage” and has demanded the US cancel the measure.

    According to media reports, the Chinese Department purchased the weapons from Rosoboronexport, Russia’s principal arms exporter. This violated a 2017 law passed by Congress named, characteristically, the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, which sought to punish the Russian government and its various agencies for interfering in in the 2016 US election as well as its alleged involvement in Ukraine, Syria and its development of cyberwar capabilities. Iran and North Korea were also targeted in the legislation.

    Explaining the new sanctions, US State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert issued a statement elaborating that the initial sanctions on Russia were enacted “to further impose costs on the Russian government in response to its malign activities.” She added that the US will “urge all countries to curtail relationships with Russia’s defense and intelligence sectors, both of which are linked to malign activities worldwide.”

    As engaging in “malign activities” is a charge that should quite plausibly be leveled against Washington and its allies in the Middle East, it is not clear if anyone but the French and British poodles actually believes the rationalizations coming out of Washington to defend the indefensible. An act to “Counter America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions” is, even as the title implies, ridiculous.

    Washington is on a sanctions spree.

    Russia has been sanctioned repeatedly since the passage of the fraudulent Magnitsky Act, with no regard for Moscow’s legitimate protests that interfering in other countries’ internal politics is unacceptable. China is currently arguing reasonably enough that arms sales between countries is perfect legal and in line with international law.

    Iran has been sanctioned even through it complied with an international agreement on its nuclear program and new sanctions were even piled on top of the old sanctions. And in about five weeks the US will be sanctioning ANYONE who buys oil from Iran, reportedly with no exceptions allowed. Venezuela is under US sanctions to punish its government, NATO member Turkey because it bought weapons from Russia and the Western Hemisphere perennial bad boy Cuba has had various embargoes in place since 1960.

    It should be noted that sanctions earn a lot of ill-will and generally accomplish nothing. Cuba would likely be a fairly normal country but for the US restrictions and other pressure that gave its government the excuse to maintain a firm grip on power. The same might even apply to North Korea. And sanctions are even bad for the United States. Someday, when the US begins to lose its grip on the world economy all of those places being sanctioned will line up to get their revenge and it won’t be pretty.

  • China Is Building A Replica Of Shakespeare's Birth Town

    Just when you thought it wasn’t possible for Chinese real estate “creativity” to jump the shark further, a recent report reveals that one of the next major real estate projects in China is going to be a full recreation of Stratford-upon-Avon, together with copies of houses where William Shakespeare lived.

    Not content with its replicas of the Eiffel Tower, London’s Tower Bridge, and Jackson Hole, this particular recreation is the latest in a series of generally pointless – if GDP boosting – projects to give real estate companies and construction developers a change of pace from building empty apartment buildings in cities that have no citizens.

    The Financial Times reported that the project contract was signed last week between the city of Fuzhou, and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, which owns the Shakespearean heritage sites in the United Kingdom. The contract paves the way to begin construction on the world’s first recreation of the two houses where Shakespeare was born, lived and died.

    The Chinese’s track record of recreating replica sites has been spotty, if entertaining for the rest of the world. The replica of Tower Bridge in London (pictured above) was built with four towers instead of the original’s two. The replica Eiffel Tower that the country built was only about a third of the height of the original. But the Birthplace Trust doesn’t seem too excited with developers taking creative liberties. The fee for the project has been undisclosed, but the Trust is adamant that they want the replicas to be as close to the originals as possible.

    Philippa Rawlinson, deputy chief executive of the trust, told FT: “We know that the Chinese laugh at themselves for creating Tower Bridge double width et cetera. But this is our intellectual property and… there needs to be a contract and something that means we can fundamentally manage our reputation and manage the story.”

    As part of this, they’re going to offer “expert guidance” on how to make the project using traditional building materials and methods. They’re also going approve all stages of design and interpretation. The construction is slated to begin next year as part of – in true Chinese fashion – the construction of an entire new town called San Weng, which is supposed to be completed in 2020.

    Getting the details right but might be more difficult than it seems. The original house where Shakespeare lived until his death no longer exists, after it was demolished in 1702. It will have to be re-created using archaeological clues and guidance from the Trust. Building techniques have also changed significantly, making a truly authentic replica especially complex:

    Much of the charm of Shakespeare’s birthplace comes from the sensation of stepping back in time. The visible undulation of the flagstone floors, the ancient timber beams, the narrow bed on which Shakespeare slept and the graffiti left by visitors from hundreds of years ago are all features that are difficult, if not impossible, to copy. Such features mean that some compromises on authenticity need to be made.

    The Trust’s project manager, Nic Fulcher, stated: “(They) are not building a timber frame building, but the interior and exterior finish have got to be appropriate.”

    So why is China bothering with yet another Western replica instead of growing out its own, domestic culture? Simple: for the city of Fuzhou, the construction of the new town of San Weng represents a big investment that is intended to rebrand the area as a centre for culture, bringing in revenues from tourism and real estate.

    And any time one sees “big investment” when it comes to China, what one should read is “GDP growth”… along with the token amount of corruption and skimming off the top.

    In addition to the town’s envisaged “Stratford quarter”, other precincts will be built in styles that are reminiscent of Cervantes, the great Spanish novelist, and Tang Xianzu, a native of Jiangxi province most famous for the classical work The Peony Pavilion. By coincidence, Shakespeare, Cervantes and Tang Xianzu all died in 1616.

    So we know why, although a logical counterargument is that perhaps China should first consider filling out its empty cities and apartment buildings before taking on new projects. Then again, that activity does not “boost” GDP and involves government bureaucrats doing actual work, which explains why the status quo will continue indefinitely.

  • The Return Of The Inquisition: Do You Confess?

    Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

    In 279 BC, the vast army of King Pyrrhus of Epirus was met by Roman forces at the Battle of Asculum in southern Italy, in what would be one of the costliest military engagements of ancient history.

    Pyrrhus fancied himself the second coming of Alexander the Great and believed that he was a descendant of Achilles.

    Many of his peers and contemporaries believed Pyrrhus to be the greatest military commander of all time.

    His exploits were legendary. And when he set sail for Italy in 280 BC, the Romans did not underestimate him.

    The Battle of Asculum was decisive. Pyrrhus actually won the battle; but in defeating the Romans, he lost so many of his men that his army was practically broken.

    Pyrrhus purportedly said of his victory, “If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined. . .”

    This gave rise to the term “Pyrrhic victory,” which refers to a win that’s incredibly costly.

    Pyrrhus also tried his hand at diplomacy with Rome, sending one of his ablest statesmen to the capital to negotiate peace with the Roman Senate.

    The emissary was not successful. But he reported back to Pyrrhus that Rome’s Senate was incredibly impressive– “an assembly of kings” comprised of its noblest citizens.

    And he was right. In the early days when Rome was still a republic, its Senate was a highly revered institution that stood for wisdom, dignity, and virtue.

    They were far from perfect. But the men who served in the Senate during the early republic were heavily responsible for building the most advanced civilization the world had ever seen up to that point.

    Needless to say, times changed. Within a few hundred years, the Senate had become a corrupt joke, filled with venal criminals, weak sycophants, and mediocre minds.

    I couldn’t help but think of this analogy yesterday watching the Inquisition of Brett Kavanaugh.

    If you’re living under a rock (or reading this letter many years from now), Brett Kavanaugh has been nominated to serve as a Justice of the United States Supreme Court. This requires that he be confirmed by the Senate.

    Recently a woman emerged who accused Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her when they were all teenagers, several decades ago.

    This is tantamount to accusing the man of a crime.

    But rather than treat this as any other criminal matter in which the authorities would investigate the evidence to determine if charges are warranted… or the case is put to a court and jury to decide… the once-hallowed halls of the US Senate have been turned into an embarrassing circus that shines a giant spotlight on the deep social divides in the Land of the Free.

    The whole charade is a horrible offense to the basic principles of justice in which a person is presumed to be innocent until proven guilty.

    When it comes to claims of sexual assault, however, the man is automatically deemed guilty … and the accuser praised for her courage and bravery before the veracity of the assertion is ever deliberated.

    Senator Maize Hirono of Hawaii recently stated, “Not only do women like [Kavanaugh’s accuser], who bravely come forward, need to be heard, but they need to be believed.”

    By definition this is neither fair nor impartial, and turns the entire process into a Kangaroo Court… which is what the Senate has become.

    At a certain point yesterday, one Senator introduced multiple pieces of evidence on behalf of the accuser, including ‘expert reports’ that justify her inability to remember details from the assault.

    This is truly bizarre.

    These Senators are playing the role of judge in this matter. It seems impossible to do this while simultaneously acting as advocate for the accuser.

    Another Senator sat smugly and sanctimoniously, leering down at Brett Kavanaugh and demanding explanations about code words for beer and flatulence that date back to Kavanaugh’s high school days.

    The fact that a United States Senator would actually consider this important evidence is an utter embarrassment.

    Another disgusting perversion of justice is that the United States Senate actually felt compelled to negotiate with the accuser about when/how she would testify.

    For example, the accuser wanted to prohibit certain questions, control who could/could not ask questions, determine the order of witness testimony, etc.

    This is simply NOT how the justice system is supposed to work.

    Accusers must face the accused in a court of law and submit to cross-examination, following the same rules that everyone else has to follow.

    No one is supposed to get special treatment. That’s the point. And it is through this process that the truth is eventually discovered.

    It’s not that I don’t believe the accuser. It’s entirely possible that she’s telling the truth.

    But as this case has not been deliberated objectively through the normal due process that is guaranteed by the Constitution, no one can reach a valid conclusion.

    Yet there are countless legions of people, including United States Senators, who have already made up their minds, like the Inquisition demanding, “Do you confess?”

    And that’s the saddest part – this manner of Inquisition… trial by social media… has now been condoned and advanced by the United States Senate, an institution whose members have ALL taken a solemn oath to support and defend the Constitution which they are now violating in the worst way.

