Jun 27

Today’s News 27th June 2018

  • Sweden's 'Neo-Nazi' Party Support Surges As Immigrant Gang Violence Soars

    Many Swedes were horrified in early 2017 when U.S. President Donald Trump linked immigration to rising crime in Sweden, but an increasing number now agree with him.

    Amid soaring crime rates, gang violence, complaints about education, and pregnant mothers even being turned away from maternity wards due to a lack of capacity, resentment in Sweden has built over the influx of more than 600,000 immigrants over the past five years.

    And as Bloomberg reports, paying some of the world’s highest income-tax rates has been the cornerstone of Scandinavia’s social contract, with the political consensus in Sweden to save money for when the economy is less healthy.

    Yet the country is showing strains all too familiar in other parts of Europe with nationalists gaining support and Swedes increasingly questioning the sustainability of their fabled cradle-to-grave welfare system.

    “The Swedish social contract needs to be reformed,” a dozen entrepreneurs including Nordea Bank AB Chairman Bjorn Wahlroos and Kreab Founder Peje Emilsson wrote in an op-ed in the Dagens Industri newspaper on May 31. “Despite high taxes, politics isn’t delivering its part of the contract in important areas. We get poor value for money.”

    Although taxes have been raised in recent years, welfare has deteriorated, they said.

    “I don’t trust welfare at all, I need to build my own capital,” Bothen said while sipping his cappuccino at the NK department store in central Stockholm. “The problem with immigration is that our welfare state is not quite dimensioned for it. Of course we should help people, and we have a good situation here in Sweden, but we can’t handle an unlimited amount of people.”

    There are warning signs across Europe of what can happen if disillusionment goes unaddressed. In Britain, popular anger over rising immigration and creaking public services fueled the vote to leave the European Union. Nationalist parties, on the march across continent, just swept to power in Italy.

    And, judging by the latest polls, the rise of extreme populist groups in Sweden is accelerating fast.

    As Reuters reports, dozens of people have been killed in the past two years in attacks in the capital Stockholm and other big cities by gangs that are mostly from run-down suburbs dominated by immigrants.

    With public calls growing for tougher policies on crime and immigration, support has risen for the ironically named, Sweden Democrats, a party with neo-Nazi roots that wants to freeze immigration and to hold a referendum on Sweden’s membership of the European Union.

    Their worried mainstream rivals have started moving to the right on crime and immigration to try to counter the Sweden Democrats’ threat in the Sept. 9 election. But so far, they are playing into the hands of the far-right.

    “Right now they (mainstream parties) are competing over who can set out the most restrictive policies,” said Deputy Prime Minister Isabella Lovin, whose Green Party is part of a minority government led by the Social Democratic Party.

    “It clearly benefits the Sweden Democrats.”

    Opinion polls put the Sweden Democrats on about 20 percent support, up from the 13 percent of votes they secured in the 2014 election and the 5.7 percent which saw them enter parliament for the first time in 2010.

    The Sweden Democrats’ rise on the back of anti-immigration sentiment mirrors gains for right-wing, populist and anti-establishment parties in other European countries such as Italy, France, Germany, Poland, Hungary, Slovenia and Austria.

    The Sweden Democrats still trail the Social Democratic Party but has overtaken the main opposition Moderates in many polls. All mainstream parties have ruled out working with them.

    But they could emerge from the election as kingmakers, and a strong election showing could force the next government to take their views into consideration when shaping policy.

    Their policies include a total freeze on asylum seekers and accepting refugees only from Sweden’s neighbors in the future. They also want tougher penalties for crime and more powers for police, and say tax cuts and higher spending on welfare could be funded by cutting the immigration budget.

    Jimmie Akesson, the leader of the Sweden Democratic party, has described the situation as “pretty fantastic”.

    “We are dominating the debate even though no one will talk to us,” he told party members.

    The Sweden Democrats have succeeded in linking the two in the minds of many voters, even though official statistics show no correlation between overall levels of crime and immigration. However, while the government denies it has lost control but Prime Minister Stefan Lofven has not ruled out sending the military into problem areas.

    “Sweden is going down a more right-wing path,” said Nick Aylott, a political scientist at Sodertorn University said. “It is almost impossible to avoid according some sort of influence to a party with around 20 percent of the vote.”

    Trump was right after all.

  • Turkey's Election: Stockholm Syndrome At Its Worst

    Authored by Burak Bekdil via The Gatestone Institute,

    Nothing could have better explained the Turks’ joy over their president’s election victory on June 24 than a cartoon that depicts a cheering crowd with three lines in speech balloons: “It was a near thing,” one says. “We would almost become free.” And the last one says: “Down with freedoms!”

    Turkey’s Islamist strongman, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, won 52.5% of the national vote in presidential elections on June 24. That marks a slight rise from 51.8% he won in presidential elections of August 2014. More than 25 million Turks voted for Erdoğan’s presidency. His closest rival, social democrat Muharrem Ince, an energetic former schoolteacher, won less than 16 million votes, or nearly 31% of the national vote.

    The opposition candidate admitted that the election was fair. There have been no reports of fraud from international observers, at least so far.

    Despite the defeat, Ince was one of the many winners of Election 2018. For the first time since 1977 a social democrat politician won more than 30% of the vote in Turkey. Ince’s party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP) won only 22.6% of the vote in the parliamentary race.

    Despite Erdoğan’s clear victory, his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) performed worse than expected: It won 42.4% of the vote in parliamentary elections, down eight percentage points from the 49.5% it won in the previous parliamentary race in November 2015.

    That decline deprived the AKP of winning parliamentary majority, with 295 seats in Turkey’s 300-member house. Instead, AKP’s right-wing partners, the National Movement Party (MHP) unexpectedly won 49 seats, bringing the total number of seats controlled by the governing bloc up to 344, a comfortable majority.

    The AKP-MHP alliance marks the official birth of Turkey’s new ruling ideology: A bloc of Islamists and nationalists that traditionally represent Turkey’s lowest educated rural population. Erdoğan may not be too happy having to share power with a party that was last in a coalition alliance in 2002 but with his AKP lacking a parliamentary majority he will have to keep the nationalists in partnership. He may also have to give them high-profile seats like vice-president and/or ministerial positions.

    After election results on June 24 Turkey will be further dragged into authoritarian politics with the blend of Islamism and nationalism emerging as the new state ideology. Deep polarization in the Turkish society will probably get deeper. There are already signs. In a victory speech in the evening hours of June 24 Erdoğan’s foreign minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, said that the losers of the election were the “terrorists”. In this politically-divisive, pathetic logic, 47.5% of Turks are terrorists: that makes about 38.5 million people.

    The national joy over the re-election of a man known best to the rest of the world for his authoritarian, sometimes despotic rule, is not surprising in a country where average schooling is a mere 6.5 years. As recently as April 2017, the Turks had already given up the remaining pieces of their democracy when they voted in favor of constitutional amendments that made Erdoğan head of the state, head of government and head of the ruling party all at the same time. The amendments gave the president almost unchecked powers and the authority to rule by decree.

    Pictured: Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan speaks at a campaign rally on June 23, 2018 in Istanbul, Turkey. (Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

    In its “Freedom in the World 2018” report, Freedom House categorizes Turkey as a “not free” country due to “due to a deeply flawed constitutional referendum that centralized power in the presidency, the mass replacement of elected mayors with government appointees, arbitrary prosecutions of rights activists and other perceived enemies of the state, and continued purges of state employees, all of which have left citizens hesitant to express their views on sensitive topics”. Turkey also tops Freedom house’s list of countries where democracy has been on decline for the past decade. Ironically, even civil war-torn Syria is at the bottom of the list (meaning its democracy has declined the least among the countries surveyed).

    Erdoğan’s Turkey was galloping toward dictatorship even before the Turks gave him the powers he wanted in the April 2017 referendum. Millions of anti-Erdoğan Turks are now terrified of the prospect of further torment under an Islamist-nationalist coalition show run by a president with effectively no checks and balances. Ince, the opposition candidate against Erdoğan has vowed to fight back. Let us hope he does not have to fight back from where many Erdoğan opponents have been locked up.

  • Who Are The Crypto-Tycoons?

    Going from rags to riches is every mortal’s dream these days, and with these Forbes figures, Statista’s Martin Armstrong introduces us to some names who have managed to do so by jumping into the crypto game right on time.

    Infographic: Who Are The Cryptotycoons? | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    Although they are nowhere near the biggest fortunes of the world, their combined net worth matches the GDP of countries such as Cambodia, Honduras or Cyprus.

    A factor that clearly differentiates them from other multimillionaires is their age: none of them are over 60, and the youngest one, Brian Armstrong, has managed to stack up a considerable wealth at only 35 years of age.

    Their nationalities also shed light on the geographical range of cryptocurrencies: it comes as no surprise that U.S. and Canada citizens dominate the list.

    However, there is one intruder in this North American race: Changpeng Zhao, the Chinese CEO of Binance, one of the main crypto exchanges.

  • Russia's Nuclear Doctrine Is Being Distorted Once Again

    Authored by Vladimir Kozin via Oriental Review,

    On June 13, 2018, the Washington Post published an original piece by Paul Sonne that describes America’s potential use of the low-yield nuclear warheads that are to be installed on the future US B-61-12 nuclear bombs, as well as on the ballistic missiles carried by the Trident II submarines in the form of W76-2 warheads, in accordance with Washington’s 2018 nuclear doctrine.

    The article claims that the introduction of low-yield warheads and the idea of their potential use is being justified by the Pentagon as necessary due to the fact that Russia is allegedly prepared to use similar warheads against NATO countries, based on that nation’s current nuclear doctrine and because a purported strategy of “escalate to de-escalate” has apparently been “approved” by Moscow.

    It should be kept in mind that the Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation, which has sections covering the potential use of nuclear weapons, says nothing about the power of the nuclear weapons that might be utilized, nor is there any mention of warheads with either high or “low” yields in TNT equivalents. Those sections of the official doctrine do not even categorize Russian nuclear weapons into strategic vs. tactical varieties.

    Only one term is specified in Russia’s military and strategic posture: “nuclear weapons.” And only two circumstances are listed as a basis for their potential use: the first — only in response to the use of nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction against the Russian Federation and/or its allies; and the second — in the event of aggression against Russia that employs conventional weapons to the point that “the very existence of the state is threatened.” In other words, only reciprocal actions are permitted in either case.

    Nor does the Russian nuclear doctrine list the countries or alliances against which nuclear weapons can be used.

    It seems odd that the US still does not understand the basic tenets of Russia’s nuclear posture. And it must be said that this is not the first time that Western analysts have taken such an unprofessional approach. This has become especially glaring in the run-up to the next NATO summit, which will take place July 11-12 in Brussels.

    On the other hand, the newest US nuclear doctrine, which was approved last February, specifies 14 justifications for the use of nuclear weapons, including “low-yield” warheads, which is how US arms experts classify nuclear warheads of 5.0-6.5 kilotons and below. These are precisely the sea- and air-launched warheads the Pentagon intends to utilize in accordance with its new concept of “escalating to de-escalate.” Under that theory, low-yield nuclear warheads can be employed by US nuclear forces on an increasing scale in a variety of regional conflicts, with the aim of “de-escalating” them, which might be accomplished with the help of a nuclear first strike.

    This practice could cause a chain reaction in the use of nuclear weapons, involving not only “low-yield” warheads, but also more powerful nuclear explosives.

    The practice being described — the potential use of low-yield nuclear weapons, which is a real fixation for the current US administration and is being discussed with increasing frequency in the US — suggests that America’s military and political leaders are committed to dramatically lowering the minimum threshold for their use and expanding the list of acceptable reasons to utilize them under real-world conditions.

    The adage from the past that everyone could relate to — “A nuclear war cannot be unleashed, because there will be no winners” — is now absent from the political statements that are being heard. It is clear that forces have taken the upper hand on Capitol Hill that are still incapable of imagining the consequences of a nuclear Armageddon. Such a path, even if this scenario proves unlikely, will inevitably lead to a potential undermining of the already fragile non-proliferation regime and a breakdown in the negotiations on establishing control over nuclear facilities, which — and this is not news — very few countries are taking part in at the present time.

    For all these reasons, a dangerous future practice like this needs to be reexamined by Washington, in the interests of preserving global stability. In order to achieve this goal, the strategic guidelines for inflicting a first “preemptive and preventive” nuclear strike, as well as the continuing premise of “unconditional offensive nuclear deterrence,” which have remained unchanged since 1945, must be completely eliminated from American nuclear strategies.

    These are not ultimatums, as someone defending US nuclear policy has already tried to portray them. This is a completely natural, logical, and sensible step, which would no doubt be positively received all over the world.

  • "He's Out!": Establishment Democrats Rocked By Joe Crowley Primary Loss To Socialist Millennial

    Establishment Democrat Joe Crowley’s nearly two-decade career in Congress came to an end Tuesday night in a shocking primary loss to 28-year-old Democratic Socialist and former Bernie Sanders organizer Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – a harsh critic of Israel and immigration enforcement.

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    Crowley – the 56-year-old Chairman of the House Democratic caucus had long been viewed as a potential House Speaker, and has been a staple in New York City politics as chairman of the Queens County Democratic Party. 

    His loss to insurgent candidate Ocasio-Cortez, his first primary challenge in 14 years, is a major upset to establishment Democrats trying to cobble together a “blue wave” of progressive support to combat Republicans in the upcoming midterms. Instead, it looks like Democrats are as fractured as ever. 

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    (there are eleven more tweets listing Crowley donors, so we’ll stop here)

    And speaking of Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept has covered New York’s 14th Congressional District race extensively (see here). Here’s why they thought she might have a chance back in May: 

    THE SAFE MONEY on a race in a machine-dominated district is to bet on the boss. And, to be sure, Crowley is likely to be the favorite. But Ocasio-Cortez has a few plausible reasons to believe there’s a path to victory:

    • She has more than 8,000 individual donors; that’s a pool she’ll continue to grow and can keep tapping into if her campaign gains momentum. It suggests that the 5,000+ signatures she turned in were no fluke.

    • Primaries are very low-turnout affairs, meaning the absolute number of votes she needs to win is quite low, in the high-four figures or low-five figures.

    • Crowley is the king of Queens, but he represents the Bronx from a distance. If Ocasio-Cortez can organize and run up her numbers in the Bronx, while holding her own in Queens, she can win.

    The case against her isn’t based on substance, but on raw politics. Crowley is a very good old-school politician: engaging on the stump, charismatic, and diligent about building relationships. He has close relationships with the bosses of the Bronx machine, which can turn out votes. And, for many Democratic voters, he’s not that bad. –The Intercept 

    President Trump took the opportunity to throw salt in Crowley’s wounds Tuesday night, tweeting: “Big Trump Hater Congressman Joe Crowley, who many expected was going to take Nancy Pelosi’s place, just LOST his primary election. In other words, he’s out!”

    Or, maybe Ocasio-Cortez schooling Crowley over ICE was the nail in the coffin in these politically charged times?

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  • A Newly Discovered Supervolcano Is Churning Under 3 States

    Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

    A blob of molten lava has been detected under three states in the Northeast.  The new supervolcano currently brewing under New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Vermont is creeping upwards and surprising geologists.

    The region in which the new volcano was discovered is geologically stable with no active volcanoes in the surrounding area.  Earthquakes are almost unheard of in the area.That means that the formation of the massive magma buildup in the northeast is a relatively recent event, scientists say. But keep in mind, in the timescale of Earth’s geological processes, this still means tens of millions of years.  If these findings hold up though, the northeast could be considered more active geologically than previously thought.

    Fox News reported that the unexpected supervolcano has been gradually making itself known to geologists in the United States. A huge mass of molten rock is slowly climbing upwards beneath three of the nation’s northeastern states. The new supervolcano only became evident through a new and large-scale seismic study. “The upwelling we detected is like a hot-air balloon, and we infer that something is rising up through the deeper part of our planet under New England,” says Rutgers University geophysicist Professor Vadim Levin.

    “Our study challenges the established notion of how the continents on which we live behave,” Professor Levin says. “It challenges the textbook concepts taught in introductory geology classes.” But there should be no fear of this supervolcano erupting anytime soon either.

    “It will likely take millions of years for the upwelling to get where it’s going,” Professor Levin explains. “The next step is to try to understand how exactly it’s happening.”

    “It is not Yellowstone-like, but it’s a distant relative,” Professor Levin says.  And geologists say that the volcano may never erupt at all. “Maybe it didn’t have time yet, or maybe it is too small and will never make it,” Professor Levin told National Geographic. “Come back in 50 million years, and we’ll see what happens.”

    These recent findings, which were published in the journal Geology, suggest that New England may not be so immune to abrupt geological change. “Ten years ago, this would not have been possible,” said Levin. “Now, all of a sudden, we have a much better eye to see inside the Earth.”

  • Naked 82-Year-Old Japanese Hermit Who Found Bliss On Remote Island "Captured", Forced Into Government Housing

    An 82-year-old Japanese hermit who “escaped” the entertainment industry and found bliss on a remote island has been yanked from his home of 29 years by Japanese authorities and taken to a government facility some 37 miles away. 

    Masafumi Nagasaki decided to live in solitude in 1989 after a friend told him about an archipelago in the southwest of Okinawa Prefecture, Japan. He made his home on Sotobanari (“Outer Distant island”), a 1,000 meter-wide kidney-shaped island. Surviving on rice cakes and bottled water, Nagasaki rarely saw anyone outside of his weekly trips by boat to a settlement an hour away for provisions – paid for with a small stipend sent to him by his family.

    Each day is conducted according to a strict timetable, starting with stretches in the sun on the beach. The rest is a race against time as he prepares food, washes and cleans his camp before the light fails and insects come out to bite. -Reuters

    “Finding a place to die is an important thing to do, and I’ve decided here is the place for me,” he said.

    Discovered in 2012 without clothes at the age of 76, Nagasaki became known as the “naked hermit” – and has chosen to stop hunting and fishing out of a sense of guilt over having to kill the few animals who also inhabit the island. Before his recent eviction, he spent five days with Alvaro Cerezo, who operates island touring company Docastaway. 

    Cerezo told news.com.au that Nagasaki was evicted after someone found him in a “weak” state on the island, despite his Nagasaki being in generally good health. He “probably only had the flu” when he was found, said Cerezo. 

    Nagasaki describes how a typhoon devastated the island in his second year – stripping it of vegetation and leaving him to bake in the sun. He persevered for 27 more years, adapting to his environment while learning to make due with virtually nothing.

    He also described his perfect death, on the island in 2012 – his home of nearly three decades. 

    “It hadn’t really occurred to me before how important it is to choose the place of your death, like whether it’s in a hospital or at home with family by your side. But to die here, surrounded by nature — you just can’t beat it, can you?”

    Finally, Nagaskai shared an insight that many in the current unstable world would do well to note.

    When asked “What is the worst thing from civilization” his answer was simple – two words: “Money and religion.”

    We wonder how many of the 29 years alone it took him to realize that.

  • DOJ Won't Release Top Secret Loretta Lynch Intercepts Suggesting Secret Deal To Rig Clinton Probe

    The Department of Justice (DOJ) is refusing to release intercepted material alleging that former Attorney General Loretta Lynch conspired with the Clinton campaign in a deal to rig the Clinton email investigation, reports Paul Sperry of RealClear Investigations. 

    The information remains so secret that Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz had to censor it from his recently released 500-plus-page report on the FBI’s investigation of Clinton, and even withhold it from Congress.

    Not even members of Congress with top secret security clearance have been allowed to see the unverified accounts intercepted from presumed Russian sources in which the head of the Democratic National Committee, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, allegedly implicates the Clinton campaign and Lynch in the scheme.

    “It is remarkable how this Justice Department is protecting the corruption of the Obama Justice Department,” notes Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch, which is suing the DOJ for the material.

    Wasserman Schultz, Lynch and Clinton have denied the allegations and characterized them as Russian disinformation. 

    True or false, the material is consequential because it appears to have influenced former FBI Director James B. Comey’s decision to break with bureau protocols because he didn’t trust Lynch. In his recent book, Comey said he took the reins in the Clinton email probe, announcing Clinton should not be indicted, because of a “development still unknown to the American public” that “cast serious doubt” on Lynch’s credibility – clearly the intercepted material.

    If the material documents an authentic exchange between Lynch and a Clinton aide, it would appear to be strong evidence that the Obama administration put partisan political considerations ahead of its duty to enforce the law. –RealClear Investigations

    Then again, if the intercepts are fabricated, it would constitute Russia’s most tangible success in influencing the 2016 U.S. election – since Comey may not have gone around Lynch cleared Clinton during his July 2016 press conference – nor would he have likely publicly announced the reopening of the investigation right before the election – an act Clinton and her allies blame for her stunning loss to Donald Trump. 

    The secret intelligence document purports to show that Lynch told the Clinton campaign she would keep the FBI email investigation on a short leash – a suggestion included in the Inspector General’s original draft, but relegated to a classified appendix in the official report and entirely blanked out. 

    What is known, based on press leaks and a letter Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley sent Lynch, is that in March 2016, the FBI received a batch of hacked documents from U.S. intelligence agencies that had access to stolen emails stored on Russian networks. One of the intercepted documents revealed an alleged email from then-DNC Chairwoman Wasserman Schultz to an operative working for billionaire Democratic fundraiser George Soros. It claimed Lynch had assured the Clinton campaign that investigators and prosecutors would go easy on the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee regarding her use of a private email server while serving as secretary of state. Lynch allegedly made the promise directly to Clinton political director Amanda Renteria. –RealClear Investigations

    “The information was classified at such a high level by the intelligence community that it limited even the members [of Congress] who can see it, as well as the staffs,” Horowitz explained last week during congressional testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which has oversight authority over Justice and the FBI.

    Congressional sources told RealClearInvestigations the material is classified “TS/SCI,” which stands for Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information. –RealClear Investigations

    Horowitz said that he has asked Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray to work with the CIA and Office of the Director of National Intelligence to figure out if the intercepted material can be rewritten to allow congress to see it. Once appropriately redacted to protect “sources and methods,” said Horowitz, he hopes that members of congress can then go to the secure reading room in the basement of the Capitol Building, called the “tank,” and view the materials. 

    “We very much want the committee to see this information,” Horowitz said.

    For some strange reason, CNN, WaPo and the New York Times have uncritically taken Lynch, Clinton and Wasserman Schultz’s denials at face value, dismissing the compromising information as possibly fake and unreliable. Horowitz even quotes non-FBI “witnesses” in his report describing the secret information as “objectively false.” 

    FBI Sandbagging

    While the FBI apparently took the intercept seriously, it never interviewed anyone named in it until Clinton’s email case was closed by Comey in July 2016. In August, the FBI informally quizzed Lynch about the allegations – while Comey also reportedly confronted the former AG and was told to leave her office.

    Comey said he had doubts about Lynch’s independence as early as September 2015 when she called him into her office and asked him to minimize the probe by calling it “a matter” instead of an “investigation,” which aligned with Clinton campaign talking points. Then, just days before FBI agents interviewed Clinton in July 2016, Lynch privately met with former President Bill Clinton on her government plane while it was parked on an airport tarmac in Phoenix. In a text message that has since been brought to light, the lead investigators on the case, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, made clear at the time their understanding that Lynch knew that “no charges will be brought” against Clinton.

    Renteria, the Clinton campaign official, who ran for governor of California but failed to secure a top-two spot in the primary, insists the intelligence citing her was disinformation created by Russian officials to dupe Americans and create discord and turmoil during the election.  –RealClear Investigations

    While Lynch has never been directly asked under oath by Congress about the allegation – she swore in a July 2016 session in front of the House Judiciary Committee “I have not spoken to anyone on either the [Clinton] campaign or transition or any staff members affiliated with them.” 

    Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) says he’ll issue a subpoena for Lynch, but the panel’s top Democrat Dianne Feinstein (CA) has to agree to it per committee rules. Grassley also said he would be open to exploring immunity for Comey’s former #2, Andrew McCabe.

    Feinstein may be hesitant to sign on, as she says she thinks Comey acted in good faith – which means she thinks Congress shouldn’t have a crack at questioning a key figure in the largest political scandal in modern history.

    “While I disagree with his actions, I have seen no evidence that Mr. Comey acted in bad faith or that he lied about any of his actions,” said Feinstein during a Monday Judiciary panel hearing. Former Feinstein staffer and FBI investigator Dan Jones, meanwhile, continues to work with Christopher Steele and Fusion GPS on a $50 million investigation privately funded by George Soros and other “wealthy donors” to continue the investigation into Donald Trump.

    Of interest, Amanda Renteria is also former Feinstein staffer. Also recall that Feinstein leaked Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson’s Congressional testimony in January.

    Lynch was dinged in the IG report over an “ambiguous” incomplete recusal from the Clinton email “matter” despite a clandestine 30-minute “tarmac” meeting with Bill Clinton one week before the FBI exonerated Hillary Clinton.

    Interesting how a “dossier” full of falsehoods about Trump not only released to the public, but was used by the FBI as part of an espionage operation on the Trump campaign – while an intercepted communication from Russia is suddenly classified as so top-secret that even members of Congressional intelligence oversight committees can’t see it.

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  • World Domination: UN Continues Fight To Disarm All Americans

    Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

    The United Nations is gearing up for round two in the fight to disarm the American public. Last month, the United Nations’ International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA) held a week-long conference geared towards making gun control an international priority.

    Wanting world domination, the global elites are seeking to prevent Americans from being able to escape the slavery they have planned for everyone by enacting “global gun control.” According to Townhall‘s Beth Baumann, during RevCon3, the conference on the program of action on small arms and light weapons, the UN’s Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres had a message delivered on his behalf.  It reads, in part:

    Every year, over half a million people are killed violently around the world, mostly through small arms fire.

    Those pulling the trigger may be soldiers, border guards or police, using their weapons as a last resort, in accordance with the principles of necessity, proportionality and restraint. Some are private security guards or civilians, using a registered firearm for protection or in self-defence.

    But the huge majority of those who kill with small arms do not fit this description. They may be members of armed groups who are terrorizing people of a country or a whole region with killings and sexual abuse. They could be members of national security forces who are abusing their power. They might be terrorists aiming to destroy lives and sow fear; criminals holding up a grocery store; or gang members killing those who get in the way of a drug deal.

    Tragically, many of them are men using an illegally-acquired weapon against the women who are their partners. In some countries, more than 60 percent of killings of women are committed with firearms.

    Illicit small arms are also used against United Nations peacekeeping forces. In 2017, 56 peacekeepers died in violent attacks – the highest number in over two decades.

    Controlling and regulating small arms therefore requires action that goes well beyond national security institutions. It includes providing alternative livelihoods for former combatants, engaging with municipal governments and police, working with civil society, including grass-roots organizations and community violence reduction programmes, as well as local businesses.

    Small arms control is a prerequisite for stability and conflict prevention, which is critical to achieve the mutually reinforcing goals of sustaining peace and sustainable development.

    Only through sustainable development will we be able to build just, peaceful and inclusive societies and to achieve lasting peace.

    The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is our agreed roadmap for building peaceful, resilient and prosperous societies on a healthy planet. Among the 17 Goals, there is a specific target to reduce arms flows, based on improving the tracing of weapons.

    The Agenda for Disarmament that I launched last month includes a renewed focus on controlling small arms. And it includes my commitment to establish a dedicated facility within the Peacebuilding Fund, to ensure solid financing for coordinated, integrated, sustained small arms control measures.

    When the UN says that over a half a million have been killed by guns worldwide, they conveniently leave out the number of people killed in wars and by governments pretending to act on the behalf of people (democide-death by your OWN government). The democide numbers are not even close when compared to private citizens acting on their own. As Baumann wrote: “The reason they have to use “grassroots organizations” they’re meaning gun control groups, like Everytown for Gun Safety and Moms Demand Action. They’re utilizing Americans to fulfill their desire to push gun control. Their reason? It looks better if Americans are demanding we abolish the Second Amendment instead of other countries trying to pressure us.”

    But just how many people were killed by their own governments (democide)?  Well, it’s hard to say because according to Glenn Floyd, the stats are deliberately concealed by State Coroners. The leading cause of non-natural death around the globe today, other than natural causes, is democide. It far outpaces private murderers and suicides.

    Governments always offer excuses for the murder, like overpopulation, political opposition, and economic concerns. But that doesn’t mean they’ve provided adequate justification to the immoral killings.  And now the global elites will seek to prevent those they seek to enslave any ability to fight back.

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Jun 26

Today’s News 26th June 2018

  • Where The Rich Park Their Money

    The amount of global offshore wealth held in 2017 was around $8.2 trillion – 6% higher than in the previous year in US dollar terms (a growth rate considerably lower than that of onshore wealth).

    According to the Boston Consulting Group, Switzerland is still the prime destination for offshore wealth worldwide domiciling 2.3 trillion dollars in 2017.

    Infographic: Where the Rich Park their Money | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    However, as proximity remains a key factor in determining where investors choose to seek offshore financial services, the biggest growth was recorded in Hong Kong and Singapore due to wealth created in Mainland China.

     

  • US Senate Bans Sale Of F-35s To Turkey: Dealing With An Unreliable Partner

    Authored by Peter Korzun via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    On June 19, the Senate passed a draft defense bill for FY 2019 that would halt the transfer of F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) aircraft to Turkey, until the secretary of state certifies that Turkey will not accept deliveries of Russian S-400 Triumf air-defense systems. It paves the way for Ankara’s expulsion from the program if it does not bow to this pressure. The support for the measure (85-10) is too strong to be overridden.

    Turkey has been one of six major partner nations in the JSF project since 2002. It is responsible for the production of certain components and for providing maintenance services in Europe to other operators of the aircraft. About a dozen Turkish companies are involved in the manufacturing, in accordance with the deal that was reached 16 years ago (2002). Ankara has placed an order to buy more than 100 F-35A Lightning IIs. It has already paid $800 million, so any restrictions that are imposed now will be an illegal breach of obligations by the US.

    On June 21, the Senate Appropriations Committee added an amendment to the foreign-aid bill that would put a stop to future deliveries, if Ankara does not cancel the S-400 deal already concluded with Moscow. One of the arguments for blocking the F-35 transfer is the fear that Russia would get access to the JSF, enabling Moscow to detect and exploit its vulnerabilities. It would learn how the S-400 could take out an F-35.

    The House version contains even more limits on arms transfers to Turkey. In May, the bill passed the House with a provision mandating a temporary hold on all major defense sales to Turkey, including F-35s, due in part to its impending purchase of the S-400. Almaz-Antey, the company that manufactures the Triumf, is on a State Department list of banned entities. Any deal with that firm could result in sanctions. Rep. John Sarbanes (D-Md.) has introduced an amendment to the FY 2019 Defense Appropriations bill (H.R. 6157) that would bar the planned transfer of the aircraft to Turkey. So, there may be some changes to the wording but that won’t significantly alter the final result — the F-35 transfer will remain blocked after the reconciliation process.

    The bill is expected to become law this summer. The administration will have no choice but to exclude Turkey from the F-35 program, to remove any parts of the plane produced in that country, and to ban the Turkish F-35s from leaving the territory of the United States.

    Despite the proceedings on Capitol Hill, officials from the government and Lockheed Martin held a ceremony on June 21 in Fort Worth, Texas, to mark the “roll out” of the first F-35A Lightning II jet under its Turkish program. It was an imposing ceremony, but it disguised some sleight of hand. The US government will retain custody of the aircraft while the Turkish pilots and service technicians are undergoing training at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona. This is a long process that will take several years, but the bill will become law soon. Turkey may be denied access to the cloud-based Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS) computer network, depriving it of software updates and other data. The US could insert some malicious code to disable the aircraft even if they are transferred and based in Turkey in 2020 as planned.

    US officials don’t shy away from open statements about their intentions to exert pressure and prevent other countries from buying Russian weapons.

    “I would work with our allies to dissuade them, or encourage them, to avoid military purchases that would be potentially sanctionable,” said David Schenker, the nominee for assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, at his Senate confirmation hearing on June 14.

    “In other words, I would tell Saudi Arabia not to do it,” he explained. Saudi Arabia and Qatar are in talks with Moscow to buy the S-400.

    According to UAWire, The US State Department’s Office of Cooperative Threat Reduction has announced a tender for the monitoring of open-source information about arms deals involving the Russian Federation and the CIS countries. That data will be collected in Russian, English, Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, Urdu, and several other languages. The information will be used for decision-making and planning sanctions against foreign states.

    So far, the policy of twisting arms has failed. Demand for Russian arms is booming in the Middle East and Africa. Just a few days ago, one of Iraq’s armored brigades swapped out its American-made M1 Abrams tanks for new Russian T-90s. Last year, Russia and Iraq signed a huge arms deal.

    Unfazed by the US lawmakers’ stance, Ankara remains all set to go ahead with the purchase of the S-400 from Moscow. If the deal is blocked it will find an alternative, such as Russia’s Su-57 jet, or Turkey could produce an aircraft of its own, as part of its indigenous TFX stealth fighter program.

    India has recently been warned against buying the Russian S-400. If it does, a ban will be put in place on sharing sensitive American military technology with Delhi, which is refusing to back down under pressure.

    A deal is not always what one may think it is. A deal signed with the US is a special case because there are strings attached, which cannot be found in the text and are not mentioned during the negotiations. All of a sudden a partner finds out that there is a caveat that goes without saying. One may sign a deal and be naive enough to take it at face value, only to find out later that it will not be valid if certain unwritten conditions are not met. If you cooperate with another country without US approval, like Turkey does, you don’t get what you are entitled to under the terms of that agreement. Buy American, they say, but if you make a deal with Russia, like India wants to do, the access to the best technology the US has is going to be cut off.

    Congress has offered a lesson to those who cooperate with America. They should remember that whatever they may sign with Washington cannot be taken for granted. US lawmakers can change everything to their heart’s content at any time they wish. There is nothing worse than an unreliable partner. And that’s what America is.

  • Is This The Most Profitable Export Route In The World?

    Forget the WTI-Brent spread in oil – the best commodity arb in the market today might instead center around the global marijuana trade.

    As the chart below (courtesy of Statista) shows, prices of cannabis differ wildly around the world and these differences are intensifying as more countries and regions (particularly in North America and South America, where Canada just became the second country to legalize weed sales) remove the legal restrictions from a product that was for decades confined to the black market.

    Statista

    Whereas Latin American countries (like, say, Colombia, for example) tend to have low prices per gram of marijuana, countries in the Far East – where penalties for possession and sale of the drug remain among the stiffest in the world – still sport incredibly high prices, as smugglers demand “hazard pay” for the fact that being caught smuggling illegal drugs can earn one a death sentence in Singapore and a multi-decade prison term in Seoul.

    All of this begs the question: Would it be worthwhile to smuggle marijuana from Quito, the capital of Ecuador, where marijuana prices are among the lowest in the world, to Tokyo, where the price-per-gram is among the highest?

    Clearly, smugglers, who move drugs like marijuana and cocaine from South America to far-flung regions of the world, are more than happy with the risk-reward profile.

    The annual ABCD Cannabis Price Index offered a city-by-city price breakdown, which can be viewed in full here.

    marijuana

    Shown: Marijuana being cultivated in a US lab.

    For enterprising drug dealers, there are plenty of arb opportunities within the US, as prices between states where weed has been legalized or decriminalized diverge from states where prohibition remains unchallenged. The price-per-gram in Denver is just $7.79, compared with $18 in Washington, DC – more than twice as much.

    Weed

    So while ‘exporting’ your Colombian weed to the United States may be ‘simple’ – it is four times more profitable to ‘export’ it to Japan…

  • These Are The Benefits Of A US-Russia Summit

    Authored by Matthew Rojansky and Audrey Kortunov via The National Interest,

    The history of relations between the United States and Russia demonstrates that there is no substitute for personal contacts between the leaders of the two countries…

    Presidents Trump and Putin appear set to hold a summit meeting in July. This will be their third in-person meeting even though both leaders have made statements about how they have a positive working relationship and that they have spoken often by phone.

    The U.S. domestic political climate on Russia is especially fraught at present. The White House is at odds with the Justice Department “Russia investigation” team led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who has reportedly sought to question President Trump. At the same time, momentum is building ahead of November’s midterm elections, with leaders from both parties warning about the risks of further “Russian meddling.”

    In Russia there is widespread skepticism about any Trump-Putin meeting. Pundits and opinion-makers raise doubts about whether Trump can deliver on any significant matters important to Moscow. The predominant mood is that the U.S. president remains a hostage to the unanimously anti-Russian Washington establishment and that any agreement with him can be overruled by the U.S. Congress or even by his own administration.

    Yet what should be in the forefront of the minds of both presidents is the dangerous state of U.S.-Russia relations, and its consequences for the interests of both countries and for global security.

    Since the end of the Cold War, and perhaps even since the early 1980s, Moscow and Washington have never been closer to direct military confrontation, a consequence of increasing deployments, exercises, and operations by air, sea, and ground forces from the Baltic region to the Middle East. In some cases, Russian and NATO forces have nearly come into hostile contact, and escalation has been avoided by only the narrowest of margins.

    Both Russia and the United States are set to invest billions in modernizing their nuclear arsenals, which, although positive from a safety and reliability standpoint, create the impression of a new “arms race,” as the presidents acknowledged in a March phone call. An especially worrying new dimension to the nuclear risk is the possibility that cyber attacks by states or non-state actors could lead either party to raise its nuclear alert level, thus triggering a matching response from the other side, and possibly touching off a dangerous escalatory cycle.

    The forthcoming Trump-Putin meeting cannot resolve fundamental problems between Washington and Moscow. Neither leader would or should make unilateral concessions on matters he views as critical to his country’s national security. However, the meeting might open a path toward stabilizing the relationship, which under the circumstances, would be an important accomplishment in itself.

    A simple but vital step toward such de-escalation could be for the two presidents to reiterate the joint view of Presidents Reagan and Gorbachev from their 1986 Reykjavik summit, that “a nuclear war cannot be won, and so should never be fought.” In fact, thirty-two years ago the U.S. and Soviet leaders discussed the possibility of eliminating nuclear weapons altogether, a goal which then Presidents Obama and Medvedev confirmed and supported in 2009.

    Yet with the 1987 Treaty on Intermediate Nuclear Forces practically defunct thanks to reciprocal alleged violations, and the New START treaty limiting overall strategic nuclear arsenals under stress, an optimistic long-term goal like nuclear zero is hardly on the agenda for Moscow or Washington. Instead, both must now confront the urgent negative consequences of stalled U.S.-Russian bilateral arms control for global nuclear nonproliferation.

    This is especially true after the U.S. withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on Iran’s nuclear program, and given the real chance that Iran is determined to develop a weapon, which would trigger cascading nuclear breakouts across the Middle East. If the upcoming 2020 Review Conference of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty is to be anything but a last gasp for the half-century old nonproliferation regime, Presidents Trump and Putin will have to offer some hope that Washington and Moscow take their own responsibilities to reduce and disarm under the treaty seriously.

    The wars in Syria and Ukraine have cost hundreds of thousands of lives, and displaced millions of people across the Middle East, Europe and beyond. Washington and Moscow each control resources and levers of influence vital for managing and ultimately resolving these conflicts. Although officials have sought to negotiate small steps, such as implementation of the Minsk agreements in Ukraine and getting the Syria talks in Geneva back on track, political will is lacking, and a meeting between the U.S. and Russian presidents is by far the best opportunity for each to signal their commitment to progress.

    Finally, in the aftermath of years of sanctions and counter-sanctions, policies of mutual isolation have atrophied relations between ordinary Americans and Russians to an unacceptable degree that does not serve the interests of either side. Basic embassy and consular services have been severely constrained by expulsions of diplomats on both sides, and by the closure of U.S. and Russian diplomatic facilities.

    As a result, tourism, trade, scientific, cultural and educational exchanges are all plummeting for the first sustained period in the fifty years since the General Agreement on Exchanges was signed at the height of the Cold War in 1958. Even while sanctions remain in place, the two presidents should clearly signal that contacts between diplomats, legislators, businesses, scholars and civic groups are foundational to peaceful, productive relations, and thus are especially important when official ties are strained.

    Despite a deep crisis in the state-to-state relationship, Americans and Russians are still interested in each other, and they largely reject the current paradigm of battling official narratives. Russians still line up at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, eager for U.S. visas, and Americans constituted the largest cohort of foreigners visiting Russia for the World Cup this month. It is simply unfair and shortsighted to make ordinary citizens pay the price for conflict between their governments.

    Disagreements between Moscow and Washington are extensive, and the two presidents will not find common ground on many issues. The point of meeting is not for them to overlook these differences or to strike a grand bargain. Rather, it should be to send a clear message and create the space necessary for the two governments to restart a cooperative engagement that is in the clear interest of both sides.

    The history of relations between the United States and Russia demonstrates that there is no substitute for personal contacts between the leaders of the two countries. This was the case with Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin. These historical examples are especially important now, when official contacts at lower levels are hampered.

    The current conflict is not a new Cold War, nor will it become one. But attention should be paid to the vital lesson from that conflict, which is that summit diplomacy is not just for celebrating big victories – it is for giving momentum to the small steps and everyday interactions that kept that war from turning hot.

  • These Are The Most Affordable Cities For Young Professionals

    In most cases, switching cities is a lot easier than switching professions. But if you’re thinking of moving (perhaps away from a crowded, expensive urban center like New York City of San Francisco and to somewhere more affordable) it might make sense to pick somewhere where you can live comfortably and have some money left over at the end of the year. To that end, RentCafe crunched data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to find out which are the best and worst metro areas for each professionals in the management, legal, computer and mathematical, health, education, protective services and community and social services fields. Overall, RentCafe discovered that managers make the most on average annually – with a national average of $89,500. Legal follows with $80,7000. At the bottom of the list is food preparation and service related jobs, with $20,500.

    Cities

    Even though it has been ranked one of the most expensive places in the country, RentCafe found that San Jose, Calif. is a city where educated workers can save the largest chunk of their income at the end of the year. Meanwhile, Jackson, Mississippi, with its paucity of jobs requiring advanced degrees, is one of the worst cities for lawyers and computer scientists.

    https://e.infogram.com/js/dist/embed.js?uIc

    Of course, places like San Jose suddenly become much more inhospitable for construction workers and food-service workers. There is a middle ground, however. With its tourism-centric economy, Las Vegas is more affordable for people working in food service. Still, food-service workers are left with only $500 at the end of the year.

    Looking at the metros where people are left with the lowest amount of money, one city stands out: McAllen, Texas, is the worst choice for people working in six different fields measured by RentCafe. Workers in each field are left with little money after paying for basic expenses.

    Hartford, Conn. is the best place for most professionals

    High atop the list of the10 best metro areas for professionals is Hartford, Conn.: Though the city might be drowning in debt, it’s the best area to live for 12 out of 21 professions. People in these fields are, on average, left with more than $11,000 a year:  Business & Financial Operations, Computer & Mathematical, Life, Physical & Social Science, Community & Social Services, Education, Training & Library, Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports & Media, Protective Service, Office & Administrative Support, Installation, Maintenance, & Repair and Production.

    We wanted to find out which are the best and worst metros to live in according to each profession and turned to the Bureau of Labor Statistics for more information. From the average net income per professional field we substracted the average cost of living per metro to calculate the average amount of money left each year. It’s important to point out that for the cost of living we used MIT data which includes the minimum cost of food, health insurance, housing, transportation and other living expenses, plus income taxes.

    Meanwhile, in Honolulu, the area where basic goods are among the most expensive in the country thanks to the fact that everything must be imported, personal care and food-service professionals are, on average, unable to afford their basic living expenses, thanks to low salaries and a high cost of living.

    What metros have the narrowest and widest gender pay gaps?

    According to Census data, on a national scale, women earn a median amount of $41,554 annually while men earn $51,640. According to RentCafe’s calculations, the metro area where women earn the highest percentage of their male peers’ earnings is Las Vegas-Henderson, Paradise, Nev. – where women earn 83.9% of what men earn, on average.

    Rent

    What’s the region with the highest gender pay gap? It happens to be Provo-Orem, Utah., where women earn just 44% of what men do.

    Rent

     

  • Sarah Sanders, Red Hen, & Social Engineering By The State

    Authored by Kurt Nimmo via Another Day In The Empire blog,

    This will be seriously politically incorrect.

    The management at Red Hen, the Virginia restaurant that booted Trump press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, has all the right in the world to deny service to any person it does not want patronizing its business. 

    It is illegal in many states to do this, especially based in skin color, religion, sexual orientation, disability, etc. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 makes it so. 

    Three jurisdictions forbid discrimination based on political affiliation – Washington DC, Seattle, and the Virgin Islands. 

    According to the Law & Crime website, if “establishments in D.C. take a cue from [Red Hen], they could be held in violation of D.C. Code Section 2-1402.31, which bars discriminatory actions against people in whole or in part due to characteristics including race, religion, nationality, sex, age, and more, including political affiliation. Violations can result in punishments including court-ordered corrective action or monetary penalties.”

    If you own a restaurant or any other “public accommodation” in DC, you cannot “discriminate” against people holding political opinions you disagree with. You are bound by law to serve Ku Klux Klan members and Antifa terrorists alike. 

    It was Thomas Jefferson who said the only moral commercial transaction is one truly voluntary on the part of the buyer and the seller. 

    The ideas of Thomas Jefferson – principal author of the Declaration of Independence – went out of fashion many years ago. According to the Identity politics crowd, his wisdom is the wisdom of a privileged white slave owner. 

    The liberal social engineers busy at working destroying the Constitution believe the exercise of natural rights – the rights you are born with – permits racists, homophobes, and sexists to spread their poison throughout Hillary Clinton’s village. Natural rights are an excuse for privileged white heterosexual males to act deplorably. 

    Now that the shoe is on the other foot – a “privileged white” was denied service for the crime of working for the president of the United States – it will be interesting to see what the response is. 

    For these folks, application of the law is predicated on “diversity.” It revolves around “protected groups” of people designated by the state, people said to have been oppressed for centuries by evil white slave owners and Indian killers. 

    According to the Identity crowd Trump is Hitler, a racist, a child abuser, a pervert who had sex with a porn star and soiled a bed Obama slept in. It is “justice”—as one tweeter put it—Sanders was denied service.  

    The alt-right MAGA supporters want to punish the Red Hen for its behavior. MAGA tweets call for a boycott. This is certainly their right—unless the boycott target is Israel—but the effort is not likely to be effective. Democrats may respond by packing the restaurant every night with comrades from the rank and file of Nancy Pelosi and Chuckie Schumer’s Resistance. 

    In a more sane and rational world, every property owner would have the freedom to exercise the natural born right to deny service or goods to any person for any reason. When government steps in and tells you what you can and can’t do with your property, you are reduced to the status of a landless serf at the mercy of the state. 

    I’m afraid we’re at the point now where far too many Americans believe the state should be the final arbiter in personal matters. Decades of social engineering have resulted in a dumbed-down public, citizens that agree the state has the right to use violence against those who nonviolently resist its authority. 

  • US General Warns China Could Deploy Hypersonic Weapons On A "Large Scale"

    The United States could lose its military technological superiority to China by late 2020s if it does not spend its $700 billion defense budget wisely, like more investments in artificial intelligence, electronic warfare, and hypersonic missiles, former deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work and Gen. Paul Selva, vice-chairman of the Joint Chief warned Thursday at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) conference on “Strategic Competition: Maintaining The Edge.”

    “We should be prepared to be surprised in any conflict with China, not only because it has invested heavily in modernizing its armed forces but also how it has invested in next-generation military technology,” said former Deputy Secretary Work.

    China “wants to be a first mover” in artificial intelligence, by incorporating machine learning algorithms into submarines, drones, hypersonics, and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). “That will be how they will get ahead of the United States,” Work warned.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Both presenters harped on the idea that China has advanced its hypersonic program to a level where it could soon deploy on a large scale. Gen. Selva said that the Pentagon needs further investment in hypersonic research and development for an asymmetric advantage against China and Russia.

    During the discussion at CNAS in Washington, D.C., Gen. Selva said China has yet to “mass deploy hypersonics or long-range [tactical] ballistic missiles,” however, “they are able now to deploy those capabilities at a large scale” if they decide to move in that direction, he added.

    Gen. Selva then dropped a bombshell indicating the Pentagon is behind in the demonstration of hypersonic technologies, but he did mention that the Pentagon still holds an advantage when it comes to sensor and sensor-integration technologies.

    “If we just sit back and don’t react we will lose our technological superiority” over China, Selva said.

    In mid-April, Lockheed Martin announced that it had won a $928 million contract to develop a hypersonic missile for the U.S. Air Force to counter Chinese and Russian missile defense systems.

    “What we’re really trying to do there is prototype using … [new rapid prototyping] authorities to see what we can advance, and what the art of the possible is to see how quickly we can get a capability out there,” Lt. Gen. Arnold Bunch, military deputy to the assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisitions, technology, and logistics, told journalists during a June 21 meeting at the Pentagon.

    Earlier this year, presenting the 2018 National Defense Strategy at the Johns Hopkins University, Secretary of Defense James Mattis warned about a world in which U.S. military is on the decline.

    “Our competitive edge has eroded in every domain of warfare – air, land, sea, space, and cyberspace,” he said. “And it is continually eroding.”

    “It’s very clear from our national defense strategy … that we intend to react” to what the Chinese are doing, Selva said. “If you accept that the Chinese are trying to offset our capability in the Western Pacific and that the Russians are trying to offset our capability in Europe, it’s incumbent upon us as strategists to react to that ambition.”

    The Department of Defense must “analyze what your opponent is trying to do to you, make this a competition … and checkmate them or prevent them from getting so much of an advantage that they can prevent you from doing the things that are in your national interest,” Selva added.

    The Pentagon is making a substantial investment via taxpayers to fund its research-and-development programs related to artificial intelligence, electronic warfare, and hypersonic missiles.

