May 06

Today’s News 6th May 2018

  • As US Military Effectiveness And Diplomacy Fade, Many Countries Start Ignoring Washington

    Authored by Federico Pieraccini via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    Diplomatic work continues in some of the areas with the highest geopolitical tensions in the world. In recent days there have been high-level meetings and contacts between Turkey, Iran and Russia over the situation in Syria; meetings between Modi and Xi Jinping to ease tensions between India and China; and finally, the historic meeting between Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong-un. The common component in all these meetings is the absence of the United States, which may explain the excellent progress that has been seen.

    The last seven days have brought a note of optimism to international relations.

    The meeting between Modi and Xi Jinping in China offered a regional example, confirmed by the words of Wang Yi, member of the State Counsel of the People’s Republic of China:

    “Our [India and China] common interests outweigh our differences. The summit will go a long way towards deepening the mutual trust between the two great neighbors. We will make sure that the informal summit will be a complete success and a new milestone in the history of China-India relations”.

    Given the tensions in August 2017 in the Himalayan border area between the two countries, the progress achieved in the last nine months bodes well for a further increase in cooperation between the two nations. Bilateral trade stands at around $85 billion a year, with China as India’s largest trading partner. The meeting between Modi and Xi also serves to deepen the already existing framework between the two countries in international organizations like BRICS, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), in which they are integral participants. It is imaginable that negotiations on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) will be in full swing, with Beijing keen to involve New Delhi more in the project. Such a prospect is particularly helped by three very powerful investment vehicles put in place by Beijing, namely, the New Development Bank (formerly the BRICS Development Bank), the AIIB, and the Silk Road Fund.

    Xi Jinping will be seeking to ​​progressively entice India closer to the BRI project through attractive and mutually beneficial commercial arrangements. However, this objective remains complicated and difficult to implement. Beijing is aware of this and has already expressed its intention not to impose the BRI on the neighboring country. With much of the future global and regional architecture depending on these two countries, the good understanding shown between Xi Jinping and Modi bodes well, especially given the commonly aligned objectives represented by the multitude of international organizations and frameworks on which China and India sit side by side.

    Another bit of important news for the Asian region has been the meeting between Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong-un, which was recently examined in an article published in Strategic Culture Foundation. As discussed in that article, the intention of the two leaders is to reunite the two Koreas, to denuclearize the peninsula, and to sign a peace treaty between the North and South, whose unprecedented implications entail such questions as whether there is a future role of for the United States on the peninsula. As stated before, the rapprochement between the two Koreas does not play into Washington’s favor, which relies on the South as a strategic foothold to contain China, justifying its presence on the purported need to confront North Korea. With an all-encompassing peace agreement, this justification would cease to exist. It seems that the goal for US policy-makers will be to find an opportunity to sabotage the North-South agreement and blame Kim Jong-un for its failure. Without engaging in a diplomatic tiff with its South Korean ally, the deep state in Washington does not intend to surrender one inch of its military presence on the peninsula, and would even look favorably on the negotiations failing to further damage Trump and his administration.

    This is an internal deep-state war that has been going on for years. Obama wanted to abandon the Middle East in order to focus on containing China, altering the military’s structure accordingly to return to a more Cold War stance. This explains the agreement with Iran in order to free the US from its Middle East involvement so as to be able to focus mainly on Asia and to promote it as the most important region for the United States. This strategic intention has met with enormous opposition from two of the most influential lobbies in the American political system, the Israeli and Saudi Arabian. Without the United States, these two countries would be unable to stop Iran’s peaceful but impressive ascent in the region.

    Listening to four-star generals like Robert Neller (Commandant of the Marine Corps) and others less distinguished, one comes to appreciate the extent to which the US military is in strategic chaos. The military has been the victim of epochal changes with each presidency. Pentagon planners would like to simultaneously confront countries like Russia, China and Iran, but in the process only decrease effectiveness due to imperial overstretch. Other politicians, especially from the neocon area, argue for the need to transform the US armed forces from a force suitable for fighting small countries (Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria), Middle Eastern insurgencies, or terrorist groups (a pretext originating from the 1990’s and the first Gulf War), to a military able to face its peer competitors with all weapons available. Such a realignment does not occur over a short period of time and requires an enormous amount of money to reorganize the armed forces.

    In this struggle between components of the deep state, Trump lumbers into a policy that stems from his electoral campaign rather than a considered strategy. Trump showed himself in his campaign to be strongly pro-Israel and strongly pro-armed forces, which has had the practical result of increasing military spending. Tens of billions of dollars worth of agreements have been realized with the richest country in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, for arms purchases, and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is viewed negatively. Trump’s interventions in Syria confirm that he is under the strong influence of that part of the deep state that is adamant that the United States should always be present in the Middle East, should openly oppose Iran, and, above all, should prevent the Shiite arc from extending its influence to cover Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

    The reasoning employed by Trump and his administration confirms this direction in Washington’s strategy, involving greater cooperation with Beijing to solve the Korean issue; less of an effort to decrease Moscow’s influence in Syria and in the Middle East in general; and greater belligerence towards Iran, with a general shift away from Asia and towards the Middle East, backtracking away from Obama’s pivot to Asia.

    Trump seems to give the impression of wanting to face China from an unprecedented direction, with a trade war that would inevitably end up damaging all sides.

    In this ad hoc strategy, the European allies play an important role in Washington’s intention to cancel or modify the Iranian nuclear agreement. Following the meetings in Washington between Trump and Macron, and then with Merkel, both European leaders seem more or less open to a modification of the JCPOA, provided that Trump backs away from placing tariffs on European countries, an appeal to which the English premier Theresa May adds her name. It seems a desperate tactic, given that one of the issues Trump is pinning his 2020 campaign on is being able to fix the trade imbalances between the US and the EU, without which he will be unable to claim to have kept his promises.

    The United States has many cards to play, but none is decisive. In Korea, the peace process depends very little on Trump’s intentions and more on the willingness of the two key parties to reach a historic agreement to improve the lives of all citizens of the peninsula. I predict the deep state will try to blame the DPRK for a failure of the negotiations, thereby bringing to Asia the chaos in international relations that the US has successfully brought to other parts of the world. The People’s Republic of China will therefore try to replace the United States in negotiations in order to bring the two negotiating parties closer together.

    In the same way, an attempt to sabotage the JCPOA will only drive Russia, China and Iran into a strategic triangle, about which I was writing more than a year ago. A unilateral exit from the nuclear agreement will help delegitimize Washington’s international role, together with the sabotage by the deep state of the peace agreement in Korea. It will be a pincer effect resulting from the chaos and the internal struggle of North American and European elites.

    Success in the negotiations in Korea could pave the way for a protection umbrella for the DPRK guaranteed by China and Russia, in the same way the two could grant Iran all the diplomatic support necessary to resist the American and European pressure to cancel the JCPOA. Ultimately, the rapprochement between India and China, in view of important agreements on the BRI, could seal comity and cooperation between the two giants, leading the Eurasian area under the definitive influence of India, China, Russia and Iran, and guaranteeing a future of peaceful economic development to the most important area of ​​the globe.

    The United States finds itself divided by a war within the elite, where Trump’s presidency is continually attacked and de-legitimized, while the coordinated assault on the dollar continues apace through gold, the petroyuan, and blockchain technology. US military power is showing itself to be a paper tiger unable to change the course of events on the ground, as seen recently in Syria. The loss of diplomatic credibility resulting from the sabotage of the JCPOA, and Washington’s inability to sit down and sincerely negotiate with the DPRK, will deliver the final coup de grace to a country that is struggling to even remain friendship with her European allies (sanctions imposed on Russia, sanctions on European companies participating in the North Stream 2, and tariffs in a new trade war).

    The US deep state remains on this path of self-destruction, perennially torn between opposing strategies, which only accelerates Washington’s unipolar decline and the emergence in its place of a multipolar world order, with New Delhi, Moscow, Beijing and Tehran as new poles over an immense area  comprising the Middle east and all of Eurasia.

  • "To His Dying Breath": McCain Regrets Picking Palin, Wants Pence But Not Trump At Funeral

    The New York Times has given John McCain (R-AZ) quite the sendoff – detailing a trip made by Joe Biden and his wife Jill to the dying senator’s Arizona ranch last Sunday where the former Vice President “wanted to let him know how much I love him and how much he matters to me and how much I admire his integrity and his courage.“

    The NYT‘s longtime op-ed writer Frank Bruni, meanwhile, lauds McCain and trashes Trump in an article entitled Battling Donald Trump With His Dying Breaths.

    As Bruni makes it quite clear, McCain may be near the end of the road, he’s far from done making his mark.

    Mr. McCain, 81, is still in the fight, struggling with the grim diagnosis he received last summer: He has been leading conference calls with his staff in a strained voice, grinding out three-hour physical therapy sessions and rewarding himself most days with a tall glass of Absolut Elyx on ice. –NYT

    Inbetween tall glasses of iced vodka, “most days,” McCain also filmed a nearly two-hour HBO documentary at his Hidden Valley Ranch, and is coming out with what he acknowledges will be his last book, “The Restless Wave,” both set for release this month. 

    The film and the book, a copy of which The New York Times obtained independently of Mr. McCain, amount to the senator’s final say on his career and a concluding argument for a brand of pro-free trade and pro-immigration Republicanism that, along with his calls for preserving the American-led international order, have grown out of fashion under President Trump. –NYT

    Some highlights from the New York Times coverage: 

    • McCain is suffering “debilitating side effects” from aggressive cancer treatment as he spends his final days in Arizona
    • He has few regrets – though one is that he chose Sarah Palin as his 2008 running mate instead of tapping Democrat-turned-independent Joe Lieberman. 

    “It was sound advice that I could reason for myself…But my gut told me to ignore it and I wish I had.”

    He calls the decision not to pick Mr. Lieberman “another mistake that I made” in his political career, a self-indictment that includes his involvement in the Keating Five savings and loan scandal and his reluctance to speak out during his 2000 presidential bid about the Confederate battle flag flying above the South Carolina Capitol.

    • McCain doesn’t want Trump at his funeral – instead insisting that Vice President Mike Pence attend the service in Washington’s National Cathedral. 

    His intimates have informed the White House that their current plan for his funeral is for Vice President Mike Pence to attend the service to be held in Washington’s National Cathedral but not President Trump, with whom Mr. McCain has had a rocky relationship. –NYT

    • McCain’s associates have been quietly spreading the word that they want a “McCain person” to eventually fill his Senate seat – “a roster that includes his wife, Cindy.“

    The matter of succession for the McCain seat — a topic of such intense discussion that Republicans officials here joke that Washington lawyers know Arizona election law better than any attorney in the state — is officially verboten among party officials and the senator’s friends. They are determined to reward him with the same good ending that his friend Senator Edward M. Kennedy enjoyed before he succumbed to brain cancer in 2009.

    McCain’s Dying Breaths

    In a second Saturday article, Frank Bruni details the Arizona Senator’s battles with President Trump – who McCain has criticized for his “half-baked, spurious nationalism.”

    The fight isn’t really between two men. It’s between two takes on what matters most in this messy world. I might as well be blunt: It’s between the high road and the gutter. McCain has always believed, to his core, in sacrifice, honor and allegiance to something larger than oneself. Trump believes in Trump, and whatever wreckage he causes in deference to that god is of no concern.

    “Trump is in every single way the opposite of John McCain,” Bob Kerrey told me recently. “He may be the opposite of every president we ever had.” Kerrey and McCain both served in Vietnam, they overlapped in the Senate and they stay in touch. So Kerrey knows that Trump has caused McCain no small measure of anguish, but less because of Trump’s crassness and the daily tragicomedy of his administration — this, too, shall pass — than because of “the impact on democracy.” It could be enduring, and it could be profound. –Frank Bruni, NYT

    Which, Bruni writes of McCain, is “why a patriot like him could never sit this one out.”

    Bruni also suggests that Trump is threatened by McCain’s biography, then goes on to mention Trump’s allegedly falsified health report, his multiple draft deferments due to bone spurs, and Trump’s claim that Barack Obama was born outside the United States. 

    Trump jump-started his political career with the lie that Barack Obama was born outside the United States and thus an illegitimate president. During the last weeks of Trump’s presidential campaign, he branded Hillary Clinton a criminal and encouraged supporters to chant, “Lock her up.”

    During the last weeks of McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, he grew so concerned about supporters’ hostility to and misconceptions about Obama that he corrected and essentially chided them. “He is a decent person,” he told a man who had volunteered that he was “scared” of an Obama presidency. When a woman at that same campaign event chimed in that Obama was “an Arab,” McCain told her that she was wrong. “He’s a decent family man,” he added. –NYT

    Other choice words for the sitting President include: 

    • “Trump is never to blame and quick to malign onetime allies who have grown inconvenient.”
    • “Trump demands instant gratification.”
    • “Trump invites pity for all the slights he suffers plus plenty that he only imagines, and he readily boasts about achievements actual and hallucinated.”
    • “Such grace is unimaginable from Trump. That’s why it’s so vital that McCain is using his waning time to model it.”

    Meanwhile, other journalists, such as Australia’s Caitlin Johnstone, can’t wait for McCain to “Please Just Fucking Die Already,” writing – (before his cancer diagnosis) “This evil man has supported every US military bloodbath in his obscenely long lifetime, and has been actively involved in both promoting and manufacturing support for every single despicable act of military invention throughout his entire career.”

    I sincerely, genuinely hope that Arizona Senator John McCain’s heart stops beating, and that he is subsequently declared dead by qualified medical professionals very soon. I don’t wish him a painful death, I don’t wish him a slow death, I don’t wish him an unnatural or violent death; I only wish that he becomes incapable of facilitating the merciless slaughter of any more human beings.

    Johnstone sums up precisely why the left (in this case the New York Times) has taken up a defense of McCain in his waning years: 

    Like all neocons have done since the advent of neoconservatism, McCain promotes a very hawkish, anti-detente position toward Russia, which he has been advancing like a good little horseman of the apocalypse at every possible opportunity, from Syria to sanctions to NATO provocations. For this reason he has found himself in what is hopefully the twilight of his life the sudden darling of the Democratic party, which, in its relentless striving to do literally anything other than move left, has been trying to make red-baiting and McCarthyism cool again. –Caitlin Johnstone

    “So yeah, if John McCain could go ahead and die sooner rather than later, that would be awesome.”

    Johnstone’s reply to McCain’s cancer diagnosis? “Good“

  • The "Dark Arts" Of Artificial Intelligence (Or Can Machines Really Think?)

    Authored by Alasdair Macleod via GoldMoney.com,

    Artificial intelligence (AI) is seen as both a boon and a threat. It uses our personal data to influence our lives without us realising it. It is used by social media to draw our attention to things we are interested in buying, and by our tablets and computers to predict what we want to type (good). It facilitates targeting of voters to influence elections (bad, particularly if your side loses).

    Perhaps the truth or otherwise of allegations such as electoral interference should be regarded in the light of the interests of their promoters. Politicians are always ready to accuse an opponent of being unscrupulous in his methods, including the use of AI to promote fake news, or influencing targeted voters in other ways. A cynic might argue that the political class wishes to retain control over propaganda by manipulating the traditional media he understands and is frightened AI will introduce black arts to his disadvantage. Whatever the influences behind the debate, there is no doubt that AI is propelling us into a new world, and we must learn to embrace it whether we like it or not.

    To discuss it rationally, we should first define AI. Here is one definition sourced through a Google search (itself the result of AI):

    “The theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages.”

    This description is laced only with the potential benefits to us as individuals, giving us facilities we surely all desire. It offers us more efficient use of our time, increasing productivity. But another definition, which might ring alarm bells, is Merriam-Webster’s: “A branch of computer science dealing with the simulation of intelligent behaviour in computers. The capability of a machine to imitate intelligent human behaviour.”

    Now we are imitating humans, particularly when we add in the ability of machines to learn and adapt themselves to new stimuli. Surely, this means machines are taking over jobs and even our ability to command. These are sensitive aspects of the debate over AI, and even the House of Lords has set up a select committee to report on it, which it did last week. Other serious issues were also raised, such as who do we hold accountable for the development of algorithms, and the quality of the data being input.

    This article is an attempt to put AI in perspective. It starts with a brief history, examines its capabilities and potential, and finally addresses the ultimate danger of AI according to its critics: the ability of AI and machine learning to replicate the human brain and thereby control us.

    AI basics

    AI has always been an integral part of computer development. As long ago as 1950, Alan Turing published a paper, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, which posed the question, “Can machines think?”. It was the concept of a “Turing Test” that determined whether a machine has achieved true AI, and the term AI itself originated from this period. The following decade saw the establishment of major academic centres for AI in the US at MIT, Carnegie Mellon University, Stanford, and Edinburgh University in the UK.

    The 1980s saw governments become involved, with Japan’s Fifth Generation project, followed by the UK Government launching the Alvey Programme to improve the competitiveness of UK information technology. This effort failed in its central objective, and the sheer complexity of programming for ever-increasing rule complexity led to a loss of government enthusiasm for funding AI development. In the US, the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency also cut its spending on AI by one third.

    However, in the late-1980s, the private sector began to develop AI for applications in stock market forecasting, data mining, and visual processing systems such as number plate recognition in traffic cameras. The neural method of filtering inputs through layers of processing nodes was developed to look for statistical and other patterns.

    It was only since the turn of the century that the general public has become increasingly familiar with the term AI, following developments in deep learning using neural networks. More recently, deep learning, for example used for speech and image recognition, has been boosted by a combination of the growing availability of data to train systems, increasing processing power, and the development of more sophisticated algorithms. Cloud platforms now allow users to deploy AI without investing in extra hardware. And open-source development platforms have further lowered barriers to entry.

    While the progress of AI since Turing’s original paper has been somewhat uneven, these new factors appear to promise an accelerating development of AI capabilities and applications in future. The implications for automation, the way we work, and the replacement of many human functions have raised concerns that appear to offset the benefits. There are also consequences for governments who fail to grasp the importance of this revolution and through public policy seek to restrict its potential. Then there is the question of data use and data ownership. I shall briefly address these issues before tackling the philosophical question as to whether AI and machine learning can ultimately pass the Turing test in the general sense.

    The work-AI balance

    AI and machine learning are already with us in more ways than most of us are aware. A modern motor car can now drive itself with minimal human input, and these abilities are no longer just experimental, becoming increasingly common on all cars. Navigation systems use AI to determine route choices in the light of current traffic congestion. Border controls use iris recognition to match passport data with the person. Airlines price their seating dynamically, and AI is increasingly used for health diagnosis, detecting early signs of cancer being one example. Hidden from us, businesses are increasingly using AI embedded in their internal systems to deliver services more efficiently. AI and machine learning are rapidly becoming ubiquitous.

    These applications are all narrow in scope, in the sense they perform specific tasks that would require intelligence in a human. They involve one or two categories of data and often both, depending on the application. The first type is general data, such as that used to generate weather and price forecasts, the second being personal to individuals.

    Privacy laws for personal data are becoming more and more restrictive, as governments clamp down on their use. The more aggressively governments do this, the less flexibility a business has in devising AI solutions for those whose data they use. Therefore, a government which takes account of both personal privacy issues and the benefits of narrow-scope AI is likely to see more economic advancement in this field than one that fails to make the distinction. The British and American governments appear to be friendlier to the leaders in the field in this respect than the EU. The EU has fined nearly all the big US tech companies, often on questionable grounds, hardly displaying a constructive attitude to future technological development. And while there are pockets of entrepreneurship in Continental Europe, they come nowhere near competing with the twin nexus of London and Oxford.

    This may be important, post Brexit. Last month, the UK Government announced a £1bn investment programme with the ambition to make Britain the best place to start and grow an AI business. Meanwhile, the EU’s attitude is broadly parochial, protectionist, anti-change and appears to be particularly antagonistic against the large American corporations that have done so much to advance AI.

    AI is becoming critical for job creation. Every technological change in recorded history has been condemned in advance as destroying jobs, and every technological change has ended up creating them instead and improving both the quality of life and earnings of the average person. There’s no reason to think that AI will be any different. It is that unmeasurable thing, called progress, that ensures jobs are created, and job creation is always the result of positive change.

    Like nearly every other invention deployed for the ultimate benefit of the consumer, AI is a creature of the private sector, not government. It is never the function of a democratic government to innovate, so it must resist the temptation to prevent change arising from the private sector, particularly when it comes to protecting jobs. Furthermore, unnecessary regulation serves to hand progress in AI on a plate to other jurisdictions, such as China, whose government is semi-entrepreneurial and is aggressively developing and deploying AI for its own national interest.

    Those who have a limited grasp of free markets fail to understand that AI, in the narrow sense we are addressing here, will produce its own solutions to concerns over data and automation. For example, Sir Tim Berners-Lee is currently developing with MIT a project to result in “true data ownership as well as improved privacy”, which if successful will not only make recent privacy regulation redundant, but also address the use of personal data by unscrupulous operators exploiting loopholes in the regulations, and ensure the jurisdictional limits of the law can no longer be exploited.

    The balance between work and AI, so long as governments take a minimalist approach to regulation, promises to be enormously beneficial to ordinary people, improving life-quality, much as the data revolution through the internet has done over the last twenty-five years. We cannot forecast the precise outcome, because the development of new technologies is always progressive in nature, with one step leading to others not yet in view. However, the limitation of AI so far has been its application is always narrow in context, for the ultimate benefit of consumers. The application of AI in the general sense, where computers and robots acquire the ability to control humans in a nightmarish brave new world is perhaps what frightens the uninformed, with comments such as, “where will it all end?” This is our next topic.

    General AI

    All AI has been developed for applications in the narrow sense, in other words to perform specific tasks intelligently. By intelligently, we refer to machine learning and deep learning applied in a specific context only. A computer can now beat a chess grandmaster, and in a more recent achievement DeepMind, a UK-based Google subsidiary, mastered the game of Go.

    These achievements suggest that AI is now superior to the human mind, but this is only true for defined tasks. So far, little or no progress has been made in AI for non-specific, or general applications. This could be partly because there is little demand for a machine with non-specific applications, or the data and processing required is uneconomically substantial. Perhaps it is a question for the next generation of AI, which might attempt the algorithms. However, the practical hurdles are one thing, and whether it can ever be achieved is essentially a philosophical question.

    There is a clash of sciences involved, between the world of physics, which works to rules, formulae and laws, and human nature, which is only guided by them. Machine and deep learning relies on continual updating from historic data to detect patterns of human behaviour from which outcomes can be forecast. The fact that machines have to continually learn from new inputs tells us that AI is in a sense a misnomer: Alan Turing’s test, can machines think, is and always should be answered this way: they only appear to think.

    This is a vital distinction. Yes, we all use data and experience to help form our decisions, and yes, deep learning allows a machine to always process that information better than a human. But where the two diverge is over choice. A machine must always choose a true/false output from all its inputs. A human always has a choice, which when taken may appear irrational to an observer. And we can then ask the question, is it the chooser or the observer who is irrational? To make this point another way, if the machine makes a choice that a human does not accept, the human can ignore it, use it as a basis for making an entirely different choice, or even switch the machine off.

    This is the fundamental difference between machine learning and human thought processes. A machine produces outputs that are essentially binary: act or not act, turn inputs into an image which is recognised or not recognised, and so on. A human can be logical, illogical or even a combination of the two, and is rarely tied to binary outcomes.

    For these reasons we can be confident that machines will never take us over, in the sense that is often predicted in science fiction. But this still leaves the unanswered question as to why is it that algorithms are so successful in trading financial instruments, which involves forecasting the human action that sets tomorrows prices. Far from being proof of a machine’s intellectual superiority, it provides a good example of the difference between human intelligence and AI, and the latter’s limitations.

    Computer, or algorithmic trading comes in two different objectives in mind. There is the trading that involves dealing at a human’s behest, such as rebalancing an index-tracker, or reallocating ETF inflows and outflows to and from investments is accordance with the objective. We will put this mechanical function to one sides. Alternatively, it is used for automated trading for profit, which is where the controversy lies.

    Automated trading is not intelligent in the human sense, being based on rules applied to historic data, continually modified as new data is added. It assumes that past trading patterns will be repeated, and then through the magic of electronics beats slower human thinkers and rival machines by placing orders and having them executed in milliseconds. Humans trading involves their experience, pattern recognition, factors external to the price such as news, innate ability and emotion. The combination of these factors makes human performance both successful and unsuccessful and introduces intuition. The strength and success of computer trading is down to the lack of human factors in securities trading, not because it replicates them.

    The increasing presence of computer trading in markets probably extends cyclical trends further into overvaluation and undervaluation territories than would otherwise be the case. This statement is conditioned by the lack of firm counter-factual evidence to prove it, but if a significant portion of total trading in a particular instrument is conducted purely on an extension of past trends, this seems likely. In other words, AI ends up driving earlier AI-driven prices, reducing the human element in pricing instead of forecasting it.

    The wider implications of these distortions are beyond the scope of this article, which is to debate whether AI is a boon or a threat. We have established that AI and machine learning is and will be an enormous assistance to mankind, and that the fears of a brave new world where machines are the masters and humans the slaves is incompatible with science. Fears over job losses from AI, in common with fears over job security with all pervious technological developments, are misplaced.

    And if Alan Turin were alive today, it would be interesting to know if his question, can machines think, has been answered to his satisfaction. The evidence is it has not and perhaps never will be.

  • When Money Dies: In Venezuela, A Haircut Costs 5 Bananas And 2 Eggs

    For Venezuela’s economy, the ascent into socialist paradise did not turn out quite as planned: in fact, under the Maduro regime, the country with the world’s biggest petroleum reserves somehow reversed course, and crashed through every single circle of economic hell, and now that its hyperinflation has hit levels that would make even Mugabe and Rudy von Havenstein blush, all that’s left is barter.

    And, as Fabiola Zerpa explains as part of Bloomberg’s fascinating “Life in Caracas” series, i.e., watching economic and social collapse in real-time, in Venezuela, a haircut now costs 5 bananas and 2 eggs.

    Read on for what really happens when money dies, coming to a banana monetary regime near you in the near future.

    In Venezuela, a Haircut Costs 5 Bananas and 2 Eggs

    The other day, I made a baguette-for-parking swap. It worked out brilliantly

    I had time but, as usual, no bolivars. The attendant at the cash-only lot had some bills but no chance to leave his post during the fleeting moments the bakery nearby put his favorite bread on sale. The deal: He let me leave my car, and I came back with an extra loaf, acquired with my debit card. He reimbursed me—giving me a bonus of spare change for my pocket.

    That’s how we make do in our collapsing economy. If somebody has lots of one thing and too little of another, an arrangement can be made. I’ve exchanged corn meal for rice with friends from high school, eggs for cooking oil with my sister-in-law. Street vendors barter, too, taking, say, a kilo of sugar as payment for one of flour. There are Facebook pages and chat-room groups devoted to the swap-ability of everything from toothpaste to baby formula.

    Amid widespread food shortages, street vendors are selling small portions of groceries. Photographer: Carlos Becerra/Bloomberg

    A barber in the countryside cuts hair for yuccas, bananas or eggs. Moto-taxi drivers will get you where you need to go for carton of cigarettes. The owners of one of my favorite Mexican restaurants offer a plate of burritos, enchiladas, tamal and tacos in return for a few packages of paper napkins. At a fast-food joint near my office, the guy working the register let me walk away with a carry-out order of chicken, rice and vegetables without paying the other day, relying on my promise to come back with the 800,000 bolivars.

    Acting on that kind of trust was unheard of just a few years ago. Charity is also something new. I didn’t grow up with the traditions of canned-food drives and volunteerism that are common in the U.S. Now parents from my kids’ school collect clothes for the poor, and neighbors gather toys for a children’s hospital. My friend Lidia, a property-rights lawyer, delivers homemade soup to the homeless.

    I like to think of all of this as a noble expression of solidarity, as evidence of the decency of my fellow caraquenos at a time of mind-numbing shortages of basic goods and exploding inflation. I know that in most cases the motivation is necessity, even desperation. But that’s all right. Handing that freshly baked baguette to the parking lot attendant made both of us smile, even if for just a second.

    * * *

    For more true stories on daily life in Venezuela read:

  • Happy Birthday Karl: Top 10 Goals Of Marx' Manifesto Accomplished In America

    By Joe Jarvis Via The Daily Bell

    Plenty of stupid ideas kill people. But one man’s stupid ideas have killed over a hundred million people.

    Karl Marx was born 200 years ago today. And despite the utter failure of his communist philosophy in practice, the cult lives on. Still people want to try again… this time they will get it right.

    Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels originally published The Communist Manifesto in 1848. It laid out the beliefs and action plan of the Communist Party. The goal was to get communists of every nationality to rise up and unite to overthrow their “capitalist oppressors.”

    Little did they know their words would be used by the likes of Stalin and Mao as justification for over 100 million murders meant to supposedly move society forward.

    In America, the goals of the communists have crept their way into society with little fanfare. Many people have no idea that public schools, the graduated income tax, and even a central state-controlled bank (like the Federal Reserve) were tenets of the Communist Manifesto.

    The points are boiled down in one section of the manifesto to a list of ten main goals. These are the goals, in Marx and Engels’ own words, followed by an analysis of how deeply they have seeped into the United States governing structure.

    “1. Abolition of all public land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.”

    Also known as property taxes. Can you really say you own land if you must pay the government every year in order to keep it? Fail to pay your rent, and they will eventually confiscate “your” land. This money is then used for “public purposes” like public schools(just wait for #10) and police, who will remove you from the government’s land if you fail to pay your rent.

    And if the local government can fine you for keeping a front yard garden, or backyard chickens, do you really own the land anyway? Sounds like the proletariat traded capitalist oppressors for government oppressors.

    The federal government owns outright 28% of all land in the United States, 640 million acres. This includes the Bureau of Land Management’s 248 million acre turf used to control or oppress political dissidents like Cliven Bundy. “The BLM is also responsible for subsurface mineral resources in areas totaling 700 million acres.” That means they control almost three times as much land as they own.

    Each state government owns an average of 8.7% of its state’s land. This source claims the feds own over 31% of the U.S. landmass, which brings the combined state and federal total ownership to almost 40% of all land in the USA.

    And let’s not forget about eminent domain, where the government can just take your land for “public use” (or public benefit) with “just compensation.” If the compensation isn’t just, simply take the most powerful government on Earth to court–courts that they own. I’m sure you will be treated fairly.

    “2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.”

    Even after the latest tax cuts, the federal income tax rates range from 10% to 37%.

    According to the Wall Street Journal, the top 20% of income earners in the U.S. will pay 87% of all income taxes this year. These people who earn $150,000 or more account for 52% of the income earned in the USA, but will pay almost all of the income taxes, 87%.

    The top 1% of earners– the evil bourgeois making over $730,000 per year–will actually pay over 43% of all income taxes this year.

    So 1% of earners who make 16% of the country’s total income will pay 43% of the total income tax.

    Sounds like way more than their “fair share” to me, but the communists won’t be satisfied until everything is owned by the state.

    “3. Abolition of all right of inheritance.”

    They want to fleece the rich one more time when they die, even though all that wealth was taxed already as income or capital gains.

    Estate Tax, or Death Tax, is one of the more egregious oppressions of the federal government.

    There is a hefty exemption–the first $11 million is not taxed. While that means few typical people will be affected, it still fits with the communist strategy of demonizing the rich.

    And every dollar over that exemption is taxed at 40%.

    When you think about it, $11 million is not so much money when you are talking about a business, even relatively small family businesses that might be passed down through inheritance.

    If a business is worth $15 million, the family of the deceased would owe $1.6 million. If they don’t have $1.6 million hanging around, they might have to dismantle the business in order to pay the taxes. That could mean a loss of good proletariat jobs and a hit to the economy.

    The same could happen to a piece of land or estate that has been in the family for generations.

    State level estate taxes add additional costs, sometimes with lower exemptions.

    But the communists are smart, they demonize the people they rob. So no one feels bad for “the rich” because they will have plenty left over when the government is done with them. Although that too could change…

    “4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.”

    Let’s start with the Exit Tax.

    Why don’t you just move out of America if you don’t like the taxes?

    Well, America taxes it’s citizens worldwide, even if they do not live or work in the USA.

    Why not renounce your citizenship then?

    That is one option. But it’s actually not free. In fact, the U.S. confiscates a serious percentage of property from emigrants.

    It is called the Exit Tax. It gets complicated, but basically, the government is going to tax you on your net worth, as if you just sold all your assets.

    If you don’t have the liquid cash to cover that, you would actually have to start selling assets–property, stocks, etc.–in order to pay the Exit Tax. Of course, you would be taxed on the income or capital gains first, and then would have to pay the exit tax with what is left over… The good news (?) is you would have less overall net worth to be taxed upon your renunciation.

    Okay, but again, a big part of being a communist is hating rich people. People with less than $700,000 of capital gains in their net worth are much less affected by the exit tax.

    So let’s turn to confiscation of rebel’s property that affects the poorest proletariat… civil asset forfeiture.

    This is often used again poor people who cannot afford to defend themselves in court. The police simply steal property or cash that they “suspect” was involved in some type of crime, without having to prove anything. You have to prove your innocence if you want your car, house, or cash back.

    So if cops think a wad of cash came from selling drugs, it’s theirs. If they think your car was bought with the proceeds of drug sales, maybe because they found an ounce of weed and some baggies, they can take the car, without charging you with a drug dealing.

    Police seized over $50,000 from a Christian Rock band that had collected donations for an orphanage. Between 2001 and 2016, “more than $2.5 billion in cash seizures had occurred on the nation’s highways without either a search warrant or an indictment.”

    And that’s not even counting the more than $3.2 billion the DEA has seized since 2007without filing civil or criminal charges.

    Just having cash is a pretty low bar to be considered a rebel. Then again, what should we expect from a communist doctrine?

    “5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.”

    I wonder if today’s communists are aware of this one. They can’t possibly think the Federal Reserve helps the proletariat, yet that is exactly what the manifesto describes.

    Some people might disagree that the Federal Reserve is state owned. Technically it has a private board, although board members are appointed by politicians. I suppose in that sense you could call it more fascist than communist–the government doesn’t own the bank, the bank owns the government.

    The Fed sets the interest rates, prints money, and finances much of the debt of the United States government. Without the Fed, it would be much harder for the government to control the people–the homes they buy, the loans they get, the interest on their savings, and even how much of that savings is robbed through inflation.

    “6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.”

    FCC, FTC, DOT, FAA, TSA, CBP–oh it’s an alphabet soup of communications and transport regulators.

    They regulate the phone lines, the roadways, air traffic, rails, mail and package delivery.

    This is nothing new. Around the same time, Marx was writing the manifesto, Lysander Spooner was doing something productive with his time. Spooner started the American Letter Mail Company to compete with the U.S. Postal Service. He undercut their prices and provided better customer service, but was fined and cited for breaking laws which protected the government monopoly. He was forced out of business in 1851.

    The government doesn’t quite have control over the internet, but they did create the conditions to allow a handful of companies control access to the internet.

    The NSA monitors every communication, and the Department of Homeland Security commissioned a database to track all journalists and media influencers who mention the DHS. Customs and Border Protection performs unconstitutional searches at the border,whether you are an American or foreign.

    And of course, you can’t go out in public without running the risk of being harassed by local, state, and federal police. You don’t have the right to travel without justifying every action to a police officer, while they often get off scot-free for murder.

    “7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.”

    The state has certainly dabbled in factory ownership, like the GM bailout. They control utilities like water and power. And they have certainly subsidized their fair share of business from oil and solar panels to sugar and corn.

    We can refer back to #1 to see how much land the government controls, often under the auspices of improving soil and protecting wastelands.

    Then there are plenty of government contractors which are basically the same thing as a government-owned company. If 100% of their revenue comes from the government, they are not a private company. This is especially prominent in the defense industry, which is where the term military-industrial-complex comes from. And then think about the roads the government contracts out to build.

    The government spends about 34% of the GDP every year. That is a significant percentage of the economy which the government owns.

    “8. Equal liability of all to labour. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.”

    Yes, the Communist Manifesto proposes enslaving all those unwilling to work.

    Now, it might not seem like the U.S. government forces people to work. But you have to make money just to park your ass on a plot of land. Local governments want property taxes, which means you must make a certain amount of money just to have a place to live.

    Otherwise, you could conceivably save up for a piece of land, and once you buy it outright, you would be done. But even renting has the built-in costs of property tax.

    And the fact that the government claims the authority to tax you on everything you earn basically means you have a liability to labor for the government if you want to labor at all.

    Most of us cannot go through life without earning something to pay for necessities. But we can’t just earn what we need, we must earn way more than we need because the government will take a huge chunk of our income.

    We tend to think about taxes as a percentage of our income. But what about as a percentage of our time? The government forces you to work as its slave from about January through April every year. In a typical career, you will spend in total more than 14 full years working as a slave for the government.

    “9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equable distribution of the population over the country.”

    The government helped create factory farming by regulating all the small-scale producers out of business.

    Reason reports that USDA regulations have forced small slaughterhouses to close in favor of large factory-style slaughterhouses. This might sound like a good idea at first. But consider that when one infected animal makes its way to a slaughterhouse, it can contaminate so much meat.

    Having many slaughterhouses distributed across the U.S. meant that any infections were localized, and affected far fewer people. Plus when the slaughterhouse is local, it is easier to know the owners and see the conditions for yourself. The animals are raised closer to home, also providing more opportunity for market oversight of the process. No hiding away from the consumers on a vast gated factory ranch.

    The U.S. government has long subsidized large crop producers, which makes it that much harder for smaller farms to compete.

    It started with the Farm Bill in 1933 and continues to this day.

    What we get is cheap, but unhealthy products. And even though the products on the shelf look cheap, we already paid for them with our tax dollars.

    The problem is, I don’t want to buy unhealthy things loaded with high fructose corn syrup. But my money will pay for that crap whether I like it or not. Then I have to spend my money on healthy items that are more expensive because they have to compete with subsidized products.

    That’s where the government incentives for factory farming have got us.

    “10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production.”

    This may be tenth on the list, but it is number one in ensuring all the rest fall into place.

    American communists got this goal in place just four years after the Communist Manifesto was published, with Massachusetts enacting the first compulsory public education law in 1852. After that, it was only a matter of time until the population was indoctrinated to believe whatever the government taught them.

    The book Teen 2.0: Saving Our Children and Families from the Torment of Adolescence delves in depth into the history and injustice of compulsory schooling.

    It was designed so that the state and corporations could work together to train an obedient workforce, with the public footing the bill.

    The point was not open minds and a desire to learn. The aim of the education was setting students up for whatever mediocre to low paying jobs the industrialists wanted them to fill.

    The communists succeeded in getting exactly what they wanted out of American schools. And today we see the growing gap between what people learn in school, and what skills they actually need for good jobs. The communists have got the American education system stuck in a stagnant philosophy of industrial labor.

    Of course, they did it with supposedly the best intentions. Sounds like a good idea to save kids from dangerous work. But in the process, they also robbed children and young adults of their autonomy and choice. They forced kids against their will into a government institution and set the course for their entire lives.

    And that is the most important lesson that the communists want to teach in schools. It is all about obedience to government.

    Karl Marx is like the anti-Midas. Everything his philosophy touches turns to shit. Is it any wonder that America is stagnating? You cannot grow with a communist philosophy. It doesn’t take into account the beautiful creative independence of individuals. It treats people like cattle. It robs people of the rewards of their labor.

    I rue this day, 200 years ago.

    You don’t have to play by the rules of the corrupt politicians, manipulative media, and brainwashed peers.

  • Russell Napier: The Rising Dollar Will Trigger The Next "Systemic Banking Crisis"

    Fresh off his successful call earlier this year that the US dollar would strengthen in the coming months, macroeconomic strategist and market historian Russell Napier joined MacroVoices host Erik Townsend to discuss why he favors deflation and why he has such a bullish view on the US dollar.

    Echoing David Tepper’s concerns that the equity highs for the year might already be in, and that a 10-year yield above 3.25% could lead to market chaos, Napier said he sees interest rates rising sharply in the coming months as the dollar strengthens – a phenomenon that will push the US back into deflation.

    Napier’s thesis relies on one simple fact: With the Fed and foreign buyers pulling back, who will step into the breach and buy Treasurys?

    The answer is – unfortunately for anybody who borrows in dollars – nobody. In fact, the Fed is expected to allow $228 billion in Treasury debt to roll off its balance sheet this year.

    Fed

    This “net sell” will inevitably lead to higher interest rates in the US, as well as a stronger dollar. And once the 10-year yield reaches the 4% area, signs of stress that could be a lead up to a global “credit crisis” could start to appear.

    We know what the Federal Reserve plans to sell this calendar year, $228 billion. We know what the rise in global foreign reserves is, and about 64% of that will flow into the United States’ assets. Slightly less of that will flow into Treasuries. $228 billion, at the current rate at which foreign reserves are accumulating, we are not going to see foreign central bankers offsetting the sales from the Fed.

    So that’s a net sell. We don’t know what that net sale will be, but it’s a net sale from central bankers at a time when the Congressional Budget Office forecasts a roughly $1 trillion fiscal deficit. This is the first time in my investment career that savers will have to fund the whole lot. And it’s perfectly normal that real rates of interest have to go higher to attract those savings.

    $1 trillion is still a large amount of money. It can come from anywhere in the world. It can come from outside the United States. It can come from inside the United States. But it’s a liquidation of other assets or a rise in the savings rate, which is necessary to fund this. Either of these things is positive for the dollar.

    And that’s a huge problem – not for the US so much as the rest of the world, where higher US interest rates could lead to a global credit crisis which Napier believes could begin in China or Turkey, then emanate out from there.

    One symptom of the rising dollar, Napier says, is it could force China into a corner and finally help China bears like Kyle Bass who have countenanced brutal losses over the past couple years as the greenback as weakened. While Bass has cut back some of his positions, he says he remains committed long-term to his bearish thesis. 

    So the strong dollar, if it continues and if it comes to pass, really could force China into a corner. That, combined with the trade tariff policies of the president, may be leading us to a more flexible exchange rate. Or at least what will be billed as a more flexible exchange rate but, for all intents and purposes, is likely to be a weaker Chinese exchange rate. So I was just going to read you the list of those emerging market economies where the debt-to- GDP ratio has been going so strongly that actually the BIS suggests there is a risk of a systemic banking crisis. China is top of the list; you’re absolutely right to point to China.

    But China isn’t the only economy that could be facing a financial blowup driven by a stronger dollar…

    I think there is definitely a role already being played by higher US rates. So if the dollar goes higher as well, it’s definitely playing a role in creating vulnerabilities. We’ve seen a couple of large Chinese companies unable to pay their US dollar credit. As I’ve mentioned, there’s a lot of Turkish companies that really can’t pay it. And that is already something to do with the rise in US yields. They’ve gone from incredibly low levels to low levels. But it’s enough at the margin when global debt to GDP is to shine the light on particularly vulnerable economies and particularly vulnerable companies.

    A strong dollar should be negative for global equities, Napier said. But the outlook for European and EM equities would be far worse than the outlook for the dollar if US interest rates climb above 4%.

    So all I would add – let’s say I’m wrong on US rates and these yields continue to rise, I think that’s particularly bearish for those outside of America who borrowed dollars, people we’ve already focused on. I think United States growth may be good. United States inflation may be rising.

    I wouldn’t specifically see any particularly bad credit issues in America. I don’t see it being anything like we’ve seen in the past. But outside of America, I think there would be an awful lot of pain going on as interest rates go higher and higher and higher. Remembering that, roughly, the European banks – I should say non-US global banks – have got a loan book in dollars of about 4.5 trillion.

    That’s a big loan book for people who don’t really take US dollar deposits. And the implications of higher US rates and a higher dollar mean that the pain may not be so America specific, but it could be very emerging market specific.

    Listen to the rest of the interview below:

  • Leaked Transcripts Reveal Courtroom Showdown Between Manafort Judge And Mueller Attorney

    Yesterday we told you about an intense courtroom battle that played out on Friday between the judge in Paul Manafort’s case and an attorney for Special Counsel Robert Mueller, in which the judge said that Mueller shouldn’t have “unfettered power” to prosecute Manafort for charges that have nothing to do with collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians.

    Manafort’s lawyers had asked the judge in the Virginia case to dismiss an indictment filed against him in what was their third effort to beat back criminal charges by attacking Mueller’s authority. In addition to pushing back against the Special Counsel’s argument for why Manafort’s bank fraud charges are related to the Russia investigation, the judge also questioned why Manafort’s case could not be handled by the U.S. attorney’s office in Virginia, rather than the Special Counsel’s office, as it is not Russia-related. 

    Today, a transcript of that hearing was leaked to Twitter user @Techno_Fog, a New York attorney who eloquently dissected the intense back-and-forth between Eastern District of Virginia Judge T.S. Ellis, a Reagan appointee, and Mueller attorney Michael Dreeben.

    The transcript reveals an unimpressed Ellis repeatedly pushing back against Dreeben’s attempts to tie Manafort’s bank fraud case to Russia, while an arrogant Dreeben suggests that the power vested in Ellis is dwarfed by the Special Counsel’s omnipotence. 

    Ellis then calls out the case as an attempt by Mueller to gain leverage over Manafort.