    Clearly the Senate is no longer an assembly of kings… but a brood of bickering, immature weaklings.

    (The only resilience displayed has been from the accused and accuser, both of whom have had to endure insane public scrutiny.)

    There’s obviously an agenda here.

    Perhaps some Senators are trying to win points with the #metoo movement for the upcoming elections.

    Or they’re intentionally blocking Kavanaugh simply because he is a Trump nominee.

    Whatever their reasons, they may be victorious in achieving their desired outcome.

    But it will be a Pyrrhic victory… for it will come at the expense of establishing a dangerous new standard that destroys the most important principles of Justice.

    And to continue learning how to ensure you thrive no matter what happens next in the world, I encourage you to download our free Perfect Plan B Guide.

  • NorCal Apple Store Robbery Crew Nets Over $1 Million In iBooty 

    California’s Attorney General Xavier Becerra announced Thursday that authorities had busted a robbery scheme targeting Apple stores across 19 counties. 

    Seventeen people have been indicted in the scheme, which saw over $1 million in Apple merchandise stolen across the state, from far northern Butte couinty all the way to San Diego. 22 law enforcement agencies are involved in the investigation. 

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    Seven unnamed individuals connected to the scheme were arrested in Oakland on Tuesday, according to Becerra’s office, while another suspect, Kenneth Martin Jr. of Oakland is in custody in Sonoma County around an hour north. Nine other suspects remain at large. 

    Surveillance videos show several groups of hooded suspects running into stores and grabbing Apple devices from display cases. In an August 29th incident, suspects made off with over $35,000 in merchandise. 

    The San Luis Obispo Police Department initiated the investigation following a series of thefts from Apple stores. Local law enforcement agencies from the following counties have assisted in the investigation: Alameda County, Butte County, Contra Costa County, Fresno County, Kern County, Los Angeles County, Marin County, Monterey County, Orange County, Placer County, Riverside County, Sacramento County, San Bernardino County, San Diego County, San Francisco County, San Mateo County, Santa Clara County, Sonoma County and Ventura County.

    Attorney General Becerra has filed charges for conspiracy to commit grand theft against the individuals in Fresno, Santa Clara, and Alameda Counties. –oag.ca.gov

    Police in Roseville, California arrested several suspects earlier this month, taking into custody Juwan Potter, 20, Melvin Barlow, 21, and Quincy Carter Jr., 21, according to CBS Sacramento. They are currently being held in the South Placer County Jail on suspicion of robbing the Applie Store in Roseville’s Westfield Galleria mall.

    “Organized retail thefts cost California business owners millions and expose them to copycat criminals. Ultimately, consumers pay the cost of this merchandise hijacking,” Becerra said in a statement. “We will continue our work with local law enforcement authorities to extinguish this mob mentality and prosecute these criminals to hold them accountable.“

  • Beijing Bows To US Pressure: China Top Refiner Halves Iranian Oil Imports

    Submitted by OilPrice.com

    China’s top refiner Sinopec is halving its oil imports from Iran as of September, bowing to pressure from the United States, which is seeking to bring Iranian oil exports down to zero with the sanctions returning in November, Reuters reported on Friday, quoting people familiar with the issue.

    Sinopec will reduce its imports from Iran to around 130,000 bpd, based on Reuters calculation on the prevailing supply contracts between the Chinese company and the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC).

    China has previously stated that it would not stop buying Iranian oil despite U.S. efforts to have the Iranian exports down to zero. But Beijing is also said to have agreed not to increase its oil purchases from Iran. Iran, for its part, is keen to keep its single biggest oil customer – China – when U.S. sanctions on Iranian oil exports kick in.

    Analysts have so far assumed that China will keep buying Iranian oil and be pretty much the only certain meaningful customer of Iran, because the other major buyer, India, is even more hard-pressed by the United States to wind down purchases from Tehran.

    Sinopec – listed in Hong Kong, but more importantly, also in New York – is now facing direct pressure from the United States to curtail Iranian oil imports.

    According to one of Reuters’s sources, U.S. officials visited Sinopec in Beijing in August and demanded steep reductions of oil imports from Iran.

    “This round is completely different from last time. Then it was more of a consultative tone, but this time it’s almost like an ultimatum,” the source told Reuters.

    Last month, Chinese refiners and oil traders were said to have started to switch to using Iran-owned tankers for almost all their crude oil imports from Tehran, in order to keep Iranian oil flowing to China.

    But shipping and insurance sources told Reuters on Friday that Iran faces difficulties in insuring its own ships because western re-insurance firms are quitting their Iranian businesses.

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Sep 28

Today’s News 28th September 2018

  • Slovak Police Arrest Suspects In Mafia Hit That Nearly Brought Down Government

    Seven months after Slovak investigative journalist Jan Kuciak and his girlfriend Martina Kusnirova were assassinated in what’s believed to have been a paid hit organized by an Italian organized crime group with deep ties to the Slovakian government, local police have finally arrested eight who were suspected of being involved with the killings, according to Reuters.

    Slovak

    The killings triggered a massive public backlash, as Kuciak had been working on a major story linking corrupt government officials, including former Prime Minister Robert Fico, to members of the ‘Ndrangheta, an organized crime group based in the Southern Italian region of Calabria. Thousands of Slovaks took to the streets to demand justice for Kuciak and Kusnirova, who were murdered in their apartment outside Bratislava back in February. The street demonstrations – the largest witnessed in the country since the 1989 revolution that brought down the former Communist regime – eventually forced Fico, his Interior Minister Robert Kalinak and police chief Tibor Gaspar from office. 

    However, the three-party ruling coalition led by Fico’s Smer party has managed to hang on to power, with Fico still serving as party chief.

    Police confirmed reports of the arrests to Reuters, which was initially notified via a statement from a lawyer working for Kuciak’s family

    “In the early morning hours today police detained suspects in the premeditated murder of Jan Kuciak and (his fiancee) Martina Kusnirova,” lawyer Daniel Lipsic said on Facebook.

    Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini welcomed the arrests with a social media statement on Thursday. A spokesman for the prime minister’s office said they had no additional information.

    “The investigation and punishment of those guilty of this murder is one of the priorities of my government,” Pellegrini wrote.

    Meanwhile, the corruption probe sparked by the murders – which is now the largest investigation in the country’s history – continues, with Interior Minister Denisa Sakova saying on Thursday that investigators had interviewed more than 200 people.

    Slovak

    A prosecutor said in March that the murders were likely related to Kuciak’s work. Police released a sketch of a possible witness and said they had narrowed down a list of possible motives to two. In the final story published before his murder, Kuciak published a story detailing links between figures reputedly involved an Italian organized crime figure with ties to two Slovaks who worked in Fico’s office. The men eventually resigned, but denied any links to the murder.

    Kuciak had, among other things, investigated fraud cases involving businessmen with Slovak political ties. He had also looked into suspected mafia links between Italy and businesses in Slovakia.

    Kuciak was found shot dead along with Kusnirova at their home outside Bratislava in February. They were both 27.

    In his final story, published posthumously, he reported on an Italian living in Slovakia with past business links to two Slovaks who later worked in then-prime minister Robert Fico’s office.

    Both of the Slovaks resigned but deny connections to the murder. Their Italian former business partner has also denied having connections with the mafia and the murder but was detained on a European drug trafficking warrant in March and extradited to Italy in May.

    While the street demonstrations haven’t been held since March, organizers say they plan to maintain pressure on the ruling coalition.

  • Serbian President Accuses West Of "Brutal Meddling" In Bosnia-Herzegovina's Elections

    Authored by Aleksandar Pavic via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    Western interference in all things Bosnian is hardly news. Not today, not yesterday, not 26 years ago, when the then-US ambassador to Yugoslavia, Warren Zimmerman, encouraged Bosnian Muslim fundamentalist leader Alija Izetbegovic to reject a peace plan – accepted, incidentally, by the very same Bosnian Serb leaders soon to be demonized by the unipolar West as “aggressors” on their own land – that had a good chance of preventing the outbreak of a bloody, three-and-a-half-year civil war that produced about 100,000 dead and many more wounded and homeless people in this former federal republic of ex-Yugoslavia.

    But it is news when such a charge comes out of the mouth of Serbia’s president, Aleksandar Vucic, who, although eager to keep and develop good relations with Russia and China, has over the years remade himself into an essentially pro-Western politician, whose main ambition is to integrate his country and the rest of the Balkans into the EU, torpedoes be damned.

    Thus, Vucic’s announcement that, as soon as the October 7 general elections in Bosnia were over, he would present “astonishing evidence of the most brutal interference of certain Western powers in the elections in Republika Srpska” (one of two entities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, with a majority Orthodox Serb population, taking up 49% of the country, the other being the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, dominated by Muslims and Catholic Croats), is a fairly reliable sign that the West has truly outdone itself, even by its own standards of “democracy export,” going so far, in Vucic’s words, that certain Western ambassadors were calling opposition candidates and threatening them not to switch allegiances, otherwise they would “answer both for real and imagined crimes.”

    The first accusations of US meddling in the upcoming Bosnian general elections could already be heard back in May, when the Bosnian Serb government presented evidence to the UN Secretary-General regarding US State Department and USAID media financing designed to influence the elections, to the tune of more than $12 million.

    Then in June, President of Republika Srpska Milorad Dodik similarly accused the British government, referring to its decision to send 40 intelligence specialists to, as British Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson (he of the “go away and shut up” Russia fame) put it, counter “malign external influence” – as “meddling in internal affairs” and “an act that borders on intrusion into this country.”

    In August, Dodik once again pointed his fingers at the Americans, charging that they were interfering in the upcoming elections by funneling “anti-corruption” funds to local, anti-government NGOs.

    And then in the first days of September, Dodik reproached the outgoing US ambassador to B-H, Maureen Cormack for – you guessed it – “flagrantly meddling in political processes and elections in Bosnia,” having lobbied for US sanctions against the vice-president of Dodik’s party, Nikola Spiric and his family, for alleged corruption – during the 2014 (!) election campaign.