    After the failed wars in the Middle East and trillions of dollars the Pentagon mysteriously lost, Washington is getting one last shot to remain relevant in the ever so changing world; otherwise, China could surpass America’s military technological superiority within the next decade.

    Its quite evident that the Pentagon is willing to send this country even closer to bankruptcy by demanding $700 billion in its new budget, as it struggles to enforce its rule in the South China Sea.

    “Given the size of our budget, if we don’t have the money to do this then we’re not paying attention,” Selva said.

    “We have to put the money where it matters and that means allocating money to research and development in the technologies that are important to achieve asymmetric approaches to both China and Russia’s technology trends,” he concluded.

    To sum up, this is it – the dying American empire gets one last shot to stay relevant in the world, as the clearly defined race against China to develop artificial intelligence, electronic warfare, and most importantly – hypersonic missiles. What comes next if Washington’s power slips in the Pacific? Well, you guessed it…War.

  • Ron Paul Rewind: The Constitution and Its Rejection By The US Government

    Authored by Adam Dick via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,

    The United States Constitution was ratified 230 years ago this week as the foundational law of the US government, when on June 21, 1788 New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify the document. In the year 2000, then-United States House of Representatives Member Ron Paul (R-TX) delivered a speech on the House floor titled “A Republic, If You Can Keep It” in which he discussed in detail his thoughts on the Constitution, the individual rights he viewed the document as seeking to protect, and the great extent to which the US government had expanded beyond and rejected constitutional limits.

    Paul, who always would ask if legislation he was presented with in the House was authorized by the Constitution, early on in the speech explains:

    Our constitutional republic, according to our Founders, should, above all else, protect the rights of the minority against the abuses of an authoritarian majority. They feared democracy as much as monarchy and demanded a weak executive, a restrained court, and a handicapped legislature.

    Paul soon after in his speech notes:

    The Constitution made it clear that the government was not to interfere with productive non-violent human energy. This is the key element that has permitted America’s great achievements. It was a great plan; we should all be thankful for the bravery and wisdom of those who established this nation and secured the Constitution for us. We have been the political and economic envy of the world. We have truly been blessed. The Founders often spoke of “divine providence” and that God willed us this great nation. It has been a grand experiment, but it is important that the fundamental moral premises that underpin this nation are understood and maintained. We as Members of Congress have that responsibility.

    Yet, despite the effort of the Founders to ensure respect for liberty, government in America grew much over time, engaging in pervasive rights violations. In his speech, Paul provides many examples of such government action concerning matters from mass surveillance to a high tax system to US government involvement in education to the US monetary system to the increase in executive branch powers to the creation of an “armed national police state” to a policy of foreign interventionism including “global military activism.” In all these instances the US government exercises power to the detriment of liberty and in violation of constitutional limitations. Overall, Paul makes this stark assessment of the situation as of the year 2000:

    Almost every daily activity we engage in is monitored or regulated by some government agency. If one attempts to just avoid government harassment, one finds himself in deep trouble with the law.

    Paul notes in the speech a contest between people seeking liberty and people seeking power:

    In every society there are always those waiting in the wings for an opportunity to show how brilliant they are, as they lust for power, convinced they know what’s best for everyone. But the defenders of liberty know that what is best for everyone is to be left alone, with a government limited to stopping aggressive behavior.

    Unfortunately, in America the power seekers have won in many ways as government has expanded far beyond constitutional bounds. Indeed, Paul laments in his speech that the Constitution “no longer serves as the guide for the rule of law” and that “[i]n its place we have substituted the rule of man and the special interests.”

    Yet, Paul in his 2000 speech, as in his comments since leaving the House and founding the Ron Paul Institute, is optimistic. He suggests toward the end of his speech that liberty proponents, though they “face tough odds,” can win and should work hard for victory. Says Paul:

    The grand experiment in human liberty must not be abandoned. A renewed hope and understanding of liberty is what we need as we move into the 21st Century.

    In his concluding sentences Paul expresses this aspiration:

    Let’s hope and pray that our political focus will soon shift toward preserving liberty and individual responsibility and away from authoritarianism. The future of the American Republic depends on it. Let us not forget the American dream depends on keeping alive the spirit of liberty.

    Watch Paul’s wide-ranging, thought-provoking speech (in eight parts) here:

    Part 1:

    Part 2:

    Part 3:

    Part 4:

    Part 5:

    Part 6:

    Part 7:

    Part 8:

  • Chinese Stocks Slump Into Bear Market As 'Weaponized' Yuan Continues To Tumble

    China’s Shanghai Composite is down 22.8% from its late-January peak – officially entering its 4th bear market in 3 years – as Trade Wars (for now) are weighing heavier on China than US markets.

     

    SHCOMP is down 45% from its highs in June 2015

     

    Year-to-Date, the more tech heavy Shenzhen Composite is the worst performer…

     

    And TATS (Tencent, Alibaba, Taiwan Semi, Samsung)are notably underperforming FANG (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google) for now…

    And while China has dramatically underperformed US markets this year, judging by the last two days, perhaps the global trade war contagion has finally washed ashore in America…

     

    Meanwhile – USDJPY has erased all of its Navarro-bounce…

    And offshore Yuan continues its tumble/devaluation…

    ‘Weaponized’ Yuan is now down over 5% from March highs…

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Jun 25

Today’s News 25th June 2018

  • Americans Now Own 40% Of The World's One Billion Guns

    At the end of 2017, there were approximately 1 billion firearms in over 230 countries around the globe, 84.6 percent of which were held by civilians, 13.1 percent by state militaries, and 2.2 percent by law enforcement agencies – with Americans the dominant owners, according to a study released Monday.

    Of the 857 million guns owned by civilians, the Small Arms Survey says 393.3 million are held in the United States, which is “more than those held by civilians in the other top 25 countries combined.”

    To clarify – there are more civilian-owned guns in the US than there are people.

    And while headlines have proclaimed a slowdown in gunmaker revenues, as @StephenGutkowski noted, the numbers are still astounding – In May alone, American civilians bought somewhere around 2 million firearms.

    Table 1: Estimated total civilian-held legal and illicit firearms in the 25 top-ranked countries and territories, 2017

    “The key to the United States, of course, is its unique gun culture,” the report’s author, Aaron Karp, said at a news conference.

    “Ordinary American people buy approximately 14 million new and imported guns every year,” Karp told a news conference at UN headquarters in New York City.

    The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution preserves the right of the people to keep and bear arms. This enables Americans to have access to powerful and cheap firearms that are not commercially available in other regions around the world due to strict laws.

    “Why are they buying them? That’s another debate. Above all, they are buying them probably because they can. The American market is extraordinarily permissive,” he said.

    The estimated rate of gun ownership around the world significantly varies, with 120.5 firearms for every 100 residents in the United States. Second on the list is Yemen, with 52.8 firearms per 100 residents, 39.1 in Montenegro, and 34.7 in Canada.

    Table 2: An estimated rate of civilian firearms holdings in the 25 top-ranked countries and territories, 2017 (firearms per 100 residents)

    The report mentioned out of the 1 billion firearms worldwide, 133 million weapons were held by government military forces and 22.7 million by police agencies.

    Infographic: Tons of Guns | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    Karp said the new estimate of global firearms is significantly higher than the 875 million weapons determined in the 2007 survey, with 650 million civilian-held guns at that time.

    After the American-led interventions in the Middle East and the 2008 financial crisis, citizens of the world have been rushing to stockpile guns. This alarming trend was significantly noted in the United States as civilian gun ownership soared from 2007 to 2017.

    However, the U.S. is fifth today in military firearms holdings, behind Russia, China, North Korea and Ukraine. The report also indicates it is fifth in law enforcement holdings, behind Russia, China, India, and Egypt.

    Small Arms Survey director Eric Berman emphasized that the Geneva-based research and policy institute is not an advocacy organization, but would rather educate governments about the global distribution of civilian firearms.

    “We don’t advocate disarmament. We are not against guns,” he said. “What we want to do, and what we have done successfully for the last 19 years, is to be able to provide authoritative information and analysis for governments so that they can work to address illicit proliferation and reduce it — and to reduce also the incidents of armed violence.”

    Anna Alvazzi del Frate, the institute’s program director, said that “the countries with the highest level of firearm violence — they don’t rank high in terms of ownership per person.”

    “So what we see is that there is no direct correlation at the global level between firearm ownership and violence,” she said.

    But “the correlation exists with firearm suicides, and it is so strong that it can be used, at least in Western countries, as a proxy for measurement,” Alvazzi del Frate said.

    While it is evident that global civilian arms holdings have rapidly expanded post-2008, it seems as the majority of the increase came from the United States.

  • How The US, Under Obama, Created Europe's Refugee Crisis

    Authored by Eric Zuesse via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    The current US President, Donald Trump, claimed on June 18th, that Germany’s leadership, and the leadership in other EU nations, caused the refugee-crisis that Europe is facing:  

    “The people of Germany are turning against their leadership as migration is rocking the already tenuous Berlin coalition. Crime in Germany is way up. Big mistake made all over Europe in allowing millions of people in who have so strongly and violently changed their culture!”

    The US Government is clearly lying about this.

    The US Government itself caused this crisis that Europeans are struggling to deal with. Would the crisis even exist, at all, if the US had not invaded and tried to overthrow (and in some instances actually overthrown) the governments in Libya, Syria, and elsewhere — the places from which these refugees are escaping?

    The US Government, and a few of its allies in Europe (the ones who actually therefore really do share in some of the authentic blame for this crisis) caused this war and government-overthrow, etc., but Germany’s Government wasn’t among them, nor were many of the others in Europe. If the US Government had not led these invasions, probably not even France would have participated in any of them. The US Government, alone, is responsible for having caused these refugees. The US Government itself created this enormous burden to Europe, and yet refuses to accept these refugees that it itself had produced, by its having invaded and bombed to overthrow (among others) Libya’s Government, and then Syria’s Government, and by its aiding Al Qaeda in organizing and leading and arming, jihadists from all over the world to come to Syria to overthrow Syria’s Government and to replace it with one that would be selected by the US regime’s key Middle Eastern ally, the Saud family, who own Saudi Arabia, including its Government, and who are determined to take over Syria.

    Trump blames Angela Merkel for — in essence — having been an ally of the US regime, a regime of aggression which goes back decades, and which Trump himself now is leading, instead of his ending, and of his restoring democracy to the United States, and, finally, thus, his restoring freedom (from America), and peace, to other nations, in Europe, and elsewhere (such as in Syria, Yemen, etc.). He blames Merkel, not himself and his predecessor — not the people who actually caused these refugees.

    Hypocrisy purer than that which Trump there expressed, cannot be imagined, and this hypocrisy comes from Trump now, no longer from Obama, who, in fact, caused the problem.

    As the 2016 study, “An Overview of the Middle East Immigrants in the EU: Origin, Status Quo and Challenges” states in its Abstract:

    “EU has the most inhabited immigrant population; it has up to a population of 56 million foreign-born people. And due to the perennial war and chaos in the Middle East, the amount of relocated population in the region, especially the number of refugees, ranks the No.1 all over the world. … There are a large number of refugees and asylum seekers heading to EU countries; it can be divided into four stages. Since the Arab Spring, especially after the outbreak of the civil war in Syria in 2011, and the rise of the “Islamic State” in 2013, the whole EU area have experienced the biggest wave of refugees since World War II.”

    All of these invasions have been, and are, invasions of countries where the US regime demands regime-change.

    In order to understand the deeper source of this problem, one must understand, first, the US regime’s continuing obsession to conquer Russia after its communism and Warsaw Pact military alliance, had ended (click onto that link to see the documentation); and, second, one needs to understand the US regime’s consequent and consistent aim after the supposed end of the Cold War, to take over control of Russia’s allied countries, including not only those within the Soviet Union and its military Warsaw Pact, but also within the Middle East, especially Syria and Iran, and even countries such as Libya, where the leader was nominally Sunni but nonetheless friendly toward Russia. (The link there provides documentation not only of what’s said here, but it also documents that the alliance between the two aristocracies, of the US and of Saudi Arabia, is essential to the US aristocracy’s Middle-Eastern objective; and Israel’s aristocracy serves as an essential agent of the Sauds in this crucial regard, because the Sauds rely heavily upon the Israeli regime to do its lobbying in Washington. In other words: America’s consistent objective is to isolate Russia so as for the US regime to emerge ultimately in a position to take over Russia itself. That’s the deeper source of Europe’s refugee-crisis.)

    Back at the start of the promised post-Cold-War period, in 1990, the US regime, under its then-President, George Herbert Walker Bush, privately and repeatedly agreed with the USSR regime, under its then-President Mikhail Gorbachev, to end the Cold War — agreed that NATO would not expand “one inch to the east” — that there would be no expansion of the US military alliance against the USSR (soon to become against Russia alone). The US regime’s promise was that NATO would not take in and add to NATO’s membership, any of the countries that then were either in the USS.R’s military alliance the Warsaw Pact (Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Romania) or in USSRitself other than Russia (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Byelorussia, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kirghizia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldavia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan), except for the eastern part of Germany. The US regime simply lied. But the Russian Government followed through on all of its commitments. Russia was now trapped, by Gorbachev’s having trusted liars, whose actual goal turned out to be world-conquest — not peace.

    Currently, the membership of NATO includes all of the former Warsaw Pact nations, and now the US regime aims to bring in also to “NATO membership: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Ukraine.” Georgia and Ukraine are the first parts of the former USSR republics — not merely parts of the Warsaw Pact but parts now of the USSR itself — to join the anti-Russian military alliance, if either of them gets allowed in. The very possibility of this happening, goes beyond anything that the naive, trusting, Mikhail Gorbachev, would ever have imagined. He hadn’t the slightest idea of how evil was (and still is) America’s Deep State (that which controls America). But now we all know. History is clear and unambiguous on the matter.

    The NATO mouthpiece, Brookings Institution, headlined on 15 November 2001, “NATO Enlargement: Moving Forward; Expanding the Alliance and Completing Europe’s Integration” and pretended that this expansion is being done in order to help Europeans, instead of to conquer Russia.

    Ukraine has the longest of all European borders with Russia and so has been America’s top target to seize. But before seizing it, the US had tried in 2008 to turn Georgia against Russia, and the Georgian Mikheil Saakashvili was a key US agent in that effort. Saakashvili subsequently became involved in the violent coup that overthrew Ukraine’s Government in February 2014. Saakashvili organized the Georgian contingent of the snipers that were sent to Ukraine to shoot into the crowds on the Maidan Square and kill both police and demonstrators there, in such a way so that the bullets would seem to have come from the police (Berkut) and/or other forces of Ukraine’s democratically elected Government. (Click on this link to see two of the Georgian snipers casually describing their participation in the coup, and referring tangentially to former Georgian President Saakashvili’s role in it. Here is a more comprehensive video compilation describing and showing the coup itself.

    As I have pointed out, the testimony of these two Georgian snipers is entirely consistent with what the investigation by the EU’s Foreign Ministry had found out on 26 February 2014 about the snipers, that “they were the same snipers, killing people from both sides” and that these snipers were “from the new coalition government” instead of from the government that was being overthrown — that it was a coup, no ‘revolution’ such as Obama’s people claimed, and Trump’s people now assert).

    The US regime has agents in all regions of the former Russia-affiliated bloc — not only in Western Europe.

    Obama’s coup to grab Ukraine away from its previous neutrality and to make it immediately a neo-Nazi rabidly anti-Russian country, has destroyed Ukraine — not only from the standpoint of the EU, but (and click on the link if you don’t already know this) from the standpoint of the Ukrainian people themselves. Who wouldn’t want to leave there?

    Europe has refugees from the Ukrainian operation too, not only (though mainly) from the Middle Eastern ones.

    Europe’s enemy isn’t Russia’s aristocracy, but America’s aristocracy. It’s the billionaires who control America’s international corporations — not the billionaires who control Russia’s international corporations — it is specifically America’s billionaires; it is the people who control the US Government; these, and no Russians at all, are the actual decision-makers, who are behind bringing down Europe. In order for Europe to win, Europeans must know whom their real enemies are. The root of the problem is in the US, Europe’s now fake ‘ally’. Today’s America isn’t the America of the Marshall Plan. The US Government has since been taken over by gangsters. And they want to take over the world. Europe’s refugee-crisis is simply one of the consequences.

    In fact, Obama had started, by no later than 2011, to plan these regime-change operations, in Libya, Syria, and Ukraine. But, in any case, none of the regime-change operations that caused the current unprecedented flood of refugees into Europe started because of what Europe’s leaders did (other than their cooperating with the US regime). Today’s American Government is Europe’s enemy, no friend at all, to the peoples of Europe. Trump’s blaming this crisis on Europe’s leaders isn’t just a lie; it is a slanderous one.

    And this fact is separate from Trump’s similar slanderous lie against the refugees themselves. On May 8th, Germany’s Die Welt newspaper had headlined “Number of crimes falls to lowest level since 1992” and reported that Germany’s Interior Minister, Horst Seehofer, announced the 2017 national crime statistics, and he said, “Germany has become safer,” the safest in the last 30 years. Seehofer happens to be a member of Chancellor Merkel’s Administration who is angling to replace her as Chancellor by appealing to the strong anti-immigrant portion of their own conservative party, but even he had to admit, essentially, that the anti-immigrant slur that Trump subsequently made on June 18th is a bald lie; it’s even the exact opposite of the truth. Trump’s tweeted comment then was a lying slander not only against Merkel and other European leaders, but also against the refugees that the US regime itself had produced. How depraved is that? How depraved is Trump?

    The refugee crisis isn’t due to the refugees themselves; and it’s not due to Europe’s leaders; it is due to the almost constantly lying US regime – the people who actually control America’s Government and America’s international corporations.

    On June 21st, Manlio Dinucci at Global Research headlined “The Circuit of Death in the ‘Enlarged Mediterranean’” and he opened by saying, “The politico-media projectors, focussed as they are on the migratory flow from South to North across the Mediterranean, are leaving other Mediterranean flows in the dark – those moving from North to South, comprised of military forces and weapons.” But the world’s biggest international seller of weapons is the US, not the EU; so, his placing the main focus on European billionaires was wrong. The main culprits are on Trump’s own side of the Atlantic, and this is what is being ignored, on both sides of the Atlantic. The real problem isn’t across the Mediterranean; it is across the Atlantic. That’s where Europe’s enemy is.

    On 7 August 2015, I headlined “The US Is Destroying Europe” and reported that: 

    “In Libya, Syria, Ukraine, and other countries at the periphery or edges of Europe, US President Barack Obama has been pursuing a policy of destabilization, and even of bombings and other military assistance, that drives millions of refugees out of those peripheral areas and into Europe, thereby adding fuel to the far-rightwing fires of anti-immigrant rejectionism, and of resultant political destabilization, throughout Europe, not only on its peripheries, but even as far away as in northern Europe.”

    It’s continuing under Trump.

  • Japan Suspends Missile Evacuation Drills

    While the American media is still uncomfortable proclaiming that President Trump achieved anything in Singapore, it appears the Japanese are willing to believe it made a difference.

    As Frank Sellers reports at The Duran, in solidarity with the peace making process, the Japanese are willing to suspend certain missile evacuation drills…

    Following a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore, US President Donald Trump announced that the North Korean threat was no longer a nuclear one and that he was suspending certain military exercises in the area on the basis that they are both expensive and a ‘provocation’.

    The Japanese, however, haven’t been too thrilled about the the idea, as they seem to like the idea of applying pressure on the North Korean regime. But, in solidarity with the peace making process as it has moved along thus far, the Japanese are willing to suspend certain missile evacuation drills.

    United Press International reports:

    June 22 (UPI) — The Japanese government confirmed Friday it will cancel future missile evacuation drills involving civilians, but announcements over the satellite-based J-Alert system would continue.

    Tokyo’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said the drills are not necessary at present, citing the easing of tensions, South Korean news service Newsis reported.

    “The urgent situation of Japan’s guarantee of security has been alleviated by the U.S.-North Korea summit,” Suga said. “We will for the moment hold off on nine kinds of civilian evacuation drills in Tochigi and Kagawa Prefectures.”

    But the government will continue to “train in information delivery through the nationwide instant alarm system,” Suga said.

    J-Alert provides early warnings to more than 200 Japanese municipalities in the Chugoku and Shikoku regions. It transmits alerts to mobile phones and televisions and warns people to take shelter.

    Japan has conducted 29 evacuation drills, beginning March 2017.

    Tokyo is keen to begin negotiations over the issue of Japanese abductees. The government claims North Korea abducted 17 people from Japanese coastal areas between 1977 and 1983, and maintains North Korea is still holding prisoners.

    North Korea may have been planning a rapprochement with Japan last year.

    According to the Nikkei, there have been plans in North Korea to work toward diplomatic normalization with Tokyo as early as October 2017.

    A source in North Korea told the Nikkei there were internal discussion at the Korean Workers’ party last fall on ways to approach the United States, China, South Korea, Russia and Japan.

    The North Koreans discussed ways to reach out to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s administration through secret contacts, then request the easing of sanctions, if Japan requests to send a team of investigators on the abduction issue, according to the Japanese newspaper.

    Abe has previously said economic assistance to North Korea would be considered only on the condition the abduction issue is resolved.

    The Japan angle is a thorny one in the sense that Japan wants the US to remain in the area as a security guarantor, particularly in their own case. However, America’s military presence happens to be part of what makes the North Korean regime somewhat nervous, and could pose as a sticking point in the nuclear disarmament and peace negotiations process, and has the cheerleading of the Japanese regime, complete with the pom-poms.

    Therefore, even though the Japanese are following suit with America’s actions on the process so far, the question is whether their insistence of the American military presence going to be a big enough of an influence in the matter to complicate the peace process if the Japanese insist on perceiving it as a non negotiable while the DPRK sits on the other end of the see-saw insisting that the US military’s absence is a non negotiable matter, necessary as part of a security guarantee component of the nuclear disarmament process?

     

  • Trump's Doomsday Gamble In China Trade War

    Authored by Finian Cunningham via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    President Trump dramatically resumed a trade war footing this week with Beijing, threatening to impose tariffs on virtually all imported Chinese goods to the US.

    After earlier negotiations this month appeared to avert a clash, the Trump administration is back to full trade war mode. With fiery language, the US president and his trade advisors said they have run out of patience with what they claim to be “predatory practices” by Beijing.

    For its part, China quickly hit back, condemning “unacceptable blackmail” by Washington. Beijing said it will not hesitate to respond in kind with counter-tariffs on American exports.

    Markets in Asia, Europe and America tumbled, with companies and investors panicked by the prospect of a full-blown trade war between the world’s two largest economies, and the uncertain repercussions from such a titanic clash.

    Trump is gambling big time. He is betting that China will be the “first to blink”, as the New York Times reported. That’s because the Trump administration reckons that with China’s huge trade surplus, Beijing has much more to suffer financially if it goes toe-to-toe with the US in a trade showdown.

    “China has a lot more to lose than we do,” said Trump’s trade advisor Peter Navarro, who is a hawk when it comes to dealing with Beijing. Navarro, like Trump, has continually accused China of ripping off the American economy and workers through alleged unfair trade practices and theft of intellectual property from US tech companies.

    During his election campaign, Trump fired up voters with tirades slamming China for “raping America”. Recently, the president railed against “China taking $500 billion out of our economy every year”.

    But typical of Trump, the emotive charges and figures are not what they appear to be.

    For a start, the US economy has been running a chronic trade deficit with the rest of the world for the past four decades. That’s largely because of a structural change in American capitalism whereby US companies and investors bailed out of the country to set up in cheaper labor territories, such as China.

    To accuse China of being the problem is a deceitful distraction from the way American capitalists have historically cheated US workers with layoffs and downsizing. One of those capitalists profiting very nicely from setting up in China is Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka whose clothes business profits from manufacturing in China and exporting to the US, thereby contributing to the American trade deficit.

    Another issue is that whatever complaints the Trump administration may have about trade with China it should settle those disputes through the legal mechanisms of the World Trade Organization. If Trump thinks he has a case against unfair Chinese practices then he should trust the multilateral trading authority. Otherwise it’s a recipe for international chaos and a slippery slope to conflict, as history has shown.

    But, as with many other facets of this administration, there is a contempt for multilateralism, and a resort to high-handed unilateralism. Rules, laws, what’s that? As one White House official was quoted recently as saying of the Trump’s administration’s attitude towards the rest of world: “We’re America, bitch!”

    Trump is playing hardball with China in the belief that its bullying will see Beijing cave to its demands for rectifying trade imbalances. The Americans are trying to solve their structural, inherent flaws by strong-arming China into making concessions. Because China’s $500 billion annual exports to the US are about four-fold what the US sells to Beijing, Trump is betting that his Mad Max approach will scare into submission.

    Trump’s browbeating manner is also grandstanding for his voter base in rustbelt states, who might feel a patriotic surge in sticking it to the Chinese. Mid-term congressional elections in November are no doubt on Trump’s mind to get the Republican vote out.

    However, the president’s best laid plans are in danger of veering into a political train wreck.

    Beijing has said it will not back down to intimidation. In an editorial in the Global Times, which reflects government thinking, the tone was combative: “It is US arrogance to believe that a trade war will exhaust China. But the boot is on the other foot. Trade is mutually beneficial to both the US and China. Scuppering bilateral trade would cause similar suffering to both sides.”

    The options at Beijing’s disposal could wreak havoc for the US economy and Trump’s political future. Trump’s inability to see that speaks to his and his advisors’ petulance.

    If China goes ahead with threats to impose counter-tariffs on US agricultural products, such as soybeans, corn and meat, the impact on farm states like Iowa, Idaho and Illinois across the mid-west will be severe. Voters from these states were crucial to Trump getting elected to the White House in 2016. By taking the US into a trade war with China, Trump will end up hitting his own political base hardest.

    Another repercussion is higher retail prices for consumer goods like televisions and footwear imported from China, if Trump slaps on punitive tariffs. That will inflate consumer prices and crimp household budgets, especially among the lower-income population, who again tended to vote for Trump. Net result is that the fragile American economy would likely tank from cash-strapped consumers, who are already living on the edge. 

    The far-reaching injurious effects of a trade war seem to have escaped the Trump administration’s planning. The president seems to have been carried away with a hubristic notion of American power and an irrational ideological hostility towards China. It’s all very well for him and his rich advisors to antagonize China over perceived wrongs. What about ordinary Americans though? So much for the famed deal-maker. Trump’s short-term recklessness betrays someone who is playing tiddlywinks instead of chess.

    Yet, in this accounting, the real pain hasn’t even begun. China’s ultimate trade weapon is its massive holdings of US Treasury bonds. With nearly $1.2 trillion-worth in holdings of US federal debt, China is by far the world’s largest creditor for Washington. US-based news outlet Bloomberg calls it Beijing’s “nuclear option”.

    “It can just stop buying US Treasury debt,” warns Bloomberg. “China is the world’s biggest Treasury investor, keeping US borrowing costs low, helping us buy more stuff from China. Ending this symbiotic relationship just when US budget deficits are soaring would devastate the US economy.”

    Bloomberg adds that such a “doomsday” option “could blow up” China’s economy too. It compares the abysmal scenario to “mutually assured destruction”.

    Arguably though, such mutually devastating economic consequences for China are moot. It has the alternative sphere of Eurasian economic integration and the new Silk Roads it has busily been building with Russia and others over the past decade.

    If Trump pushes Washington’s belligerence too far with Beijing, the economic ramifications will be wide-ranging and dire for the globe.

    China may just survive to trade another day with the rest of the world.

    But one thing seems sure. With its chronic debts, deficits and dodo-like dollar, America will be ruined beyond salvation. Ruined by a president who brags about his “art of the deal”.

  • Visualizing The Population Pulse Of A Manhattan Workday

    In cities around the world, the offices and storefronts of the downtown core fill up with people during the workday to keep the wheels of commerce turning.

    But, as Visual Capitalist’s Nick Routley shows below, nowhere is this phenomenon as pronounced as in Manhattan, which swells to an incredible four million people during work hours.

    Today’s animation, created by Justin Fung, is a dramatic, eye-opening look at the “pulse” of America’s largest city.

    Also, check out the fancy interactive version of this visualization.

    This dramatic shift in population on a daily basis is made possible by Manhattan’s unparalleled carrying capacity, or its ability to facilitate an inflow of millions of people who come for all sorts of reasons. Many of the metropolises with the most dramatic daytime population spikes, such as Washington, D.C. and New York, also have much higher rates of transit ridership than the average city.

    Not surprisingly, three surrounding boroughs have the largest daytime population decreases in the entire country.

    OUTSIDE THE BIG APPLE

    While many parts of Manhattan remain lively in the evening, many downtown cores around the country simply empty out.

    This stark contrast is particularly noticeable in low-rise communities with large employment hubs such as Redmond, Washington or Palo Alto, California, both of which are home to sprawling tech campuses.

    In the case of the nation’s capital, the city is a powerful magnet for talent. As well, Washington’s unique position between state lines means that people have the option of residing in Virginia or Maryland and easily commuting in.

    HIGHER RESTING HEARTBEAT

    Thanks to a renewed interest in urban living, many cities are starting to see an uptick in the number of residents who choose to skip the long commute and just live where the action is.

    This trend is particularly pronounced in Canadian cities such as Vancouver and Toronto. The latter city’s downtown population is expected to double over the next 25 years, while Vancouver’s sustained real estate boom has added tens of thousands of residents to the downtown area.

    In the U.S., Seattle has demonstrated significant urban residential growth. Since 2010, the population of downtown and surrounding neighborhoods has grown by an impressive 18%, and 1-in-5 people moving to the city choose to live in the downtown area.

    The 2020 U.S. Census will provide a much better clearer picture of how this trend is playing out.

  • The World Transformed And No One In America Noticed

    Authored by Martin Sieff via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    The world transformed and nobody in the West noticed.

    India and Pakistan have joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The 17 year-old body since its founding on June 15, 2001 has quietly established itself as the main alliance and grouping of nations across Eurasia. Now it has expanded from six nations to eight, and the two new members are the giant nuclear-armed regional powers of South Asia, India, with a population of 1.324 billion and Pakistan, with 193.2 million people (both in 2016).

    In other words, the combined population of the SCO powers or already well over 1.5 billion has virtually doubled at a single stroke.

    The long-term global consequences of this development are enormous. It is likely to prove the single most important factor insuring peace and removing the threat of nuclear war over South Asia and from 20 percent of the human race. It now raises the total population of the world in the eight SCO nations to 40 percent, including one of the two most powerful thermonuclear armed nations (Russia) and three other nuclear powers (China, India and Pakistan).

    This development is a diplomatic triumph especially for Moscow. Russia has been seeking for decades to ease its longtime close strategic ally India into the SCO umbrella. This vision was clearly articulated by one of Russia’s greatest strategic minds of the 20th century, former Premier and Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov, who died in 2015. In the past China quietly but steadfastly blocked the India’s accession, but with Pakistan, China’s ally joining at the same time, the influence of Beijing and Moscow is harmonized.

    The move can only boost Russia’s already leading role in the diplomacy and national security of the Asian continent. For both Beijing and Delhi, the road for good relations with each other and the resolution of issues such as sharing the water resources of the Himalayas and investing in the economic development of Africa now runs through Moscow. President Vladimir Putin is ideally placed to be the regular interlocutor between the two giant nations of Asia.

    The move also must be seen as a most significant reaction by India to the increasing volatility and unpredictability of the United States in the global arena. In Washington and Western Europe, it is fashionable and indeed reflexively inevitable that this is entirely blamed on President Donald Trump.

    But in reality this alarming trend goes back at least to the bombing of Kosovo by the United States and its NATO allies in 1998, defying the lack of sanction in international law for any such action at the time because other key members of the United Nations Security Council opposed it.

    Since then, under four successive presidents, the US appetite for unpredictable military interventions around the world – usually bungled and open-ended – has inflicted suffering and instability on a wide range of nations, primarily in the Middle East (Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen) but also in Eurasia (Ukraine) and South Asia (Afghanistan).

    The accession of both India and Pakistan to the SCO is also a stunning repudiation of the United States.

    The US has been Pakistan’s main strategic ally and protector over the past more than 70 years since it achieved independence (Dean Acheson, secretary of state through the 1949-53 Truman administration was notorious for his racist contempt for all Indians, as well as for his anti-Semitism and hatred of the Irish).

    US-Pakistan relations have steadily deteriorated even since the United States charged into Afghanistan in November 2001, but through it all, US policymakers have always taken for granted that Islamabad at the end of the day would “stay on the reservation” and ultimately dance to their tune.

    The United States has courted India for 17 years since President Bill Clinton’s state visit in 2000, which I covered in his press party. Current Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed a Joint Session of Congress in 2016, the ultimate accolade of approval by the US political establishment for any foreign leader.

    US policymakers and pundits have endlessly pontificated that India, as an English speaking democracy would become America‘s ideological and strategic partner in opposing the inevitable rise of China on the world stage. It turned out to be a fantasy.

    During the era of the Cold War, the “loss” of any nation of the size and standing of India or Pakistan to a rival or just independent ideological camp and security grouping would have provoked waves of shock, hurt, rage and even openly expressed fear in the US media.

    However, what we have seen following this latest epochal development is far more extraordinary. The decisions by Delhi and Islamabad have not been praised, condemned or even acknowledged in the mainstream of US political and strategic debate. They have just been entirely ignored. To see the leaders and opinion-shapers of a major superpower that still imagines it is the dominant hyper-power conduct its affairs in this way is potentially worrying and alarming.

    The reality is that we live in a multipolar world – and that we have clearly done so at least since 2001. However, this obvious truth will continue to be denied in Washington, London and Paris in flat defiance of the abundantly clear facts.

  • Visualizing The Global Export Economy In One Map

    President Trump has loudly complained for quite some time about U.S. trade deficits with the world, most recently following the latest G7 summit in Canada. Trump’s rhetoric implies that other countries are enjoying massive surpluses at the expense of American workers. This got us thinking about how the U.S. actually compares as an exporter in the world economy, so HowMuch.net  created the following map.

    Source: HowMuch.net

    As HowMuch.net explains, the numbers sre from the World Trade Organization (navigate to the Statistics Database to locate the original data). The WTO tracks the total value of physical goods each country sends across its borders. Remember, these numbers exclude services – we are only focused on physical items. To create our map, we changed the size of the country depending on the value of exports, and we likewise added a shade of blue for easy reference. This approach highlights the outliers and identifies several key trends.

    Top Ten Countries with the Most Exports in 2017 ($B)

    1. China: $2,263B

    2. United States: $1,547B

    3. Germany: $1,448B

    4. Japan: $698B

    5. Netherlands: $652B

    6. South Korea: $574B

    7. Hong Kong: $550B

    8. France: $535B

    9. Italy: $506B

    10. United Kingdom: $445B

    The most obvious insight that our map contains about international trade is how unequal it is. A few countries dominate the very top of the list, and everybody else falls far behind. The top exporter, China, has 32% more exports than the second-place Americans. The top three countries generate more exports than the rest of the top 10 combined ($5,258B vs $3,960B). You can see this inequality on our map in how China, the U.S. and Germany dominate the visual forefront.

    The second interesting takeaway is that there are several surprise countries, including most notably the Netherlands in the 5th spot ($652B). What could the Dutch possibly export to the rest of the world that would land them so high on our list (and give their country such a prominent place on our map)? It turns out they manufacture a lot of heavy machinery and oil, both of which spread far and wide on the international market.

    There are also more than a few surprises at the other end of the spectrum. Several countries in Southeast Asia are extremely well known for having export-dependent economies, and yet none of them are anywhere near the top of the list. Go check to see where the things in your closet were made—we bet most of the items came from Vietnam, Malaysia or Indonesia. None of these countries crack $250B in total exports. But also look at Africa, where only a handful of countries have enough exports to make it on our map. Our visualization tells a sad story about the development of these economies.

    And finally, it’s easy to believe listening to Trump’s rhetoric that the U.S. hardly sells anything to the rest of the world. Our map demonstrates how that’s just not true. With more than $1.5T in annual exports, Americans stand a lot to lose if a trade war continues to escalate and eventually becomes a reality.

  • John McAfee 'Outs' "Wanted Sex Trafficker" In Post-Poisoning Tweetstorm

    Update 3: It appears Mr McAfee is recuperating well from his near-death poisoning experience…

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    Update  2: That did not take long. McAfee now claims to know the identity of the motorcyclist and “I want him” explaining that he is a “wanted sex trafficker.”

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    *  *  *

    Update 1: It appears John McAfee has a suspect in mind and is offering a reward for details…

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    *  *  *

    John McAfee’s “enemies” recently tried to poison him, the cybersecurity pioneer claims. However, John McAfee isn’t as easy to kill as his myriad “enemies” had hoped. To help drive this point home, the creator of the eponymous computer security software tweeted an alarming picture of himself lying in a hospital bed with an oxygen tube affixed to his mouth.

    McAfee

    His tweet came accompanied with a warning to the unnamed parties who allegedly carried out the attack: “You will soon understand the true meaning of wrath.”

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    I know exactly who you are.” So if you or somebody you know was behind this latest alleged attempt on McAfee’s life (he has reportedly been the subject of 11 attempts on his life, along with a “conspiracy” by Belize authorities that he was involved in the death of a neighbor while living in the tropical South American state) be wary: McAfee is coming for you.

    McAfee

    This isn’t the first time McAfee has been in the news this week: the tech entrepreneur tweeted earlier this week that he would no longer be promoting ICOs due to a warning from the SEC, which has lately been cracking down on celebrity endorsements of the often dubious ICOs. But according to RT, McAfee has been promoting Docademic, which is focused on “reshaping the medical world.” He credited the company with urging him to seek medical assistance after his latest poisoning. It appears he made a quick recovery, as he followed up news of his poisoning with a tweet announcing his new crypto wallet.

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    The “doctors said no” when McAfee asked to leave the hospital. But he checked himself out anyway, it appears.

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    Of course, after spending so much time promoting obviously scammy ICOs, we imagine there’s a large pool of people who’ve bought into these scams who probably don’t have the warmest feelings toward McAfee. And let’s not forget his promise to “eat his dick” on national television if bitcoin doesn’t hit $500,000 by the end of 2020.

  • Ben Rhodes Admits Obama Armed Jihadists In Syria In Bombshell Interview

    Someone finally asked Obama administration officials to own up to the rise of ISIS and arming jihadists in Syria. 

    In a wide ranging interview titled “Confronting the Consequences of Obama’s Foreign Policy” The Intercept’s Mehdi Hasan put the question to Ben Rhodes, who served as longtime deputy national security adviser at the White House under Obama and is now promoting his newly published book, The World As It Is: Inside the Obama White House.

    Deputy National Security adviser Ben Rhodes and President Obama. Image source: AP via Commentary Magazine

    Rhodes has been described as being so trusted and close to Obama that he was “in the room” for almost every foreign policy decision of significance that Obama made during his eight years in office. While the Intercept interview is worth listening to in full, it’s the segment on Syria that caught our attention.

    In spite of Rhodes trying to dance around the issue, he sheepishly answers in the affirmative when Mehdi Hasan asks the following question about supporting jihadists in Syria:

    Did you intervene too much in Syria? Because the CIA spent hundreds of millions of dollars funding and arming anti-Assad rebels, a lot of those arms, as you know, ended up in the hands of jihadist groups, some even in the hands of ISIS.

    Your critics would say you exacerbated that proxy war in Syria; you prolonged the conflict in Syria; you ended up bolstering jihadists.

    Rhodes initially rambles about his book and “second guessing” Syria policy in avoidance of the question. But Hasan pulls him back with the following: “Oh, come on, but you were coordinating a lot of their arms.” 

    The two spar over Hasan’s charge of “bolstering jihadists” in the following key section of the interview, at the end of which Rhodes reluctantly answers “yeah…” — but while trying to pass ultimate blame onto US allies Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia (similar to what Vice President Biden did in a 2014 speech):

    MH: Oh, come on, but you were coordinating a lot of their arms. You know, the U.S. was heavily involved in that war with the Saudis and the Qataris and the Turks.

    BR: Well, I was going to say: Turkey, Qatar, Saudi.

    MH: You were in there as well.

    BR: Yeah, but, the fact of the matter is that once it kind of devolved into kind of a sectarian-based civil war with different sides fighting for their perceived survival, I think we, the ability to bring that type of situation to close, and part of what I wrestled with in the book is the limits of our ability to pull a lever and make killing like that stop once it’s underway.

    To our knowledge this is the only time a major media organization has directly asked a high ranking foreign policy adviser from the Obama administration to own up to the years long White House support to jihadists in Syria.

    Though the interview was published Friday, its significance went without notice or comment in the mainstream media over the weekend (perhaps predictably). Instead, what did circulate was a Newsweek article mocking “conspiracy theories” surrounding the rapid rise of ISIS, including the following:

    President Donald Trump has done little to dispel the myth of direct American support for ISIS since he took office. On the campaign trail in 2016, Trump claimed—without providing any evidence—that President Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton co-founded the group and that ISIS “honors” the former president.

    Of course, the truth is a bit more nuanced than that, as Trump himself elsewhere seemed to acknowledge, and which ultimately led to the president reportedly shutting down the CIA’s covert Syrian regime change program in the summer of 2017 while complaining to aides about the shocking brutality of the CIA-trained “rebels”.

    Meanwhile, mainstream media has been content to float the falsehood that President Obama’s legacy is that he “stayed out” of Syria, instead merely approving some negligible level of aid to so-called “moderate” rebels who were fighting both Assad and (supposedly) the Islamic State. Rhodes has himself in prior interviews attempted to portray Obama as wisely staying “on the sidelines” in Syria.

    But as we’ve pointed out many times over the years, this narrative ignores and seeks to whitewash possibly the largest CIA covert program in history, started by Obama, which armed and funded a jihadist insurgency bent of overthrowing Assad to the tune of $1 billion a year (one-fifteenth of the CIA’s publicly known budget according to leaked Edward Snowden documents revealed by the Washington Post).

    It also ignores the well established fact, documented in both US intelligence reports and authenticated battlefield footage, that ISIS and the Free Syrian Army (FSA) jointly fought under a single US-backed command structure during the early years of the war in Syria, even as late as throughout 2013 — something confirmed by University of Oklahoma professor Joshua Landis, widely considered to be the world’s foremost expert on Syria.

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    Syria experts, as well as a New York Times report which largely passed without notice, verified the below footage from 2013 showing then US Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford working closely with a “rebel” leader who exercised operational command over known ISIS terrorists (Ambassador Ford has since acknowledged the relationship to McClatchy News): 

    This latest Ben Rhodes non-denial-cum-sheepish-affirmation on the Obama White House’s arming jihadists in Syria follows previous bombshell reporting by Mehdi Hasan from 2015.

    As host of Al Jazeera’s Head to Head, Hasan asked the former head of Pentagon intelligence under Obama, General Michael Flynn, who is to blame for the rise of ISIS? (the August 2015 interview was significantly prior to Flynn joining Trump’s campaign).

    Hasan presented Flynn with the 2012 Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) declassified memo revealing Washington support to al-Qaeda and ISIS terrorists in Syria in order to counter both Assad and Iran. Flynn affirmed Hasan’s charge that it was “a willful decision to support an insurgency that had Salafists, Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood…”. 

    Soon after, The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald appeared on Democracy Now to discuss the shocking contents of the Flynn interview:

    It will be interesting to see years from now which “narrative” concerning Obama’s legacy in the Syrian conflict future historians choose to emphasize. 

    …Obama the president who “stayed out” and “on the sidelines” in Syria? …Or Obama the president whose decisions fueled the rise of the most brutal terrorist organization the world has ever seen?

    * * *

    Below is the relevant excerpt covering Syria from the 26-minute Intercept interview with Obama deputy national-security adviser Ben Rhodes [bold emphasis ours].

    The audio is available here — Mehdi Hasan begins questioning Rhodes about Syria and ISIS at the 19-minute mark.

    Mehdi Hasan: My guest today was at President Obama’s side every step of the way over the course of those two terms in office. Ben Rhodes joined the Obama election campaign in 2007 as a foreign-policy speechwriter, when he was just 29, and rose to become a deputy national-security adviser at the White House, who was so intellectually and ideologically close to his boss that he was often described as having a mind-meld with Obama.

    Ben, who currently works at the Obama Foundation, has written a new book, “The World as It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House.” And earlier this week I interviewed him about Obama’s rather contentious foreign policy record…

    …

    MH: But Ben, here’s what I don’t get, if you’re saying this about Afghanistan and prolonged conflict, all of which I don’t disagree with what you’re saying. How do you, then, explain Syria? Because you’ve been criticized a lot. I’ve been listening to your interviews on the book tour; you talk about in the book about how you were criticized for not doing enough on Syria. I remember being an event in D.C. a couple years ago where Syrian opposition members were berating you for not doing enough at an event, and you often were the public face who came out and defended Obama. I want to come to the other direction and say: Did you intervene too much in Syria? Because the CIA spent hundreds of millions of dollars funding and arming anti-Assad rebels, a lot of those arms, as you know, ended up in the hands of jihadist groups, some even in the hands of ISIS. Your critics would say you exacerbated that proxy war in Syria; you prolonged the conflict in Syria; you ended up bolstering jihadists.

    Ben Rhodes: Well, what I try to do in the book is, you know, essentially raise — all the second guessing on Syria tends to be not what you expressed, Mehdi, but the notion that we should’ve taken military action.

    MH: Yes.

    BR: What I do in the book is I try to look back at 2011 and 2012, was there a diplomatic window that we missed or that we, in some ways, escalated its closure by pivoting to the call for Assad to go — which obviously I believe should happen, I believe Assad has been a terrible leader for Syria and has brutalized his people — but, you know, was there a diplomatic initiative that could have been taken to try to avert or at least minimize the extent of the civil war. Because, you know, what ended up happening essentially there is, you know, we were probably too optimistic that, you know, after Mubarak went and Ben Ali and eventually Saleh and Gaddafi, that you would have a situation where Assad would go. And, you know, not factoring in enough the assistance he was going to get from Russia and Iran, combined with his own nihilism, and how that could lead him to survive. So I do look back at that potentially missed diplomatic opportunity.

    On the support of the opposition, you know, I don’t know that I would give us that much agency. There are a lot of people putting arms into Syria, funding all sorts of —

    MH: Oh, come on, but you were coordinating a lot of their arms. You know, the U.S. was heavily involved in that war with the Saudis and the Qataris and the Turks.

    BR: Well, I was going to say: Turkey, Qatar, Saudi.

    MH: You were in there as well.

    BR: Yeah, but, the fact of the matter is that once it kind of devolved into kind of a sectarian-based civil war with different sides fighting for their perceived survival, I think we, the ability to bring that type of situation to close, and part of what I wrestled with in the book is the limits of our ability to pull a lever and make killing like that stop once it’s underway.

    So that’s why I still look to that initial opening window. I also describe, there was a slight absurdity in the fact that we were debating options to provide military support to the opposition at the same time that we were deciding to designate al-Nusra, a big chunk of that opposition, as a terrorist organization. So there was kind of a schizophrenia that’s inherent in a lot of U.S. foreign policy that came to a head in Syria.

    MH: That’s a very good word, especially to describe Syria policy…

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Jun 24

Today’s News 24th June 2018

  • Atrocity Porn And Hitler Memes Target Trump For Regime Change

    Authored by James George Jatras via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    American and global audiences have been bombarded with media images of wailing children in holding facilities, having been separated from adults (maybe their parents, maybe not) detained for illegal entry into the United States. The images have been accompanied by “gut-wrenching” audio of distraught toddlers screaming the Spanish equivalents of “Mommy!” and “Daddy!” – since, as any parent knows, small children never cry or call for their parents except in the most horrifying, life-threatening circumstances.

    American and world media have provided helpful color commentary, condemning the caging of children as openly racist atrocities and state terrorism comparable to Nazi concentration camps and worse than FDR’s internment of Japanese and Japanese-Americans. Indeed, just having voted for Trump is now reason enough for Americans to be labeled as Nazis.

    Finally, the presumptive Hitler himself, also known as President Donald Trump, citing the pleas of First Lady Melania and First Daughter Ivanka, signed an Executive Order to provide for adults and (their?) children to be detained together. However, the order is unlikely to hold up in court, with sanctuary-minded states aiming to obstruct border enforcement the way Trump’s earlier order on vetting arrivals from terrorism-prone countries has been crippled by the federal judiciary. His media and bipartisan political opposition will be happy only when all border violation detentions cease and America has gone full Merkel, starting with ending Trump’s declared zero tolerance for illegal crossings and restoration of Barack Obama’s catch-and-release policy.

    Even then, Trump will be vilified for taking so long to do it. Whether or how Trump may yield further is not clear, but rather than slaking the hate campaign against him, his attempted effort at appeasement has put the smell of political blood in the water with the November 2018 Congressional midterm elections looming.

    Some images of small children have become veritable icons of Trumpian brutality. One photo, reportedly of a two-year-old Honduran girl (who in fact had not been separated from her mother), graced the cover of Time magazine, confronting the black-hearted tyrant himself. Another, of a little boy in a cage, went viral before it was revealed that this kid had nothing to do with the border but rather was briefly inside a staged pen as part of a protest in Dallas.

    The reality behind the pictures doesn’t matter, though. More important are the images themselves and their power, along with dishonest media spin, to produce an emotional response that short-circuits critical thinking.

    Never mind what the facts are! Children are suffering! Trump is guilty! We need to “do something”!

    On point of comparison, let’s remember the  saturation media distribution given in 2016 to a picture of a little boy, Omran Daqneesh, said to have been pulled from the rubble of Aleppo after what was dubiously reported as a Russian airstrike. Promptly dubbed “Aleppo Boy,” his pathetic dusty image immediately went viral in every prestige outlet in the United States and Europe. The underlying message: we – the “international community,” “the Free World,” the United States, you and I – must “do something” to stop Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his main backer and fellow Hitler clone Vladimir Putin.