    “You really care about what information Mr. Manafort can give you that would reflect on Mr. Trump or lead to his prosecution or impeachment or whatever. That’s what you’re really interested in.” –Judge Ellis

    Ellis then points out to Dreeben that the Special Counsel’s indictment against Manafort doesn’t mention:

    (1) Russian individuals
    (2) Russian banks
    (3) Russian money
    (4) Russian payments to Manafort

    To which Dreeben looped back to the argument that “the money that forms the basis for the criminal charges” comes from Manafort’s “Ukraine activities,” which is tied to Manafort’s Russia activities (which still doesn’t answer the Judge’s question).

    Manafort’s attorney hit back, calling the Special Counsel’s arguments “absolutely erroneous.”

    Ellis has given prosecutors two weeks to show what evidence they have that Manafort was complicit in colluding with the Russians. If they can’t come up with any, he may, presumably, dismiss the case.  Ellis also asked the special counsel’s office to share privately with him a copy of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosentein’s August 2017 memo elaborating on the scope of Mueller’s Russia probe. He said the current version he has been heavily redacted.

    Without further introduction, Techno_Fog’s breakdown of the transcripts (with full copy at bottom):

    Read the entire exchange below:

  • How China Became The World's Number One International Financial Donor

    Authored by Valentin Katasonov via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    At the spring meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB), the head of the US Treasury Department, Steven Mnuchin, touched upon a delicate subject: the financing of IMF and WB members by China and several other developing countries.

    He called these countries “non-transparent creditors” that do not coordinate their operations with the IMF, thereby destabilising the international loan market. Mnuchin noted that this practice creates problems for the debtor countries when it comes to the debt restructuring process. 

    These arguments are a cover for the US official’s barely disguised irritation at the fact that China is going against Washington’s usual way of doing things on the international loan market, where it has reigned supreme for many years and directed the market using the US-controlled International Monetary Fund.

    Steven Mnuchin then implied that Washington expected Beijing to coordinate its loan decisions for certain countries with the IMF. 

    Here are a few figures to give you some idea of just how worried Washington is by Beijing’s active involvement in the international arena as a financial donor.

    The information is taken from a study by the AidData research lab at the College of William & Mary in America in conjunction with experts from Harvard University in the US and Heidelberg University in Germany. Data was gathered and analysed from a total of 4300 projects that received Chinese funding in 140 countries around the world. The time frame of the study is 2000­–2014 (fifteen years).

    The total amount of funding these projects received from China during this time period was $350 billion, and the scale of the funding increased steadily over the fifteen years, from $2.6 billion in 2000 to $37.3 billion in 2014. The largest amount was $69.6 billion in 2009. 

    The amount of funding given to foreign countries under various arrangements by the United States during the same period equalled $394.6 billion.

    This figure is slightly higher than that of China, but one should keep in mind that the volume of US funding did not increase as sharply as China’s. In 2000, the US provided $13.4 billion in overseas loans, which increased to $29.4 billion by 2014. In the final four years (2011-2014), China was already consistently exceeding the US in terms of the amount of overseas funding.

    There are qualitative differences between the international financing policies of China and the US.

    First of all, China focuses on credits and loans (repayable funding), with financial aid (non-repayable or partially repayable funding) playing a lesser role.

    For America, however, financial aid dominates.

    The authors of the study categorise as financial aid those agreements and projects in which the share of the grant exceeds 25 percent, while repayable funding includes those agreements and projects in which the share of the grant is less than 25 percent. The researchers have categorised the agreements and projects involving China where it has not been possible to determine the share of the grant as vague finance. The distribution of China’s international financing across the three categories for the entire period was (billions of dollars): financial aid – 81.1; repayable funding – 216.3; vague finance – 57.0. The structure of America’s international financing was (billions of dollars): financial aid – 366.4; repayable funding – 28.1. Thus financial aid accounted for 92.5 percent of America’s total international financing, but just 21 percent of China’s. 

    So how is it that China has managed to focus on repayable funding, i.e. loans? At the beginning of the 21st century, the country discovered a huge niche that wasn’t being filled by the loans of America, other Western countries, the IMF or the WB. Many developing countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America were in dire need of overseas funding, but were unable or did not want to meet the stringent conditions of the “Washington Consensus”. Washington’s approach was politically motivated, while Beijing’s was commercial. Beijing declared a principle of non-intervention in the domestic affairs of the recipient countries, and it turned out to be more appealing than America’s so-called financial assistance that was like free cheese in a mousetrap. What’s more, in the 2000s China was issuing loans at 2.5 percent per annum (far more favourable terms than were being offered by the West). 

    In its external financing policy, China focuses on those industries and economic sectors of the recipient countries that directly or indirectly boost the Chinese economy. So the distribution of China’s external financing according to industry and sector between 2000 and 2014 looks like this (billions of dollars): energy – 134.1; transport and logistics – 88.8; mining and manufacturing, construction – 30.3; agriculture and forestry – 10.0; and other industries – 74.3. 

    The geography of China’s external financing is also interesting. The following countries were the main beneficiaries of financial aid (billions of dollars): Cuba – 6.7; Côte d’Ivoire – 4.0; Ethiopia – 3.7; Zimbabwe – 3.6; Cameroon – 3.4; Nigeria – 3.1; Tanzania – 3.0; Cambodia – 3.0; Sri Lanka – 2.8; and Ghana – 2.5. And here is the geographical distribution of China’s repayable funding (billions of dollars): Russia – 36.6; Pakistan – 16.3; Angola – 13.4; Laos – 11.0; Venezuela – 10.8; Turkmenistan – 10.1; Ecuador – 9.7; Brazil – 8.5; Sri Lanka – 8.2; and Kazakhstan – 6.7. As can be seen, Russia is the biggest recipient of Chinese money in the form of repayable loans (almost 17 percent of China’s total repayable funding). 

    The main recipients of Chinese money include countries that Beijing is planning to make (or has already made) key players in the transcontinental “One Belt, One Road” project. China is too heavily dependent on its eastern seacoast and the narrow Strait of Malacca near Singapore through which most of its imports and exports pass. As an example, more than 80 percent of the oil purchased by China passes through this strait. The construction of trade routes through Pakistan and Central Asia increases China’s resilience to political and military pressure from Washington. The “Belt and Road” project will also allow Beijing to start using its enormous currency reserves (more than $3 trillion), provide Chinese businesses with orders, and support employment in the country. According to some estimates, more than $300 billion has already been spent on the project. And in the coming decades, China plans to spend a further $1 trillion on the “Belt and Road” project, creating an extensive transport and logistics infrastructure in Eurasia within the next decade. 

    In recent years, the West has surrendered its position as a lender in many Asian, African and Latin American countries, which has weakened its political influence significantly. But most striking is the speed with which China has come to the forefront. At present, China is issuing more loans to developing countries than the World Bank, and yet in the 1980s and 1990s, China itself was the biggest recipient of loans from the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. 

    China is investing large amounts of money in countries that, by Western standards, are considered to be, if not “pariahs”, then “despotic”, “corrupt” and so on, countries like Zimbabwe, North Korea, Niger, Angola, and Burma. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has said he likes Chinese money because “the Chinese don’t ask too many questions and they come with big money, not small money”. In North Korea, meanwhile, only 17 Chinese projects were discovered over the entire period, for which the total amount of funding was just $210 million. This picture may be incomplete, however, since information is highly classified. 

    In some countries there is intense competition for influence between the US and China. Pakistan is a prime example. In 2014, Pakistan was the third largest recipient of US money (after Iraq and Afghanistan). In the same year, Pakistan was the second largest recipient of Chinese money after Russia. 

    In 2015, Beijing began to have an additional influence by way of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). The authorised capital of AIIB is $100 billion. China, India and Russia are the three biggest shareholders with 26.06, 7.5 and 5.92 percent of the voting power respectively. As can be seen, China’s position is much stronger than, say, America’s position in the IMF and the organisations that make up the World Bank Group (the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the International Finance Corporation, and the International Development Association). America’s stake in these is around the 16-17 percent mark. 

    Beijing’s international finance activities should not be regarded as “anti-imperialist”, of course. In the countries that Beijing is starting to befriend, what is left of their local industry is crumbling under the pressure of cheap Chinese imports. The projects to develop deposits or build roads and other infrastructure facilities involve predominantly Chinese contractors and suppliers. As often as not, construction and other onsite work uses Chinese labour. 

    Finally, China is slowly introducing tougher conditions for lending money to other countries. The interest rate has risen from 2.5 to 5 percent per annum and there is already a sense that many countries will not only be unable to repay, but also to service their Chinese loans. Beijing is not worried, however: the deposits, real estate, infrastructure facilities built using Chinese money, and businesses serve as collateral. So it will all belong to China in the end. Then the competitive struggle between Washington and Beijing will become fiercer than ever.

  • Colorado Eviction Courts Overwhelmed As Housing Crisis Unfolds

    It is official. Consumers in Colorado appear to be tapped out.

    This comes at a time when the recovery is now tied for the second-longest economic expansion in American history. The stock market is near an all-time high, unemployment is the lowest in two decades, consumer confidence is beyond euphoric, and Trump tax cuts are stoking the best earnings quarter since 2011 — unleashing a record amount of corporate stock buybacks.

    While a real economic recovery could be plausible this late in the business cycle, the unevenness of the recovery has left many residents in Colorado without a paddle. Accelerating real estate and rent prices across Colorado are squeezing residents out of their homes at an alarming pace.

    According to ABC Denver 7, Denver metro area’s skyrocketing cost of living, stagnate wage growth, and lack of affordable real estate has fueled an enormous housing crisis — overwhelming the state’s eviction courts.

    Colorado Center on Law and Policy (CCLP), which has spent decades advocating for tenant rights, warns that an eviction crisis is underway in the Denver region.

    ABC Denver 7 said, “27 percent of all civil cases filed in Colorado in 2017 were evictions, which represents 45,000 cases.” In Denver alone, eviction cases accounted for nearly 18 percent (8,000 eviction cases) of all evictions across the state. Arapahoe County, the third-most populated county outside of Denver, experienced the most significant number of eviction cases at nearly 22 percent (10,000 eviction cases) in 2017.

    Jack Regenbogen, attorney and policy advocate for the Colorado center on Law and Policy, told ABC Denver 7 that most tenants are underrepresented in eviction court cases. In return, this has led to more evictions forcing tenants out onto the streets. He says about 90 percent of landlords are represented by legal counsel during an eviction process, but less than one percent of tenants have legal assistance.

    “Traditionally, Colorado has been a very friendly state towards landlords. We really need our policymakers to begin investing meaningful resources to address this issue,” said adds.

    ABC Denver 7 indicates that more than 50 percent of Coloradans are renting, and as court dockets continue to expand with evictions in 2018, the crisis is far from over.

    According to the Denver Metro Association of Realtors (DMAR) May housing trends report, the average cost of a single-family home in the Denver metro area edged up, as it hit $543,059 in April. More and more homes are listing in the range between $500,000 to $750,000 than all of the price ranges below $500,000 combined. A spokesman from DMAR said homes priced between $500,000 and $749,000, is now considered the “new norm.”

    All-Transactions House Price Index for Colorado

    “This demonstrates homebuyer demand remains robust,” said Steve Danyliw, Chairman of the DMAR Market Trends Committee. “As new listings poured into the market, buyers that were waiting for them quickly gobbled them up, driving the average days on market down to 20 days.”

    Danyliw, further said housing activity remains stable, but increasing interest rates could have an eventual impact on the real estate market.

    Evidence continues to build that housing affordability is getting worse, particularly for everyday Americans. Colorado is the latest example of consumers physically tapping out, as they can no longer afford soaring real estate/rent prices – which is now overwhelming state courts in Denver. 

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May 05

Today’s News 5th May 2018

  • What May 2018 Has In Store: It's Difficult To Understate The Looming Dangers

    Authored by Peter Korzun via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    The month of May is always associated with V-E Day. The sentiments of “never again” were strong 73 years ago, in 1945 when the UN was founded. Since then Europe has put a huge amount of effort into creating a unique security system to prevent armed conflicts. It was never perfect, but by and large it worked. Other continents used to look on with envy and try to establish security regimes of their own.

    Multiple agreements are still in force, working to prevent the worst scenarios, but today they appear to be somewhat forgotten and are failing to meet their objectives. Yet by no stretch of the imagination would anyone have imagined that May 2018 would be a month spent teetering on the brink of war, with the experts left trying to guess when it will ignite, how far it will spread, and how many actors are likely to be involved. It’s scary but that’s where we are. It’s never been this tense since the worst days of the Cold War.

    On May 2, Siil (Hedgehog), the largest NATO exercise to be held in the Baltics since 1991, began in Estonia and Latvia, involving 3, 000 troops from 16 countries. It will last until May 14. Estonia and Latvia border the Russian Federation. Latvia will host five military exercises in May and June. All of this activity is intensive enough for Moscow to interpret it as preparation for war.

    June will see large-scale BALTOPS and Sabre Strike 2018 exercises in the Baltics. Europe will host a US armored brigade – a force of at least 4,000 soldiers accompanied by about 90 Abrams tanks, Bradley combat vehicles, 18 self-propelled Paladin howitzers, and other vehicles.

    The largest-ever NATO exercise, Anakonda 2018, will be held in Poland this summer. This is the biggest event staged by the alliance since the end of the Cold War and will include about 100,000 troops, 5,000 vehicles, 150 aircraft and helicopters, and 45 warships. Such a huge force will naturally make Russia wary. The NATO Air Policing was stepped up last month. The alliance will conduct 80 joint exercises in Europe this year, mainly aimed at prepping for a war with Russia.

    This intensified training is taking place at a time when the Donbas conflict in Ukraine is really heating up. The escalation of tensions is coming on the heels of the US deliveries of Javelin antitank systems to the Ukrainian military. This is the first transfer of lethal weapons.

    On May 1, the US State Department released a statement announcing that the American military is shifting to a new phase in its Syria operation. The US-led coalition, the SDF, and its mysterious “local partners” are to be involved. Turkey, Israel, Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon have also been mentioned as having a role. The Islamic State has not been much of an issue for Beirut, but now Lebanon is very likely to become a battlefield that will draw in many actors, especially Israel and Iran.

    Officially the mission is intended to sweep away the remnants of the Islamic State (IS) forces, but that claim should be taken with a grain of salt. Whatever is left of IS is insignificant and can be dealt with without the help of the US-led coalition. The situation in Syria is very explosive now that the US has ratcheted up the tensions instead of pulling out as President Trump said he wanted to do. A wider conflict is right around the corner there. The US-led SDF and the Syrian regular forces have recently been involved in direct clashes — a very worrisome development and coinciding with the Israeli airstrikes against Syrian and Iranian forces.

    These war preparations are taking place at the same time that Prime Minister Netanyahu is accusing Tehran of allegedly cheating on the nuclear deal. The US was quick to claim that the evidence was “compelling.” The Israeli parliament has just voted to grant the prime minister the authority to declare war or to order a major military operation without the prior approval of his security cabinet.

    US President Trump is widely expected to decertify the Iran deal on May 12 and pay a high-profile visit to Israel when the new US embassy’s provisional site in Jerusalem opens on May 14. The opening ceremony will be the right place and time to announce new moves against Iran — a country that works closely with Russia in Syria and elsewhere.

    All the events taking place in Europe and Syria have a direct impact on Russia’s security. A spark is enough to kindle a conflict in Europe.

    The never-ending NATO exercises and other operations conducted right up against Russia’s borders are extremely provocative. A war against Iran in Syria appears to be almost certain, since Russian forces are deployed near Iranian positions. It will be next to impossible to strike Iranian or Syrian sites without provoking the Russian military into taking measures to defend itself. A single strike against Iranian forces could be contained but a military campaign against them will inevitably put Russian personnel at risk. Russia has some very formidable military forces positioned in Syria that must be a serious factor in any war scenario.

    Tensions are running high in Europe and a wider conflict could ignite at any time in Syria. In either situation it won’t be Russia that provokes the explosive situations that threaten to deteriorate into a full-blown conflict.

  • Facebook Co-Founder Wants To Slap $3 Trillion Tax On Rich To Pay For Universal Basic Income

    Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes wants to tax anyone who makes over $250,000 to the tune of nearly $3 trillion over ten years, then use the proceeds to provide universal basic income (UBI) to every working American who makes under $50,000 a year, including those providing services such as child care and elder care. 

    Hughes, 34, now devotes his time to evangelizing for higher taxes on the rich, such as himself. He’s proposing that the government give a guaranteed income of $500 a month to every working American earning less than $50,000 a year, at a total cost of $290 billion a year. This is a staggering number, but Hughes points out that it equals half the U.S. defense budget and would combat the inequality that he argues is destabilizing the nation. –Bloomberg

    Hughes, who has a related book coming out, has made tackling income inequality his top priority by partnering with the Economic Security Project – a major recipient of his philanthropic efforts. The group is focused finding solutions to provide “unconditional cash and basic income” in the United States due to the effects of “automation, globalization, and financialization” forcing the discussion. 

    The plan would essentially be an expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) for low-to-moderate income individuals and families.

    The Economic Security Project is a network committed to advancing the debate on unconditional cash and basic income in the United States. In a time of immense wealth, no one should live in poverty, nor should the middle class be consigned to a future of permanent stagnation or anxiety. Automation, globalization, and financialization are changing the nature of work, and these shifts require us to rethink how to create economic opportunity for all. –Economic Security Project

    While Hughes notes that the annual $290 billion annual price tag is half the U.S. defense budget, he contends that income inequality is destabilizing the nation – and that there is a “very practical concern that, given that consumer spending is the biggest driver of economic growth in the United States and that median household incomes haven’t meaningfully budged in 40 years,” a Universal Basic Income is vital to maintaining economic national security.   

    “Cash is just the simplest and most efficient thing to eradicate poverty and stabilize the middle class,” Hughs told Bloomberg at the Economic Security Project’s New York offices at Union Square.

    There are many ways to pay for a guaranteed income. However, I do think that the resources can and should come from the people who most benefited from the structure of the economy. We had tax rates at 50 percent for several decades after [World War II]. In the same period, we had record economic growth and broad-based prosperity. I’m not making the case, in the book and in general, that we just need higher taxes. It matters what our tax dollars are going to. Cash is just the simplest and most efficient thing to eradicate poverty and stabilize the middle class. –Bloomberg

    You can read the rest of Bloomberg‘s interview with Hughes here. 

  • In Bizarre Tweet, Elon Musk Threatens Shorts With "Unreal Carnage"

    Two days after the “most unusual conference call in 20 years”, in which Elon Musk cut off questions from Bernstein and RBC research analysts, the Tesla CEO’s descent into some “unstable genius” abyss is, unfortunately, accelerating.

    It started very late on Thursday Pacific time, when perhaps unable to procure ambien, Musk took to twitter (after spending the entire night in the factory) and in a series of disjointed, rambling tweets attacked the research analysts (who were merely doing their work, seeking more information on Tesla’s CapEx plans and Model 3 rollout) whose assault prompted Musk’s erratic behavior that led to a plunge in Tesla stock on Thursday, one Musk may have instigated himself after telling “daytraders” who can’t take the volatility to sell Tesla stock.

    In his first overnight tweet, in what would soon become a tweetstorm worthy of Donald Trump, Musk “explained” that he had cut off the sellside analysts because, get this, they were “trying to justify their Tesla short thesis” (both have Tesla as a Hold).

    The “dry” questions were not asked by investors, but rather by two sell-side analysts who were trying to justify their Tesla short thesis. They are actually on the *opposite* side of investors. HyperChange represented actual investors, so I switched to them.

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    Musk then doubled down in a later tweet saying “The 2 questioners I ignored on the Q1 call are sell-side analysts who represent a short seller thesis, not investors”

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    Then, even more bizarrely, in the very next two tweets Musk contradicted himself, saying the analysts were cut off not because “they represent a shot seller thesis”, but because they were too lazy to read the company’s press release, or “boneheaded” not to believe that a company which has delayed production targets every quarter for the past year, will be able to hits it ambitious goals.

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    At this point it is worth pointing out that there is no way Musk does not know that sellside research is fundamentally useless – that’s why the buyside does its own research – and only exists to facilitate meetings between asset managers and company management (which leads us to assume that there certainly isn’t a line of people waiting to speak to Elon). As such, taking the analysts’ questions as personally as he did merely indicates that there is something very troubling with Musk’s otherwise impeccably rational thought process.

    Going back to Musk’s tweets, for a second it almost appeared that Elon’s bizarre, childish tantrum may finally be ending when in response to a question on twitter, Musk admitted that “I should have answered their questions live. It was foolish of me to ignore them.”

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    The fact that it took Musk 48 hours to grasp this is by far the biggest red flag about Elon’s fragile state of mind. Had Musk simply left it at that, the whole bizarre episode may have been on its way to being forgotten, attributed to Musk’s occasionally infantile absurdities.

    Only it was not meant to be… and in the very next tweet Musk took direct aim at his perceived mortal enemies, the Tesla shorts, when he threatened that the “short burn of the century [is] comin soon. Flamethrowers should arrive just in time.”

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    At this point, just after 6am PT, the hyperventilating Tony Stark decided to finally go to bed.

    Unfortunately, any hopes the much needed sleep would have helped him see things more clearly were dashed when after waking up several hours later, Musk appears to have read an article that made him go apeshit.

    The article in question was from Barrons, and pointed out that despite “his tweet storm in which he defended his remarks and hit out against short sellers”, or perhaps due to, Tesla short interest just hit an all time high:

    Short interest in the stock increased by nearly 400,000 shares on May 3, the day after the report, bringing the total to more than 40 million shares for the first time in Tesla’s history, notes S3 Partners’ Ihor Dusaniwsky. Moreover, despite Musk’s remarks today and the stocks’ gain, shorts rose by half a million shares Friday.

    Adding insult to injury, author Teresa Rivas touched on a very sensitive topic for Musk – supply vs demand – pointing out that there may not be any more shortable TSLA shares soon

    All of which means that Tesla customers and shorts may have something in common, says Dusaniwsky: More demand than supply. Not all long shares are in stock-lending programs, and given the high short interest at the moment, that leaves just 6.5 million shares for expanded short positions.

    At this point, Musk, who over the past 72 hours has sounded like he is having an acute psychotic episode or merely a mental breakdown, again took to twitter and in his best Trump impression, let his fingers do the talking before his brain could stop them, and sent out another “message” to the record shorts, this time even more cryptic than before, saying “Looks like sooner than expected” and while it wasn’t clear what he was referring to, the context made it clear that this was a continuation of his previous tweet about the “burn of the century” headed for the shorts.

    He then clarified his hyperbolic threat: “The sheer magnitude of short carnage will be unreal.” and concluded with some friendly advice: “If you’re short, I suggest tiptoeing quietly to the exit …“

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    And then, in response to a Twitter remark which may or may not have been sarcastic, “You seem very concerned by shorts these days… That is very kind” Musk pulled out the noble humanitarian card, saying he just wants to help the shorts:

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    With that, Musk’s tweetstorm has – for now – concluded, although we doubt it has ended, because unlike Trump, Musk actually does respond to taunts and provocations on Twitter, and after this particular threat, the CEO of the company that just burned another $1 billion in three months will be bombarded with both.

    And while it still remains to be determined who will be the winner in the end of this increasingly surreal, absurd saga – Musk or his mortal enemies, the shorts – one thing is clear: things have certainly changed from the simpler days of “Stormy weather in Shortville …”

  • How Often Do Freelancers Get Paid Late? It Depends If You’re A Woman Or Man

    Submitted by Priceonomics

    It seems obvious that you should get paid for the work you do.

    Unfortunately that’s not always the case for freelancers. In addition to irregular income streams and projects, freelancers have to deal with clients that don’t pay on time. This makes an already hard job even harder.

    Freelancers assume late payments are a professional hazard, but just how common are they, and what factors influence whether a freelancer is paid on time?

    Bonsai, which provides business management and automation tools to 100,000+ freelancers, analyzed 3 years of invoicing data to find out. The invoices covered all types of work, from digital design and development to photography and marketing. That data includes demographic info on the freelancers themselves, as well as info on their projects and payments.

    Some of the findings weren’t surprising: 29% of invoices were paid late. 

    Other data points were more shocking: female freelancers were paid late 31% of the time, versus 24% of the time for male freelancers. We also learned that cryptocurrencies are terrible payment methods for freelancers, resulting in almost 3x more late payments than other payment options like bank transfers.‍

    29% of freelance invoices are paid late

    We started by looking at how likely a freelancer’s invoice is to be paid late. We counted an invoice as paid late as one that one paid even one day past the due date. Most freelancers give clients 2 to 4 weeks to pay an invoice once it’s sent.‍‍

    We found that 29% of invoices were paid after they were due. Over 75% late invoices were paid within 14 days of the due date, and 90% were paid within a month. However, even these delays could significantly hamper a freelancer’s ability to pay for necessities like rent and groceries.

    Clients pay late for many reasons. They can simply be busy, which affects all companies, from the bureaucratic slowness of large organizations to the hectic disorganization of small ones. Clients can also be bullies, who see freelancers as powerless to enforce on time payment. Freelancers can also be to blame if they don’t set and stick to a clear payment schedule.‍

    Female freelancers get paid late more often than male freelancers.

    However, certain factors influence late payments regardless of the freelancer’s abilities or client’s size.

    The most unfortunate of those is the gender of the freelancer. 31% of female freelancers’ invoices were paid late, while 24% and 23% of men and studios’ invoices were paid late.

    This effect persisted even when we controlled for the freelancer’s skill set or experience and client’s size.

    Want to get paid on time? Avoid cryptocurrencies.

    How a client pays a freelancer also significantly influences whether that invoice was paid on time. Payment via cryptocurrencies were late almost 3 times more often than those with ACH or bank transfer.

    These late payment rates were the same even when we accounted for the slower processing time of ACH / bank transfer (up to 7-10 business days) versus the relatively quick transfer times of bitcoin. Unsurprisingly, cash and check are also a slow payment method, given the friction needed for the client to withdraw cash or physically write and deliver a check. Common digital payment methods, such as credit and debit card via Stripe or Paypal represented the average.‍

    Freelancer Marketers are most likely to be paid late.

    Another interesting finding is how the type of work a freelancer does influences their likelihood of being paid late. While many would expect higher earning freelancers like software developers and designers to be paid on time, they were paid late 29% and 28% of the time, while more traditional freelancers like writers and photographers enjoyed relatively fewer late payments (26% and 24% respectively).

    There are several hypotheses for why freelancers or certain skills are paid on time more than others. It can do with the fact that writers and photographers have a more defined work product to turn over (a blog post or an essay), and can use that as leverage in payment. Designers and developers have also relatively higher earning than writers and photographers, so it can also be that they have more of a cash buffer and are more willing to let late payments slide. For more information, check our study on freelance rates to see how rates differ across skills, experience and locations.

    Larger Invoices Get Paid Later

    Lastly, the size of the invoice has a very clear and linear effect on its late payment rate. The larger the invoice, the more likely it was to get paid late. The largest invoices of over $20,000 were 3 times more likely to be paid late than an invoice of under $100.‍

    This likely has to do with the steps and authorization necessary for clients to pay larger amounts. Interestingly, we found little relationship between payment size and payment method. Some clients will happily pay a $15,000 invoice with a credit card, while other prefer a bank transfer for even $150 invoices.‍

    Freelancing can be a rewarding career: you get the flexibility to set you own path and control your destiny. However, these benefits come with risks, especially getting paid late. You can do things like avoid payment via cryptocurrencies or invoicing for large amounts at once, which make you 3 times more likely to get paid late than other payment methods or small invoices.

    However, some things, such as your type of work or even your gender, can be harder to change but just as impactful on your payment prospects. Unfortunately for freelancers, it’s not just the work you do, but how you charge and who you are, that determines whether you get paid on time.

  • UN Secretary General Warns Scrapping Iran Deal Could Lead To "World War III"

    UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres offered a chilling message to the world during a recent interview with BBC Radio: The risk of “World War III” breaking out in the Middle East is intensifying at an alarming rate.

    As we’ve previously speculated, the combatants in the conflict that Guterres envisions would be the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia on one side, aided by some of their allies in Western Europe, and China, Russia and Iran on the other. What’s worse, Guterres warned that the collapse of the Iran deal could be the catalyst for a military conflict that morphs into the next global confrontation.

    Unless the agreement is preserved, the world will likely descend into chaos, he said.

    “The risks are there. I think we need to do everything to avoid those risks.”

    “I believe the JCPOA was an important diplomatic victory and it is important to preserve it. I also believe there are areas in which it would be very important to have a meaningful dialogue because I see the region in a very dangerous position.”

    President Trump has the opportunity to avert this horrifying future, Gutteres said – all he would need to do is preserve the JCPOA until a better deal can be worked out. Perhaps the deal’s signatories could work out something similar to the “four-part” supplementary agreement outlined by Emmanuel Macron  during a press conference with President Trump.

    Gutteres added that while he understands concerns about Iranian influence and the country’s nuclear program, a reference to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent presentation about Iran’s alleged attempts to conceal a nuclear weapons program, the Iran deal is an “important achievement” that should be preserved.

    “I understand the concerns of some countries in relation the Iranian influence in other countries of the region. I think we should separate things. I think that this agreement is an important achievement. If one day there is a better agreement to replace, it’s fine, but we should not scrap it unless we have a good alternative.”

    During his tour of the West last month, MbS expounded upon the dangers posed by Iran and even went so far as to compare Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to Adolf Hitler.

    “Hitler didn’t do what the supreme leader is trying to do. Hitler tried to conquer Europe. But the supreme leader is trying to conquer the world,” he said.

    Of course, this hard-line stance hardly bodes well for world peace. While negotiations continue, it’s widely believed that President Trump will scrap the Iran deal on May 12 by refusing to renew the sanctions waivers – though he would then have a few options to continue with negotiations before the most draconian sanctions kick back in.

  • Peter Schiff Rants Bernie's Guaranteed Jobs Program Is "Utter Nonsense"

    Authored by Peter Schiff via SchiffGold.com,

    Bernie Sanders wants everybody to have a job with health benefits paying $15 per hour. Most people would like to see that happen. But Bernie is willing to put your money where his mouth is. He’s come up with a plan guaranteeing every American worker “who wants or needs one” such a job. Here’s how the Washington Post described the proposal.

    Sanders’s jobs guarantee would fund hundreds of projects throughout the United States aimed at addressing priorities such as infrastructure, care giving, the environment, education and other goals. Under the job guarantee, every American would be entitled to a job under one of these projects or receive job training to be able to do so, according to an early draft of the proposal.”

    According to a representative from Sanders’ office, the senator has not come up with a cost estimate for the proposal or decided how a government this is more than $21 trillion in debt would fund such a program.

    As Peter Schiff put it in his latest podcast, Bernie Sanders has come up with a lot of dumb ideas, but this one is probably the dumbest. 

    This is ridiculous. What an asinine idea… The fact that Bernie Sanders, who is a US senator, could propose such utter nonsense. I mean, we have senators who are basically complete ignoramuses when it comes to a basic understanding of economics or the role of government. Bernie Sanders may be a socialist, but the United States of America is not a socialist country. This is a socialist concept – that the government is going to employ everybody.”

    Wrap your head around this. Bernie could have been president. If the Democratic Party hadn’t been in the tank for Hillary, he might have won the nomination, and he may well have been able to beat Trump.

    So, he could have been president. A guy that thinks the government should employ everybody and pay them $15 per how. Think about how ridiculous this is.”

    Peter outlined a number of obvious problems with this scheme. In the first place, what are all of these people going to do to warrant a $15 per hour wage? A lot of them likely have no skills. Is the government going to train them? Are they going to get paid while they’re being trained? Who is going to assess all these people to determine what kind of job they should be able to do?

    And Peter pointed out an even more fundamental point – the goal of an economy is not just jobs.

    We don’t want jobs just so people work. The goal is the production – that is the product of those jobs. Jobs is a means to an ends. If the government hires a million people to dig ditches and then another million people to fill the ditches back up again, those are 2 million jobs. But we’ve got nothing to show for it. We’ve produced zero. So, those jobs are a drain. We are wasting resources. We’re wasting money. Nothing is being accomplished.”

    Some will argue the government will put people to work doing valuable tasks and making necessary products. But how will it know without a profit incentive? How do we know how to best use resources with no market-based information? It will end up being nothing more than a bunch of politicians throwing resources at pet projects that may or may not beneficial or even necessary.

    Here’s another question. What’s the motivation for the “worker?”

    If you’re working for the government and your job is guaranteed, do you have to show up? They can’t fire you. If they fire you, you’re guaranteed a job … No matter how shitty you do that work, you’re going to get that job. So, can you imagine the quality of the work that would be performed by workers who know that no matter what they do they can’t be fired?”

    The labor participation rate is at a very low level right now. You’re talking millions of Americans who don’t have jobs. Let’s say all these people show up for one of these $15 per hour jobs. How is the government going to pay for this? It will cost trillions of dollars. The feds can raise taxes. But if everybody is working a government job, they will be effectively paying themselves. When the government takes money from its own employees, it’s not getting money that it didn’t already have. The only real tax base is the private sector. And Bernie’s little scheme would wreck the private sector.

    Consider the impact on private employers. If you’re making $10 an hour working for a private company, wouldn’t you just quit and go grab a $15 per hour government job?

    If you’re a private employer, you’re going to have to pay your workers at least $15 per hour, probably more. If you’re working for a private company, you’ve still got to show up on time and you might get fired. So why not just work for the government where you can show up whenever you want. So, in order for a private employer to get somebody not to take a cushy $15 per hour, no-show government job, maybe they’ll have to pay $20 per hour to get somebody to actually have to do work.”

    Of course, private companies can’t just print money to make payroll like the government. They’ll have to raise prices or just go out of business. They will also outsource and automate, which will mean even more people needing a guaranteed government job.

    The end result of all of this would be a totally government-run economy.

    I think if this law were to get passed, pretty soon they would drive out all private employees. I think everybody would want to work for the government.

    There would be no one left working in the private sector. So, there’d be nobody to tax. So, that means all of these $15 per hour jobs with benefits would be worthless because you’d have nothing to buy with your wages because there would be no real productivity in the economy. We would have a complete socialist society or a communist government. Everybody would be working for the government. The government would have to decide what everybody does. They would be in charge of allocating all of the resources. You do this. You produce that. I mean it would be a complete command economy and it’ll be a complete disaster.”

     

  • More Than 4 Million Americans Have Lost Health Insurance Since 2016

    Even before the GOP killed Obamacare’s individual mandate back in December as part of their tax-reform plan, the number of Americans going without health insurance had been rising.

    Obamacare

    And now, according to a recent study, the number of uninsured US adults between the ages of 19 and 64 climbed to 15.5% in March 2018 compared with 12.7% in 2016. That’s tantamount to 4 million people losing insurance, according to CBS.

    The number of uninsured adults between the ages of 19 and 64 rose to 15.5 percent in March 2018, up from 12.7 percent in 2016. An estimated 4 million people lost individual coverage during that period, while the number of people with employer-sponsored coverage stayed steady.

    Adults with lower incomes – about $30,000 for an individual and $61,000 for a family of four – saw a much higher increase: 25.7 percent in March 2018 compared to 20.9 percent in 2016.

    Perhaps the biggest contributor to rising uninsured rates, according to the study, is the coverage gap, which leaves poor Americans in many states unable to afford health insurance. The gap first emerged in 2012, after the Supreme Court ruled that Obamacare’s mandate forcing states to expand Medicaid was “unconstitutionally coercive”.

    The biggest increases in uninsured rates in recent years have occurred in states that did not expand Medicaid, which shouldn’t come as a surprise.

    Another factor may be related to the so-called coverage gap. When the ACA was passed, it mandated that all states expand their Medicaid coverage, including increasing qualifying income limits. At the same time, the ACA ruled that people whose income fell below 100 percent of the poverty level would not qualify for the ACA’s government subsidies to help pay health insurance premiums. The assumption was these people would be covered by expanded Medicaid coverage, Collins explained.

    That plan went haywire when the Supreme Court later ruled that states were not required to expand Medicaid coverage but could do so voluntarily. As a result, people in nonexpansion states with incomes below the ACA subsidy limits often don’t qualify for Medicaid. Indeed, the survey found the steepest increases in uninsured rates occurred in states that did not expand Medicaid.  

    Collins predicted the rising uninsured trend is likely to continue. One reason: The repeal of the individual mandate, which required people to buy insurance or face penalties. The new tax law did away with that provision and eliminated penalties starting in 2019. Commonwealth found that 5 percent of people with insurance are planning to drop coverage once the mandate becomes obsolete. “That’s not a huge number, but it is something,” said Collins. 

    At least one former ACA antagonist is warning that the repeal of the individual mandate was a mistake. Tom Price, former secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, said during a recent health-care conference in Washington that eliminating the individual mandate would almost certainly drive up premiums. Last year, the CBO forecast that 13 million people would lose coverage if the mandate was eliminated.

    Of course, this trend can’t continue for much longer until Obamacare experiences an all-out collapse as insurers decide that it’s simply no longer worth it to offer health-care plans on the ACA’s exchanges. As premiums soar, more and more people will be forced out of the market, deteriorating risk pools and forcing insurance companies to reconsider their participation.

    In an interview last year, Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini warned about the impending Obamacare “death spiral”, saying “it’s not going to get any better; it’s getting worse.”

  • What Is The Government Doing To Protect Us From An EMP?

    Via SurvivalSullivan.com,

    An EMP attack is the most deadly doomsday proposition we could ever face. Few outside of the prepper community are even pondering such an end of the work event – and far fewer still are preparing to survive such a SHTF and the copious amount of domino mega disaster effects it would create.

    An electromagnetic pulse (EMP) is defined as a brief surge of electromagnetic energy and it can be the result of either man-made or natural disturbances. Electronics can be affected and in some cases an EMP can result in physical destruction of things such as structures and vehicles. After a nuclear explosion, the EMP will radiate abruptly, and is likely to cause unspeakable damage to electrical systems as unnaturally high voltage surges through valves and transistors.

    Let’s break down that very technical and scientific definition of an EMP into practical terms, shall we? The SHTF will epically hit fan in biblical proportion and could forever change life as we know it on planet Earth.

    And….it could happen any minute now.

    That, my fellow preppers, is the deep and dirty mega secrete neither the mainstream media nor government officials are paying enough attention to or want us to know.

    If you grew up watching the Little House on the Prairie and Grizzly Adams like I did and ever wondered what it would be like to live an 1800s style existance, you just might get your chance to find out.

    If (I really should agree with former DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano and say, “when”) an EMP happens, expect a scene like this to begin playing out in your neighborhood.

    An electromagnetic pulse, whether it is caused by an Earth-directed X Class solar flare or a more nefarious man-made attack, WILL fry out fragile and antiquated power grid, anything hooked to it during when the EMP occurs, and ALL sensitive electronic equipment,

    An EMP is a short, but very strong burst, of electromagnetic energy caused by a rapid and intense increase in charged particles in the ionosphere. The acceleration of particles can occur as the result of a solar storm, a nuclear bomb, dirty bomb or an a small scale, even due to a simple, yet strong, bolt of lightning.

    Once the ionosphere experiences a particle surge, a wave of electrical currents emerges and shorts out all, modern equipment which needs electricity to function – including the transformers are necessary to make power grids all around the world, work.

    An EMP disturbance has the capability to not only destroy sensitive electronic equipment, but can even burst power lines, down airplanes, and damage brick-and-mortar structures.

    EMP Classification

    We are all familiar with the government’s hurricane and tornado classification. The same type of scale also exists for electromagnetic pulses.

    E1 – This classification of an EMp is the most brief. An E1 typically lasts for hardly even a microsecond, but is still regarded as being substantially powerful and highly destructive. An E1 EMP would occur after the detonation of a nuclear bomb.

    E2 – This classification of an electromagnetic pulse lasts at least a little bit longer than an E1 and could be caused by a man-made dirty bomb depending upon its capacity, or a nuclear explosion. During a nuclear blast, what would most likely occur is an E1 level EMP would happen followed by an E2 class event. Our power grid might be capable of withstanding an E2 event if it is really as hardened as the government claims, but there is currently no known way to harden the electrical grid (or anything else, for that matter) against an E1 class EMP event.

    E3 – An E3 EMP event is less powerful than either an E1 or an E2. It can last for hours to days, depending upon the originating incident. This is the type of EMP disturbance that commonly occurs due to solar flares during the summer months.

    The Carrington Event

    When the most recent and only recorded EMP provoking solar flare happened in 1859, it was dubbed the Carrington Event. Richard Carrington, an astronomer, watched the EMP unleash its power through his telescope lens and documented the event.

    A monstrous power outage resulted, leaving more than six million people in the dark from Canada through New York to New Jersey. At the time, NASA experts proclaimed the solar flare possessed approximately one-third of the power that the Carrington Event carried.

    Telegraph lines, the most sophisticated type of technological equipment of that era, not only snapped and caught fire, even the papers and desks of operators also burst into flames.

    Scientists often refer to EMPs as a “transient electromagnetic disturbance.” The incidents can be natural disturbances due to solar flares or a man-made current used as part of a weapons system.

    Man-Made EMPs

    An EMP strike is actually more likely to occur than a nuclear bomb or a war because of money and power. Why spend billions on war, manufacturing weapons, training and dispatching soldiers, when you can discharge an EMP attack, wait a few months, and then survey the inevitable damage?

    By simply launching a few SCUD missiles (a storable-propellant, single-stage ballistic first developed by the Soviets) from a ship anchored off the coast, you could unleash a silent, quick, and clean attack on an enemy, without so much as a single bullet. Human nature and the force of evolution will take care of the rest, as populations become defenseless, weak, and increasingly desperate. North Korea claims to have the ability to launch such an attack right now.The bottom line is that an EMP assault is cheaper and less messy for our enemies than anything else.

    Following an EMP attack, financial and communication systems would fail. Transportation systems would derail. The unprepared portion of the population, all 325.7 million of them that are not preppers or already living off grid or on a sustainable homestead, will not be able to cope with the basic needs of daily survival.

    Depending upon the origin of the electromagnetic pulse, a man-made disturbance can stem from an electric, radiated, conducted electric current, or magnetic field. A nuclear EMP attack would be even more devastating than a solar EMP – or coronal mass ejection – CME.

    An EMP attack results when the enemy launches a nuclear bomb – from land or sea – into the Earth’s atmosphere, rocketing to a height of more than 25 miles. The detonation causes gamma rays to interact with air molecules, producing positive ions while recoiling electrons in Earth’s atmosphere.

    The positive ions take over the electrons and a gigantic pulse bursts out towards the Earth below. Simply put, an atomic reaction takes place and the electromagnetic pulse that is created scorches all the electrical devices within a vast radius, including batteries.

    Solar Storms

    The effects of a solar (geomagnetic) storm are often attributed to that of an electromagnetic pulse. While an intense solar storm could potentially damage huge segments of the country’s power grid, it will impact ground level sensitive electronic equipment that isn’t even plugged in. While the effects of a solar storm do match the scientific definition of an EMP, the response it triggers is much slower than the expected speed of a ‘pulse’.

    It is untrue that an EMP has limited range because it follows the inverse square law. This law is, in fact, irrelevant for most nuclear EMP occurrences. This is because, while the detonation of the nuclear weapon may be occur at a great distance, the E1 EMP is produced within the atmosphere, 12 to 24 miles directly above, in the stratosphere region, referred to as the source region by scientists.

    A Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) is a huge burst of gas released from the Sun.This is the organic, natural form of an EMP and it brings the might power to fry electronics along with it. It targets the power grid, blasts power plants, and sends surges of electrical current along the lines, damaging household appliances and simple electronics that are plugged in along with all sensitive high-tech devices.

    A CME lasts only a few hours, but if the Sun emits many of these in several directions, there’s more chance one could collide with the Earth. A CME will have global consequences, disrupting radio transmissions, blasting satellites, and endangering people travelling in airplanes and spacecraft at high altitudes.

    The power grid would only be temporarily disrupted by a solar storm, these types of occurrences happen with fair frequency during the hot months of summer – when you see your television experiencing heavy static and have patchy cell or internet service, a solar storm is likely the root cause. However, geometric currents, triggered by a solar storm, could eradicate much of the biggest transformers worldwide and recovery could stretch over decades.

    It’s only a matter of time before nature unleashes a solar storm. And next time, it could be a big one. Solar flares run in cycles with most scientists in agreement that an X Class Earth directed solar flare occurs about every 100 years. It has been longer than a century since the Carrington Event of 1859 – so we are long overdue for what we, as a society, are ill-prepared and ill-equipped, to survive without a traumatic death toll.

    What Will Stop Working After An EMP

    1. Lights

    2. Gas pumps – meaning tractor-trailers carrying food, water, and medicine will not be able to roll. Nor will emergency responders or the military once their generators and stockpiles of fuel run out – no vehicles with sensitive computer components will be able to move even with a full tank of gas because the EMP will fry the circuits

    3. ATM machines

    4. Cell phones

    5. Computers, laptops, tablets

    6. Televisions

    7. Radios that have not been stored in Faraday Cages

    8. Life-saving hospital equipment

    9. Air conditioners

    10. Electric furnaces

    11. Electric stoves

    12. Microwave ovens

    13. Power tools – not because of sensitive electronic components but because there is no electricity to provide fuel for their tanks or to recharge their batteries once generator power and stockpiles run out

    14. Water pumps, well pumps, and municipal water treatment and utility services

    15. Refrigerators – including the ones needed to keep medicines cool at pharmacies and warehouses and the coolers at grocery stores

    16. Internet

    17. and more

    Because we rely so much on modern conveniences, the sudden deprivation will mean the general populace will be thrown into a state of panic that will rapidly lead to violent civil unrest and the breakdown of society.