    In Spiric’s own words, Cormack “made a desperate move 28 days before the general election in order to help her puppets from Sarajevo – the Alliance for Change.”

    Dodik went even further, opining that Cormack was, in fact, the ambassador of George Soros, and that the real reason behind the sanctions against Spiric was his “refusal to support the anti-Serbian agenda of the B-H Intelligence-Security Agency… and participate in a commission that was supposed to legalize eavesdropping” of him, current Republika Srpska Prime Minister Zeljka Cvijanovic, Serbian President Vucic and other officials of Serbia and Republika Srpska. Earlier in the month, before the sanctions against Spiric had been announced, Zeljka Cvijanovic had already publicly accused the B-H agency of illegally eavesdropping on “around 70” officials from Serbia and Republika Srpska.

    So the stage is set for, to say the least, eventful elections in the (former) unipolar world’s model democratic and multi-ethnic protectorate, Bosnia and Herzegovina, still “supervised” by a de facto viceroy in the form of a “High Representative,” with a “constitutional court” in which three of the nine judges are foreigners, and unwieldy and paralyzed institutions that are producing a “fatalistic cynicism” amongst its populace. That is, if regular elections even take place. For, there are increasing fears that there is a (naturally) Western scenario for preventing or voiding the elections in Republika Srpska in order to block the victory of Dodik and his ruling coalition.

    According to sources cited by Serbian Sputnik, two scenarios are in play:

    • according to the first, the elections would be sabotaged in advance if it was judged that Dodik is too strong,

    • while, according to the second, the election results would not be recognized should Dodik’s party gain the majority of the vote. Mass demonstrations would be incited in either case, with the lead role being played by the British, due to the “weakening” of America’s Balkan policy under Donald Trump.

    The mass demonstration scenario is not unrealistic.

    Demonstrators in varying numbers have been occupying the main square of Banja Luka, the Republika Srpska capital, for months, accusing the government of complicity in the death of 21-year old David Dragicevic, even though they have yet to produce concrete evidence (doesn’t that sound familiar) for their claims. The victim’s father has even threatened that there would be “no election in Republika Srpska until the murder of David and other children is solved.”

    The demonstrations are obviously well financed, and are supported and occasionally attended by members of the pro-Western opposition. And, considering that, on the eve of the elections, Dodik is slated to visit Russia and meet its president, Vladimir Putin (Russia has consistently upheld the integrity of B-H, as provided for by the Dayton Peace Accords of 1995, and the absolute equality of its three constituent peoples, which was reiterated during Sergey Lavrov’s recent visit to the country) it will indeed be exceedingly difficult for the end-of-history West to refrain from trying to “teach” the Balkan deplorables at least one more lesson in “democracy.” Because all the previous ones there and elsewhere – Syria, Libya, Iraq instantly come to mind – have produced such wonderful results…

  • China Slams Another "Provocative" US B-52 Flyover Above Disputed Seas

    Another incident involving US military operations over disputed waters near China has resulted in Beijing issuing a scathing condemnation of Washington amidst already soaring trade war tensions.

    China’s defense ministry on Tuesday denounced recent US-B52 bomber flyovers of the South China Sea and East China Sea, calling the military maneuvers “provocative”. Though Pentagon officials are downplaying this and prior such incidents, it demonstrates just how fast the currently escalating trade war could easily translate into a potential military “mishap” between the two countries.

    “Regarding the provocative actions of US military aircraft in the South China Sea, we are always resolutely opposed to them, and will continue to take necessary measures in order to strongly handle (this issue),” Chinese defense ministry spokesman Ren Guoqiang said before reporters, according to the AFP.

    A Pentagon spokesman quickly shot back, rejecting Chinese territorial claims which interpret its expanding man-made island chains as a natural extension of its sovereign space. The flights were part of “regularly scheduled operations,” said Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Dave Eastburn.

    The Pentagon further confirmed that its heavy bombers are operating in the area as part of combined exercises with Japan over the East and South China seas, and that flights were being conducted over recognized international airspace. US officials have over the past year repeatedly confirmed that the Air Force and Navy will “continue to fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows at times and places of our choosing.”

    Under international law, a country’s airspace is considered to be 12 nautical miles distant from the coastline of the nation, but China has used its man-made islands — on which it’s frequently stationed military assets — to lay claim to vast swathes of the South China Sea as falling under its definition of what constitutes sovereign Chinese space. 

    Beijing’s so called “nine-dash line” encircles as much as 90 percent of the contested waters in the South China see and runs up to 2,000 kilometers from the Chinese mainland and within a few hundred kilometers of Malaysia, Vietnam, and the Philippines — all within this vaguely defined zone Beijing claims as within its “historical maritime rights”.

    The UN estimates that one-third of global shipping passes through the expansive area claimed by China — and crucially there’s thought to exist significant untapped oil and natural gas reserves.

    There’s been a series of incidents over the summer involving US aircraft and ships, as well as that of regional powers like the Philippines, which have involved Chinese military warning off the foreign vessels and aircraft. 

    Previously this week China denied a US warship’s planned port visit to Hong Kong in what was a stunning symbolic rebuke in response to new tariffs enacted by the Trump administration. 

    In statements to reporters on Wednesday, US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis downplayed the threat that routine military flights through the area would itself raise tensions with China. He said while referring to the US military base in the Indian Ocean “If it was 20 years ago and they have not militarized those features there, it would have just been another bomber on its way to Diego Garcia or whatever.”

    Mattis added, “So there’s nothing out of the ordinary about it, nor about our ships sailing through there,” and said there is no “fundamental shift in anything.” He downplayed the whole incident: “We’re just going through one of those periodic points where we’ve got to learn to manage our differences,” he explained. 

    However, Mattis’ words aren’t too comforting when all of this comes within the context of a US-led trade war that Trump reportedly plans to make “unprecedentedly large” and “unbearably painful” for Beijing.

  • The "Pivots" To The Coming Era Can Already Be Discerned

    Authored by Alastair Crooke via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    In his autobiography, Carl Jung tells of “a moment of unusual clarity”, during which he had a strange dialogue with something inside him: In what myth does man live nowadays, his inner-self enquired? “In the Christian myth: Do you live in it?” (Jung asked of himself. And to be honest with himself, the answer that he gave was ‘no’): “For me, it is not what I live by.” Then do we no longer have any myth, asked his inner-self? “No”, Jung replied, “evidently not”. Then what is it, by which you live, his inner-self demanded? “At this point the dialogue with myself, became uncomfortable. I stopped thinking. I had reached a dead end”, Jung concluded.

    Many today, feel similarly. They feel the void. The post-war era – perhaps it is the European Enlightenment phenomenon, itself – that has run its course, people believe. Some regret it; many more are disturbed by it – and wonder what is next.

    We live in a moment of the waning of two major projects: the decline of revealed religion, and – simultaneously – of the discrediting of the experience of secular Utopia. We live in a world littered with the debris of utopian projects which – though they were framed in secular terms, that denied the truth of religion – were in fact, vehicles for religious myth.

    The Jacobin revolutionaries launched the Terror as a violent retribution for élite repression — inspired by Rousseau’s Enlightenment humanism; the Trotskyite Bolsheviks murdered millions in the name of reforming humanity through Scientific Empiricism; the Nazis did similar, in the name of pursuing ‘Scientific (Darwinian) Racism’.

    The American millenarian ‘myth’, then and now, was (and is), rooted in the fervent belief in the Manifest Destiny of the United States, and is, in the last resort, nothing other than one particular example in a long line of attempts to force a shattering discontinuity in history (through which human society would then subsequently, be re-made). 

    In other words, all these utopian projects – all these successors to apocalyptic Judaic and Christian myth – saw a collective humankind pursuing its itinerary to a point of convergence, and to some sort of End Time (or End to History).

    Well … we do not live these myths now: Even secular utopia will no longer ‘do’. It will not fill the void. The optimistic certitudes connected with the idea of linear ‘progress’ have become particularly discredited. So, by what will we live? This is no esoteric debate. These are questions of history, and destiny.

    The élites decry anything ‘alt’ – as ‘populism’ or ‘illiberalism’. Yet they decline to see what is before them: Certain values are emerging. What are they? And from where do they come? And how might they change our World?

    The most obvious ‘value’ is the emerging global desire to live in, and by, one’s own culture — to live, as it were, in a differentiated cultural way. It is a notion of cultures, autonomous and sovereign, which seek to re-capture a particular culture – in its traditional setting of history, religiosity, and ties of blood, land and language. The immigration issue, which is rending Europe apart, is the obvious example of this.

    What this ‘value’ is intimating however, is not simple tribalism, but also a different way of envisaging sovereignty. It encompasses within it the idea that sovereignty is acquired, through acting, and thinking sovereign. That sovereign power grows out from the confidence of a people having its own distinct and clear history, its intellectual legacy and its own spiritual storehouse on which to draw – by which to differentiate itself.

    We are talking here, of a secure ‘alive’ culture being the root to both personal and communal sovereignty. It is a clear rejection of the idea that ‘melting pot’ cosmopolitanism, can procreate any true sovereignty.

    It is, of course, the converse to the globalist notion of a ‘mankind’ converging on common values, converging on a single, neutral, apolitical ‘way of being’. ‘Man’ – in that way – in the old European tradition, simply did not exist. There were only men: Greeks, Romans, barbarians, Syrians, and so on. This notion stands in obvious opposition to universal, cosmopolitan ‘man’. The recovery of this type of thinking, for example, lies behind Russia and China’s Eurasian notion.

    A second emerging value is derived from the global disenchantment with the western style of mechanical, single-track thinking that attenuates all things to an (supposedly empirically derived) singularity of meaning, which, when seated in the ego, lends an unshakeable sense of one’s own certainty and conviction (to the West European thinker, at least): ‘We’ speak ‘truth’, whereas others, babble and lie.