    (Not long before, another little boy, also in the area of Aleppo, was beheaded on video by the “moderate” US-supported jihad terror group Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zenki. The images of his grisly demise received far less media attention than those of official Aleppo Boy. This other youngster received no catchy moniker. No one called for anyone in power to “do something.” In fact, western support for the al-Zenki murderers – which the Obama administration refused to disavow even after the beheading and allegations of chlorine gas use by al-Zenki – can itself be seen as part of “doing something” about the evil, evil Assad. (Reportedly Trump’s viewing the beheading video led to a cutoff of CIA aid to some jihad groups.) Another small detail readily available in alternative media but almost invisible in the major outlets: Mahmoud Raslan, the photographer who took the picture of Aleppo Boy and disseminated it to world acclaim, also took a smiling selfie with the beaming al-Zenki beheaders of the other kid. But, hey, says Raslan, I barely know those guys. Now let’s move on . . . )

    For those who have been paying attention for the past couple of decades, the Trump border crisis kids, like Aleppo Boy before them, are human props in what is known as ‘atrocity porn‘ designed to titillate the viewers through horror and incite them to hatred of the presumed perpetrators. Atrocity propaganda has long been a part of warfare – think World War I claims of Belgian babies impaled on German bayonets – but with modern digital technology and social media the impact is immediate and universal.

    It’s irrelevant whether what is identified in images corresponds to reality. What matters is their ability to evoke mindless, maudlin emotionalism, like MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow choking up in tears over the border children or the similar weepy display in 2016 by CNN’s Kate Bolduan over Aleppo Boy.  

    Now being deployed in an American domestic context over whether or not the US should be allowed to control its borders, for decades atrocity porn has been essential for selling military action in wars of choice unconnected to the actual defense of the US: incubator babies (Kuwait/Iraq); the Racak massacre (Kosovo); the Markale marketplace bombings, Omarska “living skeletons,” and the Srebrenica massacre (Bosnia); rape as calculated instrument of war (Bosnia, Libya); and false flag poison gas attacks in Ghouta  and Douma (Syria). Never mind that the facts, to the extent they eventually become known, may later turn out to be very different from the categorical black-and-white accusations on the lips of western officials and given banner exposure within hours if not minutes of the event in question.

    Atrocity porn dovetails closely with another key meme, that of Hitler-of-the-month. In painting Trump as der Führer on the border, we see coming home to America a ploy that has been an essential element to justify foreign regime change operation, each of which has been spelled out in terms of black-and-white, good-versus-evil Manichaean imperatives, with the side targeted for destruction or replacement having absolutely no redeeming qualities. This entails first of all absolute demonization of the evil leader in what is called reductio ad Hitlerum, a concept attributed to philosopher Leo Strauss in 1951. Russia’s Vladimir Putin has been characterized by name as another Hitler by Hillary Clinton and others. Among the prominent “Hitlers” since 1991 have been Saddam Hussein (Iraq), Slobodan Milosevic (Yugoslavia/Serbia), Radovan Karadzic (Republika Srpska), Moammar Qaddafi (Libya), and Bashar al-Assad (Syria), with less imposing Führer figures to be found in Mohamed Farrah Aidid (Somalia), Manuel Noriega (Panama), Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (Iran), and Omar al-Bashir (Sudan).

    With apologies to Voltaire, if Hitler had not existed it would be necessary for the US-UK Deep State to invent him . . .

    Today the atrocity porn and Hitler memes that have been so useful in justifying regime change in other countries are being directed with increasing intensity against America’s own duly elected president. This is at a time when the original conspiracy to discredit and unseat him, the phony “Russian collusion” story, is in the process of unraveling and being turned back on its originators. Horror of horrors, Trump is now feeling free enough to move forward on a meeting with Putin.

    Keep in mind that Putin is, according to Hillary Clinton, leader of the worldwide “authoritarian, white-supremacist, and xenophobic movement” who is “emboldening right-wing nationalists, separatists, racists, and even neo-Nazis.” So he and Hitler-Trump should get on famously! The prospect of any warming of ties between Washington and Moscow has elements of the US intelligence agencies, together with their British coconspirators in MI6 and GCHQ, in an absolute panic.

    That’s why desperate measures are in order. As noted earlier, when confronted with a reincarnation of the most evil personage in history, even the most extreme actions cannot be ruled out. Demonizing the intended target neutralizes objections to his removal – by any means necessary.

    After all, how can any decent person oppose getting rid of Hitler?

  • Bill Maher Defends "Wish" For "A Recession" That Will "Erode Trump's Popularity"

    Bill Maher, the host of HBO’s long-running late night talk show “Real Time”, took a few minutes out of his show Friday night to respond to the backlash to a segment from last week’s show where he voiced his hope that the US economy takes a nosedive into recession in the relatively near future, because – as Maher argued – a recession is the only thing that will help get rid of Trump by “eroding his popularity.”

    Maher started the segment by repeating his now infamous line: “A recession is a survivable event. What Trump is doing to this country…is not” before lobbing a few criticisms of his own at the “right-wing nut-o-sphere” that took umbrage with his remarks. Responding to Laura Ingraham’s claim that Maher has been rooting for an “economic collapse”, Maher called her claims “laughable”, arguing that he never said anything about wishing for an “economic collapse.” “All I did was make a wish!,” Maher joked. Anybody who doesn’t understand this, he said, could use a “course in perspective.”

    “And finally, new rule, anyone who went apeshit over the last two weeks because I said going through a recession would be worth it if it undermined Trump’s popularity has to enroll in college and take a course in perspective,” Maher told his audience.

    Maher believes his economic commentary is important, given that the American left is seemingly fixated on children being separated from their parents at the border, gun control and “intersectional” issues like transgender Americans’ rights to use the bathroom that corresponds to their gender identity, while ignoring the fact that Democracy in America is “going the way of the DoDo bird”..

    “Democracy is about to go the way of the dinosaurs because we’ve been taken over by a dodo bird,” he added, to laughs. “So let me repeat: Recessions are survivable events. We survive one every time a Republican is in the White House. It’s true. Every Republican president since Teddy Roosevelt has presided over a recession.”

    But criticisms of Maher’s comments weren’t exclusively made by the right: Dean Obeidallah, a CNN contributor, wrote that “Bill Maher is wrong to root for a recession – and it hurts progressives that a so called progressive like millionaire Bill Maher is rooting for Americans to suffer.” And while Maher scoffed at the notion that Alex Jones’ accused him of being worth $100 million, he does collect an annual salary of $10 million. The controversy began when Maher suggested during his show last week that only an economic recession would be enough to dislodge Trump from office – and that an economic downturn would be well-worth it to spare Americans from Trump’s policies like his tax reform bill which handed money back to corporations and the wealthy (ignoring the fact that many working Americans – particularly those living in states that voted for Trump – have also benefited).

    “I feel like the bottom has to fall out at some point,” Maher said.

    Of course, Maher is right about one thing: The US economy has survived, on average, one recession every ten years. And with  the current business cycle – already the second-longest on record for the US – drawing inevitably closer to its end, the odds that Trump ends up presiding over a recession are increasing with each passing day.

    Expansion

  • Johnstone: "Anyone Promoting Regime Change In Iran Is An Evil Piece Of Shit"

    Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

    I have been saying all year that the 8chan phenomenon known as “QAnon” is bogus, and as time has gone on the evidence has become overwhelming that it is an establishment psyop designed to herd the populist right into accepting the narratives and agendas of the establishment orthodoxy. Whether they’re claiming that every capitulation the Trump administration makes to longstanding neoconservative agendas is actually brilliant 4-D chess strategy, or saying that Julian Assange isn’t really trapped in the Ecuadorian embassy, QAnon enthusiasts are constantly regurgitating talking points which just so happen to fit in very conveniently with the interests of America’s defense and intelligence agencies.

    A recent “Q drop” (a fancy name for an anonymous user posting text onto a popular internet troll message board with zero accountability) makes this more abundantly clear than ever, with text reading as follows:

    Free Iran!!!
    Fight
    Fight
    Fight
    Regime change.
    People have the power.
    We stand with you.
    Q

    Once you’re cheering for a longtime neoconservative agenda to be accomplished in one of George W Bush’s “Axis of Evil” countries, you are cheering for the establishment. Or, to put it more clearly to Q followers, you are cheering for the deep state.

    So now you have conspiracy-minded populist right wingers being manipulated into supporting the same standard Bush administration globalist agendas that Alex Jones built his career on attacking. The support for regime change interventionism in Iran isn’t limited to the QAnon crowd, having now gone fully mainstream throughout Trump’s base, and I’d like to address a few of the arguments here that they have been bringing to me:

    “Iran is nowhere near the same thing as Iraq, Libya or Syria!”

    Please go look at a globe and think a little harder about your position here. Iran is a target for regime change for the exact same reasons its neighbors Iraq and Syria have been; it occupies and extremely strategically significant location in an oil-rich region that the US-centralized empire wants full control of. Thinking this one is different because its government isn’t secular is the product of many years of Islamophobic propaganda; the plutocrats and their allied intelligence and defense agencies don’t care what religion sits on top of their oil, and Saudi Arabia proves it. Any argument made against Iranian theocracy could be made even more strongly against KSA theocracy, but you don’t see Sean Hannity advocating the overthrow of the Saudi royals, do you?

    “But this regime change intervention would be completely different!”

    No it wouldn’t. There has never been a US-led regime change intervention in the Middle East that wasn’t disastrous. Cheering for regime change interventionism in Iran is cheering for all the destabilization, chaos, terror, death, rape and slavery that always necessarily comes with such interventions. Wanting to inflict that upon the world is monstrous.

    “This is different, though! This one is led by Trump! Look at all that he’s accomplished in North Korea!”

    Okay, three things:

    1. All that Trump has done with North Korea is take the very first step in the most rudimentary beginnings of peace talks. I fully support him in taking that step, but you can’t legitimately treat it as an “accomplishment” which proves that he is a strategic genius capable of facilitating the impossible task of non-disastrous regime change in Iran.

    2. Even if Trump does help bring abiding peace to the Korean Peninsula, it won’t legitimize regime change interventionism in Iran. Hell, even if Trump gets North Korea to denuclearize (and he won’t), it still wouldn’t legitimize regime change interventionism in Iran. US-led regime change interventionism is always disastrous, especially in the easily destabilized geopolitical region of the Middle East.

    3. Neocons are always wrong about foreign policy. Always. There’s no reason to believe Trump spearheading a longstanding neocon agenda would work out any better than Bush or any other neocon.

    “Well what about the Iranians in Iran who want regime change?”

    What about them? The fact that some Iranians want their government changed has nothing to do with you or your government. The Fox News and Washington Post pundits who keep pointing out the fact that Iran, like America, contains people who are unhappy with its current system of government are only ever trying to galvanize the west against Tehran. There’s no good reason for you to be acting as a pro bono CIA propagandist running around telling westerners how great it would be if the Mullahs were gone.

    “Well I don’t want the US to intervene, I just want the Iranians to free themselves!”

    Two things:

    1. This administration is already currently engaged in regime change interventionism in Iran in the form of escalated CIA covert operations and harsh economic sanctions, and its involvement with Iranian terror cult MEKsuggests it may run far deeper than that in a similar way to US involvement with extremist groups in Syria, Libya and Ukraine.

    2. Why say anything, then? Ever stop to ask yourself why you’re always cheering for Iranians to overthrow their government? Why constantly cheerlead for something which requires zero western involvement? Whom does that help? Do you think Iranians don’t already know that America hates their government?

    All you’re doing is helping to signal boost the pro-regime change propaganda that US defense and intelligence agencies have been seeding into American public consciousness for many years. Your “Yay, free Iran!” sentiments aren’t helping Iranians, they’re helping the western propagandists target western audiences. You’re just helping the public get more okay with any actions taken against the Iranian government, in exactly the same way Russiagaters help manufacture support for escalations against Russia.

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    Come on, people. Think harder. This one isn’t difficult. It’s not a random coincidence that you’re all being paced into supporting regime change in the final target named seventeen years ago in General Wesley Clark’s famous “seven countries in five years” list of neocon regime change agendas. The only thing that has changed is the face on the agenda.

    Iran is not different from the other regime change targets of Iraq, Libya or Syria. Barack Obama served George W Bush’s third and fourth terms, and Donald Trump is serving his fifth. They were strong-armed in different ways by America’s unelected power establishment into advancing different regime change agendas depending on where their political support came from and public sentiment at the time, but it’s all been pointed at the exact same region for the exact same reasons.

    Leave Iran alone. Leave the Iranian people alone. There is no legitimate reason for you to be cheering for regime change in Iran, and anyone who tells you otherwise is an evil piece of shit. Reject them.

    *  *  *

    Internet censorship is getting pretty bad, so best way to keep seeing the stuff I publish is to get on the mailing list for my website, so you’ll get an email notification for everything I publish. My articles and podcasts are entirely reader and listener-funded, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, checking out my podcast, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, or buying my book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers.

  • TV Blackout For Erdogan Opposition As Turkey Vote Looms; Goldman On What To Expect Tomorrow

    Presidential and parliamentary elections will be held concurrently in Turkey on Sunday, with the results likely to start emerging on Sunday evening. In the presidential election, opinion polls suggest that President Erdogan is likely to fall just short of the 50% required to win in the first round (implying a second round run-off on July 8). In the parliamentary elections, opinion polls also point to a close result, with a high probability that the incumbent AKP-led Cumhur Alliance could lose its majority.

    While victory is likely for Erdogan (as we detailed here), Erdogan is utilizing all his state powers to ensure his own success.

    AKP President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Republican People’s Party (CHP) challenger Muharrem Ince.  Image via Hurriyet

    Bloomberg reports “State TV TRT gives no air time to opposition’s Istanbul rally” while multiple sources confirm a television blackout for the Republican People’s Party (CHP) candidate Muharrem Ince as Erdogan’s rival continues to reportedly draw immense crowds. 

    Screenshot of CHP candidate Muharrem Ince Saturday rally on the Asian side of Istanbul. 

    Both are in Istanbul a day ahead of Sunday’s vote widely considered the most important in recent Turkish political history — a crossing the Rubicon moment for Erdogan as he stands to inherit an unprecedented and likely irreversible level of sweeping executive authority. 

    We noted previously that Muharrem Ince’s political rallies in major cities this week have drawn shockingly large crowds, a worrisome sign for incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who called for Sunday’s snap election at a time when the economy was stronger and as he likely felt unbeatable. 

    But multiple international outlets are noting that while Erdogan is still favored to win, a noticeable surge in popular discontent at runaway inflation and a tanking economy, as well as the conservative AKP party leader’s enabling of nepotism and corruption on a mass scale, is bringing a cross-section of Turks to the streets in support of secularist CHP contender Ince. 

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    For example, Ince’s Wednesday rally in Izmir included a crowd size estimating in range from 300,000 up to several million, depending on the media source commenting.

    Bloomberg describes the scene in Istanbul on Saturday:

    President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s biggest rival appealed to a massive rally in Istanbul in the campaign’s final hours. You just wouldn’t know it watching state television.

    Muharrem Ince, a 54-year-ld former physics teacher, addressed what his CHP party claimed was a crowd of 4 million in the Maltepe district on the Asian side of the Bosphorus. But the government’s TRT Haber stayed with its regular programming, interrupting it only when Erdogan addressed smaller groups in his travels around Istanbul.

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    Bloomberg explains further of early polling that:

    Erdogan remains the clear frontrunner in Sunday’s presidential election. But most polls show him short of the 50 percent needed for a first-round win — opening the way for a runoff in which an ‘anyone-but-Erdogan’ candidate stands a chance. The president’s AK Party also risks losing its majority in the parliamentary vote the same day.

    But Sunday’s vote is one Erdogan can’t afford to lose and as we noted previously he has carefully put the architecture in place for this moment: 

    The Supreme Electoral Council, the judicial system, and the military — until recently Erdogan’s most dedicated nemesis — are all now under Erdogan’s control. The military was completely denuded of its higher ranks following the July 2016 failed coup attempt…

    …The national press, meanwhile, is completely dominated by Erdogan’s acolytes. The results are unsurprising: In the last two weeks of May, a study demonstrated that the president and his party received far more coverage on three government-owned television stations, including a Kurdish-language one. — Foreign Policy

    The opposition has increasingly relied on social media channels on platforms like YouTube, Twitter, and Google to overcome the media blackout. However, state censors have had these blocked in the past as well. 

    So what will happen tomorrow?

    via Goldman Sachs,

    Turkey’s elections: Opinion polls point to a close result

    Turkey will hold presidential and parliamentary elections on Sunday, June 24. Voting will close at 5:00pm local time (3:00pm London time) and preliminary results will be announced on Monday. However, unofficial results are likely to be available on Sunday evening on media outlets. In the event that no presidential candidate achieves more than 50% of the vote in the first round, the two candidates with the largest number of votes will face a run-off on Sunday, July 8.

    The election will complete the transition to the new presidential system, with extensive new powers vested in the executive. Unlike previous Turkish elections, this time parties have been able to form alliances, with the 10% threshold for parliamentary representation applying to the alliance as a whole rather than to individual parties. In Exhibit 1, we summarise the policy positions of the government (Cumhur) and opposition (Millet) alliances on key issues.

    Exhibit 1: A summary of the government (Cumhur) and opposition (Millet) key policy positions

    Note: Not all parties in each alliance subscribe to all of these policies, but they represent our best summary of the alliances’ overall views

    Source: Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research

    The latest polling data point to a close outcome in both the parliamentary and – potentially – the presidential elections. In the presidential elections, President Erdogan has a clear lead over his rivals but most polls indicate that he will fall short of the 50% required to win in the first round.

    If the presidential election goes to a second round, polling data point to a close run-off, but a likely Erdogan victory against Muharrem Ince, of the centre-left/secular CHP (Republican People’s Party).

    In the parliamentary elections, polling data suggest that the incumbent AKP-led Cumhur Alliance stands a significant chance of losing its parliamentary majority and the key to the outcome appears to be whether the pro-Kurdish HDP party – the only major party not running as part of an alliance – passes the 10% threshold required for parliamentary representation.

    For financial markets, each of the likely outcomes comes with associated risks.

    In the past, Turkish assets have responded positively to political events that were perceived as increasing political stability, while responding negatively to political instability (Exhibit 2).

    Exhibit 2: Asset prices tend to react positively to the perception of political stability in the short run

    Turkish asset prices one day/week after political events

    Source: Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research

    Viewed from this perspective, a win for the AKP in both the presidential and parliamentary elections would be the most stable outcome. However, President Erdogan’s comments on monetary policy during the election campaign – advocating lower interest rates and indicating that he would play a more active role in monetary policy – have raised concerns over the future direction of monetary policy in the event of this outcome.

    Though one glance at the current state of Turkish stocks, debt, and FX signals this is a considerable concern…

    A split government (with Mr. Erdogan as President and the opposition obtaining a majority in parliament) would likely represent the most negative outcome for Turkish assets, in our view, as it would imply political instability and high levels of uncertainty over the future direction of monetary policy.

    An opposition victory in both elections would also bring significant challenges, not least the task of forming a new government and agreeing on a cohesive legislative programme. However, under the assumption that these challenges can be overcome, we would expect it to be the most market-friendly scenario in the medium term.

     

  • Debunking The Persistent Myth Of U.S. Precision Bombing

    Authored by Nicholas Davies via ConsortiumNews.com,

    U.S. media routinely repeat Pentagon talking points about the accuracy of U.S. bombing, but how precise are these attacks?

    Opinion polls in the United States and the United Kingdom have found that a majority of the public in both countries has a remarkably consistent belief that only about 10,000 Iraqis were killed as a result of the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq in 2003.

    Estimates of deaths in Iraq actually range from 150,000 to 1.2 million. Part of the reason for the seriously misguided public perception may come from a serious belief in guided weapons, according to what the government tells people about “precision” bombing.  But one must ask how so many people can be killed if these weapons are so “precise,” for instance in one of “the most precise air campaigns in military history,” as a Pentagon spokesman characterized the total destruction last year of Raqqa in Syria.

    The dreadful paradox of “precision weapons” is that the more the media and the public are wrongly persuaded of the near-magical qualities of these weapons, the easier it is for U.S. military and civilian leaders to justify using them to destroy entire villages, towns and cities in country after country: Fallujah, Ramadi and Mosul in Iraq; Sangin and Musa Qala in Afghanistan; Sirte in Libya; Kobane and Raqqa in Syria.

    An Imprecise History

    The skillful use of disinformation about “precision” bombing has been essential to the development of aerial bombardment as a strategic weapon. In a World War II propaganda pamphlet titled the “Ultimate Weapon of Victory”, the U.S. government hailed the B-17 bomber as “… the mightiest bomber ever built… equipped with the incredibly accurate Norden bomb sight, which hits a 25-foot circle from 20,000 feet.“

    However, according to the website WW2Weapons, “With less than 50 per-cent cloud coverage an average B-17 Fortress Group could be expected to place 32.4% of its bombs within 1000 feet of the aiming point when aiming visually.”  That could rise to 60 percent if flying at the dangerously low altitude of 11,000 feet in daylight.

    The inaccurate B17 “Flying Fortress”

    The U.K.’s 1941 Butt Report found that only five percent of British bombers were dropping their bombs within five miles of their targets, and that 49 percent of their bombs were falling in “open country.”

    In the “Dehousing Paper,” the U.K. government’s chief scientific adviser argued that mass aerial bombardment of German cities to “dehouse” and break the morale of the civilian population would be more effective than “precision” bombing aimed at military targets.  British leaders agreed, and adopted this new approach: “area” or “carpet” bombing, with the explicit strategic purpose of “dehousing” Germany’s civilian population.

    The U.S. soon adopted the same strategy against both Germany and Japan, and a U.S. airman quoted in the post-war U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey lampooned efforts at “precision” bombing as a “major assault on German agriculture.”

    The destruction of North Korea by U.S.-led bombing and shelling in the Korean War was so total that U.S. military leaders estimated that they’d killed 20 percent of its population.

    In the American bombing of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, the U.S. dropped more bombs than all sides combined in the Second World War, with full scale use of horrific napalm and cluster bombs.  The whole world recoiled from this mass slaughter, and even the U.S. was chastened into scaling back its military ambitions for at least a decade.

    The American War in Vietnam saw the introduction of the “laser-guided smart bomb,” but the Vietnamese soon learned that the smoke from a small fire or a burning tire was enough to confuse its guidance system.  “They’d go up, down, sideways, all over the place,” a GI told Douglas Valentine, the author of The Phoenix Program. “And people would smile and say, ‘There goes another smart bomb!’  So smart a gook with a match and an old tire can fuck it up.”

    Kicking the Vietnam Syndrome

    President Bush Senior hailed the First Gulf War as the moment that America “kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all.”  Deceptive information about “precision” bombing played a critical role in revitalizing U.S. militarism after defeat in Vietnam.

    The U.S. and its allies ruthlessly carpet-bombed Iraq, reducing it from what a UN report later called “a rather highly urbanized and mechanized society” to “a pre-industrial age nation.”  But the Western media enthusiastically swallowed Pentagon briefings and broadcast round-the-clock bomb-sight footage of a handful of successful “precision” strikes as if they were representative of the entire campaign.  Later reports revealed that only seven percent of the 88,500 tons of bombs and missiles devastating Iraq were “precision” weapons.

    The U.S. turned the bombing of Iraq into a marketing exercise for the U.S. war industry, dispatching pilots and planes straight from Kuwait to the Paris Air Show.  The next three years saw record U.S. weapons exports, offsetting small reductions in U.S. arms procurement after the end of the Cold War.

    The myth of “precision” bombing that helped Bush and the Pentagon “kick the Vietnam syndrome” was so successful that it has become a template for the Pentagon’s management of news in subsequent U.S. bombing campaigns. It also gave us the disturbing euphemism “collateral damage” to indicate civilians killed by errant bombs.

    The devastating aerial assault on Baghdad in 2003, known as “shock and awe.”

    ‘Shock and Awe’

    As the U.S. and U.K. launched their “Shock and Awe” attack on Iraq in 2003, Rob Hewson, the editor of Jane’s Air-Launched Weapons, estimated about 20-25 percent of the U.S. and U.K.’s “precision” weapons were missing their targets in Iraq, noting that this was a significant improvement over the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia, when 30-40 percent were off-target. “There’s a significant gap between 100 percent and reality,” Hewson said. “And the more you drop, the greater your chances of a catastrophic failure.”

    Since World War II, the U.S. Air Force has loosened its definition of “accuracy” from 25 feet to 10 meters (39 feet), but that is still less than the blast radius of even its smallest 500 lb. bombs.  So the impression that these weapons can be used to surgically “zap” a single house or small building in an urban area without inflicting casualties and deaths throughout the surrounding area is certainly contrived.

    “Precision” weapons comprised about two thirds of the 29,200 weapons aimed at the armed forces, people and infrastructure of Iraq in 2003.  But the combination of 10,000 “dumb” bombs and 4,000 to 5,000 “smart” bombs and missiles missing their targets meant that about half of “Shock and Awe’s” weapons were as indiscriminate as the carpet bombing of previous wars.  Saudi Arabia and Turkey asked the U.S. to stop firing cruise missiles through their territory after some went so far off-target that they struck their territory. Three also hit Iran.

    “In a war that’s being fought for the benefit of the Iraqi people, you can’t afford to kill any of them,” a puzzled Hewson said. “But you can’t drop bombs and not kill people.  There’s a real dichotomy in all of this.”

    ‘Precision’ Bombing Today

    Since Barack Obama started the bombing of Iraq and Syria in 2014 more than 107,000 bombs and missiles have been launched. U.S. officials claim only a few hundred civilians have been killed. The British government persists in the utterly fantastic claim that none of its 3,700 bombs have killed any civilians at all.

    Former Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurd from Mosul, told Patrick Cockburn of Britain’s  Independent newspaper that he’d seen Kurdish military intelligence reports that U.S. airstrikes and U.S., French and Iraqi artillery had killed at least 40,000 civilians in his hometown, with many more bodies still buried in the rubble.  Almost a year later, this remains the only remotely realistic official estimate of the civilian death toll in Mosul. But no other mainstream Western media have followed up on it.

    The consequences of U.S. air wars are hidden in plain sight, in endless photos and videos. The Pentagon and the corporate media may suppress the evidence, but the mass death and destruction of American aerial bombardment are only too real to the millions of people who have survived it.

  • NJ Governor Pitches 2,400% Tax Increase On Firearms

    New Jersey’s Democratic Governor Phil Murphy is floating a plan to increase taxes on buying and selling guns by up to 2,400%, according to guns.com.

    Murphy estimates that the state will take in an additional $2 million in revenue from the tax, which would include raising handgun purchase permits from $2 to $50, and firearms ID cards required to own a gun or buy ammunition from $5 to $100. Permits to carry a handgun would skyrocket from $50 to $400.

    In comparison, neighboring Delaware and Pennsylvania charge fees for carrying of $65 and $20 respectively. 

    Such taxes, of course, would disproportionately affect the poor – as rich gun owners can simply pay up for personal protection. Given that the average salary of a New Jersey armed security officer is $19.42 an hour, Murphy’s plan puts those who need to carry for their jobs under increased financial burden. 

    In a public signing ceremony for a six-pack of gun control measures last week, Murphy slammed what he characterized as the low fees of firearm licensing in New Jersey. “We must please responsibly increase the fees for gun licenses and handgun permits,” he said. “It’s long past time we did this. The last time these fees were increased was 1966.” –Guns

    Gun dealers would also be affected by the change – with the cost of retail licenses to increase 10-fold from $50 to $500, while manufacturer licenses would jump from $150 to $1,500. The ATF charges similar fees of $200 and $150 respectively. 

    Murphy has rolled back several pro-gun reforms backed by the outgoing Chris Christie (R) administration, while shutting out Second Amendment groups and repeatedly blaming the gun lobby for the state’s violent crime. He’s also appointed a “gun czar,” attorney Bill Castner.

    “Bill Castner will play an active role in enhancing the coalition and will help our administration to advance new common-sense gun measures and potential avenues for legal challenges to stop the scourge of gun violence,” said Murphy, adding “Leading the force for gun violence protection to build safer communities and protect families at the state level is of the utmost importance, and I am confident that Bill will generate ideas and solutions that will save lives.”

    Murphy’s attorney general last week warned a number of gun parts makers they could face civil action for selling unfinished lowers and frames in the state and has been ordered by Murphy to publish a running “shame” list of firearm trace data. –Guns

    So for those living in New Jersey and other states with high taxes on guns; the 2nd Amendment gives you the right to bear arms, if you’re rich enough to pay for it.

  • Facebook, Twitter Deactivate Hezbollah Accounts After Kidnapping Video Published

    Hezbollah’s television and news network Al Manar has confirmed that on Friday the Lebanese paramilitary group’s “War Media” accounts on Twitter and Facebook were closed without notice. Hezbollah is now accusing the social media giants of taking part in an American “anti-media campaign” against the group which has already long been designated a terror organization by the US government. 

    Image via Behind the News

    Al-Manar English explains:

    In a post on the Telegram messaging application, Hezbollah’s Central War Media accused the US-based websites of running an anti-media campaign against the Lebanese resistance movement.

    Facebook and Twitter closed the accounts as part of their efforts to harm the resistance since the social media accounts of the Central War Media play a major role in Hezbollah’s activities, according to the post on Telegram.

    Neither Facebook nor Twitter have yet to give official comment.

    Though it’s not the first time Hezbollah’s Facebook page has been blocked (it occurred in 2017, but later went active again), the move by Facebook and Twitter could be in relation to the current Syrian Army and allied forces major offensive in Syria’s southwest, where a major campaign is underway to liberate Daraa.

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    Both the US and Israel have issued repeat warnings against Iran-backed or Hezbollah forces being present in the south and near the Israeli occupied Golan; however, some sources on the ground have reported that Damascus is ignoring those warnings, allowing Hezbollah fighters to enter the battle. Pro-rebel social media accounts have also in recent days uploaded what they claim is proof of Hezbollah’s presence in Daraa and Quneitra governates.

    But as Newsweek suggests the social media shutdown could be related to a newly published Hezbollah video showing the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers from along the Israel-Lebanon border over a decade ago, which precipitated 2006 Israel–Hezbollah War: 

    The alleged shutdown comes a day after a Hezbollah social media account published a new video showing the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev in 2006, according to Israeli news outlet Ynet News. The Twitter page which published the video is still active, casting doubt over whether the clip played a direct part in the clampdown of the group’s social media presence.

    Controversial footage of the kidnapping was first published in 2012 on the Hezbollah affiliated news channel Al Mayadeen and aired on stations throughout the region, including in Israeli media where it was analyzed on news panels. That particular footage was filmed from a distance. 

    However, the newly released video which may have resulted in Facebook taking action shows a close-up angle of the kidnapping, focusing in on the captured soldiers lying prone just before their vehicle explodes. Hezbollah militants are seen dressed up as IDF soldiers as they ambush the Israeli Humvee and plant explosives.

    Still frame of the 2006 ambush from the newly published Hezbollah video, showing one of the IDF soldiers on the ground (in the blurred section).

    Hezbollah immediately announced on Friday that backup pages and accounts have been established, which the group encouraged followers to utilize. 

    American military analysts and advisers have in the past frequently complained that a US-designated terror group has long been allowed broad usage of US-based social media platforms. 

    In 2006 a New York man was arrested and charged for providing US residents with access to Hezbollah’s satellite channel, al-Manar. He was sentenced to 5 years in prison for material support of a terrorist organization.

  • The Indian Crossroads: Will Modi Choose Putin Or Trump?

    Authored by Andrew Korybko via Oriental Review,

    India just imposed reciprocal tariffs against the US in response to the ones that Trump just applied against steel and aluminum imports.

    According to a filing that the Indian government made to the World Trade Organization (WTO), the tariffs on almonds, apples, certain motorcycles, and walnuts are intended to compensate for the estimated $240 million a year that India is expected to lose because of Trump’s tariffs, which represents a stunningly independent move from the Great Power that’s hitherto been doing everything that it could to remain in the US’ “good graces”.

    India’s 2016 LEMOA logistics deal with the US unprecedentedly made the two countries military-strategic partners, and former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson even spoke about plans for them to remain so all throughout the 21st century. That said, the economic relationship between them has lagged far behind their military-strategic one, with India failing to attract US investors to its so-called “Make In India” domestic development program.

    New Delhi may have thought that it could woo American factories from neighboring China amidst the deteriorating trade ties between Beijing and Washington, but much to its surprise, Trump remained true to his campaign pledge that he wants US companies returning back to the homeland and not to simply “re-offshore” elsewhere.

    As a result, India no longer considers itself to be as indispensable to the US’ 21st-century plans to “contain” China like it previously thought that it was, seeing as how the economic dimension of this grand partnership is being deliberately neglected in favor of focusing solely on its military-strategic aspects. India’s plans for becoming a world power are unsustainable without the strong growth that would be afforded by a 1990s China-like economic partnership with the US, and its decision makers are now beginning to fear the consequences of indefinitely remaining the US’ “junior partner” for the rest of the century.

    It’s with these worries in mind – as well as the ever-present threat of CAATSA sanctions should it go forward with its planned S-400 missile deal with Russia – that Prime Minister Modi paid informal visits to his Chinese and Russian counterparts in providing India with the option of a Eurasian “rebalancing” in the event that its pro-Atlantic pivot of recent years fails to yield the expected comprehensive – and especially economic – dividends.

    There’s still a lot of lingering distrust between India and China that probably won’t ever fully go away, which is why India’s new strategy might be to rely on Russia as a means for “balancing” its relations between the US and China in a bid to clinch better deals from each.

    Unfortunately for India, the US will inevitably force New Delhi to choose between it and Russia.

    The ‘best-case’ scenario of siding with the US over Russia is that India will remain among the most privileged of Washington’s ‘junior partners’, while the worst-case eventuality is that it will be provoked into a border conflict with China.

    As for the Russian angle of this equation, the most advantageous outcome is that Moscow brokers a deal between India and China to combine their competing “Asia-Africa Growth Corridor” and Silk Road megaprojects into a single hemisphere-wide multipolar connectivity network, while the “worst” that can happen in this scenario is that Russia remains the “balancing” fulcrum for managing India and China’s continued competition in Afro-Eurasia.

    India is therefore at an historic crossroads that will determine its strategic trajectory across the coming century, and it’ll probably have to make an irreversible decision by the end of this year.

  • "Musk Went Ballistic" – The Inside Story Of Tesla's Feud With Federal Regulators

    Given the bizarre outbursts and increasingly grandiose performance-related promises (even as his company’s Fremont factory has continued to struggle), many have speculated that Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been cracking under the pressure. In one sign that the pressures of running Tesla (not to mention SpaceX and Neuralink) have been weighing on the CEO, some have pointed out that he’s becoming increasingly vindictive toward anybody who doubts or questions him: for example, he recently spent $25 million of his own money on Tesla shares just to blow up a few shorts after tweeting threats of “unreal carnage”.

    In a story that lays bare Musk’s obsession with his public image and his  inability to tolerate criticism or dissent from his employees or the media, Buzzfeed published a piece late Thursday that’s packed with alarming details, including the story of Musk’s meltdown during a conversation with regulators from the National Transportation Safety Board.

    Musk

    An outburst from Musk that ended the conversation prompted the NTSB to announce that Tesla would no longer be cooperating with the investigation. In a separate incident, Musk went “ballistic” during a conversation with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration after a representative informed Elon Musk that the agency would be announcing an investigation into a May 2016 crash involving a Tesla Model S in Florida.

    No one lectures Elon Musk. In April, the head of the National Transportation Safety Board discovered this after a call about his organization’s investigation into one of Tesla Motors’ autopiloted vehicles devolved into a heated exchange, leading the billionaire entrepreneur to hang up on the federal regulator. That fiery interaction eventually leaked to the press and ricocheted around the internet as further evidence that Musk was losing it.

    […]

    For example, in June 2016 the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration had contacted Tesla as a courtesy heads-up that it would be announcing an investigation into a May crash that killed the driver of a Model S sedan on Autopilot. It was the kind of call that, at most companies, would require executive restraint and sensitivity. Musk was not originally supposed to be on the call with NHTSA officials, Tesla’s general counsel, and the head of its Autopilot team, but chimed in as the conversation got underway. It was unfair that NHTSA was targeting his company, he said, noting that skeptics would just use the public investigation as evidence that Tesla was in trouble.

    After failing to convince the government officials to keep their investigation private and forgo their announcement scheduled for the next day, Musk went ballistic and embarked on a profanity-laced tirade. He threatened to sue NHTSA for what he saw as unfair scrutiny and then abruptly disconnected the phone, leaving the people left on the line shocked.

    “I couldn’t believe it,” said a former Tesla employee familiar with the call.

    Musk’s recent behavior isn’t a deviation: It’s more or less how he’s always acted around his employees. 

    But the thing is: None of this is new for Musk. He has always been the architect of his own image and has long run roughshod over journalists and his own communications team alike. In interviews with BuzzFeed News, nine people who previously worked with Musk, and who requested anonymity to preserve their personal and professional relationships, said that while the level of scrutiny on the CEO may be new, his behavior is not. What we are seeing is less a crack in his well-being than his facade. It is Elon unbound.

    His short temper has “long been legend” inside Tesla and SpaceX, according to Buzzfeed. The only thing that’s changed, they say, is that Musk’s profile – and the company’s share price – has risen.

    What’s changed is simply that Musk’s profile has risen while his staff’s ability to keep him in check has waned. As pressure continues to mount and Musk sheds the executives who once provided advice and insulation, he’s no longer just the Mars-bound genius with a promising electric car company. Depending on who you ask, he’s an icon, an environmental champion, or an attention-hungry micromanager, wielding Steve Jobs–level influence in 240-character Twitter diatribes, occasional public appearances, or mocking conference calls with analysts. But no matter which Elon you choose, it’s become more apparent that there’s no one who can rein him in.

    Musk’s inability to let go of anything remotely negative spouted by his critics and the media makes working on his communications staff – whether at Tesla or at SpaceX – a waking nightmare.

    This obsession with the media makes working in communications under Musk, whether at Tesla or SpaceX, an unpredictable and grueling gig. Multiple former staffers recalled being kept up late or woken up in the middle of the night because Musk was upset about a headline or an article. Two other former senior employees described Musk as notoriously thin-skinned. “He’ll read an obscure critical post by, like, some Belgian blogger at 3 in the morning and he’ll wake up people on the comms team and demand this person be crushed,” one former employee said. “It’s all utterly disproportionate in response.”

    If you’re thinking that some of Musk’s tendencies – particularly his treatment of the media – sound familiar, well, former Musk employees would agree. Several of Buzzfeed‘s sources independently compared working for Musk with working in the Trump White House, the outlet said.

    The lack of control and continual need to put out PR fires wore on professionals, even those who personally liked Musk and believed in the missions of Tesla and SpaceX. Tesla is known for a high rate of turnover, and some communications staffers only last a few months. Some have done multiple stints, though have left or were fired after clashing with the chief executive. Three people familiar with Musk’s communications team independently compared the pressure and publicity, and chaos of the job to working in President Donald Trump’s White House.

    This has already been a rough week for Tesla. Musk has already had to downsize Solar City’s residential solar business and finish laying off 9% of Tesla’s staff (while continuing to deny that the company is having funding troubles). And this embarrassing Buzzfeed story is one more distraction for the mogul, who’s desperately trying to bring Model 3 production up to 2,500 cars a week by the end of June. If he fails at that task, we imagine there will be another round of outbursts as Musk continues his crusade against the Tesla bears and everybody else who doubts his vision.

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Jun 23

Today’s News 23rd June 2018

  • The Eagle, The Dragon, And The Bear

    Authored by Robert Gore via Straight Line Logic blog,

    Does Trump recognize the limits of US power?

    Trump’s new world order comes straight from The Godfather. There are three global powers: the US, Russia, and China. None of these powers can militarily defeat either of the other two, and even an alliance among two of them would have trouble defeating the third.

    Like Don Corleone, Trump is dividing up the larger territory into smaller, great-power controlled sub-territories. He is tacitly recognizing Russia and China’s dominance in their own spheres of influence, and holding them to account in their territories. The implicit agreement among the three is apparently that each power will, in their, “sphere of influence…enforce peace.”

    “Trump’s New World Order,” SLL 3/20/18

    In one week President Trump confirmed that his first concern is the United States, that he has what may be a workable vision for its place in the world, and he loathes globalism and the globalists.

    A good measure of his efficacy is the outrage he generates. By that measure, that week was his finest hour… so far.

    Europe won’t have a seat at Trump’s great-power table. Its welfare states are addicted to their handouts, deeply in debt, rely on uneven trade arrangements with the US, and have below-replacement birth rates. They are cowed by Soros-sponsored propaganda—Immigration is the answer!—and haven’t shut off the immigrant invasion. Refusing to spend on their own militaries, they’ve used what they save on defense to subsidize welfare spending and state bureaucracies.

    They’re ignoring a lesson from history: nations that rely on other nations for their defense generally come to regret it. Instead, they’re wedded to the globalist acronyms: NATO, EU and UN. They have frittered away their power and their glory—Europe’s heritage and civilization—opting for overrun masquerading as assimilation by dogmatic and implacable foes.

    Trump is all about power and despises weakness. There isn’t always strength in numbers. A confederation of weaklings doesn’t equal strength, especially when the weaklings’ premises and principles are fundamentally wrong. Strongest of the weaklings is Germany, a trade powerhouse but a US military vassal. It’s hard to say if Trump’s dislike of Angela Merkel is business—she’s one of the world’s most visible and vociferous proponent of globalism, or personal—it’s always her way or the highway. Probably both, and it looks like Germany may finally be rejecting her way on immigration.

    Trump clearly relished snubbing her and her G-6 buddies, particularly boy toys Trudeau and Macron, who may actually believe his bone-crushing handshakes intimidated Trump. When you’re paying for a continent’s defense and you’re giving them a better deal on trade than they’re giving you, that’s leverage, and Trump knows it. He’s not intimidated.

    US Atlanticists have used that leverage to cement Europe into the US’s confederated empire. That Trump is willing to blow off Europe suggests that he may be blowing off empire.

    America’s imperialists equate backing away from empire with “decline,” but such a sea change would be the exact opposite. Empires require more energy and resources to maintain than can be extracted from them. They are inevitably a road to ruin.

    Nothing is as geopolitically telling as Trump leaving Europe’s most “important” heads of state early to meet with the leader of one of Asia’s most impoverished backwaters. Europe’s time has passed, the future belongs to Asia. Barack Obama’s “pivot” to Asia may look like the same recognition, but it was not. That pivot was designed to encircle China diplomatically, economically, and militarily. That thinking persists among much of the US military, but Trump may have something different in mind.

    China has its problems. Much of its economy, especially its financial sector, is state-directed, despite the capitalistic gloss. There will be a reckoning from its debt binge. The repressive social credit system typifies the government’s immoral objective: keeping China’s people compliant but productive drones. However, enforced docility and innovation—the foundation of progress—mix as readily as oil and water, and theft of others’ innovations can’t fill the void.

    Notwithstanding its issues, China is a major power and is not going to be encircled or regime changed by the US. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) it cosponsors and finances with Russia is the centerpiece of a basket of initiatives designed to further those countries’ influence and leadership within Eurasia and among emerging market countries. BRI is an apt symbol of the movement towards multipolarity, with competition shifting from the military to the economic and commercial sphere.

    Trump tacitly accepts Russian and Chinese dominance in Eurasia. However, Trump doesn’t give without receiving; he’s going to extract concessions. Number one on the list is North Korea and its nuclear weapons. We’ll probably never know what has gone on behind the scenes between Kim Jong Un, Xi Jinping, and perhaps Vladimir Putin, but Kim may have received an offer he couldn’t refuse. Both China and Russia would be well-served by a Korean peninsula free of nuclear weapons and US troops. Whatever transpired, Kim came around. Trump ameliorated any potential humiliation, journeying to Kim’s neck of the woods, laying on an inspirational movie video, and flattering the North Korean leader and his country. Kim the farsighted leader may be able to reach a deal; Kim the browbeaten puppet couldn’t. If he tried, he’d probably be deposed, always a danger for dictators.

    As global competition moves from military to economic, Trump is also going to make sure he tilts, as much as possible, the rules of that competition back towards the US. There are the existing trade arrangements with Europe, Canada, and Mexico that he’s willing to blow up, presumably to obtain better arrangements.

    China is in a league of its own when it comes to gaming trade, and it’s getting the Trump treatment as well. Much of the Chinese “advantage” stems from Chinese overcapacity, fueled by below market interest rates in China and around the globe. Trump can’t do much about that “advantage.” The low-interest regime will eventually crash and burn, but it’s going to take a depression to clear overcapacity in China and elsewhere.

    Innovation and intellectual property are America’s one indisputable comparative economic advantage. It will be a tough nut, but Trump is bent on curbing China’s acquisitions, by fair means and foul, of US know how. If he succeeds it will slow, but not stop, the Chinese economic juggernaut. It has millions of smart, well-educated, industrious people who will continue to fuel indigenous innovation (notwithstanding state-enforced docility).

    Three realities confronted Trump when he assumed office. The US empire is unsustainable, so too is the trajectory of its spending and debt, and the government is fundamentally corrupt. It would be foolish to bet Trump doesn’t understand these issues and the linkages between them.

    “Trump’s New World Order”

    If Trump has recognized that first reality and is implementing Don Corleone’s spheres of influence concept, he may get some breathing room to address the intractable second and third realities: the trajectory of US spending and debt, and the fundamentally corrupt government. On the debt, all the breathing room in the world isn’t going to save him. The US keeps adding to principal, which is compounding at rising rates. Cutting imperial expenditures would help some, although transfer payments are the biggest enchilada. To make even the first step on the thousand mile journey to solvency, however, the US government will have to run a bona fide surplus for many years. That prospect is not on the horizon.

    As for corruption, thousands of articles by bloggers and commentators, including SLL, may have less instructional value for the populace at large than one simple demonstration: most of America’s rulers and its captive media are speaking out against a peace initiative, not on the merits of the initiative itself, but because Donald Trump was one of its initiators.

    That tells those Americans who are paying attention all they need to know about their rulers and their captive media. Whether they do anything about it is another question.

  • Presenting America's 20 Best And Worst Paying Jobs

    While we fail to see any occupations listed for “insider trading hedge fund managers” or “high frequency market manipulators” in the recently released list by the BLS listing the number of workers and wages earned for all official US occupations, we supposed it will have to do, incomplete as it may be.

    Below, sorted by average annual wage, are the Top 20 best paying jobs in the US including the average hourly wage and also showing the number of people the BLS believes are employed in each,  seasonally adjusted of course.

    And here are the bottom 20, or worst-paying, US jobs. It is here the the minimum-wage debate is most acute… As is the debate just how motivated the workers in these 20 occupations really are.

    Curious how many total workers are employed in the Top and Bottom 20 jobs according to the BLS? Here is the answer:

    What may be more surprising is that while there are 6 times as many workers in the worst paid bucket as best-paid, the total compensation paid to the far smaller group of best paying jobs, is roughly 30% higher.

    Moral of the story: Don’t become line cooks, kids, unless of course when one adds up all the welfare and insolvent state benefits provided to line cooks, the after tax cash flow matches or beats that of anesthesiologists.

  • Sexy Metal: The Missing Element In The Korean Puzzle

    Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,

    US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo knows the importance of rare earth elements, and North Korea has reportedly found one of the world’s biggest deposits 150km from Pyongyang; is this another factor behind the recent thaw with the US?

    This may not be about condos on North Korean beaches after all. 

    Arguably, the heart of the matter in the Trump administration’s embrace of Kim Jong-un has everything to do with one of the largest deposits of rare earth elements (REEs) in the world, located only 150 km northwest of Pyongyang and potentially worth billions of US dollars.

    All the implements of 21st century technology-driven everyday life rely on the chemical and physical properties of 17 precious elements on the periodic chart also known as REEs.

    Currently, China is believed to control over 95% of global production of rare earth metals, with an estimated 55 million tons in deposits. North Korea for its part holds at least 20 million tons.

    Rare earth elements are not the only highly strategic minerals and metals in this power play. The same deposits are sources of tungsten, zirconium, titanium, hafnium, rhenium and molybdenum; all of these are absolutely critical not only for myriad military applications but also for nuclear power.

    Rare earth metallurgy also happens to be essential for US, Russian and Chinese weapons systems. The THAAD system needs rare earth elements, and so do Russia’s S-400 and S-500 missile defense systems.

    It’s not far-fetched to consider ‘The Art of the Deal’ applied to rare earth elements. If the US does not attempt to make a serious play on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s (DPRK’s) allegedly vast rare earth resources, the winner, once again, may be Beijing. And Moscow as well – considering the Russia-China strategic partnership, now explicitly recognized on the record.

    The whole puzzle may revolve around who offers the best return on investment; not on real estate but sexy metal, with the Pyongyang leadership potentially able to collect an immense fortune.

    Is Beijing capable of matching a possible American deal? This may well have been a key topic of discussion during the third meeting in only a few weeks between Kim Jong-un and President Xi Jinping, exactly when the entire geopolitical chessboard hangs in the balance.

    So metals are not sexy?

    Researcher Marc Sills, in a paper titled ‘Strategic Materials Crises and Great Power Conflicts’, says:

    “Conflict over strategic minerals is inevitable. The dramas will likely unfold at or near the mines, or along the transportation lines the materials must travel, and especially at world’s strategic chokepoints the US military is now generally tasked to control. Again, the power equation is written to include both control of possession and denial of possession by others.”