    What Other EMP Effects Can We Expect?

    While an EMP doesn’t harm the human body, (with the possible exception of people with pacemakers) one strategic strike launched over Kansas could cripple electrical operations in the United States. Basically, all telecommunications would fail and the country will be plunged into a 19th-century-era darkness with nationwide blackouts, because the power grid will go down immediately after the EMP hits.

    The intensity of the high voltage spikes produced by an E1 surge is based on several factors including location relative to the EMP surge, amount of shielding, as well as object size and energy status at the time.

    The E2 surge is like lightning, but weaker and relatively harmless. Electronic devices already damaged by an E1 are more vulnerable to an E2. The E3 is similar to a geomagnetic storm, lasting several minutes. Unconnected electronics won’t be damaged. Its primary threat is to the power grid, especially the larger transformers.

    Phone, cable TVs and electric lines are the most hazardous when an EMP strikes. External antennas and computer cables are next in line. Smaller electronic devices would be mildly affected and would probably stay intact. A cell phone or wristwatch may be immune to a spike, but only EMP-resistant signal towers will stay online.

    Planes will literally be falling from the sky after an EMP. Their highly sensitive computer components will fail and the approximately 7,000 planes flying above our heads across the country at any given moment, will crash and burn – and no one will be there to put out the flames.

    The spreading of fires from plane crashes as well as from survivors attempting to stay warm, boil water, and prepare food, will causes an insurmountable amount of damage to homes, businesses, crops, wildlife that will need to be hunted for food, etc.

    Shock, disbelief, and then panic will be the first emotions and reactions the general populace (and let’s face it, many areas of our government will be going through the same set of emotions as well) will feel. Once the full impact of the doomsday disaster beings to register, things will get even worse once folks know the lights are not going to come back on for at least months, but more than likely years…if at all.

    With no functioning ATMS, cash will go fast and essentially be deemed worthless overnight. A can of peaches or a bottle of water will become far more valuable than a $100 bill to survivors.

    When the SHTF, looting will occur quickly and bartering will replace cash transactions. Security systems will fail, leaving you and your home vulnerable to intruders because you cannot call 911 for help. You’ll need alternative methods to prepare and refrigerate or otherwise store food. Start canning, stockpiling, and preserving food before it’s too late.

    There are indirect and direct EMP effects. Direct, physical effects include damaged electrical systems. Indirect effects can be more severe and cause widespread chaos. And, the worst part is, it only takes a fraction of a second to fry all electronics.

    The indirect effects of a doomsday disaster, like an EMP, are referred to as “domino effects.” With the exception of a full-scale nuclear war, that is no other SHTF scenario that will bring out more devastating domino effects than an EMP.

    EMP Domino Effects

    1. Economic collapse

    2. Dehydration

    3. Starvation

    4. Fires – raging unchecked because the fire department cannot respond.

    5. Looting and general lawlessness

    6. Violent civil unrest

    7. Homelessness

    8. Disease – because trash will not be collected and human waste can no longer be flushed, we could have a plague on our hands within weeks. Treatable medical conditions will turn deadly, people with controllable chronic conditions will die due to a lack of medication, and serious medical issues, like heart attacks, will cause even more deaths as hospitals run out of generator power and because doctors will no longer have access to the high-tech tools they have come to rely upon. A pandemic is highly likely during such a long-term disaster.

    When both the United States and Russian government engaged in nuclear tests during the 1960s, the experiments definitely did not go as planned.

    The Star Fish Prime test of 1962 involved a 1.4 megaton nuclear warhead being launched over the Pacific Ocean by the United States government. The EMP pulses generated by the testing of the nuclear warhead were significantly more powerful and far reaching than the learned scientists of that era had anticipated.

    In Hawaii, more than 1,000 miles away from the test sight, street lights went out. The test results the scientists had hoped to review and learn from were rendered useless because the EMP event was so powerful it exceeded the ability of their equipment to measure.

    At the same time as the Star Fish Prime test, Russia was engaging a nearly identical nuclear experiment of their own – Test 184. Although the exacts details about the type of nuclear warhead used and other particulars related to the test are still unknown outside of our Cold War foe, diesel generators were damaged and a a shielded and underground power line 180 miles away from the test area in Kazakhstan.

    Are We Prepared?

    Some analysts and elected officials prefer to bury their heads in the sand instead of facing reality and hardening our power grid from an EMP attack.If you think the government has a ready stockpile of necessary parts tucked away in Faraday cages “just in case” think again. We do not even make the parts needed to repair our electrical grid in the United States. If the EMP attack is global, as would be the case with an Earth-directed solar flare, getting the parts we need from an overseas manufacturer will not be an option.

    How Can I Protect My Stuff ?

    During an EMP, electric fields, both non-static and static, are obstructed because electricity is directed around the mesh, producing continuous voltage on all sides but not the space in the middle. Cars and microwaves are NOT Faraday cages. As a rule of thumb, if you can listen to the radio or call your cell phone while inside any of them, they won’t work.

    To ensure that your electronics survive an EMP spike, they have to be housed inside aFaraday cage shield, preferably several nested cages. What is a Faraday cage? It is a low-tech cage, box, or can made of metal and lined with cardboard that houses sensitive electronic equipment to harden it against an EMP or CME. The components inside absolutely cannot touch for the cage to function properly.

    Michael Faraday, a scientist from England, invented a cage that is capable of shielding its contents from an EMP by rerouting the charge around the surface of the metal, in 1836. The more dense the metal, the better the contents in inside will be protected – that fact is why most preppers use metal trash cans as Faraday cages.

    How well a Faraday cage would work under real world conditions remains unknown because they have only been tested in laboratory simulations. But, it still remains the best shot at saving your handheld 2-way radios, batteries, spare vehicle parts, etc.

    There Are many opinions on whether or not these cages will work so… better safe than sorry.The mesh layer of conductive material in Faraday bags creates this protective skin.

    If you’re worried about EMP obliterating your comms, invest in a Surplus PRC 77 radio and an EMP-resistant vehicle. Short range comms, that utilize VHF/UHF radios, can be up and running less than an hour after an EMP strike, if protected. Long range comms will take several hours to recover.

    How well your vehicle will fare against an EMP will depend largely upon its age. There is a lot of debate about how old is old enough, when it comes to the durability of car parts from an EMP survival perspective. Some folks say any vehicle built prior to the early 1970s does not possess components with electronic components sensitive enough to be impacted by an EMP. Still others staunchly maintain a vehicle older than the 1950s or maybe the 1960s, will not still work after an EMP.

    You can turn your garage into a Faraday cage in an attempt to harden your vehicle, ATV, and other electronic devices and survival gear. If you own a metal pole barn style garage, simply line the floor with sheet metal and then place several layers of thick cardboard or plywood on top of the metal to insulate the vehicles or equipment from the impact of the EMP.

    To protect your electronic devices, you need to defend against the E1 phase, a surge similar to radio waves that penetrates ground-level devices such as power cords, circuit boards and antennas. The E3 phase, which travels through power and phone lines, is also worrisome. E3 energy travels over longer conductors, flooding connected equipment and causing a destructive power overload.

    Formulate Plan B for operating your home and business without electronics or the Internet. How will you manage transactions? Inventory stock? Accept payments? To be safe, prepare yourself now to conduct all operations manually and to do cash only transactions.

    What About Day-To-Day Power Surges?

    For day-to-day protection, invest in quality surge protectors for your electronic devices, an affordable and reliable precaution. You’ll need one that’s UL-listed with a voltage of 330 volts or less, as well as a rapid response time. Buy a computer with an Ethernet slot, or get yourself a dedicated Ethernet surge protector. For optimal protection, add an uninterruptible power supply (UPS), an effective but more expensive option.

    The UPS should be a double conversion supply tested to meet UL standards. While 60-90% of today’s vehicles are designed to withstand electromagnetic pulses of up to 25 kV/m, it’s always best to be prepared for the worst case scenario. If you know your way around cars, consider buying back-up modules for your vehicle’s key electronics.

    What Is The Government Doing To Protect Us From An EMP?

    Not much, is the short answer.

    While nuclear weapons are destructive enough to level entire cities, the resultant EMP from one would likely be its most devastating effect. In 2001, in response to concern that crucial infrastructure and even the United States military would not hold up against an EMP strike, the EMP Commission was created by Congress. President Obama disbanded the committee and the potentially society-saving information that would come out of it, not long after taking office.

    In 2008, the Commission delivered a report on the possible effects that an EMP strike would have on national infrastructures, recommending ways that the US could prepare, protect, and restore these if this kind of attack were ever to take place. Dr. William Forstchen’s One Second After was heralded on the floor of Congress by those elected officials and commission members who saw the writing on the wall and were urging, if not outright begging, for something to be done to protect the lives of Americans, our economy, and sanctity of this nation, from an EMP attack.

    Their pleas largely fell upon deaf ears. Several bills were written to address the power grid’s frailties and to develop a full and actionable plan to prepare for an EMP attack – and to survive afterwards, but they never made it out of committee.

    Why do perhaps the most important pieces of legislation introduced during our lifetimes keep getting buried? Disbelief such a SHTF event is really going to happen for one – but over money, mostly.

    Hardening the power grid and taking other necessary steps to prepare American for either a man-made or natural EMP attack would cost billions of dollars. Why don’t our public servants just stop sending our hard-earned money to countries they readily and loudly proclaim their hate for us and curtail the tens of billions of dollars sent overseas for charitable reasons and spent on studies about that place shrimp on treadmills? That is a good question for which neither I, nor those politicians who continue to ignore this looming and very real SHTF thread, have no reasonable answer.

    Final Word

    An EMP attack is a strong possibility in today’s economically-strained, weaponized world. It is a swift, deadly, and silent force that relies on the deterioration of civil society into chaos and darkness. While it may appear to be a perfectly normal scientific phenomenon, its effects on humanity will be crippling. How prepared are you for an EMP strike?

  • US Farmers Choke On Trade War With China

    In April we told you about how some of the “unintended consequences” of Trump’s steel tariffs, such as an Illinois farmer who put the brakes on a $71,000 grain mill, but had to hold off on the purchase because the seller raised the price 5% to account for the rising price of steel, or Iowa grain mill producer Sukup Manufacturing, which had to hike their prices for grain storage bins. 

    The Wall Street Journal now reports that the US-China “trade spat” is now affecting US exporters of soybeans, pork and other commodities. 

    Since early April, when China announced tariffs on some U.S. agricultural goods and threatened to target others, Chinese importers have canceled purchases of corn and cut orders for pork while dramatically reducing new soybean purchases, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data. Chinese importers’ new orders of sorghum, a grain used in animal feed, have dwindled while cancellations increased.

    The chill in agricultural trade is sending jitters through the U.S. Farm Belt, which for years has dispatched farmers on trade missions to cultivate the Chinese market. –WSJ

    “As the summer persists and if nothing’s been resolved, it will start showing up as a pretty big hole in U.S. exports,” warned Soren Schroder, CEO of Bunge Ltd., one of the world’s largest soybean processors and traders.

    Last Thursday, a ship bound for China carrying over 58,000 tons of American sorghum was diverted to South Korea after Beijing said it would levy a hefty deposit on U.S. shipments of the grain amid an anti-dumping probe.

    Importers now facing losses of millions of dollars on their cargoes are trying to resell the grain to buyers elsewhere but are being forced to offer steep discounts.

    Four cargoes have been resold to Saudi Arabia and Japan, and another is heading to Spain. If the ‘Peak Pegasus’ unloads in South Korea, it would be first of the Chinese cargoes to be resold in that country. –Reuters

    No date has been set in stone for the various tariffs China has threatened to impose, however senior US officials including Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer are meeting with Chinese officials in Beijing this week for negotiations. That said, even if they reach an agreement, the uncertainty created by the threatened tariffs has already done quite a lot of damage in the commodities sector.

    China spent around $20 billion annually on US agricultural products in 2017 – and their growing apetite for pork and other meats requires huge quantities of feed grain, such as the aforementioned diverted sorghum. China-based importers are holding off on new soybean orders from the US, including their usual advance purchase of this fall’s crops, as nobody wants to take the risk that a shipment will be slapped with a giant tariff by the time it is delivered. As such, China is buying more beans from South American suppliers, according to Bunge’s Schroder.

    Chinese buyers ordered about 255,000 metric tons of U.S. soybeans during the week ended April 5, according to the USDA, but new sales over the rest of the month came to about 11,000 metric tons, a sharp decline. Meanwhile, purchasers canceled nearly 76,000 metric tons’ worth of orders over the month. –WSJ

    “If [the Chinese] market closes, it could be devastating for local communities across the Midwest,” said Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) in a statement. 

    Despite the fact that US soybeans are around $15 a ton cheaper than beans from Brazil, a 25% tariff would cost Chinese importers around $100 a ton according to St. Louis-based trader Ken Morrison. 

    Ed Breen, chief executive of crop-seed supplier DowDuPont Inc., said Thursday that if China steps back from U.S. soybean purchases, growing markets like Mexico, Indonesia, Vietnam and Turkey would fill the void. –WSJ

    Following China’s tariff on US pork products on April 2, the USDA reported the largest weekly drop in net pork sales to the country since October 2016, and sales have declined further since then.

    Given expanding pork supplies—boneless hams in cold storage hit a record 86 million pounds earlier this year—and another big slaughterhouse set to open later this year, the industry has been aiming to sell more to China, not less. –WSJ

    “With the trade negotiations, a lot of unknowns with our future demand is clearly not a positive to the pork market at this stage,” said Jason Roose, VP of U.S. Commodities Inc., a livestock and grain advisory firm based in Des Moines, Iowa.

    Given China’s growing need for agricultural imports, some believe that China won’t be able to avoid US crops for long. That said, the biggest danger in this trade war is US farmers and agricultural companies developing a reputation for unreliability – prompting other countries to maximize their own crop production, according to research firm AgResource Co’s President, Dan Basse. 

    “Our biggest concern is the message this sends to the world,” said Mr. Basse, adding that “Brazil still has an abundance of land to bring into production, and farm profits there would rise to the chagrin of the U.S. farmer.”

    Trump might be wise to note that the very US farmers suffering the unintended consequences of the trade spat with China are the very same folks from he promised not to neglect.

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May 04

Today’s News 4th May 2018

  • Furious Migrant Mob "Forcefully Prevents" German Police From Deporting Asylum Seeker

    It appears that nationalists were on to something when they warned about “no go” zones in Germany, Sweden and other European countries that have taken in millions of migrants from Syria, Afghanistan, Eritrea and elsewhere since 2015.

    While progressive Europeans scoffed, a report by RT illustrates how law enforcement is losing control of some neighborhoods. In a shocking incident that unfolded in the town of Ellwangen in Southern Germany, police officers were forced to release an asylum seeker who had been detained and was set to be ejected from the country.

    Migrants

    The reason? A an angry mob surrounded them and began demand that the Togolese national be released in an “aggressive and threatening” manner.

    After failing to disperse or contain the crowd, the overwhelmed officers were left with no choice but to let the detained man go free to avoid “a drastic escalation of the situation that could occur otherwise.”

    At one point the mob swelled from 50 to more than 150 migrants. Just as violence appeared inevitable, the migrants sent a peace emissary who delivered a chilling message to the overwhelmed police: They could leave safely if they removed the man’s handcuffs and released him tot eh crowd within two minutes.

    Otherwise, the migrants would storm the gates of the ward. Following the incident, the man who had been detained has not yet been found.

    But perhaps the most shocking detail from the story was the response by the local police chief, who appeared to defend the migrants, saying they too appeared to be in an “extremely tense situation.” Though he also praised the officers for their bravery “under such exceptional circumstances.”

    The deputy head of the Aalen police department, Bernhard Weber, praised the actions of the officers “under such exceptional” circumstances. “I can only show great respect for my colleagues,” who were able to “keep a cool head” in such a situation, he said in a statement, apparently implying that, even though a massive breach of public order would justify the use of force by the police, it was not really necessary.

    At the same time, he seemed to seek to downplay the incident. “We believe that those who confronted [the police], were also in an extremely tense situation,” Weber said, adding that the migrants apparently “got carried away” by some sort of a corporate feeling and took the actions “they would have probably never taken following a thorough consideration.”

    The police chief admitted, though, that “it is clear that a state governed by the rule of law should not let itself be barred from enforcing this rule of law by an aggressive mob.” The police emphasized that it has launched a probe into the incident over the unlawful release of a detainee and a breach of public order.

    Unsurprisingly, the incident prompted an outcry from local politicians who told reporters that the migrants should be held legally accountable for their actions.

    The incident, however, provoked concerns among local politicians. “Attacks on police officers are unacceptable,” Uli Sckerl, a member of the regional parliament from the Green Party, told journalists. He also said that such behavior should be followed by legal consequences. “Frustration does not justify crimes,” he added.

    The faction leader of the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany party in the regional parliament, Bernd Goedel, condemned the incident by calling it the “state’s failure.” “If the authorities show that they can yield to pressure even once, then one will see the same situations in the future,” he warned. The leader of the regional parliament’s faction of the Free Democrats, Hans-Ulrich Ruelke, also described the incident as an “alarming situation.”

    The migrant crisis has grown so acute in Germany that last year Chancellor Angela Merkel was forced to walk back her “open door” policy and announce that Germany would limit the number of refugees it accepts to 200,000 per year (though she also recently said the country would let in an additional 10,000 who had been selected by the UN).

    Unfortunately, appalling incidents like the one described above aren’t unique to Germany. Last year, Swedish police told a journalist investigating the rape of a 12-year-old girl that they hadn’t started investigating the case because they “cannot cope” with the sheer volume of cases.

  • "It's Up To Europe" – Paul Craig Roberts On What Can Be Done To Save The World

    Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

    It is up to Europe whether or not the Earth dies in nuclear Armageddon.

    European governments do not realize their potential to save the world from Washington’s aggression, because the western Europeans are accustomed to being Washington’s vassal states since the end of World War 2, and the eastern and central Europeans have accepted Washington’s vassalage since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Vassalage pays well if all the costs are not counted.

    By joining NATO, the eastern and central Europeans permitted Washington to move US military presence to Russia’s borders. This military presence on Russia’s borders gave Washington undue confidence that Russia also could be coerced into a vassal state existence. Despite the dire fate of the two finest armies ever assembled—Napoleon’s Grand Army and that of Germany’s Wehrmacht—Washington hasn’t learned that the two rules of warfare are: (1) Don’t march on Russia. (2) Don’t march on Russia.

    Because of Europe’s subservience to Washington, Washington is unlikely to learn this lesson before Washington marches on Russia.

    Washington in its hubristic idiocy has already begun this march piecemeal with the coup in Ukraine and with its attacks on Syrian military positions. As I wrote earlier this week, Washington is escalating the crisis in Syria.

    What can stop this before it explodes into war is eastern and central Europe’s decision to disengage as enablers of Washington’s aggression.

    There are no benefits to Europe of being in NATO. Europeans are not threatened by Russian aggression, but they are threatened by Washington’s aggression against Russia. If the American neoconservatives and their Israeli allies succeed in provoking a war, all of Europe would be destroyed. Forever.

    What is wrong with European politicians that they take this risk with the peoples that they govern?

    Europe is still a place of beauty constructed by humans over the ages—architecturally, artistically, and intellectually—and the museum should not be destroyed. Once free of Washington’s vassalage, Europe could even be brought back to creative life.

    Europe is already suffering economically from Washington’s illegal sanctions against Russia forced upon Europeans by Washington and from the millions of non-European refugees flooding the European countries fleeing from Washington’s illegal wars against Muslim peoples, wars that Americans are forced to fight for the benefit of Israel.

    What do Europeans get for the extreme penalties imposed on them as Washington’s vassals? They get nothing but the threat of Armageddon. A small handful of European “leaders” get enormous subsidies from Washington for enabling Washington’s illegal agendas. Just take a look at Tony Blair’s enormous fortune, which is not the normal reward for a British prime minister.

    Europeans, including the “leaders,” have much more to gain from being connected to the Russia/China Silk Road project. It is the East that is rising, not the West. The Silk Road would connect Europe to the rising East. Russia has undeveloped territory full of resources—Siberia—that is larger than the United States. On a purchasing power parity basis, China is already the world’s largest economy. Militarily the Russian/Chinese alliance is much more than a match for Washington.

    If Europe had any sense, any leadership, it would tell Washington good-bye.

    What is the value to Europe of Washington’s hegemony over the world? How do Europeans, as opposed to a handful of politicians receiving bags full of money from Washington, benefit from their vassalage to Washington? Not one benefit can be identified. Washington’s apologists say that Europe is afraid of being dominated by Russia. So why aren’t Europeans afraid of their 73 years of domination by Washington, especially a domination that is leading them into military conflict with Russia?

    Unlike Europeans and Russians, Americans have scant experience with wartime casualties. Just one World War 1 battle, the Battle of Verdun, produced more casualties than the battle deaths that US has experienced in all the wars of its existence beginning with the Revolutionary War for independence from Britain.

    The World War 1 Battle of Verdun,which took place prior to the US entry into the war, was the longest and most costly battle in human history. An estimate in 2000 found a total of 714,231 casualties, 377,231 French and 337,000 German, for an average of 70,000 casualties a month; other recent estimates increase the number of casualties to 976,000 during the battle, with 1,250,000 suffered at Verdun during the war.

    In contrast, US casualties for World War 1 after US entry were 53,402 battle deaths and 200,000 non-mortal woundings.

    Here is the list of US battle deaths from the War of Revolution through the “global war on terror” as of August 2017:

    • American Revolution: 4,435
    • War of 1812: 2,260
    • Wars against native Americans (1817-1898): 1,000
    • Mexican War: 1,733
    • War of Northern Aggression :
    • North: 104,414
    • South: 74,524
    • Spanish-American War: 385
    • World War 2: 291,557
    • Korean War: 33,739
    • Vietnam War: 47,434
    • Gulf War: 148

    This comes to 561,629 battle deaths

    If we add the battle deaths of the global war on terror as of Aug. 2017 – 6,930 – we have 568,559 US battle deaths in all US wars.

    That compares to 714,231 casualties, from which I am unable at this time to separate battle deaths from non-mortal wounds and maiming from a single World War 1 battle that did not involve US soldiers.

    In other words, except for the Confederate States and native Americans, who endured enormous Union war crimes, the US has no experience of war. So Washington enters war with ease. The next time, however, will be Armageddon, and Washington will no longer exist. And neither will the rest of us.

    US deaths in World War 1 were low because the US did not enter the war until the last year. Similarly in World War 2. Japan was defeated by the loss of her navy and air force and by the firebombing of Tokyo and other Japanese cities, which required few US battle deaths. The nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were gratuitous and took place when Japan was asking to surrender. Approximately 200,000 Japanese civilians died in the nuclear attacks and no Americans except prisoners of war held in those cities. In Europe, as in World War 1, the US did not enter the war against Germany until the last year when the Wehrmacht had already been broken and defeated by the Soviet Red Army. The Normandy invasion faced scant opposition as all German forces were on the Russian front.

    If there is a World War 3 the US and all of the Western world would be immediately destroyed as nothing stands between the West and the extraordinary nuclear capability of Russia except the likelihood of complete and total destruction. If China enters on Russia’s side, as is expected, the destruction of the entirety of the Western World will be for all time.

    Why does Europe enable this scenario? Is there no humanity, no intelligence left anywhere in Europe? Is Europe nothing but a collection of cattle awaiting slaughter from the machinations of the crazed American neocons? Are there no European political leaders with one ounce of common sense, one ounce of integrity?

    If not, doom is upon us as there is no humanity or intelligence in Washington.

    Europe must take the lead, especially the central Europeans. These are peoples who were liberated from the Nazis by the Russians and who have in the 21st century experienced far more aggression from Washington’s pursuit of its hegemony they they have experienced from Moscow.

    If Europe breaks away from Washington’s control, there is hope for life. If not, we are as good as dead.

  • Taiwan Livid After China Secretly Installs Cruise Missiles On Contested Spratly Islands

    Tensions continue to flare up in the South China Sea, as Beijing has reportedly installed anti-ship cruise missiles and surface-to-air missile systems on three outposts in the region, as reported by CNBC on Wednesday, which cited sources with direct knowledge of U.S. intelligence reports. The missiles have reportedly been installed on Fiery Cross Reef, Subi Reef and Mischief Reef.

    Fiery Cross Reef

    The land-based anti-ship cruise missiles, designated as YJ-12B, allow China to strike surface vessels within 295 nautical miles of the reefs. Meanwhile, the long-range surface-to-air missiles designated as HQ-9B, have an expected range of targeting aircraft, drones and cruise missiles within 160 nautical miles. –CNBC

    As we’ve documented again and again (and again and again), China’s military buildup in the Pacific, particularly surrounding the Spratly Islands, a collection of small islands, cays and atolls in the South China Sea, is one of the greatest long-term risks to peace and stability in the US and many of China’s neighbors, who have territorial claims in the region that may conflict with China’s.

    Subi Reef, July 2012 vs. December 2017

    If confirmed, the installations would mark the first Chinese missile deployments in the Spratly Islands – a territory with claims by several Asian countries, including Taiwan and Vietnam. Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hya Chunying says that the missiles are required to protect China’s sovereignty.

    China’s missile placement comes on the heels of an april deployment of radar jammers on the Spratly islands, capable of scrambling military communications and radar systems used by US ships – a clear rebuke to the US and China’s neighbors.

    A US official confirmed to WSJ in April that “China has deployed military jamming equipment to its Spratly Island outposts.” Furthermore, the equipment was likely installed during the last 90 days.

    The U.S. assessment is supported by a photo taken last month by the commercial satellite company DigitalGlobe and provided to The Wall Street Journal. It shows a suspected jammer system with its antenna extended on Mischief Reef, one of seven Spratly outcrops where China has built fortified artificial islands since 2014, moving sand onto rocks and reefs and paving them over with concrete.

    China’s Defense Ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment. –WSJ

    The move allows China to further project its rapidly growing military influence in the region – most recently approaching the government of Vanuatu to build a permanent military base on the South Pacific Island nation.

    “Those who do not intend to be aggressive have no need to be worried or scared,” ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters in Beijing.

    China’s Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the latest report.

    The foreign ministry said China has irrefutable sovereignty over the Spratly Islands and that its necessary defensive deployments were for national security needs and not aimed at any country. –Reuters

    Mawanwhile, Taiwan called the new missile installations “irresponsible,” presidential office spokesman Alex Huang said on Thursday. Taiwan “will not bow down to pressure from Beijing” Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said, but “will work with friendly nations to uphold regional peace and stability and ensure our rightful place in the international community.”

    In response to China’s increased provocations in the region, Tsai Shih-Ying of Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, asking the National Defence Minister Yen Teh-fa for details surrounding Taiwan’s military program to procure a new modern main battle tank.

    Yen told Tsai that Taiwan’s military would soon make a bid to purchase M1A2 tanks, an American third-generation main battle tank — the most modern armored tank in the world, from the Pentagon in the second half of 2018.

    Yen also stated that the American tanks could help transfer technology to the island’s defense industry, Taiwan’s Central News Agency reported, as quoted by South China Morning Post.

    “The Taiwan Strait is very likely to replace the Korean peninsula as the hottest flashpoint in the region,” he warned.

    “In response to the changing situation, Taiwan’s military has also increased its combat readiness.”

    “In one or two months, China will hold more long-range military training and increase combined forces operations when engaged in such activities in waters near Taiwan,” Yen said when responding to another lawmaker Chiang Chi-chen about Beijing’s increased military exercises in the Taiwan Strait and the East China Sea.

    Greg Poling, a South China Sea expert at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies think-tank, said deploying missiles on the outposts would be important.

    “These would be the first missiles in the Spratlys, either surface to air, or anti-ship,” he said.

    He added that such deployments were expected as China built missile shelters on the reefs last year and already deployed such missile systems on Woody Island further to the north.

    Poling said it would be a major step on China’s road to dominating the South China Sea, a key global trade route. –Reuters

    “Before this, if you were one of the other claimants … you knew that China was monitoring your every move. Now you will know that you’re operating inside Chinese missile range. That’s a pretty strong, if implicit, threat,” said Poling.

    China’s increased presence in the South China Sea is “a substantial challenge to US military operations in the region,” says US Navy Adm. Philip Davidson, the expected nominee to replace US Pacific Command Chief Adm. Harry Harris. 

    In written testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, he writes that the development of China’s various forward operating bases in controversial waters appear to be complete. 

    “The only thing lacking are the deployed forces. Once occupied, China will be able to extend its influence thousands of miles to the south and project power deep into Oceania,” Davidson wrote. “In short, China is now capable of controlling the South China Sea in all scenarios short of war with the United States.“

  • Exposed: The Naked Truth About Robert Mueller

    Authored by Rep Louis Gohmert via Director Blue blog,

    Robert Mueller has a long and sordid history of illicitly targeting innocent people. His many actions are a stain upon the legacy of American jurisprudence. He lacks the judgment and credibility to lead the prosecution of anyone.

    I do not make these statements lightly. Each time I prepared to question Mueller during Congressional hearings, the more concerned I became about his ethics and behavior. As I went back to begin compiling all of that information in order to recount personal interactions with Mueller, the more clearly the big picture began to come into focus.

    At one point I had to make the decision to stop adding to this compilation or it would turn into a far too lengthy project. My goal was to share some firsthand experiences with Mueller — as other Republican Members of Congress had requested — adding, “You seem to know so much about him.”

    This article is prepared from my viewpoint to help better inform the reader about the Special Prosecutor leading the effort to railroad President Donald J. Trump through whatever manufactured charge he can allege.

    Judging by Mueller’s history, it doesn’t matter who he has to threaten, harass, prosecute or bankrupt to get to allege something or, for that matter, anything. It certainly appears Mueller will do whatever it takes to bring down his target — ethically or unethically — based on my findings.

    What does former Attorney General Eric Holder say? Sounds like much the same thing I just said. Holder has stated, “I’ve known Bob Mueller for 20, 30 years; my guess is he’s just trying to make the case as good as he possibly can.”

    Holder does know him. He has seen Mueller at work when Holder was obstructing justice and was therefore held in Contempt of Congress. He knows Mueller’s FBI framed innocent people and had no remorse in doing so.

    Let’s look at what we know. What I have accumulated here is absolutely shocking upon the realization that Mueller’s disreputable, twisted history speaks to the character of the man placed in a position to attempt to legalize a coup against a lawfully-elected President. Any Republican who says anything resembling, “Bob Mueller will do a good job as Special Counsel,” “Bob Mueller has a great reputation for being fair,” or anything similar; either (a) wants President Trump indicted for something and removed from office regardless of his innocence; (b) is intentionally ignorant of the myriad of outrageous problems permeating Mueller’s professional history; or (c) is cultivating future Democrat votes when he or she comes before the Senate someday for a confirmation hearing.

    There is simply too much clear and convincing evicdence to the contrary. Where other writers have set out information succinctly, I have quoted them, with proper attribution. My goal is to help you understand what I have found.

    ROBERT MUELLER – BACKGROUND

    In his early years as FBI Director, most Republican members of Congress gave Mueller a pass in oversight hearings, allowing him to avoid tough questions. After all, we were continually told, “Bush appointed him.” I gave him easy questions the first time I questioned him in 2005 out of deference to his Vietnam service. Yet, the longer I was in Congress, the more conspicuous the problems became. As I have said before of another Vietnam veteran, just because someone deserves our respect for service or our sympathy for things that happened to them in the military, that does not give them the right to harm our country later. As glaring problems came to light, I toughened up my questions in the oversight hearings. But first, let’s cover a little of Mueller’s history.

    MUELLER: THE WHITEY BULGER AFFAIR

    The Boston Globe noted Robert Mueller’s connection with the Whitey Bulger case in an article entitled, “One Lingering Question for FBI Director Robert Mueller.” The Globe said this: “[Mike] Albano [former Parole Board Member who was threatened by two FBI agents for considering parole for the men imprisoned for a crime they did not commit] was appalled that, later that same year, Mueller was appointed FBI director, because it was Mueller, first as an assistant US attorney then as the acting U.S. attorney in Boston, who wrote letters to the parole and pardons board throughout the 1980s opposing clemency for the four men framed by FBI lies. Of course, Mueller was also in that position while Whitey Bulger was helping the FBI cart off his criminal competitors even as he buried bodies in shallow graves along the Neponset…”

    Mueller was the head of the Criminal Division as Assistant U.S. Attorney, then as Acting U.S. Attorney. I could not find any explanation online by Mueller as to why he insisted on keeping the defendants in prison that FBI agents—in the pocket of Whitey Bulger— had framed for a murder they did not commit. Make no mistake: these were not honorable people he had incarcerated. But it was part of a pattern that eventually became quite clear that Mueller was more concerned with convicting and putting people in jail he disliked, even if they were innocent of the charges, than he was with ferreting out the truth. I found no explanation as to why he did not bear any responsibility for the $100 million paid to the defendants who were framed by FBI agents under his control. The Boston Globe said, “Thanks to the FBI’s corruption, taxpayers got stuck with the $100 million bill for compensating the framed men, two of whom, Greco and Tameleo, died in prison.”

    The New York Times explained the relationship this way: “In the 1980’s, while [FBI Agent] Mr. Connolly was working with Whitey Bulger, Mr. Mueller was assistant United States attorney in Boston in charge of the criminal division and for a period was the acting United States attorney here, presiding over Mr. Connolly and Mr. Bulger as a ’top echelon informant.’

    Officials of the Massachusetts State Police and the Boston Police Department had long wondered why their investigations of Mr. Bulger were always compromised before they could gather evidence against him, and they suspected that the FBI was protecting him.”

    If Mr. Mueller had no knowledge that the FBI agents he used were engaged in criminal activity, then he certainly was so incredibly blind that he should never be allowed back into any type of criminal case supervision. He certainly helped continue contributing to the damages of the framed individuals by working relentlessly to prevent them from being paroled out of prison even as their charges were in the process of being completely thrown out.

    Notice also the evidence of a pattern throughout Mueller’s career: the leaking of information to disparage Mueller’s targets. In the Whitey Bulger case, the leaks were to organized crime — the Mafia.

    One of the basic, most bedrock tenets of our Republic is that we never imprison people for being “bad” people. Anyone imprisoned has to have committed a specific crime for which they are found guilty. Not in Mueller’s world. He has the anti-Santa Claus list; and, if you are on his list, you get punished even if you are framed.

    He never apologizes when the truth is learned, no matter how wrong or potentially criminal or malicious the prosecution was. In his book, you deserve what you get even if you did not commit the crime for which he helped put you away. This is but one example, though — as Al Pacino once famously said — “I’m just getting warmed up!” 

    REP. CURT WELDON ATTACKED AND CRUSHED BY ROBERT MUELLER

    During my first term in Congress, 2005 to 2006, Congressman Curt Weldon delivered some powerful and relentless allegations about the FBI having prior knowledge that 9/11 was coming. He repeatedly alleged that there was documentary evidence to show that 9/11 could have been prevented and thousands of lives saved if the FBI had done its job. He held up documents at times while making these claims in speeches on the floor of the House of Representatives.

    I was surprised that FBI Director Mueller seemed to largely ignore these allegations. It seemed to me that he should either admit the FBI made significant mistakes or refute the allegations. Little did I know Mueller’s FBI was preparing a response, but it certainly was not the kind of response that I would have expected if an honorable man had been running that once hallowed institution.

    You can read two of Congressman Weldon’s speeches on the House floor that are linked below. After reading the excerpts I have provided, you may get a window into the mind of the FBI Director or someone under Mueller’s control at the FBI. The FBI literally destroyed Congressman Weldon’s public service life, which then foreclosed his ability to use a national platform to expose what he believed were major problems in the FBI fostered under the Clinton administration. Here is but one such excerpt of a speech wherein he spoke of the failure of FBI leadership, then under the direction of the Clinton administration and as came within Mueller’s control just before 9/11. Shockingly, the Mueller FBI failed to even accept from the military any information on the very terrorists who would later go on to commit the atrocities of

    9/11, much less act upon it.

    The U.S. gleaned this information through development of a surveillance technology called Able Danger. On October 19, 2005, Rep. Curt Weldon delivered the following statement on the House floor.

    Mr. Speaker, back in 1999 when I was Chair of the Defense Research Subcommittee, the Army was doing cutting-edge work on a new type of technology to allow us to understand and predict emerging transnational terrorist threats. That technology was being done at several locations but was being led by our Special Forces Command. The work that they were doing was unprecedented. And because of what I saw there, I supported the development of a national capability of a collaborative center that the CIA would just not accept.

    In fact, in November 4 of 1999, two years before 9-11, in a meeting in my office with the Deputy Secretary of Defense, Deputy Director of the CIA, Deputy Director of the FBI, we presented a nine-page proposal to create a national collaborative center.

    When we finished the brief, the CIA said we did not need that capability, and so before 9/11 we did not have it. When President Bush came in after a year of research, he announced the formation of the Terrorism Threat Integration Center, exactly what I had proposed in 1999. Today it is known as the NCTC, the National Counterterrorism Center.

    But, Mr. Speaker, what troubles me is not the fact that we did not take those steps. What troubles me is that I now have learned in the last four months that one of the tasks that was being done in 1999 and 2000 was a Top Secret program organized at the request of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, carried out by the General in charge of our Special Forces Command, a very elite unit focusing on information regarding al Qaeda. It was a military language effort to allow us to identify the key cells of al Qaeda around the world and to give the military the capability to plan actions against those cells, so they could not attack us as they did in 1993 at the Trade Center, at the Khobar Towers, the USS Cole attack, and the African embassy bombings.

    What I did not know, Mr. Speaker, up until June of this year, was that this secret program called Able Danger actually identified the Brooklyn cell of al Qaeda in January and February of 2000, over one year before 9/11 ever happened.

    In addition, I learned that not only did we identify the Brooklyn cell of al Qaeda, but we identified Mohamed Atta as one of the members of that Brooklyn cell along with three other terrorists who were the leadership of the 9-11 attack.

    I have also learned, Mr. Speaker, that in September of 2000, again, over one year before 9-11, that [the] Able Danger team attempted on three separate occasions to provide information to the FBI about the Brooklyn cell of al Qaeda, and on three separate occasions they were denied by lawyers in the previous administration to transfer that information.

    Mr. Speaker, this past Sunday on “Meet the Press,” Louis Freeh, FBI Director at the time, was interviewed by Tim Russert. The first question to Louis Freeh was in regard to the FBI’s ability to ferret out the terrorists. Louis Freeh’s response, which can be obtained by anyone in this country as a part of the official record, was, ‘Well, Tim, we are now finding out that a top-secret program of the military called Able Danger actually identified the Brooklyn cell of al Qaeda and Mohammed Atta over a year before 9/11.’

    And what Louis Freeh said, Mr. Speaker, is that that kind of actionable data could have allowed us to prevent the hijackings that occurred on September 11.

    So now we know, Mr. Speaker, that military intelligence officers working in a program authorized by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the General in charge of Special Forces Command, identified Mohammed Atta and three terrorists a year before 9/11, tried to transfer that information to the FBI [and] were denied; and [that] the FBI Director has now said publicly if he would have had that information, the FBI could have used it to perhaps prevent the hijackings that struck the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the plane that landed in Pennsylvania and perhaps saved 3,000 lives and changed the course of world history.

    Curt Weldon gave a series of speeches, recounting what he saw and what he knew, regarding the failures of the FBI and the Clinton administration to share information that could have prevented 9/11.

    Congressman Weldon tried to hold those accountable in the FBI and CIA that he felt had mishandled actionable intelligence which he said could have thwarted the 9/11 attacks. He recounted many examples of similar intelligence failures.

    In 2006, the Robert Mueller-led FBI took horrendously unjust actions to derail Curt Weldon’s reelection bid just weeks before the vote—actions that were later described as a “hit job”: “Each of Weldon’s 10 previous re-elections had been by sizable margins. Polls showed he was up by 5-7 points [in the fall of 2006]. Three weeks prior to the election, however, a national story ran about Weldon based upon anonymous sources that an investigation was underway against him and his daughter, alleging illegal activities involving his congressional work. Weldon had received no prior notification of any such investigation and was dumbfounded that such a story would run especially since he regularly briefed the FBI and intelligence agencies on his work.

    A week after the news story broke, alleging a need to act quickly because of the leak, FBI agents from Washington raided the home of Weldon’s daughter at 7:00AM on a Monday morning… Local TV and print media had all been alerted to the raid in advance and were already in position to cover the story. Editor’s note: Sound familiar?

    Within hours, Democratic protesters were waving “Caught Red-Handed” signs outside Weldon’s district office in Upper Darby. In the ensuing two weeks, local and national media ran multiple stories implying that Weldon must also have been under investigation. Given the coverage, Weldon lost the election… To this day, incredibly, no one in authority has asked Weldon or his daughter about the raid or the investigation. There was no follow up, no questions, no grand jury interrogation, nothing.

    One year after the raid the local FBI office called Weldon’s daughter to have her come get the property that had been removed from her home. That was it…The raid ruined the career of Weldon and his daughter.”

    Though some blamed the Clintons and Sandy Berger for orchestrating the FBI “hit job,” we can’t lose sight of the fact that the head of the FBI at the time was Robert Mueller. Please understand what former FBI officials have told me: the FBI would never go after a member of Congress, House or Senate, without the full disclosure to and the blessing of the FBI Director. Even if the idea on how to silence Curt Weldon did not come from Director Mueller himself, it surely had his approval and encouragement.

    The early morning raid by Mueller’s FBI — with all the media outside — who had obviously been alerted by the FBI, achieved its goal of abusing the U.S. Justice system to silence Curt Weldon by ending his political career. Mueller’s tactics worked. If the Clintons and Berger manipulated Weldon’s reelection to assure his defeat, they did it with the artful aid of Mueller, all while George W. Bush was President. Does any of this sound familiar?

    People say those kinds of things just don’t happen in America. They certainly seemed to when Mueller was in charge of the FBI and they certainly seem to happen now during his tenure as Special Counsel. It appears clear that President Obama and his adjutants knew of Mueller’s reputation and that he could be used to take out their political opponents should such extra-legal actions become politically necessary.

    To the great dismay of the many good, decent and patriotic FBI agents, Obama begged Mueller to stay on for two years past the 10 years the law allowed. Obama then asked Congress to approve Mueller’s waiver allowing him to stay on for two extra years. Perhaps the leaders in Congress did not realize what they were doing in approving it. I did. It was a major mistake, and I said so at the time. This is also why I objected strenuously the moment I heard Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed his old friend Bob Mueller to be Special Counsel to go after President Trump.

    ROD ROSENSTEIN

    I was one of the few who were NOT surprised when Mueller started selecting his assistants in the Special Counsel’s office. Many had reputations for being bullies, for indicting people who were not guilty of the charges, for forcing people toward bankruptcy by running up their legal fees (while the bullies in the Special Counsel’s office enjoy an apparently endless government budget), or by threatening innocent family members with prosecution so the Special Counsel’s victim would agree to pleading guilty to anything to prevent the Kafka-esque prosecutors from doing more harm to their families.

    AN ILLEGAL RAID ON CONGRESS BY MUELLER

    There is a doctrine in our governmental system that mandates each part of government must have oversight to prevent power from corrupting — and absolute power from corrupting absolutely. The Congress and Senate are accountable to the voters as is the President. Our massive and bloated bureaucracy is supposed to be accountable to the Congress.

    A good example would be complaints against the Department of Justice or, specifically, the FBI.

    If constituents or whistleblowers within those entities have complaints, a Congressman’s office is a good place to contact. Our conversations or information from constituents or whistleblowers are normally privileged from review by anyone within the Executive Branch. It must be so.

    If the FBI could raid our offices anytime an FBI agent were to complain to us, no FBI agent could ever afford to come forward, no matter how egregious the conduct they sought to disclose.

    Whistleblowers in the FBI must know they are protected. They always have known that in the past. As I learned from talking with attorneys who had helped the House previously with this issue, if the FBI or another law enforcement entity needed to search something on the House side of the Capitol or House office buildings, they contacted the House Counsel, whether with a warrant or request. The House Counsel with approval of the Speaker, would go through the Congress Members’ documents, computers, flash drives, or anything that might have any bearing on what was being sought as part of the investigation.

    They would honestly determine what was relevant and what was not, and what was both irrelevant and privileged from Executive Branch review. Normally, if there were a dispute or question, it could be presented to a federal judge for a private in-chamber review to determine if it were privileged or relevant. If the DOJ or FBI were to get a warrant and gather all of the computers and documents in a Congressman’s office without the recovered items being screened to insure they are not privileged from DOJ seizure, the DOJ would be risking that an entire case might be thrown out because of things improperly recovered and “fruit of the poisonous tree,” preventing the use of even things that were not privileged.

    FBI Director Mueller, however,, seemed determined to throw over 200 years of Constitutional restraints to the wind so he could let Congress know he was the unstoppable government bully who could potentially waltz into our offices whenever he wished.