    The obverse – the old European tradition – is conjunctive thinking. Do guilt, injustice, contradiction and suffering exist in this world? They do, proclaims Heraclitus, but only for the limited mind that sees things apart (disjunctively), and not connectedly, and notcon-tuitively linked: a term which implies not a ‘grasping’ for meaning but, rather, to be gently and powerfully ‘grasped’ by meaning.

    What has this to do with today’s world? Well this is how the neo-Confucianist, Chinese leadership think today. The idea of Yin and Yang, and their latency for creating and being in harmony, still underlies Chinese notions of politics, and conflict resolution. Ditto for Shi’a philosophy and Russian Eurasianism. This used to be how Europeans thought, too: For Heraclitus, all polar opposites co-constitute each other, and run into harmony in ways that are invisible to the human eye.

    This ‘other’ perspective precisely lies behind the multilateral Global Order value. The acceptance of a multi-aspectual quality to any person, or people, escapes the prevailing obsession to reduce every nation to a singularity in value, and to a singularity of ‘meaning’. The ground for collaboration and conversation thus widens beyond ‘the either-or’ – to the differing strata of complex identities (and interests). It is, in a word, tolerant.

    Then there are other values: Pursuit of justice, truth (in a metaphysical sense), integrity, dignified, manly conduct and knowing and accepting who you are. These were all eternal values.

    And here is the point: The disappearance in modernity of any external norm or ‘myth’, beyond civic conformity, which might guide the individual in his or her life and actions; and the enforced eviction of the individual from any form of structure (social classes, Church, family, society and gender) has made a ‘turning back’ to that which was always latent, if only half remembered, somehow inevitable.

    The yearning for these ancient norms – even if only poorly understood, and articulated – represents a ‘reaching down’ into those ancient ‘storehouses’, still lingering at the deepest levels of the human being — A ‘turning back’ to being ‘in, and of’ the world, again. This is happening in diverse modes, across the globe.

    Of course, ‘the Ancient’ cannot be an ad integrum return. It cannot be the simple restoration of what once was. It has to be brought forward – as if ‘a youth’ who is coming ‘home’ again – the eternal return – out of our own decomposition; from amidst our ruins.

    True, but nonetheless these new-old ideas will impinge, will challenge the existing liberal world. Our present economic framework largely was inherited from Adam Smith. And what was it if nothing other than a direct translation of the political philosophy of John Locke and John Hume (Smith’s close friend)? And what was Locke and Hume’s thinking, if not the narrative, in political and economic terms, of the Protestant victory over the Catholic idea of a religious community – in the wake of Westphalia?

    Inevitably then, different values dictate different models: What sort of models do the emerging values then foreshadow?

    Firstly, we can see a shift in the non-West, away from ‘identity and gender’ blurring, and a return to a differentiated clarity in these aspects, to the centrality of family, and of the need to give esteem to all, whatever their place, in the hierarchy of life. In governance, as in economics, the guiding ‘value’ is a different understanding of power. The Latin Christian myth of love, turning the other cheek, humility, and retreat from worldly-power stands in contradistinction to the ancient notion of ‘manly’ conduct that preached something quite different: Resist injustice, and pursue your ‘truth’. It was therefore naturally political, and was possessed of an ethos in which power was a normal attribute.

    This ancient expression of power has arisen today through the insight that a people which is mentally ‘active’ has activated its vitality and has cultural strength, may prevail against a hugely richer and better armed state – yet one, that has put its people into gentle sleep – and robbed it of vitality.

    Thus, whether in governance or in economics, the structures are likely to reflect the principles of autonomy and the re-sovereigntisation of nation and people, and the notion that the organisation of society was always intended to be the natural field for the self-expansion of a man or a woman – a man capable of finding his own power, and finding himself – as his own project. 

    What is striking is that we see that these last twin principles (which may seem ostensibly in tension), precisely are instantiating themselves in current politics – albeit coming from totally different quarters: In Italy, the Five Star movement (seen as Leftish) is in government with the Lega (viewed as Rightish).

    Of course many will say simply TINA (there is no alternative). But plainly there is – and that ‘train’ is already arriving at our station now.

  • Mapping The Most Profitable Industry In Each US State

    Diversification is a broadly accepted investment strategy designed to hedge against risk. If you invest all your money in one company or one industry, you flirt with disaster during an economic downturn. With that in mind, HowMuch.net asks, does the US have a diverse economy? Their new map reveals that the answer is both yes and no…

    Source: HowMuch.net

    We found the numbers for our visualization from GoBankingRates, which analyzed 2017 US Census Bureau data to determine the value of each industry’s products. They defined industries using Harmonized System (HS) codes from the World Customs Organization. We color-coded each state based on its most lucrative sector, and we added a nice logo and the dollar amount for easy reference. The output is an intuitive map with a few surprising, and a few predictable, results.

    Let’s start by pointing out the industries you might expect to predominate in certain states. Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana significantly benefit from car manufacturing in and around the Motor City. South Carolina and Alabama also stand out as states with a strong automotive presence since they are destinations for in-sourcing as car makers look for cheaper (non-unionized) labor. A few states surrounding Nebraska are major meat producers, which shouldn’t catch anyone by surprise, given the region’s strong agricultural bent. Alaska and Maine likewise benefit from a substantial fishing industry. Nevada is the only state where the most profitable industry involves accommodations and food service. Viva Las Vegas!

    There are a number of surprises on our map, too. Who knew that the most profitable industry in Kansas is aerospace ($2.6B)? The same goes for Arkansas, Georgia, and Kentucky. And take a look at all the states colored purple, where machinery and mechanical appliances predominate – who knew that Florida, Idaho, and Illinois have so much in common?

    The overarching takeaway from our map is a little unnerving. We read all the time about how diversification is the best guard against risk. And based on our map, the US economy is diverse in some regions but not very diverse in others. In fact, 27 out of 50 US states are led by only three industries (machinery, aerospace, and mineral products), accounting for just under $1.7T in value. That means that when certain segments undergo technological disruption or economic downturns, it can disproportionately impact sections of the country in ways people don’t expect.

    Data: Table 1.1 

  • Senate Insider: Kavanaugh Votes Secured

    After an emotional day of testimony on Capitol Hill, a late Thursday report from Townhall citing a Senate insider reveals that Brett Kavanaugh has the votes to make it out of committee and will be confirmed on the floor for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. 

    Sens. Flake (R-AZ), Collins (R-ME), Murkowski (R-AK), and Manchin (D-WV) are expected to vote in favor of Kavanaugh. All the Republicans are voting yes. Also, in the rumor mill, several Democrats may break ranks and back Kavanaugh. That’s the ball game, folks. –Townhall

    Thursday’s proceedings saw a rollercoaster of emotions from both Brett Kavanaugh and his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford – who claims he groped her at a high school party in 1982. 

    Ford’s testimony was considered compelling, with Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) calling her an “attractive, good witness,” however betting site PredictIt showed Kavanaugh’s odds of confirmation steadily climbing after ranking minority leader Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) laid out Ford’s case. He stands at 74% as of this writing. 

    PredictIt

    Kavanaugh, on the other hand, shook the building with righteous indignation – slamming Democrats for smearing his family name and his lifetime of achievements. His opening statement was gripping and emotional – with Kavanaugh breaking down into tears several times, and seething with rage during other pivotal moments – such as when he excoriated Feinstein for withholding Ford’s letter from the committee for several weeks before it was leaked to the press. 

    Feinstein was taken aback, and immediately pivoted to a softer tact which was ultimately not convincing. The Democrats attempted several times to corner Kavanaugh on why he hasn’t advocated for an FBI investigation into the allegations against him, to which Kavanaugh stated several times that this would ultimately be unproductive since the agency doesn’t render an opinion, which was the Judiciary Committee’s job. 

    Kavanaugh’s opening statement has already been made into a commercial: 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    And his entire opening statement: 

    Undoubtedly contributing to pro-Kavanaugh sentiment among GOP Committee members was Senator Lindsey Graham’s fiery condemnation of the Democrats for turning the Supreme Court hearing into a circus. 

    Democrats are now suggesting that Kavanaugh isn’t fit for the Supreme Court because of his emotional testimony over accusations that will hang over his head for the rest of his life, confirmed or not. 

    With no evidence, no corroborating witnesses, and the timing of the allegation, these allegations against an eminently qualified judge were just too thin to stop the Kavanaugh train. Remember Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s (D-CA) office had Ford’s letter since July. They sat on it for weeks. They kept it from Senate colleagues. And then they dropped it at the 11th hour in the hope of derailing the nomination. It was a Hail Mary pass—and it failed miserably. –Townhall

    Kavanaugh’s Senate confirmation vote is scheduled for Friday morning at 9:30 a.m.

  • What Was In The Envelope That Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee Slipped To Kavanaugh Accuser's Lawyer?

    A curious thing happened on Christine Blasey Ford’s way out of Congressional testimony today – when Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) handed Ford’s lawyer, Michael Bromwich, a thick envelope after shaking hands. 

    Watch: 

    Ford’s attorneys told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday that they are representing her on a pro bono basis.

    During questions from staff lawyer Rachel Mitchell as to who was paying her legal bills, Bromwich interjected “Both her counsel are doing this pro bono.” Furthermore, Ford was unable to explain who paid for – or will pay for – her polygraph.

    Update: According to Lee’s office and reported by Houston’s KHOUhttps://www.khou.com/article/news/politics/whats-in-the-envelope-rep-sheila-jackson-lee-gave-to-fords-attorney-during-kavanaugh-hearings/285-598884783, “Simply, what was passed were unopened stationery notes to counsel for Dr. Ford from women who wanted to enter the hearing room but were not allowed to enter the hearing room.”

     

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  • Regulator Tasked With Preventing Another Crisis Is Slashing Headcount

    The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), tasked with monitoring the complex derivatives that catalyzed the 2008 financial crisis, is now being forced to shrink its headcount due to lack of funding. The CFTC is reportedly offering some of its employees buyouts and early retirements after it has been refused years of requests for increased funding. The agency reportedly has over 700 employees.