    This applies, for instance, to the Ukraine puzzle. Russia badly needs Ukraine’s titanium, zirconium and hafnium for its industrial-military complex.

    Earlier this year Japanese researchers discovered a deposit of 16 million tons of rare earth elements (less than the North Korean reserves) beneath the seabed in the Western Pacific. But that’s unlikely to change China’s – and potentially the DPRK’s – prominence. The key in the whole rare earth element process is to devise a profitable production chain, as the Chinese have done. And that takes a long time.

    Detailed papers such as ‘China’s Rare Earth Elements Industry’, by Cindy Hurst (2010), published by the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security (IAGS) or ‘Rare Earth in Selected US Defense Applications’, by James Hedrick, presented at the 40th Forum on the Geology of Industrial Minerals in 2004, convincingly map all the connections. Sills stresses how minerals and metals, though, seem to attract attention only in mining trade publications:

    “And that would seem to explain in part why the REE contest in Korea has eluded attention. Metals just ain’t that sexy. But weapons are.”

    Metals are certainly sexy for US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. It’s quite enlightening to remember how Pompeo, then CIA director, told a Senate Committee in May 2017 how foreign control of rare earth elements was “a very real concern.”

    Fast forward to one year later, when Pompeo, taking over at the State Department, emphasized a new “swagger” in US foreign policy.

    And fast forward again to only a few weeks ago, with Pompeo’s swagger applied to meetings with Kim Jong-un.

    Way apart from a Netflix-style plot twist, a quite possible narrative is Pompeo impressing on Kim the beauty of a sweet, US-brokered rare earth elements deal. But China and Russia must be locked out. Or else. It’s not hard to visualize Xi understanding the implications.

    The DPRK – this unique mix of Turkmenistan and post-USSR Romania – may be on the cusp of being integrated to a vast supply chain via an Iron Silk Road, with the Russia-China strategic partnership simultaneously investing in railways, pipelines and ports in parallel to North-South Korean special economic zones (SEZs), Chinese-style, coming to fruition.

    As Gazprom’s Deputy CEO Vitaly Markelov has revealed: “The South Korean side has asked Gazprom” to re-start a key project – a gas pipeline across North Korea, an umbilical cord between South Korea and the Eurasian landmass.

    Since key discussions at the Far East Summit in Vladivostok in September 2017, the roadmap is set for South Korea, China and Russia to attach the DPRK to Eurasia integration, developing its agriculture, hydropower and – crucially – mineral wealth.

    As much as the Trump administration may be late in the game, it’s unthinkable Washington would abandon a piece of the (metal) action.

  • Here's How Erdogan Plans To Steal Sunday's Election

    As Turks prepare to head to the polls Sunday in a snap election called by incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Foreign Policy has published what is essentially a summary blueprint outlining the ways Erdogan could steal the election, noting “Sunday’s vote is one he can’t afford to lose.”

    As we previously commented, though the man who has dominated the nation’s politics for almost two decades is not expected to lose, a consensus is emerging that the vote should be regarded as a referendum on his person and leadership.

    And now, a visible surge in popularity for the rival secularist Republican People’s Party (CHP) candidate has pundits declaring the opposition actually has a chance. 

    AKP President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Republican People’s Party (CHP) challenger Muharrem Ince.  Image via Hurriyet

    Erdogan has often boasted that he has never lost an election and, as recent polls indicate, he is unlikely to lose this time either (but likely by a thin margin). Since 2002, he and his AKP (Justice and Development Party) have won five parliamentary elections, three local elections, three referendums and one presidential election. 

    The president moved elections that weren’t supposed to be held until 2019 forward by more than a year in hopes of smashing an unprepared opposition, but there’s yet a possibility this could backfire.  

    Ironically, the move could blow up in Erdogan’s face as he called for the early elections at a moment when the economy appeared strong, but which in the interim began tanking — giving all but die-hard AKP supporters reason for serious pause as the opposition’s message becomes louder. 

    His legacy has already been established as ushering in Turkey’s transformation from a parliamentary to a presidential system, giving a disproportionate share of power to the president, and should he win he’ll assume even greater executive powers after last year’s referendum which narrowly approved major constitutional changes related to the presidency. 

    But Erdogan’s main opposition candidate, Muharrem Ince, is this week drawing immense crowds according to a variety of reports, and gaining support from a cross-section of Turks increasingly fed up with Erdogan’s power-grabbing.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Ince, a former high school physics teacher widely seen has having much more charisma, has mirrored Erdogan’s firebrand and combative rhetoric while taking direct aim at the Islamic conservative Justice and Development Party (AKP) leader’s enabling corruption and nepotism, and his further overseeing an economy in tailspin with the lira having lost nearly 20% of its value since the year began, inflation at 12%, and interest rates at 18%.

    Muharrem Ince’s simple yet pointed appeal goes something like this: “Erdogan is tired, he has no joy and he is arrogant,” he told hundreds of thousands of supporters at an Izmir rally on Wednesday. CNN noted the rally presented “what looked like the largest crowd in the elections period yet.”


    Muharrem Ince’s Wednesday rally in Izmir as shown on Turkish television. Crowd size estimates ranged from 250,000 up to millions, depending on who was commenting.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Sunday’s election is being widely described the most important in recent Turkish political history — a crossing the Rubicon moment for Erdogan as he stands to inherit an unprecedented and likely irreversible level of sweeping executive authority. 

    As Foreign Policy explains, he has carefully put the architecture in place for this moment, and the outlook remains bleak for the future of democracy in Turkey:

    The current Council of Ministers, all members of parliament, will cease to exist and the president will appoint advisors and deputies to run the country. Parliament, especially if it remains in the hands of Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), will be nothing but a rubber stamp. Erdogan over the years has amassed an enormous amount of power by molding state institutions to his liking and by eliminating anyone from his entourage who can even minimally challenge him. Every single member of the party owes his or her position directly to Erdogan. This patronage system permeates all levels of the bureaucracy, which has lost its independence.

    So again, on June 24 losing is not an option for Erdogan.

    * * *

    Here are ways Erdogan can steal the election, according to Foreign Policy:

    1) He’s already engineered electoral law for less oversight of ballots:

    He has engineered several changes to the electoral law, two of which could be game-changers. The first is the elimination of the requirement that all ballots be stamped by officials. This practice will open up the system to abuse in obvious ways — it was precisely such a last-minute change that allowed the government to claim victory in 2017 during the constitutional referendum.

    2) Erdogan’s own party cronies will manage and appoint officials for Sunday’s election process:

    Erdogan’s second change to the electoral law concerns the ballot box overseers: Whereas in the past political parties nominated candidates who were chosen by a draw, under the new rules overseers are to be chosen among local officials whose jobs are ultimately determined by the government and the state. 

    3) Switching ballot locations especially in Kurdish areas:

    Suppressing the Kurdish vote is critical for the government… one can expect more shenanigans in Kurdish-majority areas, because Erdogan needs to push the Peoples’ Democratic Party below the 10 percent threshold to ensure that his party wins a majority of seats in parliament. 

    4) Erdogan now essentially owns the judicial system, the military, and media – all of which will be leveraged:

    The Supreme Electoral Council, the judicial system, and the military — until recently Erdogan’s most dedicated nemesis — are all now under Erdogan’s control. The military was completely denuded of its higher ranks following the July 2016 failed coup attempt…

    …The national press, meanwhile, is completely dominated by Erdogan’s acolytes. The results are unsurprising: In the last two weeks of May, a study demonstrated that the president and his party received far more coverage on three government-owned television stations, including a Kurdish-language one. 

    5) No detail has been left untouched, but last minute “shenanigans” will ensure victory if it’s close:

    Erdogan, the consummate politician, is not leaving anything about this election to chance; no detail has been too small to escape his attention.

    …Still, it is quite doubtful that he will allow anything but a total victory for himself — one should expect a great deal of shenanigans on the part of the ruling party in the final run-up to the June 24 vote.

     

  • America's Military Drops A Bomb Every 12 Minutes, And No One Is Talking About It

    Authored by Lee Camp via TruthDig.com,

    We live in a state of perpetual war, and we never feel it. While you get your gelato at the hip place where they put those cute little mint leaves on the side, someone is being bombed in your name. While you argue with the 17-year-old at the movie theater who gave you a small popcorn when you paid for a large, someone is being obliterated in your name. While we sleep and eat and make love and shield our eyes on a sunny day, someone’s home, family, life and body are being blown into a thousand pieces in our names.

    Once every 12 minutes.

    The United States military drops an explosive with a strength you can hardly comprehend once every 12 minutes. And that’s odd, because we’re technically at war with—let me think—zero countries. So that should mean zero bombs are being dropped, right?

    Hell no! You’ve made the common mistake of confusing our world with some sort of rational, cogent world in which our military-industrial complex is under control, the music industry is based on merit and talent, Legos have gently rounded edges (so when you step on them barefoot, it doesn’t feel like an armor-piercing bullet just shot straight up your sphincter), and humans are dealing with climate change like adults rather than burying our heads in the sand while trying to convince ourselves that the sand around our heads isn’t getting really, really hot.

    You’re thinking of a rational world. We do not live there.

    Instead, we live in a world where the Pentagon is completely and utterly out of control. A few weeks ago, I wrote about the $21 trillion (that’s not a typo) that has gone unaccounted for at the Pentagon. But I didn’t get into the number of bombs that ridiculous amount of money buys us. President George W. Bush’s military dropped 70,000 bombs on five countries. But of that outrageous number, only 57 of those bombs really upset the international community.

    Because there were 57 strikes in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen—countries the U.S. was neither at war with nor had ongoing conflicts with. And the world was kind of horrified. There was a lot of talk that went something like, “Wait a second. We’re bombing in countries outside of war zones? Is it possible that’s a slippery slope ending in us just bombing all the goddamn time? (Awkward pause.) … Nah. Whichever president follows Bush will be a normal adult person (with a functional brain stem of some sort) and will therefore stop this madness.”

    We were so cute and naive back then, like a kitten when it’s first waking up in the morning.

    The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reported that under President Barack Obama there were “563 strikes, largely by drones, that targeted Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. …”

    It’s not just the fact that bombing outside of a war zone is a horrific violation of international law and global norms. It’s also the morally reprehensible targeting of people for pre-crime, which is what we’re doing and what the Tom Cruise movie “Minority Report” warned us about. (Humans are very bad at taking the advice of sci-fi dystopias. If we’d listened to “1984,” we wouldn’t have allowed the existence of the National Security Agency. If we listened to “The Terminator,” we wouldn’t have allowed the existence of drone warfare. And if we’d listened to “The Matrix,” we wouldn’t have allowed the vast majority of humans to get lost in a virtual reality of spectacle and vapid nonsense while the oceans die in a swamp of plastic waste. … But you know, who’s counting?)

    There was basically a media blackout while Obama was president. You could count on one hand the number of mainstream media reports on the Pentagon’s daily bombing campaigns under Obama. And even when the media did mention it, the underlying sentiment was, “Yeah, but look at how suave Obama is while he’s OK’ing endless destruction. He’s like the Steve McQueen of aerial death.”

    And let’s take a moment to wipe away the idea that our “advanced weaponry” hits only the bad guys. As David DeGraw put it, “According to the C.I.A.’s own documents, the people on the ‘kill list,’ who were targeted for ‘death-by-drone,’ accounted for only 2% of the deaths caused by the drone strikes.”

    Two percent. Really, Pentagon? You got a two on the test? You get five points just for spelling your name right.

    But those 70,000 bombs dropped by Bush—it was child’s play. DeGraw again:

    “[Obama] dropped 100,000 bombs in seven countries. He out-bombed Bush by 30,000 bombs and 2 countries.”

    You have to admit that’s impressively horrific. That puts Obama in a very elite group of Nobel Peace Prize winners who have killed that many innocent civilians. The reunions are mainly just him and Henry Kissinger wearing little hand-drawn name tags and munching on deviled eggs.

    However, we now know that Donald Trump’s administration puts all previous presidents to shame. The Pentagon’s numbers show that during George W. Bush’s eight years he averaged 24 bombs dropped per day, which is 8,750 per year. Over the course of Obama’s time in office, his military dropped 34 bombs per day, 12,500 per year. And in Trump’s first year in office, he averaged 121 bombs dropped per day, for an annual total of 44,096.

    Trump’s military dropped 44,000 bombs in his first year in office.

    He has basically taken the gloves off the Pentagon, taken the leash off an already rabid dog. So the end result is a military that’s behaving like Lil Waynecrossed with Conor McGregor. You look away for one minute, look back, and are like, “What the fuck did you just do? I was gone for like, a second!”

    Under Trump, five bombs are dropped per hour – every hour of every day. That averages out to a bomb every 12 minutes.

    And which is more outrageous—the crazy amount of death and destruction we are creating around the world, or the fact that your mainstream corporate media basically NEVER investigates it? They talk about Trump’s flaws. They say he’s a racist, bulbous-headed, self-centered idiot (which is totally accurate) – but they don’t criticize the perpetual Amityville massacre our military perpetrates by dropping a bomb every 12 minutes, most of them killing 98 percent non-targets.

    When you have a Department of War with a completely unaccountable budget—as we saw with the $21 trillion—and you have a president with no interest in overseeing how much death the Department of War is responsible for, then you end up dropping so many bombs that the Pentagon has reported we are running out of bombs.

    Oh, dear God. If we run out of our bombs, then how will we stop all those innocent civilians from … farming? Think of all the goats that will be allowed to go about their days.

    And, as with the $21 trillion, the theme seems to be “unaccountable.”

    Journalist Witney Webb wrote in February, “Shockingly, more than 80 percent of those killed have never even been identified and the C.I.A.’s own documents have shown that they are not even aware of who they are killing—avoiding the issue of reporting civilian deaths simply by naming all those in the strike zone as enemy combatants.”

    That’s right. We kill only enemy combatants. How do we know they’re enemy combatants? Because they were in our strike zone. How did we know it was a strike zone? Because there were enemy combatants there. How did we find out they were enemy combatants? Because they were in the strike zone. … Want me to keep going, or do you get the point? I have all day.

    This is not about Trump, even though he’s a maniac. It’s not about Obama, even though he’s a war criminal. It’s not about Bush, even though he has the intelligence of boiled cabbage. (I haven’t told a Bush joke in about eight years. Felt kind of good. Maybe I’ll get back into that.)

    This is about a runaway military-industrial complex that our ruling elite are more than happy to let loose. Almost no one in Congress or the presidency tries to restrain our 121 bombs a day. Almost no one in a mainstream outlet tries to get people to care about this.

    Recently, the hashtag #21Trillion for the unaccounted Pentagon money has gained some traction. Let’s get another one started: #121BombsADay.

    One every 12 minutes.

    Do you know where they’re hitting? Who they’re murdering? Why? One hundred and twenty-one bombs a day rip apart the lives of families a world away – in your name and my name and the name of the kid doling out the wrong size popcorn at the movie theater.

    We are a rogue nation with a rogue military and a completely unaccountable ruling elite. The government and military you and I support by being a part of this society are murdering people every 12 minutes, and in response, there’s nothing but a ghostly silence. It is beneath us as a people and a species to give this topic nothing but silence. It is a crime against humanity.

    *  *  *

    If you think this column is important, please share it. Also, check out Lee Camp’s weekly TV show “Redacted Tonight” and weekly podcast “Common Censored.”

    Truthdig is running a reader-funded project to document the Poor People’s Campaign. Please help us by making a donation.

  • Meet Mystery FBI "Agent 5" Who Sent Anti-Trump Texts While On Clinton Taint Team

    A recently unmasked FBI agent who worked on the Clinton email investigation and exchanged anti-Trump text messages with her FBI lover and other colleagues has been pictured for the first time by the Daily Mail. 

    Sally Moyer, 44, who texted ‘f**k Trump,’ called President Trump’s voters ‘retarded’ and vowed to quit ‘on the spot’ if he won the election, was seen leaving her home early Friday morning wearing a floral top and dark pants. 

    She shook her head and declined to discuss the controversy with a DailyMail.com reporter, and ducked quickly into her nearby car in the rain without an umbrella before driving off. –Daily Mail

    Moyer – an attorney and registered Democrat identified in the Inspector General’s report as “Agent 5” is a veritable goldmine of hate, who had been working for the FBI since at least September of 2006.

    When Moyer sent the texts, she was on the “filter team” for the Clinton email investigation – a group of FBI officials tasked with determining whether information obtained by the FBI is considered “privileged” or if it can be used in the investigation – also known as a taint team.

    Moyer exchanged most of the messages with another FBI agent who worked on the Clinton investigation, identified as ‘Agent 1’ in the report.

    Moyer and Agent 1 were in a romantic relationship at the time, and the two have since married, according the report. Agent 1’s name is being withheld. –Daily Mail

    Some of Moyer’s greatest hits:

    • “fuck Trump” 
    • “screw you trump”
    • “She [Hillary] better win… otherwise i’m gonna be walking around with both of my guns.” 
    • Moyer also called Ohio Trump supporters “retarded” 

    “Agent 1” who is now married to Moyer, referred to Hillary Clinton as “the President” after interviewing the Democratic candidate as part of the email investigation.

    Another FBI official, Kevin Clinesmith, 36, sent similar text messages. A graduate of Georgetown Law, Clinesmith – referred to in the Inspector General’s report as “Attorney 2,” – texted several colleagues lamenting the “destruction of the Republic” after former FBI Director James Comey reopened the Clinton email investigation.

    In response to a colleague asking he had changed his views on Trump, Clinesmith responded “Hell no. Viva le resistance,” a reference to the Trump opposition movement that clamed to be coordinating with officials inside the Trump administration. 

    Two high-ranking FBI officials – Peter Strzok and his mistress Lisa Page, were discovered by the Inspector General to have sent over 50,000 text messages to each other – many of which showed the two harbored extreme bias aginst Trump and for Hillary Clinton. Like Moyer and “Agent 1,” Strzok and Page worked on the Clinton email investigation.

    Don’t worry though – none of their bias made its way into the Clinton email investigation…

  • Ike Was Right!

    Authored by Bill Bonner via Bonner & Partners,

    We wait for the world to fall apart.

    The Dow is still more than 1,000 points below its high; so we presume the primary trend is down. Treasury yields – on the 10-year note – are near 3%… twice what they were two years ago. So we presume the primary trend for bonds is down, too.

    If we’re right, we are at the beginning of a long slide… down, down, down… into chaos, destitution, and destruction.

    Faked Out

    Our working hypothesis is that General Eisenhower was right.

    There were two big temptations to the American Republic of the 1950s; subsequent generations gave in to both of them.

    1. They spent their children’s and grandchildren’s money. Now, the country has a government debt of $21 trillion. That’s up from $288 billion when Ike left the White House.

    2. And they allowed the “unwarranted influence” of the “military/industrial complex” to grow into a monster. No president, no matter how good his intentions, can stop it.

    A corollary to our major hypothesis is that the rise of the Deep State (the military/industrial/social welfare/security/prison/medical care/education/bureaucrat/crony complex) was funded by the Fed’s fake-money system.

    Now, investors, businesses, households, and the feds themselves have all been “faked out” by a fraudulent money system. None of them can survive a cutback in credit.

    For nearly 30 years, central banks have backstopped markets and flooded the world with liquidity.

    But last week, the Fed turned the screws a little further. It now targets a 2% Fed Funds Rate and claims to be on the path of “normalization.”

    And the European Central Bank (ECB) made it official, too; it hasn’t quite begun tightening, but it’s got its toolbox open. And command of the ECB work crew is set to change hands next year anyway, passing on to a German engineer.

    Scarred Psyche

    The German psyche has been scarred by its awful experience in the last century. Even though today’s Germans didn’t live through it themselves, the entire country seems to have a race memory of it.

    Still preparing for hard times, the household savings rate in Germany is at least three times higher than in the sans souci U.S.

    Germany’s apocalypse, too, can be described in Eisenhower’s terms – too much debt (arising from World War I)… and too much influence in the hands of the military/industrial complex.

    Debt led to hyperinflation. But the damage done by Germany’s hyperinflation of the early ’20s lead to far more than just wiped-out mortgages and billion-dollar cigars.

    It discredited the traditional elite of the country – its institutions, its culture, and its politics. Germany had the world’s finest artists, composers, and philosophers. Its writers, engineers, and scientists were second to none.

    Even in the early ’30s, Germans could still look to the East – to the madness, purges, and famines of Russia – and say to themselves: “Ah, that couldn’t happen here; we are so much more civilized.”

    But by then, civilization was on the run, from the Rhine all the way to Siberia. And in Germany, the old elite was being chased out of leading posts in academia, the military, and the government.

    Ruined by hyperinflation and chaos – and hounded by extremists – thousands emigrated from Germany to England and America. Those left yielded to mob spirits and rabble-rousing upstarts – communists, anarchists, and national socialists – who fought it out in the streets.

    The national socialists – the Nazis – won. Even though it was prohibited by the Versailles Treaty, they quickly began building up the military/industrial complex.

    Then, as Madeleine Albright phrased it, “What good is it having such a powerful military if you can’t put it to use?”

    As it transpired, Germany attacked the Soviet Union. By then, the average Russkie may have hated Stalin, but he rallied to defend Mother Russia.

    By the end of World War II, eight million Germans would be dead, with millions more condemned to die in prisoner-of-war camps or from starvation.

    By 1945, Germany had been bombed so thoroughly that nothing much was left of its once-impressive industrial capacity.

    Its farms had been starved of investment (the money went to the military) for the previous 10 years. And the country had been cut in half, with foreign troops ruling over every aspect of life.

    Runaway Money

    And today, 73 years later… there are still foreign troops garrisoned on German soil… and the Germans still fear letting the money system get out of control.

    They’re right to be wary of runaway money. It turns honest wage-earners into paupers, while the speculators get rich.

    Worse, it gives the meddlers a source of almost unlimited financing. Then, there’s no telling what mischief they will get up to. Revolution? War? Or simply a complete economic collapse?

    News also came last week that the inflation rate in Venezuela has reached 24,600%. In other words, if you bought a pack of cigarettes for $5 last June, you could expect to pay $1,230 for the same pack today.

    When the money goes, everything seems to go with it. The economy, government, order, morality, right and wrong – all sink into a greasy stew where you don’t know which parts are edible and which are poisonous.

    This year’s rise in oil prices was supposed to give Venezuela a little break. Oil is the country’s biggest asset and its major export. And the state-owned oil giant PDVSA was supposed to rescue the nation.

    But it is too late.

    The vernacular – the vast web of thoughts and deals that make up everyday life for everyday people – has been so corrupted and distorted that it can’t react normally. Venezuela can no longer take advantage of opportunities or respond to crises. The New York Times reports:

    Desperate oil workers and criminals are also stripping the oil company of vital equipment, vehicles, pumps and copper wiring, carrying off whatever they can to make money. The double drain – of people and hardware – is further crippling a company that has been teetering for years yet remains the country’s most important source of income.

    Wages could not keep up with inflation. The NYT highlights the case of a typical rig worker who stayed on the job for the entire month of May, yet earned only enough to buy one chicken.

    No longer able to feed their children, workers walk off the job. Or drive off.

    Trucks disappear. So do wrenches and copper pipes. Even with a higher oil price, income falls for the company… the state… and the remaining employees.

    What’s a man to do?

    Leave! Venezuelans are rushing the borders to escape, often taking little more than the clothes on their backs with them.

    But wait… Americans are civilized people with full employment, a solid dollar, and a military that is bringing order to a troubled world. What possible significance could Germany 1920–1945 or Venezuela 1999–? have for us?

    And Eisenhower was just an old worrywart, wasn’t he?

  • Gold Joins The Global "Death Cross" Procession

    While US mega-tech stocks support the belief that all is well for many Americans, a glance around the world and the shit is seriously hitting the fan…

    Downtrends are everywhere and ‘death crosses’ are popping up in asset classes from Chinese stocks to global Systemically-Important Banks and most recently gold…

    The crossing of the 50-day moving average below the 200-day moving average has been long used a signal of trend change and more euphemistically is known as the “death cross.”

    Gold is now suffering…

    Silver was triggered a few months back… (but has largely gone sideways since)

    But Chinese Stocks have slumped since being hit by the death cross…

    And as China growth expectations fade amid global trade war tensions, Copper has given back its recent spike gains and formed a death cross…

    And it’s not just ‘real’ assets, virtual currencies have been hit with Bitcoin plunging after suffering its death cross…

    Europe has not been spared with DAX suffering a death cross earlier in the year, rebounding, and now about to suffer another as Trump’s tariff threats send it spiralling lower…

    Emerging Market stocks, bonds, and FX are all ‘death cross’-ing…

    And finally, and perhaps most ominously, there are the Global Most Systemically Import Banks (G-SIBs) – which just formed a death cross as they entered a bear market…

    But then again – why worry – Nasdaq is at a record high…

    Probably nothing to worry about, it’s only the global economy that is slowing dramatically…

  • How Much Money Do You Save by Cooking at Home?

    Submitted by Priceonomics

    Intuitively, we all know there are benefits to cooking at home. You can use healthier ingredients, set portions to a reasonable size, avoid food allergies, and of course you can save money compared to ordering restaurant delivery or using a meal kit service.

    But just how much money do you save by cooking at home? We decided to analyze our recipe data to find out the true cost of cooking at home from scratch, compared to delivery from a restaurant or a meal kit service. 

    We analyzed data from Priceonomics customer wellio, a platform that breaks down millions of recipes into single ingredients and matching those to grocery items from local stores. That allows us to measure the ingredient cost for a wide variety of recipes. For 86 popular dinner recipes, we decided to look at the average cost per serving of cooking from scratch and compare it to the cost per serving of ordering from a restaurant or a meal kit delivery service.

    We found on average, it is almost five times more expensive to order delivery from a restaurant  than it is to cook at home. And if you’re using a meal kit service as a shortcut to a home cooked meal, it’s a bit more affordable, but still almost three times as expensive as cooking from scratch.

    When cooking at home, you’ll save a substantial amount of money on carb-based meals like pasta or pizza, and you’ll save the most on protein-based meals when compared to ordering from a restaurant or meal kits.

    ***

    Before diving into the results, let’s spend a moment on the methodology of this analysis. We looked at 86 popular meals and examined how much it would cost to acquire them as: groceries for home cooking, restaurant delivery or meal kit delivery. For home cooking, we’ve calculated the price per serving based on the consumed portion of ingredients. For example, you purchase a whole onion for the recipe, which requires half an onion per serving, so the price per serving is ½ of the onion. To be clear, this is an analysis of your costs and isn’t about looking at opportunity costs of time associated with cooking.

    For restaurant delivery, we looked up menu prices on the websites of the following national restaurant chains: Applebee’s, Cheesecake Factory, Chevy’s, Chili’s, Lyfe Kitchen, Maggiano’s, and P.F. Chang’s. Then added an average $5 delivery fee based on delivery prices from Caviar, UberEats, and Grubhub. Since meals sold within a meal kit are usually part of a bundle, we took the average price of a meal across the bundle and then allocated a $2.50 delivery fee per meal. For home cooking, we looked at the cost of ingredients according to wellio, based on Whole Foods Market, a national grocery chain with quality products.

    First, let’s look at the average costs of the meals we analyzed depending on if you acquired them from a restaurant versus meals kits versus cooking at home from scratch.

    By far, getting dinner delivered from a restaurant is the most expensive meal option. 

    At over $20 per serving on average, a restaurant delivered meal is almost three times as expensive as a meal kit and five times as expensive as cooking at home from scratch. Obviously when you cook at home, you’ll spend more time but you usually end up with a healthier meal because you’re the one to decide what exactly goes into it. 

    Next, let’s look at the cost of getting specific meals delivered via restaurant delivery versus making the meal from scratch. Of course, there are “cheaper” places to buy these restaurant meals, but these are the prices published on restaurant websites in our sample of mostly national chains. 

    Which meals save you the most when you roll up your sleeves and cook instead of picking up your phone to order?

    At the top of the list, the meals you can save the most money by cooking at home are heavily protein based entrees. As it turns out, restaurants charge a lot of money for meals that have beef, pork, and chicken. When you factor in a delivery cost, your price per meal can easily exceed $20 per person (and sometimes even more than $30 per person!).

    To better understand this comparison, let’s look at an example of the price per serving breakdown for Pork Tenderloin, one of the top money-saving meals when cooking at home from the list above.

    Also appearing throughout the list are pasta-based meals like Broccoli Alfredo, Pad Thai, Pasta Bolognese and Soba Noodles. If you buy these from a restaurant you will pay “entree” prices of about $20. However you can easily make these meals at home and save 80-90% per serving. 

    Restaurant delivery, however, isn’t the only alternative to cooking at home. You can also have meal kits delivered to your house. These kits are sold at a premium compared to cooking from scratch because the raw ingredients are pre-assembled and pre-portioned for you.

    If you’re looking to save money, when should you avoid meal kits and instead cook from scratch at home?

    For vegetable and pasta-based meals, frankly, it’s really cheap to make them at home while meal kits still charge a lot for them. 

    In the above list, for example, making a Cheese Pizza, Mac & Cheese, Cauliflower or Quinoa bowl is incredibly inexpensive to make at home — it only costs about a dollar per serving! However, these are the type of meals where meal kits are the worst value since you’ll be paying around $12 for them as part of the “bundle” you’re required to purchase (that also includes delivery fee). 

    Eating meat through a meal kit is about half as expensive as ordering it from a restaurant, but still much more expensive than making it yourself. A few meat-based meals stand out as being much more expensive with a meal kit than home cooking — Cilantro Lime Chicken, Chicken Soup, and Teriyaki Chicken make the top ten worst meal kit deals compared to home cooking.

    Lastly, let’s look at all the data. The below chart shows the prices of all 86 meals we analyzed from a meal kit service, a restaurant, or making it at home from scratch.

    What rules of thumb can be gleaned from looking at all this data? 

    First, If meat is involved, you can save a lot of money by making the dish at home instead of ordering it from a restaurant. These types of dishes are the most expensive entrees on the menu at restaurants but don’t cost you that much to cook from scratch.

    Second, if the ingredients are items like flour, cheese, and pasta, which are very inexpensive at the grocery store, avoid getting them from a meal kit service. On the other hand, meal kits can be a pretty good option if you want to cook more complicated meals with many ingredients, especially a meal like Curry Chicken which has many spices.

    Lastly, cooking at home saves you money across the board. Although you will spend more time then ordering delivery from a restaurant, you will get a nutritious and delicious meal for about $4 a person.

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Jun 22

Today’s News 22nd June 2018

  • Germany Has Made Over 3 Billion Profit From Greece's Crisis Since 2010

    Germany has earned around 2.9 billion euros in profit from interest since the first bailout for Greece in 2010.

    As KeepTalkingGreece reports, this is the official response of the Federal Government to a request submitted by the Green party in Berlin.

    The profit was transmitted to the central Bundesbank and from there to the federal budget.

    The revenues came mainly due to purchases of Greek government bonds under the so-called Securities Markets Program (SMP) of the European Central Bank (ECB).

    Previous agreements between the government in Athens and the eurozone states foresaw that other states will pay out the profits from this program to Greece if  Athens would meet all the austerity and reform requirements. However, according to Berlin’s response, only in 2013 and 2014 such funds have been transferred to the Greek State and the ESM. The money to the euro bailout landed on a segregated account.

    As the Federal Government announced, the Bundesbank achieved by 2017 about 3.4 billion euros in interest gains from the SMP purchases. In 2013, approximately 527 million euros were transferred back to Greece and around 387 million to the ESM in 2014. Therefore, the overall profit is 2.5 billion euros.

    In addition, there are interest profits of 400 million euros from a loan from the state bank KfW.

    “Contrary to all right-wing myths, Germany has benefited massively from the crisis in Greece,” said Greens household expert Sven Christian Kindler said and demanded a debt relief for Greece.

    “It can not be that the federal government with billions of revenues from the Greek interest the German budget recapitalize,” Kindler criticized. “Greece has saved hard and kept its commitments, now the Eurogroup must keep its promise,” he stressed.

    “Sorry, Angie, I couldn’t make more, yet 2.9billion is not bad profit either…”

  • The United States Is Pushing Toward War With China

    Authored by Michael Klare via The Nation,

    The decision to change the name of US forces in the Pacific is more than symbolic… it’s a threat.

    On May 30, Secretary of Defense James Mattis announced a momentous shift in American global strategic policy.

    From now on, he decreed, the US Pacific Command (PACOM), which oversees all US military forces in Asia, will be called the Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM).

    The name change, Mattis explained, reflects “the increasing connectivity between the Indian and Pacific Oceans,” as well as Washington’s determination to remain the dominant power in both.

    What? You didn’t hear about this anywhere? And even now, you’re not exactly blown away, right? Well, such a name change may not sound like much, but someday you may look back and realize that it couldn’t have been more consequential or ominous. Think of it as a signal that the US military is already setting the stage for an eventual confrontation with China.

    If, until now, you hadn’t read about Mattis’s decision anywhere, I’m not surprised since the media gave it virtually no attention—less certainly than would have been accorded the least significant tweet Donald Trump ever dispatched. What coverage it did receive treated the name change as no more than a passing “symbolic” gesture, a Pentagon ploy to encourage India to join Japan, Australia, and other US allies in America’s Pacific alliance system. “In Symbolic Nod to India, US Pacific Command Changes Name” was the headline of a Reuters story on the subject and, to the extent that any attention was paid, it was typical.

    That the media’s military analysts failed to notice anything more than symbolism in the deep-sixing of PACOM shouldn’t be surprising, given all the attention being paid to other major international developments—the pyrotechnics of the Korean summit in Singapore, the insults traded at and after the G7 meeting in Canada, or the ominous gathering storm over Iran. Add to this the poor grasp so many journalists have of the nature of the US military’s strategic thinking. Still, Mattis himself has not been shy about the geopolitical significance of linking the Indian and Pacific Oceans in such planning. In fact, it represents a fundamental shift in US military thinking with potentially far-reaching consequences.

    Consider the backdrop to the name change: in recent months, the United States has stepped up its naval patrols in waters adjacent to Chinese-occupied islands in the South China Sea (as has China), raising the prospect of future clashes between the warships of the two countries. Such moves have been accompanied by ever more threatening language from the Department of Defense (DoD), indicating an intent to do nothing less than engage China militarily if that country’s build-up in the region continues. “When it comes down to introducing what they have done in the South China Sea, there are consequences,” Mattis declared at the Shangri La Strategic Dialogue in Singapore on June 2.

    As a preliminary indication of what he meant by this, Mattis promptly disinvited the Chinese from the world’s largest multinational naval exercise, the Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC), conducted annually under American auspices. “But that’s a relatively small consequence,” he added ominously, “and I believe there are much larger consequences in the future.” With that in mind, he soon announced that the Pentagon is planning to conduct “a steady drumbeat” of naval operations in waters abutting those Chinese-occupied islands, which should raise the heat between the two countries and could create the conditions for a miscalculation, a mistake, or even an accident at sea that might lead to far worse.

    In addition to its plans to heighten naval tensions in seas adjacent to China, the Pentagon has been laboring to strengthen its military ties with US-friendly states on China’s perimeter, all clearly part of a long-term drive to—in Cold War fashion—“contain” Chinese power in Asia. On June 8, for example, the DoD launched Malabar 2018, a joint Pacific Ocean naval exercise involving forces from India, Japan, and the United States. Incorporating once neutral India into America’s anti-Chinese “Pacific” alliance system in this and other ways has, in fact, become a major 21st-century goal of the Pentagon, posing a significant new threat to China.

    For decades, the principal objective of US strategy in Asia had been to bolster key Pacific allies Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines, while containing Chinese power in adjacent waters, including the East and South China Seas. However, in recent times, China has sought to spread its influence into Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean region, in part by extolling its staggeringly ambitious “One Belt, One Road” trade and infrastructure initiative for the Eurasian continent and Africa. That vast project is clearly meant both as a unique vehicle for cooperation and a way to tie much of Eurasia into a future China-centered economic and energy system. Threatened by visions of such a future, American strategists have moved ever more decisively to constrain Chinese outreach in those very areas. That, then, is the context for the sudden concerted drive by US military strategists to link the Indian and Pacific Oceans and so encircle China with pro-American, anti-Chinese alliance systems. The name change on May 30 is a formal acknowledgement of an encirclement strategy that couldn’t, in the long run, be more dangerous.

    GIRDING FOR WAR WITH CHINA

    To grasp the ramifications of such moves, some background on the former PACOM might be useful. Originally known as the Far East Command, PACOM was established in 1947 and has been headquartered at US bases near Honolulu, Hawaii, ever since. As now constituted, its “area of responsibility” encompasses a mind-boggling expanse: all of East, South, and Southeast Asia, as well as Australia, New Zealand, and the waters of the Indian and Pacific Oceans—in other words, an area covering about 50% of the Earth’s surface and incorporating more than half of the global population. Though the Pentagon divides the whole planet like a giant pie into a set of “unified commands,” none of them is larger than the newly expansive, newly named Indo-Pacific Command, with its 375,000 military and civilian personnel.

    Before the Indian Ocean was explicitly incorporated into its fold, PACOM mainly focused on maintaining control of the western Pacific, especially in waters around a number of friendly island and peninsula states like Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines. Its force structure has largely been composed of air and naval squadrons, along with a large Marine Corps presence on the Japanese island of Okinawa. Its most powerful combat unit is the US Pacific Fleet —like the area it now covers, the largest in the world. It’s made up of the 3rd and 7th Fleets, which together have approximately 200 ships and submarines, nearly 1,200 aircraft, and more than 130,000 sailors, pilots, Marines, and civilians.

    On a day-to-day basis, until recently, the biggest worry confronting the command was the possibility of a conflict with nuclear-armed North Korea. During the late fall of 2017 and the winter of 2018, PACOM engaged in a continuing series of exercises designed to test its forces’ ability to overcome North Korean defenses and destroy its major military assets, including nuclear and missile facilities. These were undoubtedly intended, above all, as a warning to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un about what he could expect if he continued down the path of endless provocative missile and nuclear tests. It seems that, at least for the time being, President Trump has suspended such drills as a result of his summit meeting with Kim.

    North Korea aside, the principal preoccupation of PACOM commanders has long been the rising power of China and how to contain it. This was evident at the May 30 ceremony in Hawaii at which Mattis announced that expansive name change and presided over a change-of-command ceremony, in which outgoing commander, Adm. Harry Harris Jr., was replaced by Adm. Phil Davidson. (Given the naval-centric nature of its mission, the command is almost invariably headed by an admiral.)

    While avoiding any direct mention of China in his opening remarks, Mattis left not a smidgeon of uncertainty that the command’s new name was a challenge and a call for the future mobilization of regional opposition across a vast stretch of the planet to China’s dreams and desires. Other nations welcome US support, he insisted, as they prefer an environment of “free, fair, and reciprocal trade not bound by any nation’s predatory economics or threat of coercion, for the Indo-Pacific has many belts and many roads.” No one could mistake the meaning of that.

    Departing Admiral Harris was blunter still. Although “North Korea remains our most immediate threat,” he declared, “China remains our biggest long-term challenge.” He then offered a warning: Without the stepped-up efforts of the US and its allies to constrain Beijing, “China will realize its dream of hegemony in Asia.” Yes, he admitted, it was still possible to cooperate with the Chinese on limited issues, but we should “stand ready to confront them when we must.” (On May 18, Admiral Harris was nominated by President Trump as the future US ambassador to South Korea, which will place a former military man at the US Embassy in Seoul.)

    Harris’s successor, Admiral Davidson, seems, if anything, even more determined to put confronting China atop the command’s agenda. During his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on April 17, he repeatedly highlighted the threat posed by Chinese military activities in the South China Sea and promised to resist them vigorously.

    “Once [the South China Sea islands are] occupied, China will be able to extend its influence thousands of miles to the south and project power deep into Oceania,” he warned.

    “The PLA [People’s Liberation Army] will be able to use these bases to challenge US presence in the region, and any forces deployed to the islands would easily overwhelm the military forces of any other South China Sea claimants. In short, China is now capable of controlling the South China Sea in all scenarios short of war with the United States.”

    Is that, then, what Admiral Davidson sees in our future? War with China in those waters? His testimony made it crystal clear that his primary objective as head of the Indo-Pacific Command will be nothing less than training and equipping the forces under him for just such a future war, while enlisting the militaries of as many allies as possible in the Pentagon’s campaign to encircle that country.

    “To prevent a situation where China is more likely to win a conflict,” he affirmed in his version of Pentagonese, “we must resource high-end capabilities in a timely fashion, preserve our network of allies and partners, and continue to recruit and train the best soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and coastguardsmen in the world.”

    Davidson’s first priority is to procure advanced weaponry and integrate it into the command’s force structure, ensuring that American combatants will always enjoy a technological advantage over their Chinese counterparts in any future confrontation. Almost as important, he, like his predecessors, seeks to bolster America’s military ties with other members of the contain-China club. This is where India comes in. Like the United States, its leadership is deeply concerned with China’s expanding presence in the Indian Ocean region, including the opening of a future port/naval base in Gwadar, Pakistan, and another potential one on the island of Sri Lanka, both in the Indian Ocean. Not surprisingly, given the periodic clashes between Chinese and Indian forces along their joint Himalayan borderlands and the permanent deployment of Chinese warships in the Indian Ocean, India’s prime minister Narendra Modi has shown himself to be increasingly disposed to join Washington in military arrangements aimed at limiting China’s geopolitical reach.

    “An enduring strategic partnership with India comports with US goals and objectives in the Indo-Pacific,” Admiral Davidson said in his recent congressional testimony. Once installed as commander, he continued, “I will maintain the positive momentum and trajectory of our burgeoning strategic partnership.” His particular goal: to “increase maritime security cooperation.”

    And so we arrive at the Indo-Pacific Command and a future shadowed by the potential for great power war.

    THE VIEW FROM BEIJING

    The way the name change at PACOM was covered in the United States, you would think it reflected, at most, a benign wish for greater economic connections between the Indian and Pacific Ocean regions, as well, perhaps, as a nod to America’s growing relationship with India. Nowhere was there any hint that what might lie behind it was a hostile and potentially threatening new approach to China—or that it could conceivably be perceived that way in Beijing. But there can be no doubt that the Chinese view such moves, including recent provocative naval operations in the disputed Paracel Islands of the South China Sea, as significant perils.

    When, in late May, the Pentagon dispatched two warships—the USS Higgins, a destroyer, and the USS Antietam, a cruiser—into the waters near one of those newly fortified islands, the Chinese responded by sending in some of their own warships while issuing a statement condemning the provocative American naval patrols. The US action, said a Chinese military spokesperson, “seriously violated China’s sovereignty [and] undermined strategic mutual trust.” Described by the Pentagon as “freedom of navigation operations” (FRONOPs), such patrols are set to be increased at the behest of Mattis.

    Of course, the Chinese are hardly blameless in the escalating tensions in the region. They have continued to militarize South China Sea islands whose ownership is in dispute, despite a promise that Chinese President Xi Jinping made to President Obama in 2015 not to do so. Some of those islands in the Spratly and Paracel archipelagos are also claimed by Vietnam, the Philippines, and other countries in the area and have been the subject of intensifying, often bitter disagreements among them about where rightful ownership really lies. Beijing has simply claimed sovereignty over all of them and refuses to compromise on the issue. By fortifying them—which American military commanders see as a latent military threat to US forces in the region—Beijing has provoked a particularly fierce US reaction, though these are obviously waters relatively close to China, but many thousands of miles from the continental United States.

    From Beijing, the strategic outlook articulated by Secretary Mattis, as well as Admirals Harris and Davidson, is clearly viewed—and not without reason—as threatening and as evidence of Washington’s master plan to surround China, confine it, and prevent it from ever achieving the regional dominance its leaders believe is its due as the rising great power on the planet. To the Chinese leadership, changing PACOM’s name to the Indo-Pacific Command will just be another signal of Washington’s determination to extend its unprecedented military presence westward from the Pacific around Southeast Asia into the Indian Ocean and so further restrain the attainment of what it sees as China’s legitimate destiny.

    However Chinese leaders end up responding to such strategic moves, one thing is certain: They will not view them with indifference. On the contrary, as challenged great powers have always done, they will undoubtedly seek ways to counter America’s containment strategy by whatever means are at hand. These may not initially be overtly military or even obvious, but in the long run they will certainly be vigorous and persistent. They will include efforts to compete with Washington in pursuit of Asian allies—as seen in Beijing’s fervent courtship of President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines—and to secure new basing arrangements abroad, possibly under the pretext, as in Pakistan and Sri Lanka, of establishing commercial shipping terminals. All of this will only add new tensions to an already anxiety-inducing relationship with the United States. As ever more warships from both countries patrol the region, the likelihood that accidents will occur, mistakes will be made, and future military clashes will result can only increase.

    With the possibility of war with North Korea fading in the wake of the recent Singapore summit, one thing is guaranteed: The new US Indo-Pacific Command will only devote itself ever more fervently to what is already its one overriding priority: preparing for a conflict with China. Its commanders insist that they do not seek such a war, and believe that their preparations—by demonstrating America’s strength and resolve—will deter the Chinese from ever challenging American supremacy. That, however, is a fantasy. In reality, a strategy that calls for a “steady drumbeat” of naval operations aimed at intimidating China in waters near that country will create ever more possibilities, however unintended, of sparking the very conflagration that it is, at least theoretically, designed to prevent.

    Right now, a Sino-American war sounds like the plotline of some half-baked dystopian novel. Unfortunately, given the direction in which both countries (and their militaries) are heading, it could, in the relatively near future, become a grim reality.

  • Water Wars: India Facing "Worst Crisis In Its History"

    India is facing its worst-ever water crisis, with some 600 million people facing acute water shortage, a government think-tank says.

    The Niti Aayog report, which draws on data from 24 of India’s 29 states, says the crisis is “only going to get worse” in the years ahead.

    Around 200,000 Indians die every year because they have no access to clean water, according to the report. And as The BBC reports, many end up relying on private water suppliers or tankers paid for the by the government. Winding queues of people waiting to collect water from tankers or public taps is a common sight in Indian slums.

    Indian cities and towns regularly run out water in the summer because they lack the infrastructure to deliver piped water to every home.

    • 600 million people face high-to-extreme water stress.

    • 75% of households do not have drinking water on premise. 84% rural households do not have piped water access.

    • 70% of our water is contaminated; India is currently ranked 120 among 122 countries in the water quality index.

    India faces more than one problem – all compounding the nation’s crisis:

    Droughts are becoming more frequent, creating severe problems for India’s rain-dependent farmers (~53% of agriculture in India is rainfed17).

    When water is available, it is likely to be contaminated (up to 70% of our water supply), resulting in nearly 200,000 deaths each year.

    Interstate disagreements are on the rise, with seven major disputes currently raging, pointing to the fact that limited frameworks and institutions are in place for national water governance.

    And that means massive problems lie ahead…

    40% of the Indian population will have no access to drinking water by 2030 with 21 cities running out of groundwater by 2020 – affecting 100 million people which will cut 6% from GDP by 2050.

    What remains alarming is that the states that are ranked the lowest – such as Uttar Pradesh and Haryana in the north or Bihar and Jharkhand in the east – are also home to nearly half of India’s population as well the bulk of its agricultural produce.

    But, the report said, policymakers face a difficult situation because there is not enough data available on how households and industries use and manage water.

    While trade wars are grabbing all the headlines, the water wars are where the real pain lies.

  • Paul Craig Roberts: "The Entire Western World Lives In Cognitive Dissonance"

    Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

    In this column I am going to use three of the current top news stories to illustrate the disconnect that is everywhere in the Western mind.

    Let us begin with the family separation issue. The separation of children from immigrant/refugee/asylum parents has caused such public outcry that President Trump has backed off his policy and signed an executive order terminating family separation.

    The horror of children locked up in warehouses operated by private businesses making a profit off of US taxpayers, while parents are prosecuted for illegal entry, woke even self-satisfied “exceptional and indispensable” Americans out of their stupor. It is a mystery that the Trump regime chose to discredit its border enforcement policy by separating families. Perhaps the policy was intended to deter illegal immigration by sending the message that if you come to America your children will be taken from you.

    The question is: How is it that Americans can see and reject the inhumane border control policy and not see the inhumanity of family destruction that has been the over-riding result of Washington’s destruction in whole or part of seven or eight countries in the 21st century?

    Millions of people have been separated from families by death inflicted by Washington, and for almost two decades protests have been almost nonexistent. No public outcry stopped George W. Bush, Obama, and Trump from clear and indisputable illegal acts defined in international law established by the US itself as war crimes against the inhabitants of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, and Somalia. We can add to this an eighth example: The military attacks by the US armed and supported neo-Nazi puppet state of Ukraine against the breakaway Russian provinces.

    The massive deaths, destruction of towns, cities, infrastructure, the maiming, physical and mental, the dislocation that has sent millions of refugees fleeing Washington’s wars to overrun Europe, where governments consist of a collection of idiot stooges who supported Washington’s massive war crimes in the Middle East and North Africa, produced no outcry comparable to Trump’s immigration policy.

    How can it be that Americans can see inhumanity in the separation of families in immigration enforcement but not in the massive war crimes committed against peoples in eight countries? Are we experiencing a mass psychosis form of cognitive dissonance?

    We now move to the second example: Washington’s withdrawal from the United Nations Human Rights Council.

    On November 2, 1917, two decades prior to the holocaust attributed to National Socialist Germany, British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour wrote to Lord Rothschild that Great Britain supported Palestine becoming a Jewish homeland. In other words, the corrupt Balfour dismissed the rights and lives of the millions of Palestinians who had occupied Palestine for two millennia or more. What were these people compared to Rothschild’s money? They were nothing to the British Foreign Secretary.