    In the case of Congressman William Jefferson, Democrat of Louisiana, Mueller was willing to risk a reversal of a slam dunk criminal case just to send a message to the rest of Congress: you don’t mess with Mueller. That Congressman Jefferson was guilty of something did not surprise most observers when, amidst swirling allegations, $90,000 in cold hard cash was found in his freezer. As we understood it, the FBI had a witness who was wired and basically got Jefferson on tape taking money. They had mountains of indisputable evidence to prove their case. They had gotten an entirely appropriate warrant to search his home and had even more mountains of evidence to nail the lid on his coffin, figuratively speaking.

    The FBI certainly did not need to conduct an unsupervised search of a Congressman’s office to put their unbeatable case at risk. Apparently, the risk was worth it to Mueller — he could now show the members of Congress who was in charge. Apparently, the FBI knew just the right federal judge who would disregard the Constitution and allow Mueller’s minions to do their dirty work.

    I read the Application for Warrant and the accompanying Affidavit for Warrant to raid Jefferson’s office, as I did so many times as a judge.

    I simply could not believe they would risk such a high-profile case just to try to intimidate Members of Congress.

    In the opinion of this former prosecutor, felony judge and Appellate Court Chief Justice, they could have gotten a conviction based on what they had already spelled out in the very lengthy affidavit. The official attorneys representing the House, knowing my background, allowed me to sit in on the extremely heated discussions between attorneys for the House, DOJ attorneys, and, to my recollection, an attorney from the Bush White House, after Jefferson’s office was raided.

    The FBI had gathered up virtually every kind of record, computerized or otherwise, and carted them off. I was not aware of the times that the DOJ and House attorneys, with the Speaker’s permission, had cooperated over the years. No Congressman is above the law nor is any above having search warrants issued against them which is why Jefferson’s home was searched without protest.

    However, when the material is in a Congressional office, there is a critical and centuries’ old balance of power that must be preserved.

    The Mueller FBI, along with the DOJ, assured everyone that all was copacetic. They would ask some of the DOJ’s attorneys review all of the material and give back anything that was privileged and unlawful for the DOJ to see. Then they would make sure none of the DOJ attorneys who participated in the review of materials (that were privileged from the DOJ’s viewing) would be allowed to be prosecutors in Jefferson’s case.

    If you find that kind of thinking terribly flawed and constitutionally appalling, you would be in agreement with the former Speakers of the House, the Vice President at the time, and ultimately, the final decisions of our federal appellate court system. They found the search to be illegal and inappropriate. Fortunately for the DOJ, they did not throw the entire case out. In retrospect, we did not know at the time what a farce a DOJ “firewall” would have been. Now we do!

    MUELLER’S 5-YEAR UP-OUR-OUT

    In federal law enforcement, it takes a new federal agent or supervisor about five years or so after arriving at a newly assigned office to gain the trust and respect of local law enforcement officers. That trust and respect is absolutely critical to doing the best job possible. Yet new FBI Director Robert Mueller came up with a new personnel policy that would rid the FBI of thousands of years of its most invaluable experience.

    In a nutshell, after an FBI employee was in any type of supervisory position for five years, he or she had to either come to Washington to sit at a desk or get out of the FBI.

    In the myriad of FBI offices around the country, most agents love what they do in actively enforcing the law. They have families involved in the community; their kids enjoy their schools; and they do not want to move to the high cost of living in Washington, DC, and especially not to an inside desk job. What occurred around the country was that agents in charge of their local offices got out of the FBI and did something more lucrative. Though they really wanted to stay in, they were not allowed to do so if they were not moving to DC. Agents told me that it was not unusual for the Special Agent in Charge of a field office to have well over 20 years of experience before the policy change. Under Mueller’s policy that changed to new Special Agents in Charge having five to ten years of experience when they took over.

    If the FBI Director wanted nothing but “yes” men and women around the country working for him, this was a great policy. Newer agents are more likely to unquestioningly salute the FBI figurehead in Washington, but never boldly offer a suggestion to fix a bad idea and Mueller had plenty of them.

    Whether it was wasting millions of dollars on a software boondoggle or questionable personnel preferences, agents tell me Mueller did not want to hear from more experienced people voicing their concerns about his ideas or policies. An NPR report December 13, 2007, entitled, “FBI’S ‘Five-And-Out’ Transfer Policy Draws Criticism” dealt with the Mueller controversial policy: “From the beginning of this year (2007) until the end of September (2007), 576 agents found themselves in the five-and-out pool. Less than half of them — just 286 — opted to go to headquarters; 150 decided to take a pay cut and a lesser job to stay put; 135 retired; and five resigned outright.”

    In the period of nine months accounted for in this report, the FBI ran off a massive amount of absolutely priceless law enforcement experience vested in 140 invaluable agents. For the vast part, those are the agents who have seen the mistakes, learned lessons, could advise newer agents on unseen pitfalls of investigations and pursuit of justice.

    So many of these had at least 20-30 years of experience or more. The lessons learned by such seasoned agents were lost as the agents carried it with them when they left. In the 2007 NPR report, the FBI Agents Association indicated that the Five-Year-Up-or-Out program hobbles field offices and takes relationships forged there for granted. In other words, it was a terrible idea.

    The incalculable experience loss damages the FBI by eliminating those in the field in a position to advise the FBI Director against his many judgment errors, which were listed in the NPR article. But this was not the only damage done.

    If an FBI Director has inappropriate personal vengeance in mind or holds an inappropriate prejudice such as those that infamously motivated Director J. Edgar Hoover, then the older, wiser, experienced agents were not around with the confidence to question or guide the Director away from potential misjudgment. I also cannot help but wonder: if Mueller had not run off the more experienced agents, would they have been able to advise against and stop the kind of Obama-era abuses and corruption being unearthed right now?

    Rather than admit that his 5-Year program was a mistake, Mueller eventually changed the policy to a Seven-Year-Up-or-Out Program. I once pointed out to him at a hearing that if he had applied the Five Year Up-or-Out Policy to literally everyone in a supervisory position, he himself would have had to leave the FBI by September of 2006. He did not seem to be amused.

    One other problem remained that will be discussed in more detail later in this article. Before Mueller became Director, FBI agents were trained to identify certain Muslims who had become radicalized and dangerous. Mueller purged and even eliminated training that would have helped identify radical Islamic killers. By running off the more experienced agents who had better training on radical Islam before Mueller, “blinded us of the ability to identify our enemy,” as I was told by some of them, Mueller put victims in harm’s way in cities like Boston, San Diego and elsewhere.

    NATIONAL SECURITY LETTER ABUSES

    National Security Letters (NSL) are a tool that allows the DOJ to bypass the formality of subpoenas, applications for warrants with affidavits in support, and instead simply send a letter to an individual, business or any entity they so choose to demand that records or documents of any kind must be produced and provided to the sender.

    The letter also informs the recipient that if the he or she reveals to anyone that the letter was received or what it requires to be produced, then the recipient has committed a federal felony and will be prosecuted.

    It is a rather dramatic event to receive such a letter and then realize that this simple letter could have such profound power and consequences.

    The Committee in the House of Representatives that has oversight jurisdiction over the DOJ is the Judiciary Committee of which I am a member. We have grilled DOJ personnel in the past over the potential for NSL abuse, but both the House and Senate Committees were reassured that there were no known abuses of this extra-constitutional power.

    Unfortunately, the day came when we learned that there had been an extraordinary number of abuses.

    Apparently, some of Mueller’s FBI agents had just been sending out demands for records or documents without any probable cause, which the Fourth Amendment requires. Some agents were on outright fishing expeditions just to find out what different people were doing. We were told that there may have even been thousands of NSL’s dispatched to demand documents without following either the Constitutional requirements or the DOJ’s own policy requirements.

    When the Inspector General’s report revealed such absolutely outrageous conduct by FBI agents, some in Congress were absolutely livid. An NBC News report on March 9, 2007, had this headline and sub-headline: “Justice Department: FBI acted illegally on data; Audit finds agency misused Patriot Act to obtain information on citizens.”

    The report went on to say, “FBI Director Robert Mueller said he was to blame for not putting more safeguards into place. ‘I am to be held accountable,’ Mueller said. He told reporters he would correct the problems and did not plan to resign. ‘The inspector general went and did the audit that I should have put in place many years ago,’ Mueller said.” Some Republicans wanted to completely eliminate such an extraordinary power that was so widely abused. Nonetheless, I could not help but wonder that if Mueller had not run off thousands of years of experience though his “Five Year Up-or-Out Policy,” perhaps young, inexperienced agents would not have been so tempted to vastly abuse the power of the NSL.

    In fact, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales lost his job over the widespread, pervasive abuses under Mueller’s supervision. In retrospect, Mueller probably should have been gone first. It was his people, his lack of oversight, his atmosphere that encouraged it, and his FBI that did virtually nothing to hold people accountable.

    SENATOR TED STEVENS

    With Mueller as his mentor and confidant, is it any surprise that we’re now finding James Comey’s FBI found additional ways to monitor Americans and plot with Democrat loyalists in an attempt to oust a duly-elected President?

    Ted Stevens had served in the U.S. Senate since 1968 and was indicted in 2008 by the U.S. Justice Department. One would think before the U.S. government would seek to destroy a sitting U.S. Senator, there would be no question whatsoever of his guilt. One would be completely wrong, at least when the FBI Director is Robert Mueller. Roll Callprovides us with General Colin Powell’s take on Ted Stevens.

    “According to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who had worked closely with the senator since his days as President Ronald Reagan’s national security adviser, the senator was ‘a trusted individual … someone whose word you could rely on. I never heard in all of those years a single dissenting voice with respect to his integrity, with respect to his forthrightness, and with respect to the fact that when you shook hands with Ted Stevens, or made a deal with Ted Stevens, it was going to be a deal that benefited the nation in the long run, one that he would stick with.’”

    Such a glowing reputation certainly did not inhibit Mueller’s FBI from putting Stevens in its cross-hairs, pushing to get an indictment that came 100 days before his election, and engaging in third world dictator-type tactics to help an innocent man lose his election, after which he lost his life. As reported by NPR, after the conviction and all truth came rolling out of the framing and conviction of Senator Stevens, the new Attorney General Eric Holder, had no choice. He “abandoned the Stevens case in April 2009 after uncovering new and ‘disturbing’ details about the prosecution…”

    Unfortunately for Ted Stevens, his conviction came only eight days before his election, which tipped the scales on a close election.

    Does this sound familiar yet? The allegation was that Senator Stevens had not paid full price for improvements to his Alaska cabin. As Roll Call reported, he had actually overpaid for the improvements by over twenty percent. Roll Callwent on to state:

    “But relying on false records and fueled by testimony from a richly rewarded ‘cooperating’ witness… government prosecutors convinced jurors to find him guilty just eight days before the general election which he lost by less than 2 percent of the vote.”

    After a report substantiated massive improprieties by the FBI and DOJ in the investigation and prosecution of Senator Stevens, the result was ultimately a complete dismissal of the conviction.

    At the time there was no direct evidence that Director Mueller was aware of the tactics of concealing exculpatory evidence that would have exonerated Stevens, and the creation of evidence that convicted him in 2008. Nearly four years later, in 2012, the Alaska Dispatch News concluded: “Bottom line: Kepner (the lead FBI investigator accused of wrongdoing by Agent Joy) is still working for the FBI and is still investigating cases, including criminal probes. Joy, the whistleblower (who was the FBI agent who disclosed the FBI’s vast wrongdoing, especially of Kepner), has left the agency.”/p>

    Director Mueller either did control or could have controlled what happened to the lead FBI agent that destroyed a well-respected U.S. Senator. That U.S. Senator was not only completely innocent of the manufactured case against him, he was an honest and honorable man. Under Director Mueller’s overriding supervision, the wrongdoer who helped manufacture the case stayed on and the whistleblower was punished. Obviously, the FBI Director wanted his FBI agents to understand that honesty would be punished if it revealed wrongdoing within Mueller’s organization. Further, not only was evidentiary proof of Senator Stevens’ innocence concealed from the Senator’s defense attorneys by the FBI, there was also a witness that provided compelling testimony that Stevens’ had done everything appropriately. That witness, however, was who agents sent back to Alaska by FBI Agents, unbeknownst to the Senator’s defense attorneys. This key exonerating testimony was placed out of reach for Senator Stevens’ defense. Someone should have gone to jail for this illegality within the nation’s top law enforcement agency. Instead, Senator Stevens lost his seat, and surprise, surprise, Mueller’s FBI helped another elected Republican bite the dust. Unfortunately, I am not speaking figuratively.

    In August of 2010, former Senator Stevens boarded his doomed plane. But for the heinous, twisted and corrupt investigation by the FBI, and inappropriate prosecution by the DOJ, he would have still been a sitting U.S. Senator.

    Don’t forget, one vote in the Senate was critical to ObamaCare becoming law. If Senator Stevens was still there, it would not have become law. In the following month after Senator Stevens’ untimely death, in September of 2010, a young DOJ lawyer, Nicholas Marsh — who had been involved in the Stevens case — committed suicide at his home as the investigation into the fraudulent case continued. The report expressed, “no conclusion as to his (Marsh’s) conduct,” given his untimely death. Robert Luskin, an attorney for Marsh, said, “he tried to do the right thing.”

    If you’re wondering what happened to the valuable FBI agent who was an upstanding whistleblower with a conscience, you should know that inside Mueller’s FBI, Special Agent Joy was terribly mistreated.

    Orders came down from on high that he was not to participate in any criminal investigation again, which is the FBI management’s way of forcing an agent out of the FBI. On the other hand, the FBI agent who was said to have manufactured evidence against Senator Stevens — while hiding evidence of his innocence — was treated wonderfully and continued to work important criminal cases for Director Mueller.

    If you wonder if mistreatment of an FBI agent who exposed impropriety was an anomaly in Mueller’s FBI, the Alaska Dispatch noted this about another case:

    “Former FBI agent Jane Turner was treated much like Joy (the whistleblower agent in the Stevens case) after she blew the whistle on fellow agents who had taken valuable mementos from Ground Zero following the 9-11 terrorist attacks. She took the FBI to court over her treatment and ended up winning her case against the agency after a jury trial. When you blow the whistle on the FBI, ‘it’s death by a million paper cuts,’ she told Alaska Dispatch. Turner said that agents who violate the FBI’s omerta — those who internally challenge the agency — are undercut and isolated. ‘They (Mueller’s FBI supervisors) do everything they can to get you to quit’ she said.”

    THE DISGUSTING TREATMENT OF DR. STEVEN HATFILL

    Here is how Mollie Hemingway of The Federalist described this combined Mueller-Comey debacle:

    “The FBI absolutely bungled its investigation into the Anthrax attacker who struck after the 9-11 terrorist attacks. Carl Cannon goes through this story well, and it’s worth reading for how it involves both Comey and his dear ‘friend’ and current special counsel Robert Mueller. The FBI tried — in the media — its case against Hatfill. Their actual case ended up being thrown out by the courts: Comey and Mueller badly bungled the biggest case they ever handled. They botched the investigation of the 2001 anthrax letter attacks that took five lives and infected 17 other people, shut down the U.S. Capitol and Washington’s mail system, solidified the Bush administration’s antipathy for Iraq, and eventually, when the facts finally came out, made the FBI look feckless, incompetent, and easily manipulated by outside political pressure. More from the Carl Cannon cited above, recounting how disastrous the attempt to convict Dr. Steven Hatfill for a crime he didn’t commit was: In truth, Hatfill was an implausible suspect from the outset. He was a virologist who never handled anthrax, which is a bacterium. (Ivins, by contrast, shared ownership of anthrax patents, was diagnosed as having paranoid personality disorder, and had a habit of stalking and threatening people with anonymous letters – including the woman who provided the long-ignored tip to the FBI). So what evidence did the FBI have against Hatfill? There was none, so the agency threw a Hail Mary, importing two bloodhounds from California whose handlers claimed could sniff the scent of the killer on the anthrax-tainted letters. These dogs were shown to Hatfill, who promptly petted them. When the dogs responded favorably, their handlers told the FBI that they’d “alerted” on Hatfill and that he must be the killer.

    Unfortunately, both Mueller and Comey were absolutely and totally convinced of the innocent man’s guilt. They ruined his life, his relationship with friends, neighbors and potential employers. And from Carl Cannon, Real Clear Politics:

    You’d think that any good FBI agent would have kicked these quacks in the fanny and found their dogs a good home. Or at least checked news accounts of criminal cases in California where these same dogs had been used against defendants who’d been convicted — and later exonerated. As Pulitzer Prize-winning Los Angeles Times investigative reporter David Willman detailed in his authoritative book on the case, a California judge who’d tossed out a murder conviction based on these sketchy canines called the prosecution’s dog handler “as biased as any witness that this court has ever seen.” Instead, Mueller, who micromanaged the anthrax case and fell in love with the dubious dog evidence, and personally assured Ashcroft and presumably George W. Bush that in Steven Hatfill, the bureau had its man… Mueller didn’t exactly distinguish himself with contrition, either. In 2008, after Ivins committed suicide as he was about to be apprehended for his crimes, and the Justice Department had formally exonerated Hatfill – and paid him $5.82 million in a legal settlement ($2.82+150,000/yr. for 20 yrs) – Mueller could not be bothered to walk across the street to attend the press conference announcing the case’s resolution. When reporters did ask him about it, Mueller was graceless. “I do not apologize for any aspect of the investigation,” he said, adding that it would be erroneous “to say there were mistakes.”

    Though FBI jurisdiction has its limitations, Mueller’s ego does not. Mueller and Comey’s next target in the Anthrax case was Dr. Bruce Ivins. As the FBI was closing in and preparing to give him the ultimate Hatfill treatment, Dr. Ivins took his own life. Though Mueller and Comey were every bit as convinced that Dr. Ivins was the Anthrax culprit as they were that Dr. Hatfill was, there are lingering questions about whether or not there was a case beyond a reasonable doubt. Since Dr. Ivins is deceased, we are expected to simply accept that he was definitely the Anthrax killer and drop the whole matter. That’s a difficult ask after taxpayer money paid off Mueller’s previous victim. Mueller had relentlessly dogged Dr. Hatfill using lifedestroying, Orwellian tactics. Either Mueller was wrong when he said it would be a mistake, “to say there were mistakes,” in the railroading of Hatfill or Mueller did intentionally and knowingly persecute an innocent man.

    THE FRAMING OF SCOOTER LIBBY

    In 2003, there was yet another fabricated and politically-charged FBI investigation: this one “searching” for the leak of CIA agent Valery Plame’s identity to the media. Robert Mueller’s close friend James Comey was at the time serving as the Deputy Attorney General. Comey convinced then Attorney General John Ashcroft that he should recuse himself from the Plame investigation while Ashcroft was in the hospital.

    After Deputy A.G. Comey was successful in securing Ashcroft’s recusal, Comey then got to choose the Special Counsel. He then looked about for someone who was completely independent of any relationships that might affect his independence and settled upon his own child’s godfather, nameing Patrick Fitzgerald to investigate the source of the leak. So much for the independence of the Special Counsel.

    The entire episode was further revealed as a fraud when it was later made public that Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald, FBI Director Mueller, and Deputy Attorney Comey had very early on learned that the source of Plame’s identity leak came from Richard Armitage. But neither Comey nor Mueller nor Fitzgerald wanted Armitage’s scalp. Oh no. These so-called apolitical, fair-minded pursuers of their own brand of justice were after a bigger name in the Bush administration like Vice President Dick Cheney or Karl Rove. Yet they knew from the beginning that these two men were not guilty of anything.

    Nonetheless, Fitzgerald, Mueller and Comey pursued Cheney’s chief of staff, Scooter Libby, as a path to ensnare the Vice President. According to multiple reports, Fitzgerald had twice offered to drop all charges against Libby if he would ‘deliver’ Cheney to him. There was nothing to deliver. Is any of this sounding familiar? Could it be that these same tactics have been used against an innocent Gen. Mike Flynn? Could it be that Flynn only agreed to plead guilty to prevent any family members from being unjustly prosecuted and to also prevent going completely broke from attorneys’ fees? That’s the apparent Mueller-ComeySpecial Counsel distinctive modus-operandi. Libby would not lie about Cheney, so he was prosecuted for obstruction of justice, perjury, making a false statement. This Spectator report from 2015 sums up this particularly egregious element of the railroading.

    “… By the time Scooter Libby was tried in 2007 it wasn’t for anything to do with the Plame leak — everyone then knew Armitage had taken responsibility for that — but for lying to federal officials about what he had said to three reporters, including Miller. It is relating to this part of the story that an extraordinary new piece of information has come to light. After her spell in prison, and with her job on the line, Miller was eventually worn down to agree to hand over some redacted portions of notes of her few conversations with Libby. Several years on, she could no longer recall where she had first heard of Plame’s CIA identity, but her notes included a reference to Wilson alongside which the journalist had added in brackets ‘wife works in Bureau?’

    After Fitzgerald went through these notes it was put to Miller that this showed that the CIA identity of Plame had been raised by Libby during the noted meeting. At Libby’s trial Miller was the only reporter to state that Libby had discussed Plame. His conviction and his sentencing to 30 months in prison and a $250,000 fine, rested on this piece of evidence. But Miller has just published her memoirs. One detail in particular stands out. Since the Libby trial, Miller has read Plame’s own memoir and there discovered that Plame had worked at a State Department bureau as cover for her real CIA role. The discovery, in Miller’s words, ‘left her cold’. The idea that the ‘Bureau’ in her notebook meant ‘CIA’ had been planted in her head by Fitzgerald. It was a strange word to use for the CIA. Reading Plame’s memoir, Miller realized that ‘Bureau’ was in brackets because it related to her working at State Department. (Emphasis added)

    What that means is that Scooter Libby had not lied as she originally thought and testified. He was innocent of everything including the contrived offense. For his honesty and innocence, Scooter Libby spent time behind bars, and still has a federal felony conviction he carries like an albatross. The real culprit of the allegation for which the Special Counsel was appointed, and massive amounts of tax payer dollars expended was Richard Armitage. A similar technique was used against Martha Stewart. After all, Mueller’s FBI developed both cases. If the desired crime to be prosecuted was never committed, then talk to someone you want to convict until you find something that others are willing to say was not true. Then you can convict them of lying to the FBI. Martha Stewart found out about Mueller’s FBI the hard way. Unfortunately, Mueller has left a wake of innocent people whom he has crowned with criminal records. History does seem to repeat itself when it is recording the same people using the same tactics. Can anyone who has ever actually looked at Robert Mueller’s history honestly say that Mueller deserves a sterling reputation in law enforcement? One part of his reputation he does apparently deserve is the reputation for being James Comey’s mentor.

    MUELLER’S EMBRACE OF THE FRIENDS OF ISLAMIC TERROR

    In 2011, in one of the House Judiciary Committee’s oversight hearings, FBI Director Mueller repeatedly testified during questioning by various Members about how the Muslim community was just like every other religious community in the United States. He also referenced an “Outreach Program” the FBI had with the Muslim community.

    When it was my turn to question, I could not help but put the two points of his testimony together for a purge question:

    GOHMERT: Thank you, Director. I see you had mentioned earlier, and it’s in your written statement, that the FBI’s developed extensive outreach to Muslim communities and in answer to an earlier question I understood you to say that you know Muslim communities were like all other communities, so I’m curious as the result of the extensive outreach program the FBI’s had to the Muslim community, how is your outreach program going with the Baptists and the Catholics?

    MUELLER: I’m not certain of, necessarily the rest of that, the question I would say — there are outreach to all segments of a particular city or county or society is good.

    GOHMERT: Well do you have a particular program of outreach to Hindus, Buddhists, Jewish community, agnostics or is it just an extensive outreach program to –

    MUELLER: We have outreach to every one of those communities.

    GOHMERT: And how do you do that?

    MUELLER: Every one of those communities can be affected can be affected by facts or circumstance.

    GOHMERT: I’ve looked extensively, and I haven’t seen anywhere in any one from the FBI’s letters, information that there’s been an extensive outreach program to any other community trying to develop trust in this kind of relationship and it makes me wonder if there is an issue of trust or some problem like that that the FBI has seen in that particular community.

    MUELLER: I would say if you look at one of our more effective tools or what we call citizens academies where we bring in individuals from a variety of segments of the territory in which the office operates . . . look at the citizens’ academy, the persons here, they are a crosssection of the community, they can be Muslim, could be Indian, they can be Baptists – GOHMERT: Okay but no specific programs to any of those. You have extensive outreach to the Muslim community and then you have a program of outreach to communities in general is what it sounds like.

    We went further in the questioning. The 2007 trial of the Holy Land Foundation, the largest terrorism financing trial in American history, linked the Council on AmericanIslamic Relations (CAIR) to the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas. CAIR was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the case. Because of this affiliation, the FBI issued policy and guidance to restrict its non-investigative interactions with CAIR in an effort to limit CAIR’s ability to exploit contacts with the FBI. As a result, FBI field offices were instructed to cut ties with all local branches of CAIR across the country.

    GOHMERT: Are you aware of the evidence in the Holy Land Foundation case that linked the Council on American-Islamic relations, CAIR, the Islamic Society of North America and the North America Islamic Trust to the Holy Land Foundation?

    MUELLER: I’m not going to speak to specific information in a particular case. I would tell you on the other hand that we do not –

    GOHMERT: Are you aware of the case, Director?

    [CROSSTALK] MUELLER: – relationship with CAIR because of concerns –

    GOHMERT: Well I’ve got the letter from the Assistant Director Richard Powers that says in light of the evidence – talking about during the trial – evidence was introduced that demonstrated a relationship among CAIR, individual CAIR founders, including its current president emeritus and executive director and the Palestine committee, evidence was also introduced that demonstrated a relationship between the Palestine committee and Hamas, which was designated as a terrorist organization in 1995.

    In light of that evidence, he says, the FBI suspended all formal contacts between CAIR and FBI. Well now it’s my understanding, and I’ve got documentation, and I hope you’ve seen this kind of documentation before, it’s public record, and also the memo order from the judge in turning down a request that the unindicted co-conspirators be eliminated from the list, and he says the FBI’s information is clear there is a tie here, and I’m not going to grant the deletion of these particular parties as unindicted coconspirators.

    So, I’m a little surprised that you’re reluctant to discuss something that’s already been set out in an order, that’s already been in a letter saying we cut ties in light of the evidence at this trial. I’m just surprised it took the evidence that the FBI had, being introduced at the trial in order to sever the relationships with CAIR that it (the FBI) had that showed going back to the 1993 meeting in Philadelphia, what was tied to a terrorist organization. So, I welcome your comments about that.

    MUELLER: As I told you before, we have no formal relationship with CAIR because of concerns with regard to the national leadership on that.

    What Director Mueller was intentionally deceptive about was that the FBI had apparently maintained a relationship and even “community partnership” instigated on his watch with CAIR and other groups and individuals that his FBI had evidence showing they were co-conspirators to terrorism. That, of course, is consistent with his misrepresentation that Mueller’s FBI had outreach programs to other religious communities just like they did with the Muslim community. They did not. He was not honest about it. In a March 2009 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) questioned Mueller over the FBI move to cut off contact with CAIR. Mueller responded to Kyl’s pressing over how the policy was to be handled by FBI field offices and headquarters with the following:

    MUELLER: We try to adapt, when we have situations where we have an issue with one or more individuals, as opposed to institution, or an institution, large, to identify the specificity of those particular individuals or issues that need to be addressed. We will generally have — individuals may have some maybe leaders in the community who we have no reason to believe whatsoever are involved in terrorism, but may be affiliated, in some way, shape or form, with an institution about which there is some concern, and which we have to work out a separate arrangement. We have to be sensitive to both the individuals, as well as the organization, and try to resolve the issues that may prevent us from working with a particular organization.

    KYL: They try to “adapt” with members of terror-related groups? Are they as “sensitive” with other organizations? Do they work out “separate arrangements” with members of, say, the Mafia or the Ku Klux Klan for “community outreach”? Why the special treatment for radical Islamic terrorism?

    A March 2012 review of FBI field office compliance with this policy by the Office of Inspector General found a discrepancy between the FBI’s enforcement policy restricting contact and interaction with CAIR and its resulting actions. Rather than FBI headquarters enforcing the rules, they hedged. Mueller set up a separate cover through the Office of Public Affairs and allowed them to work together, despite the terrorist connections.

    That was the cultivated atmosphere of Mueller’s FBI. The DOJ actually set out in writing in an indictment that CAIR and some of the people Mueller was coddling were supporters of terrorism. I had understood that the plan by the Bush Justice Department was that if they got convictions of the principals in the Holy Land Foundation trial, they would come right back after the co-conspirators who were named in the indictment as co-conspirators but who were not formally indicted. In late 2008, the DOJ got convictions against all those formally indicted, so DOJ could then move forward with formally indicting and convicting the rest—EXCEPT that the November 2008 election meant it was now going to be the OBAMA DOJ with Eric Holder leading. The newly-named but not confirmed Attorney General apparently made clear they were not going to pursue any of the named co-conspirators. That itself was a major loss for the United States in its war against terrorism in the Obama administration. It was a self-inflicted refusal to go after and defeat our enemies. All of the named co-conspirators would not likely have been formally indicted, but certainly there was evidence to support the allegations against some of them, as the federal district court and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals had formally found. One of the problems with FBI Director Mueller is that he had already been cozying up to named co-conspirators with evidence in hand of their collusion with terrorists. That probably was an assurance to President Obama and Attorney General Holder that Mueller would fit right in to the Obama administration. He did. It also helps explain why President Obama and AG Holder wanted him to serve and extra two years as FBI Director. Mueller was their kind of guy. Unfortunately for America, he truly was!

    PURGING THE FBI OF ANTI-TERROR INFORMATION

    We repeatedly see cases where people were radicalized, emerge on the FBI’s radar, but federal agents are instead looking for Islamophobes, not the terrorists standing in front of them. That is because Mueller’s demand of his FBI Agents, in the New Age to which he brought them, was to look for Islamophobes.

    If a Mueller-trained FBI agent got a complaint about a potential radical Islamist who may pose a threat, the agent must immediately recognize that the one complaining is most likely an Islamophobe. That means the agent should first investigate whether the complainant is guilty of a hate crime. Too often it was after an attack occurred that Mueller-trained FBI agents would decide that there really was a radical Islamic threat to the United States.

    The blinding of our FBI agents to the domestic threat of radical Islam is part of the beguiling damage Robert Mueller did as FBI Director. That is also the kind of damage that got Americans killed, even though Mueller may have avoided offending the radical Islamists who were killing Americans. As terrorism expert Patrick Poole continually points out in his “Known Wolf” series, the overwhelming majority of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil are committed by those the FBI has interviewed and dismissed as a threat. Here are three of the more high-profile cases:

    ORLANDO: The mass killer who attacked the Pulse nightclub in June 2016, Omar Mateen, had been interviewed by the FBI on three separate occasions. The open preliminary investigation in 2013 lasted 10 months, after Mateen had told others about mutual acquaintances he shared with the Boston bombers and had made extremist statements. He was investigated again in 2014 for his contacts with a suicide bomber who attended the same mosque. At one point, Mateen was placed on TWO separate terrorism databases. He was later removed from them.

    NORTHWEST AIRLINES: Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab boarded Detroitbound Northwest Flight 253 on Christmas Day 2009 with 289 other passengers wearing an underwear bomb intended to murder them all. He was well-known to U.S. intelligence officials before he boarded.

    Only one month before the attempted bombing, Abdulmutallab’s father had actually gone to the U.S. embassy in Nigeria and met with two CIA officers. He directly told the CIA that he was concerned about his son’s extremism. Abdulmutallab’s name was added to the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE) database. However, his name was not added the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Database. Or even the no-fly list. So, he boarded a plane. When asked about the near-takedown of the flight and these missteps, then-Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano remarkably told CNN that “the system worked.” The only “system” that worked in this incident: a culture that values bravery, already instilled in the passengers who acted.

    BOSTON: Prior to the bombing of the Boston Marathon by Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in April 2013 that killed three people and injured 264 others, the FBI had been tipped off. Twice. Russian intelligence warned that Tamerlan was “a follower of radical Islam.” Initially, the FBI denied ever meeting with Tamerlan. They later claimed that they followed up on the lead, couldn’t find anything in their databases linking him to terrorism, and quickly closed the case. After the second Russian warning, Tamerlan’s file was flagged by federal authorities demanding “mandatory” detention if he attempted to leave or re-enter the United States. But Tsarnaev’s name was misspelled when it was entered into the database.

    An internal FBI report of the handling of the Tsarnaev’s case -unsurprisingly — saw the FBI exonerate itself. When I asked at yet another House Judiciary Committee oversight hearing, in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing, Mueller himself admitted in response to my questioning, that the FBI had indeed gone to the Boston mosque the bombers attended. Of course, The FBI did not go to investigate the Tsarnaevs. The bombers’ mosque, the Islamic Society of Boston, was incorporated by known and convicted terrorists. The incorporation papers were signed by none other than Abduram Al-Amoudi who is currently serving 23 years in a federal prison for funding terrorism. One of the members of the Board of Trustees included a leader of the International Muslim Brotherhood, Yusef al-Qawadari, who is barred from entering the United States due to his terrorist ties. Did Mueller’s FBI go to the Boston bombers’ mosque to investigate the Tsarnaevs? This is from the House Judiciary oversight hearing transcript:

    GOHMERT: The FBI never canvassed Boston mosques until four days after the April 15 attacks. If the Russians tell you that someone has been radicalized and you go check and see the mosque that they went to, then you get the articles of incorporation, as I have, for the group that created the Boston mosque where these Tsarnaevs attended, and you find out the name Al-Amoudi, which you will remember, because while you were FBI Director this man who was so helpful to the Clinton administration with so many big things, he gets arrested at Dulles Airport by the FBI and he is now doing over 20 years for supporting terrorism. This is the guy that started the mosque where the Tsarnaevs were attending, and you didn’t even bother to go check about the mosque? And then when you have the pictures, why did no one go to the mosque and say, who are these guys? They may attend here. Why was that not done since such a thorough job was done?

    MUELLER: Your facts are not altogether——

    GOHMERT: Point out specifically. MUELLER: May I finish my——

    GOHMERT: Point out specifically. Sir, if you’re going to call me a liar, you need to point out specifically where any facts are wrong.

    MUELLER: We went to the mosque prior to Boston.

    GOHMERT: Prior to Boston?

    MUELLER: Prior to Boston happening, we were in that mosque talking to the imam several months beforehand as part of our outreach efforts. “Outreach efforts”? Yes. That is apparently Mueller’s efforts to play figurative pattycake with the leaders and tell them how wonderful they are and how crazy all those Islamaphobes out there are, but they surely got assurance that Mueller’s FBI is after those bigots. Maybe they sat around on the floor and had a really nice meal together. One thing for certain, they weren’t asking about the Tsarnaevs! But the hearing got even worse:

    GOHMERT: Were you aware that those mosques were started by Al-Amoudi?

    MUELLER. I’ve answered the question, sir.

    GOHMERT. You didn’t answer the question. Were you aware that they were started by Al-Amoudi?

    MUELLER. No. . .

    Then my time for questioning expired, leaving many questions unanswered. Why was the FBI unaware of the origins of the mosque attended by the Boston bombers? This was arguably the most traumatic Islamic terrorist attack in America since 9-11 because the explosions happened on live television at the Boston Marathon. When did the FBI become an outreach-to-terrorism organization to the detriment and disregard of its investigations? Under Director Robert Mueller’s tenure, that’s when!

    In Director Mueller’s efforts to appease and please the named co-conspirators of terrorism, he was keenly attuned to their complaints that the FBI training materials on radical Islam said some things about Islamic terrorists that offended some Muslims. Never mind that the main offense was done to the American people by radical Islamists who wanted to kill Americans and destroy our way of life. Mueller wanted to make these co-conspirators feel good toward Mueller and to let them know he was pleased to appease. Director Mueller had all of the training materials regarding radical Islam “purged” of anything that might offend radical Islamic terrorists. So, in addition to using his “Five Year Up-or-Out” policy to force out so many experienced FBI agents who had been properly trained to identify radical Islamic terrorists, now Mueller was going even further. He was ensuring that new FBI agents would not know what to look for when assessing potentially radicalized individuals.

    When those of us in Congress learned of the Mueller-mandated “purge” of FBI training materials, we demanded to see what was being removed. Unfortunately, Mueller was well experienced in covering his tracks, so naturally the pages of training materials that were purged were ordered to be “classified,” so most people would never get to see them.

    After many terrorist attacks, we would hear that the FBI had the Islamic terrorists on their radar but failed to identify them. Now you are beginning to see why FBI agents could not spot them. They were looking more at the complainant than they were at the radical Islamist because that is what Mueller had them trained to do.

    Michele Bachmann and I were extremely upset that Americans were being killed because of the terribly flawed training. We demanded to see the material that was “purged” from the training of FBI agents regarding radical Islam. That is when we were told it could not be sent over for review because the purged material was “classified.” We were authorized to review classified material, so we demanded to see it anyway. We were willing to go over to the FBI office or the DOJ, but we wanted to review the material.

    We were told they would bring it over and let us review it in the Rayburn Building in a protected setting. They finally agreed to produce the material. Members of Congress Michele Bachmann, Lynn Westmoreland, and I went to the little room to review the vast amount of material. Lynn was not able to stay as long as Michele and I did, but we started pouring through the notebooks of materials. It was classified so naturally I am not allowed to disclose any specifics, but we were surprised at the amount of material that was purged from the training our agents. Some of the items that were strictly for illustration or accentuation were removed. A few were silly. But some should clearly have been left in if an FBI agent was going to know how and what a radical Islamic terrorist thinks, and what milestone had been reached in the radicalization process.

    It was clear to Michele and me as we went through the purged materials that some of the material really did need to be taught to our FBI agents. For those densely-headed or radical activists who will wrongly proclaim that what I am writing is an Islamophobic complaint, please note that I have never said that all Muslims are terrorists. I have never said that, because all Muslims are not terrorists. But for the minority who are, we have to actually learn exactly what they study and learn how they think. As Patton made clear after defeating Rommel’s tanks in World War II, he studied his enemy, what he believed and how he thought. In the movie, “Patton,” he loudly proclaims, “Rommel, you magnificent ___, I read your book!”

    That is how an enemy is defeated. You study what they believe, how they think, what they know. Failure to do so is precisely why so many “Known Wolves” are able to attack us. Clearly, Mueller weakened our ability to recognize a true radical Islamic terrorist. As one of my friends in our U.S. Intelligence said, “We have blinded ourselves of the ability to see our enemy! You cannot defeat an enemy you cannot define.” Robert Mueller deserves a significant amount of the credit for the inability of our federal agents to define our enemy.

    PURGING COUNTER-TERRORISM TRAINING MATERIALS

    FBI Special Agent Kim Jensen had spent a great deal of his adult life studying radical Islam. He is personally responsible for some extraordinary undercover work that remains classified to this day. He was tasked with putting together a program to train our more experienced FBI agents to locate and identify radicalized Muslims on the threshold of violence.

    Jensen had done this well before Mueller began to cozy up with and pander to groups such as CAIR. Complaints by similar groups caused Mueller to once again demand that our agents could not be properly instructed on radical Islam.

    Accordingly, Jensen’s roughly 700-pages of advanced training material on radical Islam were eliminated from FBI training and all copies were ordered destroyed.

    When Director Mueller decides he wants our federal agents to be blind and ignorant of radical Islam, they are indeed going to be blind and ignorant.

    Fortunately, in changing times well after Mueller’s departure as FBI Director, a new request went out to Mr. Jensen to recreate that work because at least someone in the FBI needed to know what traits to look for in a terrorist. It still did not undo the years of damage from Mueller’s commanded ignorance of radical Islam.

    MUELLER’S UNETHICAL ACCEPTANCE OF APPOINTMENT AS SPECIAL PROSECUTOR

    Robert Mueller had more than one direct conflict of interest that should have prohibited him from serving as the Special Counsel to investigate President Donald Trump.

    For one thing, President Trump fired his close friend and confidante, disgraced FBI Director James Comey. Mueller had long served as a mentor to Comey, who would most certainly be a critical witness in any investigation of Donald Trump.

    Mueller and Comey had also been exceedingly close friends beyond the mentor relationship. But Comey’s insertion of himself into so much of the election cycle — and even its aftermath — in conversations he had with the President himself made him a critical witness in the investigation. There is no way Mueller could sit in judgment of his dear, close friend’s credibility, and certainly no way he should be allowed to do so.

    Gregg Jarrett explained one aspect of this situation quite clearly and succinctly at FoxNews.com in an article titled, “Gregg Jarrett: Are Mueller and Comey ‘Colluding’ against Trump by acting as co-special counsel?” A portion of that article reads:

    The law governing the special counsel (28 CFR 600.7) specifically prohibits Mueller from serving if he has a “conflict of interest.” Even the appearance of a conflict is disallowed. The same Code of Federal Regulations defines what constitutes a conflict. That is, “a personal relationship with any person substantially involved in the conduct that is the subject of the investigation or prosecution” (28 CFR 45.2).

    Comey is that person. He was substantially involved in the conversation with President Trump who may be the subject of an obstruction investigation. In fact, the former Director is the only other person involved. There were no witnesses beyond himself. A conflict of interest is a situation in which an individual has competing interests or loyalties. Here, it sets up a clash between the special counsel’s self-interest or bias and his professional or public interest in discharging his responsibilities in a fair, objective and impartial manner. His close association with the star witness raises the likelihood of prejudice or favoritism which is anathema to the fair administration of justice.

    Mueller has no choice but to disqualify himself. The law affords him no discretion because the recusal is mandatory in its language. It does not say “may” or “can” or “might”. It says the special counsel “shall” recuse himself in such instances.

    An excellent post by Robert Barnes, a constitutional lawyer, identifies five statutes, regulations and codes of conduct that Mueller is violating because of his conflict of interest with Comey. Byron York, chief political correspondent for the Washington Examiner recounts in detail the close personal relationship between Mueller and Comey which gives rise to the blatant conflict of interest.

    Another deeply troubling aspect of Mueller’s conflict of interest is and was his role in the investigation of Russia’s effort to illegally gain control of a substantial part of United States’ precious supply of uranium. That investigation was taking place within the Mueller FBI, which should have had a direct effect on prohibiting Secretary of State Clinton from participating in the approval of the uranium sale into the hands that were ultimately the Russian government.

    Of course, then U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein had direct control over that Russiauranium investigation in conjunction with FBI Director Mueller. It certainly appears that with what they had gleaned from that undercover investigation, they should never have been involved in any subsequent investigation that might touch on potential collusion and millions of dollars paid to the Clinton’s foundation by the very beneficiaries of the Russians’ uranium schemes. Rosenstein and Mueller’s failure to warn against or stop the sale reeks of its own form of collusion, cooperation, or capitulation in what some consider a treasonous sale.

    Quite the interesting duo is now in charge of all things investigatory surrounding their own actions. In fact, Rosenstein and Mueller are now in a position to dissuade others from pursuing them for their own conduct.

    SPECIAL PROSECUTOR MUELLER’S TROUBLINGLY BIASED HIRES

    Through it all, Mueller’s modus operandi does not seem to have ever changed. He has hired nine Democrat-supporting lawyers and zero Republicans. Certainly all attorneys likely have political views and that is not a problem so long as they do not affect their job. But not a single Republican was worthy of Mueller’s selection?

    Were there no establishment Republicans who wanted to join his jihad? Mueller’s hand-picked team of Democrats reveal political views that distinctly conflict with Trump and the conservative agenda, raising questions about Mueller’s bias and his ability to conduct a fair investigation. At least nine members of Mueller’s team made significant contributions to Democrats or Democratic campaigns, while none contributed to Trump’s campaign and only James Quarles contributed to Republicans in a drastically smaller amount than what he gave to Democrats.

    Analysis of Federal Election Commission records shows that Andrew Weissmann, Jeannie Rhee, Andrew Goldstein, James Quarles, Elizabeth Prelogar, Greg Andres, Brandon Van Grack, Rush Atkinson, and Kyle Freeny all contributed over $50,000 in donations to Democrats including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama’s Presidential campaigns, various Democratic non-presidential candidates, and the Democratic National Convention. Mueller also has surprisingly strong personal ties to a number of the lawyers he hired.

    Three former partners with Mueller at the Boston law firm of WilmerHale are on the payroll: Aaron Zebley, Jeannie Rhee, and James Quarles. In addition to strong personal ties to Mueller, many of the attorneys have potential conflicts in working for persons directly connected to the people and issues being investigated.

    Jeannie Rhee represented Ben Rhodes, ex-Obama National Security Adviser, and the Clinton Foundation in a 2015 racketeering lawsuit, as well as Hillary Clinton in a lawsuit probing her private emails.

    Aaron Zebley, former Chief of Staff to Mueller while Director of the FBI, represented Justin Cooper in the Clinton email scandal as he was responsible for setting up Clinton’s private email server. He admitted to physically damaging Clinton’s old mobile devices.

    Andrew Goldstein joined the team after working under major Trump critic Preet Bharara in the U.S. Attorney’s office in New York. Bharara became a strong critic after Trump fired him as an Obama-holdover and spoke on ABC News that “there’s absolutely evidence to launch an obstruction of justice case against Trump’s team with regard to the Russia probe.” Does he sound a bit prejudiced?