    The CFTC started to inform some workers last month that it would be giving them as much as $25,000 to leave. These email communications were reported by Bloomberg. The agency is also trying to encourage some employees to consider an early retirement which would, in some cases, allow employees to keep their benefits.

    Prior to the 2008 collapse, the CFTC was widely held to be somewhat of an afterthought. Back then, it was only primarily in charge of regulating agricultural futures. This changed after Congress bestowed upon the agency the responsibility of overseeing the swaps market after a global economic near-meltdown made it clear how dangerous these derivatives could be. The government likely felt like it had to do – well, something – to help justify almost $1 trillion in bailouts.

    The CFTC’s $249 million budget, however, hasn’t grown in size proportion what what the agency is responsible for today. For instance, the agency is now also tasked with regulating cryptocurrency derivatives after CME and CBOE both started to offer bitcoin futures last December. The head of the agency, Chairman J. Christopher Giancarlo, who was put into his position by President Trump, hasn’t been able to successfully lobby for more money since he started last year.

    Erica Elliott Richardson, the CFTC’s director of public affairs, told Reuters back in May:

    “We are absolutely astounded by the decrease in the CFTC’s budget. Chairman Giancarlo takes this budget decrease incredibly personally, and is currently meeting with our finance team to figure out a path forward for the agency.”

    That path forward seems to now be forcing employees out the door. According to Bloomberg, agency buyouts are only eligible for those who have had three years of continuous service in the federal government. Early retirement can be qualified for by having at least 20 years of government experience and being at least 50 years old. Additionally, any worker with 25 years of government service is eligible, regardless of age.

    Back in July of this year, we reported on the CFTC’s award of $30 million to a J.P. Morgan whistleblower who pointed out information proving that the bank neglected to inform its wealthy asset-management clients about conflicts of interest involving the bank’s investment recommendations.

    Once again, the Achilles heel of over-regulation rears its head: everything costs money. Theoretically, the more the government chooses to police the markets, the less effective and less cost efficient they may become. The CFTC making staff cuts with arguably the most responsibility its ever had is just another soon-to-be-forgotten brick in the wall of examples. 

  • The Global Housing Bubble Is Biggest In These Cities

    Three years ago, when UBS looked at the world’s most expensive housing markets, it found that London and Hong Kong were the only two areas exposed to bubble risk.

    What a difference just a few short years makes, because in the latest report by UBS Sealth Management which compiles the bank’s Global Real Estate Bubble Index, it found that six of the world’s largest cities are now subject to a massive speculative housing bubble. And while still unnaturally low mortgage rates are to blame for the rapid ascent of home prices, investors and offshore money laundering operators – especially in Canada – continue to play a role, as their favorite markets of Vancouver, Toronto and Hong Kong all made this year’s list.

    Bubble risk appears greatest in Hong Kong, Munich, Toronto, Vancouver, London and Amsterdam. Major imbalances also characterize Stockholm, Paris, San Francisco, Frankfurt and Sydney.

    This year’s study highlights increasingly strained affordability. Buying a small apartment in most world cities exceeds the budget of most people who earn the average annual income paid in the highly skilled service sector.

    Prices continue to soar, but in half of the cities in the study, housing markets are booming with inflation-adjusted prices rising at least 5% in the last four quarters. However, in the other half of the cities house prices were stalling or declining.

    According to UBS – if not Ben Bernanke – the typical signs of a housing bubble include real estate prices rising out of sync with incomes, as well as economic imbalances like excessive lending and construction activity. However, unlike the boom of the mid-2000s, there’s no evidence of simultaneous excesses in lending and construction, the report said, and outstanding mortgage volumes are growing at about half of the rate of the pre-crisis period.

    “Although many financial centers remain at risk of a housing bubble, we should not compare today’s situation with pre-crisis conditions,” Mark Haefele, chief investment officer at UBS Global Wealth Management, said in a statement.

    That will hardly comfort all those millions of residents in the bubble cities who continues to find themselves priced out of the market. That said, there was some good news: while housing bubbles are still pervasive, the rate of price increases is slowing:

    Inflation-adjusted city prices increased by 3.5% on average over the last four quarters, considerably less than in previous years but still above the 10-year average. They remained on an explosive uptrend in the largest Eurozone economic centers, as well as in Hong Kong or Vancouver. But the first cracks in the boom’s foundation have begun appearing: house prices declined in half of last year’s bubble risk cities.

    As UBS warns, fewer and fewer resident households can afford to buy their own home. The crowding out of long-time residents from their local housing markets by foreign investors is triggering political reactions. This is observed most directly in Canada, Australia and New Zealand where recent regulations have emerged making it difficult for foreign buyers to snap up local real estate.

    Foreign and buy-to-let investors are the main group being targeted by new regulatory measures. It is becoming more difficult, more expensive and in some cases outright impossible for them to acquire residential space. Especially in the luxury market, regulatory intervention can bring demand to a standstill and trigger a price correction.

    So if not regular people then who is buying up the real estate? Answer: investors, who have outperformed stocks by buying housing and renting it back out.

    Over the past five years, owner-occupied homes have been a good investment: the median total return of the most important financial centers was 10% annually, accounting for an imputed rental income and book profits from rising prices. So “golden concrete” has seemingly outperformed the stock markets.

    According to UBS, Chicago was the only undervalued housing market in the 20-city index, while Milan, Singapore and Boston are deemed fairly valued. Ten cities, from New York to Sydney to Stockholm, are overvalued, while six are in bubble-risk territory, with Hong Kong’s market the most inflated. Still, some questions about the methodology linger: just a year ago, New York had been scored as fairly valued (it is now seen as “overvalued”).

    As UBS further notes, last year the house price boom in key cities was already losing intensity and scope. Inflation-adjusted prices declined in almost half of the cities analyzed, which prompted UBS to warn that returns of owner-occupied homes in the next few years is questionable.

    Yet while home prices may not be rising quite as fast as in recent years, houses in these cities remain out of reach for most ordinary homebuyers as prices in major cities have increased by 35% on average in the last 5 years:

    Over the course of the last five years, house prices in major cities have increased by 35% on average. In San Francisco, Munich and Vancouver price growth was double the average. Overall, the price boom has not been spectacular, but it has been broad-based. Until recently nearly all the cities enjoyed rising house prices, something seen in the late 1980s and before the 2008 market crash. This exceptional breadth of the current house price boom has various roots. Easy financing conditions boosted demand almost everywhere. Major cities profited from the growing importance of the digital economy and the wider trend toward urbanization. Finally, the number of wealthy households searching for safe assets in the most attractive residential areas surged.

    Why are most housing market inaccessible to mere mortals? Simple: incomes aren’t climbing fast enough to keep up with the price appreciation in many areas. For example, it would take a skilled service worker in Hong Kong 22 years of their average annual income to buy a 60-square-meter (650-square-foot) apartment near the city center. A decade ago it was 12 years.

    Meanwhile, the U.S. has managed to avoid UBS’s bubble territory, and a repeat of the 2007 housing crisis, for now…even though markets like San Francisco and Los Angeles look set to give it another try…

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Sep 27

Today’s News 27th September 2018

  • US And Turkey "Quietly" Making Progress At "Highest Levels" On Release Of American Pastor

    A new report in Middle East Eye says Pastor Andrew Brunson could very soon be released from Turkish detention after months of immense US pressure on Ankara has sent the Turkish lira into a nosedive.

    In the past weeks the issue has been out of the public eye compared to the heated and seemingly constant back and forth between US and Turkish leaders concerning the detained American citizen over the summer. 

    The new report, citing Turkish and US government sources, suggests the relative cooling down in public statements surrounding Brunson’s fate is due to behind the scenes progress being made in the case. Notably, President Trump did not once mention Turkey or the Brunson issue during his major speech before the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, after being very vocal in prior months. 

    Andrew Brunson has been held in Turkey since 2016. Image source: AP

    According to Middle East Eye:

    But the shrill tone and tit-for-tat tariff slapping has lulled lately.

    The calm, according to a Turkish diplomat, comes after Ankara, under pressure to stem the country’s economic freefall, told Washington that the conflict could only be resolved if the public squabbling stopped.

    The Turkish diplomat said further, “We knew we had to solve the problem and normalize our relations with the US for the sake of Turkey’s economy, but it was not possible to do that amid challenging statements.” He continued, “So we both decided to prevent any more escalation and solve the problem quietly.”

    Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan mentioned in statements this week that Pastor Brunson’s fate is a judicial matter, distancing himself from the contentious issue which effectively led to a summer long diplomatic war with Washington, resulting in the Turkish lira losing more than 45 percent of its value this year.

    There was a moment of hope this week, however, when on Monday US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters at the UN General Assembly that Brunson could be released this month, immediately after which the lira value jumped to a one-week high.

    “As the president, I don’t have the right to order his release. Our judiciary is independent. Let’s wait and see what the court will decide,” Erdogan told Reuters on Wednesday. Erdogan also claimed the severely ailing economy had nothing to do with the diplomatic feud with the US: “The Brunson case is not even closely related to Turkey’s economy. The current economic challenges have been exaggerated more than necessary and Turkey will overcome these challenges with its own resources,” he said.

    Meanwhile a US diplomat confirmed that the Brunson case is being discussed at “the highest levels” between Washington and Ankara. 

    “There is a will on both sides to solve this problem,” the American diplomat told Middle East Eye. “We both want to leave this problem behind and focus on other areas to further our cooperation; especially Manbij, trade relations, and so on.”

    Pastor Brunson, a 50-year-old evangelical pastor from Black Mountain, North Carolina was detained starting in 2016, and is undergoing trial in Turkey while under “house arrest” and is facing charges of espionage and aiding terrorist groups after being accused of cooperating with “Kurdish terrorists” and colluding with the Gulenist Islamic movement to mount a failed coup against Erdogan in 2016. He faces up to 35 years in prison if found guilty, and has now been in Turkish custody for two years. 