    Balfour’s attitude toward the rightful inhabitants of Palestine is the same as the British attitude toward the peoples in every colony or territory over which British power prevailed. Washington learned this habit and has consistently repeated it.

    Just the other day Trump’s UN ambassador Nikki Haley, the crazed and insane lapdog of Israel, announced that Washington had withdrawn from the UN Human Rights Council, because it is “a cesspool of political bias” against Israel.

    What did the UN Human Rights Council do to warrant this rebuke from Israel’s agent, Nikki Haley? The Human Rights Council denounced Israel’s policy of murdering Palestinians—medics, young children, mothers, old women and old men, fathers, teenagers.

    To criticize Israel, no matter how great and obvious is Israel’s crime, means that you are an anti-semite and a “holocaust denier.” For Nikki Haley and Israel, this places the UN Human Rights Council in the Hitler-worshipping Nazi ranks.

    The absurdity of this is obvious, but few, if any, can detect it. Yes, the rest of the world, with the exception of Israel, has denounced Washington’s decision, not only Washington’s foes and the Palestinians, but also Washington’s puppets and vassals as well.

    To see the disconnect, it is necessary to pay attention to the wording of the denunciations of Washington.

    A spokesperson for the European Union said that Washington’s withdrawal from the UN Human Rights Council “risks undermining the role of the US as a champion and supporter of democracy on the world stage.” Can anyone image a more idiotic statement? Washington is known as a supporter of dictatorships that adhere to Washington’s will. Washington is known as a destroyer of every Latin American democracy that elected a president who represented the people of the country and not the New York banks, US commercial interests, and US foreign policy.

    Name one place where Washington has been a supporter of democracy. Just to speak of the most recent years, the Obama regime overthrew the democratically elected government of Honduras and imposed its puppet. The Obama regime overthrew the democratically elected government in Ukraine and imposed a neo-Nazi regime. Washington overthrew the governments in Argentina and Brazil, is trying to overthrow the government in Venezuela, and has Bolivia in its crosshairs along with Russia and Iran.

    Margot Wallstrom, Sweden’s Foreign Minister, said: “It saddens me that the US has decided to withdraw from the UN Human Rights Council. It comes at a time when the world needs more human rights and a stronger UN – not the opposite.” Why in the world does Wallstrom think that the presence of Washington, a known destroyer of human rights—just ask the millions of refugees from Washington’s war crimes overrunning Europe and Sweden—on the Human Rights Council would strengthen rather than undermine the Council? Wallstrom’s disconnect is awesome. It is so extreme as to be unbelievable.

    Australia’s Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop, spoke for the most fawning of all of Washington’s vassals when she said that she was concerned by the UN Human Rights Council’s “anti-Israel bias.” Here you have a person so utterly brainwashed that she is unable to connect to anything real.

    The third example is the “trade war” Trump has launched against China. The Trump regime’s claim is that due to unfair practices China has a trade surplus with the US of nearly $400 billion. This vast sum is supposed to be due to “unfair practices” on China’s part. In actual fact, the trade deficit with China is due to Apple, Nike, Levi, and to the large number of US corporations who produce offshore in China the products that they sell to Americans. When the offshored production of US corporations enter the US, they are counted as imports.

    I have been pointing this out for many years going back to my testimony before the US Congress China Commission. I have written numerous articles published almost everywhere. They are summarized in my 2013 book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism.

    The presstitute financial media, the corporate lobbyists, which includes many “name” academic economists, and the hapless American politicians whose intellect is almost non-existent are unable to recognize that the massive US trade deficit is the result of jobs offshoring. This is the level of utter stupidity that rules America.

    In The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism, I exposed the extraordinary error made by Matthew J. Slaughter, a member of President George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, who incompetently claimed that for every US job offshored two US jobs were created. I also exposed as a hoax a “study” by Harvard University professor Michael Porter for the so-called Council on Competitiveness, a lobby group for offshoring, that made the extraordinary claim that the US work force was benefitting from the offshoring of their high productivity, high value-added jobs.

    The idiot American economists, the idiot American financial media, and the idiot American policymakers still have not comprehended that jobs offshoring destroyed America’s economic prospects and pushed China to the forefront 45 years ahead of Washington’s expectations.

    *  *  *

    To sum this up, the Western mind, and the minds of the Atlanticist Integrationist Russians and pro-American Chinese youth, are so full of propagandistic nonsense that there is no connection to reality.

    There is the real world and there is the propagandistic made-up world that covers over the real world and serves special interests. My task is to get people out of the made-up world and into the real world. Support my efforts.

  • 80% Of Renters Can't Afford To Live Close To Work

    Companies like McDonald’s and GE have been moving their headquarters from the suburbs to trendy urban centers to try and attract “tech-savvy” millennial talent. But unfortunately for their employees, the companies can’t take all the cheap housing from the suburbs with them. And even as developers are in the middle of a luxury apartment boom in many downtown areas, the cost of housing remains the No. 1 factor separating 80% of millennial employees from living close to work.

    According to RentCafe, fewer than 17% of over 2,000 renters recently surveyed said they lived close to their ideal location, leaving 83% to live in less-than-ideal locations as rents have climbed incessantly since the crisis. What’s worse, 60% of respondents said they would not be able to afford to pay substantially more than they are already paying.

    Nationally, the average rent charged by buildings in the most desirable locations is $1,650 a month, which is 37% more than the national average rent of $1,211 charged in lower-rated locations, according to rent data and location ratings by Yardi Matrix.

    RentCafe

    That rent gap comes from comparing top-notch locations rated A+/A/A-/B+ and apartments in average and below-average locations rated B/B-/C/D. The map below shows the cities with some of the largest gaps between low-rated and top-rated locations. The six cities where this difference is higher than 50% are Chicago, St. Louis, Philadelphia, Houston, Brooklyn, NYC, and Memphis.

    Rent

    Meanwhile, Raleigh and Seattle are among the six cities where renters pay less than 10% more for a top location vs. the rest of the city (though, at least in Seattle’s case, this is due to the immense tech boom that has seen rents increase across the city).

    The survey confirmed that younger workers prefer to live closer to work, while older Americans prioritize being closer to their friends and family. Many renters who said they’d pay $250 more a month to live in a better location said living near quality schools was their reason. In the most-coveted buildings, Americans hoping for a rent reduction might be disappointed – but at least rents in newer high-rise towers tend to increase more slowly, RentCafe found. However, with the rush to cities still underway, the development boom in centrally located areas has yet to run its course. In the 50 cities analyzed for this study, there are more than 100,000 units of housing that are under construction in the highest-rated areas alone.

  • What Life Is Really Like For A Venezuelan Mom

    Authored by J.G. Martinez D. via The Organic Prepper blog,

    Did you ever wonder what the life of a mother in Venezuela is like?

    This is not a fictional story. It is a couple of days in the life of one of our best friends, in our country, under the current conditions. Her son suffers from diabetes. He is 12 years old and has lost one tooth because he is malnourished and needs a special diet. We’ll call her L.

    The Morning

    She woke up early, around 6 AM. After using just a drop of toothpaste, and a tiny little bit of what used to be a soap bar for washing her face, she dressed and went to her kid´s bedroom. He was already awake, but still in bed. Another drop of toothpaste, and using the same tiny bit of soap, he was ready for breakfast. This was just a piece of boiled tapioca, with a teaspoon of margarine, and a tiny bit of ground cheese on top. A banana, and a glass of water. Eggs are a luxury item, usually left for the weekend’s breakfast. A fulltime shower before leaving would be a waste of soap, better to sleep clean at night because going to bed fresh is better once the lights go out and the air conditioning stops working.

    She walked her kid about ¾  mile to school, in streets half empty, with very few cars. This is not surprising. There is no money for oil changes nor tires or batteries. There are express assaults often, usually with a couple of men on a small Chinese motorcycle (bought by the government and sold under subsidies for the “poor” people who needed a vehicle), with the one on the back seat jumping off the bike with a gun, and robbing the bystanders.

    With eyes on her back, and very alert, after dropping the kid at school she walked to the avenue, just for trying to find a cattle truck or any other farm truck that are transporting people to the downtown where she worked. After texting on her old cellphone and saying she was already waiting for a truck, she quickly hid her phone inside her jeans. After 35 minutes of waiting, a truck appeared, loaded with people up to the roof. She paid to the chauffeur and the passengers helped her to climb up. A taxi is no longer an option.

    Most of the people are working the taxi just under request, because of the high price of spare parts. They are contacted by phone and charge high prices, because of the added security level they offer. Some people have been robbed or even killed by using the wrong kind of taxi. Usually, their phone numbers are passed on by word of mouth, and they rarely transport unknown people.

    The Workday

    She arrived at the beauty, nails and hair room on time, and her day was as usual, barely enough clients to keep the business open and running. The other 5 employees had to be sent home a long time ago, and now it is just her, the room owner (very sick with untreated cancer) and another girl with two small children and an older mother to support.

    By lunchtime, an old lady with a styrofoam box wrapped in duct tape arrived. L got out her dish and “silverware”, to receive her lunch. The old lady opened her cooler and quickly served to L the ration in her dish. She pays the lady once a week if she has been able to find some stuff or the cash for buying enough food.

    That day things were a little bit better so she decided to take some food for her son at dinner. One rice cup, another cup of beans, and two slices of fried plantains. Filtered water for washing it down and lunch is ready. She took an empty Tupperware she had left around just in case, and the old lady served the food inside. Sticking it in her backpack, she started to sweep the room.

    Shortly before the end of the closing (business close around 6 o´clock in that part of the country and pretty much earlier if lights go out because of the night arrives fast, and being on the streets without lights is dangerous) she received a text of one of the neighbors who carpools for several people living in the same subdivision.

    The Evening

    She quickly accepted the ride (anything is better than the platform of a truck in the rainy season), said goodbye to her boss, and got out to wait. Not staying in one spot but walking from one side of the mall to another, always in sight of the watchmen, (armed robbery, express style is rampant in the downtown these days), once the car arrived she jumped inside the already full car. Everybody is thin these days so there is always space for one more passenger. She greets the people and jokes about being on time because it almost immediately started to rain.

    A light chat was in place, and she joined cheerfuly. The general consensus was “something has to happen soon”, and about where to find what product, and better price. Another topic was who had been robbed recently, and who was already leaving out the country and which route they were taking. After a 15 minute ride, they arrived to the subdivision. There was power, so the electrical gate opened without problems. The passengers walked from the entrance to their homes, greeting the driver, until the next day.

    Her son was already at home. He is a kid who is 12, so he could microwave his meager lunch once he had arrived home. Another piece of tapioca, and a can of sardines. They fed the cats and their rescued puppy. They watched part of a movie on the DVD and took a shower before the lights went out.

    This happened around 9 PM so they went to bed. It was fresh after all with the rain. The next day was Saturday, and she told her boss that perhaps she would be delayed because she would need to leave out early in the morning, in order to buy some food for the weekend.

    The Weekend

    At 7 AM she was already with her son in the vegetable shop. Prices in cash were half of the prices using the POS, but there was not an alternative. The rows in the ATMs are too long and the money was not enough for buying anything, anyways. So she bought a kilogram of sweet potatoes (better for people with diabetes, she has been told), one large papaya for juice and dessert, a half kilo of white hard cheese, some tomatoes, lettuce, spice herbs, half kilo of two different dried grains, and then most of the money of her monthly salary was gone.

    She would buy some ground beef for a special lunch on Sunday, 300 grams or so. Mostly for F, her son who needed the proteins. She hurried home, and leaving the kid and the groceries, she quickly walked up to the main avenue to get another truck again before the rain started.

    She had to wait a little bit, because the trucks were much more filled up than the day before.  Saturdays were days when people usually went out to buy some food, and getting earlier to the few shops that still have products was necessary.

    Once she arrived, there was no power in the mall where her nail room was, and one man was working in the genset that provided energy for the entire mall. Once they started the engine, the mall came back to life. Some people hurried up to the line in front of the Chinese-owned supermarket. There is a lot of Chinese-owned supermarkets, and while Venezuelan people do not have money even for a taxi, the store owners drive Tahoes, live in luxury apartments, and enjoy a lifestyle that any Venezuelan, unless it is a member of the mafia cannot have.

    L worked her shift, and left in a hurry again to take the transport to a neighboring subdivision: one of her clients needed to be attended at home because she was having a special night with her husband. After having done the work on her hair and nails, she arrived home with some cash, but it was already too late to go to some place for buying anything. Going out at 8 PM is definitely not a good idea these days.

    They ate some casabe (tapioca dry cakes, very typical of the east of the country but not too nutritious or filling) with tomato sauce and fried plantains and went to bed. This time lights went about 11 PM, and they could watch an entire movie on the DVD. The cats were on the bed with the four of them.

    The puppy was in the living room, in a big cardboard box all for himself, sleeping like a baby.

    She watched her son sleep, next to her, silently. Took the remote and shut down the TV. She wanted to cry, but instead, she gave thanks to God for another day with food.

  • NSA Launches Amazon-Backed Cloud-Computing Service For Sharing "Top Secret" Info

    Four years after handing Amazon a $600 million contract to develop a cloud-storage service for the US intelligence community that can store information across the full range of data classifications – including Unclassified, Sensitive, Secret, and Top Secret – the NSA announced on Thursday that it has moved most of its mission data to a front-end cloud computing system developed by the agency that’s supported by – you guessed it – Amazon and its CEO, Jeff Bezos.

    NSA

    According to NextGov.com, the IC GovCloud, which was created by the NSA but is supported by Amazon’s web services, will offer similar hosting services to the other 16 members of the US intelligence community. The advantage of having all of these intelligence agencies using the same system, according to NSA Chief Information Officer Greg Smithberger, is that it will allow analysts from across agencies to share information and “connect the dots” more quickly. But even before the other agencies sign on, the NSA will use the platform to “collect, analyze and store” classified information in a “classified cloud computing environment.”

    The goal of the platform is to gather all of the signals intelligence that the NSA gathers on foreign targets (and, of course, its myriad spying on the American public) into one centralized location that’s easily accessible by its analysts.

    The impetus for the multi-year move is getting the NSA’s data, including signals intelligence and other foreign surveillance and intelligence information it ingests from multiple repositories around the globe into a single data lake analysts from the NSA and other IC agencies can run queries against.

    “The NSA has been systematically moving almost all its mission into this big data fusion environment,” Smithberger told Nextgov in an interview. “Right now, almost all NSA’s mission is being done in [IC GovCloud], and the productivity gains and the speed at which our analysts are able to put together insights and work higher-level problems has been really amazing.”

    Furthermore, the NSA cloud will employ AI and machine learning techniques to allow analysts to work more quickly than they otherwise would be able to.

    Data ingested by NSA has been meta-tagged with bits of information, including where it came from and who is authorized to see it, which ensures analysts only immerse themselves in intelligence they’re cleared to see.

    “This environment allows us to run analytic tools and do machine-assisted data fusion and big data analytics, and apply a lot of automation to facilitate and accelerate what humans would like to do, and get the machines to do it for them,” Smithberger said. Analysts, he said, can “interactively ask questions” of the data in the cloud environment, and it spits out data in “humanly readable form.”

    In addition to utilizing some of the commercial technology used by tech firms like Facebook in their data centers, the IC GovCloud will feature proprietary technology developed by the NSA.

    The backbone of the system is the same commercial hardware you might see in data centers owned by Facebook, Amazon or other industry titans. But that hardware is blended with NSA-developed custom software, exotic processing, high performance computing and other unique NSA intellectual property.

    “It’s really a hybrid of the latest and greatest commercial technology, but a lot of custom NSA technology and a lot of unique development we’ve done to actually create these outcomes,” Smithberger said.

    Of course, one can’t help but wonder what kind of access Jeff Bezos & Co. will have to this new technology. Or, to put it another way, will the most powerful company in America now have access to your girlfriend’s nudes?

  • Zuesse: The Diseased, Lying, Condition Of America's 'News'-Media

    Authored by Eric Zuesse via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    Both President Trump and former President Obama are commonly said in America’s ‘news’ media to be or to have been “ceding Syria to Russia” or “ceding Syria to Russia and Iran,” or similar allegations. They imply that ‘we’ own (or have some right to control) Syria.

    That’s not only a lie; it is a very evil and harmful one, dangerously goading the US President to go even more against Russia (and Iran) (and, of course, against Syria) than has yet been done – but the ‘news’media don’t care about that evil, and that falsehood, and that dangerousness – they do it anyway, and none of them attacks the others for perpetrating this vicious war-mongering lie, that lying provocation to yet more and worse war than already exists there.

    And the fact that none is exposing the fraudulence of the others on this important matter, is a yet-bigger additional scandal, beyond and amplifying the media’s common lying itself. Because they all function here like a mob, goading to more and worse invasions, and doing it on the the basis of dangerous lies – that America, and not the Syrians themselves, own Syria.

    These lies simply assume that America (probably referring to the US Government, but whatever) somehow “has” or else “had” Syria (so that America can now ‘cede’ it, to anyone); and this assumption (that the US somehow owns Syria) is not only an imperialistic one (which is bad, and wrong, in itself), but it reduces to nothingness the rights (in the minds of the American public) of the Syrian people, to control their own land.

    That lie is what America’s ‘news’media won’t expose, but instead they all cooperate with it, when they’re not actually participating, themselves, in spreading these lies. 

    What they are doing is also to slur Russia, and to slur Iran, for having accepted the request from Syria’s Government, for assistance in protecting Syria’s Government, against the tens of thousands of jihadists who had been recruited throughout the world by the Saudi-American alliance, to overthrow and replace Syria’s Government, to replace it with one that would be appointed by the Saud family (’America’s ally’), the fundamentalist-Sunni royal family who (as the absolute monarchy there) do actually own Saudi Arabia – a monarchical dictatorship, which the US Government calls an ‘ally’.

    The evilness of this imperialistic assumption, which is being constantly spread by the US-and-allied ‘news’media, is as bad as is its falseness, because “America” (however one wishes to use that term) never had, never possessed, any right whatsoever to control Syria. Of course, neither does Russia possess such a right, nor does Iran, but neither Russia nor Iran is asserting any such right; both instead are there to protect Syria’s national sovereignty, against the invaders (including the US, and the Sauds’ regime). But the US-and-allied ‘news’media don’t present it that way — the honest way — not at all. Such truths are instead suppressed.

    I was immediately struck by this false and evil assumption that the US owns Syria, when reading the June 15th issue of The Week magazine. It contained, under its “Best Columns” section, a piece by Matthew Continetti (“Obama Too Good for America”), which says, among other falsehoods, “Obama was wrong about a lot of other things, too, like… ceding Syria to Russia.”

    That phrase, “ceding Syria to Russia” rose straight out from the page to me as being remarkable, stunning, and not only because it suggests that America owns that sovereign nation, Syria. I was especially struck by it because the CIA has several times attempted Syrian coups and once did briefly, in 1949, overthrow and replace Syria’s democratically elected President. But is that really something which today’s America’s ‘news’media should encourage the American public to be demanding today’s American politicians to be demanding from today’s American President? How bizarre, even evil, an idea is that? But it is so normal that it’s a fair indication of how evil and untrustworthy today’s American ‘news’media actually are. I just hadn’t noticed it before.

    Publishing such a false and evil idea, without any accompanying commentary that truthfully presents its context and that doesn’t simply let the false and evil allegation stand unchallenged – that instead lets it be unchallenged both factually and morally – is not acceptable either factually or morally, but then I checked and found that it’s the almost universal norm, in today’s US ‘news’media.

    For examples:

    On 17 April 2018, CBS News headlined “Lindsey Graham ‘unnerved’ after Syria briefing: ‘Everything in that briefing made me more worried’” and presented that US Senator saying, “It seems to me we are willing to give Syria to Assad, Russia, and Iran.” He was criticizing President Trump as being “all tweet and no action.” He wanted more war, and more threat of war. But when President Obama had repeatedly denied in public that only the Syrian people should have any say-so over whom Syria’s leaders ought to be, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon repeatedly contradicted the US President’s viewpoint on this, and he said, “The future of Assad must be determined by the Syrian people.” 

    If the American people have become so dismissive of international law as this, then is it because the US ‘news’media start with the ridiculously false presumption that “America” (whatever that refers to) is the arbiter of international law, and therefore has the right to dictate to the entire world what that law is, and what it means? Is America, as being the dictator over the whole planet, supposed to be something that Americans’ tax-dollars ought to be funding — that objective: global dictatorship? How does that viewpoint differ, then, from perpetual war for perpetual ‘peace’ — a dictum that’s enormously profitable for America’s big ‘Defense’ contractors, such as Lockheed Martin, but that impoverishes the general public, both in America, and especially in the countries (such as Syria) where ‘our’ Government drops bombs in order to enforce its own will and demand, that: “Assad must go!”

    In fact, as any journalist who writes or speaks about the Syrian situation and who isn’t a complete ignoramus knows, Bashar al-Assad would easily win any free and fair Presidential election in Syria, against any contender. His public support, as shown not only in the 2014 Syrian Presidential election, but also in the many Western-sponsored opinion-polls in Syria (since the CIA is always eager to find potential candidates to support against him), show this. 

    On 17 December 2016, Eric Chenoweth, a typical neocon Democratic Party hack, headlined “Let Hamilton Speak: Recapturing American Democracy”, and he wrote: “Trump’s statements and appointments make clear he intends to tilt American policy to serve Russian interests: ceding Syria to Russia by ending support to pro-Western rebels; possibly lifting economic sanctions and recognizing the annexation of Crimea; proposing an alliance with Russia in the war on terror while remaining uncommitted to the defense of NATO allies, in particular the Baltic countries vulnerable to Russian aggression. Restoring American Democracy When they meet on December 19, Republican Electors who reflect on their constitutional duty should not then affirm Trump’s election.” Those “pro-Western rebels” in Syria were actually led by Al Qaeda’s Syrian branch. Without them, the US regime wouldn’t have had any “boots on the ground” forces to speak of there.

     In fact, the US regime has actually been fronting for the Saud family to take over control of Syria if and when Syria’s Government falls.The Saud family even selected the people who in the U.N. peace talks on Syria represent ‘the rebels’ — the Sauds, who have been Syria’s enemy ever since 1950, selected ‘Syria’s opposition’, who were now seeking to take over Syria if and when ‘America’s moderate rebels’ succeed. Both Al Qaeda and ISIS are actually fundamentalist-Sunnis, like the Saud family are, and Assad’s Government is resolutely non-sectarian. Assad himself is a non-Islamist Alawite Shiite secularist, which virtually all fundamentalist Sunnis (such as the Sauds are) are taught to despise and to hate — especially because he’s Shiite. The US regime knows that neither it, which is considered Christian, nor Israel, which is theocratically Jewish, could practically succeed at imposing rule in Syria, but that maybe the Sauds could — so, they are the actual leaders of the ‘pro-Western’ forces, seeking to replace Syria’s secularist Government. Overthrowing Syria’s Government would be their victory. It would be the Saud family’s victory. But this fact is kept a secret from the American public, by the US ‘news’media.

    Back on 17 September 2016, shortly before the change in US Administrations, Obama bombed the Syrian Government’s garrison in Der Zor, or Deir Ezzor, which is the capital of Syria’s oil-producing region. He did it in order to enable ISIS forces, which surrounded the city, to rush in and conquer it. Obama did this only eight days after his Secretary of State, John Kerry, had conceded to the demand by Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s Foreign Minister, Russia’s demand that in a cease fire, Russia be allowed to continue bombing not only ISIS there, which Kerry agreed should continue to be bombed by both the US and Russia, but also Al Qaeda’s forces — which until 9 September 2016, Obama refused to allow to be bombed during a cease-fire. But, finally, after a year of deadlock between Russia and the United States on that crucial issue, Kerry and Lavrov both signed a cease-fire agreement, and it allowed both ISIS and Al Qaeda-led forces to continue being bombed. (Russia had been bombing both, ever since 30 September 2015, when Russia began its bombing campaign in Syria.)

    That cease-fire went into effect on September 12th. Then Obama, unannounced — and a great disappointment to his Secretary of State, who wasn’t informed of this in advance — broke the agreement, by bombing the Syrian outpost in Deir Ezzor — and that’s the moment when Vladimir Putin quit his efforts to get agreements from Obama, because Putin now recognized that Obama was totally untrustworthy.

    Already by late September of 2015, even prior to Russia’s having been requested by President Assad to enter the war in order to speed up the defeat of what Washington still calls ‘the rebels’, it was clear that Washington (actually Riyadh) wasn’t going to take over Syria; and Americans were — and are — being taught by the ‘news’media, that this was because Obama was ‘weak’ and didn’t care enough about ‘human rights’ in Syria, and about ‘democracy’ in Syria. So, on 28 September 2015, Matt Purple at the libertarian “Rare Politics” site, headlined “Pentagon admits that the Syrian rebels it trained handed over weapons to al Qaeda”, and he wrote “Neoconservatives wail that President Obama is ceding Syria to Russia — but the reason the Russians are taking the lead is precisely because America has sidelined itself.” But the US regime hadn’t at all “sidelined itself”; it continued — and it continues to this day — its invasion and occupation of that land. Trump’s policy on Syria is basically a continuation of Obama’s — and it’s not at all “ceding Syria to Russia,” or “ceding Syria to Russia and Iran.”

    Because of America’s ‘news’media, it still isn’t “ceding Syria to the Syrians” — as Ban ki-Moon and international law would. That wouldn’t be profitable for Lockheed Martin etc. (whose biggest customers other than the US Government are the Sauds, and Trump alone sold $400 billion of US weapons to them); so, it’s not done.

    Syria’s sovereignty is utterly denied by the US regime, but if the US regime were to succeed, the big winners would actually be the Saud family. 

    Do the American people have sovereignty, over ‘their’ (our) Government? US ‘news’media effectively ban that question. Perhaps what controls the US Government is the Saudi-Israeli alliance: the Sauds have the money, and the Israelis have the lobbyists. Of course, the US ‘news’media are obsessed whether Russia controls the US Government. That diversionary tactic is extremely profitable to companies such as General Dynamics, and America’s other weapons-manufacturers, which thrive on wars — especially by selling to the Sauds, and to their allies (and, obviously, not at all to Russia).

  • As Shutdown Looms, New Jersey Legislature Blasts Governor's "My Way Or The High Way" Budget

    In what’s beginning to sound like a repeat of last year’s statewide budget battles that pitted Democratic legislatures against Republican governors in states like Maine, New Jersey and Illinois, the Democrat-controlled New Jersey legislature is trying to jam a plan that would raise taxes on corporations down the throat of the state’s fledgling governor, Goldman Sachs alum Phil Murphy. 

    However, there’s one key incongruity here that might raise eyebrows among voters who don’t live in the Garden State: Murphy is also a Democrat – yet his tax plan, which would rely on long-term increases in sales taxes as well as a hike on income taxes for the wealthiest individuals, has been resoundingly rejected by lawmakers – including State Senate President Steve Sweeney, who lost out to Murphy in the gubernatorial primary to replace outgoing governor Chris Christie, according to NJ.com.

    Murphy

    The Senate Budget Committee passed the budget bill 8-3 (including two abstentions), and the Assembly Budget Committee passed their bill 9-4. By ignoring the governor’s plan and instead moving ahead with its own, the legislature is hoping to send a resounding message to Murphy: “We don’t answer to you.”

    New Jersey lawmakers on Tuesday flexed their muscles in advancing a state spending blueprint that eschews Gov. Phil Murphy’s call for income and sales tax increases in favor of higher taxes on the state’s largest corporations.

    “The bill is hot off the press,” state Senate Budget Chairman Paul Sarlo, D-Bergen, announced before that committee voted along party lines on the $36.5 billion state budget that Murphy has already vowed to veto.

    Legislative leaders have said they intend to put the budget before the two houses on Thursday, sending the bill to the governor, and with it, a message that the state Legislature doesn’t answer to him.

    “The Legislature is an independent body. We’re equal partners and we’re expressing that right now,” state Senate President Stephen Sweeney, D-Gloucester, told reporters at the Statehouse Tuesday. “The Legislature is not going to accept ‘my way or the highway’ talking. We’re not subservient.”

    Sweeney and Murphy have exchanged criticisms of their respective plans. Lawmakers criticized Murphy’s plan for failing to take advantage of corporations’ savings on their federal tax bill as Murphy blasted lawmakers’ budget plan as “irresponsible and temporary”  – a reference to the fact that lawmaker’s tax plan would only last for two years.

    But perhaps the most trenchant criticism of the legislature’s plan came from Republicans and Democrats who correctly pointed out that the tax hikes on corporations (some of which would be used to help fill the massive funding gap in New Jersey’s public-employee pensions) would cement New Jersey’s status as the “least friendly state in the US for corporations.”

    The legislative budget retools the corporation business tax hike Sweeney proposed earlier this year, adding two new temporary tiers that would tax businesses with net income between $1 million and $25 million at a 11.5 percent tax rate and businesses with more than $25 million in net income at 13 percent — the highest rate of any state.

    Sweeney said the tax should end after two years.

    State Assemblyman John McKeon, D-Essex, voted in favor of the budget, he said with “trepidation” and hope the Legislature and governor would manage to find a compromise in the coming days and an alternative to that two-year tax.

    “It sunsets in two years. That’s crazy,” McKeon said. “What does that mean two years from now?”

    […]

    Business lobbyists and Republican lawmakers warned that the higher taxes would position New Jersey as the least-friendly state for corporations in the region.

    New Jersey ought to be a “economic monster,” said Assemblyman John DiMaio, R-Warren.

    “I just can’t help but realize that as we make this move – and I truly hope it’s temporary – that we’re not keeping more businesses from coming in,” he said. “I just hope this is not going to damage the business climate.”

    As NorthJersey.com points out, both sides agree that taxes must be raised to beef up funding for public schools, NJ Transit and, of course, the state’s “troubled public pensions.” But thanks to today’s Supreme Court ruling, which opened the door to states collecting sales tax on e-commerce purchases made by its residents, Jersey could reap an additional $216 million to $351 million in tax receipts, according to some estimates. Murphy, Sweeney and Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin, who along with Sweeney spearheaded the legislature’s bill, met Thursday morning to discuss their proposal with the governor. But given how budget battles have played out over the past year in states across the US, we imagine this, too, will snowball into a last-minute nail-biter, as Sweeney and Murphy refuse to lose face to their former opponents.

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Jun 21

Today’s News 21st June 2018

  • Russia Raises Retirement Age Above Life Expectancy For 40% Of Men

    An estimated 40% of Russians may never live to retire, after Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev announced that the age to receive a Russian state pension would be raised from 60 to 65 for men by 2028, and from age 55 to 63 by 2034 for women. The draft legislation was discussed in the Russian cabinet on Thursday. There is one problem: a substantial portion of the Russian population will never live that long.

    Angry Russians are accusing the Kremlin of announcing the changes while the country is distracted hosting the World Cup. 

    Expected to be officially adopted by next year, the new policy would mean the country’s retirement age for men would be only a year lower than the World Health Organisation’s estimated life expectancy for a Russian man of 66.

    It estimated around 40 per cent of men and 20 per cent of women may not live long enough to claim their pensions under the new rules. –Independent.co.uk

    The Russian Confederation of Labour (KTR) says that the average life expectancy for men is actually less than 65-years-old in over 60 regions in Russia.

    “KTR does not support such decisions and declares its intention to launch a broad public campaign against their implementation,” the organization said in a statement. 

    According to the Federal State Statistics Service, in 62 regions of the Russian Federation, the average life expectancy of men is less than 65 years, and in three subjects – less than 60 years.

    In other words, if demographic trends continue in Russia as a whole, up to 65 years 40% of men and 20% of women will not live to see their retirement. The implementation of the proposal to raise the retirement age will mean that a significant portion of Russian citizens will not survive to retirement.

    The Kremlin, however, disagrees – with Russia’s Federal Statistics Service projecting men’s life expectancy to reach 74-years-old by 2037, according to Bloomberg.

    The unpopular announcement comes as Russia is gripped watching their national team’s 5-0 victory over Saudi Arabia in the opening game of the World Cup. 

    “Under the noise of the opening of the 2018 World Cup Medvedev announced at a government meeting: the retirement age in Russia should be raised to 65 years for men and up to 63 years for women,” wrote Twitter user Yoshkin Mole.

    How about some exoskeletons?

    Facing a similar situation with an aging workforce, Japan has taken to outfitting senior citizens with exoskeletons so they don’t throw out their brittle backs lifting boxes and whatnot.

    In some cases, the solution lies in technologies that help offset senior workers’ deficiencies, like the exoskeletons used by Obayashi at its construction site. The Fujisawa Aikoen nursing home about an hour outside Tokyo started leasing the “hybrid assistive limb,” or HAL, exoskeletons from maker Cyberdyne Inc. in June.

    At an office-building construction site in the center of Japan’s capital, 67-year-old Kenichi Saito effortlessly stacks 44-pound boards with the ease of a man half his age.

    His secret: a bendable exoskeleton hugging his waist and thighs, with sensors attached to his skin. The sensors detect when Mr. Saito’s muscles start to move and direct the machine to support his motion, cutting his load’s effective weight by 18 pounds. –WSJ (2015)

    “In Hokkaido, 60-year-old potato-pickers use rubber “smart suits” making it easier to bend over. Baggage handlers at Tokyo’s Haneda airport employ similar assistance,” reports the Journal.

    No word on whether they come with Adidas stripes for the Russian market.

  • Italy Challenges The Western Order… And The EU Is Showing The Strains

    Authored by Frank Sellers via TheDuran.com,

    With a massive influx of immigrants from across Africa and the Middle East, and growing poverty, Italy voted in a populist government representing policies which would seem to virtually overturn the postwar European order.

    The austerity measures which have been imposed upon the Italian people have pushed more and more of them down into poverty, with the poverty rate doubling over the course of the past decade.

    Relative to migration, Italy is one of the Southern European countries taking the brunt of the migrants who are flooding into Europe by the thousands, helped along by various NGOs which seek to alter the demographic makeup and economic and political order of Europe under the guise of humanitarianism.

    The present economic metrics tend to perceive the profits of multinational corporations as a gauge of the health of the economy, rather than the economic situation on the ground level, faced by the Italian citizen. All of these and more are things which this new government has a view towards radically changing.

    To combat Austerity, which may be tossed out the window, the option on the table is to review treaties to which Italy is partied which impose or advise them. Rather than gutting the population for the money which the government needs in order to cover obligations to multinational financial interests, a proposal was broached of launching a universal basic income, reduction in the pension age, as well as a flat tax system.

    And while the migrant policy is still evolving, it has had a view towards repatriating the migrants which are already within Italy’s borders. Italy has already flexed its will on the migrants issue over refusing a ship full of migrants port in Italy, forcing it to set sail for Spain.

    Foreign policy aims at softening the approach towards Russia by eliminating sanctions and by putting the focus on improving relations, benefitting Italy both by allowing a resumption of trade, and the perspective of Russia’s will and capacity to help get a handle on the situation in the Middle East, which is part of what prompts the migration issue, due to the region’s instability.

    What this could mean is that an already strained relationship between Italy and the EU could be put to the test, or altered in a significant manner if these proposals are put into play after the fashion in which they were introduced during the elections cycle.

    Alessandra Bocchi over at First Things observes:

    Italy’s new government represents the most radical challenge yet to the order that has dominated Europe since World War II. Comprising the populist-left Five Star Movement and the populist-right League, the coalition is often described as a combination of alt-left and hard-right, but in fact it moves beyond conventional ideological categories. No wonder its members have been darkly described as “barbarians” by the Financial Times and “insurgents” by the Telegraph.

    Something in the project of European integration is not working, and the elites who lead it have refused to adjust. The euro is failing miserably in southern Europe, yet the European commission wants to deepen economic and monetary union. The euro has powered German economic growth while saddling countries like Italy and Greece with austerity and debt. According to official government statistics by Istat, absolute poverty in Italy has doubled in the past decade, a few years after the euro was introduced as the country’s currency.

    The new government’s eclectic program emphasizes environmentalism, claiming that “man and the environment are two sides of the same coin,” and calls for a reduction of carbon emissions and an end to fossil fuels. The mixed ideological character of the new coalition is illustrated by Alberto Bagnai, a left-wing euroskeptic economist who represents the League in the Italian Senate. His book, The Sunset of the Euro, decries the single currency as a means for Germany to exert its dominance in the Eurozone. Bagnai also strongly opposes mass immigration, calling it a tool to drive down wages and increase exploitation of workers: “It’s no surprise that ‘left-wing’ ‘intellectuals’ don’t care about immigrants’ impact on wages—it’s because they’re not low skilled workers.”

    Even more radically, the 31-year-old leader of the Five Star Movement, Luigi Di Maio, has challenged the tyranny of economic metrics. In a speech prior to the election, he said: “The economic indicator for growth will no longer be GDP.” This represents a fundamental challenge to the free-trade post-war order, which has culminated in the rule of multi-national corporations over small businesses and enterprises.

    To address Italy’s public debt crisis, the program rejects austerity measures and seeks to revisit EU treaties that recommend them. In place of austerity, the coalition has proposed a minimum salary, a universal basic income, and a lowering of the pension age. What has raised some eyebrows is the League’s proposal for a more libertarian flat-tax system. How can the government increase spending while also decreasing its revenue? The coalition claims that the program will be paid for by eliminating bureaucratic inefficiencies and by subsidies from the EU. And Italy does indeed have a problem with corruption—Five Star built its popularity by campaigning against it.

    The new government also has a traditionalist family minister, the League’s Lorenzo Fontana, who opposes abortion and same-sex civil unions. Italy passed a law for same-sex civil unions only last year and is one of the few countries that has not legalized gay marriage. Fontana strongly opposes the civil-unions law, claiming: “They want to dominate us and erase our people.”

    In another traditionalist initiative, the Five Star–League program seeks to reverse Italy’s plummeting birth rates. “It’s necessary to provide family welfare,” the program says. The program proposes measures to help women manage their motherly and professional roles by providing free child-care facilities, thus addressing one of the main reasons for the declining birthrate: the financial penalty imposed by childbirth. The case of Valeria Ferrara, a mother who was denied a Sunday per month to spend with her family by the multi-national Calvin Klein, Inc., is exemplary of this crisis. Both Five Star and the League have, in the past few years, proposed to end Sunday labor. Luigi Di Maio, the leader of Five Star, said, “unrestrained liberalization is making us poorer.”

    The Five Star–League program also states that it will oversee the deportation of 500,000 illegal migrants currently living in Italy. Matteo Salvini, the head of the League, who holds the strongest position on immigration, will become minister of the interior under the new government. But even Di Maio, the head of Five Star, has indicated his opposition to mass migration. Last summer he said that the center-left government that has ruled Italy for the past five years had transformed the country into “Europe’s biggest port” for migrants. Di Maio also criticized the activities of NGOs operating in the Mediterranean and transporting migrants to Italian shores: “The EU doesn’t care about saving migrant lives, they just want the money.” The Five Star–League program has accordingly promised to “stop the business of smuggling” and take down “criminal organizations responsible for human trafficking,” which have caused “countless deaths in the Mediterranean.” As for financing the deportation of illegal migrants, the government would accomplish this by “directing funds used for hospitality towards repatriations.”

    This would be the toughest stance yet taken by an EU member in Western Europe. (It is interesting to note that Switzerland, which is not part of the EU, has maintained very strict immigration controls and received very little criticism for it.) The measures proposed by the coalition prompted the president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, to say that the European Commission will now “monitor the rights of African migrants in Italy.” This comment suggests that a collision over migration is imminent, particularly given the EU’s stance toward countries that have taken a tough stance on migration, such as Poland and Hungary.

    On foreign policy, the Five Star–League program says it wants to “end sanctions on Russia.” Indeed, the coalition sees Russia as a strategic partner in combating “Islamic terrorism” in the region and in ending the conflicts in Syria, Libya, and Yemen. Despite the great displays of alarm over this fact, it merely reflects a growing consensus in Europe that relationships with Russia must change. “I do think we have to reconnect with Russia,” Juncker said at a conference in Brussels this week. “This Russia-bashing has to be brought to an end.”

    Religion also plays a strong role in the program, a role often overlooked by the media. The League has pushed for the registering and monitoring of mosques in Italy. There have also been increasing appeals to a Catholic identity. Di Maio and Salvini have both shown uncommon reverence toward the Catholic Church. In September, Di Maio launched his campaign by observing the old Catholic custom of kissing the vial containing the blood of St. Januarius and bowing before the cardinal of Naples. In 2016, in front of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, Di Maio said: “The Church is my home. I am a Catholic.” Leftwing papers have responded by calling him “retrograde.”

    Salvini may be even more outspoken about his faith. In March, just before the election, he held up a rosary at one of his rallies, “swearing allegiance to the Gospel and my people.” The chosen prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, a previously unknown figure, is a former leftist who turned to the Five Star Movement. Conte is devoted to Padre Pio, a Catholic saint famous for his stigmata and bilocation.

    The Five Star–League program combines euroskepticism, environmentalism, strong borders, protection of families and small businesses against globalization, and respect for religion. It combines elements of left and right in a way that scandalizes well catechized political elites. If it succeeds, it will be the first real sign that we are moving beyond the postwar order.

    The EU is under a lot of strain.

    German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, might be looking at a weaker governing coalition if she isn’t able to get a solid grip on the migration problem in Germany. Britain’s Brexit continues to trek along, albeit at a sluggish pace, without much of a road map as to how it is going to be accomplished, and how the UK’s relationship with the EU will be positioned once the deadline finally comes. Italy here is considering renegotiating its relationship with the EU after a fashion, France is facing internal conflicts over migrants and the economic situation of average citizens, while Poland and Hungary are both defying the Union’s will on the migration matter. And last, but not least, the populace of Greece still isn’t too happy about the austerity measures it is undergoing, while international investors gobble up the nation’s infrastructure at an alarming rate, with a government that is just barely hanging onto power.

    Then there are the security and energy issues to be solved.

    Germany, and some others, are moving forward with a pipeline to import Russian gas, which some Eastern European nations are apathetic about, leading to some disagreement about where Europe’s energy security looks to. To top it all off, there are Trump’s tariffs and secondary sanctions threats relative to commerce conducted with Iran, a necessary component of the JCPOA’s survival, and the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which puts Germany between the US and its Eastern neighbors over its energy policy.

    But Trump, not merely a wild card in the deck, could pose as Europe’s saving grace, serving as a unifying factor for the bloc. While Europeans are facing lots of centrifugal issues which threaten to break it apart, Trump is the one problem which they all have in common, and is one which would offer a rallying point around which the Europeans can gather together to combat, after a fashion.

    The situation in Europe, therefore, is one which necessitates a revision of its constituent relationships, a common plan to deal with migrants, both those already in Europe and with those yet to arrive, look out for the interests of the common person, a common policy towards the East, and a common political will to oppose unilateralism and extreme nationalism.

  • "Qatar Island": Saudis Launch Massive Canal Project To Cut Off Neighbor

    It almost sounds too insane to be believed, but Saudi Arabia’s move to further isolate neighboring Arab rival Qatar by literally turning it into an island is but the latest in an intense year long feud between the two countries that has already produced its fair share of bizarre headlines.

    Tiny but ultra-wealthy Qatar is a peninsula which shares a 37.5 mile border (60km) with Saudi Arabia on the kingdom’s northeast side and juts out from the Arabian peninsula about 100 miles into the Persian Gulf. 

    Saudi media revealed this week the kingdom is quickly moving forward with ambitious plans to dig a 200 meter wide and 15-10 meter deep canal the entire length of the land border, effectively creating ‘Qatar island’ — as some Mideast news sources are already calling it.

    Of course, the Qataris don’t appear to have a say in their own country’s geographic fate, and the Saudis and Emirates further plan to locate nuclear waste sites and a military base along the proposed canal to boot. 

    The so-called “Salwa Marine Canal Project” has reportedly opened up to bidding among five international companies that specialize in digging canals, with bids closing next Monday and the project to be awarded in 90 days, according to regional sources. The canal project is estimated to cost up to 2.8 billion riyals ($750 million) according to Saudi-based Sabq newspaper.

    Qatar has remained defiant throughout its unprecedented summer diplomatic crisis with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states which have brought immense pressure to bear on the oil and gas rich monarchy through a complete economic and diplomatic blockade imposed by its neighbors. Saudi and UAE officials have long accused Qatar of supporting terrorism, aligning with Iran, and meddling in the affairs of its gulf neighbors in a crisis that has resulted in the near complete unraveling of the GCC. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    The Salwa canal was first announced in April but many observers dismissed it as but the latest in outrageous Saudi claims and punitive measures aimed at Qatar. 

    Newsweek reported in early April:

    Apparently, Riyadh is not content with traditional isolation. The so-called “Salwa Marine Canal Project” would establish a military base in one area of the border and a nuclear waste site in another. The waste would come from the nuclear reactors that Saudi Arabia is planning to build. The border would then be clearly demarcated by a wide canal. The UAE would also build a nuclear waste site at its border’s closest point to Qatar.

    But it now appears to be concretely advancing and not a bluff. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Beyond nuclear waste and military installations, Riyadh further envisages beach resorts in Salwa, Sakak, Khor al-Adeed and Ras Abu Qamees, and marinas for yachts and leisure.

    According to Dubai-based Gulf News the canal will be fully within the Saudi side of the border, meaning Qatar will have no rights or access to the waterway. Gulf News further (somewhat enthusiastically) notes that “In April, Saudi border guards took control of the Salwa crossing, effectively cutting off Qatar’s only terrestrial link with the outside world.”

    The project will reportedly be funded entirely but UAE and Saudi private investors, and it will be interesting to see if it actually comes to fruition. If so, building what is essentially a massive 60km long mote to physically cut off an entire country would certainly constitute a first in the history of diplomatic warfare.

  • Rapper Akon Creates 'Akoin' Cryptocurrency

    Authored by Molly Jane Zuckerman via CoinTelegraph.com,

    Rapper and singer Akon of twelve Billboard Top Ten Hits, including the famous “Smack That,” has announced the creation of his own cryptocurrency for use in his new African “Akon Crypto City,” Page Six reported yesterday, June 19.

    image courtesy of CoinTelegraph

    During a panel at Cannes Lion, Senegal-descended Akon said that his cryptocurrency, the Akoin, will be available in two weeks for use in the 2,000 acres of land recently given to him by the president of Senegal.

    The new Akon Crypto City describes itself as a “100% crypto-based city with Akoin at the center of transactional life […] blend[ing] leading Smart City planning designs with a blank canvas for cryptonizing our daily human and business exchanges, towards inventing a radical new way of existence.”

    Akon, who has already been involved with bringing solar power to Africa through his Lighting Africa project, said that bringing cryptocurrency to Africa can help empower its public:

    “I think that blockchain and crypto could be the savior for Africa in many ways because it brings the power back to the people and brings the security back into the currency system and also allows the people to utilize it in ways where they can advance themselves and not allow government to do those things that are keeping them down.”

    When asked about the specifics of the technology, Akon demurred, noting, “I come with the concepts and let the geeks figure it out.”

    The singer also mentioned the possibility of his running for U.S. president in 2020, imagining a future debate between himself, current president Donald Trump, and rapper Kanye West:

    “And the debate stage will be set where it’s all about me. It’s perfect, a masterplan. I’m going to come in with a team so crazy, man, it’s all going down. I’m not holding my tongue. The way I look at it, win or lose, at least I get the movement going, I get the conversation going.”

    Both Akon’s cryptocurrency and presidential ambitions mirror those of John McAfee, formerly of McAfee Anti-Virus software and now well-known crypto enthusiast. McAfee announced recently that he would be releasing his own fiat currency backed by crypto, as well as plans to run for president in order to gain a wider platform for promoting cryptocurrency.

  • Bridge: US Liberals Are Clinically Insane And Care Nothing For The American People

    Authored by Robert Bridge via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    Even before Donald Trump won the White House, there were strong indications that something was not quite right with the Liberal mindset. Today, all doubt on the matter has been cleared away.

    The mass hysteria that swept across Liberal America, like one giant tear tsunami, following Hillary Clinton’s ‘surprise’ loss in the 2016 presidential election has reached a new level of madness and can now be described as a deep-seated psychosis.

    There are some understandable reasons for the Left’s collective mental breakdown. Briefly, ‘Russiagate’ is disintegrating into a burlesque theater of the absurd, while Trump – from jump-starting the Heartland’s industrial sector, to making peace with a nuclear-armed dictator, to ‘winning’ the World Cup – is on a serious roll. If the momentum continues, it may give the Republicans a crucial victory in November congressional midterms. The Democrats, acutely aware as to what is at stake yet unable to stop Trump, are showing a side of their character that can be best described as treacherous. And in order to see the symptoms of a disintegrating Democratic Party one only need look at the US entertainment industry.

    For example, actor Robert DeNiro, one of the most outspoken Hollywood critics of Trump, forced his captive audience at the recent Tony Awards to sit through an invective against the US leader, which started with the juvenile comment, “F*ck Trump!” Just in case his audience – which may have included some minors, not to mention Republicans – did not hear him the first time, DeNiro repeated it. The pathetic outburst, which was certainly not the first time a fading Hollywood star has used the pulpit at an awards ceremony to make a weak political impression, won DeNiro a cheap standing ovation.

    Back in January 2017, before Trump was even moved into Pennsylvania Avenue, actress Meryl Streep pulled a similar stunt, lecturing the president on the diverse composition of US society in general and Hollywood in particular: “Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners and if we kick them all out, you’ll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts,” Streep said, a comment that reinforces the idea that actors should just stick to their scripts instead of venturing into the minefield of politics.

    In between those dual diatribes by two famous Hollywood has-beens have been countless other deranged Liberal stunts, including the moment when ‘comedian’ Kathy Griffin released a photograph of herself holding Trump’s ‘severed head’ aloft, to Johnny Depp making a veiled threat to assassinate the president.