    Andrew Weissman, notoriously a “tough” prosecutor previously accused of “prosecutorial overreach,” has a less than stellar career after various courts reversed his prosecutions due to his questionable conduct and tactics. As director of the Enron Task Force, Weissman shattered the Arthur Andersen LLP accounting firm and destroyed over 85,000 jobs. In 2005, the conviction was reversed by the Supreme Court. In other words, the only true crime in the case was the murderous destruction of 85,000 jobs and the lives they ruined.

    Weissman’s next conviction threw four Merrill Lynch executives into prison without bail for a year, only to be reversed by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. Weissman subsequently resigned from the Enron Task Force. A suspiciously timely move, as the public eye had just caught sight of his modus operandi. Additionally, Weissman has unsightly political ties, having attended Clinton’s electionnight celebration in New York City. He also sent an email to Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, praising her boldness on the night she was fired for refusing to enforce President Trump’s travel ban. President Trump was trying to enforce the law; Weissman was trying to enforce his bigotry against Trump and Republicans.

    Peter Strzok was removed from Mueller’s team after more than 10,000 texts between him and former Mueller investigator Lisa Page were found to contain vitriolic anti-Trump tirades. They were not simply anti-Trump. They were more in the nature of desperate attempts to stop him from becoming President and talk of a nefarious insurance policy to orchestrate his removal if he were elected.

    GENERAL MICHAEL FLYNN

    Michael Flynn is a man entangled in manufactured controversy from the moment he stepped into his role in the Trump administration. The circumstances surrounding his take-down have become one of the more puzzling aspects of the TrumpRussia investigation. His career took him from three decades in the U.S. Army to overseeing the Pentagon’s military intelligence operation and directing the Defense Intelligence Agency. Flynn was more than qualified to act as the first national security adviser in a new administration. However, his influence and zeal made him a clear target for the Trump-Russia investigation.

    As a strong supporter and friend of Donald Trump’s from the onset, he campaigned and publicly supported then-candidate Trump throughout 2016. As best I can sort it out through the media hype and hysteria, having no first-hand knowledge like the rest of America: after the successful election, during the transition period, in December 2016, Flynn reportedly conversed with a Russian ambassador.

    He was “accidentally” swept up in an intelligence foreign surveillance recording. When this happens, the names of American citizens are supposed to be masked in the transcripts. Somehow Flynn’s name was magically unmasked, which apparently allowed the Obama administration to peruse his meetings and conversations. Parts of the classified transcript of that conversation were leaked to the media by rogue Deep State law breakers (criminals who Mueller seems completely disinterested in). This appears to be what fueled the media-driven narrative of Trump campaign “collusion” with Russia because Flynn had a discussion with a Russian ambassador, which conversation is absolutely legal and advisable. A media-generated doubt clouded Flynn’s reputation, as the discussion was longreported as having taken place during the campaign (which could possibly be illegal) but was later proven to have been after the election and during the transition which should not have been illegal.

    After a complete pounding of media-driven hysteria, in mid-February of 2017, Flynn resigned having served only 23 days as National Security Advisor. Mueller targeted Flynn using illicitly-gathered and leaked foreign intelligence and surveillance as evidence. Nine months later after Flynn and his family were subjected to Mueller’s usual threats and intimidation, a financially exhausted Flynn entered a guilty plea on one count of lying to the FBI—the result of a Mueller-technique perjury trap as was used on Scooter Libby and Martha Stewart. What is Flynn guilty of? He apparently misremembered a conversation that took place 33 days previously? The FBI had a transcript of that conversation and already knew what information was there. They went into a conversation with Flynn not seeking answers to questions, but to try to trip him up on exact statements made in a conversation when they were already in possession of the transcript.

    Flynn’s unmasking has become the center of a controversy wherein those transcripts were procured under exceedingly questionable circumstances before a judge who had a questionable and undisclosed relationship with part of Mueller’s team. That judge was appointed to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), the secretive court created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that allows federal law enforcement to seek secretive warrants to surveil foreign persons outside of the United States who are suspected of terrorism. But the Obama administration and Mueller seemed to find it much more politically expedient to use the secret court to go after Americans who were part of the Trump team for actions that did not occur while they were part of the Trump campaign team. Strange goings-on.

    One could argue that Judge Rudolph Contreras, the federal judge who accepted Flynn’s guilty plea, conveniently misremembered that he also served on the FISA court as a judge and conveniently misremembered his friendship with the FBI agent whose interview was used as evidence against Flynn. As it turns out, the FBI interview notes of that very encounter with Flynn may exonerate Michael Flynn, crushing Mueller’s case against him, not to mention the highly questionable hearing before a judge who may well have been recused much too late to save the Flynn prosecution.

    FISA ABUSE

    The FISA-authorized FISC is built upon the principle that highly delicate cases dealing with government surveillance of foreign agents and officials would be handled in an unbiased and respectful environment where secrecy at all costs was critical. There is supposed to be an added precaution to prevent any potential for bias in a FISA Judge by having a rotation of judges. That is why it is such a shock to find out now that Mueller’s case against Michael Flynn would happen to end up before the “randomly selected” very dear close personal friend of FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok, who hated President Trump with a passion, as evidenced in his text messages with colleague and paramour, Lisa Page. U.S. District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras, or “Rudy” as Strzok likes to refer to him, should have recused himself from such a highly sensitive case involving the ultimate attempted removal of the duly-elected President of the United States who happened to be despised by the very people who by law were required to prosecute with fairness. He was later forced to ‘recuse’ himself and be removed from the Flynn proceedings, without public explanation.

    This forced recusal was an unmistakable indication that he never should have been involved in the Michael Flynn plea agreement. Judge Contreras’ conflict of interest has yet to be explained by the court. Contreras’ is one of only three local FISA court judges, and by default, is likely one of the judges who have on four occasions approved the Title I surveillance of another character in this melodrama, Carter Page. This is the case where the FBI is known to have intentionally misled the FISA court by using as evidence the illustrious “Steele Dossier,” a sordid opposition research document paid for by Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Oh, what a tangled web of crime Special Prosecutor Mueller’s team appears to have helped weave, and of which Mueller appears to be completely disinterested, all while he searches high and low for an elusive crime to pin on the President.

    MUELLER IGNORES PROVABLE CRIMES BY THE CLINTON CAMPAIGN, THE FBI, THE FISC, ETC.

    Strategically timed leaks of selective classified information are being used to target individuals for investigation in order to create the appearance of some sinister crime are committed.

    Upon closer scrutiny, the cases fall apart.

    Yet, slam dunk federal criminal cases of leaking classified material are going on under Mueller’s nose, and by those within his purview and his team. When we think of all the leaks from Mueller’s investigation, it brings to mind Wilford Brimley’s quote from Absence of Malice: “You call what’s goin’ on around here a leak? Boy, the last time there was a leak like this, Noah built hisself a boat.”

    Case in point: Erik Prince. As Lee Smith put it in a recent article from TabletMag.com, Robert Mueller’s Beltway Cover-Up:

    News that special counselor Robert Mueller has turned his attention to Erik Prince’s January 11, 2017 meeting in the Seychelles with a Russian banker, a Lebanese-American political fixer, and officials from the United Arab Emirates, helps clarify the nature of Mueller’s work. It’s not an investigation that the former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation is leading—rather, it’s a cover-up…

    Mueller is said to believe that the Prince meeting was to set up a back channel with the Kremlin. But that makes no sense. According to the foundational text of the collusion narrative, the dossier allegedly written by former British spy Christopher Steele, the Kremlin had cultivated Trump himself for years. So what’s the purpose of a back channel, when Vladimir Putin already had a key to the front door of Mar-a-Lago? Further, the collusion thesis holds that the Trump circle teamed with high-level Russian officials for the purpose of winning the 2016 election. How does a meeting that Erik Prince had a week before Trump’s inauguration advance the crooked election victory plot? It doesn’t—it contradicts it. The writer goes on to point out that serious crimes have been committed which Mueller is purposefully ignoring. Prince was thrown into the middle of Russiagate after an April 3, 2017, Washington Post story reported his meeting with the Russian banker. But how did anyone know about the meeting? After the story came out, Prince said he was shown “specific evidence” by sources from the intelligence community that the information was swept up in the collection of electronic communications and his identity was unmasked. The US official or officials who gave his name to the Post broke the law when they leaked classified intelligence. “Unless the Washington Post has somehow miraculously recruited the bartender of a hotel in the Seychelles,” Prince told the House Intelligence Committee in December, “the only way that’s happening is through SIGINT [signals intelligence].” Prince’s name was unmasked and leaked from classified signals intelligence. Oddly enough, it’s the same modus operandi used in the targeting of President Donald Trump, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. It is a federal felony to publish leaked classified information.

    Ask WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange about that particular unequal application of the law. The Deep State felons who are strategically leaking this information have politically weaponized our justice system and should be prosecuted for their attempts, with malice aforethought, to manufacture the overthrow of a duly elected President of the United States. The leaks and publication of classified information alone warrant investigation and prosecution to the fullest extent of the law in this matter, yet Mueller appears utterly uninterested in those crimes even as they go to the very heart of the credibility of his investigative mandate.

    Yet, as I’ve demonstrated here, the man put in charge of the investigation of “Russian Collusion”; case, Robert Mueller, has perfected the art of abuse of the justice system for personal and political gain. He is uninterested in any criminal activity that does not further his cause of damaging this President. If you think that is harsh, consider the criminality of the FISA court abuses by the Obama Department of Justice and FBI. We have all heard ad nauseum about the infamous “Steele Dossier,” the opposition research document paid for by the Clinton campaign that was used to manufacture the Russia collusion narrative and spark what became the Mueller investigation into our President. On June 18, 2017, Muller protégé and disgraced former FBI Director James Comey testified in front of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence about the Clinton campaign-funded document, telling Congress that the document was, “salacious and unverified.” https://www.politico.com/story/2017/06/08/full-text-james-comey-trump-r…)

    The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, created a court called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to allow secret warrants to surveil agents of foreign governments, be they U.S. citizens or non-U.S. actors. In October of 2016, the Obama DOJ/FBI successfully applied for one of these secret warrants to surveil Carter Page, a short-time Trump campaign volunteer. Since these warrants against U.S. citizens are outside of the bounds of the Constitution, they have to be renewed by applying to the court every 90 days after the first warrant application is approved. These secret warrants are so serious they have to be signed off on at the highest levels. The applications in question would have been signed off on by Obama administration FBI and DOJ officials including then FBI Director James Comey. At least one of the renewal applications would have been signed off on by our current Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. At the time of the signing, they all would have had the knowledge and/or the professional and legal duty to know that the dossier was used as evidence and also had the legal duty to know the evidence origins. The same would apply to the knowledge of the penalty for submitting unverified information to the FISC for the purpose of obtaining a warrant. It is a crime to submit under the color of law an application to the FISC that contains unverified information 50 U.S. Code § 1809).

    Comey’s “salacious and unverified” testimony before the Senate occurred eight months after the Clinton campaign-funded dossier was used in the first successful FISA court application to obtain a surveillance warrant against Carter Page, a Trump campaign volunteer for several months. The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence examined the documentation submitted to the court and concluded that the unverified information contained in the Steele dossier was in fact used in the FISC application, without disclosing to the court that it was an opposition research document paid for by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee.

    Neither the initial application in October of 2016, nor any of the renewals, disclose or reference the role of the DNC, the Clinton campaign, or any other partyn in funding Steele’s efforts, even though the political origins of the Steele dossier were then known to senior DOJ and FBI officials. The timing of the applications, the inclusion of material the DOJ/FBI knew to be unverified at the time, and the successful result after this fraudulent inclusion speak to the level of criminal corruption of those who sought to destroy Donald Trump’s candidacy and still seek to overturn his election. The widespread abuse of the FISA-authorized court, FISC, was laid bare in a court memorandum of review of these abuses that was declassified in 2017 and went virtually unnoticed by the media because it didn’t fit their narrative.

    These are serious crimes that, left unchecked, lead nations down the path to tyranny at the hands of people who think they know better than citizens. It’s an age-old struggle America’s Founding Fathers knew well and did everything they could to prevent from happening. The FISC judges themselves have a duty to police their own courts and call to account these bad actors who, by all facts in the documentation I’ve personally seen, have committed a fraud upon the court. If these judges do not have the integrity to self-police in this matter, we in Congress must hold them accountable using the power granted to us in the Constitution. Congress has created every single federal court in the country except the Supreme Court. We have the duty to phase out, change or disband the FISC, all while developing a better solution to address the authorization of this sort of surveillance of foreign agents and actors. It is our duty to clean up the mess that the Obama administration demonstrated is far too easy to create.

    If you want answers, and you can handle the truth, join me in demanding those answers from “Special Counsel” Robert Mueller, along with his resignation. If he were to resign, it could well be the only truly moral, ethical and decent action Mueller has undertaken in this entire investigation.

    Hat tip: BadBlue Uncensored News.

  • Pentagon's War Robots Are Now Roaming The Battlefield

    Self-driving vehicles have become a symbol of Silicon Valley and Detroit, with companies such as Uber, Waymo, Ford, and General Motors zooming towards the commercialization of driverless transportation.

    However, few are likely aware that the United States Department of Defense (DoD) through its Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) could, in fact, have driverless war robots roaming the Pentagon’s battlefields much faster than Silicon Valley and Detroit can get an entirely legal self-driving vehicle onto the streets of America.

    “Finding new ways to lower the risk soldiers face from hostile actors – an effort known as force protection – has become a top priority for various branches of the military after sustained conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan,” according to Karlyn Stanley, a senior researcher at the Rand Corporation who studies autonomous vehicles.

    “Unlike the commercial sector, the military is primarily interested in using autonomous technology to save lives,” she added.

    During the recent US-led military conflicts in the Middle East, coalition troops discovered that terrorist organizations were using improvised explosive devices (IED) that targeted their transportation, supply, and logistics units. The rise of the IED killed or wounded thousands of allied troops, but gave way to a “multibillion-dollar industry in vehicle and body armor, autonomous vehicles, ground-penetrating radar, surveillance, electrical jamming, counterintelligence, computer analysis and computerized prostheses,” said USA Today.

    “We’re going to have self-driving vehicles in theater for the Army before we’ll have self-driving cars on the streets,” Michael Griffin, the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, told a hearing on Capitol Hill in April. “But the core technologies will be the same.”

    With more than half of all the combat casualties from the transportation, supply, and logistics personnel. Griffin believes automated unmanned war robots could replace humans in completing these dangerous tasks during wartime.

    “You’re in a very vulnerable position when you’re doing that kind of activity,” Griffin said. “If that can be done by an automated unmanned vehicle with a relatively simple AI driving algorithm where I don’t have to worry about pedestrians and road signs and all of that, why wouldn’t I do that?”

    At the moment, the DoD has several autonomous military vehicles in development or are already in use on the battlefield.

    WINGMAN

    This month, the United States Army is sending its first robotic Humvee to a field training exercise to see if the autonomous combat vehicle can accurately destroy targets, as part of a new experimental program to weaponize robots.

    The killer Humvee, which is called the ‘Wingman,’ is part of the Joint Capability Technology Demonstration, or JCTD program, where engineers have developed autonomously piloted weaponized vehicles in hopes it will provide direct and indirect fire support for ground troops trapped in dangerous situations on the battlefield.

    THE UNMANNED ARMORED PERSONNEL CARRIERS

    In a stunning show of robotic force, humans were absent last month during a field training exercise at USAG Grafenwoehr Army Base in Grafenwoehr, Germany. U.S./British Armed Forces and Department of Defense (DoD) contractors observed from the sidelines, as robots cleared simulated battlefield obstacles for manned tanks and fighting vehicles.

    An unmanned M113 armored personnel carrier lays down smoke during the Robotic Complex Breach Concept demonstration at Grafenwoehr, Germany, Friday, April 6, 2018. MARTIN EGNASH/STARS AND STRIPES

    An unmanned Terrier engineering vehicle clears mines during the Robotic Complex Breach Concept demonstration at Grafenwoehr, Germany, Friday, April 6, 2018. MARTIN EGNASH/STARS AND STRIPES

    Robotic Breach Demo at Grafenwoehr

    AUTONOMOUS DUNE BUGGY FOR US SPECIAL FORCES

    For over 5-years, the United States special operations forces (SOF) have been deploying to overseas operations with a revolutionary, ultra-light all-terrain vehicle called the Polaris MRZR. The MRZR is gas powered, seats up to six, and can haul up to 1,500 lbs of payload, but light enough to fit inside an MV-22 Osprey and zip troops around the battlefield.

    In February, Polaris Industries, an American manufacturer of snowmobiles, ATVs, and neighborhood electric vehicles, based in Roseau, Minnesota, revealed its MRZR X, a fully autonomous upgraded version of the MRZR at the AUVSI unmanned systems show near Washington, D.C.

    Polaris Autonomous Vehicle AUSA 

    SEA HUNTER

    In the latest installment of the Pentagon’s preparation for the fast-approaching drone wars, a prototype autonomous ship known as the Medium Displacement Unmanned Surface Vehicle (MDUSV) has successfully been transferred to the United States Navy from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), after it completed its multi-year Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel (ACTUV) program.

    The autonomous ship “Sea Hunter”, developed by DARPA, is shown docked in Portland, Oregon after its christening ceremony, April 7, 2016. REUTERS/Steve Dipaola

    US Navy Aims To Use This ‘Sea Hunter’ Drone To Hunt Submarines

    THE OX

    Lockheed Martin’s Convoy Active Safety Technology (CAST) autonomously manages military vehicles to significantly reduce crew fatigue, eliminate rear-end collisions, decrease human exposure to IEDs, enhance operator situational awareness and enable a more effective response to attack.

    CAST Makes Autonomous Convoys a Reality

    IRONCLAD

    Developed by BAE Systems, Ironclad is a new breed of an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) designed to take on some of the most dangerous tasks on the battlefield.

    Craig Fennell, Future Programmes Director at BAE Systems Land (UK) explained: “Ironclad has a unique set of capabilities for a UGV. Using high endurance battery power, it offers near silent running up to a 50km range and will come with a set of mission systems that can be quickly changed in the field. A modular connection system allows two vehicles to be connected together to handle additional loads, such as a specialized stretcher. It is also protected against blast and small arms fire to increase mission survivability.”

    “The next step is for Ironclad to act autonomously as part of a battlegroup, interacting with other vehicles and ground troops to follow mission objectives. This is being tested on existing vehicles as the technology – already at a high state of readiness – is developed.”

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

    Armed with a defense budget of over $700 billion for the coming fiscal year — which will likely soar over the course of Trump’s Pentagon-controlled presidency — the DoD’s dystopian vision for the future of the military is becoming increasingly obvious with the introduction of war robots.

  • Army Major Fears Civilian Policymakers Are "Reliving The 'Good Old Days' Of The Cold War"

    Authored by Major Danny Sjursen via AntiWar.com,

    The Non-Options: 4 Wars the Military Prepares for But Shouldn’t Fight, Part 1

    There’s nothing military men like more than obsessively training for wars they will never have to fight. The trick is not to stumble into a conflict that no one will win.

    The most senior officers and sergeants refer to them as the “good old days.” The Cold War era, that is. I can still hear their repetitive platitudes. Back then, at least, we knew who the enemy was, there were front lines, and we understood our mission. America looked strong as our tanks and planes patrolled the line dividing Central Europe between its Soviet and Western spheres. It’s odd, in a way, to romanticize a period when the world so often stood at the brink of nuclear annihilation.

    Then again, the sentiment is understandable. For years and years, decades even, young soldiers trained hard, never had to actually fight, and could spend their weekends drinking Bavarian beer. Compared to the countless deployments and tens of thousands of post-9/11 casualties in today’s U.S. military, there’s something rather appealing in that old scenario. Best part was, that despite bluster from the likes of President Reagan about the Soviet’s “evil empire,” the all-out Communist assault on Western Europe was never coming. Truth is, serious scholars and analysts know it now, and the most erudite knew it then. Now, after 17 years of ongoing brushfire wars in the Greater Middle East, many senior military folks seem poised to get back what they’re good at: prepping for wars they’ll (hopefully) never have to fight.

    There’s lots of talk around Washington and in the Pentagon these days about how and why the US military must extricate from its various small wars in the Mideast and “pivot” to a focus on “Great Power” conflict. Heck, Trump’s National Security Strategy lays it out quite clearly. The administration calls the policy “principled realism” – which sounds great – but let’s call it what it really is: a new strategy to pressure and contain four key global “adversaries” – Russia, Iran, China, and North Korea.

    While I’m 100% onboard with de-escalation in Southwest Asia, some of the bellicose rhetoric about renewed “Great Power” competition is troubling. My fear is that as the military, especially the army, positions itself for major war with heavyweight powers, it – and its commander-in-chief – might just be foolish enough to think they can or should actually fight one. That’s a terrifying thought because the truth is everyone, all sides, would lose in a major regional or global war.

    See, the Cold War military – with the exception of its ill-advised interventions in Korea and Vietnam – knew its role: to train, prepare, but probably never actually fight (at least not the Russians). Problem is, this military, the one I’ve served in, thinks hot war is normal. It’s all we’ve done for almost two decades! Today’s generals, and their civilian chiefs, might just be crazy enough to think we oughta actually duke it out with a major power. Someone needs to explain to these guys the old-school rules of big-boy, modern conflict: we pretend to be prepared for an attack, they (our “adversaries”) pretend one is coming! You’re not supposed to actually fight one of these things out!

    Crazy part is, I’m only half-kidding. Sarcasm aside, though, over my next several articles at Antiwar.com, I’ll look at the four areas where Washington is ramping up its military presence and pugnacious language, and just why war is a terrible option to be avoided at all costs.

    This week: Russia. Putin.

    They’re on the tip of everyone’s tongues lately, especially those of the alarmists over at MSNBC. We’re told they’re on the move everywhere, seeking dominance in Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the Caucasus, even the Middle East. Everyone laughed when candidate Romney called Russia America’s greatest security threat, but given the tone in Washington these days, old Mitt seems vindicated.

    In response to supposed Russian aggression, the US military has started forward deploying modest-sized units to the Baltic States, Poland, Romania, and other old Warsaw Pact borderlands. We’re also told the US must stay put, indefinitely, in the Syrian debacle, in order to deter Russia. Sounds a lot like the Cold War 2.0. But is that really in US interests, and, is it warranted?

    No doubt, the US military must be prepared to back its key allies in Europe and, in an emergency, check Russian attacks on partners or the homeland itself. Still, a little perspective is in order.

    If Russia were after world domination, they’ve made a paltry effort so far. Every single recent Russian conflict has been fought on soil that was only recently part of the Soviet Union or where (as in Syria) they’ve long had a military base. That’s right, none of this “aggression” has come near to any classical NATO territory. Let’s review the record of actual military events (leaving the cyber-attacks, alleged collusion and election meddling to the nightly rants of Rachel Maddow):

    • A flawed “victory” in a short war with Georgia (Stalin’s birthplace), which left the state independent but exposed many shortfalls in the Russian army.

    • A series of long, bloody wars to suppress Islamist and separatists insurgents within the Russian Federation province of Chechnya. And don’t forget, Russia is still concerned about jihadism within and along its southern border.

    • Direct and proxy- interventions in Ukraine and the seizure of Crimea, after the USbacked the overthrow of a flawed but elected and sovereign president, in what amounted to a local coup. As for the Crimean annexation, most locals desired it and Crimea was historically part of Russia. It’s not that I love all these Russian decisions, but let’s call a spade a spade.

    • An ongoing intervention to prop up Bashar al-Assad and secure its only naval base on the Mediterranean Sea, a base it has long possessed, in the country of an ally it has long had. Not exactly revisionism, this. Besides, Syria is just as likely to turn into a quagmire and a nightmare for Russia. Let them have that mess.

    And, well, that’s about it. It’s not that US and Russian interests are always aligned. It’s not that the US should never contest expansion of Russian influence. Rather, the point is that the threat from the Russian Bear is overhyped and not worth a potentially nuclear war. Russia has one aircraft carrier, spends a fraction of what the US does on its military, is facing a demographic crisis (high death and low birth rates, plus a shrinking ethnic Russian percentage of the population), and has an economy about the size of Spain or Italy.

    To stir up the controversy a bit more, consider the possibility that Russia’s got some genuine gripes, too. After the Cold War, the USbroke its promise not to expand NATO into Eastern Europe. Instead, it absorbed nearly the whole region and even some former Soviet Republics (i.e. the Baltic States). The US intervened repeatedly in the Balkans, bombing Russia’s Serbian allies, and recognizing the unilaterally declared independence of what amounts to a flawed Kosovar state. The US has militarily invaded country after country to Russia’s south – places much closer to Moscow than to Milwaukee – and destabilized an entire region. Look, the US isn’t always evil, but neither is Russia always wrong.

    So here’s my best strategic prediction: Russia’s army is not planning an invasion of central Europe or the destruction of NATO. It has neither power, intent, nor capacity to do so. What they do have is lots of tanks, lots of planes, and lots of nukes. We do not want a shooting war with these guys and have little strategic interest in doing so. It’s all risk no reward.

    So, America’s generals, admirals, and civilian policymakers: plan and train away. Relive the “good old days” of Cold War glory. But please, be smart, show some maturity, and don’t start a war with Russia that everyone will lose.

    *  *  *

    Danny Sjursen is a US Army officer and regular contributor to Antiwar.com. He served combat tours with reconnaissance units in Iraq and Afghanistan and later taught history at his alma mater, West Point. He is the author of a memoir and critical analysis of the Iraq War, Ghostriders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge. Follow him on Twitter at @SkepticalVet.

  • New Test Results Reveal A "Lost Decade" For Academic Progress In Public Schools

    The biannual report card from the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) has been released. The results indicate a lost decade for academic progress in America’s public schools, with little progress measured in eighth-grade reading and zero improvements for reading in fourth-grade or for mathematics in eighth-grade.

    Despite the hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars pumped into the education programs at state and federal levels per annum, the return on developing America’s intelligent, future leaders of tomorrow is failing.

    “This has been education’s lost decade,” Michael Petrilli, president of the reform-oriented Thomas B. Fordham Institute, told The 74 Million.

    NAEP was administered in 1Q2017 to a nationally representative sample of 149,400 fourth-graders and 144,900 eighth-graders. Fourth-grade scores in 2017 were unchanged in math and declined in reading, though the decline was not determined to be significant. On the other hand, eighth-graders made marginal progress in both subjects, though reading was much stronger than math.

    The 74 Million said in the modern era of academic standards and school accountability over the last two decades, the flat trajectory in education progress for public school youth have left education reformers baffled.

    “In some ways, the flat trajectory provides relief for educators after the especially bitter NAEP news in 2015, when scores dropped for three out of four age/subject groupings. The development came as states were still rolling out testing regimes aligned with the Common Core, and the new standards were widely (and controversially) blamed for bringing down student performance.

     

    Although scores for American students have gone through periods of sizable and consistent growth — most recently at the dawn of the modern era of academic standards and school accountability in the late 1990s and early 2000s — results over the past 10 years have left education reformers at a loss.”

    Petrilli said, “the one-point [increase] in eighth-grade reading? I’m not going to start a party for that one. We’ve been basically flat since the late 2000s. There was a time when we were making some big progress nationally, and we’re not seeing that now. The results are disappointing.”

    The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) noticed a troubling trend in test scores — spotted about two years ago. While the national average in test scores stagnated over the past decade, “scores for the highest-performing eighth-graders (those scoring at the 75th and 90th percentiles) nosed higher, while those for the lowest-performing students (those at the 10th and 25th percentiles) declined in fourth-grade math, eighth-grade math, and fourth-grade reading,” detailed The 74 Million.

    “Some of the hypotheses [for growing score gaps] would include that we’re seeing some of the lingering effects of the Great Recession,” Petrilli said.

    “And that can impact both kids, individually — what’s going on in their homes, if they’re experiencing greater challenges than before — and … schools, in terms of funding. If that’s a factor, you’d expect to see it most strikingly for the lowest-performing kids.”

    University of Southern California education professor Morgan Polikoff said that the growing performance gap could be caused by wealth inequalities developed after the Great Recession.

    “I think it’s certainly conceivable that that’s a real phenomenon — that there’s a widening of the gaps, and you sort of imagine that that might have something to do with widening socioeconomic gaps or increases in the degree of poverty among relatively poor people in the U.S.,” he explained to The 74. “That seems plausible.”

    “The story seems to be no story,” he added.

    “On average, it looks like not too much has changed from 2015. I think there was a good deal of progress for most grades and subjects from 1990 up to maybe 2005, 2007, 2009, somewhere in that window. And there definitely seems to have been some sort of leveling off since then.”

    Among the 27 large cities across the United States for which the Department of Education published the 2017 NAEP test scores, Detroit and Fresno school districts had the lowest scores in math for eighth-graders; meanwhile, eighth-graders in Charlotte and Austin had some of the brightest students in the country.

    Per CNSNews:

    • Only 5 percent of Detroit public-school eighth-graders were proficient or better in math. Only 7 percent were proficient or better in reading.

    • In the Cleveland public schools, only 11 percent of eighth-graders were proficient or better in math and only 10 percent were proficient or better in reading.

    • In the Baltimore public schools, only 11 percent were proficient or better in math and only 13 percent were proficient or better in reading.

    • In the Fresno public schools, only 11 percent were proficient or better in math and only 14 percent were proficient or better in reading.

    Urban Districts Ranked By Percentage of 8th Graders Proficient in Math 2017 NAEP Test :

    Urban Districts Ranked By Percentage of 8th Graders Proficient in Reading 2017 NAEP Test:

    States Ranked By Percentage of 8th Graders Proficient in Math 2017 NAEP Test:

    States Ranked By Percentage of 8th Graders Proficient in Reading 2017 NAEP Test:

    If American exceptionalism begins with education, then why is the public school system falling apart?

  • Who's Funding The White Helmets?

    Via TruthInMedia.com,

    As the U.S. moves closer toward all out war in Syria, a lot of what our government seems to base its intelligence on, especially claims of chemical weapon use by they Syrian government, is from an impartial humanitarian group called the White Helmets.

    You’ve no doubt, heard of the White Helmets. They have been praised in the media as heroes and have reportedly saved more than 100,000 lives as of April 2018.

    But who are the White Helmets really? Are they a legitimate organization or pawns, funded for the purpose of regime change?

    Despite a recent U.S. funding freeze for humanitarian aid for Syria, the U.S. continues to fund the controversial group, known as White Helmets.

    The White Helmets claim to be a neutral entity in Syria. They say they are just helping people caught in the middle of a civil war. But are they?

    Follow the money and you will find numerous ties to government funding from not only the U.S., but the U.K., the Netherlands, Denmark, and Germany.

    Untangling these ties to the White Helmets is complicated, so stay with me.

    According to their website, the Syria Civil Defense, nicknamed the White Helmets, formed in “late 2012- early 2013” as self-organized groups.

    Realizing they needed training, 20 Syrians went to Turkey back in March 2013 to learn from a former British army officer named James Le Mesurier.

    Le Mesurier has ties to the failed NATO intervention in Kosovo. He developed a training program for Syrians that included trauma care, command and control and crisis management courses.

    He is credited for helping form the White Helmets’ structure and operations.

    Le Mesurier was able to fund this training program through Mayday Rescue, his Netherlands-based non-profit funded by grants from the Dutch, British, Danish and German governments.

    Now, this brings us to December 2013, when the U.K.-based PR machine backing the White Helmets was established.

    It’s called the Voices Project, set up as a private limited company for public relations and communications activities.

    Part of the Voices Project’s articles of incorporation state that the organization seeks to “influence public opinion” and “influence governmental and other bodies and institutions regarding reform … legislation and regulation.”

    Who set up the Voices Project? The first listed director on the articles of incorporation is Jeremy Heimans, the co-founder and CEO of the global PR platform “Purpose” and a co-founder of controversial online activist network “Avaaz”.

    Though Heimans stepped down from his position with the Voices Project in 2015, his connection to the project is worth noting. Here’s why.

    In February 2014, New York-based “Purpose” listed a job posting for interns to “help launch a new movement for Syria.”

    By March 2014, the Voices Project set up The Syria Campaign NGO, which they describe as “a human rights organisation that supports Syria’s heroes in their struggle for freedom and democracy.”

    This, coinciding with the graduates of the Mayday Rescue training establishing new teams in Syria.

    Six months later, in October 2014, a conference of these teams came together to establish the Syrian Civil Defense as an official, national organization. They then became known as the White Helmets, thanks to The Syria Campaign.

    According to their website, the White Helmets have been directly funded by Mayday Rescue, and a company called Chemonics, since 2014.

    Yet there’s evidence that both of those organizations started supporting the White Helmets back in early 2013, right around the time the White Helmets claim to have formed as self-organized groups.

    Mayday Rescue, as we said, is funded by the Dutch, British, Danish and German governments. And Chemonics?

    They are a Washington, D.C. based contractor that was awarded $128.5 million in January 2013 to support “a peaceful transition to a democratic and stable Syria” as part of USAID’s Syria regional program. At least $32 million has been given directly to the White Helmets as of February 2018.

    The firm has been funded by USAID for years, and carries a record of failures in supporting so-called humanitarian interventions, including in Libya.

    What you need to know is that first, this was only part one of our look at the White Helmets.

    There are even more dots to connect here, including the relationship between USAID, Chemonics, Jeremy Heimans and Azaaz. We will make those connections in another episode of Reality Check.

    But for today, let’s make this clear: there are very real questions about the authenticity of the voice of the White Helmets as representative of the Syrian people.

    It is also clear that the White Helmets have ties to organizations that are being funded by governments that have been seeking, and right now continue to, seek to overthrow the Assad government and to establish a new regime in Syria.

    And yet our media and government act as if the information coming from the White Helmets is coming from an impartial observer. When in fact, it appears to actually be coming from an organization that is being funded with an agenda to see the Syrian government overthrown.

  • Payrolls Preview: After March Miss, "Don't Expect Much Of A Weather Bounce"

    After March’s dismally disappointing 102k payrolls print, expectations are for a swift rebound in hiring in the April jobs report to 192k – that will confirm that the March results were a fluke, and not a signal of an emerging economic soft patch… despite the collapse of economic data this month and a majority of labor market indicators deteriorating…

    However, Goldman Sachs warns investors not to expect too much – Most labor market indicators decelerated somewhat, and we don’t expect a meaningful weather rebound (relative to trend).

    Reasons to expect a softer report include the following:

    1. Softer services business surveys. Service-sector employment surveys were softer on net in April. Our non-manufacturing employment tracker declined 1.7pt to 55.2. This deterioration was also broad-based, with decreases in five of the six business survey measures we track in the sector. In particular, the ISM non-manufacturing employment component declined 3.0pt to 53.6. Additionally, the Conference Board labor market differential – the difference between the percent of respondents saying jobs are plentiful and those saying jobs are hard to get – edged 0.9pt lower to +22.9, but still remains at a high level. Service-sector employment growth slowed to 87k in March, well below the 151k average over the last six months.

    2. Softer manufacturing business surveys. The manufacturing employment surveys were also weaker on net in April. Our manufacturing employment tracker edged down 1.1pt to 58.4, still a relatively elevated level consistent with a solid pace of factory job gains. Manufacturing employment rose 22k in April, roughly in line with the 27k average over the past six months.

    3. Tighter labor supply constraints. We see the labor market as at or a bit beyond full employment and diminished slack should exert some downward pressure on job growth. Labor supply constraints are likely to weigh the most on hiring in the hiring season months of April and May.

    4. A drop in help-wanted ads. The Conference Board’s Help Wanted Online (HWOL) report showed decreases in both new (-1.0%) and total (-1.4%) online ads in April. We currently put only limited weight on this indicator in light of recent research by Fed economists showing that the HWOL ad count has been influenced by price increases for online job ads.

    Neutral factors include:

    1. No meaningful weather rebound. Weather very likely reduced March payroll growth as payrolls in weather-sensitive sectors (construction, retail trade, leisure and hospitality) fell 14k and job growth slowed significantly in the affected Northeast and Southeast regions. However, Exhibit 1 shows that the March regional weakness likely represents payback following above-trend growth in January and February. We therefore don’t expect a significant April bounce-back in job growth in the affected areas.

    March Weakness in East Was Likely Payback from Earlier Weather Strength

    2. Jobless Claims. Initial claims rebounded 6k between the survey weeks to 233k in the April survey week. In contrast, continuing claims have kept declining in April.

    3. ADP. Private sector payrolls in the ADP report rose by 204k in April, slightly above consensus expectations. We don’t make much of this small beat because ADP’s predictive content for the BLS numbers has been very limited recently.

    Goldman offers no factors that suggest a stronger report.

    We expect the unemployment rate to decline to 4.0% in April after stabilizing at 4.1% for six consecutive months. The unrounded unemployment rate edged lower to 4.07% in March. The bar for the unemployment rate to decline on a rounded basis is therefore low, with trend job growth still likely roughly double the breakeven pace.

    We estimate average hourly earnings for all private workers rose 0.2% in April, lowering the year-over-year rate to 2.6%. While last week’s cycle-high growth pace in the Q1 Employment Cost Index and the pick-up in our wage tracker suggest that underlying wage pressures are rising, our below-consensus forecast for the year-over-year rate reflects somewhat unfavorable calendar effects (as the pay period ends on the 14th) and a potential mean reversion following the firm March print.

    Bloomberg notes that consensus has tended to undershoot the April payroll gain by five- and 10-year averages of 15k and 30k, respectively, in recent years. Similarly, April-hiring gains have shown a tendency to exceed the six-month trailing average by about 15k-40k. Both of these factors suggest an increase exceeding 200k. The ADP private employment survey results (204k) also point to a stronger outcome, as this series has shown a bias to underestimate by about 40k. The seasonal adjustment factor applied to April payrolls is typically somewhat larger than February and March; it has averaged near 865k over the past five years.

    CONSENSUS  EXPECTATIONS

    • Nonfarm Payrolls: Exp. 198k, Prev. 103k

    • Unemployment Rate: Exp. 4.0%, Prev. 4.1%

    • Average Hourly Earnings Y/Y: Exp. 2.7%, Prev. 2.7%

    • Average Hourly Earnings M/M: Exp. 0.2%,  Prev. 0.3%

    • Average Work Week Hours: Exp. 34.5hrs, Prev. 34.5hrs

    • U6 Unemployment Rate: Prev. 8.0%

    • Labor Force Participation: Prev. 62.9%

    Unemployment rate expected to drop to lowest

    since 2000

    *  *  *

    Finally, as Bloomberg notes, a substantial disappointment in payrolls would magnify concerns that trade-war anxieties are yielding tangible economic fallout.

    Otherwise, the market focus will more likely be on the unemployment rate and pace of wage increases. The former is overdue to reach a new low, while consensus expects the latter to trend sideways.

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May 03

Today’s News 3rd May 2018

  • Germans Pay The Highest Income Tax

    Last week, the OECD released the latest edition of its “Taxing Wages” report which focuses on the net personal average tax rate in different nations.

    As Statista’s Niall McCarthy points out, it takes into account income tax and social security contributions paid by employees without family benefits as a share of gross wages.

    Last year, the average share of gross wages paid in tax across the OECD was 25.5 percent. There is a considerable difference in tax rates between countries and they are heavily dependent on earnings and family status…

    Infographic: Where Workers Pay The Highest Income Tax | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    A single worker in Germany will face a high combination of income tax and social security payments that will account for just under 40 percent of his or her gross earnings. Despite that, Germans do get something back such as health insurance, pensions, old-age care and unemployment benefits.

    In Italy, the break down is 21.7 percent for income tax and 9.5 percent for social security, adding up to 31.2 percent in total.

    The U.S. trails with 18.4 percent for income tax and 7.7 percent for social security making for 26.1 percent of gross earnings in total.

  • Eurasia Is Torn Between War & Peace

    Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,

    Iran’s top trading partner is China, while Tehran and Moscow have been improving ties as the three countries move closer to cementing a solid alliance…

    Two summits – the cross-border handshake that shook the world between Kim and Moon in Panmunjom and Xi and Modi’s cordial walk by the lake in Wuhan – may have provided the impression Eurasia integration is entering a smoother path.

    Not really. It’s all back to confrontation: predictably the actual, working Iran nuclear deal, known by the ungainly acronym JCPOA, is at the heart of it.

    And faithful to the slowly evolving Eurasia integration roadmap, Russia and China are at the forefront of supporting Iran.

    China is Iran’s top trading partner – especially because of its energy imports. Iran for its part is a major food importer. Russia aims to cover this front.

    Chinese companies are developing massive oil fields in Yadavaran and North Azadegan. China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) took a significant 30% stake in a project to develop South Pars – the largest natural gas field in the world. A $3 billion deal is upgrading Iran’s oil refineries, including a contract between Sinopec and the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) to expand the decades-old Abadan oil refinery.

    In a notorious trip to Iran right after the signing of the JCPOA in 2015, President Xi Jinping backed up an ambitious plan to increase bilateral trade by over tenfold to US$600 billion in the next decade.

    For Beijing, Iran is an absolutely key hub of the New Silk Roads, or the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). A key BRI project is the $2.5 billion, 926 kilometer high-speed railway from Tehran to Mashhad; for that China came up with a $1.6 billion loan – the first foreign-backed project in Iran after the signing of the JCPOA.

    There’s wild chatter in Brussels concerning the impossibility of European banks financing deals in Iran – due to the ferocious, wildly oscillating Washington sanctions obsession. That opened the way for China’s CITIC to come up with up to $15 billion in credit lines.

    The Export-Import Bank of China so far has financed 26 projects in Iran – everything from highway building and mining to steel producing – totaling roughly $8.5 billion in loans. China Export and Credit Insurance Corp – Sinosure – signed a memorandum of understanding to help Chinese companies invest in Iranian projects.

    China’s National Machinery Industry Corp signed an $845 million contract to build a 410km railway in western Iran connecting Tehran, Hamedan and Sanandaj. And insistent rumors persist that China in the long run may even replace cash-strapped India in developing the strategic port of Chabahar on the Arabian Sea – the proposed starting point of India’s mini-Silk Road to Afghanistan, bypassing Pakistan.

    So amid the business blitz, Beijing is not exactly thrilled with the US Department of Justice setting its sights on Huawei, essentially because of hefty sales of value-for-money smart phones in the Iranian market.

    Have Sukhoi will travel

    Russia mirrors, and more than matches, the Chinese business offensive in Iran.

    With snail pace progress when it comes to buying American or European passenger jets, Aseman Airlines decided to buy 20 Sukhoi SuperJet 100s while Iran Air Tours – a subsidiary of Iran Air –  has also ordered another 20. The deals, worth more than $2 billion, were clinched at the 2018 Eurasia Airshow at Antalya International Airport in Turkey last week, supervised by Russia’s deputy minister of industry and trade Oleg Bocharov.

    Both Iran and Russia are fighting US sanctions. Despite historical frictions, Iran and Russia are getting closer and closer. Tehran provides crucial strategic depth to Moscow’s Southwest Asia presence. And Moscow unequivocally supports the JCPOA. Moscow-Tehran is heading the same way of the strategic partnership in all but name between Moscow and Beijing.

    According to Russian energy minister Alexander Novak, the 2014  Moscow-Tehran oil-for-goods deal, bypassing the US dollar, is finally in effect, with Russia initially buying 100,000 barrels of Iranian crude a day.

    Russia and Iran are closely coordinating their energy policy. They have signed six agreements to collaborate on strategic energy deals worth up to $30 billion. According to President Putin’s aide Yuri Ushakov, Russian investment in developing Iran’s oil and gas fields could reach more than $50 billion.

    Iran will become a formal member of the Russia-led Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) before the end of the year. And with solid Russian backing, Iran will be accepted as a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) by 2019.

    Iran is guilty because we say so

    Now compare it with the Trump administration’s Iran policy.

    Barely certified as the new US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo’s first foreign trip – to Saudi Arabia and Israel – amounts in practice to briefing both allies on the imminent Trump withdrawal of the JCPOA on May 12. Subsequently, this will imply a heavy new batch of US sanctions.

    Riyadh – via Beltway darling Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, (MBS) – will be all in on the anti-Iran front. In parallel, the Trump administration may demand it, but MBS won’t relinquish the failed blockade of Qatar or the humanitarian disaster that is the war on Yemen.

    What’s certain is there won’t be a concerted Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) front against Iran. Qatar, Oman and Kuwait see it as counterproductive. That leaves only Saudi Arabia and the Emirates plus irrelevant, barely disguised Saudi vassal Bahrain.

    On the European front, French president Emmanuel Macron has stepped up as a sort of unofficial King of Europe, leveraging himself to Trump as the likely enforcer of restrictions on Iran’s ballistic missile program, as well as dictating Iran to stay out of Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

    Macron has made a direct – and patently absurd – connection between Tehran abandoning its nuclear enrichment program, including the destruction of uranium stockpiles enriched to less that 20%, and being the guilty party helping Baghdad and Damascus to defeat Daesh and other Salafi-jihadi outfits.

    No wonder Tehran – as well as Moscow and Beijing – is connecting recent, massive US weapons deals with Riyadh as well as MBS’s hefty investments in the West to the Washington-Paris attempt to renegotiate the JCPOA.

    Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov has been adamant; the JCPOA  was the product of a strenuous seven-country negotiation over many years: “The question is, will it be possible to repeat such successful work in the current situation?”

    Certainly not

    Thus the suspicion widely floated in Moscow, Beijing and even Brussels that the JCPOA irks Trump because it’s essentially a multilateral, no “America First” deal directly involving the Obama administration.