    Trump has made it a personal mission to free Brunson, previously issuing statements via Twitter condemning his detention. For example last July, Trump stated, while addressing the Turkish president directly: “A total disgrace that Turkey will not release a respected U.S. Pastor, Andrew Brunson, from prison. He has been held hostage far too long. Erdogan should do something to free this wonderful Christian husband & father. He has done nothing wrong, and his family needs him.”

    Congress has also held up transfer of F-35 fighters which were set to be delivered to Turkey, citing its horrible human rights record and the detention of Brunson. 

    It appears that Turkey has now been brought to breaking point as it seeks to revive the nosediving lira, but will seek to keep its acquiescence to the White House as quiet as possible. 

  • A "Perfect Storm" Surrounds One Of The Worst Ebola Outbreaks In History Right Now

    Authored by Daisy Luther via The Organic Prepper blog,

    An Ebola outbreak that has been going on in the Democratic Republic of Congo since August is already one of the worst in history – the 7th worst to be precise – and it looks like it may spiral out of control. Peter Salama, WHO Deputy Director-General for Emergency Preparedness and Response, called the situation “a perfect storm.”

    Unrest and war in the region combined with community resistance and mistrust of medical personnel are making it difficult for the World Health Organization to get a handle on the outbreak. Dr. Salama said:

    “We are now extremely concerned, that several factors may be coming together over the next weeks to months to create a potential perfect storm. A perfect storm of active conflict, limiting our ability to access civilians, distress by segments of the community, already traumatized by decades of conflict and of murder…

    …We’ve seen attacks now on August 24, September 3, 9, 11, 16, 21 and most recently and most dramatically September 22 in the city itself of Beni,” he said. He said that Beni was the base for the agency’s base for the “entire operation.” (source)

    The outbreak is based in North Kivu, which is on the border of Uganda and Rwanda. Violence has displaced more than a million people in the area, and there have been a number of brutal machete attacks against civilians. Things got so bad that the WHO was forced to cease their operations for an entire week while the Ebola virus spread.

    One of the armed groups in DRC which pose a threat to civilians and the international response to Ebola, the ADF – Allied Democratic Forces – has sufficient military capacity to ambush blue helmets from the UN’a Stabilization Mission in DRC (MONUSCO) and government forces – the FARDC.

    “The ADF in particular has enormous capabilities,” Dr Salama said. “They’ve been able to overrun entire FARDC-bases in and around Beni, they’ve been able to ambush (UN) forces.” (source)

    ADF is an Islamist group that is a serious threat to the Congolese government as well as relief workers.

    If WHO and its partners had to leave North Kivu … we would have grave concerns that this outbreak would not be able to be well controlled in the coming weeks or months.” (source)

    But it isn’t only violence and war that are factors in this “perfect storm.”

    Local traditions are making it the Ebola outbreak more likely to spread.

    The local traditions in the Congo are making relief efforts more difficult.

    …“We’ve heard this morning, that that ‘ville morte’, which was yesterday, has now been extended right through to Friday of this week,” he said, “which basically means for the UN family, including WHO, a lockdown in Beni. Our operations are in effect suspended.”

    …Butembo could also declare a “ville morte” in coming days in sympathy with the people of Beni, he said, potentially increasing the chances of the situation deteriorating rapidly.

    “If we do see unsafe burials that can’t be responded to and symptomatic people that can’t be accessed, we can see this situation deteriorating very quickly,” Dr. Salama said.

    A “ville morte” is a period of mourning.

    Local politicians are manipulating the public so they’re afraid to be treated.

    Meanwhile, it’s an election year in the area and local politicians are taking full advantage of this crisis.

    In addition to many people’s fear of Ebola, the WHO senior official explained that the situation was being further complicated by local politicians who “exploited and manipulated” them prior to upcoming elections.

    Social media reaction to the outbreak was also adding to a “range of conspiracy theories”, Dr Salama said, adding that people have been “actively fleeing” health-workers, including in places where there have been a large number of cases in recent weeks. (source)

    “Pockets of resistance” against treatment, fueled by the politicians, are making it difficult to get a handle on new cases. Terrified people are running away from workers into areas that are inaccessible due to security concerns.

    We also see a very concerning trend. That resistance, driven by quite natural fear of this terrifying disease, is starting to be exploited by local politicians, and we’re very concerned in the run up to elections, projected for December, that exploitation… will gather momentum and make it very difficult to root out the last cases of Ebola.”

    Some people were fleeing into the forest to escape Ebola follow-up treatment and checks, sometimes moving hundreds of kilometers, he said…

    …social media posts were conflating Ebola with criticism of the DRC government and the United Nations and “a range of conspiracy theories”, which could put health workers at risk. (source)

    This fear of treatment is something we’ve seen numerous times. During the last outbreak, families literally broke into treatment facilities and took their ailing family members who were diagnosed with active Ebola to prayer meetings, where they died in the most contagious stages of the disease.

    The disease is now threatening Uganda

    Thus far, there are no cases of Ebola in Uganda, but worry has spiked as a case was confirmed near the border at a popular destination for Ugandans.

    Tchomia landing site is the closest Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) landing site to Ugandan districts in the Bunyoro sub-region On Friday, Ituri province vice governor Keta Upar said in a statement that the latest Ebola case had been reported in Tchomia.

    Tchomia is one of the busiest fish markets in eastern DRC and attracts several Ugandan businessmen from the landing sites of Butiaba, Walukoba, Kijangi, Kaiso,Sebigoro, Nkondo, Ndaiga, Ntoroko, Kyehoro and Fofo from the districts of Hoima, Buliisa, Kikuube, Ntoroko and Kagadi.

    Usually, Ugandan businessmen cross to Tchomia market on a weekly basis – posing a big threat that the Ebola outbreak can easily be brought into the country. Tchoima fish market operates every Thursday. (source)

    Ugandan officials have stepped up screening at the border.

    Screening of people crossing from DRC for signs and symptoms of Ebola is being conducted at official and unofficial points of entry. Communities have been sensitised about Ebola and are vigilant and reporting any suspicious cases for investigation. (source)

    Here’s a map that shows the area and where the case was diagnosed.

    It’s encouraging to see that Uganda is not allowing political correctness to sway them from doing the right thing for their people. We can only hope that the United States will do the same in a time where deadly diseases can spread so easily. Physical check-ups of people from areas where epidemics are out of control should be the norm, not a unique thing that is protested loudly.

    At least 100 people have died.

    The current outbreak is the 7th largest in history.

    In the past two months, 150 cases have been confirmed or “probable” and as of Sept. 23, 100 people had died.

    The worst-case scenario is that the Ebola virus continues to spread in North Kivu and moves across the border to other countries. If that happens, we could be facing a nightmare like the 2014-15 Ebola epidemic, during which more than 11,000 people died. The only good news: This time we have an effective vaccine. (source)

    As of Monday, 80% of Ebola contacts and three suspected cases could not be reached for disease monitoring.

  • Asia Development Bank Warns US-China Trade War Could Trigger 2019 Asia Slowdown

    The Asian Development Bank (ADB) warned on Wednesday that growth prospects for Asia next year could slow substantially as the US-China trade war disrupts multinational corporations’ supply chains, inflicting damage on the region’s export-reliant economies.

    Peak quantitative easing policies have been realized; central bank asset purchases $1.6tn in 2016, $2.3tn in 2017, $0.3tn in 2018, and will decline $0.2tn in 2019. It is late-cycle, and the Federal Reserve is tightening, which explains why global stocks are down YTD ex. US tech. Meanwhile, global liquidity is rapidly shrinking, and that has become a significant concern for Asian business activity by pushing up borrowing costs, while capital outflows are also a risk.

    Reuters said the Manila-based institution kept its 2018 economic growth forecast for the region unchanged at 6.0% in an update of its Asian Development Outlook. But slashed next year’s projection to 5.8% from 5.9%.

    “Downside risks to the outlook are intensifying”, said ADB Chief Economist Yasuyuki Sawada, pointing to the potential impact of US-China trade tensions on regional supply chains and the risk of sudden capital outflows if the Federal Reserve continues hiking interest rates.

    The ADB’s growth cut to 5.8%  estimate for 2019 would be the slowest for the region since the Dotcom bust (2001) when it expanded 4.9%. The report covers a total of 45 countries in the Asia-Pacific region.

    Additionally, Reuters said ADB’s revised outlook for 2019 had not factored in President Trump’s recently implemented tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods imposed on Monday. 

    The domestic economy in China “seems to be quite robust and supporting 6.6% growth this year”, Sawada told the press. “But admittedly we don’t know (how) the further escalation of the trade dispute may directly affect consumer sentiment.”

    Beijing fixed its 2018 growth target to 6.5%, similar to 2017, which it beat by expanding at 6.9%. Despite the trade war, Chinese authorities have stayed the course for 2018 growth target, as new easing measures have been introduced to prevent an already cooling economy.

    In a recent BofA report titled “The Thundering World,” the profit outlook has become more negative for world risk assets. Global EPS has peaked; was 22% in February, now 16%. One leading indicator of global profits is Korean exports, which predicts an imminent global slowdown.

    ADB said weakness in Southeast Asia is expected: beware moderating export growth, quickening inflation, net capital outflows and a worsening balance of payments, with growth this year projected to slow to 5.1% from the July forecast of 5.2%.

    “Policymakers have at their disposal an array of policy tools with which to manage pockets of vulnerability and maintain stability, but they must be applied carefully,” Sawada said.

    Sawada said Asian governments have “enough policy space to handle” shocks and pressure from currency depreciation.

    A perfect storm of trade wars and quantitative tightening is brewing in the world, and it could soon lead to a sudden growth shock in the Eastern hemisphere, in 2019. 

    So what happens next? A possible 2019 slowdown in Asia could trigger a repricing event in the US, as the gap between US equities and global stocks is wide. 

  • Kavanaugh Mayhem: Two Men Cop To Feeling Christine Ford's Breasts, Contradicting Her Accusation

    The Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday night released a time of their efforts to responded to various accusations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh – including two men who say they they were the basis for the “groping” allegation. 