    “When was the last time an actor assassinated a president,” Depp asked concertgoers in Glastonbury, a reference to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth, an actor.

    However, all that was mere dress rehearsal for the outrageous and very revealing comments by Bill Maher, a popular and provocative HBO talk show host.

    “I feel like the bottom has to fall out at some point. And by the way, I’m hoping for it,” Maher commented last week. “Because I think one way you get rid of Trump is a crashing economy. So please, bring on the recession … Sorry if that hurts people, but it’s either root for a recession or you lose your democracy.”

    At first, that may have sounded like a courageous comment until one realizes that Maher, who earns enough money to have donated one million dollars to back Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection efforts, won’t feel any of the repercussions from an imploding economy. From the relative safety of his high-security neighborhood, people like Maher will only feel the consequences from economic ruin vicariously via CNN, MSNBC and a host of other hyper-Liberal news channels that would be only too happy to provide 24/7 coverage on the ensuing chaos.

    Maher’s comment speaks volumes about the true nature of the so-called progressive Liberals. Despite all of their virtue signaling and identity grandstanding about the various groups, sexes, religions, nationalities and other various subsets that make up the colorful quilt of America, they clearly have no interest in the welfare of the people.

    A good example of this political opportunism came in the Obama era when a non-stop avalanche of cultural experiments were put to work further dividing and conquering the country into atomized, bite-size pieces, ready for easy consumption by the Democrats come election day. In an effort to appear ‘progressive’, a term with no real meaning or sense anymore, Liberals will popularize any cause, however base and diabolical, even if it serves to destroy the very fabric of the nation.

    Witness the transgender movement, for example, which the Obama administration practically forced on the American people without any debate in the matter. Under Obama, public schools were told to either allow transgender students the right to use the bathroom of their choice or lose federal support. Here we have a prime example of ‘social justice warriors’ more concerned with guaranteeing the rights of a minuscule part of the population, while ignoring the millions of women and children who will feel rightly threatened with the prospect of sharing a bathroom or changing facility with a male. Much to its credit, the Trump administration put an end to that nonsense.

    Beyond America’s borders, where was the seething outrage and visceral hate of the social justice warriors (in reality, snowflakes) when Obama was bombing parts of the Middle East back to the Stone Age? Where were the Academy Award rants as the Nobel Peace Prize winner was raining hell down on innocent civilians? What it have mattered if they knew that Obama dropped over 26,000 bombs in the last year of his reign? Or does ‘social justice’ only apply to Americans? These itinerant ‘warriors’ simply do not care, and have been able to shut down any debate they deem inappropriate – even on college campuses, once the flashpoint for anti-war protests.

    The dripping self-righteousness and perceived moral authority of the Liberals is simply nauseating, especially when it is understood that no other group is in reality more supportive of military action than they are.

    Indeed, the only time Trump won a golf clap from these warmongering hypocrites was when he bombed, however tepidly, a Syrian airfield following an alleged chemical attack by Syrian forces in April 2017.

    Appearing on CNN, analyst Fareed Zakaria declared, “I think Donald Trump became president of the United States” last night. “American leaders… don’t need to go to a pesky Congress every time they want to use military force.”

    I am tempted to believe that Trump tossed these psychopaths the bone of military conflict just to expose them for the real ‘social warriors’ they really are.

  • For The First Time In U.S. History White Deaths Outnumber Births In Majority Of States

    Deaths now outnumber births among whites in more than half of the United States, according to demographers at the University of Wisconsin in partnership with the University of Texas at San Antonio. Meanwhile the birth/death ratio among blacks, asians and latinos remains robust.

    Notably, the number of white deaths increased while births diminished between 1999 and 2016, signaling what could usher in a faster-than-expected transition to a future in which whites are no longer the majority in America.

    With significantly fewer white births and a rising number of deaths, natural increase (births minus deaths) actually ended in 2016. In that year, for the first time in U.S. history, data from the National Center for Health Statistics showed more white deaths than births in the United States. –wsic.edu

    “It’s happening a lot faster than we thought,” said Rogelio Sáenz, a demographer at the University of Texas at San Antonio and a co-author of the report, which covers the period from 1999 to 2016 using data from the National Center for Health Statistics. Sáenz said he initially thought that the results must be a mistake.

    We find overall white natural decrease in the U.S. for the first time in 2016 according to NCHS data. We also find that twenty-six states are currently experiencing it and that its occurrence has accelerated significantly in the past two years from seventeen states in 2014 to twenty-six states in 2016. Some 56 percent of the U.S. population reside in the 26 white natural decrease states and many of them are among the nation’s most populous and urbanized.  –wsic.edu

    The pattern first started nearly two decades ago in a handful of states with aging white populations like Pennsylvania and West Virginia. But fertility rates dropped drastically after the Great Recession and mortality rates for whites who are not of Hispanic origin have been rising, driven partly by drug overdoses. That has put demographic change on a faster track. The list of states where white deaths outnumber births now includes North Carolina and Ohio. –New York Times

    The rapid change has sweeping implications for the cultural makeup of the United States; transforming a nation of mostly white baby boomers to a multiethnic and racial patchwork that can already be seen in many parts of the country. 

    A majority of the youngest Americans are already nonwhite and look less like older generations than at any point in modern American history. In California, 52 percent of all children are living in homes with at least one immigrant parent, Professor Sáenz said.

    What does it mean for the political map? Some experts say that rapid demographic change became a potent issue in the 2016 presidential race — and helped drive white voters to support Donald J. Trump. .

    –New York Times

    How does this affect politics?

    The New York Times points out that of the 26 states in which white deaths now exceed births, 13 voted for Donald Trump and 13 voted for Clinton. Four of the states switched from Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016 – Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Florida – though it’s unclear how the change in demographics will affect politics in the future.

    Florida was the first state where white deaths outstripped births around 1993, largely because it was drawing a lot of retirees. But its population has been one of the fastest growing in the nation. Retirees have kept coming, replenishing the white population, and its large Hispanic population has helped lift the state over all. The median age for Hispanics in the United States is 29, prime for child bearing, compared with 43 for whites.

    Deaths began to exceed births for whites countrywide in 2016, according to the report. But in many states, as in Florida, white people moving in made up the losses. However, in 17 states, including California, Michigan, New Jersey and Ohio, those migrants weren’t enough and the white populations declined between 2015 and 2016, said Kenneth M. Johnson, a demographer at the University of New Hampshire and the report’s other author. Five of those states registered drops in their total populations that year: Vermont, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Mississippi and Connecticut. –New York Times

    “People say demographics is destiny and there’ll be more people of color — all that is true,” said Yale social psychologist Jennifer Richeson. “But they also say the U.S. is going to become more progressive, and we don’t know that. We should not assume that white moderates and liberals will maintain current political allegiances, nor should we expect that the so-called nonwhite group is going to work in any kind of coalition.”

    Rural areas began to experience a disproportionate number of aging whites long before other parts of the country – as young people tend to migrate towards urban areas – never to return home. 

    “There are just hardly any young people in the county anymore,” said Michael Brown, 66, a retired hospital maintenance worker in Robersonville, North Carolina. He tells the Times that his two daughters went away to college and never moved back. “We are the last generation who stayed with their parents,” said Brown.

     

  • China's Oil Trade Retaliation Is Iran's Gain

    Authored by Tom Luongo,

    I’ve told you that once you start down the Trade War path forever it will dominate your destiny.

    Well here we are.  Trump slaps big tariffs on aluminum and steel in a bid to leverage Gary Cohn’s ICE Wall plan to control the metals and oils futures markets.   I’m not sure how much of this stuff I believe but it is clear that the futures price for most strategically important commodities are divorced from the real world.

    Alistair Crooke also noted the importance of Trump’s ‘energy dominance’ policy recently, which I suggest strongly you read.

    But today’s edition of “As the Trade War Churns” is about China and their willingness to shift their energy purchases away from U.S. producers.  Irina Slav at Oilprice.com has the good bits.

    The latest escalation in the tariff exchange, however, is a little bit different than all the others so far. It’s different because it came after Beijing said it intends to slap tariffs on U.S. oil, gas, and coal imports.

    China’s was a retaliatory move to impose tariffs on US$50 billion worth of U.S. goods, which followed Trump’s earlier announcement that another US$50 billion in goods would be subjected to a 25-percent tariff starting July 6.

    It’s unclear as to what form this will take but there’s also this report from the New York Times which talks about the China/U.S. energy trade.

    Things could get worse if the United States and China ratchet up their actions [counter-tariffs]. Mr. Trump has already promised more tariffs in response to China’s retaliation. China, in turn, is likely to back away from an agreement to buy $70 billion worth of American agricultural and energy products — a deal that was conditional on the United States lifting its threat of tariffs.

    “China’s proportionate and targeted tariffs on U.S. imports are meant to send a strong signal that it will not capitulate to U.S. demands,” said Eswar Prasad, a professor of international trade at Cornell University. “It will be challenging for both sides to find a way to de-escalate these tensions.”

    But as Ms. Slav points out, China has enjoyed taking advantage of the glut of U.S. oil as shale drillers flood the market with cheap oil.  The West Texas Intermediate/Brent Spread has widened out to more than $10 at times.

    By slapping counter tariffs on U.S. oil, that would more than overcome the current WTI/Brent spread and send Chinese refiners looking for new markets.

    Hey, do you know whose oil is sold at a discount to Brent on a regular basis?

    Iran’s.  That’s whose.

    And you know what else?  Iran is selling tons, literally, of its oil via the new Shanghai petroyuan futures market.

    Now, these aren’t exact substitutes, because the Shanghai contract is for medium-sour crude and West Texas shale oil is generally light-sweet but the point remains that the incentives would now exist for Chinese buyers to shift their buying away from the U.S. and towards producers offering substitutes at better prices.

    This undermines and undercuts Trump’s ‘energy dominance’ plans while also strengthening Iran’s ability to withstand new U.S. sanctions by creating more customers for its oil.

    Trade wars always escalate.  They are no different than any other government policy restricting trade.  The market response is to always respond to new incentives.  Capital always flows to where it is treated best.

    It doesn’t matter if its domestic farm subsidies ‘protecting’ farmers from the business cycle or domestic metals producers getting protection via tariffs.

    By raising the price above the market it shifts capital and investment away from those protected industries or producers and towards either innovation or foreign suppliers.

    Trump obviously never read anything from Mises, Rothbard or Hayek at Wharton. Because if he did he would have come across the idea that every government intervention requires an ever-greater one to ‘fix’ the problems created by the first intervention.

    The net result is that if there is a market for Iran’s oil, which there most certainly is, then humans will find a way to buy it.  If Trump tries to raise the price too high then it will have other knock-on effects of a less-efficient oil and gas market which will create worse problems in the future for everyone, especially the very Americans he thinks he’s defending.

    *  *  *

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  • Chinese Investments In The US Plunge By 92%

    Coming amid the escalating trade war between the US and China, many were quick to blame the collapse in Chinese investments in the US on tensions surrounding protectionism. And indeed, according to research firm Rhodium Group, China’s direct investments in the U.S. plunged in the first half of 2018 as Chinese companies completed acquisitions and greenfield investments worth only $1.8 billion, a 92% drop over the past year, and the lowest level in seven years.

    The reality, however, is that this has little to do with the Chinese trade spat, and everything to do with China’s crackdown on outbound M&A and conglomerate “investments” which as we said back in 2015, were just a thinly veiled scheme to cover capital outflows.

    Rhodium confirms as much:

    The rapid decline in Chinese FDI in the U.S. was driven by a “double policy punch” — Beijing cracking down on rapid outbound investment and the U.S. government increasing scrutiny on Chinese acquisitions through the Committee on Foreign Investment as well as taking a more confrontational stance toward economic engagement with China in general.

    The investment tracker is based on collection and aggregation of data on individual transactions, including acquisitions, greenfield projects, and expansions.

    Whatever the reason behind the sharp drop, however, it doesn’t change the fact that there has been a recent collapse in recycled Chinese capital back into the US. And, while it may not have caused it, Trump’s recent change in trade policy will certainly make future Chinese direct investment far more problematic. As Bloomberg notes, “lawmakers and the White House are planning fresh curbs on Chinese investment.” Furthermore, as we reported earlier, a just released White House report claimed that China’s spectacular economic growth “has been achieved in significant part through aggressive acts, policies and practices that fall outside of global norms and rules.”

    As Thilo Hanemann, a Rhodium direct said, “the more confrontational approach of the Trump administration toward economic relations with China has cast some doubt, in these companies’ minds, about their position here.”

    The first-half slump follows a 35% drop in 2017, and if the sale of assets is taken into account – as Chinese investors sold $9.6 billion of US assets in the first five months of 2018, mostly driven by deleveraging pressures from Beijing – the net investment flow is negative. And with former high-profile acquirers such as HNA Group Co., Anbang Insurance Group Co. and Dalian Wanda Group Co. putting their assets up for sale, it will be a long time before China’s serves as a source of direct capital in the US again.

     

     

     

     

  • For The Deep State, Smearing Julian Assange Is As Good As Killing Him

    Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Steemit.com,

    As I write this, demonstrations around the world are taking place in protest of WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange’s arbitrary detention and silencing by the US-centralized power establishment that has been actively pursuing his destruction for over a decade. The demonstrations will be well-attended, but not a fraction as well-attended as they should be. They will receive international attention, but not a fraction as much attention as they should.

    This is because the manipulators and smear merchants who have made their careers paving the way for oligarchic agendas have been successful in killing off sympathy for the plight of Assange. As we discussed yesterday, sympathy is key for getting narratives to take hold in public consciousness. This is why western corporate media will circulate pictures of dead children all day long when it’s in the interests of advancing longstanding imperialist agendas, but never when those children were killed by western weapons. If you can tug at someone’s heart strings while telling them a story, the story you tell them will slide right in with minimal scrutiny. And it works the other way, too: if you can prevent someone’s heart strings from being plucked while hearing about a legitimately heartbreaking story, you can prevent that story from taking hold.

    Kill all sympathy for a dissident journalist and you kill all belief in his side of the story.

    And Assange’s side of the story is indeed devastating to the preferred narrative of the US-centralized empire. A journalist (yes, journalist, per definition) who publishes 100 percent authentic documents exposing the inner mechanics of power structures all over the world, who was forced to seek political asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy in London in order to avoid extradition by the same government which brutalized Chelsea Manning, is on its face a highly sympathetic story. And it does tremendous damage to the narrative that America and its close network of allies are freedom-loving democracies whose systems of government are nothing like those naughty, oppressive regimes they seek to topple.

    So they smear him. As often as possible, using whatever they can, they smear his reputation. Because if they can kill all sympathy for him and his outlet, it’s as good for their agendas as actually killing him.

    The smears work because the social engineers know how to manipulate people. In America, for example, people are herded into two isolated ideological holding pens and encouraged to identify as much as possible with whichever pen they’re in so that narratives can be slipped into their consciousness in a smooth, streamlined way. Are you in the ‘R’ pen and upset about the hand you’ve been dealt? You should blame the ‘D’ pen, and those foreigners who are of no strategic consequence to your rulers. Are you in the ‘D’ pen and upset about the hand you’ve been dealt? You should blame the ‘R’ pen, and those Russians whose downfall would advance the longstanding geopolitical agendas of your rulers.

    In the same way, those in the ‘R’ pen were fed narratives against Julian Assange in 2010 which they lapped up because believing them was easier than believing that the pen they’re so tightly identified with had enabled the evils revealed in WikiLeaks releases about US war crimes. And in exactly the same way, those in the ‘D’ pen were fed narratives against Julian Assange in 2016 which they lapped up because believing them was easier than believing that the pen they’re so tightly identified with is pervasively corrupt.

    By enforcing a strong sense of identification with a particular ideological tribe, they ensure that the psychological discomfort known as cognitive dissonance will arise from any revelation which can be spun as detrimental to that tribe. They then create a narrative which alleviates that discomfort, and that narrative always damages the reputation of the enemies of the power establishment. It’s a snake oil cure for an ailment that they deliberately caused.

    Nobody actually thinks that Julian Assange is a Russian agent, or a rapist, or a “hostile non-state intelligence service”, or any of the other absurd smears I’ve seen circulating about him throughout all political sectors of the US-centralized empire. Those are not ideas that anyone has taken on board because they sincerely believe there’s enough evidence for them to outweigh the undeniable fact that many extremely powerful and influential people stand to benefit from tarnishing his reputation on false pretenses. At best, they’re just fairy tales people tell themselves because they’re easier than believing that their favorite country/political party persecutes journalists for telling the truth and is as corrupt and evil as the various WikiLeaks publications of their communications would indicate. At worst, it’s a fairy tale they are deliberately seeding into public consciousness so that people will believe lies instead of truth.

    People find all sorts of ways to wiggle their way around the cognitive dissonance that unedited, authentic documents can create in them when it challenges their deeply treasured identity structures. People who present themselves as anti-establishment progressives often say things like “Well, you can be critical of Assange and still support WikiLeaks for providing a valuable service.” And sure, that may be technically true, but it’s never actually true for the people who say it: look at their writings and social media posts and you won’t see them aggressively defending WikiLeaks, you’ll only see them smearing Assange as often as they can get away with. They’re just trying to retain their anti-establishment cred (another treasured identity structure) while promulgating smear campaigns which advance the agendas of the CIA and the State Department. They pay lip service to the image they’re trying to convey, but their actions tell you where they really stand.

    People who disrupt dominant narratives will always be attacked and vilified, because those narratives often form the building blocks of people’s identity structures, their egos. An ego is just a collection of believed “I” stories; they typically include believed ideas about really basic things like “I am this body,” but they also include a bunch of other “I” stories like “I am a Democrat” or “I am a patriotic American” as well. Attacking dominant narratives on a large scale will cause intense cognitive dissonance in everyone who has a lot of identity wrapped up in the power structure which is weakened by that attack, to such an extent that it can feel as though you yourself are being personally attacked. The way Democrats have talked about Assange since 2016 you get the distinct impression they feel like he may as well have walked up and stabbed them.

    As this webcomic from The Oatmeal brilliantly explains, the brain is hardwired to protect strongly valued belief systems in the same way it’s hardwired to make sure the body protects itself from a physical attack. This serves a useful function in that it gives us a cognitive strategy for making sense of the world that isn’t blown to pieces every time you encounter a new idea, but it can also be malformed in a way which does not accurately represent reality. When that happens, it really is worthwhile to tough it out through the brain’s distress signals of cognitive dissonance and consciously restructure your sense-making apparatus in a way that accommodates a more accurate perspective.

    This is the invitation whenever you’re looking at a WikiLeaks drop which challenges your existing worldview. It’s just raw information sitting there, and you can choose to believe a story which allows you to comfortably dismiss it, or you can stick it out through the psychological discomfort and allow it to restructure your worldview. You have defense mechanisms in place to prevent random bits of information from tearing apart your sense-making apparatus that haven’t been properly audited for reliability, but a publishing outlet with a 100 percent perfect record for releasing authentic documents is as reliable a source of information as you will ever find.

    If your goal is psychological comfort, you have plenty of good reasons to loathe Julian Assange and spend all day helping plutocrats and secretive government agencies damage his reputation so that nobody will ever pay attention to him or his publications. If your goal is the truth, however, it is to your benefit to ignore the smears, to accept the reality of how and why Assange is being targeted, and to allow the truths that have been revealed by WikiLeaks publications to reshape your understanding of how the world works.

    *  *  *

    Internet censorship is getting pretty bad, so best way to keep seeing the stuff I publish is to get on the mailing list for my website, so you’ll get an email notification for everything I publish. My articles and podcasts are entirely reader and listener-funded, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, checking out my podcast, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, or buying my book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers.

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Jun 20

Today’s News 20th June 2018

  • "Italy Is Collapsing…And 5 Star Is Our Last Hope": How Young Italians Fueled A Populist Uprising

    Unlike in the US, where President Trump relies on older Americans for his base of support, more than half (53%) of Italians under 35 voted for one of the two anti-establishment parties that triumphed in Italy’s March election. Their enthusiastic support explains the outpouring of anger directed at technocratic Italian President Sergio Mattarella, who called for new elections as he seemingly reached for every conceivable excuse to try and stop the two parties from forming a government, before finally acquiescing.

    Young Italians have grown disillusioned with the center-left – which has clung to a status quo that deliberately favors older workers – even as their counterparts in Greece and Spain have moved even further to the left, with 40% of Spaniards under 35 saying in a recent poll that they favor the far-left Podemos and its allies, while in Greece, 41% of people aged 18 to 24 voted for Syriza in the 2015 election that brought the far-left party to power, according to the Wall Street Journal, which recently published a long-winded feature about the political plight of restive Italian youth.

    Italy

    Giada Gramanzini, a 29-year-old Italian university graduate who has struggled to find permanent work

    Young Italians, like young people in much of the Western developed nations that comprise the EU, are convinced that they will lead lives fraught with economic turbulence, and that few in their generation will manage to achieve the same standard of living that their parents enjoyed. The marriage rate in Italy has fallen by a fifth over the past decade, according to Istat. In 2016, the last year for which data are available, Italian men got married on average at age 35 and women at 32 – two years later than in 2008. Meanwhile, the birth rate in a country that’s viewed as the cradle of conserative Catholicism has fallen to an all-time low.

    Chart

    Of the many statistics that point to an intractable economic malaise, the youth unemployment rate is particularly troubling: Nearly 30% of Italians aged 20 to 34 aren’t working, studying or enrolled in a training program, according to Eurostat. This comes after the employment rate for Italians under 40 fell every year between 2007 and 2014, before flatlining for three years. That’s higher than any other EU member state – including Greece, which is sporting youth unemployment of 29% – the second highest – as well as Spain’s 21%.

    “Italy is collapsing and yet nothing has changed in this country for at least 30 years,” said Carlo Gaetani, a self-employed engineer in Puglia. Ten years ago, when he was in his early 20s, he voted for a center-left party that he hoped would push for economic development in southern Italy. When Italy descended into a crippling recession, he felt betrayed by the traditional Italian left-wing parties. He has seen friends struggle to find jobs, and said his own business opportunities are limited to the stagnant private sector, because commissions for the public sector are usually awarded to people with connections he doesn’t have.

    Mr. Gaetani, now 33, voted for 5 Star in the 2013 election, a choice he repeated in March with more conviction. “5 Star is our last hope. If they also fail, I think I’ll stop voting,” he said.

    Luckily, the older generation is well-equipped to step in and provide a modicum of financial support, thanks to generous pension benefits that have accrued to older workers. Yet this has done little to assuage the anger of young Italians, as the number of Italians under 34 living in dire poverty (aka those who can’t afford even basic goods and services) has more than doubled in the aftermath of the crisis.

    The pain in southern Europe reflects a feeling across much of the Western world that the younger generation will struggle to surpass their parents in wealth and security. Half of Italians who responded last year to an online survey on jobs site Monster.com said they thought they will earn less over their careers than their parents.

    Young Italians, who bore the brunt of the country’s protracted, triple-dip recession, still bear the scars that will affect their career prospects, homeownership and birthrates for decades to come.

    While they share many similar characteristics, the problems in Italy are fundamentally different than in the US. Perhaps the biggest issue for young people is a labor system where people with open-ended employment contracts enjoy unassailable job security and access to benefits. Meanwhile, younger employees are getting stuck with short-term contracts generally lasting from one month to one year that carry few benefits and make it impossible to plan for the future.

    Short

    The Italian government introduced these short-term contracts in the 1990s to help young people enter the labor force. Italy recently adopted a revamp of its labor laws, using tax breaks to coax companies into using more open-ended contracts – which allow firms to avoid the great hassle and cost involved in firing employees. But these policies generally haven’t worked, and both the Five Star Movement and the League have capitalized on the anger at existing labor policies by promising to undo the government’s reforms, while Five Star has also advocated giving the poor and unemployed a UBI of 780 euros (roughly $900) a month.

    The 5 Star Movement has lured millions of young voters with promises to roll back new labor rules, give the unemployed and poor a so-called universal basic income of €780 ($905) a month, and abolish unpaid apprenticeship contracts. Its leader, Luigi Di Maio, was a 26-year-old university dropout who lived with his parents when he was elected to parliament in 2013. Today, he is a deputy prime minister.

    The League attracted a sizable portion of the youth vote by advocating for many of the same anti-establishment policies that Five Star embraced – such as canceling the country’s recent labor reforms – while also calling for deportations of African migrants who have overwhelmed Italy’s borders in recent years.

    Italy’s economic problems played into young voters’ sentiments about immigration during the campaign as well, one of the animating drivers of support for the League. “We can’t host all of Africa,” said Gianluca Taburchi, a 23-year old supermarket employee from Perugia who voted for the League. “We already have our own problems. We have lots of unemployment and unsecure jobs.”

    Matteo Salvini, the leader of the League who became a deputy prime minister and interior minister in the new government, promised to return hundreds of thousands of migrants to their countries of origin. 5 Star, which straddles the line on many issues, spoke of stemming illegal immigration, but stopped short of calling for mass deportations.

    Now that they’ve found their way into power, the future of these euroskeptic parties will depend on whether they keep their promises. Instituting labor-market, welfare and immigration reforms is only one part of the problem. Many younger Italians are deeply distrustful of both the European Union and the euro currency – while many older Italians still view both projects as integral to maintaining a sense of European Unity and lasting peace on the continent.

    Conte

    Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, flanked by Five Star Leader Luigi Di Maio and The League leader Matteo Salvini

    Both The League and Five Star’s controversial flirtations with abolishing the euro (League leader Matteo Salvini was reportedly photographed wearing a T-shirt reading “Basta euro” – or “enough with the euro – to the chagrin of many older voters) have been popular with their base. But when directly confronted about their stance on leaving the euro, they’ve been noncommittal. The question now is: Will the Five Star and the League allow voters a chance to speak on the possibility of an “Italexit”, as the analysts on Wall Street have taken to calling an Italian departure from the European Union? Or will they stop short of threatening an orthodoxy that a growing number of Italian young people view as the root cause for their economic suffering?

  • Separating Children From Their Families Is Nothing New, US Has Been Doing It For Decades

    Authored by Darius Shahtahmasebi, op-ed via RT.com,

    Outrage over the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy appears to have little to do with genuine concerns over human-rights abuses committed by the US government on a routine basis.

    The Trump administration’s Stephen Miller-inspired immigration policy of coercively tearing children from their parents is rightly receiving a hefty load of criticism, even from some of the more traditional Republicans. Some 2,000 children have already been separated from their parents and placed in makeshift government shelters in less than a month and a half, with estimates that this number will continue to rise (and has probably already risen).

    The outrage over this policy – while blame is still being deflected elsewhere by Donald Trump himself – is understandable and far-reaching indeed, right across the political spectrum.

    “Because of the Administration’s policy of breaking up families at the border, these detention facilities are overflowing with children,” Sen. Kamala Harris (CA) wrote on Twitter. “Many don’t know where their parents are. Let’s be clear: this is a human rights abuse being committed by our government.”

    Wow. Do you mean the United States government is actually committing human-rights abuses? Imagine my surprise, that the country which I believe to be a beacon of human rights, democracy and freedom has suddenly begun committing a human-rights abuse for what I am supposed to believe is the very first time.

    This is the part that makes little sense when you consider the actions of the US ever since it was founded, right up until the present day, in terms of its ever-expanding list of human-rights abuses. Are these people genuinely upset and furious by the Trump administration’s policy of separating children from their parents, or are they using this egregious policy as an excuse to advance their own agenda?

    The United States has had a longstanding foreign policy of separating thousands of children from their parents on a daily basis. Arguably, this decades-long policy that has continued through both Democrat and Republican administrations is even worse than the current “zero-tolerance” immigration policy, given that the US has been separating thousands of children from their families using explosive devices, not detention centers.

    On the campaign trail, then-candidate Trump vowed that he would “take out” the families of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) fighters and no one seemed to bat an eyelid at the time. While no one was looking, he began doing just that – and more. Soon after ascending to office, he relaxed the so-called Obama-era restrictions on airstrikes in multiple warzones, meaning that commanders on the field could call in airstrikes with almost all but zero oversight. The result was mass murder and chaos, as the commander-in-chief dropped 20,650 bombs in a mere six-month window.

    One such airstrike in Mosul, Iraq killed between 200 and 300 civilians in a single strike. An investigation carried out by the Associated Press in relation to the total civilian death toll in the campaign to retake Mosul suggests that over 9,000 civilians lost their lives due to the barrage of strikes that the US-led coalition exacted in the area.

    In Syria’s Raqqa, a territory which the US had no legal authority to bomb in the first place, its forces destroyed 80 percent of the entire city, rendering it uninhabitable. Through its violent policy, the US was wiping out entire families, one by one, with no regard at all for civilian life. One such airstrike in Raqqa killed a mother and her three children. Another such airstrike killed 30 members of a single family.

    Barely two weeks ago, Amnesty International released an explosive report which called the US-led operation in Raqqa a “war of annihilation.” The report details four further cases of civilian families who lost 90 relatives and neighbors. One family lost 39 members in total, all of them by coalition airstrikes. Just to get an overall picture of this grotesque display of violence, at the time Reuters described the plight of one resident in Raqqa who came outside to find several of his neighbors lying dead on the street, with cats eating the corpses.

    It later transpired that the US was doing all of this while allowingthousands of ISIS fighters to escape safely from Raqqa in order to head to Deir Ez-Zor, Syria’s most oil-rich region. In other words, the US was still somehow managing to drop a bomb every eight minutesin Raqqa, yet they allowed their prime enemy to escape safely under their cover, knowing full well they were wrecking civilian life in the process.

    In Yemen, the US-backed Saudi-led coalition destroyed a family’s home, leaving a four-year-old Yemeni girl as the sole survivor. She wasn’t taken from her parents and put in a center – her parents were violently taken away from her for eternity. The United States, together with the United Kingdom, are 100-percent responsible for the bloodshed in Yemen. In addition to supplying billions of dollars’ worth of arms to the Saudi kingdom, US and UK personnel provide overwhelming assistance to the Saudi-led coalition to wreak this devastation on Yemen by sitting in the Saudi’s command and control center, refueling Saudi warplanes, providing intelligence and having access to lists of targets.

    The media won’t tell you this, but if the US pulled its support for Saudi Arabia, Yemen’s suffering could stop as soon as tomorrow. Instead, what the US is doing is prolonging this war. Even as I type, the coalition is bombarding the Hodeidah port in Yemen, which actually provides the majority of humanitarian aid to an already devastated population.

    This is not a violent policy that pertains only to the Trump administration. Altogether, the United States has killed some four million Muslims since it began its overt wars in the Middle East in the early 1990s. That’s over four million Muslims who will never see their loved ones again. I hate to break it to you, but unseating Donald Trump and replacing him with someone else is not going to save the United States government from committing human-rights abuses.

    “Just wondering. Do you think Hillary Clinton would have kidnapped children and used them as leverage for political gain?” so-called ‘Twitter Personality’ Brian Krassenstein recently asked on the social network, receiving over 4,637 likes and 1,231 retweets. “You know, that woman who should have won the election, who got 3 million more votes…”

    I don’t know Brian. But what I do know, is that this same Hillary Clinton was responsible for putting two million Libyan children out of school when she lobbied instrumentally for the overthrow of the Gaddafi leadership in Libya in 2011. If I remember correctly, she laughed hysterically after Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was killed in the streets of Sirte (some reports state he was raped by a bayonet).

    This is also the same Hillary Clinton who refused to put Nigeria’s notorious jihadist group Boko Haram on the designated terrorist list. Remember Boko Haram, the group of terrorists that kidnapped 219 schoolgirls in 2014 to use as hostages? Remember how Hillary Clinton tweeted“#BringBackOurGirls” as if she had nothing to do with the policy which enabled this series of events? Furthermore, it was actually Hillary’s prized destruction of Libya in 2011 that allowed Boko Haram in Nigeria to grow from strength to strength, as the lawlessness that followed created a heavy arms market for jihadists to thrive all over the African continent.

    Would Hillary “have kidnapped children and used them as leverage for political gain?” It seems like she, and every other prominent US politician before and after her, has done something brilliantly similar right across the world, on which vocal Twitter activists are all but completely silent.

    Hillary’s husband, Bill, also oversaw the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children, to which his secretary of state intimated that it was “worth it”as the price Iraq needed to pay.  

    In 2011, the Obama administration famously killed a 16-year-old American citizen, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, in Yemen during a drone strike of which he was the target. He had not been charged with any crime. Two weeks prior, a separate CIA drone strike killed his father, Anwar al-Awlaki, who also had not been charged or convicted of any crime. Not long after Donald Trump was elected last year, a January raid in Yemen saw the United States kill Abdulrahman’s eight-year-old sister. 30 people were killed in total during this botched raid, including 10 women and children.

    To make matters worse, when asked about the death of Abdulrahman by independent media organization We Are Change in 2012, Obama campaign senior advisor Robert Gibbs said: “I would suggest that you should have a far more responsible father if they are truly concerned about the wellbeing of their children.”

    Compare the latter statement to the people who say that parents who don’t want their children to be torn away from them should just “follow the law” and not come to the US illegally, and it should be clear that this type of policy of separating children from their parents is not “un-American” at all. It is almost as American as apple pie; you just never knew you had been embracing it for so long, as no one felt the need to talk about it.

    Sure, the location of the child-parent separation may be a little bit closer to home, but that’s more or less the only difference – the distance. If you are outraged at one type of child-parent separation but completely and blissfully ignorant towards the other, perhaps you don’t actually care as much about human rights as you pretend to do.

  • Russia Warns: "Militarization Of Space Is Way To Disaster"

    President Trump’s order for the Pentagon  to create a “Space Force” as a separate branch of the armed services has already elicited sharp criticism, but one Russian senator went as far as to warn that “the militarization of space is a way to disaster.”

    They also warned that Washington could risk violating key international agreements regulating the demilitarization of space, potentially destabilizing the international order.

    Trump

    “There’s a major risk that the Americans would commit grave violations in this field…if one takes into account what they do in other spheres,” said Viktor Bondarev, the head of the Russian Federation Council’s Defense and Security Committee.

    While Trump wasn’t exactly clear about what he meant, he said he hoped to achieve “dominance” in space, ignoring the fact that the US is a signatory of the 1967 “Outer Space agreement,” which bans the deployment of nuclear weapons in space. However, the US has seemingly made a habit of withdrawing from major international agreements. For example, George W Bush backed out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and Russia has threatened to “strongly retaliate” if the US violates the outer space agreement by sending weapons of mass destruction into orbit. The treaty also prohibits states from building military bases on the moon, according to RT.

    Still, violating the “Outer Space agreement” could potentially create problems because, during his speech, Trump mentioned something about establishing a “permanent presence” on the moon – though he didn’t explicitly say that it would be a “military” presence. Trump said during his speech that a “separate but equal” (from the other branches of the military) Space Force would be needed for America to maintain a tactical advantage over its geopolitical adversaries (adversaries like China and Russia).

    Speaking with CNN after Trump’s speech, an analyst pointed out exactly why “dominance” of space will be so important for national defense in the future: “I hate the term ‘the final frontier’ but (space) is the ultimate high ground. Space doesn’t dominate one small geographic area – it dominates continents, oceans,” said US Lt. Col. Rick Francona

    “Most military thinkers know this is the battle space of the future.”

    One US Congressman warned that the US is already behind, and that “Russia and China” are dominating the space race.

    “Russia and China are surpassing us in space capabilities and we need to dedicate a separate force solely with a space mission,” Mike Rogers said.

    The Chinese have also spoken out against the US’s planned “dominance” of space.

    Responding to a question from CNN regarding Trump’s announcement Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Geng Shuang said that “Outer space is an asset shared by all mankind. China always advocates the peaceful use of outer space, and opposes the weaponization of outer space and space arms races.”

    But of course, more than anything, Trump’s declaration reminds us all of that famous “Chapelle Show” sketch.

  • Government Eyes Are Watching You: We Are All Prisoners Of The Surveillance State

    Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

    “We’re run by the Pentagon, we’re run by Madison Avenue, we’re run by television, and as long as we accept those things and don’t revolt we’ll have to go along with the stream to the eventual avalanche…. As long as we go out and buy stuff, we’re at their mercy… We all live in a little Village. Your Village may be different from other people’s Villages, but we are all prisoners.”

    — Patrick McGoohan

    First broadcast in America 50 years ago, The Prisoner – a dystopian television series described as “James Bond meets George Orwell filtered through Franz Kafka” – confronted societal themes that are still relevant today: the rise of a police state, the freedom of the individual, round-the-clock surveillance, the corruption of government, totalitarianism, weaponization, group think, mass marketing, and the tendency of humankind to meekly accept their lot in life as a prisoner in a prison of their own making.

    Perhaps the best visual debate ever on individuality and freedom, The Prisoner (17 episodes in all) centers around a British secret agent who abruptly resigns only to find himself imprisoned and interrogated in a mysterious, self-contained, cosmopolitan, seemingly tranquil retirement community known only as the Village. The Village is an idyllic setting with parks and green fields, recreational activities and even a butler.

    While luxurious and resort-like, the Village is a virtual prison disguised as a seaside paradise: its inhabitants have no true freedom, they cannot leave the Village, they are under constant surveillance, their movements are tracked by surveillance drones, and they are stripped of their individuality and identified only by numbers.

    The series’ protagonist, played by Patrick McGoohan, is Number Six.

    Number Two, the Village administrator, acts as an agent for the unseen and all-powerful Number One, whose identity is not revealed until the final episode.

    “I am not a number. I am a free man,” was the mantra chanted on each episode of The Prisoner, which was largely written and directed by McGoohan.

    In the opening episode (“The Arrival”), Number Six meets Number Two, who explains to him that he is in The Village because information stored “inside” his head has made him too valuable to be allowed to roam free “outside.”

    Throughout the series, Number Six is subjected to interrogation tactics, torture, hallucinogenic drugs, identity theft, mind control, dream manipulation, and various forms of social indoctrination and physical coercion in order to “persuade” him to comply, give up, give in and subjugate himself to the will of the powers-that-be.

    Number Six refuses to comply.

    In every episode, Number Six resists the Village’s indoctrination methods, struggles to maintain his own identity, and attempts to escape his captors. “I will not make any deals with you,” he pointedly remarks to Number Two. “I’ve resigned. I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.”

    Yet no matter how far Number Six manages to get in his efforts to escape, it’s never far enough.

    Watched by surveillance cameras and other devices, Number Six’s getaways are continuously thwarted by ominous white balloon-like spheres known as “rovers.” Still, he refuses to give up. “Unlike me,” he says to his fellow prisoners, “many of you have accepted the situation of your imprisonment, and will die here like rotten cabbages.”

    Number Six’s escapes become a surreal exercise in futility, each episode an unsettling, reoccurring nightmare that builds to the same frustrating denouement: there is no escape.

    As journalist Scott Thill concludes for Wired, “Rebellion always comes at a price. During the acclaimed run of The Prisoner, Number Six is tortured, battered and even body-snatched: In the episode ‘Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling,’ his mind is transplanted to another man’s body. Number Six repeatedly escapes The Village only to be returned to it in the end, trapped like an animal, overcome by a restless energy he cannot expend, and betrayed by nearly everyone around him.”

    The series is a chilling lesson about how difficult it is to gain one’s freedom in a society in which prison walls are disguised within the trappings of technological and scientific progress, national security and so-called democracy.

    As Thill noted when McGoohan died in 2009, “The Prisoner was an allegory of the individual, aiming to find peace and freedom in a dystopia masquerading as a utopia.”

    The Prisoner’s Village is also an apt allegory for the American Police State: it gives the illusion of freedom while functioning all the while like a prison: controlled, watchful, inflexible, punitive, deadly and inescapable.

    The American Police State, much like The Prisoner’s Village, is a metaphorical panopticon, a circular prison in which the inmates are monitored by a single watchman situated in a central tower. Because the inmates cannot see the watchman, they are unable to tell whether or not they are being watched at any given time and must proceed under the assumption that they are always being watched.

    Eighteenth century social theorist Jeremy Bentham envisioned the panopticon prison to be a cheaper and more effective means of “obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example.”

    Bentham’s panopticon, in which the prisoners are used as a source of cheap, menial labor, has become a model for the modern surveillance state in which the populace is constantly being watched, controlled and managed by the powers-that-be and funding its existence.

    Nowhere to run and nowhere to hide: this is the new mantra of the architects of the police state and their corporate collaborators (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google, YouTube, Instagram, etc.).

    Government eyes are watching you.

    They see your every move: what you read, how much you spend, where you go, with whom you interact, when you wake up in the morning, what you’re watching on television and reading on the internet.

    Every move you make is being monitored, mined for data, crunched, and tabulated in order to form a picture of who you are, what makes you tick, and how best to control you when and if it becomes necessary to bring you in line.

    When the government sees all and knows all and has an abundance of laws to render even the most seemingly upstanding citizen a criminal and lawbreaker, then the old adage that you’ve got nothing to worry about if you’ve got nothing to hide no longer applies.

    Apart from the obvious dangers posed by a government that feels justified and empowered to spy on its people and use its ever-expanding arsenal of weapons and technology to monitor and control them, we’re approaching a time in which we will be forced to choose between obeying the dictates of the government – i.e., the law, or whatever a government official deems the law to be – and maintaining our individuality, integrity and independence.

    When people talk about privacy, they mistakenly assume it protects only that which is hidden behind a wall or under one’s clothing. The courts have fostered this misunderstanding with their constantly shifting delineation of what constitutes an “expectation of privacy.” And technology has furthered muddied the waters.

    However, privacy is so much more than what you do or say behind locked doors. It is a way of living one’s life firm in the belief that you are the master of your life, and barring any immediate danger to another person (which is far different from the carefully crafted threats to national security the government uses to justify its actions), it’s no one’s business what you read, what you say, where you go, whom you spend your time with, and how you spend your money.

    Unfortunately, George Orwell’s 1984 – where “you had to live – did live, from habit that became instinct – in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized” – has now become our reality.

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

    Consider that on any given day, the average American going about his daily business will be monitored, surveilled, spied on and tracked in more than 20 different ways, by both government and corporate eyes and ears.

    A byproduct of this new age in which we live, whether you’re walking through a store, driving your car, checking email, or talking to friends and family on the phone, you can be sure that some government agency, whether the NSA or some other entity, is listening in and tracking your behavior.

    This doesn’t even begin to touch on the corporate trackers that monitor your purchases, web browsing, Facebook posts and other activities taking place in the cyber sphere.

    Stingray devices mounted on police cars to warrantlessly track cell phones, Doppler radar devices that can detect human breathing and movement within in a home, license plate readers that can record up to 1800 license plates per minute, sidewalk and “public space” cameras coupled with facial recognition and behavior-sensing technology that lay the groundwork for police “pre-crime” programs, police body cameras that turn police officers into roving surveillance cameras, the internet of things: all of these technologies add up to a society in which there’s little room for indiscretions, imperfections, or acts of independence—especially not when the government can listen in on your phone calls, monitor your driving habits, track your movements, scrutinize your purchases and peer through the walls of your home.

    As French philosopher Michel Foucault concluded in his 1975 book Discipline and Punish, “Visibility is a trap.”

    This is the electronic concentration camp – the panopticon prison – the Village – in which we are now caged.

    It is a prison from which there will be no escape if the government gets it way.

    As Glenn Greenwald notes:

    “The way things are supposed to work is that we’re supposed to know virtually everything about what [government officials] do: that’s why they’re called public servants. They’re supposed to know virtually nothing about what we do: that’s why we’re called private individuals. This dynamic – the hallmark of a healthy and free society – has been radically reversed.

    Now, they know everything about what we do, and are constantly building systems to know more. Meanwhile, we know less and less about what they do, as they build walls of secrecy behind which they function. That’s the imbalance that needs to come to an end. No democracy can be healthy and functional if the most consequential acts of those who wield political power are completely unknown to those to whom they are supposed to be accountable.”

    Unfortunately, we seem to be trapped in the Village with no hope of escape.

    That we are prisoners – and, in fact, never stopped being prisoners – should come as no surprise to those who haven’t been taking the escapist blue pill, who haven’t fallen for the Deep State’s phony rhetoric, and who haven’t been lured in by the promise of a political savior.

    So how do we break out?

    For starters, wake up. Resist the urge to comply.

    The struggle to remain “oneself in a society increasingly obsessed with conformity to mass consumerism,” writes Steven Paul Davies, means that superficiality and image trump truth and the individual. The result is the group mind and the tyranny of mob-think—especially in a day and age when most people are addicted to screen devices controlled and administered by the government and its corporate allies.

    Think for yourself. Be an individual. As McGoohan commented in 1968, “At this moment individuals are being drained of their personalities and being brainwashed into slaves… As long as people feel something, that’s the great thing. It’s when they are walking around not thinking and not feeling, that’s tough. When you get a mob like that, you can turn them into the sort of gang that Hitler had.”

    In a media-dominated age in which the lines between entertainment, politics and news reporting are blurred, it is extremely difficult to distinguish fact from fiction. We are so bombarded with images, dictates, rules and punishments and stamped with numbers from the day we are born that it is a wonder we ever ponder a concept such as freedom. As McGoohan declared, “Freedom is a myth.”

    In the end, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we are all prisoners of our own mind. 

    In fact, it is in the mind that prisons are created for us. And in the lockdown of political correctness, it becomes extremely difficult to speak or act individually without being ostracized. Thus, so often we are forced to retreat inwardly into our minds, a prison without bars from which we cannot escape, and into the world of video games and television and the Internet.

    We have come full circle from Bentham’s Panopticon to McGoohan’s Village to Huxley’s Brave New World.

    As cultural theorist Neil Postman observed:

    What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.

    Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism.

    Orwell feared we would become a captive audience. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.

    Orwell feared that we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy.

    As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure.

    In short, Orwell feared that what we hate would ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.

    You want to be free? Break out of the circle.

  • BitTorrent Sells For $140 Million To Blockchain Startup Tron

    Justin Sun, the founder of blockchain-focused startup Tron, has purchased BitTorrent, the owner of the file-sharing client MuTorrent, for $140 million, according to The Hacker News. Tron is a decentralized entertainment and content-sharing platform, and of course BitTorrent was a pioneer in the world of distributed file-sharing, and Sun said he hopes to use BitTorrent’s recognizable brand in the course of building out his own company’s content sharing system.

    Tron is hoping to build a platform where users can publish content without ceding any control to a third-party like one would with YouTube or Facebook.

    Bittorrent

    As TechCrunch explains, Tron is a relatively new entry into the world of cryptocurrency.

    The company was founded by Sun, who previously worked for rival crypto Ripple, and is one of a handful of ICO products that’s hoping to build a “truly decentralized Internet and its infrastructure.” To do this, the company launched its own cryptocurrency, the TRX.

    The coin is supposed to allow payment of creators for hosting content on Tron’s platform (because so many Internet users are used to paying for the content they consume on the Internet).

    Though BitTorrent has become irrevocably associated with the file sharing movement, the company has been earning revenue, and hasn’t needed to raise money in a decade. However, it’s plan to build a bigger business on top of its core technology never really took off (though its enterprise services segment was eventually spun off).

    Tron is hoping the acquisition will “legitimize” its business after Tron has been accused of ripping off other ICOs, like FileCoin and Ethereum. BitTorrent recently said it has about 170 million users. Its protocols move around roughly 40% of the world’s Internet traffic on a typical day, making it the world’s largest decentralized application – many times larger than bitcoin.

  • The Real Takeaway: The FBI Influenced The Election Of A US President

    Authored by Peter Van Buren via The American Conservative,

    The good news is the Deep State seems less competent than we originally feared…

    It will be easy to miss the most important point amid the partisan bleating over what the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General report on the FBI’s Clinton email investigation really means.

    While each side will find the evidence they want to find proving the FBI, with James Comey as director, helped/hurt Hillary Clinton and/or maybe Donald Trump, the real takeaway is this: the FBI influenced the election of a president.

    In January 2017 the Inspector General for the Department of Justice, Michael Horowitz (who previously worked on the 2012 study of “Fast and Furious”), opened his probe into the FBI’s Clinton email investigation, including public statements Comey made at critical moments in the presidential campaign. Horowitz’s focus was always to be on how the FBI did its work, not to re-litigate the case against Clinton. Nor did the IG plan to look into anything regarding Russiagate.

    In a damning passage, the 568 page report found it “extraordinary and insubordinate for Comey to conceal his intentions from his superiors… for the admitted purpose of preventing them from telling him not to make the statement, and to instruct his subordinates in the FBI to do the same. By departing so clearly and dramatically from FBI and department norms, the decisions negatively impacted the perception of the FBI and the department as fair administrators of justice.” Comey’s drafting of a press release announcing no prosecution for Clinton, written before the full investigation was even completed, is given a light touch though in the report, along the lines of roughly preparing for the conclusion based on early indications.

    Attorney General Loretta Lynch is criticized for not being more sensitive to public perceptions when she agreed to meet privately with Bill Clinton aboard an airplane as the FBI investigation into Hillary unfolded. “Lynch’s failure to recognize the appearance problem… and to take action to cut the visit short was an error in judgment.” Her statements later about her decision not to recuse further “created public confusion and didn’t adequately address the situation.”

    The report also criticizes in depth FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, who exchanged texts disparaging Trump before moving from the Clinton email to the Russiagate investigation. Those texts “brought discredit” to the FBI and sowed public doubt about the investigation, including one exchange that read, “Page: “[Trump’s] not ever going to become president, right? Strzok: “No. No he’s not. We’ll stop it.” Another Strzok document stated “we know foreign actors obtained access to some Clinton emails, including at least one secret message.”