    The Obama administration’s pivot to Asia – which depended on settling the Iranian nuclear dossier – ended up setting off a formidable, unintended chain of geopolitical events.

    Neocon factions in Washington would never admit to normalized Iranian relations with the West; and yet Iran not only is doing business with Europe but got closer to its Eurasian partners.

    Artificially inflating the North Korea crisis to try to trap Beijing has led to the Kim-Moon summit defusing the “bomb the DPRK” crowd.

    Not to mention that the DPRK, ahead of the Kim-Trump summit, is carefully monitoring what happens to the JCPOA.

    The bottom line is that the Russia-China partnership won’t allow for a JCPOA renegotiation, for a number of serious reasons.

    On the ballistic missile front, Moscow’s priority will be to sell S-300 and S-400 missile systems to Tehran, sanctions-free.

    Russia-China might eventually agree with the JCPOA 10-year sunset provisions to be extended, although they won’t force Tehran to accept it.

    On the Syrian front, Damascus is regarded as an indispensable ally of both Moscow and Beijing. China will invest in the reconstruction of Syria and its revamping as a key Southwest Asia node of the BRI. “Assad must go” is a non-starter; Russia-China see Damascus as essential in the fight against Salafi-jihadis of all stripes who may be tempted to return and wreak havoc in Chechnya and Xinjiang.

    A week ago, at an SCO ministerial meeting, Russia-China issued a joint communiqué supporting the JCPOA. The Trump administration is picking yet another fight against the very pillars of Eurasia integration.

  • Russia Kills Jihadists With Weaponized Robot Ahead Of World Cup

    Dramatic footage has surfaced showing Russian counter-terrorism forces slaying jihadist “sleeper cells” and “underground units” ahead of the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia. In the past few months, Russian troops have launched numerous counter-terrorism operations in the volatile Islamic region of Dagestan.

    According to the Daily Mail, local police in Derbent, a city in the Republic of Dagestan, Russia, located on the Caspian Sea, alerted government officials about dangerous jihadist “sleeper cells” that were planning to attack the civilian population on May 01, known as a traditional holiday in Russia.

    The violent video shows Russian counter-terrorism forces using heavily armored personnel carriers with tremendous firepower, pounding the building with copper and lead bullets, in the town of Derbent, where the jihadist “sleeper cells” were active.

    Once the terrorist compound caught fire, all of the armored personnel carriers retreated to a safe distance, as a small armed robot was seen approaching the compound to finish off the job.

    The video shows a Russian soldier remotely guiding the killer robot through the compound. Video and audio recordings relayed wirelessly back to the command notebook of the robot reveals the terrorist shouting ‘Allahu Akbar,’ followed by an explosion.

    The Daily Mail reported that the heavily armed robot, mounted with a machine gun, was responsible for killing all eleven jihadis.

    “Guns, bullets, knives, and grenades were discovered at the scene,” according to a statement from the Russian Investigative Committee which investigates terrorism cases. Homemade bombs and other deadly weapons were discovered in the compound before it went up in flames.

    Government officials later released graphic images showing the bullet-ridden bodies of the terrorist killed in the raid –which is too gruesome to show.

    Derbent, where the counter-terrorism operation was carried out, is just 590 miles southeast of Volgograd, where England will play their opening 2018 World Cup qualifying group game this summer.

    Security specialists have warned about “lone jihadi” terror attacks during the upcoming 2018 World Cup starting in June. “Sunni Islamist militants, particularly Russian jihadists returning from conflict zones, are the primary source of concern for Moscow,” according to a report released Tuesday by Jane’s Defence Weekly, the defense and security wing of IHS Markit.

    Jane’s Defence Weekly explains how the jihadists buildup in the disputed Northern Caucasus region, has driven Russia to unleash counter-terrorism operations leading up to the World Cup.

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    According to the Washington-based security consultancy the Soufan Group, Russia is the largest exporter of foreign jihadis by country, ahead of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Tunisia. The data shows an estimated 3,417 Russian nationals had trained and fought with ISIS and 400 had returned home by 2017.

    “Returning Russian jihadists pose a likely terrorism threat to security measures at the 2018 FIFA World Cup, motivated by their opposition to the military involvement of Russia and other World Cup participants in the Middle East, and towards Iran and Saudi Arabia,” said Chris Hawkins, a senior analyst at Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Centre (JTIC).

    While the Kremlin is expected “to intensify its counter-terrorism operations in the majority Muslim semi-autonomous Caucasus regions of Chechnya and Dagestan,” said CNBC, there is a reason to believe Putin will have his hands full ahead and during the World Cup. Russia’s tourism ministry projects more than one million foreign visitors could flood into Russia for the World Cup, which will be held across eleven cities this summer. What could go wrong?

  • China's Long Game In Korea

    Authored by Retired Colonel Lawrence Selling via The Daily Caller,

    Underlying the current lovefest between North Korea and South Korea with the offer of a peace treaty to formally end the Korean War and a possible denuclearization of the peninsula are prospects more ominous for U.S. Asia-Pacific policy.

    The crux of the issue is the concept of spheres of influence.

    One of the chief causes of the Korea War was the perception by North Korea, China and the Soviet Union that the Korean peninsula was outside the U.S. defense perimeter. The genesis of this perception can be attributed to the January 12, 1950 National Press Club speech given by then Secretary of State Dean Acheson, which defined the U.S. sphere of influence from Japan to the Philippines.

    Based on evidence from Russian archives published by the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars:

    “In the spring of 1950 Stalin’s policy toward Korea took an abrupt turn. During meetings with Kim Il Sung in Moscow in April, Stalin approved Kim’s plan to reunify the country by military means and agreed to provide the necessary supplies and equipment for the operation… Stalin’s purpose was not to test American resolve; on the contrary, he approved the plan only after having been assured that the United States would not intervene.

    Because U.S. troops had been withdrawn from the Korean peninsula in 1949, the reasoning behind the North Korean invasion argued; “it would be a decisive surprise attack and the war would be won in three days” and “the U.S. would not have time to participate.” Retired North Korean brigadier general Chung Sang-chin said the Acheson speech was known and “produced a certain influence on Kim Il Sung.”

    Stalin’s intent was to extend Soviet influence in Asia by supporting its proxy North Korea in a scenario wherein the United States could not provide a timely or effective response, thus avoiding a major confrontation and providing the Soviet Union and its communist allies an easy strategic fait accompli.

    Applying the conclusions in the Wilson Center report to the current situation, where Beijing has replaced Moscow as Pyongyang’s sponsor, the North Koreans retain their own goals for reunification and are not simply puppets. Nevertheless, the Chinese continue their close supervision of North Korea.

    The events now taking place represent the intersection of Chinese and North Korea aims. It is no coincidence that Kim Jong Un, in his first known trip abroad since taking power, made an official visit to China in March, just prior to initiating talks with South Korean President Moon Jae-in and later possibly attending a summit with President Trump.

    The apparent North Korean about-face occurred after a long period of provocation with the development of missiles capable of hitting the United States mainland and what Kim claimed was a missile-ready hydrogen bomb.

    Perhaps, like Stalin, Chinese President Xi Jinping wishes to avoid direct confrontation with the United States on the Korean peninsula, which could derail a grander strategy.

    Instead, as part of that strategy, China hopes to decouple South Korea from the U.S. militarily by making the withdrawal of American forces a quid pro quo for a peace treaty and denuclearization, thereby, again placing Korea outside the U.S. defense perimeter and extending China’s sphere of influence to the shoreline of Japan.

    The Trump administration should remain wary because the present aura of détente surrounding potential Korean reconciliation is inconsistent with recent Chinese actions in the Asia-Pacific region including: alleged Chinese “subversion, cyber intrusions, and harassment on the high seas” against Australia; increased Chinese military activities in the Taiwan straits; and China’s continued aggressive naval operations in the South China Sea.

    In his written testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Admiral Philip Davidson, nominated as the new US Pacific Command chief, said that “China is now capable of controlling the South China Sea in all scenarios short of war with the United States” and is “able to extend its influence thousands of miles to the south and project power deep into Oceania.”

    The situation in Korea should not be evaluated in isolation, but considered as part of a larger, long-term Chinese strategy, in which North Korea is a partner and where the U.S. needs to maintain a posture of high vigilance and low expectations.

  • 20,000 Indian Troops Engage In War Drill Near Pakistan Border

    In a massive show of force, more than 20,000 troops of strike formations of the Indian Army’s South Western Command have begun exercise Vijay Prahar in the Mahajan Field Firing Ranges close to the India–Pakistan border, according to the Ministry of Defence, Government of India.

    “Strike formations of the command are going through the exercise in Mahajan area close to Suratgarh in Rajasthan in which over 20,000 troops are participating with fighting equipment for a couple of weeks,” Brigadier Anil Gautam, Brigadier General Staff (Information Warfare), South Western Command said.

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    In the immediate wake of Gagan Shakti war drill, which the Indian Air Force flew over 11,000 sorties between 10 and 22 of April, this exercise represents back-to-back military efforts to “refine jointmanship and maximizing the impact of the joint operations, General Gautam said.

    “The exercise is aimed to orchestrate wide spectrum of threats which are planned to be tackled through high tempo joint air and land operation involving hundreds of aircraft, thousands of tanks and artillery pieces supported by real-time intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and just in time logistic support,” General Gautam noted.

    Moments ago, exclusive footage of Exercise Vijay Prahar has been released for the public viewing:

    Vimal Bhatia, a war reporter for 24-years on the border town of Jaisalme said, “Big Army Excercise Vijay Prahar in Mahajan field firing range, Bikaner Formations of Jaipur based Sapta Shakti Command are carrying out Big ‘EXERCISE VIJAY PRAHAR’ in Mahajan Field Firing Ranges Bikaner.”

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    The month-long exercise, which concludes on May 09, is to “help the troops in bolstering their penetrative maneuvers across obstacle-ridden terrain under a nuclear umbrella,” said Zee News. In other words, the Indian Army could be preparing to invade Pakistan — considering the massive drill is being conducted about 40-miles from the India–Pakistan border.

    As per the report, “the formations are practicing and operationalizing certain innovative concepts of operating in the network-centric environment, integrated employment of modern-day sensors with the weapon platforms, employment of attack helicopters in the air cavalry role and bold offensive of application of the Special Forces,” General Gautam added.

    The chances of war breaking out between India and Pakistan is significantly closer as India launches a massive war drill simulating “penetrative maneuvers across obstacle-ridden terrain.” One glance at the Google Earth map above makes one wonder, is India preparing to invade Pakistan?

  • Syria & Iran Prove There's No Chance For North Korean Peace

    Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

    There is a saying in geopolitics that peace summits are generally a perfect time to prepare for war. This thinking stems from the military philosophy of Sun Tzu, who believed that when a nation is weak it is important to appear strong, and when a nation is at its most dangerous it is important to appear weak or “diplomatic.” Sun Tzu also often praised the virtues of distraction and sleight of hand, not only in war, but in politics as well.

    I would note that Sun Tzu and the Eastern “sleight of hand” methodology is not only a mainstay of Chinese as well as North Korean thought, but also required reading for Western covert intelligence agencies. It is important to fully understand this methodology when examining the East vs. West paradigm, because almost everything you see and hear when it comes to relations with countries like China and North Korea is theater. Their governments have hidden schemes, our governments have hidden schemes and the globalists manipulating both sides have plans that trump everything else.

    Keep all of this in mind when you hear about the sudden and almost inexplicable announcements of peace summits with North Korea in May or June between Pyongyang and the Trump administration.

    Looking at the scenario purely from the perspective of political motive, it’s difficult to discern why Trump has been so obsessed with North Korea since he first entered office. North Korea has always had nuclear capability as well as the ability to deploy those nukes in one form or another against the U.S. North Korea has also always been involved in further nuclear testing and missile testing. The idea that such testing today is somehow a “violation” of arbitrary international standards and etiquette is absurd. Almost every nation in the world is engaged in military expansion and development.

    Then again, if one only looks at surface rhetoric and policy, it is difficult to discern why the Trump White House is equally obsessed with Syria and the Assad regime. One of the primary driving forces behind the Trump election campaign was the idea that this was a candidate that would break from establishment elites in the tradition of perpetual war. Trump’s criticisms of past presidents and their handling of Iraq and the Middle East was supposed to represent a sea change in American policies of aggression. Instead, his cabinet is now laced with the cancers of neo-conservative warhawks (fake conservatives) and globalist banking proponents.

    The U.S. was supposedly mere months away from completely removing its military presence from Syria. Yet a well timed “chemical attack” on a Damascus suburb, blamed on Assad, gave Trump a perfect rationale for keeping troops in the region as well as escalating the use of force through missile bombardment. The original claim under President Obama was that we were in Syria because of the growing threat of ISIS (a terrorist movement supported by western covert intelligence). Now, the new enemy is the target globalists always intended — the Syrian government itself.

    When I see news of North Korea abruptly embracing peace talks just after meetings with China and not long after wild threats were tossed around of impending nuclear conflict, I wonder about the true nature behind the abnormal shift in rhetoric. When I see Trump suddenly speaking of Kim Jong-un as “very honorable” after months of trading character attacks on social media, I have to wonder when the next false flag event similar to the Damascus farce will take place?

    There are already clear signs that all is not as it seems when it comes to a potential North Korean peace agreement.

    North Korea’s offer to halt nuclear testing in exchange for a truce with the U.S. rings a bit hollow when one realizes Pyongyang’s primary nuclear testing site has recently collapsed in on itself from overuse. Any halt on testing by North Korea is likely temporary as secondary sites are prepared.

    It also should come as no surprise that North Korea is willing to enter into diplomatic talks only months after achieving successful tests on their first ICBMs capable of reaching the eastern seaboard of the US. Again, as Sun Tzu taught, when you are most dangerous it is important to appear weak to your enemies.

    Trump’s newest National Security Adviser and neo-con warmonger, John Bolton, expressed “doubts” in interviews that North Korea will “give up” its nuclear armaments. Bolton and other globalists know full well that North Korea has no intention of disarming, and if this is going to be a prerequisite to any peace agreement then I would expect talks to fall apart before they ever begin.

    During initial talks to engineer “peace” in Syria under the Obama administration, the establishment argument was that Assad would have to step down as president of Syria in order for diplomacy to move forward. Of course, as noted above, western covert agencies created ISIS out of thin air just as they created the Syrian civil war out of thin air. They caused an extreme civilian genocide through their ISIS proxies, blamed the Assad regime for the instability in the region and then, when their color revolution failed to unseat Assad, they ask him to relinquish power as a good will offering towards the peace process. See how that works?

    Obviously, globalists knew Assad was never going to step down. Why would he when he knows that this was the goal behind the creation of ISIS from the very beginning? And so, Syria remains a useful point of chaos in the globalist arsenal as a larger war is an ever present possibility. It is a perpetual powder keg that could be set off anytime the globalists choose.

    Iran is also an excellent example of the fraudulent nature of establishment peace agreements.  The initial agreement arrived at in 2015, called the Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action (JCPOA), listed a drastic reduction in Iran’s Uranium stockpile and enrichment facilities.  Iran seems to have complied with this request according to initial reports, and has complied with IAEA requests for inspections.  However, globalist peace deals are never fixed – they can be changed at a moment’s notice to facilitate a breakdown in the agreement.

    The US has recently made demands for the IAEA to inspect not only Iran’s nuclear facilities but also its military sites, which were not under the original IAEA purview.  Iran, of course, is not too happy about the idea of having its military bases subject to foreign inspections.  US officials have also claimed Iran is not following the “spirit of the agreement”; not because of any supposed nuclear development, but because of Iran’s support for the Assad regime in Syria.

    On top of this, the US is seeking to change the original JCPOA while refusing to label the changes a “renegotiation”.  Officials have called for a “supplementary deal”, which to my mind is in fact a renegotiation of the original deal.  This is clearly meant to cause a collapse in the JCPOA, as Iran is unlikely to ever accept a renegotiation.

    Finally, Israel is now claiming that Iran has broken the JCPOA by secretly developing nuclear technology.  Once again, like WMDs in Iraq and chemical weapons attacks in Syria, no hard evidence whatsoever has been produced to support this claim.  But, that might not matter at all as Israel has already initiated strikes against Iranian targets in Syria (Syria and Iran have a mutual defense pact), and they may very well attack Iran directly within the next year.

    Globalists do not care about peace, they only care about timing their wars properly.  The same reality applies to North Korea. Here is how this situation is probably going to play out…

    The Trump administration will enter into peace talks with outlandish demands of complete nuclear disarmament. North Korea has so far offered a freeze on testing, but again, this is probably due to the collapse of their main testing site. A freeze on testing is not the same as total disarmament.

    North Korea will of course refuse disarmament. The establishment will push harder, causing North Korea to pull back from the talks, to reschedule talks multiple time or to abandon talks altogether. Then, the establishment will say North Korea is not serious about peace, therefore, the force of action may be justified. They will say they gave North Korea a chance to do things the easy way, but now the hard way is necessary.

    North Korea missile tests will continue, and new nuke facilities will open. Trump will call for the kinetic termination of such sites.

    People who actually believe that globalists will abandon one of its best geopolitical Pandora’s boxes in North Korea have still not learned their lesson from the Syrian debacle, or from Iran. These regions represent a gold mine of potential international chaos which can be used as cover for all sorts of misdeeds as well as continued economic decline.

    As I have noted in past articles, it is rather convenient for the banking elites at the Federal Reserve that every time they make an announcement of further cuts to their balance sheet as well as continued interest rate hikes a new geopolitical crisis involving Donald Trump simultaneously erupts. Is this mere coincidence, or should we view it as a discernible trend?

    If it is a trend, then I would expect further crisis events involving Syria, Iran and North Korea in May and June as the Fed is set to increase the size of its balance sheet reductions thereby pulling the plug on its long time policy of artificially supporting markets.

    More strikes in Syria as well as destabilizing relations with Iran are likely. A collapse in talks with North Korea should be expected, followed by more plunges in stocks and other assets.

  • Hillary Clinton Now Blaming Socialist Democrats For Historic Election Loss

    Just when we thought Hillary Clinton had run out of people to blame for her 2016 defeat, the former Secretary of State has come up with a new one we never saw coming: Socialist Democrats.

    When asked on Wednesday at the Shared Value Leadership Summit in New York City if she thought that declaring herself  to be a “capitalist” Democrat hurt her in the primaries, Clinton replied, “probably.” 

    “It’s hard to know but I mean if you’re in the Iowa caucuses and 41 percent of Democrats are socialists or self-described socialists, and I’m asked ‘Are you a capitalist?’ and I say, ‘Yes, but with appropriate regulation and appropriate accountability.’ You know, that probably gets lost in the ‘Oh my gosh, she’s a capitalist!’” Clinton concluded, referring in part to the popularity of her Democratic Socialist rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT).

    So aside from socialists, as a friendly reminder since everyone’s scroll wheel needs a workout every now and again, below is a list of all the “reasons” Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 US election courtesy of the Daily Mail – because it certainly wasn’t her fault. 

    JAMES COMEY

    Clinton is furious that Comey, then the FBI director, publicly revealed the re-opening of the secret email server investigation just before election day – and has said so time after time after time.

    THE FBI  

    Comey’s entire organization does not escape her wrath. 

    ‘The FBI wasn’t the Federal Bureau of Ifs or Innuendoes. Its job was to find out the facts,’ she writes in What Happened.

    VLADIMIR PUTIN

    ‘There’s no doubt in my mind that Putin wanted me to lose and wanted Trump to win,’ she told USA Today in September last year while promoting What Happened. 

    It was hardly a new theme. As early as December the New York Times obtained audio in which she told her donors: ‘Putin publicly blamed me for the outpouring of outrage by his own people, and that is the direct line between what he said back then and what he did in this election.’  

    THE RUSSIANS

    Putin’s entire apparatus gets a name-check. In May she told the Codecon convention how ‘1,000 Russian agents’ had filled Facebook with ‘fake news’.

    She told NPR ‘my path toward November was being disrupted with Russians’.

    WIKILEAKS 

    The ‘transparency website’ is consistently ranked along with Comey by Clinton at the top of her blame list.

    She told NPR : ‘Unfortunately the Comey letter, aided to great measure by the Russian WikiLeaks, raised all those doubts again.’

    And she writes of its founder Julian Assange in What Happened: ‘In my view, Assange is a hypocrite who deserves to be held accountable for his actions.’

    LOW INFORMATION VOTERS

    ‘You put yourself in the position of a low information voter, and all of a sudden your Facebook feed, your Twitter account is saying, “Oh my gosh, Hillary Clinton is running a child trafficking operation in Washington with John Podesta.”,’ she told the Codecon convention in May.

    ‘Well you don’t believe it but this has been such an unbelievable election, you kind of go, ‘Oh maybe I better look into that.”

    THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE

    ‘We have an electoral college problem. It’s an anachronism,’ she told Vox. 

    ANTI-AMERICAN FORCES

    ‘I think it’s important that we learn the real lessons from this last campaign because the forces that we are up against are not just interested in influencing our elections and our politics, they’re going after our economy and they’re going after our unity as a nation,’ she told Codecon in May.

    ‘What is hard for people to really accept – although now after the election there’s greater understanding – is that there are forces in our country – put the Russians to one side – who have been fighting rear guard actions for as long as I’ve been alive because my life coincided with the Civil Rights movement, with the women’s rights movement, with anti-war protesting, with the impeachment.

    EVERYONE WHO ASSUMED SHE WOULD WIN

    ‘I was the victim of a very broad assumption that I was going to win,’ she told the Codecon convention.

    BAD POLLING NUMBERS

    Clinton says polls in key states did not serve her. 

    ‘I think polling is going to have to undergo some revisions in how they actually measure people,’ she told the Codecon convention.

    ‘How they reach people. The best assessments as of right now are that the polling was not that inaccurate, but it was predominantly national polling and I won nationally.’

    BARACK OBAMA 

    Clinton has two beefs with Obama: one of them being that he won two terms. Clinton says that succeeding an incumbent is almost impossible for a Democrat.

    ‘No non-incumbent Democrat had run successfully to succeed another two-termer since Vice President Martin Van Buren won in 1836,’ she writes in What Happened.

    But she also says his response to the Russian campaign of interference wasn’t enough.

    ‘I do wonder sometimes about what would have happened if President Obama had made a televised address to the nation in the fall of 2016 warning that our democracy was under attack,’ she writes in What Happened. 

    WHITE WOMEN

    ‘I believe absent Comey, I might’ve picked up 1 or 2 points among white women,’ she told Vox in September.

    ‘White woman… are really quite politically dependent on their view of their own security and their own position in society what works and doesn’t work for them.’

    THE NEW YORK TIMES

    The newspaper was blamed as early as May at the Codecon conference in Rancho Palos Verde, California.

    She singled out its managing editor Dean Baquet – the paper’s most senior editor – and said of coverage of her email issue under his direction: ‘They covered it like it was Pearl Harbor.’

    JOE BIDEN

    Biden could have run against her and didn’t. But Clinton writes: ‘Joe Biden said the Democratic Party in 2016 ‘did not talk about what it always stood for—and that was how to maintain a burgeoning middle class.’

    ‘I find this fairly remarkable, considering that Joe himself campaigned for me all over the Midwest and talked plenty about the middle class.’

    BERNIE SANDERS

    ‘His attacks caused lasting damage, making it harder to unify progressives in the general election and paving the way for Trump’s ‘Crooked Hillary’ campaign,’ she writes in What Happened.

    ‘I don’t know if that bothered Bernie or not.’

    BERNIE BROS 

    ‘Some of his supporters, the so-called Bernie Bros, took to harassing my supporters online. It got ugly and more than a little sexist,’ she writes in What Happened. 

    PEOPLE WANTING CHANGE

    ‘I thought, at end of day, people would say, look, we do want change, and we want the right kind of change, and we want change that is realistic and is going to make difference in my life and my family’s life and my paycheck,’ she told Vox.

    ‘That’s what I was offering. And I didn’t in any way want to feed into this, not just radical political argument that was being made on other side, but very negative cultural argument about who we are as Americans.’

    MISOGYNISTS

    Asked by CNN’s Christine Amanpour at the Women for Women International event in new York in May if misogyny was to blame she said: ‘Yes, I do think it played a role.’  

    TELEVISION EXECUTIVES

    ‘When you have a presidential campaign and the total number of minutes on TV news, which is still how most people get their information, covering all of our policies, climate change, anything else was 32 minutes, I don’t blame voters,’ she told The View.

    ‘They don’t get a broad base of information to make decision on. The more outrageous you are, the more inflammatory you are, the higher the ratings are.’

    NETFLIX

    Hillary does not do Netflix and chill – or if she does, she doesn’t find it very relaxing.

    ‘Eight of the top 10 political documentaries on Netflix were screeds against President Obama and me,’ she claimed at the Codecon convention.

    FACEBOOK

    ‘If you look at Facebook the vast majority of the news items posted were fake. They were connected to as we now know the 1,000 Russian agents who were involved in delivering those messages,’ she told Codecon.

    TWITTER

    Usually mentioned in the same breath as Facebook, the micro-blogging site is seen by Clinton as one of the reasons for her loss. 

    She told the Codecon convention in may that Trump had a method in his tweets.

    ‘They want to influence your reality. That to me is what we’re up against, and we can’t let that go unanswered,’ she said.

    CONTENT FARMS IN MACEDONIA

    ‘Through content farms, through an enormous investment in falsehoods, fake news, call it what you will – lies, that’s a good word too – the other side was using content that was flat out false,’ she told the Codecon convention in May. 

    ‘They were conveying this weaponized information and the content of it, and they were running, y’know there’s all these stories, about y’know, and you know I’ve seen them now, and you sit there and it looks like you know sort of low level CNN operation, or a fake newspaper.’

    CAMPAIGN FINANCE

    ‘You had Citizens United come to its full fruition.’ she told Codecon in May.

    ‘So unaccountable money flowing in against me, against other Democrats, in a way that we hadn’t seen and then attached to this weaponized information war.

    THE MEDIA

    ‘American journalists who eagerly and uncritically repeated whatever WikiLeaks dished out during the campaign could learn from the responsible way the French press handled the hack of Macron,’ she writes in What Happened. 

    Now-president Macron had a massive tranche of his emails hacked and released shortly before the French voted. Many outlets did not report on their contents.  

    STEVE BANNON AND BREITBART

    ‘Provided the untrue stories,’ she told the Codecon convention in May. 

    THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

    ‘I set up my campaign and we have our own data operation. I get the nomination. So I’m now the nominee of the Democratic Party. I inherit nothing from the Democratic Party,’ Clinton said told the Codecon convention in May.

     ‘I mean, it was bankrupt. It was on the verge of insolvency. Its data was mediocre to poor, nonexistent, wrong. I had to inject money into it.’

    THE REPUBLICAN PARTY

    The Republicans were far better prepared for a campaign than the Democrats she claimed, when it came to money and data, telling the Codecon convention: ‘So Trump becomes the nominee and he is basically handed this tried and true, effective foundation.’ 

    CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA

    The data-targeting firm ultimately owned by Robert Mercer, the billionaire Breitbart backer, and his family, is said to have targeted voters to drive them away from Clinton.

    ‘They ultimately added something and I think again we’d better understand that. The Mercers did not invest all that money for their own amusement,’ she told the Codecon convention.

    WOMEN PROTESTERS

    The massive demonstrations in Washington and other cities in the wake of the election were organized as an immediate response to Clinton’s shock defeat.

    But that did not stop Clinton from writing in What Happened: ‘I couldn’t help but ask where those feelings of solidarity, outrage and passion had been during the election.’

    MATT LAUER

    The NBC Today show anchor quizzed both candidates at a ‘commander-in-chief forum’ on board Intrepid in New York. 

    But Clinton – who went first in the back-to-back interviews, complained about Lauer focusing on her secret server and whether it raised questions over her trustworthiness.

    ‘Lauer had turned what should have been a serious discussion into a pointless ambush. What a waste of time,’ she writes in What Happened. She later delighted in his firing for sexual misconduct, saying in December: ‘Every day I believe more in karma.’ 

    WHITE VOTERS

    ‘White voters have been fleeing the Democratic party ever since Lyndon Johnson predicted they would,’ she told Vox.  

    DEMOCRATIC DOCUMENTARY MAKERS 

    ‘We’re not making the documentaries that we’re going to get onto Netflix,’ she told Codecon.

    She was asked by the interviewer: ‘This is because Hollywood isn’t liberal enough?’

    ‘No, it’s because Democrats aren’t putting their money there,’ she replied. 

    BENGHAZI INVESTIGATORS

    The attacks on the U.S. diplomatic compound in the Libyan city of Benghazi on September 11, 2012, happened when Clinton was Secretary of State. It claimed four American lives, and was the focus of intense investigation by Congress.  

    Clinton told the Today show: ‘Take the Benghazi tragedy – you know, I have one of the top Republicans, Kevin McCarthy, admitting we’re going to take that tragedy – because, you know, we’ve lost people, unfortunately, going back to the Reagan administration, if you talk about recent times, in diplomatic attacks.

    ‘But boy, it was turned into a political football. And it was aimed at undermining my credibility, my record, my accomplishments.’

    VOTER SUPPRESSION

    Suppressing her voters was named by Clinton as one of the major factors in her defeat in her interview on the Today show when she rattled off her laundry list. ‘What was at work here?’ she said.

    ‘In addition to the mistakes that I made, which I recount in the book, what about endemic sexism and misogyny, not just in politics but in our society, what about the unprecedented action of the FBI director,  what about the interference of an adversary nation, what about voter suppression?’ 

    It was a return to a theme – she suggested it was a problem in Wisconsin in an interview in May with New York magazine.

    ‘I would have won had I not been subjected to the unprecedented attacks by Comey and the Russians, aided and abetted by the suppression of the vote, particularly in Wisconsin,’ she said. 

    ‘Republicans learned that if you suppress votes you win.’

    MITCH McCONNELL

    The Senate majority leader is accused of stopping the Obama administration from revealing what Clinton says the Russians were up to, helping tip the balance against her because he did not want a third successive Democratic term in the White House.  

    ‘Mitch McConnell, in what I think of as a not only unpatriotic but despicable act of partisan politics, made it clear that if the Obama Administration spoke publicly about what they knew [on Russia], he would accuse them of partisan politics, of trying to tip the balance toward me,’ she told the New Yorker.   

    THE SUPREME COURT

    Clinton claims the Supreme Court watered down the Voting Rights Act at the Codecon convention.

    ‘You had effective suppression of votes,’ she said.

    ‘I was in the senate when we voted 98-0 under a Republican president, George W Bush, to extend the Voting Rights Act and the Supreme Court says ‘oh we don’t need it any more’ , throws it out, and Republican governors and legislatures began doing everything they could to suppress the votes.’

    Clinton appears to be referring to Second 4(b) of the Act being ruled unconstitutional by the court in 2013, because it relied on out of date data which meant it was not in line with the 15th Amendment. 

    FATHERS, HUSBANDS, BOYFRIENDS, AND MALE BOSSES

    Clinton says that James Comey’s actions in re-opening the FBI investigation allowed men to influence their wives or girlfriends.

    ‘Women will have no empathy for you because they will be under tremendous pressure – and I’m talking principally about white women – they will be under tremendous pressure from fathers, and husbands, and boyfriends and male employers, not to vote for ‘the girl’,’ she told NPR. 

    THE INVISIBLE STATE

    The newest addition to the list: named by her confidante Lanny Davis as the reason she lost at a reading of his book while Hillary nodded along in approval. 

  • HKMA Warns Public "Manage Risks, Prepare For Volatility" As Stocks, Currency Slide

    Two weeks after HKMA’s intervention managed to lift the HKD off its peg band’s lower limit, the currency tumbled back to its weakest level in 30 years overnight.

    Having hit the lower end of the peg band, the HKD is popping modestly following a statement from Hong Kong Monetary Authority Chief Executive Norman Chan, noting that local interest rates should gradually rise along with their USD counterparts under the linked exchange rate system as the U.S. is in an interest rate hike cycle and market is expected a U.S. rate rise in June.

    Additionally, Chan admitted that the HKD-USD interest rate gap attracts carry trade activities, which resulted in the weakening of the Hong Kong currency. Chan noted that as capital flowed out of HKD, aggregate balance shrank and HKD market liquidity should tightened gradually, providing a more “conducive” environment for HKD interest rate normalization.

    And rather notably, the HKD-USD rate-spread has narrowed dramatically (as HIBOR has risen), removing some of the enticement to enter the carry trade (but remaining a solid 75-80bps for now)…

    Finally, presumably on the back of an ongoing rise in local rates HKMA’s Chan reminded public to “manage risks prudently to prepare for possible volatility in local interest rates and asset markets..”

    And Hong Kong stocks (and China tech stocks) are headed for their worst loss in a month after the Federal Reserve signaled it will continue to tighten monetary policy and as investors awaited the outcome of U.S.-China talks.

  • Giuliani Says Trump Reimbursed Cohen For Stormy Daniels Hush Payment

    In a Wednesday statement which promises to keep White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders busy for the next few news cycles, former New York City Mayor and recent addition to Trump’s legal team, Rudy Giuliani, told Fox’s Sean Hannity that President Trump reimbursed his personal attorney, Michael Cohen, $130,000 which Cohen paid to adult film star Stormy Daniels.

    Giuliani, paradoxically in his new capacity as Trump’s lawyer, says that the payment was “perfectly legal” and that it was “not campaign money,” meaning that the payment did not violate campaign finance law. 

    “Funneled through a law firm, and the president repaid it,” Giuliani said, adding “He didn’t know about the specifics of it but he did know about the general arrangement, that Michael would take care of things like this.“

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    Where it gets complicated for Trump is that Cohen told the New York Times in February that he paid $130,000 to Daniels out of his own pocket, and that neither the Trump Organization or the Trump Campaign had anything to do with the 2016 transaction.

    “Neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms. Clifford, and neither reimbursed me for the payment, either directly or indirectly,” Cohen told The New York Times. “The payment to Ms. Clifford was lawful, and was not a campaign contribution or a campaign expenditure by anyone.”

    Following the report, nonprofit watchdog group Common Cause filed a complaint with the DOJ and the Federal Election Commission claiming that the payment to Clifford violated campaign finance laws because it was an “unreported in-kind contribution to the president’s 2016 campaign.“

    So with Cohen paying Daniels, and Trump paying Cohen, viola – no problems! Right? 

    Well no: here’s the rub…

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    And now, thanks to Giuliani, Trump will have no choice but to give yet another “explanation” for why the official narrative has just broken down which means more angry tweets and out bursts, and who knows, maybe more chemical false flag attacks by Assad to justify another airstrike or two on Syria.

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May 02

Today’s News 2nd May 2018

  • German Foreign Minister Demands IAEA Analyze Israel's Evidence Against Iran

    Germany’s Foreign Minister Heiko Maas has called on the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to review Israeli accusations against Iran “as soon as possible,” in order to “clarify whether it actually provides evidence of a violation,” reports Bild.

    After the Israeli revelations about a secret continuation of the Iranian nuclear agreement, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas (SPD) has now spoken up.

    Maas said to BILD: “Israel’s security is at the center of German politics. That is why we will analyze the Israeli information carefully. “

    He now called for a thorough review – and a check on the Iranian plants: “The Vienna nuclear agreement with Iran is not based on good faith, but on complete control. Now, as soon as possible, the International Atomic Energy Agency must get access to the Israeli information and clarify whether it actually provides evidence of a violation of the agreement. ” –Bild.de (translated)

    Maas spoke against ditching the nuclear deal with Iran, “Precisely because we can not tolerate an Iranian grip on nuclear weapons, the control mechanisms of the Vienna Agreement must be grasped and maintained,” he told Bild. Bloomberg adds that the French Foreign Ministry would like the IAEA to access the documents as well. 

    On Monday Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Iran of secretly developing and building nuclear weapons – unveiling a cache of 55,000 pages of documents and 183 CDs containing evidence of Iran’s alleged “atomic archive” of documents on its nuclear program. Israel claims that the files prove that Tehran ran a secret program, called Project Amad, to “test and build nuclear weapons.”

    While Iranian leaders have long said their nuclear program is only for peaceful purposes, Netanyahu claimed this was not the case according to tens of thousands of pages of documents, which he said were copied from a “highly secret location” in Iran.

    “These files conclusively prove that Iran is brazenly lying when it says it never had a nuclear weapons program,” Netanyahu said. “The files prove that.”

    He says the US has vouched for the authenticity of the secret archive obtained by Israel, and that it would make the documents available to the UN atomic agency and other countries.

    A senior Israeli official said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had informed Trump on March 5 about alleged evidence seized by Israel in what Netanyahu on Monday presented as a “great intelligence achievement”.

    Trump agreed at the meeting that Israel would publish the information before May 12, the date by which he is due to decide whether the United States should quit the nuclear deal with Iran, an arch foe of both countries, the Israeli official said. –Reuters

    Others, however, have suggested Netanyahu is once again “crying wolf” – hence the skeptcism by some.

    Shortly after Netanyahu’s speech, President Trump addressed reporters at the White House with the following comments on the Iran revelations and nuclear deal, from Bloomberg:

    • *TRUMP SAYS HE SAW PARTS OF NETANYAHU’S SPEECH ON IRAN
    • *TRUMP DECLINES TO SAY WHAT HE’LL DO ON IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL
    • *TRUMP LEAVES OPEN POSSIBILITY OF NEGOTIATING NEW IRAN DEAL
    • *TRUMP SAYS HE HAS BEEN `100% RIGHT’ ON IRAN SO FAR

    Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif says allegations made by the Israel prime minister are lies aiming to deceive people and some governments, state-run FARS reports.

    “The speech of Netanyahu and some American circles behind him are mere false claims that don’t matter”

    Meanwhile, Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, said Israeli presentation accusing Iran of hiding a secret nuclear arms project shows how far it is willing to go to end the nuclear deal: “We are prepared for all scenarios. But this really shows how much the Americans, the Zionist regime and the Saudis are worried about the opportunities that the nuclear deal provides Iran and the lengths they’ll go to stop it,” he said in comments aired on state TV.

    Araghchi called the presentation “laughable” and says Israel has used an “old, worn-out scenario.”

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  • Look Where They Tell You Not To Look

    Authored by Craig Murray,

    At the very beginning of the of the Skripal incident, the security services blocked by D(SMA) notice any media mention of Pablo Miller and told the media not to look at Orbis and the Steele dossier on Trump, acting immediately to get out their message via trusties in the BBC and Guardian.

    Gordon Corera, “BBC Security Correspondent”, did not name the source who told him to say this, but helpfully illustrated his tweet with a nice picture of MI6 Headquarters.

    MI6’s most important media conduit (after Frank Gardner) is Luke Harding of the Guardian.

    A number of people replied to Harding’s tweet to point out that this was demonstrably untrue, and Pablo Miller had listed his employment by Orbis Business Intelligence on his Linkedin profile. That profile had just been deleted, but a google search for “Pablo Miller” plus “Orbis Business Intelligence”, without Linkedin as a search term, brought up Miller’s Linkedin profile as the first result (although there are twelve other Pablo Millers on Linkedin and the search brought up none of them). Plus a 2017 forum discussed Pablo Miller’s Orbis connection and it both cited and linked to his Linkedin entry.

    You might think that any journalist worth his salt would want to consider this interesting counter-evidence. But Harding merely tweeted again the blank denials of the security services, without question.

    This is an important trait of Harding. Last year we both appeared, separately, at the Jaipur Literature Festival. Harding was promoting a book and putting the boot into Wikileaks and Snowden. After his talk, I approached him in an entirely friendly manner, and told him there were a couple of factual errors in his presentation on matters to which I was an eye-witness, and I should be very happy to brief him, off the record, but we could discuss which bits he might use. He said he would talk later, and dashed off. Later I saw him in the author’s lounge, and as I walked towards him he hurriedly got up and left, looking at me.

    Of course, nobody is obliged to talk to me. But at that period I had journalists from every major news agency contacting me daily wishing to interview me about Wikileaks, all of whom I was turning down, and there was no doubt of my inside knowledge and direct involvement with a number of the matters of which Harding was writing and speaking. A journalist who positively avoids knowledge of his subject is an interesting phenomenon.

    But then Harding is that. From a wealthy family background, privately educated at Atlantic College and then Oxford, Harding became the editor of Oxford University’s Cherwell magazine without showing any leftwing or rebel characteristics. It was not a surprise to those who knew him as a student when he was employed at the very right wing “Daily Mail”. From there he moved to the Guardian. In 2003 Harding was embedded with US forces in Iraq and filing breathless reports of US special forces operations.

    Moving to Moscow in 2007 as the Guardian’s Moscow correspondent, others in the Moscow press corps and in the British expatriate community found him to be a man of strongly hawkish neo-con views, extremely pro-British establishment, and much closer to the British Embassy and to MI6 than anybody else in the press corps. It was for this reason Harding was the only resident British journalist, to my knowledge, whose visa the Russians under Putin have refused to renew. They suspected he is actually an MI6 officer, although he is not.

    With this background, people who knew Harding were dumbfounded when Harding appeared to be the supporter and insider of first Assange and then Snowden. The reason for this dichotomy is that Harding was not – he wrote books on Wikileaks and on Snowden that claimed to be insider accounts, but in fact just carried on Harding’s long history of plagiarism, as Julian Assange makes clear. Harding’s books were just careful hatchet jobs pretending to be inside accounts. The Guardian’s historical reputation for radicalism was already a sham under the editorship of Rusbridger, and has completely vanished under Viner, in favour of hardcore Clinton identity politics failing to disguise unbending neo-conservatism. The Guardian smashed the hard drives containing the Snowden files under GCHQ supervision, having already undertaken “not to even look at” the information on Iraq and Afghanistan. The fact the hard drives were not the only copies in the world does not excuse their cravenness.

    We know, of course, what MI6 have fed to Harding, because it is reflected every day in his output. What we do not know, but may surmise, is what Harding fed back to the security services that he gleaned from the Guardian’s association with Wikileaks and Snowden.

    Harding has since made his living from peddling a stream of anti-Assange, anti-Snowden and above all, anti-Russian books, with great commercial success, puffed by the entire mainstream media. But when challenged by the non-mainstream media about the numerous fact free assertions on behalf of the security services to be found in his books, Harding is not altogether convincing. You can watch this video, in which Harding outlines how emoticons convinced him someone was a Russian agent, together with this fascinating analysis which really is a must-read study of anti-Russian paranoia. There is a similar analysis here.

    Perhaps still more revealing is this 2014 interview with his old student newspaper Cherwell, where he obviously felt comfortable enough to let the full extent of his monstrous boggle-eyed Russophobia become plain:

    His analogies span the bulk of the 20th century and his predictions for the future are equally far-reaching. “This is the biggest crisis in Europe since the Cold War. It’s not the break-up of Yugoslavia, but the strategic consensus since 1945 has been ripped up. We now have an authoritarian state, with armies on the march.” What next?

    “It’s clear to me that Putin intends to dismember Ukraine and join it up with Transnistria, then perhaps he’ll go as far as Moldova in one way or another,” Harding says. This is part of what he deems Putin’s over-arching project: an expansionist attempt to gather Russo-phones together under one yoke, which he terms ‘scary and Eurasian-ist’, and which he notes is darkly reminiscent of “another dictator of short stature” who concocted “a similarly irredentist project in the 1930s”.

    But actually I think you can garner everything you want to know about Harding from looking at his twitter feed over the last two months. He has obsessively retweeted scores of stories churning out the government’s increasingly strained propaganda line on what occurred in Salisbury. Not one time had Harding ever questioned, even in the mildest way, a single one of the multiple inconsistencies in the government account or referred to anybody who does. He has acted, purely and simply, as a conduit for government propaganda, while abandoning all notion of a journalistic duty to investigate.

    We still have no idea of who attacked Sergei Skripal and why. But the fact that, right from the start, the government blocked the media from mentioning Pablo Miller, and put out denials that this has anything to do with Christopher Steele and Orbis, including lying that Miller had never been connected to Orbis, convinces me that this is the most promising direction in which to look.

    It never seemed likely to me that the Russians had decided to assassinate an inactive spy who they let out of prison many years ago, over something that happened in Moscow over a decade ago. It seemed even less likely when Boris Johnson claimed intelligence showed this was the result of a decade long novichok programme involving training in secret assassination techniques. Why would they blow all that effort on old Skripal?

    That the motive is the connection to the hottest issue in US politics today, and not something in Moscow a decade ago, always seemed to me much more probable. Having now reviewed matters and seen that the government actively tried to shut down this line of inquiry, makes it still more probable this is right.

    This does not tell us who did it. Possibly the Russians did, annoyed that Skripal was feeding information to the Steele dossier, against the terms of his release.

    Given that the Steele dossier is demonstrably in large degree nonsense, it seems to me more probable the idea was to silence Skripal to close the danger that he would reveal his part in the concoction of this fraud. Remember he had sold out Russian agents to the British for cash and was a man of elastic loyalties. It is also worth noting that Luke Harding has a bestselling book currently on sale, in large part predicated on the truth of the Steele Dossier.

    Steele, MI6 and the elements of the CIA which are out to get Trump, all would have a powerful motive to have the Skripal loose-end tied.

    Rule number one of real investigative journalism: look where they tell you not to look.