    The claims also include a new allegation from a San Diego woman who alleges that Kavanaugh and others raped her in the backseat of a car, though it does not specify the place, date or identities of the alleged accomplices. 

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    Last week, former Scalia clerk Ed Whelan floated a theory over Twitter in a series of now-deleted tweets, suggesting that Blasey Ford had confused Kavanaugh with another high school student who looked almost identical to him. Ford claims “there is zero chance that I would confuse him.” 

    And earlier Wednesday, another Kavanaugh accuser – Julie Swetnick, had an ominous cloud of doubt cast over her allegation that the Supreme Court nominee and a friend were operating a date-rape “gang bang” operation at 10 high school parties she attended as a legal adult three years older than Kavanaugh (yet didn’t report once).

    Politico reports that Swetnick’s ex-boyfriend, Richard Vinneccy – a registered Democrat, took out a restraining order against her, and says he has evidence that she’s lying. 

    “Right after I broke up with her, she was threatening my family, threatening my wife and threatening to do harm to my baby at that time,” Vinneccy said in a telephone interview with POLITICO. “I know a lot about her.” –Politico

    “I have a lot of facts, evidence, that what she’s saying is not true at all,” he said. “I would rather speak to my attorney first before saying more.”

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    Avenatti called the claims “outrageous” and hilariously accused the press of “digging into the past” of a woman levying a claim against Kavanaugh from over 35 years ago. 

    Meanwhile, Swetnick has now been linked to Blasey Ford – as she utilized the law firm run by Ford to sue her previous employer, New York Life Insurance Co. for sexual harassment. 

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    Ford and Kavanaugh are scheduled to testify before the Judiciary Committee on Thursday. If it even happens at this point, will one – or both of the “mystery gropers” make an appearance?

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  • The Battle For Our Minds

    Authored by Patrick Lawrence via ConsortiumNews.com,

    There are battlefields in Syria, Ukraine, Yemen, and elsewhere, but given the state of corporate media, perhaps the most consequential battle now being fought is for our minds…

    After reading The New York Times piece “The Plot to Subvert an Election” I put the paper down with a single question.

    Why, after two years of allegations, indictments, and claims to proof of this, that, and the other did the newspaper of record—well, once the newspaper of record—see any need to publish such a piece? My answer is simple: The orthodox account of Russia-gate has not taken hold: It has failed in its effort to establish a consensus of certainty among Americans. My conclusion matches this observation: The orthodox narrative is never going to achieve this objective. There are too many holes in it.

    “The information age is actually a media age,” John Pilger, the noted British–Australian journalist, remarked during a symposium four years ago, when the Ukraine crisis was at its peak.

    “We have war by media; censorship by media; demonology by media; retribution by media; diversion by media—a surreal assembly line of obedient clichés and false assumptions.”

    Pilger revisited the theme in a piece last week on Consortium News, arguing that once-tolerated, dissenting opinion has in recent years “regressed into a metaphoric underground.”

    There are battlefields in Syria, Ukraine, Yemen, and elsewhere, but perhaps the most consequential battle now being fought is for our minds.

    Those who dispense with honest intellectual inquiry, healthy skepticism of all media, and an insistence that assertions require supporting evidence should not win this war. The Times piece by Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti—two of the paper’s top-tier reporters—is a case in point: If the Russia-gate narrative were so widely accepted as their report purports, there would have been no need to publish such a piece at this late date.

    Many orthodox narratives are widely accepted however among a public that is not always paying attention. The public too often participates in the manufactured consent. Usually it take years for the truth to be widely understood. Sometimes it comes when the U.S. admits it decades later, such as the role of the CIA in the coups in Iran and Chile. Other times it comes through admissions by former U.S. officials, such as former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara about the Vietnam War.

    Even Recent Narratives are Fraying

    There are more recent examples of official narratives quickly fraying if not starting to fall apart, though Establishment media continues to push them.

    For instance, there are serious doubts about who was responsible for alleged chemical weapons attacks in Syria. The most significant was in Eastern Ghouta in August 2013 followed by attacks in Khan Sheikhoun (April 2017) and Douma (April 2018).

    The corporate media accounts of each of these attacks have been countered with persuasive evidence against the prevailing view that the government of Bashar al–Assad was to blame. It has been provided journalists (Seymour Hersh ), a scientist (Theodore Postol ), and on-the-ground correspondents and local witnesses. These reports are subject to further verification. But by no means do official narratives stand without challenge.

    There is also the case of Malaysian Flight MH–17, shot down over Ukrainian territory in June 2014. The official report, issued a year later, concluded that the plane was downed by Ukrainian rebels using a Russian-supplied missile. The report was faulty from the first: Investigators never visited the site , some evidence was based on a report produced by Bellingcat , an open-source web site affiliated with the vigorously anti–Russian Atlantic Council, and Ukraine was given the right to approve the report before it was issued.

    Last week the Russian military disclosed evidence that serial numbers found in the debris at the MH–17 crash site indicate the missile that downed the plane was produced at a Soviet military-production plant in 1986 owned by Ukraine. Let us see further verification of this evidence (although I seriously doubt any Western correspondent will seek any). The official report of 2015 noted the serial numbers, so we know they are authentic, but it did not use them to trace the missile’s provenance.

    There is also the seriously muddled case of the poisoning of the Skripals in Britain.  Why hasn’t the Western media dug into this story rather than accept at face value the pronouncements of the British government?

    A month ago I lamented the damage Russia-gate has done to many of our most important institutions, the press not least among them. What is the corporate media thinking? That once President Trump is dumped, all will return to normal and professional standards will be restored? One can also argue the reverse: that adversarial journalism has returned to the White House beat largely out of personal animus towards Trump and that it will disappear again once a more “normal” president is in office.

    As Pilger put it, “This is a seismic shift, with journalists policing the new ‘groupthink,’ as [Robert] Parry called it, dispensing myths and distractions, pursuing its enemies.”

    In other words, Establishment journalism has shifted far afield from its traditional ideals of non-partisan, objective reporting and is instead vying for your mind to enlist it in its agenda to promote American interests abroad or one party or the other at home.

     

    We can’t let them get away with it. Our minds are our own.

  • Top US General Says Troop Readiness In Korea Facing "Degradation" After Trump Suspended Exercises

    As part of the White House’s ongoing attempts for North Korean denuclearization and as relations continue to thaw between Pyongyang and Seoul, President Trump last month cancelled previously scheduled US military exercises with South Korea’s armed forces.

    But a top general has testified before Congress that this pause in joint military exercises is hurting American troop readiness in the region.

    In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, Army General Robert Abrams said that Trump’s decision has led to a “slight degradation” in American readiness.

    Abrams is the president’s own nominee to lead US forces in Korea. However the comments came as the soon to be top US military commander in the Korean peninsula broadly defended Trump’s calculated diplomatic concessions to the North which are designed to slowly ease tensions. 

    “The suspension of military exercises … was a prudent risk if we’re willing to make the effort to change the relationship with [Pyongyang],” explained Abrams, who heads Army Forces Command. “I think there is certainly degradation to the readiness of the force. That’s a key exercise to maintain continuity and to continue to practice our interoperability, and so there was a slight degradation.”

    Gen. Abrams testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington on Tuesday. He’s been nominated to take command of U.S. and allied forces in South Korea. (image via AP)

    Trump announced last June just after meeting with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un in Singapore for their historic summit that the US would suspend “select” exercises with South Korea.

    At the time Trump had described the war games as highly “provocative” and cancelled large scale regularly scheduled exercises that had been slated for August. 

    The suspension of joint exercises formed a key topic of discussion during Tuesday’s committee hearing with Democrat Senators pressing the general on how many scheduled training exercises could be skipped before US forces were severely hindered from maintaining adequate levels of readiness. 

    Gen. Abrams said this would be “hard to judge” but added that he would “apply that judgement based on what I assess on the ground.”

    Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) asked the following at a key point during the hearing: “If Kim Jong Un offers to remove illegally obtained ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons for lawfully deployed U.S. troops on the Korean Peninsula, do you think that would be a smart decision, and tactically and strategically that would be good for our posture not just on the Korean Peninsula but in the region?”

    The General responded: “Tactically, without any mention of any change in his conventional capability, there would be a significant amount of risk,” and he added that Russia and China would be “strongly encouraged” by such a scenario.

    Sen. Sullivan replied: “We think it would be strategically disastrous and the fact the administration seems to be toying with it is very troubling. And Congress doesn’t support it.”

    China and Russia have pursued closer ties of late, for the first time conducting major joint exercises as part of the Vostok-2018 early this month. Hawkish Congressional leaders have worried that the North Koreans could be engaged in stall tactics meant in part to weaken US military preparedness on the peninsula. 

  • The Everything Bubble: When Will It Finally Crash?

    Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

    Much like the laws of physics, there are certain laws of economics that remain constant no matter how much manipulation exists in the markets. Expansion inevitably leads to contraction, and that which goes up must eventually come down. Central banks understand this reality very well; they have spent over a century trying to exploit those laws to their own advantage.

    A common misconception among people new to alternative economics is the idea that central banks only seek to keep the economy afloat, or keep it expanding forever. In reality, these institutions and the money elites behind them artificially inflate financial bubbles only to deliberately implode them at opportunistic moments.

    As I have outlined in numerous articles, every economic bubble and subsequent crash since 1914 can be linked to the policy actions of central bankers. Sometimes they even admit to culpability (to a point), as Ben Bernanke did on the Great Depression and as Alan Greenspan did on the 2008 credit crisis. You can read more about this in my article ‘The Federal Reserve Is A Saboteur – And The “Experts” Are Oblivious.’

    Generally, central bankers and international bankers mislead the public into believing that the crashes they are responsible for were caused “by mistake.” They rarely if ever mention the fact that they often use these crises as a means to consolidate control over assets, resources and governments while the masses are distracted by their own financial survival. Centralization is the name of the game. It is certainly no mistake that after every economic implosion the wealth gapbetween the top 0.01% and the rest of humanity widens exponentially.