    Page and Strzok also discussed cutting back the number of investigators present for Clinton’s in-person interview in light of the fact she might soon be president, and thus their new boss. Someone identified only as Agent One went on to refer to Clinton as “the President” and in a message told a friend “I’m with her.” The FBI also allowed Clinton’s lawyers to attend her interview, even though they were also witnesses to a possible crimes committed by Clinton.

    Page and Strzok were among five FBI officials the report found expressed hostility toward Trump and have been referred to the FBI’s internal disciple system. The report otherwise makes only wishy-washy recommendations about things every agent should already know, like “adopting a policy addressing the appropriateness of department employees discussing the conduct of uncharged individuals in public statements.”

    But at the end of it all, the details really don’t matter, because the report broadly found no political bias, no purposeful efforts or strategy to sway the election. In aviation disaster terms, it was all pilot error. Like an accident of sorts, as opposed to the pilot boarding drunk, but the plane crashed and killed 300 people either way.

    The report is already being welcomed by Democrats — who feel Comey shatteredClinton’s chances of winning the election by reopening the email probe just days before the election —and by Republicans, who feel Comey let Clinton off easy. Many are now celebrating it was only gross incompetence, unethical behavior, serial bad judgment, and insubordination that led the FBI to help determine the election. No Constitutional crisis.

    A lot of details in those 568 pages to yet fully parse, but at first glance there is not much worthy of prosecution (though Attorney General Jeff Sessions says he will review the report for possible prosecutions and IG Horowitz will testify in front of Congress on Monday and may reveal more information.) Each side will point to the IG’s conclusion of “no bias” to shut down calls for this or that in a tsunami of blaming each other. In that sense, the IG just poured a can of jet fuel onto the fires of the 2016 election and walked away to watch it burn.

    One concrete outcome, however, is to weaken a line of prosecution for Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The chief Russiagate investigator has just seen a key witness degraded — any defense lawyer will characterize Comey’s testimony as tainted now — and a possible example of obstruction weakened. As justification for firing Comey, the White House initially pointed to an earlier Justice Department memo criticizing Comey for many of the same actions now highlighted by the IG (Trump later added concerns about the handling of Russiagate.) The report thus underscores one of the stated reasons for Comey’s dismissal. Firing someone for incompetence isn’t obstructing justice; it’s the boss’ job.

    It will be too easy, however, to miss the most important conclusion of the report: there is no longer a way to claim America’s internal intelligence agency, the FBI, did not play a role in the 2016 election. There is only to argue which side they favored and whether they meddled via clumsiness, as a coordinated action, or as a chaotic cluster of competing pro- and anti- Clinton/Trump factions inside the Bureau. And that’s the tally before anyone brings up the FBI’s use of a human informant inside the Trump campaign, the FBI’s use of both FISA warrants and pseudo-legal warrantless surveillance against key members of the Trump team, the FBI’s use of opposition research from the Steele Dossier, and so on.

    The good news is the Deep State seems less competent than we originally feared. But even if one fully accepts the IG report’s conclusion that all this – and there’s a lot – was not intentional, at a minimum it makes clear to those watching ahead of 2020 what tools are available and the impact they can have. While we continue to look for the bad guy abroad, we have already met the enemy and he is us.

  • US Army Seeks New Sub-Compact Weapons To Avoid "Increased Warfighter Casualties"

    The US Army Contracting Command-New Jersey (ACC-NJ) on behalf of the Project Manager Soldier Weapons (PM SW), intends to purchase Sub Compact Weapons (SCW) from thirteen different gun manufactures for weapon trials to improve the effectiveness of Personal Security Details (PSD) on the evolving modern battlefield.

    According to the Army Times, the Army announced it would spend $428,480 to award sole-source contracts to Beretta USA, Colt Manufacturing Company, CMMG Inc., CZ-USA, Sig Sauer and seven other gun manufactures for highly concealable subcompact guns.

    These SCWs are “capable of engaging threat personnel with a high volume of lethal and accurate fires at close range with minimal collateral damage,” according to a June 15 special contract award notice.

    “Currently, PSD military personnel utilize pistols and rifles; however, there is an operational need for additional concealability and lethality,” the notice states. “Failure to provide the selected SCW for assessment and evaluation will leave PSD military personnel with a capability gap which can result in increased warfighter casualties and jeopardize the success of the U.S. mission.”

    Gun manufactures selected by the ACC-NJ had until June 16 to respond to the notice. The SCWs will be procured by the Army for further evaluation and testing in the coming weeks/months.

    “The acquisition of the SCW is essential in meeting the agency’s requirement to support Product Manager, Individual Weapons mission to assess commercially available off-the-shelf (COTS) SCWs in order to fill a capability gap in lethality and concealability.”

    The following thirteen weapons were submitted by the corresponding companies: 

    • Award Number: W15QKN-18-P-0034 Awardee: Colt’s Manufacturing Company LLC for CM9MM-9H-M5A, Colt Modular 9mm Sub Compact Weapon Amount: $22,000.00

    • Award Number: W15QKN-18-P-0037 Awardee: Beretta USA Corporation for Beretta PMX Sub Compact Weapon Amount: $16,000.00

    • Award Number: W15QKN-18-P-0038 Awardee: CMMG, Inc. for CMMG Ultra PDW Sub Compact Weapon Amount: $8,500.00

    • Award Number: W15QKN-18-P-0039 Awardee: CZ-USA for CZ Scorpion EVO 3 A1 Submachinegun Amount: $14,490.00

    • Award Number: W15QKN-18-P-0040 Awardee: Lewis Machine & Tool Company for MARS-L9 Compact Suppressed Weapon Amount: $21,900.00

    • Award Number: W15QKN-18-P-0041 Awardee: PTR Industries, Inc. for PTR 9CS Sub Compact Weapon Amount: $12,060.00

    • Award Number: W15QKN-18-P-0042 Awardee: Quarter Circle 10 LLC 5.5 CLT and 5.5 QV5 Sub Compact Weapon Amount: $24,070.00

    • Award Number: W15QKN-18-P-0043 Awardee: SIG SAUER, Inc. for SIG SAUER MPX Sub Compact Weapon Amount: $20,160.00

    • Award Number: W15QKN-18-P-0044 Awardee: Trident Rifles, LLC for B&T MP9 Machine Guns Amount: $36,000.00

    • Award Number: W15QKN-18-P-0045 Awardee: Zenith Firearms for Z-5RS, Z-5P and Z-5K Sub Compact Weapons Amount: $39,060.00

    • Award Number: W15QKN-18-P-0048 Awardee: Heckler and Koch Defense Inc for HK UMP9 Sub Compact Weapon Amount: $10,850.00

    • Award Number: W15QKN-18-P-0049 Awardee: Angstadt Arms Corporation for Angstadt UDP-9 Sub Compact Weapon Amount: $15,950.00

    • Award Number: W15QKN-18-P-0050 Awardee: Noveske Corporation for Noveske Sub Compact Weapon Amount: $17,200.00

    Here some images of the SCWs that the Army will be evaluating and testing in the near term: 

    CZ-USA for CZ Scorpion EVO 3 A1 Submachinegun

    CMMG, Inc. for CMMG Ultra PDW Sub Compact Weapon

    CM9MM-9H-M5A, Colt Modular 9mm Sub Compact Weapon

    SIG SAUER MPX Sub Compact Weapon

    Zenith Firearms for Z-5RS, Z-5P and Z-5K Sub Compact Weapons 

    PTR Industries, Inc. for PTR 9CS Sub Compact Weapon

    Heckler and Koch Defense Inc for HK UMP9

    Angstadt Arms Corporation for Angstadt UDP-9 Sub Compact Weapon

    Noveske Corporation for Noveske Sub Compact Weapon

    So, this is the first time in decades that the U.S. Army is searching for SCWs for conventional forces, as it recognizes troops that wield pistols and rifles have an operational gap that can result in “increased warfighter casualties.” The Army will be testing a dozen or so SCWs and will shortly be making a decision which weapon system will fill that gap and ensure dominance on the modern battlefield for regular troops. This is yet another sign the Pentagon is preparing its grunts for war.

  • De-Dollarization Escalates: Russia Sells Off Record Amount Of US Treasury Bonds

    Authored by Arkady Savitsky via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    The US Treasury Department report for April published on June 15 revealed that Russia sold $47.4 billion out of the $96.1 it had held in Treasury bonds (T-bonds). In March, Moscow cut its Treasury holdings by $1.6 billion. In February, Russia reduced its bond portfolio by $9.3 billion. Other holders did it too. Japan sold off about $12 billion, China liquidated roughly $7 billion. Ireland ditched over $17 billion.

    The tariff wars unleashed by Washington stirred fears that financial markets may be in for a rough ride with American treasuries dumped by some partners, including such major holders as China and Japan, each holding over $1 trillion in bonds.

    Russia has cut its holdings in American securities following numerous rounds of sanctions imposed by Washington against Moscow and amid the ongoing trade wars between the US and its allies and partners.

    This is bad news and ominous warning for Washington. The foreign demand is critical to offset an expected surge in federal borrowing needs. The Treasury Department needs to finance the huge spending bill along with tax cuts that were passed by Congress in December 2017. It plans to auction off around $1.4 trillion in treasuries this year with a glut of sellers and a shortage of buyers in the bond market the government plans to add $600 billion to.

    The companies buy back their own shares to boost capitalization. The stock prices are overvalued. The Fed’s monetary policy does not spur economic growth amid the growing national debt. The bond market does not look attractive anymore. Looks like there is a big change on the horizon that nations will dump US debt in case of trade war.

    And the supremacy of the US dollar is not as solid as many people believe it is. A sell-by date as a global reserve currency is looming. The process of de-dollarization is gradually gaining momentum.

    Moscow and Beijing are making agreements to move away from the American currency. On June 8, their leaders signed an agreement to raise the share of trade settlements in national currencies. Last year, nine percent of payments for supplies from Russia to China were made in the Russian rubles. In October 2017, China launched a payment system for transactions in the renminbi and the Russian currency. The launch of the petro-yuan allows Moscow and Beijing to use national currencies for settlements.

    Russian companies paid for 15 percent of Chinese imports in the renminbi. For comparison, only three years ago the respective figures were two and nine percent. The gradual shift away from the USD is on the agenda of BRICS. China and Japan started direct trading of their currencies as far back as 2012 to hedge the risk of the dollar’s fall in the long run.

    Stanley Druckenmiller, the billionaire investor, believes that this is the time when “all you need is gold and all other investments are rubbish”. Top money managers are also recommending gold. Other countries are repatriating their gold reserves from the US Federal Reserve.

    Russia has increased its gold reserves in order to diversify away from the dollar. It has recently concluded a cooperation agreement with China on developing the Klyuchevskoye gold ore deposit in the Trans-Baikal region. It is expected to extract 12 million tons of ore to produce 6 tons of precious metal yearly. Gold is considered important by both countries. The Central Bank of Russia has been increasing its gold holdings for three years now. Today, it has the fifth largest gold reserves in the world to make Russia immune to fluctuations of global currency market. This is a good investment to fend off US sanctions, tariff impositions and dollar fluctuations.

    The worse the US relations with other countries become, the more likely are other nations to reconsider their reliance on the dollar. The US bonds market is going through hard times, the dollar is facing uncertain future and gold is becoming the best investment one could think of. With sanctions constantly used as a tool of foreign policy, trade wars waged, and the huge debt growing, America’s economic prospects are clouded in doubt to make other countries gradually move away from its currency and T-bonds. It does not augur well for the US. Its policy of confrontation makes it weaker, not stronger. There are clear signs the American century is coming to an end.

  • "Mr. President Fu*k You!"; The Hunt Is On For Congressional Intern Who Heckled Trump

    President Trump as he arrived at the Capitol Tuesday to meet with House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), when a woman thought to be a Congressional intern shouted “Mr. President, Fuck You!” as he walked down the hall. 

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    The incident occurred as tempers flared in D.C. over President Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy of enforcing existing laws, which include separating children from their parents who choose to enter the United States illegally – something done under both Bush II and Obama. 

    All 49 members of the Democratic caucus – including independents Bernie Sanders (VT) and Angus King (ME), signed on to Monday legislation designed to prevent the separation of immigrant families – something President Trump agrees with:

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    Trump also noted that 80% of migrant children are unaccompanied – meaning they were “separated” from their families when their parents chose to send them with human traffickers to America. 

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    Perhaps sensing an opportunity to hobble Trump on the separated children thing – former First Ladies Laura Bush and Michelle Obama joined together to criticize the “zero tolerance” policies – which many on Twitter immediately noted were passed into law and enacted by their husbands. 

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    We look forward to Trump’s heckler being fired, only to emerge as a #resistance hero in their proudest pink pussy hat. And for those trying to identify which Congressional intern it was – let’s not assume gender; we hear soy has an amazing affect on vocal chords. 

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Digest powered by RSS Digest

Jun 19

Today’s News 19th June 2018

  • Italy's Salvini Orders "Special Census" And Expulsion Of Illegal Gypsies, Immediately Compared To Hitler

    Italy’s new Interior Minister, and the country’s de facto leader now that the League has surpassed 5-Star is national poalling,  Matteo Salvini told an Italian television station Monday that he plans to conduct a census of the Roma community, and will kick anyone out of the country residing there illegally.

    “I’ve asked the ministry to prepare a dossier on the Roma question in Italy,” Salvini told TeleLombardia, adding that the country’s large community of Roma, also known as Gypsies, was “chaos” several years after a crackdown.

    “Unfortunately we will have to keep the Italian Roma because we can’t expel them,” Salvini added.

    Italy’s Roma community is vast, and consists of mostly poor people from Romania and the former Yugoslavia. Italian authorities periodically clean out Gypsy squatter camps at the outskirts of major cities in the hopes that the notoriously nomadic Roma will find another place to set up camp. 

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    Salvini’s remarks drew immediate comparisons to Adolf Hitler – with liberal politicians warning that Italy had a “terrible” history in which they conducted a Fascist-era census of Jews.

    “You can work for security and respect for rules without becoming fascist,” tweeted Democratic lawmaker Ettore Rosato. “The announced census of Roma is vulgar and demagogical.”

    In a follow-up statement, Salvini said he had no plans to take digital fingerprints or make index cards of individual Roma – rather, he wants a study of the overall situation.

    “We are aiming primarily to care for the children who aren’t allowed to go to school regularly because they prefer to introduce them to a life of crime. We also want to check how millions of euro that come from European funds are spent,” said Salvini. 

    Salvini said over Facebook and Twitter that he also thinks of “those poor children who are trained in theft and lawlessness.” 

  • "Hopeless" European Millennials And The Populist Takeover

    Authored by John Rubino via DollarCollapse.com,

    Europe is frequently held up as an example of how the rest of the world should behave on a variety of issues. But this comparison misses at least two things:

    First, “Europe” is actually a lot of different countries in a lot of different situations.

    Second, much of what seems to work over there only does so because it’s being financed with ever-increasing amounts of debt.

    For countries, as for individuals, borrowing money is fun at first but beyond a certain point becomes debilitating, as interest payments begin to crowd out everything else. That’s where a growing number of Europe’s failed states now find themselves, with overly-generous pensions and overly-restrictive labor laws making it virtually impossible to run a functioning market-based economy.

    The result: Fewer good jobs and more frustrated voters – especially young ones who have seen only the downside of the current system – and the resulting rise of populist political parties that recognize the problems without offering coherent solutions, thus guaranteeing even more chaos in the future.

    As Today’s Wall Street Journal notes, in Italy and Greece, nearly a third of young adults not only aren’t working but aren’t enrolled in school or training. What are they doing? Apparently just sitting around and stewing about life’s injustice.

    As for where they’re sitting and stewing, in Greece, Italy and Spain it’s now normal for adults all the way into their 30s to live with their parents, largely because they can’t find work that pays enough to afford a house, car and other requirements of independent life.

    Not surprisingly, they’re also failing to attract mates — because who wants to marry an unemployed 30-year-old who lives with his or her parents?

    Add it all up and you get fertile ground for politicians willing to promise a quick fix.

    In Italy, the populist 5 Star Movement and League parties won a combined majority of the youth vote and now run the show.

    In Spain, 40% of voters under 35 are, according to polls, leaning towards the far-left party Podemos and its political allies.

    In Greece, more than 41% of those age 18 to 24 voted for far-left Syriza in the 2015 election.

    As for Germany, which looks great by comparison, keep in mind that a big part of its economic outperformance is due to other EU countries borrowing huge amounts of money to buy German exports.

    When the latter run out of money – a point which is clearly coming – Germany suffers twice, once when it loses important customers and again when its banks, having lent trillions of euros to Italy, Spain, et al, have to eat those losses.

    But bad-mouthing Europe should not be seen as implicit praise of the US. We, like Germany, have an advantage that’s both unfair and temporary. Where Germany has trading partners willing to borrow big to buy Mercedes and Beemers, the US has the world’s reserve currency, which acts as an unlimited credit card for our entitlement state and military/industrial empire. Slightly different scams, same eventual result: the credit spigot gets turned off and all hell breaks loose.

  • Mass Shooting Attack On World Cup Fans After Sweden Win

    Police in Sweden are attempting to downplay initial reports of terrorism after a man opened fire on a crowd during World Cup celebrations as the Swedish national team beat South Korea earlier in the day. As the story broke, multiple international headlines suggested a terror attack in progress related to World Cup play, with at least five people wounded in the southern city of Malmo. One man has reportedly died of his injuries in what’s being described as a “mass shooting”.

    A hail of bullets were unleashed by an unknown shooter in a car mid-evening in the downtown Drottninggatan area just as revelers took the streets to celebrate the Swedish national team’s 1-0 win against South Korea. 

    All 5 victims are being described in European press as “World Cup fans” who were among a crowd exiting area venues that had been screening the soccer match. The shooter (or shooters) may have been targeting a group gathered inside of a coffee shop.

    Image via The Daily Star

    “There are no signs that this is terror-related,” said police spokesman Fredrik Bratt, as quoted in EuroNews. “It is probably a shooting between criminal individuals.” 

    Though as the Daily Mail reports “feuds between criminal gangs fighting over territory have taken place in major Swedish cities in recent years” Swedish media initially described a crime that appears broad and random in nature, designed to cause mass casualties. 

    However some local sources indicate some among the victims may include known criminals engaged in gang or organized crime activities. 

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    Eyewitnesses told the the Swedish language Aftonbladet newspaper that around 15 to 20 shots were fired in Malmo’s downtown area. Malmo is Sweden’s third largest city with a population of about 350,000 — but is known for a high murder rate among European cities, and has a reputation as being the most dangerous city in Scandinavian countries. 

    Police have cordoned off a large area downtown and say a major investigation is ongoing. A police spokesman said: “There are injured people who have been hospitalized with ambulances and some who have been traveling with private individuals.”

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    Sweden’s Sydsvenskan newspaper reports that all among the injured were standing on the sidewalk outside a coffee shop when a car drove up and unleashed automatic fire at close range on the group. Multiple reports also say some among the wounded were rushed away in private cars, which could further suggest an incident involving organized crime. One witness, Jonatan Burhoff, told Aftonbladet he saw wounded people being carried to private cars that drove off “as fast as possible”.

    The shootings took place close to a police station which allowed for emergency response units to arrive on the scene almost immediately. No suspects were immediately apprehended according to early reports.

  • How The Last Superpower Was Unchained

    Authored by Tom Engelhardt via The Asia Times,

    Think of it as the all-American version of the human comedy: a great power that eternally knows what the world needs and offers copious advice with a tone deafness that would be humorous, if it weren’t so grim.

    If you look, you can find examples of this just about anywhere. Here, for instance, is a passage in The New York Times from a piece on the topsy-turvy Trumpian negotiations that preceded the Singapore summit. “The Americans and South Koreans,” wrote reporter Motoko Rich, “want to persuade the North that continuing to funnel most of the country’s resources into its military and nuclear programs shortchanges its citizens’ economic well-being. But the North does not see the two as mutually exclusive.”

    Think about that for a moment. The US has, of course, embarked on a trillion-dollar-plus upgrade of its already massive nuclear arsenal (and that’s before the cost overruns even begin). Its Congress and president have for years proved eager to sink at least a trillion dollars annually into the budget of the national security state (a figure that’s still rising and outpaces by far that of any other power on the planet), while its own infrastructure sags and crumbles. And yet it finds the impoverished North Koreans puzzling when they, too, follow such an extreme path.

    “Clueless” is not a word Americans ordinarily apply to themselves as a country, a people, or a government. Yet how applicable it is.

    And when it comes to cluelessness, there’s another, far stranger path the United States has been following since at least the George W Bush moment that couldn’t be more consequential and yet somehow remains the least noticed of all. On this subject, Americans don’t have a clue. In fact, if you could put the United States on a psychiatrist’s couch, this might be the place to start.

    America contained

    In a way, it’s the oldest story on Earth: the rise and fall of empires. And note the plural there. It was never – not until recently at least – “empire,” always “empires.” Since the 15th century, when the fleets of the first European imperial powers broke into the larger world with subjugation in mind, it was invariably a contest of many. There were at least three or sometimes significantly more imperial powers rising and contesting for dominance or slowly falling from it.

    This was, by definition, the history of great powers on this planet: the challenging rise, the challenged decline. Think of it for so many centuries as the essential narrative of history, the story of how it all happened until at least 1945, when just two “superpowers,” the United States and the Soviet Union, found themselves facing off on a global scale.

    Of the two, the US was always stronger, more powerful, and far wealthier. It theoretically feared the Russian Bear, the Evil Empire, which it worked assiduously to “contain” behind that famed Iron Curtain and whose adherents in the US, always modest in number, were subjected to a mania of fear and suppression.

    However, the truth – at least in retrospect – was that, in the Cold War years, the Soviets were actually doing Washington a strange, if unnoted, favor. Across much of the Eurasian continent, and other places from Cuba to the Middle East, Soviet power and the never-ending contest for influence and dominance that went with it always reminded American leaders that their own power had its limits.

    This, as the 21st century should have (but hasn’t) made clear, was no small thing. It still seemed obvious then that American power could not be total. There were things it could not do, places it could not control, dreams its leaders simply couldn’t have. Though no one ever thought of it that way, from 1945 to 1991, the United States, like the Soviet Union, was, after a fashion, “contained.”

    In those years, the Russians were, in essence, saving Washington from itself. Soviet power was a tangible reminder to American political and military leaders that certain areas of the planet remained no-go zones (except in what, in those years, were called “the shadows”).

    The Soviet Union, in short, rescued Washington from both the fantasy and the hell of going it alone, even if Americans only grasped that reality at the most subliminal of levels.

    That was the situation until December 1991 when, at the end of a centuries-long imperial race for power (and the never-ending arms race that went with it), there was just one gigantic power left standing on Planet Earth. It told you something about the thinking then that, when the Soviet Union imploded, the initial reaction in Washington wasn’t triumphalism (though that came soon enough) but utter shock, a disbelieving sense that something no one had expected, predicted, or even imagined had nonetheless happened. To that very moment, Washington had continued to plan for a two-superpower world until the end of time.

    America uncontained

    Soon enough, though, the Washington elite came to see what happened as, in the phrase of the moment, “the end of history.” Given the wreckage of the Soviet Union, it seemed that an ultimate victory had been won by the very country its politicians would soon come to call “the last superpower,” the “indispensable” nation, the “exceptional” state, a land great beyond imagining (until, at least, Donald Trump hit the campaign trail with a slogan that implied greatness wasn’t all-American any more).

    In reality, there were a variety of paths open to the “last superpower” at that moment. There was even, however briefly, talk of a “peace dividend” – of the possibility that, in a world without contesting superpowers, taxpayer dollars might once again be invested not in the sinews of war-making but of peacemaking (particularly in infrastructure and the well-being of the country’s citizens).

    Such talk, however, lasted only a year or two and always in a minor key before being relegated to Washington’s attic. Instead, with only a few rickety “rogue” states left to deal with – like… gulp … North Korea, Iraq and Iran – that money never actually headed home, and neither did the thinking that went with it.

    Consider it the good fortune of the geopolitical dreamers soon to take the reins in Washington that the first Gulf War of 1990-1991, which ended less than a year before the Soviet Union collapsed, prepared the way for quite a different style of thinking. That instant victory led to a new kind of militarized dreaming in which a highly tech-savvy military, like the one that had driven Iraqi autocrat Saddam Hussein’s forces out of Kuwait in such short order, would be capable of doing anything on a planet without serious opposition.

    And yet, from the beginning, there were signs suggesting a far grimmer future. To take but one infamous example, Americans still remember the Black Hawk Down moment of 1993 when the world’s greatest military fell victim to a Somali warlord and local militias and found itself incapable of imposing its will on one of the least impressive not-quite-states on the planet (a place still frustrating that military a quarter-century later).

    In that post-1991 world, however, few in Washington even considered that the 20th century had loosed another phenomenon on the world, that of insurgent national liberation movements, generally leftist rebellions, across what had been the colonial world – the very world of competing empires now being tucked into the history books – and it hadn’t gone away. In the 21st century, such insurgent movements, now largely religious, or terror-based, or both, would turn out to offer a grim new version of containment to the last superpower.

    Unchaining the indispensable nation

    On September 11, 2001, a canny global jihadist by the name of Osama bin Laden sent his air force (four hijacked US passenger jets) and his precision weaponry (19 suicidal, mainly Saudi followers) against three iconic targets in the American pantheon: the Pentagon, the World Trade Center, and undoubtedly the Capitol or the White House (neither of which was hit because one of those jets crashed in a field in Pennsylvania). In doing so, in a sense bin Laden not only loosed a literal hell on Earth, but unchained the last superpower.

    William Shakespeare would have had a word for what followed: hubris. But give the top officials of the Bush administration (and the neocons who supported them) a break. There had never been a moment like it: a moment of one. A single great power left alone, triumphant, on planet Earth. Just one superpower – wealthy beyond compare, its increasingly high-tech military unmatched, its only true rival in a state of collapse – had now been challenged by a small jihadist group.

    To president Bush, vice-president Dick Cheney, and the rest of their crew, it seemed like nothing short of a heaven-sent opportunity. As they came out of the shock of 9/11, of that “Pearl Harbor of the 21st century,” it was as if they had found a magic formula in the ruins of those iconic buildings for the ultimate control of the planet. As secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld would instruct an aide at the Pentagon that day, “Go massive. Sweep it up. Things related and not.”

    Within days, things related and not were indeed being swept up. The country was almost instantly said to be “at war,” and soon that conflict even had a name, the Global War on Terror. Nor was that war to be against just al-Qaeda, or even one country, an Afghanistan largely ruled by the Taliban. More than 60 countries said to have “terror networks” of various sorts found themselves almost instantly in the administration’s potential gunsights. And that was just to be the beginning of it all.

    In October 2001, the invasion of Afghanistan was launched. In the spring of 2003, the invasion of Iraq followed, and those were only the initial steps in what was increasingly envisioned as the imposition of a Pax Americana on the Greater Middle East.

    There could be no doubt, for instance, that Iran and Syria, too, would soon go the way of Iraq and Afghanistan. Bush’s top officials had been nursing just such dreams since, in 1997, many of them formed a think-tank (the first ever to enter the White House) called the Project for the New American Century and began to write out what were then the fantasies of figures nowhere near power. By 2003, they were power itself and their dreams, if anything, had grown even more grandiose.

    In addition to imagining a political Pax Republicana in the United States, they truly dreamed of a future planetary Pax Americana in which, for the first time in history, a single power would, in some fashion, control the whole works, the Earth itself.

    And this wasn’t to be a passing matter either. The Bush administration’s “unilateralism” rested on a conviction that it could actually create a future in which no country or even bloc of countries would ever come close to matching or challenging US military power. The administration’s National Security Strategy of 2002 put the matter bluntly: The US was to “build and maintain” a military, in the phrase of the moment, “beyond challenge.”

    They had little doubt that, in the face of the most technologically advanced, bulked-up, destructive force on Earth, hostile states would be “shocked and awed” by a simple demonstration of its power, while friendly ones would have little choice but to come to heel as well. After all, as Bush said at a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in 2007, the US military was “the greatest force for human liberation the world has ever known.”

    Though there was much talk at the time about the “liberation” of Afghanistan and then Iraq, at least in their imaginations the true country being liberated was the planet’s lone superpower. Although the Bush administration was officially considered a “conservative” one, its key officials were geopolitical dreamers of the first order and their vision of the world was the very opposite of conservative. It harkened back to nothing and looked forward to everything.

    It was radical in ways that should have, but didn’t, take the American public’s breath away; radical in ways that had never been seen before.

    Shock and awe for the last superpower

    Think of what those officials did in the post-9/11 moment as the ultimate act of greed. They tried to swallow a whole planet. They were determined to make it a planet of one in a way that had never before been seriously imagined.

    It was, to say the least, a vision of madness. Even in a moment when it truly did seem – to them at least – that all constraints had been taken off, an administration of genuine conservatives might have hesitated. Its top officials might, at least, have approached the post-Soviet situation with a modicum of caution and modesty.

    But not George W Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and pals. In the face of what seemed like the ultimate in possibilities they proved clueless when it came to the possibility that anything on Earth might have a shot at containing them.

    Even among their critics, who could have imagined then that, more than 16 years later, having faced only lightly armed enemies of various sorts, still wealthy beyond compare, still with a military funded in a way the next seven countries couldn’t cumulatively match, the United States would have won literally nothing?

    Who could have imagined that, unlike so many preceding imperial powers (including the US of the earlier Cold War era), it would have been able to establish control over nothing at all; that, instead, from Afghanistan to Syria, Iraq deep into Africa, it would find itself in a state of “infinite war” and utter frustration on a planet filled with ever more failed states, destroyed cities, displaced people, and right-wing “populist” governments, including the one in Washington?

    Who could have imagined that, with a peace dividend no longer faintly conceivable, this country would have found itself not just in decline, but – a new term is needed to catch the essence of this curious moment – in what might be called self-decline?

    Yes, a new power, China, is finally rising – and doing so on a planet that seems itself to be going down. Here, then, is a conclusion that might be drawn from the quarter-century-plus in which America was both unchained and largely alone.

    The Earth is admittedly a small orb in a vast universe, but the history of this century so far suggests one reality about which America’s rulers proved utterly clueless: After so many hundreds of years of imperial struggle, this planet still remains too big, too disparate, too ornery to be controlled by a single power. What the Bush administration did was simply take one gulp too many and the result has been a kind of national (and planetary) indigestion.

    Despite what it looked like in Washington once upon a time, the disappearance of the Soviet Union proved to be no gift at all, but a disaster of the first order. It removed all sense of limits from America’s political class and led to a tale of greed on a planetary scale. In the process, it also set the US on a path to self-decline.

    The history of greed in our time has yet to be written, but what a story it will someday make. In it, the greed of those geopolitical dreamers will intersect with the greed of an ever wealthier, ever more gilded 1%, of the billionaires who were preparing to swallow whole the political system of that last superpower and grab so much of the wealth of the planet, leaving so little for others.

    Whether you’re talking about the urge to control the planet militarily or financially, what took place in these years could, in the end, result in ruin of a historic kind. To use a favored phrase from the Bush years, one of these days we Americans may be facing little short of “regime change” on a planetary scale. And what a piece of shock and awe that’s likely to prove to be.

    All of us, of course, now live on the planet Bush’s boys tried to swallow whole. They left us in a world of infinite war, infinite harm, and in Donald Trump’s America where cluelessness has been raised to a new power.

  • Nearly Half Of All Millennials Know Someone Affected By Opiates

    The statistics surrounding the American opioid epidemic are becoming more and more alarming with each passing day, it seems. Two weeks ago, we cited a new report claiming that one in five millennial deaths can be attributed not just to drugs – but specifically to opioids.

    The study is called “The Burden of Opioid-Related Mortality in the United States,” published Friday in JAMA. Researchers from St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, Ontario, found that all opiate deaths — which accounts for natural opiates, semi-synthetic/ humanmade opioids, and fully synthetic/ humanmade opioids — have increased a mindboggling 292 percent from 2001 through 2016, with one in every 65 deaths related to opioids by 2016. Men represented 70 percent of all opioid-related deaths by 2016, and the number was astronomically higher for millennials (24 and 35 years of age).

    According to the study, one out of every five deaths among millennials in the United States is related to opioids. In contrast, opioid-related deaths for the same cohort accounted for 4 percent of all deaths in 2001.

    Opioid

    And today Axios cited a new NBC News/GenForward poll revealing that nearly half of millennials (42%) have been impacted by the opioid crisis in some way, either because they have a friend or family member who is struggling with addiction, or because they themselves are addicted.

    Why it matters: Millennials, ages 22 to 37, are expected to make up the largest generation in the U.S. by 2019. Overdose deaths are causing this group of individuals to die at a faster rate that those over 50 years old, according to the CDC.

    By the numbers:

    • White male and female millennials have been affected by the opioid epidemic the most — 54% know someone who is caught in the issue.
    • 30% of black millennials say they know someone who has dealt with an opioid addiction. Asian-Americans 26%. Latinos 23%.
    • More people who live in the Northeast part of the U.S. said they know someone who has dealt with opioid addiction than any other region. But about 40% of millennials in the Midwest, South and West still said yes to knowing someone.

    Democrats and Republicans have been scrambling to pitch a harm-reduction program to help reduce the number of deaths, but many remain uncomfortable with the idea of needle-exchange vans and clinics that offer emergency services (like supervised injection sites) for addicts operating in their neighborhoods.

    Opioid

    Furthermore, the political influence of the millennial generation is being affected by the crisis, as more young Americans are arrested (or are too busy feeding their addictions to care much about voting).

    Across party lines, roughly half of young Republicans and half of young Democrats say they know somebody struggling with opioid addiction. The future of the epidemic could be greatly impacted by a series of bills wending through Congress right now: One bill seeks to crackdown on illicit fentanyl – a powerful synthetic – another seeks to remove unused prescriptions out of circulation. Another – what Axios describes as “possibly the most significant” – would lift the IMD exclusion, a ban on federal Medicaid money for mental health treatment, allowing adult opioid users to stay at a bed in an institution for 30 days.

    Expanding access to opioid treatment would likely do the most to help improve conditions for addicts on the ground. But as it stands, having access to treatment isn’t enough – because nearly all research shows that substance-abuse treatments like rehab are still deeply ineffective treatments for opioids.

    When it comes to reducing the number of opioid overdoses, the solution put forth by one small-time Ohio politician still stands out: Just let the addicts die.

  • The Hidden Risk Of A Trade Deficit Reduction

    Authored by Valentin Schmid via The Epoch Times,

    A deal to reduce the trade deficit will have far-reaching consequences for the dollar…

    In May, China reportedly offered the United States a $200 billion reduction in its goods surplus with the United States. It would be a major victory for the Trump administration’s tough trade policy on China.

    The Chinese authorities so far have confirmed they are willing to buy up to $70 billion more agricultural and energy goods from the United States and they would be able to make good on the promise given the centrally-planned Chinese economy.

    But even if China were to follow through and import more from the United States or export less to it – reducing its surplus from the $500 billion in 2017 to $300 billion per year in the future – this would not be the end of the story.

    Capital Flows

    The problem with the single-handed focus on trade is that international trade between different nations has two sides. One is the goods trade, the other is the trade in capital, which has far-reaching consequences for interest rates and exchange rates.

    So far, the United States has financed persistent deficits in goods with persistent surpluses in capital exports. This means foreigners ship BMW cars and Samsung TVs to the United States and end up owning Miami condominiums, Apple stocks, and U.S. Treasury bonds.

    Of course, it’s not necessarily the same people who sell the BMWs and get the Apple stock, but the equation applies to the trade balances between nations.

    At the end of 2017, foreigners owned $33.8 trillion of U.S. assets with the United States owning $26 trillion of foreign assets, a net deficit of $7.8 trillion, which represents the accumulated trade deficit with the rest of the world from past decades.

    Indeed, capital transactions make up 95 percent of international financial flows, compared to 5 percent for trade.

    The Balancing Factor

    More importantly, these international investment decisions are not made at a top-down level, although they balance out trade surpluses and deficits automatically at the national aggregate.

    Because the United States has a very open capital account (there are few restrictions on money moving in and out of the country) and attractive assets (Apple and Miami), it brings in investments from foreign countries with high savings rates like Germany and China.

    Both companies and consumers in these countries save more than they spend because of culture, state intervention, and many other reasons. Either way, companies and individuals make asset allocation decisions independently of the national goods surplus their country has with the United States.

    So how does the capital account automatically balance with the trade account? “Over 90 percent of the ‘adjustment’ required to balance the accounts lies in the value of currencies,” writes Woody Brock of research firm Strategic Economic Decisions who wrote an excellent paper on the topic.

    Because of relatively inflexible supply chains as well as sticky consumer preferences, it takes large moves in currencies and prices to shift demand for goods either up or down.

    Not so with capital. Even small moves in the currency lead to traders and investors buying and selling trillions of assets, but also vice versa, where changing economic conditions at home or abroad lead to more or less appetite for U.S. assets.

    Reduce the Deficit to Boost the Dollar

    Let’s take the reported $200 billion reduction in the trade deficit with China as an example. In this case, sticky U.S. consumer preferences would fall victim to heavy-handed intervention by the Chinese state, and China would export $200 billion less goods to the United States, while producers in China would at first be swamped by more agricultural and energy products than they needed.

    Any combination of the two (more exports to China, fewer imports from China) would reduce the trade deficit from the current $500 billion to $300 billion.

    What also stays the same is the demand for U.S. dollar assets by Chinese citizens and companies, absent other economic changes or changes in Chinese policies to further control its capital account.

    Before the adjustment and at the current exchange rate of 6.41 yuan per dollar, the Chinese are demanding 3.20 trillion yuan worth of dollar assets, or $500 billion.

    But after the adjustment, the United States will only supply $300 billion of capital to the Chinese. How to reconcile the difference? The dollar will have to rise to 10.68 yuan in order to supply 3.2 trillion yuan, worth $300 billion, of U.S. capital.

    That’s a 66 percent rise in the dollar – which the United States would consider outrageous, since the politicians on this side of the Pacific have been complaining bitterly that the Chinese are artificially undervaluing their currency.

    Of course, there will be changes in the asset mix too, as Miami condos will become very expensive for the Chinese, whereas the relative prices of bonds and stocks and their cash flows (interest payments and dividends) as well as upside potentials are not affected by the exchange rate.

    In addition, although Chinese now receive less income from exports if they cannot find a substitute market, this does not mean their demand for foreign capital needs to decline. The Chinese pool of yuan savings is so large that even less income through trade would not make a dent in the appetite for overseas assets.

    According to surveys conducted by the Financial Times in China, wealthy Chinese want to invest around 30 percent of their assets abroad, with the United States being the preferred destination. Right now, Credit Suisse estimates Chinese household wealth to be in the region of $29 trillion. And this does not include Chinese companies who are buying everything from foreign companies that fit their strategic needs just to get money out of the country.

    It’s important to note that this analysis is only mathematically valid in a two-nation world economy. If other trading partners were involved, U.S. consumers could source products from other countries, the global U.S. trade deficit would not be reduced as much, and the yuan would not fall as much.

    However, considering the Trump administration wants to reduce the global trade deficit, the analysis becomes valid again, although it is impossible to calculate the impact on all different exchange rate. The only conclusion: If asset allocation preferences around the world don’t shift and the trade deficit with the rest of the world goes down, the dollar would go up. By how much against which rate is impossible to say.

    Too Much Volatility

    In the two nation world economy case, the adjustment would wreak havoc with the Chinese regime’s careful plans to centrally manage its currency, which is the biggest reason the Chinese would want to test the waters first with a $70 billion increase in imports and a corresponding reduction in the trade surplus.

    Even in the multilateral word economy scenario, adjustments would take time and exchange rate volatility would increase, although the effects would wear off eventually.

    Interestingly enough, tariffs on Chinese goods would lead to a much similar result. They make Chinese goods more expensive in dollar terms and represent an artificial devaluation in the U.S. dollar. They would thus reduce the trade deficit by limiting Chinese exports to the United States.

    What they would not do is limit the amount of capital demanded by the Chinese for U.S. assets. And unless the tariff also includes a surcharge on Chinese investment in the United States (an artificial boost to the U.S. dollar), we would be confronted with similar exchange rate dynamics as in the example above.

    In either case, absent significant changes in U.S. industrial policy and capital goods accumulation, the currency is the only variable to make the United States better off on world markets both from a production and a consumption perspective.

    The deal won’t boost U.S. exports and industrial production, but the trade deficit will be reduced and U.S. consumers would get more bang for their buck. So as unlikely as the full $200 billion reduction is about to happen, from a U.S. perspective it may be worthwhile.

  • Unprecedented Israeli Strikes Target Iraqi Shia Militias In Syria

    A day after a mysterious airstrike close to the Iraq-Syria border reportedly killed over 30 Syrian government soldiers and Iraqi paramilitary forces backed by Iran, a US official has told CNN the attack was carried out by Israel and not by the US coalition.

    Syrian state media blamed the strike on the US-led coalition — though in the immediate aftermath any level of confirmation or evidence was hard to come by. The claims prompted the US coalition spokesman to issue a formal denial, calling Syria’s accusation “misinformation” as US-backed SDF forces are only operating east of the Euphrates, and not near Abu Kamal, which lies west, according to the statement. 

    If confirmed it would mark the first time in the war that Iraq’s paramilitary forces have been targeted by Israel. The Iran-backed Popular Mobilization Units (PMU, or PMF) have increasingly coordinated with the Syrian Army as well as pro-Syrian irregular Shia fighters during anti-ISIS operations along Syria’s eastern border of late. 

    The incident marks the second time in three weeks that the Syrian Army has accused the US Coalition of bombing their troops in southeast Syria; however it is uncertain as yet how Damascus will respond to this new claim of Israeli responsibility. 

    The CNN source is an unnamed US official, who gave no other details on the strike, including how many jets conducted the mission or the flight path into the Iraq-Syria border area, though CNN notes, “The area is some distance from Israel and Israeli jets would have had to overcome significant logistical hurdles to strike that area.”

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    And as Al Masdar News points out, Israel “has never attacked the Syrian military this far from their border, so if they were behind this – this would be the first time they have every bombed the Deir Ezzor Governorate.” 

    The last confirmed Israeli strike in Deir Ezzor was in 2007, when Israel destroyed an alleged nuclear reactor in al-Kibar. Up until now in the war confirmed there have been acknowledged Israeli attacks in western Syria, around Damascus, and in the Homs desert (T-4 airbase).

    Syrian military sources initially told Reuters that the strikes were conducted by attack drones flying from the direction of U.S. lines. Syrian forces did not respond to the attacks which left dozens of Syrian Army, allied National Defense Forces (NDF), and Iraqi paramilitary troops killed and wounded in the town of Al-Harri, in the Abu Kamal countryside. 

    Though casualty numbers have varied slightly — with opposition media site SOHR citing 38 and pro-government sources citing well over 40 — it marks a significant escalation given the high death toll against units which were in the midst of battling remnant ISIS pockets in Syria’s east. 

    The attack came the same day that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a cabinet meeting, “We will take action – and are already taking action – against efforts to establish a militarily presence by Iran and its proxies in Syria both close to the border and deep inside Syria. We will act against these efforts anywhere in Syria.”

    Netanyahu’s words follow similar statements made last week wherein he accused Iran of importing 80,000 Shia fighters into the Syrian conflict from places like Pakistan and Afghanistan in order to both “covert” Syrian Sunnis and prepare attacks against Israel, claiming that a broader “religious war” would emerge. 

    “That is a recipe for a re-inflammation of another civil war – I should say a theological war, a religious war – and the sparks of that could be millions more that go into Europe and so on … And that would cause endless upheaval and terrorism in many, many countries,” Netanyahu said before an international security forum in Jerusalem last Thursday.

    “Obviously we are not going to let them do it. We’ll fight them. By preventing that – and we have bombed the bases of this, these Shi’ite militias – by preventing that, we are also offering, helping the security of your countries, the security of the world,” he said.

    Currently, new reports of a “massive build-up” of Syrian Army troops and their allies in Syria’s south continue to emerge after Assad recently reaffirmed his desire to liberate “every inch” of sovereign Syrian territory. As the army conducts operations increasingly close to the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, the likelihood of more direct Syria-Israel clashes to come is high. 

  • China Enters The Trade Trap

    Via Investing In Chinese Stocks blog,

    Perhaps nobody knows what President Trump will do next, including President Trump, but right now it looks like he has successfully maneuvered China into a trade trap.

    The goal is to slow China’s economy such that military modernization slows and its economy cannot catch up with the United States. Meanwhile, implementation of this strategy is called “Beijing’s playbook” and the whole time President Trump speaks positively about Xi Jinping and China’s help in other areas.

    Bloomberg: Xi to Counter Trump Blow for Blow in Unwanted Trade War

    “The Chinese view this as an exercise in self-flagellation, meaning that the country that wins a trade war is the country that can endure most pain,” said Andrew Polk, co-founder of research firm Trivium China in Beijing.

    China “thinks it can outlast the U.S. They don’t have to worry about an election in November, let alone two years from now.”

    This is the mistake autocrats always make about Western governments and the United States. They view the messy and inefficient political system (intentionally designed that way to protect liberty) as a weakness. They think politicians care more about elections than anything else. They see the difficulty in reaching consensus as a weakness. However, they miss the fact that democratic governments enjoy greater legitimacy. If the U.S. reaches a majority in favor of confronting China on trade, then President Trump has the far stronger political hand.

    Confronting China on trade raises President Trump’s popularity. His base and independent voters favor this policy.

    Democrats oppose him because he is Trump, but they would lose votes if the only issue in November was “Confront China on trade, yes or no?”

    If President Trump makes it through November losing only a few House seats (as is typical of nearly all mid-term elections) and sticks to his China trade policy, he will come out the other side incredibly strengthened on trade heading into 2020. If the public begins to view the trade war more as war than trade, they will want to win the war of attrition.

    China’s “ace” remains yuan devaluation.

    When I wrote The Logic of Strategy: Yuan Devaluation and the Road to Trade War, I expected economics to lead the way as the yuan devalued. Although the yuan weakened in 2015 and 2016, it was not the substantial depreciation needed to reset the financial system. Still, China created the conditions for a major currency depreciation and U.S. trade policy will soon lean heavily on this pressure point.

    Finally, remember that geopolitics is right beneath the surface of the trade war. The U.S. is confronting China in the South China Sea. Pacific nations are turning against China.

    ABC: China warns citizens in Vietnam after protests fuel anti-Chinese sentiment

    China has warned its citizens in Vietnam after protesters clashed with police over a government plan to create new economic zones for foreign investment that has fuelled anti-Chinese sentiment in the country.

    SCMP: China tells Australia to remove its ‘coloured glasses’ to get relations back on track

    Relations between the two countries have cooled since late last year when Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s government proposed a bill to limit foreign influence in Australia, including political donations. Beijing saw the move as “anti-China”.

    Critics say President Trump’s trade policy is poorly designed and antagonizes allies, but the Logic of Strategy says nations will come around to Trump’s position in the coming months and years.

  • DOJ Indicts "Vault 7" Leak Suspect; WikiLeaks Release Was Largest Breach In CIA History

    A 29-year-old former CIA computer engineer, Joshua Adam Schulte, was indicted Monday by the Department of Justice on charges of masterminding the largest leak of classified information in the spy agency’s history.

    Schulte, who created malware for the U.S. Government to break into adversaries computers, has been sitting in jail since his August 24, 2017 arrest on unrelated charges of posessing and transporting child pornography – which was discovered in a search of his New York apartment after Schulte was named as the prime suspect in the cyber-breach one week after WikiLeaks published the “Vault 7” series of classified files. Schulte was arrested and jailed on the child porn charges while the DOJ ostensibly built their case leading to Monday’s additional charges.

    [I]nstead of charging Mr. Schulte in the breach, referred to as the Vault 7 leak, prosecutors charged him last August with possessing child pornography, saying agents had found 10,000 illicit images on a server he created as a business in 2009 while studying at the University of Texas at Austin.

    Court papers quote messages from Mr. Schulte that suggest he was aware of the encrypted images of children being molested by adults on his computer, though he advised one user, “Just don’t put anything too illegal on there.” –New York Times

    Monday’s DOJ announcement adds new charges related to stealing classified national defense information from the Central Intelligence Agency in 2016 and transmitting it to WikiLeaks (“Organization-1”). 

    The Vault 7 release – a series of 24 documents which began to publish on March 7, 2017 – reveal that the CIA had a wide variety of tools to use against adversaries, including the ability to “spoof” its malware to appear as though it was created by a foreign intelligence agency, as well as the ability to take control of Samsung Smart TV’s and surveil a target using a “Fake Off” mode in which they appear to be powered down while eavesdropping.

    The CIA’s hand crafted hacking techniques pose a problem for the agency. Each technique it has created forms a “fingerprint” that can be used by forensic investigators to attribute multiple different attacks to the same entity.

    …

    The CIA’s Remote Devices Branch’s UMBRAGE group collects and maintains a substantial library of attack techniques ‘stolen’ from malware produced in other states including the Russian Federation.

    With UMBRAGE and related projects the CIA cannot only increase its total number of attack types but also misdirect attribution by leaving behind the “fingerprints” of the groups that the attack techniques were stolen from.

    UMBRAGE components cover keyloggers, password collection, webcam capture, data destruction, persistence, privilege escalation, stealth, anti-virus (PSP) avoidance and survey techniques. –WikiLeaks

    Schulte previously worked for the NSA before joining the CIA, then “left the intelligence community in 2016 and took a job in the private sector,” according to a statement reviewed in May by The Washington Post.

    Schulte also claimed that he reported “incompetent management and bureaucracy” at the CIA to that agency’s inspector general as well as a congressional oversight committee. That painted him as a disgruntled employee, he said, and when he left the CIA in 2016, suspicion fell upon him as “the only one to have recently departed [the CIA engineering group] on poor terms,” Schulte wrote. –WaPo

    Part of that investigation, reported WaPo, has been analyzing whether the Tor network – which allows internet users to hide their location (in theory) “was used in transmitting classified information.” 