  • Taiwan "Won't Bow Down To China Pressure"; Plans To Purchase 108 US Abrams Tanks

    Taiwan “will not bow down to pressure from Beijing” Foreign Minister Joseph Wu says, but “will work with friendly nations to uphold regional peace and stability and ensure our rightful place in the international community.”

    His exclamation came after news that the Dominican Republic had broken ties with Taipei and established formal relations with Beijing, expressing “deep regret” that the Dominican Republic had “set aside 77 years of partnership” in order “to accept deceptive promises of investment and aid from China.”

    Taiwan’s presidential office also issued a statement criticizing the Chinese government for “exacerbating tension in the Taiwan Strait” just as international society was working to promote reconciliation and dialogue, “including in the Korean Peninsula.”

    Which prompted questioning by a panel of legislators on Monday, with Tsai Shih-Ying of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, asking the National Defence Minister Yen Teh-fa for details surrounding Taiwan’s military program to procure a new modern main battle tank.

    Yen told Tsai that Taiwan’s military would soon make a bid to purchase M1A2 tanks, an American third-generation main battle tank — the most modern armored tank in the world, from the Pentagon in the second half of 2018.

    Yen also stated that the American tanks could help transfer technology to the island’s defense industry, Taiwan’s Central News Agency reported, as quoted by South China Morning Post.

    “The Taiwan Strait is very likely to replace the Korean peninsula as the hottest flashpoint in the region,” he warned.

    “In response to the changing situation, Taiwan’s military has also increased its combat readiness.”

    “In one or two months, China will hold more long-range military training and increase combined forces operations when engaged in such activities in waters near Taiwan,” Yen said when responding to another lawmaker Chiang Chi-chen about Beijing’s increased military exercises in the Taiwan Strait and the East China Sea.

    Relations between Beijing and Taipei have collapsed since President Tsai Ing-wen, of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party, was elected to office last year. As a result, Beijing has flexed its military muscles by sending warships through the Taiwan Strait and bombers to circumnavigate the island.

    To make matters worse, President Trump signed the “Taiwanese Travel Act,” which promotes official visits to Taiwan by government officials at all levels with an emphasis on “national security officials.”

    The new law infuriated Chinese President Xi Jinping, who lashed out at the Trump administration during a speech last month and warned, “any actions and tricks to split China are doomed to failure and will meet with the people’s condemnation and the punishment of history.”

    Since the start of this year, the Liaoning, the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s (PLAN) only operational aircraft carrier, conducted numerous military exercises around Taiwan on January 04, March 20 and April 19.

    In President Tsai’s first national defense review report in December, the Taiwanese government expanded its war preparations around coastal areas for fears of a Chinese invasion.

    As quoted by South China Morning Post, Taiwan’s United Daily News reported that the islands defense ministry could be ordering “two battalions, or 108, M1A2 tanks, but the army hoped Taipei could buy more.”

    In 2016, the M1A2 Abrams was given an estimated quote of about $8.92 million per tank, adjusted for inflation from the FY’99. Simple math shows, Taiwan could be spending around $1 billion on American main battle tanks in the second half of this year.

    South China Morning Post explains how Taipei has been searching for “surplus U.S. Army M1 tanks to replace its M60s,” but has been hesitant about the upgrades because of the island’s mountainous interior and coastal wetlands. Further, there are concerns that the island’s infrastructure, such as bridges and roadways could have difficulty supporting the 65-ton tank.

    While Taiwan could be the flashpoint for the next global war, it seems as the Armed Forces of Taiwan are now preparing for a Chinese invasion by ordering a billion dollars worth of American main battle tanks. War could be coming to Taiwan; North Korea was just one giant distraction.

    * * *

    If a Chinese invasion of Taiwan did occur, here is an excellent video of the American M1 Abrams versus the Chinese Type 99 tank:

  • A Timelapse Video Of Dubai's Astonishing Growth

    Dubai’s transformation from a fishing village to a global real estate hub has been nothing short of remarkable. From having the world’s tallest building to man-made islands in the shape of a world map, the U.A.E.’s most populous city has never shied away from ambitious construction projects.

    Today’s motion graphic video, from Knight Frank, is a unique overview of Dubai’s half-century long growth spurt.

    AMBITION INTO ACTION

    Dubai’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, summed up the ambition of his people in a quote:

    Dubai will never settle for anything less than first place.

    Indeed, the city’s economic growth has been nearly unparalleled over the past two decades. Unlike neighboring emirates, Dubai had a modest supply of oil and knew that diversifying their economy would be vital for future success.

    As oil production leveled off in the early 1990s, the tourism industry ramped up. In 2002, reforms allowed foreigners to own real estate and that industry boomed overnight. Today, oil accounts for a minuscule 1% of Dubai’s GDP.

    As the Middle East begins looking toward a post-oil economy, Dubai’s success provides an obvious example for other cities in the region to mimic.

    SKY HIGH AMBITION

    In addition to quirky attractions like the 250,000 sqft indoor ski hill, the desert city boasts a number of record-setting projects:

    • World’s tallest building – Burj Khalifa

    • World’s tallest hotel – JW Marriott Marquis Hotel

    • World’s largest shopping center – Dubai Mall

    • World’s largest indoor theme park – IMG Worlds of Adventure

    • World’s Busiest Airport (International Travelers) – Dubai International Airport

    • World’s longest fully automated metro network – Dubai Metro

    Though Dubai is full of blockbuster development projects, the city’s urban form is perhaps best known for one specific attribute: height. For a city of only 3.0 million people, Dubai has a remarkable number of skyscrapers. In fact, the city trails only New York and Shanghai for the number of buildings taller than 150m (492ft).

    For context, during the period of 2007–2014 Dubai essentially kept pace with high-rise development in the United States as a whole. (Dubai’s population is 0.9% the size of the United States.)

    THE B WORD

    Just as Dubai was hitting its stride, the global financial crisis blew in and choked the pipeline of money flowing into the growing city. In 2009, headlines around the world proclaimed that Dubai’s real estate bubble had finally burst.

    Though the financial crisis was a setback, the city’s development industry has recovered admirably. Going into 2017, there were 11,600 active projects worth over $800 billion. As well, Expo 2020 is expected to add fuel to the twin engines of Dubai’s economy: real estate development and tourism.

    With the U.A.E. set to further relax foreign ownership roles, the city’s economic prospects remain as sunny as its weather forecast.

  • "The Biggest Player In The History Of The World…"

    Authored by Alastair Crooke via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    John Mauldin gives us a highly pertinent anecdote about China:

    “Back in the 1990s, Robert Rubin, a Secretary of the Treasury under Bill Clinton, was negotiating the terms under which China would be allowed into the World Trade Organization. My sources say he was basically asking for many of the exact same things Trump wants now … But in 1998, in the middle of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Clinton wanted a “win” (Not unlike the current president.) And Rubin wasn’t delivering, holding firm on his demands for market access and guarantees on intellectual property, etc. Clinton then took the Chinese negotiations away from Rubin and gave it to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright with the instructions to get it done.

    Not being a trade expert, Albright didn’t understand the underlying issues. The Chinese recognized she was playing a weak hand and held firm. To make a long story short, my sources say she effectively caved. Clinton got his “win” and we got stuck with a lousy trade deal. When Trump alleges that we got snookered in a bad trade deal, he is correct—although I wonder if he understands the history. Maybe somebody gave him the background, but it never came out in any of his speeches. That WTO access, which finally happened in 2001, let China begin capturing markets through legal means, and access US intellectual property without paying for it …

    Does this make a difference now? Probably not … But it gets to the rivalry we discussed above. Is it possible for both the US and China to stay in an organization like WTO? Trump seems to doubt it, as he’s threatened to withdraw from WTO. We may someday look back at this period of a single body governing international trade as an aberration — a nice dream that was never realistic. If so, prepare for some big changes.”

    This goes to the crux of one of the biggest geo-political issues facing Europe and America. Mauldin then gives us what very much the consensus view that, “despite some of his rhetoric, I don’t believe [Trump] is ideologically against trade. I think he just wants a US “win” and is flexible on what that means”. Yes, Trump quite possibly will end up doing ‘a Clinton’, but does America have a realistic alternative but to accommodate a rising China?  The world has changed since the Clinton era:  this no longer is just a matter of tussling over the terms of trade.

    Xi Jinping lies at the apex of the Chinese political system. His influence now permeates at every level. He is the most powerful leader since Chairman Mao.

    Kevin Rudd (former PM of Australia and longtime student of China) notes, “none of this is for the faint-hearted … Xi has grown up in Chinese party politics as conducted at the highest levels. Through his father, Xi Zhongxun … he has been through a “masterclass” of not only how to survive it, but also on how to prevail within it. For these reasons, he has proven himself to be the most formidable politician of his age. He has succeeded in pre-empting, outflanking, outmanoeuvring, and then removing each of his political adversaries. The polite term for this is power consolidation. In that, he has certainly succeeded”. 

    And here is the rub: the world which Xi envisions is wholly incompatible with Washington’s priorities. Xi is not only more powerful than any predecessor other than Mao, he knows it, and intends to make his mark on world history. One that equates, or even surpasses, that of Mao.

    Lee Kuan Yew, who before his death in 2015, was the world’s premier China-watcher, had a pointed answer about China’s stunning trajectory over the past 40 years:

    “The size of China’s displacement of the world balance is such that the world must find a new balance. It is not possible to pretend that this is just another big player. This is the biggest player in the history of the world.” 

    The year 2021, marks the centenary of the Chinese Communist Party’s founding, and Xi clearly intends that in 2021 China will showcase the achievements of its first centenary goals.  By then, China expects to be the most powerful economy in the world (it is already there – on a purchasing power parity basis), and an emerging world class power – both in political and military terms. According to Richard Haas, the President of the US Council for Foreign Relations, “[China’s] long-term ambition is to dismantle the U.S. alliance system in Asia, replacing it with a more benign (from Beijing’s perspective) regional security order in which it enjoys pride of place, and ideally a sphere of influence commensurate with its power”. (If anything, Haas may be understating things).

    To achieve the first of the two centenary goals (the second concludes in 2049), China has one major economic, one economic/political strand, and one political/military strand of policy to the achievement of its goals.

    Made in China 2025 is a broad industrial policy that is receiving massive state R & D funding ($232 billion in 2016), including an explicit potential dual-use integration into military innovation. Its main aim, besides improving productivity, is to make China the world’s ‘tech leader’, and for China to become 70% self-sufficient in key materials and components. This may be well-known in theory, but perhaps the move towards self-sufficiency by both China and Russia suggests something more stark. These states are moving away from the classic liberal trade model to an economic model based on autonomy, and a state-led economy (such as advocated by economists like Friedrich List, before becoming eclipsed by the prevalence of Adam Smith-ian thinking).

    The second prong to policy is the famous ‘Belt and Road’ initiative linking China to Europe. The economic element however, is often deprecated in the West as ‘mere infrastructure’ – albeit on a grand scale. Its conception, rather, represents a direct swipe at the western, hyper-financialised economic model.  In a famous critical remark directed at China’s heavy reliance on western-style, debt-led growth – an anonymous author (thought to be Xi or close colleague), noted (sarcastically) the notion that big trees could be grown ‘in the air’.  Which is to say: that trees need to have roots, and to grow in the ground. Instead of the ‘virtual’, financialised ‘activity’ of the West, real economic activity stems from the real economy, with roots planted in the earth.  The ‘Belt and Road’ is just this: intended as a major catalyst to real economics.

    Its political aspect, of course, is evident: It will create an immense (Remimbi) trading and influence block, and being land-based, will shift strategic power away from the western domination over sea-power to land routes over which western conventional military power is limited – just as, in the same way, it will transfer financial power away from the reserve dollar system, to the Remimbi and other currencies.

    The other aspect, which has received much less notice, is how Xi has been able to mesh his objectives with those of Russia. Initially cautious towards the ‘Belt and Road’ project when Xi launched it in 2013, the Kremlin, warmed to the notion in the wake of the western coup against its interests in Ukraine, and with America’s joint project with Saudi Arabia to crash the price of oil (Saudi wanted to put pressure on Russia to abandon Assad, and the US to weaken President Putin, by weakening the rouble and government finances). 

    Thus, by 2015, President Putin had pledged a linkup between Russia’s Eurasian Economic Union and China’s Silk Road Economic Belt, and two years later, Putin was the main guest of honor at the ‘One Belt, One Road’ summit, held in Beijing.

    What is interesting is how Russia has integrated Xi’s vision into its own ‘Greater Eurasia’ thinking, conceived as the core antithesis to an American-led, financialised, world order. The Kremlin, of course, well understands that in the trade and finance realm, Russia’s position in Eurasia is much weaker than that of China. (China’s economy being eight to ten times the size of that of Russia).

    Russia’s crucial strengths traditionally lie in the political-military and diplomatic domains. Hence, leaving economic initiatives to China, Moscow strives for the role of the chief architect of a Eurasian political and security architecture, a concert of major Asian powers, and energy producers.

    President Putin has, in a sense, found the Russian symmetry and complementarity to Xi’s ‘road and corridor’ politics (an asymmetrical Russian balance, if you like, to Xi’s raw economic strength) in its ‘One Map; Three Regions’ politics. Bruno Maçães has written:

    In October 2017, Rosneft Chief Executive Officer Igor Sechin took the unusual step of presenting a geopolitical report on the “ideals of Eurasian integration” to an audience in Verona, Italy. One of the maps projected on the screen during the presentation showed the supercontinent—what Russian circles call “Greater Eurasia”—as divided between three main regions. For Sechin, the crucial division is not between Europe and Asia, but between regions of energy consumption and regions of energy production. The former are organized on the western and eastern edges of the supercontinent: Europe, including Turkey, and the Asia Pacific, including India.

    Between them we find three regions of energy production: Russia and the Arctic, the Caspian, and the Middle East. Interestingly, the map does not break these three regions apart, preferring to draw a delimitation line around all three. They are contiguous, thus forming a single bloc, at least from a purely geographic perspective.

    The map, Maçães notes, “illustrates an important point about Russia’s new self-image. From the point of view of energy geopolitics, Europe and the Asia Pacific are perfectly equivalent, providing alternative sources of demand for energy resources … And, as you consider the three areas [which the map] delimits, it becomes apparent that two of them are already led and organized by a leading actor: Germany in the case of Europe; and China for the Asia Pacific”.

    It is from this perspective, that Russia’s renewed interest and intervention in the Middle East must be understood. By consolidating all three energy-producing regions under its leadership, Russia can be a true equal to China in shaping the new Eurasian system. Its interests lie now more decisively in organizing a common political will for the core energy production region, than in recovering ‘old yearnings’ about being a part of Europe.

    And ‘political will’ is Xi’s project too: Whereas once Mao’s Cultural Revolution tried to wipe out China’s ancient past and replace it with communism’s “new socialist man”, Xi has increasingly portrayed the party as the inheritor and successor to a 5,000-year-old Chinese empire brought low only by the marauding West, writes Graham Allison, author of Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?  Thus the Party has evoked past humiliations at the hands of Japan and the West “to create a sense of unity that had been fracturing, and to define a Chinese identity fundamentally at odds with American modernity”.

    Finally, Xi has pledged to make China strong again. He believes that a military that is “able to fight and win wars” is essential to realizing every other component of China’s “rejuvenation”.  America has more military ‘structure’ than China, but Moscow has technologically better weapons – but China too is catching up in this respect with the West fast. The direct strategic military co-operation between China and Russia (China stood behind Russia militarily as well as politically) was evident in the recent US and UK infowar thrust – Skripal and chemical weapons in Syria – against Russia.  It acts as a deterrent against US military action undertaken against either state.

    In Washington there are – in contrast to Beijing – multiple voices attempting to define how America should interact with China.  Trump has been the loudest, but ideologues are there too, calling for a fundamental re-set of the terms of trade, and of intellectual property rights. But the US military also are adamant that the US must remain the military hegemon in the Asia-Pacific region and that China cannot be allowed to push America out.  There is, though, rare unity in Washington – amongst ‘think-tankers’ and between the two main political parties – on one point, and one point alone: that China constitutes the ‘Number One’ threat to the American-led ‘rules-based’ global order … and should be cut down to size.

    But what – amongst China’s objectives outlined above – is it that that the US thinks it can somehow ‘roll back’ and more substantially cut China ‘down to size’ – without going to war? 

    Realistically, Xi may grant Trump enough minor concessions (i.e. on ownership and intellectual property issues) to enable Trump to claim a ‘win’ (i.e. to do ‘a Clinton’ again), and buy a few years of chilly economic peace, whilst the US continues to rack up trade and budget deficits. But ultimately, America will have to decide to accommodate to reality, or risk recession at best, or war at worst.

    It will be fraught both economically and geo-politically, especially since those who claim to know Xi, seem to be convinced that aside from wanting to return China to being the ‘biggest player in the history of the world’, that Xi also aspires to the one who, finally, reunites China: including not just Xinjiang and Tibet on the mainland, but also Hong Kong and Taiwan. Can America culturally absorb the thought of ‘democratic’ Taiwan being militarily unified into China? Could it trade that for a North Korean solution?  It seems improbable.

  • End Of "Major Combat": US Deactivates Anti-ISIS HQ In Iraq

    In a significant milestone, the headquarters responsible for coordinating US-led military operations in Iraq closed on Monday, “signifying the end of major combat operations against ISIS [the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria],” the Combined Joint Forces Land Component Command (CJFLCC) said in a statement.

    According to the statement, the U.S.-led coalition “was deactivated today [Monday] at a ceremony in Baghdad” that included a casing of the colors. The command’s authorities have been transferred to the Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve’s (CJTF-OIR) headquarters based in Kuwait that oversees the US-led international coalition against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Eastern Mediterranean region.

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    “Casing the CJFLCC colors is a symbolic gesture, honoring the perseverance and sacrifice of our coalition partners. Thanks to our partnered success, we are able to continue our support to the government of Iraq under the unified command of CJTF-OIR,” Army Maj. Gen. Walter Piatt, the former commander of CJFLCC, said in the statement.

    Moving the CJFLCC’S responsibilities to CJTF-OIR’s headquarters in Kuwait is “acknowledging the changing composition and responsibilities of the coalition,” the statement read.

    In other words, it shows the coalition’s commitment to consolidate command structure as its position “evolves from supporting and enabling combat operations to the training and development of self-sufficient Iraqi security-related capabilities,” the statement added.

    Iraqi Security Force spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Rasool Abdullah, said CJFLCC had been an extraordinary part of Iraq’s recent success to eradicate ISIS from the country.

    “The commitment and professionalism of all the men and women from all the coalition nations has been of the highest order, and Iraq is immensely grateful for their sacrifice and dedication in this task,” he said. “We look forward to taking the partnership forward with the Combined Joint Task Force, and a friendship that will endure for years to come.”

    The US invaded Iraq in 2003, alleging that Saddam Hussein possessed an illegal stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. Years later, no such weapons were ever discovered. The U.S.-led coalition decimated the country’s military but soon realized that Iraq was a breeding ground for terrorist organizations. The Pentagon began withdrawing troops in the second half of 2011, just as the next war was flaring up in Syria. While US troops were exiting Iraq, ISIS claimed control of large territories inside the country by 2014, including the major city of Mosul in the northern region.

    After more than three years of combat operations, Iraq announced in December that the fight against ISIS was officially over after Iraqi Armed Forces liberated most of the country. Iraqi and CJFLCC officials warned, however, that many obstacles could remain for an extended period despite the military victory.

    While March marked the 15th anniversary of the US war in Iraq, the likelihood of US troops exiting the Middle East as a whole is nil. The closing of the CJFLCC only consolidates responsibilities to a centralized command in Kuwait, dubbed CJTF-OIR. As America’s military seems to be pivoting towards the next conflict, recent developments surrounding Israel and Iran could undoubtedly lead to the next flashpoint.

  • James Comey's Forgotten Rescue Of Bush-Era Torture

    Authored by James Bovard via The Mises Institute,

    “Here I stand, I can do no other,” James Comey told President George W. Bush in 2004 when Bush pressured Comey – who was then Deputy Attorney General – to approve an unlawful antiterrorist policy.

     Comey, who was FBI chief from 2013 to 2017, was quoting a line reputedly uttered by Martin Luther in 1521, when he told Holy Roman Emperor Charles V that he would not recant his sweeping criticisms of the Catholic Church. Comey’s quotation of himself quoting the father of the Reformation is par for the self-reverence of his new memoir, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership.

    MSNBC host Chris Matthews recently declared, “James Comey made his bones by standing up against torture. He was a made man before Trump came along.” Washington Post columnist Fareed Zakaria, in a column declaring that Americans should be “deeply grateful” to lawyers like Comey, declared, “The Bush administration wanted to claim that its ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ were lawful. Comey believed they were not… So Comey pushed back as much as he could.”

    Martin Luther risked death to fight against what he considered the heresies of his time. Comey, a top Bush administration policymaker, found a safer way to oppose the worldwide secret U.S. torture regime widely considered a heresy against American values. Comey approved brutal practices and then wrote some memos and emails fretting about the optics. 

    Comey became Deputy Attorney General in late 2003 and “had oversight of the legal justification used to authorize” key Bush programs in the war on terror. At that time, the Bush White House was pushing the Justice Department to again sign off on an array of extreme practices that had begun shortly after the 9/11 attacks. A 2002 Justice Department memo had leaked out that declared that the president was entitled to ignore federal law in approving extreme interrogation techniques. Photos had also leaked from Abu Ghraib prison showing the stacking of naked prisoners with bags over their heads, mock electrocution via a wire connected to a man’s penis, guard dogs on the verge of ripping into naked men, and grinning U.S. male and female soldiers celebrating the bloody degradation. A confidential CIA Inspector General report had just warned that post-9/11 CIA interrogation methods may violate the international Convention Against Torture.

    Rather than ending the abuses, Comey repudiated the memo. Speaking to the media in a not-for-attribution session on June 22, 2004, Comey declared that the 2002 memo was “overbroad,” “abstract academic theory,” and “legally unnecessary.” Comey helped oversee crafting a new memo with different legal footing to justify the same interrogation methods.

    Comey twice gave explicit approval for waterboarding, which sought to break detainees with near-drowning.

    This practice had been recognized as a war crime by the U.S. government since the Spanish American War.

    Comey wrote in his memoir that he was losing sleep over concern about Bush administration torture polices. But losing sleep was not an option for detainees because Comey approved sleep deprivation as an interrogation technique. Detainees could be forcibly kept awake for up to 180 hours until they confessed their sins. How did this work? At Abu Ghraib, the notorious Iraqi prison, one FBI agent reported seeing a detainee “handcuffed to a railing with a nylon sack on his head and a shower curtain draped around him, being slapped by a soldier to keep him awake.” 

    Comey also approved “wall slamming” – which, as law professor David Cole wrote, meant that detainees could be thrown against a wall up to 30 times. Comey also signed off on the CIA using “interrogation” methods such as facial slaps, locking detainees in small boxes for 18 hours, and forced nudity. When the secret Comey memo approving those methods finally became public in 2009, many Americans were aghast – and relieved that the Obama administration had repudiated Bush policies.

    When it came to opposing torture, Comey’s version of “Here I stand” had more loopholes than a reverse mortgage contract. Though Comey in 2005 approved each of 13 controversial extreme interrogation methods, he objected to combining multiple methods on one detainee. It was as if Martin Luther grudgingly approved of the Catholic Church selling indulgences to individually expunge sins for adultery, robbery, lying, and gluttony but vehemently objected if all the sins were expunged in one lump sum payment.

    In 2014, the Senate Intelligence Committee finally released a massive report, Americans learned grisly details of the CIA torture regime that Comey helped legally sanctify – including death via hypothermia, rape-like rectal feeding of detainees, compelling detainees to stand long periods on broken legs, and dozens of cases of innocent people pointlessly brutalized. Psychologists aided the torture regime, offering hints on how to destroy the will and resistance of prisoners. The only CIA official to go to prison for the torture scandal was courageous whistleblower John Kiriakou.

    If Comey had resigned in 2004 or 2005 to protest the torture techniques he now claims to abhor, he would deserve some of the praise he is now receiving. Instead, he remained in the Bush administration but wrote an email summarizing his objections, declaring that “it was my job to protect the department and the A.G. [Attorney General] and that I could not agree to this because it was wrong.” A 2009 New York Times analysis noted that Comey and two colleagues “have largely escaped criticism [for approving torture] because they raised questions about interrogation and the law.” In Washington, writing emails is “close enough for government work” to convey sainthood.

    When Comey finally exited the Justice Department in August 2005 to become a lavishly-paid senior vice president for Lockheed Martin, he proclaimed in a farewell speech that protecting the Justice Department’s “reservoir” of “trust and credibility” requires “vigilance” and “an unerring commitment to truth.” But Comey perpetuated policies that shattered the moral credibility of both the Justice Department and the U.S. government.

    Comey failed to heed another Martin Luther admonition: “You are not only responsible for what you say, but also for what you do not say.”

  • McCain Unloads On "Reality Show" Trump In New Book

    Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) writes in his new book that his battle with brain cancer and his departure from Congress has liberated him, and he can now speak his mind.

    “This is my last term,” writes the 81-year-old Senator in his upcoming book The Restless Wave, co-authored by former adviser Mark Salter. Portions of the book were posted Monday by Apple News. 

    “If I hadn’t admitted that to myself before this summer, a stage 4 cancer diagnosis acts as ungentle persuasion,” McCain continues. “I’m freer than colleagues who will face the voters again. I can speak my mind without fearing the consequences much. And I can vote my conscience without worry. I don’t think I’m free to disregard my constituents’ wishes, far from it. I don’t feel excused from keeping pledges I made. Nor do I wish to harm my party’s prospects. But I do feel a pressing responsibility to give Americans my best judgment.”

    McCain goes on to excoriate Trump – writing that the President “has declined to distinguish the actions of our government from the crimes of despotic ones,” and that to Trump “The appearance of toughness, or a reality show facsimile of toughness, seems to matter more than any of our values.” 

    The AZ Senator notes that despite the “decline in civility and cooperation, and increased obstructionism” that there remain lawmakers and officials in the federal government “committed to meeting the challenges of the hour.”

    “They might not be the most colorful politicians in town, but they’re usually the ones who get the most done,” McCain writes.

    “Before I leave I’d like to see our politics begin to return to the purposes and practices that distinguish our history from the history of other nations. I would like to see us recover our sense that we are more alike than different,” McCain writes – pushing Americans to seek presidential candidates whose “humility and honesty commend them for the job.” 

    In McCain’s ideal world, Hillary Clinton would have won the 2016 election and all of those Syrian Al-Qaeda affiliated “rebels” he loves so much (and flew out to meet in a clandestine face-to-face weeks after Trump took office) would have regime changed Assad months ago.

    Perhaps despite all the trash talking in McCain’s book, Trump will gift the Arizona Senator with the most explosive item on his bucket list based on that totally not fabricated, totally verified evidence of Iran’s nuclear program that Germany’s foreign minister wants independently inspected. 

  • Scientists: Earth's Magnetic Field Is Acting "Weird", We Could Experience A "Shudder"

    Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

    Scientists are saying that the Earth’s magnetic field is acting strangely, and at some point, we could all experience a shudder.  Although we are being told we won’t experience a magnetic pole reversal in the near future, something incredibly strange is going on.

    The Earth is showing signs that the poles will flip, yet scientists are denying it will happen soon.

    The Earth has a fierce molten core that generates a magnetic field capable of defending our planet against devastating solar winds.  This magnetic field is vital to life on Earth and has weakened by 15 percent over the last 200 years. This protective field acts as a shield against harmful solar radiation and extends thousands of miles into space and its magnetism affects everything from global communication to power grids.

    Historically, Earth’s North and South magnetic poles have flipped every 200,000 or 300,000 years. However, the last flip was about 780,000 years ago, meaning our planet is well overdue.  The latest satellite data, from the European Space Agency’s Swarm trio which monitors the Earth’s magnetic field, suggest a pole flip may be imminent.  The satellites allow researchers to study changes building at the Earth’s core, where the magnetic field is generated. Their observations suggest molten iron and nickel are draining the energy out of the Earth’s core near where the magnetic field is generated. While scientists aren’t sure why exactly this happens, they describe it as a “restless activity” that suggests the magnetic field is preparing to flip. –SHTFPlan

    An international team of scientific experts compared the current state of Earth’s magnetic field with conditions during the Laschamp event (about 41,400 years ago) and the Mono Lake event (about 34,000 years ago). On both those previous occasions, the Earth’s magnetic field “recovered” without a flip, and the scientists think the same will happen now.

    “There has been speculation that we are about to experience a magnetic polar reversal or excursion,” says one of the team, Richard Holme from the University of Liverpool in the UK. 

    “However, by studying the two most recent excursion events, we show that neither bear resemblance to current changes in the geomagnetic field and therefore it is probably unlikely that such an event is about to happen. Our research suggests instead that the current weakened field will recover without such an extreme event, and therefore is unlikely to reverse.”

    In a new report,  Daniel Baker, who is the director of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder, claims if a magnetic pole reversal happens, it is likely to render some areas of the planet “uninhabitable” by knocking out power grids. Baker’s comments were made in an in-depth Undark report written by Alanna Mitchell, who has a new book about the topic titled “The Spinning Magnet: The Electromagnetic Force that Created the Modern World and Could Destroy It.”

    Human beings would survive a pole reversal, but it could cause serious problems with satellite, communications, and power systems. There’s also the possibility it might interfere with the planet’s temperature and climate, but scientists just aren’t sure at the moment what the effects will be because the last full flip was 780,000 years ago, after all.  But trust them when they say we won’t experience the grid failures of a pole reversal any time soon…

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May 01

Today’s News 1st May 2018

  • Millennial Homeownership Rate Collapses In Britain

    Theresa May could be entirely correct. Britain’s real estate market is severely dysfunctional and needs to be reformed. Homeownership for millennials has collapsed over the past three decades; the investigation reveals that millennials are facing a housing crisis from London to Manchester.

    The homeownership rate for millennials aged 25- to 34-year-old has nearly halved in some regions of Britain, showing that the housing affordability crisis extends far beyond the boundaries of London.

    According to The Guardian, the report was conducted over a two-year investigation of “intergenerational fairness in Britain,” supervised by think tank Resolution Foundation and directed by former universities minister David Willetts. The team discovered that overpriced homes in Britain had forced millennials into “increasingly cramped and expensive rented properties that leave them with a longer commute and little chance of saving for a home.”

    The figures below show how a collapsing homeownership rate for millennials is much more widespread than thought:

    “Ownership among 25- to 34-year-olds has plummeted in Greater Manchester from 53% in 1984 to 26% last year. It has fallen from 54% to 25% in south Yorkshire, from 45% to 20% in the West Midlands, from 50% to 28% in Wales and from 55% to 27% in the south-east. In outer London, the proportion has collapsed from 53% to just 16%. Out of 22 regions analysed by the commission, in only one – Strathclyde in Scotland – has home ownership among the young remained stable. It stood at 32% in 1984 and 33% last year, having peaked at 45% in 2002.”

    Shockingly, with today’s sub-par economic growth conditions in the region, millennials are expected to be at the same level of homeownership as the previous generation by the age of 45. The Guardian notes that inheritances could speed up the home buying process, but added that “nearly half of young non-homeowners have parents who do not own either.”

    Nearly two-fifths of millennials rent by the age of 30, double the rate for Generation X, and almost four times the rate for baby boomers. It was estimated that millennials spend roughly a quarter of their net income on housing, which is three times more than the pre-war generation.

    The Guardian explains how millennials are facing smaller living spaces with longer commutes to their jobs.

    “Their living space is also declining. Each person living in the private rented sector now has on average eight square metres less space than they did in 1996. Meanwhile, those who own their own homes enjoy an extra four square metres each. Since younger households are more likely to be private renters than owners, they now have less space on average per household member. Just under one in 10 households headed by millennials in their late 20s now live in overcrowded conditions.

    They are facing longer commutes than older generations endured. If current differences continue, millennials will spend almost three full days more commuting in the year they turn 40 than the baby boomers did at the same age.”

    Based on existing trends from 2002 to 2012, about half of the oldest millennials would own a home by the age of 45, compared to more than 70 percent of baby boomers at that age.

    Torsten Bell, director of the Resolution Foundation, said: “The need to renew our intergenerational contract is clear and urgent, but doing so is far from easy. It requires new thinking and tough trade-offs – from how we deal with the fiscal pressures of an aging society in a way that is generationally fair, to how we deliver the housing young people need while respecting the communities everyone values.”

    “We need our political leaders to rise to this challenge with an appeal to all generations. We can deliver the health and care older generations deserve without simply asking younger workers to bear all the costs. We can do more to promote education and skills, especially for those who are not on the university route.

    We can provide more security for young people, from the jobs they do to the homes they rent. And we can show younger generations that owning a home is a reality, not a distant prospect in 21st-century Britain.”

    At the current rate, a majority of millennials in Britain might not be able to afford a home in their lifetime. While this is nothing new, the homeownership rate has been declining for the past 30-years, at what point will the millennials revolt against government and demand inter-generational fairness?

  • UK 'Deep State' Panics: Turns Russia-Narrative On Political Left

    Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Steemit.com,

    “Fuck You, Actually!”

    For months leftist analysts have been warning that the increasingly hysterical anti-Russia narratives being aggressively promoted by the western media would eventually be used to target the political left. Those warnings went largely unheeded in the United States where the Russiagate narrative was being ostensibly used to undermine the Trump administration, and the McCarthyite feeding frenzies which have become normalized for American audiences have now metastasized across the pond to the UK.

    As a result, the Poms have now quickly found themselves in a political environment where anyone who remembers the Blair government’s lies about Iraq is smeared as a “useful idiot”, a private British citizen can be falsely labeled a Kremlin bot by a mainstream publication without retraction or apology, and a BBC reporter can admonish a veteran military analyst for giving a truthful analysis about the alleged Douma chemical attacks on the grounds that it could hurt the “information war” against Russia.

    And now, in what is undeniably a whole new level of Russophobic shrillness, Russia is being blamed for the gains made last year by Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party.

    According to a tweet, The Sunday Times‘ headline read, in all seriousness, “Exposed: Russians tried to swing election for Corbyn”. According to the text in the tweet, the Times has allegedly found evidence that Russian bots have been retweeting publicly available posts supporting Labour and criticizing the Tories. Not creating fake news, not even circulating articles from RT or Sputnik, but retweeting conventional, publicly available political commentary.

    This would be the same publisher, by the way, whose expertise on Russian Twitter “disinformation” recently led to a false allegation against an antiwar Finnish grandmother in an article about Kremlin trolls.

    The Sunday Times front page featured Corbyn against a red background in very much the same way the BBC superimposed his image in Soviet-looking garb against a red-colored Kremlin skyline last month, with a red Twitter logo plainly intended to evoke Cold War memories of the USSR flag. They’re intentionally calling up old, generational fears of communists to smear a leftist politician as a Kremlin tool. It’s about as subtle as a kick in the throat.

    Hey, Sunday Times? How about fuck you, actually? Fuck your brazen attempt to keep the British people from reclaiming what is being stolen from them by an increasingly corporatist neoliberal government. Fuck your shameless “information war” which places the agendas of plutocrats and intelligence agencies above truth and honest discourse. Fuck your relentless propaganda campaign which smears anyone who remembers the lies they were told about Vietnam, Iraq and Libya as a “useful idiot” and arbitrarily labels any discussion of the very real phenomenon of false flag attacks as a “Kremlin talking point”.

    This is as fascinating as it is infuriating.

    By attacking literally anything which poses an obstacle to the loose alliance of western plutocrats and secretive government agencies, the social engineers who are fueling this Russia hysteria are actually closer than ever before to openly admitting that the west is truly ruled by those plutocrats and agencies.

    They are now this close to saying “Russia is our enemy because it stands in opposition to the corporatist Orwellian oligarchy which is your real government.”

    This is a really extraordinary time to be alive. The nationless power establishment which looked completely unshakeable a matter of months ago is now flipping out like a meth addict whose stash just got stolen and publicly overextending itself in an amazingly conspicuous way. The mechanics of western imperialism and the deceitful nature of the mass media propaganda machine which holds it all together have never been as exposed as they are today.

    Keep pushing against the machine, clear-eyed rebels. Truth is winning. Truth will prevail. The bastards are about to fall.

    *  *  *

    Internet censorship is getting pretty bad, so best way to keep seeing my daily articles 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 new book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

  • Sacre Bleu – More French Babies Born Out Of Wedlock Than Any EU Nation

    In many countries, the institution of marriage is losing its importance.

    As Statista’s Martin Armstrong points out, one indicator of this is demonstrated in the below infographic showing Eurostat data on the share of live births outside of marriage in EU countries.

    Infographic: Where babies are born outside of marriage | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    France is at the top with a majority of babies born out of wedlock – 60 percent.

    On the other end of the scale, Greece has the lowest rate, where nine out of ten children were born to parents that were already married.

  • Mueller's Questions For Trump Leaked; Read Them Here

    The New York Times has obtained a list of four-dozen questions that Special Counsel Robert Mueller would like President Trump to answer, after Mueller’s office delivered the questions to Trump’s attorneys (however the Times notes that their source is not someone on Trump’s legal team).

    Mueller has sought to question Trump for months over his business dealings, his relationships, and his communications with former staffers who have become embroiled in the probe. Trump, meanwhile, has at times expressed a desire to be interviewed by Mueller in the hopes of ending the investigation more quickly. The President’s lawyers eventually negotiated for Mueller to present a list of questions, which can be read below. 

    Mr. Trump’s lawyers gave Mr. Mueller several pages of written explanations about the president’s role in the matters the special counsel is investigating. Concerned about putting the president in legal jeopardy, his lead lawyer, John Dowd, was trying to convince Mr. Mueller he did not need to interview Mr. Trump, according to people briefed on the matter.

    Mr. Mueller was apparently unsatisfied. He told Mr. Dowd in early March that he needed to question the president directly to determine whether he had criminal intent when he fired Mr. Comey, the people said.

    But Mr. Dowd held firm, and investigators for Mr. Mueller agreed days later to share during a meeting with Mr. Dowd the questions they wanted to ask Mr. Trump. –NYT

    Several questions focus on communications between Trump or members of his staff and Russia, while others focus on the infamous Trump Tower meeting between Don Jr. and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, which was organized by Fusion GPS associate Rob Goldstone. 

    Further questions pertain to:

    • Russian hacking during the 2016 election
    • Why Trump praised Wikileaks during the election and called on Russia to find Hillary Clinton’s deleted emails 
    • Questions about Jeff Sessions, Michael Cohen, Jared Kushner, Reince Priebus and others
    • Trump’s decisions to fire his former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn as well as former FBI Director James Comey

    Trump’s explanation for why he fired each individual has appeared to change at times, stoking speculation that the president may have obstructed justice.

    In a similar vein, Mueller planned to inquire about Trump’s reported efforts to fire the special counsel.

    “What discussions did you have regarding terminating the special counsel, and what did you do when that consideration was reported in January 2018?” the question states, according to The Times.

    Trump reportedly sought to fire Mueller on two occasions, but was talked out of it in both instances. –The Hill

    Read the New York Times‘ analysis of the questions below:

     

  • Russia Really Is America's No. 1 Enemy…Depending On Who "America" Is

    Authored by James George Jatras via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    US-Russia enmity is here to stay. Cold War II is a fact of life for the foreseeable future. The only questions are where, when, and how it might turn hot. That didn’t happen in Syria this past Friday the Thirteenth, for reasons yet to be explained. But the danger is by no means gone.

    Rather, the threat of a major war will continue to intensify as President Donald Trump continues to stack his team with GOP retards who diametrically oppose his oft-repeated desire to improve ties with Moscow. Whether or not his desire is genuine is irrelevant. With each new appointment to the National Security Council and the State Department the Russophobic critical mass grows.

    Personnel is policy. The door to rapprochement is being nailed ever more firmly shut

    “FISAgate” and the Christopher Steele “dirty dossier,” on top of bogus claims of Russian election meddling, have done their job. It would be remiss not to mention the major role played by British special services. The dossier itself, authored by a “retired” MI6 agent. The British diplomat (or another spook?) who passed it on to a top GOP Trump critic, and thence to then-FBI Director James Comey. The likelihood that GCHQ spied on Trump and his team. The Salisbury chemical provocation. The Douma chemical provocation.

    Never forget that however culpable the likes of Comey, James Clapper, John Brennan, and others are, they had a lot of help from their “Five Eyes” pals abroad.

    There was foreign interference, alright, in what we still quaintly call “our democracy.” But it was British, not Russian.

    The fact that the House Intelligence Committee wrapped up its investigation having found no evidence of Russian collusion makes no difference. Neither does the fact that Robert Mueller’s probe won’t turn up any evidence either, since it doesn’t exist. If Mueller nails Trump – and he well might – it won’t be because of anything to do with Russia, it will be a “process crime” like perjury or obstruction trumped up during the investigation (cf., Flynn, Papadopoulos) or related to something in Trump’s business and personal life (a supposed election law violation for a payoff to Stormy Daniels, corners cut in a sharp-elbowed New York real estate deal).

    Again, the specifics hardly matter. If Trump’s head rolls, the new President Mike Pence – Vice President Nikki Haley Administration will be even more anti-Russian. To quote America’s schoolmarmish Metternich of Turtle Bay: “Russia will never be our friend, we’ll slap them when needed.” Surely Russia would never be crazy enough to slap back!

    For Republicans, the factual vacuum at the heart of “Russiagate” only means that the narrative of Trump’s canoodling with the Kremlin just flips on a partisan basis to a Democratic conspiracy. The DNC paid Steele for Russian dirt! Hillary gave Putin our stocks of fissile material under the Uranium One deal! The variable (Democrat vs. Republican) changes, the constant (Russia is bad) doesn’t. GOP NeverTrumpers and Trump supporters alike smugly chortle that “Mitt Romney was right” when Barack Obama mocked him for suggesting in 2012 that Russia was America’s greatest geopolitical foe. (Note that putting “Mitt Romney” and “was right” in the same sentence violates basic grammar of the English language.)

    To say that Russia is an adversary for “geopolitical” reasons is obvious to many people whose views matter in Washington. Russia is the closest approximation of the “Heartland” of Halford Mackinder’s “World Island”: “Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; Who rules the Heartland commands the World Island; Who rules the World Island commands the World.” The United States is master of Mackiner’s “Outlying Islands” (Western Hemisphere and Australia) and “Offshore Islands” (British Isles and the Pacific “First Island Chain”).

    So there you have it! According the expert graduates of geopolitical Mackinder-garten, Washington must confront Moscow over every square inch of Eastern Europe and the Middle East! Otherwise the Russians will consolidate the “Heartland” – and then it’s curtains for America! Never mind the Mexican border, our frontline “self-defense” really lies in Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, and on Russia’s Baltic and Black Sea littoral. (Ditto US naval dominance in the South China Sea and East China Sea.) Anything less than perpetual, full-spectrum, unipolar global domination by Washington would be a dereliction of duty!

    Of course we shouldn’t overlook the fact that perpetual war (or at least perpetual projection of power to the far corners of the earth at the risk of war) is a breathtakingly profitable business – “doing well by doing good.” If Russia (and China) didn’t exist our mandarin class would have to invent them.

    At least, we are told, that unlike the first Cold War this second one is not about ideology, like the struggled between “capitalism” (use of the term itself was a bow to anarcho–socialist vocabulary) and communism. As summarized by Susan B. Glasser of Politico:

    ‘…the new Cold War is not like the original Cold War because it lacks an ideological dimension. … the current tension between the United States and Russia is a Seinfeldian fight about nothing: Putin has no ideological goal beyond the elevation of the Russian state, ruled by him and his clan; he is not seeking adherents in the West, and therefore has brought about no great contest between two systems. … After all, Putin does not preach worldwide revolution, which was a key doctrinal element of Soviet communism.’

    Ah, but the new Cold War is ideological but with two critical differences from the old one.

    First, in the original Cold War the ruling cliques in Washington and Moscow basically believed in the same ideology. While ordinary Americans thought about communism as a murderous, godless machine of oppression (think of the Knights of Columbus’ campaign to insert “under God” into the Pledge of Allegiance), many if not most of the irreligious intellectuals making policy firmly believed that material progress, in a mildly socialist form, was the duty of government – it was only the communists’ methods they found objectionable. As described by Professor Daniel J. Mahoney of Assumption College:

    ‘So many intellectuals were disarmed before the challenge of communism and could not see it for the radical evil that it was. For many, it was simply a more brutal means for achieving the desired ends of industrial modernity and social equality—“the New Deal in a hurry,” in Harry Hopkins’s notorious formulation. That explains in part the divide between ordinary Americans, who … hated communism for its atheism as well as for its brutality, and elite opinion, which tended toward anti-anti-communism and refused to believe in the guilt of one of its own.’

    Second, while Glasser is right that “Putin does not preach worldwide revolution,” western governments do. Just as members of the old Soviet nomenklatura depended on Marxism-Leninism both as a working methodology and as a justification for their prerogatives and privileges, denizens of the entrenched duopoly of Democrat liberal interventionists and Republican neoconservatives rely upon an ideological imperative of “democracy promotion” for global empire and endless wars.