    Yet another crash is being weaponized by the banks, and this time I believe the motivations behind it are rather different. Or at least the goals are supercharged.

    The next phase of the financial elite’s plans for centralization involve a complete restructuring of the global monetary climate, something Christine Lagarde of the IMF has often referred to as the great “economic reset.” The term “economic reset” is more likely code for “economic collapse,” one epic enough to facilitate a completely new monetary framework with a new global reserve currency. A historically unprecedented economic reset would require a historically unprecedented financial bubble, which is exactly what we have today.

    The ‘Everything Bubble’ as many alternative analysts are calling it is built upon multiple crumbling pillars. Here they are in no particular order:

    Central Bank Stimulus

    Bailouts and QE measures on the part of central banks have been used as a stopgap since the 2008 crash to prevent market reversals whenever they appear. Most of all, central banks have been particularly obsessed with keeping stocks in a perpetual bull run, which Ben Bernanke and Alan Greenspan admitted was part of maintaining a certain positive “psychology” within the public. In other words, the purpose of stimulus measures was to give the masses a false sense of security, not heal the real economy.

    The other primary initiative behind stimulus was to prop up debt poisoned governments and corporations around the world. However, the intention was not necessarily to help these institutions climb out of the red. No, instead, the goal was to keep them semi-solvent long enough for them to take on EVEN MORE debt, to the point that when they do collapse the aftermath will be so devastating that recovery would be impossible.

    The timing of the central bank tapering of QE should be treated as an alarm on the crash of the everything bubble. With the Federal Reserve cutting off QE measures, the Bank of Japan using “stealth tapering,” and the European Central Bank warning of high inflation and the need for tapering, it is clear that the era of easy money is almost over. When the easy money is gone, the crash is near.

    Stock Buybacks

    Using steady loans from the Federal Reserve as well as Trump’s tax cut, stock markets have been inflated beyond all reason by corporations implementing the equities manipulation scheme of stock buybacks. By artificially reducing the number of stock shares on the market, companies can increase the “value” of the existing shares and fuel a bull market rally. This rally has nothing to do with actual wealth creation, of course. It is a game of phantom wealth and inflated numbers.

    Stocks in particular will require ever more debt on the part of corporations along with never-ending near zero interest rates in order to keep the farce going. The central bankers, though, have other plans.

    Near Zero Interest Rates

    Low interest rates should be considered a part of the stimulus model, but I’m setting them separately because they represent a special kind of market manipulation. The option for corporate entities to borrow from the Fed at almost no cost has done little to improve the effects of the 2008 credit crisis. In fact, corporate debt levels are now near all-time highs not seen since the last crash. This time, however, dependency on low cost loans has conjured a monstrous addiction within the business cycle. Any increase in interest rates will trigger painful withdrawals.

    Central banks around the world are now increasing that pain as they hike rates well beyond what many analysts were expecting a few years ago. Corporate debt in particular is highly vulnerable to this new tightening policy. Without low rates, corporations can no longer afford to hold the debts they have, let alone take on more debt in a futile attempt to keep equities propped up.

    Central banks argue that “inflation” is the excuse for hiking interest rates at this time. True inflation has been well above Fed targets for years, and the banking elites showed no care whatsoever. I suspect that the real reason is that the next phase of the reset is near, and a little chaos is needed.

    For decades, the Fed has kept the neutral rate of interest well below the rate of inflation. For the first time in at least 30 years, the Fed under Jerome Powell is seeking to increase neutral rates to make them equal to the pace of inflation (official inflation). The Fed has approximately two to three more rate hikes (including the September rate hike) to reach the pace of inflation. I believe this is our window on the next crash; the moment at which the Fed completely reverses its past policy of artificial support for the economy.

    Federal Reserve Balance Sheet

    I have written at great length about the correlation between the Fed’s balance sheet and equities and I will not go into great detail here.  Simply put, with each increase in the balance sheet over the past decade, stocks rallied in tandem. As the Fed cuts assets, stocks enter volatility. A divergence has occurred the past two months between the Fed balance sheet and stocks, but I believe this is temporary.

    Corporate buybacks are at all-time highs in 2018, and it’s obvious that this is meant to offset the Fed’s waning support for the markets. As interest rates increase and the Trump tax cut dwindles, though, buybacks will die.

    If we consider the possibility that the Fed’s assets also include stock shares as many suspect, then the Fed asset dumps would also INCREASE the number of existing shares on the market and sabotage corporate efforts to reduce shares through stock buybacks. I predict stocks will once again converge with the falling Fed balance sheet by the end of this year and that they will continue to drop precipitously through the last quarter of 2018 and the rest of 2019.

    Timing Is Everything

    Central banks need cover before they can launch their “global reset,” and what better cover than a massive international trade war? Trump’s trade war is an excellent distraction which can be used as a rationale for every negative consequence of the central banks pulling the plug on stimulus life support. Meaning, the disasters the central bankers cause through tightening into a weak economic environment can be blamed on Trump and the trade conflict.

    I don’t think it’s a coincidence that almost every escalation in the trade war happens to take place at the same time as major central bank announcements on rate hikes and balance sheet cuts. The latest trade war salvo of $200 billion in tariffs against China is leading to a Chinese announcement on retaliation — all of this taking place on the exact week of the Fed’s September meeting which is expected to result in yet another rate hike and expanded balance sheet cuts.

    The Fed’s tightening policies have resulted in a severe reaction by emerging markets which are already crashing and have diverged greatly from U.S. markets. American stocks will not escape the same fate.

    The Fed’s neutral rate efforts suggest a turning point in late 2018 to early 2019. Balance sheet cuts are expected to increase at this time, which would also expedite a crash in existing market assets. The only question is how long can corporations sustain stock buybacks until their own debt burdens crush their efforts? With such companies highly leveraged, interest rates will determine the length of their resolve. I believe two more hikes will be their limit.

    If the Fed continues on its current path the next stock crash would begin around December 2018 into the first quarter of 2019. After that, other sectors of the economy, already highly unstable, will break down through 2019 and 2020.

    *  *  *

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  • US Pulls Patriot Missiles From Middle East As Focus Shifts To China, Russia Threat

    The Pentagon is removing Patriot missile systems from several Middle Eastern countries next month, an a move that the Wall Street Journal says coincides with a “realignment of forces and capabilities as the military steps up its focus on threats from China and Russia,” citing multiple senior military officials. 

    The relocation of the systems out of the Middle East, which hasn’t been previously disclosed, is one of the most tangible signs of the Pentagon’s new focus on threats from Russia and China and away from the long-running conflicts in the Middle East and Afghanistan.

    Two Patriot missile systems will be redeployed from Kuwait, and one each from Jordan and Bahrain, officials said. Patriots are mobile missile systems capable of shooting down missiles and planes.

    The four systems have been taken offline and will be redeployed by next month, officials said. There are no plans for any of them to be replaced, and they are being returned to the U.S. for refurbishing and upgrades, an official said. –WSJ

    While some Patriot systems will remain in the region, removal of the four batteries “amounts to a major drawdown of the capability Patriots provide in the region,” notes the Journal, which adds that their removal also comes amid the White House intensifying its rhetoric against Iran and “amid an increasingly cvomplex battlefield in Syria.” 

    According to a 48-page report issued Tuesday by the State Department, Iran’s missile programs pose a significant threat, and the Islamic Republic maintains “a stockpile of hundreds of missiles that threaten its neighbors in the region.” 

    Patriot missile systems deployed around the world utilize what is referred to as “point defense” – providing defensive capabilities over a smaller radius to shoot down aircraft, while the newest version of the system, the PAC-3, can shoot down missiles as well. Their effective range is only in the dozens of miles, so they are typically located near bases or other sensitive installations they are intended to protect. 

    Patriot systems owned by Saudi Arabia are used there frequently, for example, regularly shooting down missiles fired from Yemen, where a civil war has ragedsince 2015.

    American allies in the region have depended on such missile-defense systems for years. The systems play both a real and symbolic role in countering the threat posed by nearby Iran. Bahrain, in particular, has grown concerned about Iran-backed groups and other Shiite militias destabilizing the small island nation. –WSJ

    Washington’s move comes as Russia announced the deployment of their S-300 anti-aircraft system to the Syrian government, following the downing of a Russian Il-20 plane due to outdated Syrian air-defense systems. 

  • Kavanaugh "Gang Bang" Accuser Exposed: Restraining Order, Link To Blasey-Ford

    Brett Kavanaugh’s fourth accuser, Julie Swetnick, has just had an ominous cloud of doubt cast over her allegations against the Supreme Court nominee. 

    Less than 24 hours after her attorney, Michael Avenatti, revealed Swetnick’s salacious claim that Kavanaugh and a friend ran a date-rape “gang bang” operation at 10 high school parties she attended as an adult (yet never reported to the authorities), Politico reports that Swetnick’s ex-boyfriend, Richard Vinneccy – a registered Democrat, took out a restraining order against her, and says he has evidence that she’s lying. 

    “Right after I broke up with her, she was threatening my family, threatening my wife and threatening to do harm to my baby at that time,” Vinneccy said in a telephone interview with POLITICO. “I know a lot about her.” –Politico

    “I have a lot of facts, evidence, that what she’s saying is not true at all,” he said. “I would rather speak to my attorney first before saying more.”

    Avenatti called the claims “outrageous” and hilariously accused the press of “digging into the past” of a woman levying a claim against Kavanaugh from over 35 years ago. 

    New York Life

    Earlier Wednesday, researcher and journalist Thomas Wictor discovered that a report about Swetnick by The Guardian had mysteriously been altered to remove a reference to her former employer, New York Life: 

    Lo and behold, Swetnick made a sexual harassment claim against New York Life – and used the firm run by Christine Blasey Ford’s attorney to represent her.

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    What a small world…

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