    In other hearings in Schulte’s case, prosecutors have alleged that he used Tor at his New York apartment, but they have provided no evidence that he did so to disclose classified information. Schulte’s attorneys have said that Tor is used for all kinds of communications and have maintained that he played no role in the Vault 7 leaks. –WaPo

    Schulte says he’s innocent: “Due to these unfortunate coincidences the FBI ultimately made the snap judgment that I was guilty of the leaks and targeted me,” Schulte said. He launched Facebook and GoFundMe pages to raise money for his defense, which despite a $50 million goal, has yet to receive a single donation.

    As The Post noted in May, the Vault 7 release was one of the most significant leaks in the CIA’s history, “exposing secret cyberweapons and spying techniques that might be used against the United States, according to current and former intelligence officials.”

    The CIA’s toy chest includes:

    • Tools code named “Marble” can misdirect forensic investigators from attributing viruses, trojans and hacking attacks to their agency by inserted code fragments in foreign languages.  The tool was in use as recently as 2016.  Per the WikiLeaks release:

    “The source code shows that Marble has test examples not just in English but also in Chinese, Russian, Korean, Arabic and Farsi. This would permit a forensic attribution double game, for example by pretending that the spoken language of the malware creator was not American English, but Chinese, but then showing attempts to conceal the use of Chinese, drawing forensic investigators even more strongly to the wrong conclusion, — but there are other possibilities, such as hiding fake error messages.”

    • iPads / iPhones / Android devices and Smart TV’s are all susceptible to hacks and malware. The agency’s “Dark Matter” project reveals that the CIA has been bugging “factory fresh” iPhones since at least 2008 through suppliers. Another, “Sonic Screwdriver” allows the CIA to execute code on a Mac laptop or desktop while it’s booting up.
    • The increasing sophistication of surveillance techniques has drawn comparisons with George Orwell’s 1984, but “Weeping Angel”, developed by the CIA’s Embedded Devices Branch (EDB), which infests smart TVs, transforming them into covert microphones, is surely its most emblematic realization.
    • The Obama administration promised to disclose all serious vulnerabilities they found to Apple, Google, Microsoft, and other US-based manufacturers. The US Government broke that commitment.

    “Year Zero” documents show that the CIA breached the Obama administration’s commitments. Many of the vulnerabilities used in the CIA’s cyber arsenal are pervasive and some may already have been found by rival intelligence agencies or cyber criminals.

    In addition to its operations in Langley, Virginia the CIA also uses the U.S. consulate in Frankfurt as a covert base for its hackers covering Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

    CIA hackers operating out of the Frankfurt consulate ( “Center for Cyber Intelligence Europe” or CCIE) are given diplomatic (“black”) passports and State Department cover. 

    • Instant messaging encryption is a joke.

    These techniques permit the CIA to bypass the encryption of WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, Wiebo, Confide and Cloackman by hacking the “smart” phones that they run on and collecting audio and message traffic before encryption is applied.

    • The CIA laughs at Anti-Virus / Anti-Malware programs.

    CIA hackers developed successful attacks against most well known anti-virus programs. These are documented in AV defeats, Personal Security Products, Detecting and defeating PSPs and PSP/Debugger/RE Avoidance. For example, Comodo was defeated by CIA malware placing itself in the Window’s “Recycle Bin”. While Comodo 6.x has a “Gaping Hole of DOOM”.

    You can see the entire Vault7 release here.

    A DOJ statement involving the Vault7 charges reads: 

    “Joshua Schulte, a former employee of the CIA, allegedly used his access at the agency to transmit classified material to an outside organization.  During the course of this investigation, federal agents also discovered alleged child pornography in Schulte’s New York City residence,” said Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman. 

    On March 7, 2017, Organization-1 released on the Internet classified national defense material belonging to the CIA (the “Classified Information”).  In 2016, SCHULTE, who was then employed by the CIA, stole the Classified Information from a computer network at the CIA and later transmitted it to Organization-1.  SCHULTE also intentionally caused damage without authorization to a CIA computer system by granting himself unauthorized access to the system, deleting records of his activities, and denying others access to the system.  SCHULTE subsequently made material false statements to FBI agents concerning his conduct at the CIA.         

    Schulte faces 135 years in prison if convicted on all 13 charges: 

    1. Illegal Gathering of National Defense Information, 18 U.S.C. §§ 793(b) and 2
    2. Illegal Transmission of Lawfully Possessed National Defense Information, 18 U.S.C. §§ 793(d) and 2
    3. Illegal Transmission of Unlawfully Possessed National Defense Information, 18 U.S.C. §§ 793(e) and 2 
    4. Unauthorized Access to a Computer To Obtain Classified Information, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1030(a)(1) and 2
    5. Theft of Government Property, 18 U.S.C. §§ 641 and 2
    6. Unauthorized Access of a Computer to Obtain Information from a Department or Agency of the United States, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1030(a)(2) and 2
    7. Causing Transmission of a Harmful Computer Program, Information, Code, or Command, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1030(a)(5) and 2
    8. Making False Statements, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1001 and 2
    9. Obstruction of Justice, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1503 and 2
    10. Receipt of Child Pornography, 18 U.S.C. §§ 2252A(a)(2)(B), (b)(1), and 2
    11. Possession of Child Pornography, 18 U.S.C. §§ 2252A(a)(5)(B), (b)(2), and 2
    12. Transportation of Child Pornography, 18 U.S.C. § 2252A(a)(1)
    13. Criminal Copyright Infringement, 17 U.S.C. § 506(a)(1)(A) and 18 U.S.C. § 2319(b)(1)

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Jun 18

Today’s News 18th June 2018

  • China Responds To US Sabre-Rattling With Anti-Aircraft "Drill" Over South China Sea

    The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has carried out an alarming anti-aircraft drill with missiles fired at dummy drones over the South China Sea to simulate an aerial attack, after Washington challenged Beijing by flying Boeing B-52 Stratofortress bombers near its highly disputed militarized islands, said the South China Morning Post.

    The military exercise, which involved “three target drones making flyovers of a ship formation at varying heights and directions,” is part of a much larger effort by Beijing to increase its military readiness for future combat with the U.S.

    The report said the drones served to “precisely verify the feasibility and effectiveness to ensure a close stimulation of an aerial attack target,” according to the report.

    In other words, Beijing is preparing for an attack on its islands — most likely led by the U.S. and backed by its regional allies.

    Details were limited about the overall military exercise — including the exact date and which militarized island the drill was conducted on.

    The report came out shortly after U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo expressed great concern over China’s rapid militarization of the South China Sea during a briefing in Beijing with Chinese leadership on last week’s summit between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

    Pompeo’s remarks came after the recent U.S. Navy warships and U.S. Air Force Boeing B-52 Stratofortress bombers traveled dangerously close (separate but related incidents) to the militarized islands, which drew sharp criticism from Beijing.

    During Pompeo’s visit to China in April, he “reaffirmed our deep concerns about the building and militarizing of outposts in the South China Sea, as those actions increase tensions, complicate and escalate disputes, endanger the free flow of trade, and undermine regional stability”, the U.S. State Department released in a statement.

    China lays unilateral claim to most of the South China Sea, a region that has vast natural resource and one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. Other claims to the heavily disputed area are by the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and Taiwan. It is still unclear whether Beijing used its sovereign territory or a foreign nation’s territory to conduct the latest round of war drills.

    The South China Morning Post said regional military strategists expect relations between Beijing and Washington to further deteriorate over the South China Sea, as Beijing continues to expand its military reach, which was once dominated by Washington for decades.

    “The vast waters of the South China Sea connect the Pacific and Indian oceans and have high military, security and strategic importance, so anyone who dominates the region has the advantage,” said Li Mingjiang, an associate professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

    “But China is unlikely to follow what the US wants as [Beijing] is also looking to expand its military presence in the South China Sea with the hope of turning the region into an area under its military dominance.”

    Xu Liping, a senior research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, agreed with Mingjiang.

    “The drills, as well as other recent military exercises, are a message to the world that China is determined about, and capable of, safeguarding its territory in the South China Sea,” Liping said.

    “These tensions will remain, but the question is – how are the two sides going to manage this dispute?”

    While there is no comprise in sight, the Washington-Beijing struggle for regional dominance in the South China Sea could lead to a further decline in relations between both countries.

    To give a perspective of what the future could behold, the escalating trade war between Washington-Beijing could, in fact, lead to a hot conflict, and it seems the epicenter could be the South China Sea.

  • Russian Army Gets The Weapons Of The Future Today

    Authored by Andrei Akulov via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    The combat experience that Russia’s Terminator-2 tank support combat vehicle (BMPT-72) has gained in Syria has proven to be invaluable. It is being used to develop a new Terminator-3 version that will soon equip the tank support system to do things like attacking unmanned aerial vehicles (drones). Other armored vehicles and dismounted infantry in difficult terrain remain high-priority targets.

    Few details are available so far. Like its predecessors, the new vehicle’s armor protection will be equivalent to that of a main battle tank, with armaments allowing it to engage virtually any enemy weapon system or unit and to fire at multiple targets at the same time. Automation makes it possible to reduce the number of crew members from 5 to 3.

    The new weapon system is likely to share its chassis, sensors, armor, and active protection system with the new Armata T-14 main battle tank. According to Russian media reports, the main armament will be a 57-mm. gun already used by the Russian Navy. Its rate of fire is 300 rounds per minute, its range — 16 km., and its altitude — over 4 km. The projectile can penetrate armor over 100 mm. thick. Because the firing range of its machine gun and automatic grenade launcher are 60-140% greater than that of the American Bradley IFVs and Stryker wheeled armored vehicles and anti-tank systems, this system can reliably protect tanks and infantry while remaining safely out of reach.

    The Zvezda TV channel quoted officials from the weapons manufacturer Techmash who claimed that the Tosochka thermobaric, wheeled-chassis, heavy multiple-rocket launcher is to be delivered to the Russian Army in 2020. Using wheels instead of caterpillar tracks allows it to move faster but also increases the system’s vulnerability when operating on the front lines. One must assume that the MLRS will not be used to fire directly at targets, but will instead shoot at them from protected positions. Wheels make it more effective against terrorist units. It does not need trailers to move rapidly across great distances, which is exactly what is required to forcefully attack militants on different fronts.

    Russian officials confirmed in May that the Uran-6 demining robot and the Uran-9 unmanned light battle tank have been tested in Syria. The latter is the first remote-controlled military robot in the world (a miniature tank) with a 30-mm. gun, enabling it to carry out the missions of an armored combat system supporting infantry on the ground.

    The Uran-6 is a unique unmanned ground vehicle (UGV), or mine-clearing robotic system, that saves human lives by clearing routes across mine fields. Weighing six tons, it can be transported by truck. With its bulldozer blade and trawls, it can do the work of 20 sappers, neutralizing ordnance with a potential explosive energy of 59 kg. (130 lbs.) of TNT equivalent. Aided by four cameras for 360-degree view, it can be equipped with a large number of tools, such as a robotic arm, a rear forklift, a gripper with a cargo-lifting capacity of one ton, etc. The system can conduct demining operations on any terrain, while remaining at a safe distance of up to one km. away.

    Made of steel plates 8 mm-10 mm thick, the vehicle is highly resistant to mine blasts and shrapnel damage. The system can defend itself using 7.62-mm small arms.

    Built on the basis of a tracked chassis, the Uran-6 is powered by a 6-cylinder water-cooled, turbo-charged diesel engine, allowing it to move at a speed of up to 15 km., negotiate obstacles 0.8 m. high, cross 1.2-m wide ditches and water obstacles, and operate in swamps 0.45 m. deep. The system is able to work continuously for up to five hours. It did a great job in Palmyra, Syria, defusing bombs and bobby traps. The Russian Army plans to increasingly rely on UGVs as time goes on.

    Mainly designed for reconnaissance and patrol purposes, as well as for protecting convoys and supporting infantry, Tigr-M all-terrain infantry mobility vehicles have also seen combat in Syria. With the Arbalet-DM remote module installed, the system becomes robotic. The module consists of a 12.7-mm. caliber Kord machine gun with 150 cartridges or a 7.62-mm caliber PKTM machine gun with 250 cartridges. Laser guidance is used. The Arbalet-DM can lock on and automatically track stationary and moving targets identified by a TV camera from a distance of 2.5 km. or 1.5 km. if thermal-imaging equipment is used. A laser range finder has a range of 100 m.-3,000 m. This new version of Tigr is funded by the 2018-2025 state procurement program.

    The Tigr-M has outstanding off-road capabilities. With an operational range of 1.000 km, the vehicle can reach speeds of up to 155 km. per hour. It can climb 31-degree slopes and cross water obstacles that are 1.2 m wide.

    The famous, combat-proven BMP-3 heavily armed infantry combat vehicles are to become unmanned too, as soon as the AU-220 combat module armed with a 57-mm. automatic cannon is installed. It will enable the system to strike aerial targets. The gun’s rate of fire is 80 rounds per minute and its range is 14.5 km. Any type of rounds can be used. An armor-piercing round can penetrate 130 mm. of steel from one km. away A coaxial 7.62-mm machine gun can hold 1,000 rounds of ammunition. The module can fully rotate 360 degrees.

    The trend is clearly evident — the Russian Army is making great strides in its introduction of new, more highly automated technologies. New weapons that are unlike anything owned by any other country, such as tank support vehicles, are currently either being added to the Russian arsenal or are being developed. The army is also gradually moving away from soldier-to-soldier warfare, turning instead toward combat that is fought by remote-controlled machines driven by artificial intelligence. In March, Defense Minister Army General Sergei Shoigu said that a number of military robotic systems were nearing the completion of their trials before going into serial production this year. He was telling the truth. Many nations are working hard to put unmanned systems onto the battlefields, but Russia appears to be leading this race, fielding its military robotics more quickly than anyone else. The very pace of the updates to these armored vehicles captures the imagination.

  • Meet "The Guardian" – Maybe The Scariest-Looking Robot Yet

    Sarcos Robotics’ Guardian GT has earned comparisons from Wired to Sigourney Weaver’s Power Loader – the machine she used to defeat the eponymous Alien from the 1979 film: It’s a robot that allows people to lift and manipulate objects weighing up to 500 pounds with its 7-foot robotic arms.

    While mimicking human dexterity has become one of the defining problems of robotics, the Guardian GT has a couple of advantages that make it more dexterous than its contemporaries: For example, the Guardian GT’s control systems are kinematically equivalent to the human body. This allows the operator to control what’s effectively a larger version of his or her own torso and arms.

    The Guardian also employs force feedback so the operator can feel through the machine’s hands. This creates a strange sensation when the operator is lifting a large object, like say a 1,000-pound pipe.

    “That’s a little disorienting, so we give a little bit of load into the arm,” Wolff says. Meaning, the robot pushes back a tiny bit. “So instead of lifting a thousand pounds you feel like you’re lifting five.” (How it’s able to do this without the herky-jerkiness of other robots comes down to special actuators, the bits that move and bend the arms. What exactly is special about them, Wolff declines to say, because he’s a good businessman.)

    Its designers are marketing the robot for use on construction sites. They argue that the machine would free up workers to handle jobs that require human coordination, while the Guardian does the heavy lifting.

    Just imagine this thing on a construction site. Doing something like lifting and joining two pipes would require a crane and maybe five or six workers, who would be freed up to do other jobs that require a more human touch (fine manipulation, for instance). With the Guardian GT, all it takes is one supercharged human. It still requires a lot of coordination, sure, but the robot takes the strain out of the equation.

    What’s interesting about this workplace robot is that it’s collaborative—a human is always in control. And that’s what the future of work looks like, especially heavy industry. Fields like construction and agriculture are already facing severe labor shortages, and the machines are poised to pick up the slack. Think automated construction tractors and robots that help humans harvest crops without all the stooping. In the very near future we’ll be working alongside robots, as opposed to robots outright replacing us.

    Still, the company insists that robots won’t replace human workers so much as humans will eventually learn to work alongside their robot partners. Robots, which won’t be able to match human dexterity for years to come, just won’t be able to do some tasks that require a high degree of finesse.

    “While I think that we will see increasing amounts of autonomy and AI,” says Wolff, “I think the real role in work generally is for us to find as humans how to maximize the utility of robots. Allow them to do what they’re really good at while still relying on what humans are best at, which is wisdom and judgment.”

    Then there are the jobs that humans simply can’t do. Because the Guardian GT rolls on either tracks or wheels, the operator can drive it into danger. Think exploring toxic environments and decommissioning nuclear power plants. With the inherent dexterity of the machine, it could easily manipulate things made for humans hands, like valves and buttons.

    Indeed, the death of human labor has been greatly exaggerated. For now, at least.

  • On Donald Trump's "Madness" & A New Gold Standard

    Authored by Hugo Salinas Price via Plata.com,

    Way back in 1995, when Mexico was in the throes of another financial crisis, I figured out the problem of the existing world’s monetary system, based on the paper dollar as the fundamental currency of the world.

    In my ignorance, I did not know that a man named Triffin had already pointed out that problem, which became known as “Triffin’s Dilemma”.

    The problem is really very simple:

    If the dollar – such as it is – is going to be the basis of the world’s monetary system, and therefore required by all Central Banks as Reserves, there is only one way that these CBs can obtain those Reserves: their countries are forced to undersell all US producers, in order to be able to sell more to the US, than they buy from the US.

    The difference between the dollars they get from sales, is more, than the dollars they spend to buy from the US. That difference – known as the US Trade Deficit – flows to the CBs of the world and swells their Reserves.

    So if Mr. Trump wants to cut down, or even ideally abolish the Trade Deficit, that would mean that foreign CBs would have to find it much harder to obtain dollars for their Reserves. Mr. Trump apparently does not want to have foreign CBs use dollars as Reserves, by making it very difficult to obtain those dollars – which they can only get if the US runs a Trade Deficit.

    What that great world monetary system based on the paper dollar has done to the US, was quite unexpected: it consists in obtaining foreign goods by tendering paper money in payment, something that is fundamentally fraudulent. And that fraud has come back to haunt the US, quite unexpectedly.

    The unexpected result of Triffin’s (or “Hugo’s”) Dilemma, has been the de-industrialization of the US, as the world geared up to undersell all US producers wherever they could do so, in order to obtain the indispensable US Dollars.

    Mr. Trump is wildly alienating all the rest of the world, with the threat of Tariffs in order to reduce the Trade Deficit. What he does not understand, is that the Trade Deficit is built-in to the US economy, because the world´s CBs need Dollars for their Reserves: that is the System.

    There is one way, and only one way, to do away with the Trade Deficit and renew the productivity of the US: abandon  the present International Monetary System (derived from the original Bretton Woods Agreements of 1944) and return to the gold standard.

    There are no “Trade Deficits” under the Gold Standard, because all countries have to pay Cash Gold for their imports, and collect Cash Gold for their exports. Result: Balanced Trade. No Trade Deficits.

    A question in the back of my mind: Is Mr. Trump’s “madness” really leading to the Gold Standard? Is that what he really wants? Because if he continues to undermine the present US Dollar as the World’s Reserve Currency, by making it impossible for CBs to obtain Dollars through the US Trade Deficit, that would appear to be the likely final outcome.

  • Are China's "Drone Swarms" The Military Weapon Of The Future?

    China, the country where fireworks were invented back in in ninth century, recently decided to ban fireworks displays in more than 400 cities, a decision that has forced companies and municipalities to brainstorm alternative forms of entertainment that won’t have such a deleterious impact on the environment. One perhaps unintended result of this decision has been an explosion in demonstrations involving “drone swarms” of LED-equipped flying robots, according to Bloomberg. In fact, shows involving more than 1,000 flying drones have cropped up around China – with the robots being used for celebrations commemorating everything from the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang to the Spring Festival Gala sponsored by China’s state-run news channel CCTV.

    Drones

    And while China insists that these “drone swarms” are for entertainment purposes only, we can’t help but wonder: Will “drone swarms” become the weapon of the future?

    While the Intel performance at PyeongChang was pre-recorded, EHang has performed for live audiences. Some drones failed to stay in formation during parts of Ehang’s record show and Xiong said the issue may have been due to man-made interference, but declined to provide details.

    Founded by Duke graduate Xiong and his partner Huazhi Hu in 2014, Guangzhou, China-based EHang raised $42 million in a Series B round the following year with investors including GP Capital, GGV Capital and ZhenFund.

    EHang’s drones aren’t the only ones getting attention. When state broadcaster CCTV held its annual Spring Festival Gala, the world’s most-watched TV show, it featured Zhuhai-based Oceanalpha’s performance of 80 boat bots.

    Of course, organizers of drone displays like the ones we mentioned above must contend with obstacles like the fact that China has strict controls on the usage of its airspace. EHang, one Chinese dronemaker, raised $42 million in a Series B round the following year with investors including GP Capital, GGV Capital and ZhenFund. So far, its swarms have been on display in 20 countries during events like Cirque du Soleil and concerts put on by the metal band Metallica. Most interestingly, drones that are part of the storm communicate with one another via artificial intelligence (a technology that China has also outmaneuvered the US in developing…)

    Verity Studios, a company founded by robotics expert Raffaello D’Andrea that focuses on live drone shows, has performed swarm displays in 20 countries, including at Cirque du Soleil and on tour with Metallica.

    One of the challenges in China is restrictions on the nation’s airspace. Xiong has sought to address that by offering some control to authorities by designing command and control centers that can track traffic. Profits from shows are supporting the company as it works toward a goal of bringing to market the first passenger drone , a concept that is being tested at an abandoned amusement park in its hometown.

    Phil Finnegan, director of corporate analysis at Teal Group, said regulators concerned with making sure each drone is operated by one operator could limit the use of swarms.

    “There are military applications for swarms, but in terms of commercial, it’s nascent,” he said. “The concern is that regulatory authorities may allow this in limited circumstances and widespread use is still far off.”

    Many kinks in the technology still need to be worked out, per Bloomberg.

    While the Intel performance at PyeongChang was pre-recorded, EHang has performed for live audiences. Some drones failed to stay in formation during parts of Ehang’s record show and Xiong said the issue may have been due to man-made interference, but declined to provide details.

    Founded by Duke graduate Xiong and his partner Huazhi Hu in 2014, Guangzhou, China-based EHang raised $42 million in a Series B round the following year with investors including GP Capital, GGV Capital and ZhenFund.

    Surprisingly, EHang and other drone manufacturers insist that civilian applications have been the most lucrative so far, and that military applications remain far off.

    Swarms burst onto the global stage at the Winter Olympics in February, when Intel Corp. used more than 1,200 drones to fly as one in the shape of athletes. Since PyeongChang, there has been debate on their use, including the controversial potential for military applications. Ehang’s focus for now is on making money from civilians, with a May 1 live performance launched from the ancient city wall of Xi’an watched by more than 100,000 people and part of a deal that netted the company a 10.5 million yuan ($1.6 million) payday.

    “We have other business sectors but the first one we have monetized is the drone swarm performances,” said Ehang co-founder Derrick Xiong, adding that EHang is also developing passenger and delivery drones. “It’s a more environmentally friendly way of doing fireworks.”

    As “China Uncensored” pointed out in an episode published late last year, the Chinese Communist Party is developing military applications for these “drone swarms” that will allow the drones to communicate with each other at speeds that are impossible for human pilots.

    So what do you think? Are drone swarms the “weapon of the future” that will give China’s military the edge it needs to outmaneuver the US? Or are these just a high-tech way to make sure Metallica never burns down the venue with poorly supervised pyrotechnics?

  • The Saudi-UAE Alliance Is The Most Dangerous Force In The Middle East Today

    Authored by Doug Bandow via The American Conservative,

    The latest: they are bombing a port that accounts for 80 percent of the food and aid trickling into starving Yemen.

    For three years, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have conducted a murderous campaign to reinstall a pliable regime in the desperately poor country of Yemen. This campaign is based on a lie intended to gain American support: that the two authoritarian monarchies are responding to Iranian aggression. Now the UAE is preparing a military offensive that could split Yemen apart and create mass starvation.

    The Saudi-Emirati alliance is the most dangerous force in the Middle East today. Sometimes acting alone, but usually in tandem, the two dictatorships have promoted intolerant Wahhabism around the world, backed brutal tyranny in Egypt and Bahrain, supported radical jihadists while helping tear apart Libya and Syria, threatened to attack Qatar while attempting to turn it into a puppet state, and kidnapped the Lebanese premier in an effort to unsettle that nation’s fragile political equilibrium. Worst of all, however, is their ongoing invasion of Yemen.

    To demonstrate support for its royal allies, America joined their war on the Yemeni people, acting as chief armorer for both authoritarian monarchies and enriching U.S. arms makers in the process. America’s military has also provided the belligerents with targeting assistance and refueling services. And our Special Forces are on the ground assisting the Saudis.

    The result has been both a security and humanitarian crisis. Observed Perry Cammack of the Carnegie Endowment: “By catering to Saudi Arabia in Yemen, the United States has empowered AQAP, strengthened Iranian influence in Yemen, undermined Saudi security, brought Yemen closer to the brink of collapse, and visited more death, destruction, and displacement on the Yemeni population.

    The Yemeni people have done nothing to harm the United States. So why is Washington treating them as the enemy?

    Yemen, both as one and two states, has been almost constantly at war over the last half century, as its more powerful neighbors have sought to meddle in its affairs. Once, Egyptian and Saudi troops battled each other on behalf of separate Yemeni states. The two Yemens united in 1990, but that resulted in neither peace nor stability.

    The latest round of violence grew out of the Arab Spring. Long-ruling President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who cooperated with both the U.S. and the Saudis, was ousted. But he soon united with his old enemies, the Houthis, a political and tribal militia whose members are Zaydis, a moderate, Shia-related sect that also shares some Sunni characteristics. Together they defenestrated Saleh’s successor, Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi. Area specialists agree that Iran had little to do with these maneuvers, while U.S. intelligence reports that Tehran even advised against the anti-Hadi coalition’s march on the capital of Sanaa.

    The resulting conflict little affected America except in disrupting some operations against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). But the Saudis and UAE created a “coalition” supplemented with de facto mercenaries—from Sudan, for instance—in March 2015 to restore Hadi. That military operation, which was supposed to take a few weeks, continues more than three years later.

    Today the Yemeni nation and state no longer exist. The UN has termed the conflict “the largest humanitarian crisis in the world” where “Yemenis are facing multiple crises, including armed conflict, displacement, risk of famine and the outbreaks of diseases, including cholera.” Some 30,000 civilians are estimated to have died since January 2017 alone. In March, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees reported: “Conflict in Yemen has left 22.2 million people, 75 per cent of the population, in need of humanitarian assistance and has created a severe protection crisis in which millions face risks to their safety and are struggling to survive.”

    The Houthis share the blame for Yemen’s hardship. But the coalition, by employing airstrikes termed “indiscriminate or disproportionate” by Human Rights Watch, has caused at least two thirds of the infrastructure damage and three quarters of the casualties. Yemeni American Rabyaah Lthaibani was blunt: “For three years now, the Saudi Coalition has bombed hospitals, schools and wedding parties. They have systematically targeted roads and farms and blocked ports so lifesaving aid and other goods could not reach people facing famine and the world’s fastest-growing cholera outbreak.” Amnesty International concluded that the coalition deliberately hit civilian targets to create a crisis.

    On Wednesday, the Saudis and Emiratis launched their planned assault on the port of Hodeida, which will only exacerbate this humanitarian horror. Pleas by the UN and U.S. that upwards of 250,000 people’s lives will be at risk have gone unheeded. But then why would Abu Dhabi listen, since Washington’s support for the coalition has thus far been total? The U.S. is enabling an aggressive war with all of its horrendous human consequences.

    Washington’s complicity in Yemen’s destruction hasn’t promoted regional stability. Over the last two decades, misbegotten American intervention has spread conflict, loosed Islamist furies, imperiled religious minorities, and expanded Iran’s influence throughout the Mideast and beyond. Inflaming the Yemeni war has proved similarly destructive.

    Hadi may be Yemen’s “legitimate” ruler, but he sacrificed what little popular support he had when he called in airstrikes on his own people. Nor is he a friend of America: journalist Laura Kasinof observed that Hadi had “cozied up to the Islamists” before his ouster, even sometimes cooperating with AQAP. Saudi Arabia and the UAE also have armed radical forces. AQAP may be the greatest inadvertent beneficiary of the overall conflict.

    U.S. officials sound like Saudi propagandists when they falsely claim that the Houthis are Iranian proxies. Gabriele vom Bruck at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies explains: “The Houthis want Yemen to be independent, that’s the key idea, they don’t want to be controlled by Saudi or the Americans, and they certainly don’t want to replace the Saudis with the Iranians.”

    As noted earlier, Yemen has rarely not been at war. According to Thomas Juneau of the University of Ottawa, the present fight “is at its root a civil war, driven by local competition for power, and not a regional, sectarian or proxy war.” The Houthis turned to Tehran out of necessity, after being attacked by their wealthy neighbors backed by America. Bruce Riedel of the Brookings Institution observed: “A major consequence of the war is to push the Houthis and Iran and Hezbollah closer together.” Tehran has opportunistically helped bleed the aggressors, rather like U.S. policy against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

    While Riyadh still pays lip service to the idea of maintaining a united Yemen, the Emirates is actively promoting secessionists in the south. Indeed, the UAE may hope to grab Hodeidah for its own geopolitical and commercial advantage. Reports The Economist: “the UAE’s actions in Yemen appear part of a larger strategy to gobble up ports along some of the world’s busiest shipping routes.” For this, thousands more Yemenis could die.

    The worst argument for the U.S. to back Saudi and Emirati atrocities is that doing so reduces civilian casualties. The claim is risible. Americans are helping the coalition kill civilians to stop it from killing more civilians? Seriously?

    In fact, American officials admit they do not monitor Saudi attacks, so they have no means of judging the impacts of the strikes. Anyway, the best way to end coalition attacks on the Yemeni people would be to stop subsidizing coalition attacks on the Yemeni people. Make the royals pay for their own war.

    Especially now. Hodeidah accounts for perhaps 70 to 80 percent of the aid, food, and fuel reaching Yemen. Observers fear that an Emirati assault would kill thousands and displace much of the city’s 600,000-strong population. Worse, such an attack would almost certainly interrupt vital shipments to Yemen’s civilian population. Abdi Mohamud, country director for Mercy Corps, warned that “Any disruption to this critical lifeline could be a death sentence for millions of Yemenis.” Mark Lowcock, UN undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs, said that “if for any period Hodeidah were not to operate effectively the consequences in humanitarian terms would be catastrophic.”

    Foreign Ministers from Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE meet with then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in July 2017. (State Department photo/ Public Domain)

    Humanitarian concerns did not stop Abu Dhabi from assaulting Hodeidah. Nor will the sort of cautious statements issued by the Trump administration. Unnamed officials recently told the Wall Street Journal that the administration light was yellow on the matter: “What we are scrambling to do is, if there’s an inevitability to this, we want to ensure that it causes the least amount of damage and make sure things are set up on the humanitarian side in the best way we can.”

    Last weekend the Red Cross began removing its staff from the city to avoid the coming assault. And on Monday, the UN began evacuating its personnel from the port. That should make it clear: only a cut-off in U.S. assistance will get the UAE’s attention. But that Washington refuses to do.

    Yemen continues a tragic pattern in American policy. Washington has intervened promiscuously throughout the Mideast, fomenting radicalism, creating chaos, promoting aggression, and subsidizing tyranny. The humanitarian costs of the Yemen war continue to climb. It’s time for the Trump administration to stop supporting tyrannical regimes like the Saudis and Emiratis as they assault both our interests and our values.

  • These Are The World’s Biggest Disruptors (And How The Disrupteds Are Fighting Back)

    Ask any “brick and mortar” retailer in the past decade what new development has had the greatest (and most adverse) impact on their business, and 11 out of 10 times the answer will be “Amazon” and eCommerce in general. Or ask legacy enterprise solutions companies, which used to rake in tens of billions of dollars every year with customer, client-facing IT and tech solutions, why their stock price has been tumbling in recent years (coughibmcough), and you will hear one word: the “cloud.”

    Indeed, we live in a time of tremendous overhaul in legacy business relationships, and while much of this has been driven by the low cost of capital made possible by ten years of ultra low interest rates, much if not all of this deflationary technological innovation is here to stay, with a few (FAANG) winners and many losers, those unable to adapt fast enough to the changing times.

    While investors in US equities have had to contend with several major cross-currents over the past year, including the gradual phase out of central bank intervention in capital markets i.e., “Quantitative Tightening”, the favorable impact of the “three arrows of Trumponomics” such as tax cuts, fiscal expansion and deregulation offset by growing fears about protectionism and GDP and EPS-crushing trade wars,  even as bank deregulation provides solace to bank investors, a key focus for investors, policy makers and businesses themselves across the globe has been the growing dominance of Internet-based companies as a result of a series of disruptive innovations sweeping across the U.S. economy, presenting investors with another major source of confusion: how to value, and trade, legacy businesses when confronted with disruptors. Alternatively, what is the upside for the disruptors.

    As Barclays writes in a recent report, the disruptors (Internet and cloud-based companies, mainly the FAANGs: Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, And Google) are breaking down moats of the disrupted (legacy consumer businesses and IT hardware & software companies), by dominating the user experience and creating strong moats for themselves in the process. This, according to Barclays, is “leading to a shift in value from consumer discretionary and consumer staples to info tech.”

    The various trends and conflicts between legacy industries and new businesses are broken down by Barclays into the following three key types of disruptions:

    • Internet is disrupting consumer focused businesses (retailers, cable TV⁄media, consumer staples, consumer PC industry): FAANG stocks are disrupting legacy consumer industries by either modularizing supply or distribution moats of the incumbents and creating strong moats for themselves by owning the user experience.
    • Cloud computing disrupting IT hardware and software companies: Amazon⁄Microsoft are the disruptors due to the flexibility and low cost of cloud’s pay-for-use model
    • Shale⁄fracking disrupting oil & gas industry and power companies: shale oil & gas revolution and well productivity disrupting oil & gas supply-demand balance

    And while Barclays provides a detailed analysis of all three “disruption” modalities, we will focus on the first two – the role of the internet and “the cloud” in disrupting consumer-facing businesses and IT Hardware/Software– as that is the one transition that is of greatest impact to most US consumers.

    The Internet as a Disruptor

    According to Barclays, historically the competitive advantage of legacy consumer focused businesses depended on either: 1) creating a monopoly⁄oligopoly in supply (creating a “scarce resource” in the process), or 2) controlling distribution by integrating with suppliers. Here, the fundamental disruption of the internet has been to turn this dynamic on its head by dominating the user experience. Barclays explains further:

    First, while the mega-tech internet companies have high upfront capital costs, their user base is so large that the capital costs per user are insignificant, specially relative to revenue generated per user. This means that the marginal costs of serving another customer is effectively zero, thus neutralizing the advantage of exclusive supplier relationships that were leveraged by legacy distributors. Secondly, the internet has led to the creation of infinitely scalable networks that commoditize⁄modularize supply of “scarce resources” (thus disrupting the legacy suppliers of those resources), making it viable for the disrupting internet company to position itself as the key beneficiary of the industry‘s disruption by integrating forward with end users⁄consumers at scale.

    As a result of the disruption, the user experience has become the most important factor determining success in the current environment: the disruptors win by providing the best experience, which earns them the most consumers⁄users, which attracts the most suppliers, which enhances the user experience in a virtuous cycle. This is also why so many legacy businesses find themselves unable to compete with runaway disruptors, whose modest advantage quickly becomes an insurmountable lead due to the economics of scale made possible by the internet.

    This has resulted in a shift of value from the disrupted to the disruptors who modularize⁄commoditize suppliers, integrate the modularized suppliers on their platform, and distribute to consumers⁄users with which they have an exclusive relationship at scale.

    This further means that the internet enforces strong winner-take-all effects: since the value of a disruptor to end users is continually increasing it is exceedingly difficult for competitors to take away users or win new ones. This, according to Barclays, makes it difficult to make antitrust arguments based on consumer welfare (the standard for U.S. jurisprudence), but ripe for EU antitrust regulation (which considers monopolistic behavior illegal if it restricts competition).

    The Cloud as a Disruptor

    Back in the “old days”, on-premise IT Hardware and Software companies built high barriers to entry by creating integrated suites of hardware⁄middleware and application software involving multi-year relationships with enterprises, complete with licensing & support contracts and cash-rich streams of maintenance and service costs. High switching costs and entrenchment through customization of on-premise hardware and software based on enterprise-specific needs resulted in outsized profits for the incumbents. Fast forward to today, when Amazon⁄Microsoft commoditized data center infrastructure, effectively transforming computing resources into storage, computing, database, and application software components running on centralized servers which could be used on an ad-hoc basis not only by their internal teams but also enterprise customers. Here’s Barclays:

    The cloud is becoming a disruptive force for IT hardware, software, and the services industry as the cloud’s greater efficiency, flexibility, and lower cost is reshaping IT spending patterns and vendor incumbency. Cloud displacement risk is high for companies participating in storage and servers, followed by managed services and application⁄middleware software as competitive pressures mount from elongating replacement cycle and greater price discounting.

    Even for large enterprises and governments, where decades of IT infrastructure and applications make the move from on-premise to the cloud difficult, the cloud’s pay-for-use model is changing how these enterprises evaluate and deploy on-premise IT workloads, and increasing the use of modular and customized IT solutions, which stands to hurt the cash-rich services and software maintenance streams of the disrupted legacy IT hardware and software businesses.

    Summarizing these various trends while also highlighting how the “disrupteds” are fighting back, Barclays lays out the following chart below which illustrates:

    1. The key disrupted industries that have been disrupted by the internet-based companies,
    2. What were the moats of these legacy businesses,
    3. How the disruptors commoditized those moats,
    4. How the disrupted legacy businesses are adapting, and
    5. Whether the value will continue to shift from the disrupted to the disruptors.

     

    To be sure, assessing the net impact of these innovations on each sector is difficult as in some cases the disruptors and the disrupted belong to the same sector – for example, Amazon and retailers are both in consumer discretionary while Microsoft and IT hardware and software companies are both in info tech. With that caveat in mind, the Barclays summary of the net impact of the affected disrupted sectors is laid out below.

  • Mattis: Putin Is Trying To "Undermine America's Moral Authority"

    Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via CaitlinJohnstone.com,

    At a graduation ceremony for the US Naval War College (barf), US Secretary of Defense James Mattis asserted that Russian President Vladimir Putin “aims to diminish the appeal of the western democratic model and attempts to undermine America’s moral authority,” and that “his actions are designed not to challenge our arms at this point but to undercut and compromise our belief in our ideals.”

    This would be the same James Mattis who’s been overseeing the war crimes committed by America’s armed forces during their illegal occupation of Syria. This would be the same United States of America that was born of the genocide of indigenous tribes and the labor of African slaves, which slaughtered millions in Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq, Libya and Syria for no legitimate reason, which is partnered with Ukrainian Nazis, jihadist factions in Syria and Iranian terror cultists, which supports 73 percent of the world’s dictators, which interferes constantly in the electoral processesof other countries as a matter of policy, which stages coups around the world, which has encircled the globe with military bases, whose FBI still targets black civil rights activists for persecution to this very day, which routinely enters into undeclared wars of aggression against noncompliant governments to advance plutocratic interests, which remains the only country ever to use nuclear weapons on human beings after doing so completely needlessly in Japan, and which is functionally a corporatist oligarchy with no meaningful “democratic model” in place at all.

    A casual glance at facts and history makes it instantly clear that the United States has no “moral authority” of any kind whatsoever, and is arguably the hub of the most pernicious and dangerous force ever assembled in human history. But the establishment Russia narrative really is that cartoonishly ridiculous: you really do have to believe that the US government is 100 percent pure good and the Russian government is 100 percent pure evil to prevent the whole narrative from falling to pieces. If you accept the idea that the exchange is anything close to 50/50, with Russia giving back more or less what it’s getting and simply protecting its own interests from the interests of geopolitical rivals, it no longer makes any sense to view Putin as a leader who poses a unique threat to the world. If you accept the idea that the west is actually being far more aggressive and antagonistic toward Russia than Russia is being toward the west, it gets even more laughable.

    In order to believe that the US has anything resembling “moral authority” you have to shove your head so far into the sand you get lava burns, but that really is what is needed to keep western anti-Russia hysteria going. None of the things the Russian government has been accused of doing (let alone the very legitimate questions about whether or not they even did all of them) merit anything but an indifferent shrug when compared with the unforgivable evils that America’s unelected power establishment has been inflicting upon the world, so they need to weave a narrative about “moral authority” in order to give those accusations meaning and relevance. And, since the notion of America having moral authority is contradicted by all facts in evidence, that narrative is necessarily woven of threads of fantasy and denial.

    Establishment anti-Russia hysteria is all narrative, no substance. It’s sustained by the talking heads of plutocrat-owned western media making the same unanimous assertions over and over again in authoritative, confident-sounding tones of voice without presenting any evidence or engaging with the reality of what Russia or its rivals are actually doing. The only reason American liberals believe that Putin is a dangerous boogieman who has taken over their government, but don’t believe for example that America is ruled by a baby-eating pedophile cabal, is because the Jake Tappers and Rachel Maddows have told them to believe one conspiracy theory and not the other. They could have employed the exact same strategy with any other wholly unsubstantiated conspiracy narrative and had just as much success.

    In reality, Russia is nothing other than a rival power structure that the US-centralized empire wants to either collapse or absorb, but they can’t just come right out and tell the public that they’re dangerously escalating tensions with a nuclear superpower because westerners live in an invisible empire ruled by insatiably greedy plutocrats, so they make up nonsense about Putin being some kind of omnipotent supervillain who has infiltrated the highest levels of US government and is trying to take over the world.

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    Of equal interest to the Defense Secretary’s “moral authority” gibberish is his claim that Putin’s actions “are designed not to challenge our arms at this point but to undercut and compromise our belief in our ideals.”

    I mean, like… what? So Russia isn’t challenging America militarily and isn’t taking any actions to attempt to, but it’s trying to, what, hurt America’s feelings? All this new cold war hysteria and nuclear brinkmanship has basically been America acting like a bitchy high school drama queen because Russia is saying mean things about it behind its back? How does a guy named “Mad Dog” get to be such a thin-skinned little snowflake?

    I’m just playing. Actually, when Mattis says that the Russian government is trying to “undercut and compromise our belief in our ideals,” he is saying that Moscow is interrupting the lies that Americans are being told about their government by the plutocrat-owned media. As we’ve been discussing a lotrecently, control of the narrative is absolutely essential for rulers to maintain their rule. When you hear establishment policy makers babbling about “Russian propaganda” and Putin’s attempts to “undercut and compromise our belief in our ideals,” all that they are saying is that the plutocrats who rule America need to be able to control the way Americans think and vote, and that the Russian government is making it a bit harder for them to do that.

    More and more, the threads of the establishment narrative are ceasing to be unconsciously absorbed and are being increasingly consciously examined instead. This development has ultimately nothing to do with Russia and everything to do with our species moving out of its old relationship with mental narrative as it approaches evolve-or-die time in our challenging new world. I am greatly encouraged by what I am seeing.

    *  *  *

    Internet censorship is getting pretty bad, so best way to keep seeing the stuff I publish is to get on the mailing list for my website, so you’ll get an email notification for everything I publish. My articles and podcasts are entirely reader and listener-funded, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, checking out my podcast, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, or buying my bookWoke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers.

  • Deutsche: "This Is The Most Dangerous Development The Fed Wants To Avoid"

    In the first week of February, in the trading session just before the February 5 VIXtermination, the market tumbled as a result of a January average hourly earnings number that surged (even though as we explained at the time, the market had wildly misinterpreted the print), prompting speculation that the Fed was dangerously behind the curve and would need to accelerate its tightening, potentially hiking rates more than just 4 times in 2018, leading to an accelerating liquidation of risk assets which eventually culminated in the record VIX spike.

    Since then, inflation fears moderated following several downward revisions (as expected) and more tame hourly earnings prints, with market concerns instead shifting to trader wars, the return of populism to Europe, the tech bubble, and the sustainability of record margins and net income.

    But according to a recent analysis by Deutsche Bank’s Aleksandar Kocic, traders are ignoring the risk of an imminent, “phase shift” spike in wages at their own risk. Specifically, Kocic looks at the current locus of the Philips curve – which many economists have left for dead due to its seeming failure to explain how the plunge in unemployment to record low levels has failed to boost wages – and notes that as the economy approaches the full employment, “wages tend to become more responsive.” This, to the Deutsche Bank analyst, “is the inflection point that the Fed is monitoring.“

    Looking at the Phillips curve over the past 4 economic cycles, Kocic compares it to the Cheshire cat’s smile from Alice in Wonderland, which is present even when the actual cat body is no longer there: “In each cycle, it falls apart, but after every annihilation, it re-composes itself and continues to play an important role.”

    Specifically, what Kocic highlights, is the sudden phase transitions between the end of one cycle and the start of another, in which one observes a “near vertical” spike in inflation to the smallest favorable change in underlying conditions. In the DB chart below, each cycle has a different color which implicitly marks their beginning and end.

    In the current context, the most important message of this graph is the finale of each recovery. In the past, this stage always exhibited a dramatic (practically straight line) rise in wages in response to infinitesimal improvements in economic activity. These periods are highlighted with (almost) vertical lines in the chart.

    Of course, as economists have long lamented, what has prompted many to speculate that the Phillips curve is broken or even dead, is the failure of the economy to respond with a sharp increase in wages to the already near record low unemployment rate, which is over 0.5% below what the Fed currently believes is the NAIRU (non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment), or the unemployment rate which does not cause inflation to rise or decrease.

    The NAIRU level corresponding to the 1990 is 6%, and 5% in 2000 and 2006. Currently, NAIRU is around 4.5%. This is the territory where the Fed is likely to become concerned. Allowing the economy to overheat would jeopardize Fed’s ability to control inflation if it rises too fast.

    Another way of visualizing the potential risk facing both the Fed and traders is whosn in the next chart, which looks at the Phillips curve within the latest economic cycle, starting with the early stagflationary months of 2007, then progressing into several years of recession, before ultimately emerging into the recovery and, finally, “growth and inflation” phase. According to Kocic, “we are currently in the final stages of the recovery. If we enter the goldilocks region (upper left corner) too fast, the Fed could be caught behind the curve and might be forced to hike aggressively which could have a negative impact on growth while leaving only inflation behind”…  a recipe for progressing straight into another recession.

    As the Deutsche strategist warns, and as the events of early February so vividly demonstrated, “this is the most dangerous development which the Fed would want to avoid.”

    Underscoring why it is only a matter of time before the Phillips curve, which he believes is not dead, but merely waiting to erupt in “a near vertical spike” reveals some fireworks, Kocic notes that “in addition to the distance from the NAIRU and the inflation target, the actual non-linearity of the curve is the key development to watch, in particular the change in response of inflation to the decline in unemployment” and adds:

    The economy is currently operating below NAIRU and just slightly below the target and has shown a sustained support for higher slope which has been persistent since the end of 2016. This has caught the market’s attention.

    But it’s not just the Phillips curve that has caught the attention of Kocic. As regular readers will recall, back in the summer of 2013 we first speculated that Okun’s law is either broken, or there is a giant, and inexplicable output gap forming in the US economy, in which GDP was trending far below where the unemployment rate suggested it should be.

    Now, five years later, that output gap is finally closing, and according to Kocic if past is prologue, it may do so in an “explosive” manner. This is how he frames it:

    The figure below shows the Okun’s law which captures the interplay between the social and economic response to the crisis in terms of distance of unemployment rate from NAIRU (social) and output gap (economic). Historically, output gap closes roughly when unemployment reaches NAIRU (the long term intercept / beta is close to zero). Post-2007, there has been a structural break in this relationship: The economy was slower to recover – it required a more aggressive improvement of labor market in order for the growth to reach its potential. This is shown in the figure through lower intercept: unemployment has to decline about 0.8% below NAIRU for the gap to close.

    So, according to Kocic, if the unemployment rate is already low enough to potentially trigger a “near vertical” spike in wages (Phillips), it is also low enough to launch a sharp reversal in the output gap (Okun) leading to a Fed that is behind the curve on the parameters, or as the DB analyst says, with “current unemployment rate already 0.5% below NAIRU it is only a quarter of a percent away from closing the output gap. This justifies possible Fed’s concerns.”

    Then again, if Kocic’s historical analog for the current situation is correct, “nightmares” may be a better word than “concerns.” The reason for that is that the appropriate historical period to compare the current regime to is the 1960s, when the output gap “exploded”:

    While we think that history might not be the best guide for the future at the moment, the lessons of the 1960s are difficult to be completely ignored. The figure below shows the unfolded Okun’s law. 1960s are a screaming example of the effect of “exploding” output gap as a consequence of injection of fiscal stimulus when the economy was already operating at full employment, a situation that bears keen similarity to the present.

    If the DB analysis is accurate, the implications would be profound for the market, which would find itself not only observing a sudden spike higher in wages, but also an economy where the actual GDP is suddenly soaring far above the potential, resulting in a 1960s output gap rerun and a Fed that has never been so far behind the curve.

    The outcome of both would be even more aggressive rate hikes by the Fed, which – if the scenario plays out as Kocic envisioned – would be forced to raise rates well more than the 7 or so hikes the latest dots currently envision for 2018 and 2019, resulting in another bout of exploding volatility as the market finds itself not only chasing the dots, but in a rerun of “February” where to catch up to inflation, first the Fed, and then the market would be forced to aggressively tighten financial conditions.

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