    Perhaps the fullest expression of this was from a 1996 article by neoconservative ideologists William Kristol and Robert Kagan, misleadingly titled “Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy,” in which they called for the US to establish and maintain indefinitely “benevolent global hegemony” – American world domination. As scrutinized by this analyst the following year, Kristol and Kagan laid down virtually all of the elements that have guided US foreign policy and its media aspect during the ensuing years. It is no accident that these same GOP neoconservatives were enthusiastic supporters of Bill Clinton’s Balkan interventions of 1990s, under the guidance of people like then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who once opined regarding the sanctions-related deaths of a half million Iraqi children that “the price is worth it.” In the US establishment, there is little dissent on either side of the partisan aisle with Albright’s sincere conviction that a militant United States has a special wisdom: “If we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future…”

    So if some country doesn’t agree with the “indispensable” opinion of officials in Washington, they should prepare at least to get sanctioned, if not bombed, occupied, targeted by terrorists, or set up for a “color revolution” regime change, with the media cheering it on. Hence the succession of humanitarian, therapeutic wars of aggression in Serbia, Iraq, Libya, and Syria, plus regime change operations in many, many other places.

    After all, extremism is no vice in eliminating opposition to the inexorable forward march of “liberal democracy” against its benighted opponents: nationalists, neo-fascists, xenophobes, racists, anti-Semites, champions of neo-Marxism, protectionists, forces of illiberalism, conspiracy-mongers, fringe websites that spread “fake news,” and other insects of their ilk. [From the “Renew Democracy Manifesto,” paragraph 8. Somehow it’s a bit reminiscent of another famous “Manifesto”…]

    It’s easy to see why a revived, national, non-communist Russia is the main enemy for the ideologists of this faux “America.” The promise of putting America first, which is why the real America elected Donald Trump, terrified them.

    Unfortunately, the ersatz America has taken firm hold of the key levers of power. Worse, Trump handed those levers to them.

  • Safeway Warns Seattle: New Employment Tax Could Turn Neighborhoods Into Food Deserts

    A new employment tax proposed by the Seattle City Council would charge roughly $500 per employee based in the city. And though it would only apply to the city’s largest companies, many of them are complaining to the press – some with good reason – about how the tax would discourage employment and ultimately damage the city’s economy.

    The tax would only apply to businesses earning $20 million in revenue within the city limits – a group that includes roughly 585 companies, about 3% of the total number operating in the city, according to CNNMoney.

    Safeway

    Businesses would be required to pay 26 cents per man hour per employee worked within the city limits, excluding vacation pay and sick time.

    To what we imagine would be the delight of the Trump administration, Amazon would bear the brunt of the new tax. The e-commerce giant would be forced to contribute some $20 million annually on behalf of its nearly 45,000 employees in Seattle. Of course, Amazon will have a difficult time arguing that it can’t afford the tax after it smashed expectations in its latest quarterly earnings report. And with the city facing an unemployment rate of 3.8%, even lower than the nationwide rate of 4.1%.

    The city says it would use the money to build affordable housing and also provide emergency shelter services to at-risk and homeless individuals.

    But Amazon told CNNMoney that it has a better plan to help the homeless.

    Amazon, which declined to comment on the proposal, notes that it already contributes economically in many ways to Seattle. For example, it will provide a permanent location for a shelter in one of its new office buildings by 2020. It would be run by the nonprofit Mary’s Place, which already had temporary use of two vacant Amazon buildings to shelter the homeless since 2016.

    Starbucks did not respond to a request for comment.

    Prosperous big businesses can in turn generate a lot of economic activity and revenue for their host city. And they may donate goods, services or money to critical social causes.

    But the co-sponsors of the bill note that a major cause of homelessness is the higher cost of housing that results when more workers move to a city for jobs that pay more than long-time residents have been earning. And the demand to build affordable housing doesn’t keep pace.

    But city council members have apparently been ignoring pleas from Safeway, which operates 21 grocery stores in the city. The company said that if the tax is passed, it will be faced with a dilemma: Either raise prices or consider closing stores, according to Q13 Fox.

    The tax would threaten stores that are in many cases the only resources in under-served neighborhoods – something that would turn those neighborhoods into food deserts.

    It’s been billed as a tax on the rich, only levied on business with revenue of $20 million or more annually. But Safeway contends that the tax would end up hurting the city’s poorest families.

    Currently, there are 19 Safeway stores and two Alberstons in the Seattle city limits. Albertsons is the parent company of Safeway.

    In two communities, Rainier Beach and Othello, it is the only mainstream store in the area.

    Chelle Jackson, the store director at the Safeway in Rainier Beach, told Fox that her store would likely be forced to close if the tax doesn’t spare grocery stores.

    “I grew up about five blocks up the street from here,” said Jackson. “It’s the only store that’s survived the generations around here.”

    […]

    “It’s not about our company being in bad shape, it’s about losing stores in communities in Seattle who need them,” said Osborne.

    The problem is that while Safeway stores earn more than $20 million a year, their margins are razor-thin, so the tax would have a disproportionate impact.

    On paper, Osborne confirms Safeway’s Seattle stores bring more than over $20 million in revenue each year. But after expenses, Safeway says its Seattle locations end up with a small profit.

    “The margins grocers operate within, they’re very, very small, almost razor thin,” said Osborne.

    If grocers aren’t exempted, and Safeway decides not to close stores, Osborne said the other option Safeway has is to raise prices. Jackson said that would be devastating to her customers.

    “It would mean they couldn’t get all the things they want on their shopping list, or they would have to cut back, and it might mean that kids don’t get to take lunch to school,” said Jackson.

    Safeway has offered to let the city council review its stores’ financials, but apparently the offer hasn’t been accepted.

    Safeway said if the council wants proof, they’ll gladly share their slim margins behind closed doors.

    “We’re happy to share those numbers so the council members can see how close we are in some communities to it not being worthwhile in some communities to operate,” said Osborne. “We want them to believe us.”

    Safeway wants to make it clear they believe building affordable housing and addressing the homeless crisis is an important cause they support, but in their opinion this tax isn’t the way to go.

    “What we’re trying to point out is that we are addressing an affordability crisis, but we can’t address that by making food less affordable,” said Osborne.

    Of course, many alternatives to the progressive employment tax have been offered by firms who (correctly) point out that the city council’s plan would do little to improve housing affordability and instead lead to a range of adverse consequences for workers and companies. Firms could be forced to cut pay or raise prices, which would hurt Seattle residents among every rung of the economic spectrum.

    But then again, this is the same legislative body that crushed the poor and minority workers in particular by adopting a $15 minimum wage in the city.

  • Dial 'T' For Tyranny: While America Feuds, the Police State Shifts Into High Gear

    Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

    What characterizes American government today is not so much dysfunctional politics as it is ruthlessly contrived governance carried out behind the entertaining, distracting and disingenuous curtain of political theater. And what political theater it is, diabolically Shakespearean at times, full of sound and fury, yet in the end, signifying nothing.

    Played out on the national stage and eagerly broadcast to a captive audience by media sponsors, this farcical exercise in political theater can, at times, seem riveting, life-changing and suspenseful, even for those who know better. 

    Week after week, the script changes—Donald Trump’s Tweets, Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, Michael Cohen’s legal troubles, porn star Stormy Daniels’ lawsuit over an alleged past affair with Trump, Michelle Wolf’s tasteless stand-up routine at the White House correspondents’ dinner, North and South Korea’s détente, the ongoing staff shakeups within the Trump administration—with each new script following on the heels of the last, never any let-up, never any relief from the constant melodrama.

    The players come and go, the protagonists and antagonists trade places, and the audience members are forgiving to a fault, quick to forget past mistakes and move on to the next spectacle. 

    All the while, a different kind of drama is unfolding in the dark backstage, hidden from view by the heavy curtain, the elaborate stage sets, colored lights and parading actors.

    Such that it is, the realm of political theater with all of its drama, vitriol and scripted theatrics is what passes for “transparent” government today, with elected officials, entrusted to act in the best interests of their constituents, routinely performing for their audiences and playing up to the cameras, while doing very little to move the country forward.

    Yet behind the footlights, those who really run the show are putting into place policies which erode our freedoms and undermine our attempts at contributing to the workings of our government, leaving us none the wiser and bereft of any opportunity to voice our discontent or engage in any kind of discourse until it’s too late.

    None of the dangers posed by the government and its henchmen have dissipated.

    They have merely disappeared from our televised news streams.

    In the interest of liberty and truth, here’s an A-to-Z primer to spell out the grim realities of life in the American Police State that no one is talking about anymore.

    A is for the AMERICAN POLICE STATE. A police state “is characterized by bureaucracy, secrecy, perpetual wars, a nation of suspects, militarization, surveillance, widespread police presence, and a citizenry with little recourse against police actions.”

    B is for our battered BILL OF RIGHTS.

    C is for CIVIL ASSET FORFEITURE, which allows government agents to seize and keep private property whether or not any crime has actually taken place.

    D is for DRONES equipped with lasers, tasers and scanning devices, all aimed at “we the people.”

    E is for ELECTRONIC CONCENTRATION CAMP, a.k.a., the surveillance state.

    F is for FUSION CENTERS that serve as a clearinghouse for information shared between state, local and federal agencies.

    G is for GRENADE LAUNCHERS, part of the more than $18 billion worth of battlefield-appropriate military weapons, vehicles and equipment distributed to domestic police departments across the country.

    H is for HOLLOW-POINT BULLETS, which have been stockpiled by the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration.

    I is for the INTERNET OF THINGS, a “connected” industry that propels us closer to a future where a person’s biometrics can be used to track their movements, target them for advertising, and keep them under perpetual surveillance.

    J is for JAILING FOR PROFIT, a $70 billion private prison industry that relies on the complicity of state governments to keep their privately run prisons full by jailing large numbers of Americans for inane crimes.

    K is for KENTUCKY V. KING, a Supreme Court ruling that gives police the green light to break into homes, without a warrant, even if it’s the wrong home as long as they think they have a reason to do so.

    L is for LICENSE PLATE READERS, which enable law enforcement and private agencies to track the whereabouts of vehicles, and their occupants, all across the country.

    M is for MAIN CORE, a database of names and information to be used by the government in times of national emergency or under martial law to locate and round up Americans seen as threats to national security.

    N is for NO-KNOCK RAIDS, of which more than 80,000 are carried out every year.

    O is for OVERCRIMINALIZATION, which renders every American a criminal.

    P is for PATHOCRACY: tyranny at the hands of a psychopathic government, which “operates against the interests of its own people except for favoring certain groups.”

    Q is for QUALIFIED IMMUNITY, which allows officers to walk away without paying a dime for their wrongdoing.

    R is for ROADSIDE STRIP SEARCHES and BLOOD DRAWS.

    S is for the SURVEILLANCE STATE.

    T is for TASERS, which have been used by police as weapons of compliance more often and with less restraint—even against women and children—and in some instances, even causing death. 

    U is for UNARMED CITIZENS SHOT BY POLICE.

    V is for VIPR SQUADS, which carry out “soft target” security inspections whenever and wherever the government deems appropriate, at random times and places, and without needing the justification of a particular threat.

    W is for WHOLE-BODY SCANNERS, which are being used not only to “see” through your clothes but to spy on you within the privacy of your home.

    X is for X-KEYSCORE, one of the many spying programs carried out by the National Security Agency that targets every person in the United States who uses a computer or phone.

    Y is for YOU-NESS. Facial recognition software promises to create a society in which every individual who steps out into public is tracked and recorded as they go about their daily business. 

    Z is for ZERO TOLERANCE in which young people are increasingly viewed as suspects and treated as criminals by school officials and law enforcement alike, often for engaging in little more than childish behavior.

    As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the reality we must come to terms with is that in the post-9/11 America we live in today, the government does whatever it wants, freedom be damned.

    We have moved beyond the era of representative government and entered a new age.

    You can call it the age of authoritarianism. Or fascism. Or oligarchy. Or the American police state.

    Whatever label you want to put on it, the end result is the same: tyranny.

  • "Absolute Gong Show": Vancouver Loses Crown As Canada's Hottest Real Estate Market

    Following the imposition of taxes on foreign investors and empty houses, Vancouver real estate has lost its crown as the craziest housing market in Canada – ceding its position to the resort town of Whistler – around two hours north.

    The Pan Pacific Whistler hotel

    Benchmark property prices in Whistler have surpassed Vancouver for the first time – with the average townhouse in Whistler selling for C$1 million vs. Vancouver’s C$835,000, and detached homes selling for a premium of 4% over Vancouver’s at C$1.67 million. The housing crunch in Whistler is so bad that businesses have taken to buying multi-million-dollar properties to house employees who can’t otherwise afford to live in the popular vacation destination.

    “It’s an absolute gong show,” said Russell Kling, a former hedge fund manager turned developer, whose Pangea Pod Hotel is set to open this summer aimed at delivering more affordable tourist accommodation. Whistler was the most expensive place in Canada to spend New Year’s Eve — C$745 for a double room compared to C$414 in second-place Quebec City.

    “People told us, ‘Your biggest issue will be accommodation — if your staff can’t find accommodation, it doesn’t matter how much you pay them,’” recounts Kling, whose co-founder is his wife, Jelena. “So we took that risk off the table and purchased a home.”

    The seven-bedroom residence cost “close to a couple million dollars” and will house the hotel’s general manager and a handful of key employees. The Klings even looked at buying a second staff property. “But so much of this stuff now — forget about buying, I wouldn’t want to put my worst enemy there,” he said. –Bloomberg

    While the explosion in real estate prices is mind-boggling already, the rental market is even crazier – with one recent listing for two girls to share a double room (and we presume, the one bed) at C$780 per month, each.

    Many renters spend more than 50 percent of their income on housing. Mayor Wilhelm-Morden, incensed by landlords raking in cash from illegal short-term rentals, has imposed a C$1,000-a-day fine for violators, saying Whistler won’t tolerate “employees shoved out the back door” to make way for tourists. –Bloomberg

    And it’s not just the price of housing and rentals that’s exploded in Whistler – visiting is now prohibitively expensive as well, with overnight rates during peak winter season topping anywhere else in the nation. It’s become so bad in Whistler that a take-home income of $2,180 per month is barely enough to get by. As Bloomberg reports: 

    Phil Bonham, a 31-year-old ski patroller, has been living out of a 1984 Dodge camper van for four years, unable to afford the surging cost of housing.

    Styrofoam cutouts are wedged into his windows to keep out the chill during cold snaps, when temperatures can plummet to minus 25 degrees Celsius (-15 Fahrenheit). He doesn’t bother with the propane-fired refrigerator in the tiny kitchen between the driver’s seat and bed — nothing thaws anyway in winter, and he eats fruits and vegetables immediately before they freeze.

    The small wood-burning stove in the back corner is the “hippie killer,” a reference to stoves like this that have been known to asphyxiate people in their sleep as they try to stay warm. The winter before last, he found himself lying under the van during a snow storm rebuilding pieces of the engine — “a bit of a low point,” as he describes it. But that’s what a take-home wage of about C$2,800 ($2,180) a month after taxes buys in Whistler. –Bloomberg

    “I only expected to do it for a season,” Bonham said in a Bloomberg interview in a parking lot near the ski slopes, where he identified at least seven other vehicles being used as full-time residences. “Without getting a second job or a girlfriend, there’s no way I could afford a room to myself. And I make a decent wage in comparison to many other jobs in Whistler.”

    While Whistler has a permanent population of less than 12,000 residents, there are over 1,300 applicants waiting to either rent or buy homes at below-market rates in a lottery of resident-only housing managed by the Whistler Housing Authority – which aims to provide housing for at least 75% of the town’s employees. Officials in December said that target “will be very challenging to continue to meet.” 

    Putting even more upward pressure on the Whistler real estate market is its transition from a skiing mecca into a four-season destination for all sorts of outdoor activities, including golf, hiking and mountain biking. 

    “We’re as busy now in the summer as in the winter,” said Mark Lamming, owner of Whistler bakery, Purebread.

    In order to try and explain the run up in housing costs, Mayor Nancy Wilhelm-Morden has assembled a task force to try and determine how young families can afford to live in the area – finding that “Suites that once housed local tenants are being replaced by lavish, sparsely used vacation chalets. Online home-share websites have made it easier for owners to illegally rent properties intended for residents to higher-paying tourists.”

    Further complicating matters is Whistler’s bevy of restrictive zoning laws prevent builders from easily alleviating the crunch.

    Much of the supply-side woes are also self-imposed. Canada’s first resort municipality, Whistler was purpose-built in the 1980s in the image of a pedestrian-free Swiss alpine village, and restrictive zoning and land-use rules to prevent over-development also choke supply. Meanwhile, a byzantine web of rules dictate how residences can be used in the broader community. –Bloomberg

    One in three Whistler businesses could not find enough staff last year, according to the housing authority. In order to try and mitigate the problem, the town council has committed to an additional 1,000 new resident beds over the next five y4ears – however one local developer says that’s less than half of what’s needed. 

    [I]n a letter to council dated Oct. 31, local developer Steve Bayly questioned the accuracy of the RMOW assessment.

    “In my view, 1,000 beds fall short of the current need. Most concerning is that 850 of the beds are predicted to come from in-fill (300) and private sector development (550) where Whistler has had little success in the past,” Bayly wrote.

    Further, with 2,500 new employees gained in the last five years and more growth projected, the RMOW’s target of 1,000 beds, even if fully realized, may fall well short of future need.

    “In my view, total additional employee beds needed to run the resort at build out may be as high as 2,500 new beds and that is before such things as future leakage and gentrification,” Bayly wrote. –Pique

    Vancouver

    Two miles to the South of Whistler, Vancouver’s market has softened – with residential home sales totaling 2,517 in March – a 29.7 decrease from March 2016, and 23% below the 10-year March sales average.

    There were 6,542 home sales on the Multiple Listing Service® (MLS®) in Metro Vancouver during the first quarter of 2018, a 13.1 per cent decrease from the 7,527 sales over the same period last year. This represents the region’s lowest first-quarter sales total since 2013. –RE Board of Greater Vancouver

    “We saw less demand from buyers and fewer homes listed for sale in our region in the first quarter of the year,” Phil Moore, REBGV president said. “High prices, new tax announcements, rising interest rates, and stricter mortgage requirements are among the factors affecting home buyer and seller activity today.”

    That said, Vancouver experienced its lowest first-quarter new listings total since 2013, which may continue to put upward pressure on prices. 

    “Even with lower demand, upward pressure on prices will continue as long as the supply of homes for sale remains low,” Moore said. “Last month was the quietest March for new home listings since 2009 and the total inventory, particularly in the condo and townhome segments, of homes for sale remains well below historical norms.”

    Maybe staff-strapped Whistler businesses can chip in for a few tour buses to cart employees back and forth two hours each way from the “far more affordable” Vancouver? 

  • NSA Whistleblower: "Impossible To Communicate Safely… NSA Knows Our Weaknesses"

    Authored by Erik Sandberg via Medium.com,

    Some of the most vocal critics of the ethics of the U.S. governmental and surveillance agencies have been the ones who worked and built their tracking programs. The problem many of these individuals feel  –  like Bill Binney, a former technical director at the NSA  –  is that the spying mechanisms and frameworks have been abused by successive American governments following the travesty that was 9/11.

    The sheer amount of data that was being fed in to the National Security Agency in the lead-up to 9/11 is also a moot point in that the event was an entirely avoidable catastrophe. Programs originally designed and implemented to protect U.S. citizens are now being used against its population.

    Listen to the full interview in our weekly Newsvoice Think podcast.

    Speaking to Bill Binney, we wanted to find out a bit more about how the National Security Agency functions and in what ways it violates the U.S. constitution. He told Newsvoice Think that it’s now practically impossible for any member of the public to communicate safely, privately or in a fashion that doesn’t end up in an NSA repository unit.

    Bill Binney on the Fairview surveillance program

    “The Fairview surveillance program has been used to spy on the Donald Trump administration, even before he took office. Now they’re starting to talk about this program simply because the politicians are getting hit with it. The poor suckers and thousands of citizens that have been jailed via this program. They don’t count. They’re the Department of Just-Us.”

    Bill Binney on protecting ourselves against spying…

    With Telegram hitting the news early in 2018, the focus on encrypted messaging apps and their primary function was much debated. In Iran, the government there blamed Pavel Durov’s product and banned it for inciting and encouraging revolution in a country already nervous and encircled by U.S. bases in the Middle East. The argument on encrypted messaging apps rages on with many in the U.K., such as Amber Rudd and even the Prime Minister calling on access in unique cases such as terrorist activity. Bill Binney, however, was sceptical on whether there is any way that the public can protect themselves from intrusion on their metadata.

    Bill Binney on the relationship between the press and the CIA…

    Censorship isn’t secluded to just Iran, though. With journalists across the globe still being jailed or in extreme cases, as witnessed recently in Slovakia, killed for their investigative work and reporting. Binney describes that the CIA have been involved and have colluded with the press since the ’50s and that the former director of the CIA, William J. Casey once said: “We’ll know when our propaganda campaign has succeeded; when everything and everyone in the country believes is false.”

    Bill Binney on Mike Pompeo and the intelligence communities…

    While Russia’s influence on the 2016 U.S. elections continues to hark debate, Bill Binney found himself at the centre of the furore late in 2017. At the behest of Donald Trump, he was summoned by the then CIA director Mike Pompeo who wanted his thoughts on Russian ‘hacking’.

    “The intelligence community was not telling them the truth. They’re trying to drum up a new cold war. Look what they said in public testimony about spying, look what they said about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq: Nobody’s been telling the truth about these major issues.

    Then they go off and kill hundreds of thousands of people based on a lie so they can go and build these military industrial complexes.”

    *  *  *

    With Newsvoice, you can be a part of the media. Our mission is to democratize the news, and move the power over to our readers. Get involved by downloading the app, or visit us at Newsvoice.com.

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Apr 30

Today’s News 30th April 2018

  • UK's "Generation Rent" Faces Ever-More Unaffordable Homes

    For the so-called ‘Generation Rent’, the dream of buying a house is usually a distant and unrealistic one.

    And, as Statista’s Martin Armstrong notes, figures from the Office for National Statistics show the dream is only moving further away, too.

    Infographic: The ever-more unaffordable price of a house | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    Furthermore, when comparing the ratio of median house prices in England and Wales to the average earnings, the gap is only moving in the wrong direction.

    In 1997, the rate was 3.54 in England and 3.00 in Wales. In 2016, this had jumped up to 7.72 and 5.79.

  • Move Over Chernobyl, Fukushima is Now Officially the Worst Nuclear Disaster in History

    Authored by John Laforge of CounterPunch

    The radiation dispersed into the environment by the three reactor meltdowns at Fukushima-Daiichi in Japan has exceeded that of the April 26, 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe, so we may stop calling it the “second worst” nuclear power disaster in history. Total atmospheric releases from Fukushima are estimated to be between 5.6 and 8.1 times that of Chernobyl, according to the 2013 World Nuclear Industry Status Report. Professor Komei Hosokawa, who wrote the report’s Fukushima section, told London’s Channel 4 News then, “Almost every day new things happen, and there is no sign that they will control the situation in the next few months or years.”

    Tokyo Electric Power Co. has estimated that about 900 peta-becquerels have spewed from Fukushima, and the updated 2016 TORCH Report estimates that Chernobyl dispersed 110 peta-becquerels. [1] (A Becquerel is one atomic disintegration per second. The “peta-becquerel” is a quadrillion, or a thousand trillion Becquerels.)

    Chernobyl’s reactor No. 4 in Ukraine suffered several explosions, blew apart and burned for 40 days, sending clouds of radioactive materials high into the atmosphere, and spreading fallout across the whole of the Northern Hemisphere — depositing cesium-137 in Minnesota’s milk.[2]

    The likelihood of similar or worse reactor disasters was estimated by James Asselstine of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), who testified to Congress in 1986: “We can expect to see a core meltdown accident within the next 20 years, and it … could result in off-site releases of radiation … as large as or larger than the releases … at Chernobyl. [3] Fukushima-Daiichi came 25 years later.

    Contamination of soil, vegetation and water is so widespread in Japan that evacuating all the at-risk populations could collapse the economy, much as Chernobyl did to the former Soviet Union. For this reason, the Japanese government standard for decontaminating soil there is far less stringent than the standard used in Ukraine after Chernobyl.

    Fukushima’s Cesium-137 Release Tops Chernobyl’s

    The Korea Atomic Energy Research (KAER) Institute outside of Seoul reported in July 2014 that Fukushima-Daiichi’s three reactor meltdowns may have emitted two to four times as much cesium-137 as the reactor catastrophe at Chernobyl. [4]

    To determine its estimate of the cesium-137 that was released into the environment from Fukushima, the Cesium-137 release fraction (4% to the atmosphere, 16% to the ocean) was multiplied by the cesium-137 inventory in the uranium fuel inside the three melted reactors (760 to 820 quadrillion Becquerel, or Bq), with these results:

    Ocean release of cesium-137 from Fukushima (the worst ever recorded): 121.6 to 131.2 quadrillion Becquerel (16% x 760 to 820 quadrillion Bq). Atmospheric release of Cesium-137 from Fukushima: 30.4 to 32.8 quadrillion Becquerel (4% x 760 to 820 quadrillion Bq).

    Total release of Cesium-137 to the environment from Fukushima: 152 to 164 quadrillion Becquerel. Total release of Cesium-137 into the environment from Chernobyl: between 70 and 110 quadrillion Bq.

    The Fukushima-Daiichi reactors’ estimated inventory of 760 to 820 quadrillion Bq (petabecquerels) of Cesium-137 used by the KAER Institute is significantly lower than the US Department of Energy’s estimate of 1,300 quadrillion Bq. It is possible the Korean institute’s estimates of radioactive releases are low.

    In Chernobyl, 30 years after its explosions and fire, what the Wall St. Journal last year called “the $2.45 billion shelter implementation plan” was finally completed in November 2016. A huge metal cover was moved into place over the wreckage of the reactor and its crumbling, hastily erected cement tomb. The giant new cover is 350 feet high, and engineers say it should last 100 years — far short of the 250,000-year radiation hazard underneath.

    The first cover was going to work for a century too, but by 1996 was riddled with cracks and in danger of collapsing. Designers went to work then engineering a cover-for-the-cover, and after 20 years of work, the smoking radioactive waste monstrosity of Chernobyl has a new “tin chapeau.” But with extreme weather, tornadoes, earth tremors, corrosion and radiation-induced embrittlement it could need replacing about 2,500 times.

    John Laforge’s field guide to the new generation of nuclear weapons is featured in the March/April 2018 issue of CounterPunch magazine.

    Notes.

    [1] Duluth News-Tribune & Herald, “Slight rise in radioactivity found again in state milk,” May 22, 1986; St. Paul Pioneer Press & Dispatch, “Radiation kills Chernobyl firemen,” May 17, 1986; Minneapolis StarTribune, “Low radiation dose found in area milk,” May 17, 1986.

    [2] Ian Fairlie, “TORCH-2016: An independent scientific evaluation of the health-related effects of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster,” March 2016 (https://www.global2000.at/sites/global/files/GLOBAL_TORCH%202016_rz_WEB…).

    [3] James K. Asselstine, Commissioner, US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Testimony in Nuclear Reactor Safety: Hearings before the Subcommittee on Energy Conservation and Power of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, House of Representatives, May 22 and July 16, 1986, Serial No. 99-177, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1987.

    [4] Progress in Nuclear Energy, Vol. 74, July 2014, pp. 61-70; ENENews.org, Oct. 20, 2014.

  • How China's "Pragmatic Authoritarianism" And Russia's "Illiberal Democracy" Have Averted "The End Of History"

    Since the historic triumph of President Trump over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 US presidential election, political analysts have pontificated about how the rise of Trumpism was a direct repudiation of a popular idea advanced by Francis Fukuyama in his 1992 book: “The End of History and the Last Man”. That book, published shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, speculated that liberal Western democracy had categorically defeated Communism to become the world’s de fact dominant ideology. It was only a matter of time, Fukuyama posited, before the rest of the world embraces democracy, and, once this happens, the world will settle into an enduring peace.

    For better or worse, the events of the last few years have eroded the credibility of liberal democracies to the point that their continued dominance no longer looks assured even in the west. For evidence of this, one need look no further than Hungary, Poland and Russia, “illiberal democracies” – a term coined by popular Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban – that have won the popular support of the people.

    But by far the biggest threat to US-style democracy is, of course, China – which is already the world’s most populous country and will soon surpass the US as the world’s largest economy, too.

    Communism

    China’s model of pragmatic authoritarianism has succeeded in delivering sustained benefits to even the poorest Chinese – the country’s middle class is growing at a rate unmatched anywhere in the developing world.

    One need only compare its political system to India’s shambolic democracy to see the stark difference in outcomes. India has failed to implement the reforms it needs to maximize its growth potential, while China has proven itself capable of radical and muscular policy changes like doubling the number of solar panels in use over the course of a single year (2016).

    Cambridge Professor David Runciman examined these issues in greater detail in an essay that’s essentially a condensed version of his upcoming book “How Democracy Ends”. It was published as this week’s “Saturday Essay” in the Wall Street Journal.

    Read it in full below:

    In his 1992 book “The End of History and the Last Man,” Francis Fukuyama famously declared the triumph of liberal democracy as the model of governance toward which all of humankind was heading. It was a victory on two fronts. The Western democracies held the clear advantage over their ideological rivals in material terms, thanks to their proven ability to deliver general prosperity and a rising standard of living for most citizens. At the same time, to live in a modern democracy was to be given certain guarantees that you would be respected as a person. Everyone got to have a say, so democracy delivered personal dignity as well.

    Results plus respect is a formidable political mix. The word “dignity” appears 118 times in “The End of History,” slightly more often than the words “peace” and “prosperity” combined. For Mr. Fukuyama, that is what made democracy unassailable: Only it could meet the basic human need for material comfort and the basic human desire for what he called “recognition” (a concept borrowed from Hegel, emphasizing the social dimension of respect and dignity). Set against the lumbering, oppressive, impoverished regimes of the Soviet era, it was no contest.

    Yet today, barely two decades into the 21st century, the contest has been renewed. It is no longer a clash of ideologies, as during the Cold War. Western democracy is now confronted by a form of authoritarianism that is far more pragmatic than its communist predecessors. A new generation of autocrats, most notably in China, have sought to learn the lessons of the 20th century just like everyone else. They too are in the business of trying to offer results plus respect. It is the familiar package, only now it comes in a nondemocratic form.

    Since the 1980s, the Chinese regime has had remarkable success in raising the material condition of its population. Over that period, nondemocratic China has made strikingly greater progress in reducing poverty and increasing life expectancy than democratic India: People in China live on average nearly a decade longer than their Indian counterparts and per capita GDP is four times higher. The poverty rate in China is now well below 10% and still falling fast, whereas in India it remains at around 20%. The benefits of rapid economic growth have been made tangible for many hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens, and the regime understands that its survival depends on the economic success story continuing.

    But China’s rise has been underpinned by more than just improved living standards. There has been a simultaneous drive for greater dignity for the Chinese people. This is not, however, the dignity of the individual citizen as we’ve come to know it in the West. It is collective national dignity, and it comes in the form of demanding greater respect for China itself: Make China great again! The self-assertion of the nation, not the individual, is what completes the other half of the pragmatic authoritarian package.

    Chinese citizens do not have the same opportunities for democratic self-expression as do citizens in the West or India. Personal political dignity is hard to come by in a society that stifles freedom of speech and allows for the arbitrary exercise of power. Nationalism is offered as some compensation, but this only works for individuals who are Han Chinese, the majority national group. It does not help in Tibet or among Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang.

    On the material side of the equation, China’s pragmatic authoritarians have certain advantages. They can target and manage the benefits of breakneck growth to ensure that they are relatively widely shared. Like other developed economies, China is experiencing rising inequality between the very richest and the rest. But the rest are never far from their rulers’ minds. The Chinese middle class is continuing to expand at a dramatic pace. In the West, by contrast, it is the middle class, whose wages and standard of living have been squeezed in recent decades, who feel like they are being left behind.

    The material benefits of democracy are much more haphazardly distributed. At any given moment, plenty of people feel excluded from them, and the constant changing of course in democratic politics—“We zig and we zag,” as Barack Obama said after Donald Trump’s victory—is a reflection of these persistent frustrations. Democracies, because they give everyone a say, are bound to be fickle. Pragmatic authoritarianism has shown itself more capable of planning for the long-term.

    This is revealed not only by the massive recent Chinese investment in infrastructure projects—in transport, in industrial production, in new cities that spring up seemingly from nowhere—but also by the growing concern of China’s rulers with environmental sustainability. China is now the world’s leading greenhouse gas emitter, but it is also at the forefront of attempts to tackle the issue. Only in China would it be possible to double solar capacity in a single year, as happened in 2016.

    Western visitors often come back from China astonished by the pace of change and the lack of obstacles in its path. Things appear to get done almost overnight. That is what happens when you don’t have to worry about the democratic dignity of anyone who might stand in the way.

    Beijing’s reliance on the continuation of rapid economic growth comes with significant risks. The great long-term strength of modern democracies is precisely their ability to change course when things go wrong. They are flexible. The danger of the pragmatic authoritarian alternative is that when the immediate benefits start to dry up, it may be difficult to find another basis for political legitimacy. Pragmatism may not be enough. Nor, in the end, will national self-assertion, if it increases the dangers of geopolitical instability.

    The central political contests of the 20th century were between rival and bitterly opposed worldviews. In the 21st century, the contest is between competing versions of the same fundamental underlying goals. Both sides promise economic growth and widespread prosperity—tangible results in terms of material well-being. But they differ on the question of dignity: The West offers it to individual citizens, while China offers it more diffusely, to the nation as a whole.

    The remarkable rise of China shows that this constitutes a genuine alternative. But is it a genuine rival in the West? Might democratic voters be tempted by this offer?

    One of the striking features of the last century’s battle of ideologies was that the rivals to liberal democracy always had their vocal supporters within democratic states. Marxism-Leninism had its fellow-travelers right to the bitter end, and such people can still be found in Western politics ( Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, potentially the next prime minister and finance minister of the United Kingdom, have never given up the struggle). By contrast, the Chinese approach has almost no one in the West actively advocating its merits. That does not mean, however, that it is without appeal.

    Mr. Trump’s electoral pitch in 2016 came straight out of the pragmatic authoritarian playbook. He promised to deliver collective dignity, at least for the majority group of white Americans: Make America great again! Stop letting other people push us around! At the same time, he promised to use the state much more directly and forcefully to improve the material circumstances of his supporters. He would bring the jobs back, triple the growth rate and protect everyone’s welfare benefits. What Mr. Trump did not offer was much by way of personal dignity: not in his own conduct, not in his treatment of the people around him, and not in his contemptuous attitude toward the basic democratic values of tolerance and respect.

    But there are serious limits in the West to the appeal of the Chinese model. First, unlike his counterparts in Beijing, Mr. Trump has shown little capacity to deliver real benefits to the Americans who elected him. He is hamstrung by his own lack of pragmatism and impulse control. He has also been constrained by the checks and balances that democratic politics puts in his way. For now, he looks more like a familiar type of democratic huckster than a harbinger of future authoritarianism in the U.S.: He has over-promised and under-delivered.

    More fundamentally, it is still very hard to imagine the citizens of Western democracies acquiescing in the loss of personal dignity that would come with abandoning their rights of democratic dissent. We are far too attached to our continuing capacity to throw the scoundrels out of office when we get the chance. Voters in Europe and the U.S. have been attracted lately by novel-sounding promises to kick over the traces of mainstream democracy, but they have not endorsed anyone threatening to take away their democratic rights. The authoritarian reflex has been limited to threats to take away the rights of others—people who supposedly “don’t belong.”

    All of these movements in the West are populist distortions of democracy, not alternatives to it. Democratic authoritarians like the recently re-elected Viktor Orban in Hungary, who describes himself as an “illiberal democrat,” take their inspiration from Vladimir Putin rather than from the Chinese Communist Party. Pragmatism in countries like Hungary and Russia comes a distant second place to scapegoating and elaborate conspiracy theories. Democracy is still talked up, but stripped of its commitment to democratic rights. Elections take place, but the choice is often an empty one.

    Chinese politics is far from immune to scapegoating and conspiracy theories. Its leaders pose as strongmen, and Xi Jinping has recently cemented his tight hold on power by being installed as leader for life. But as a viable alternative to democracy, Beijing has something to offer that Moscow and Budapest, to say nothing of today’s Washington, can only gesture toward: Consistent, practical results for the majority.

    The ongoing appeal of the Chinese model will vary from place to place. It may just stretch to include the edges of our own politics, though it will struggle to reach its heart. It is more immediately appealing in those parts of Africa and Asia where breakneck economic growth is both a realistic prospect and a pressing need. Rapid economic development, coupled with national self-assertion, has an obvious attraction for states that need to deliver results in a relatively short period of time. In these places, democracy often looks like the riskier bet.

    In Western societies, the Chinese alternative is unlikely to capture voters’ imaginations, even as it shows them what they might be missing. Still, the triumph of liberal democracy appears a lot more contingent than it did three decades ago. The temptations to try something different are real, even if the most successful current alternative remains a distant prospect for most voters.

    There’s reason to worry about the weaknesses of our democracies. The kind of respect they provide may prove insufficient for 21st-century citizens. The premium that democracy places on personal dignity has traditionally been expressed through extensions of the franchise. Giving people the vote is the best way to let them know that they count. But when almost all adults are able to vote—in theory, if not in practice—citizens inevitably look for fresh ways to secure greater respect.

    The rise of identity politics in the West is an indication that the right to take part in elections is not enough anymore. Individuals seek the dignity that comes with being recognized for who they are. They don’t just want to be listened to; they want to be heard. Social networks have provided a new forum through which these demands can be voiced. Democracies are struggling to work out how to meet them.

    Elected politicians increasingly tiptoe around the minefield of identity politics, unsure which way to turn, terrified of giving offense, except when they deliberately court it. At the same time, they have grown dependent on technical knowledge—from bankers, scientists, doctors, software engineers—to deliver continuing practical benefits. As citizens find less personal dignity in politics and politicians become less able to manage prosperity, the attraction that has held democracy together for so long will start to dissipate. Respect plus results is a formidable combination. When they come apart, democracy loses its unique advantage.

    The Chinese model faces serious challenges, too. There, personal dignity remains the unrealized option, and the untried temptation is to extend rights of political expression and choice. The use by the Chinese state of social networks to manage and monitor its citizens represents a concerted attempt to resist the pull of democratic dignity and to hold fast to the appeal of pragmatic authoritarian control. Just as the strains in the Western trade-off between dignity and material benefits may not be sustainable over time, the same is true of the Chinese version.

    That sweet spot, where the two come together, which Mr. Fukuyama identified as the end of history, looks increasingly remote. No one has the monopoly on respect plus results any more.

  • Movement In "Tokyo Whale" Wallet Hints At More Crypto Chaos Ahead

    If recent history is any guide, crypto traders should be bracing for some serious volatility in the price of bitcoin and bitcoin cash during the coming days and weeks.

    And no, it won’t be David Tepper’s “tepid” (no pun intended) assessment of crypto’s value. Rather, as The Next Web’s crypto vertical pointed out, the Mt. Gox bankruptcy trustee (who has in the past denied that his trades had ANY impact on the price of bitcoin even though his trades almost exactly correspond to some of the largest dips in recent months), has moved 16,000 bitcoin and 16,000 bitcoin cash to two separate wallets – a decision that TNW says is a sign of another impending dump.

    The 16,000 BTC have been transferred to the address below…

    One

    …While 16,000 BCH have been sent to this address:

    BTCChart2

    For what it’s worth, TNW wasn’t able to confirm that the accounts are attached to an exchange – something that would firm up its thesis that more sales are imminent. However, it did point out that this is the first time that Mt. Gox trustee Nobuaki Kobayashi has moved any coins from the Mt. Gox wallet since February…

    BTC

    …Of course, crypto bulls will likely wince when they recall how THAT turned out.

    In a report released back in March,  the so-called Tokyo Whale (no, not that Tokyo Whale) revealed that he had sold roughly $400 million worth of bitcoin and bitcoin cash beginning late last year and ending in February. But despite the unprecedented crash that bitcoin experienced during the first quarter, Kobayashi insisted in the report that his selling had nothing to do with the negative price activity.

    But describing that claim as “specious” would be almost too charitable. Instead, by offering this explanation, Kobayashi, pictured below, is probably engaging in some badly needed CYA – given that he’s obligated to sell the coins at the best price possible to help reimburse Mt. Gox customers who lost everything when the exchange collapsed back in February 2014.

    Those same customers should at least have some hope that they might soon be made whole (or at least partly whole) after years of waiting. Now that Kobayashi has finally realized some cash gains, the trustee has recently recently started making some payouts.

    Kobayashi

    But one crypto trader said during a conference appearance this past week that the wallet does appear to belong to an exchange desk , which would signal that another dump will follow in the coming weeks.

    “It appears that the Mt. Gox trustees have moved the funds to a wallet belonging to an exchange desk,” cryptocurrency trader and speaker Ivo Jonkers told Hard Fork. “The last time this happened, Mt. Gox proceeded to sell the funds at market rate, practically sending the entire market in the red.”

    “I wouldn’t be surprized if this happens again,” he speculated.

    Bitcoin has been climbing in April, but has recently run into some resistance around the $9,000 level – a level around which it has been fluctuating in recent days.

    But if this ominous indicator proves correct, early May could be a bloodbath. So, instead of “Sell in May and Go Away”, bitcoin traders should keep a watchful eye out for opportunities to “buy the Mt. Gox crypto dip”.

  • Former CIA Officer: Scarier Than Bolton, Think Haley For President

    Authored by Philip Giraldi via ConsortiumNews.com,

    Nikki Haley is America’s face to the international community. She is the Ugly American personified, thinking that American Exceptionalism gives her license to say and do whatever she wants at the United Nations…

    The musical chairs playing out among the senior officials that make up the President Donald Trump White House team would be amusing to watch but for the genuine damage that it is doing to the United States. The lack of any coherence in policy means that the State Department now has diplomats that do not believe in diplomacy and environment agency heads that do not believe in protecting the environment. It also means that well-funded and disciplined lobbies and pressure groups are having a field day, befuddling ignorant administrators with their “fact sheets” and successfully promoting policies that benefit no one but themselves.

    In the Trumpean world of all-the-time-stupid, there is, however, one individual who stands out for her complete inability to perceive anything beyond threats of unrelenting violence combined with adherence to policies that have already proven to be catastrophic. That person is our own Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, who surfaced in the news lately after she unilaterally and evidently prematurely announced sanctions on Russia. When the White House suggested that she might have been “confused” she responded that “With all due respect, I don’t get confused.” This ignited a firestorm among the Trump haters, lauding Haley as a strong and self-confident woman for standing up to the White House male bullies while also suggesting that the hapless Administration had not bothered to inform one of its senior diplomats of a policy change. It also produced a flurry of Haley for higher office tweets based on what was described as her “brilliant riposte” to the president.

    One over-the-top bit of effusion from a former Haley aide even suggested that her “deft rebuttal” emphasizes her qualities, enthusing that “What distinguishes her from the star-struck sycophants in the White House is that she understands the intersection of strong leadership and public service, where great things happen” and placing her on what is being promoted as the short list of future presidential candidates.

    For sure, neocon barking dog Bill Kristol has for years been promoting Haley for president, a sign that something is up as he was previously the one who “discovered” Sarah Palin. Indeed, the similarities between the two women are readily observable. Neither is very cerebral or much given to make any attempt to understand an adversary’s point of view; both are reflexively aggressive and dismissive when dealing with foreigners and domestic critics; both are passionately anti-Russian and pro-Israeli. And Kristol is not alone in his advocacy. Haley regularly receives praise from Senators like South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham and from the Murdoch media as well as in the opinion pages of National Review and The Weekly Standard.

     She’s Locked and Loaded

    The greater problem right now is that Nikki Haley is America’s face to the international community, even more than the Secretary of State. She has used her bully pulpit to do just that, i.e. bully, and she is ugly America personified, having apparently decided that something called American Exceptionalism gives her license to say and do whatever she wants at the United Nations. In her mind, the United States can do what it wants globally because it has a God-given right to do so, a viewpoint that doesn’t go down well with many countries that believe that they have a legal and moral right to be left alone and remain exempt from America’s all too frequent military interventions.

    Haley: Locked and Loaded (UN Poto)

    Nikki Haley sees things differently, however. During her 15 months at the United Nations she has been instrumental in cutting funding for programs that she disapproves of and has repeatedly threatened military action against countries that disagree with U.S. policies. Most recently, in the wake of the U.S. cruise missile attack against Syria, she announced that the action was potentially only the first step. She declared that Washington was “locked and loaded,” prepared to exercise more lethal military options if Syria and its Russian and Iranian supporters did not cease and desist from the use of chemical weapons. Ironically, the cruise missile attack was carried out even though the White House had no clue as to what had actually happened and it now turns out that the entire story, spread by the terrorist groups in Syria and their mouthpieces, has begun to unravel. Will Nikki Haley apologize? I would suspect that if she doesn’t do confusion she doesn’t do apologies either.

    Haley, who had no foreign policy experience of any kind prior to assuming office, relies on a gaggle of neoconservative foreign-policy “experts” to help shape her public utterances, which are often not cleared with the State Department, where she is at least nominally employed. Her speechwriter is Jessica Gavora, who is the wife of the leading neoconservative journalist Jonah Goldberg. Unfortunately, being a neocon mouthpiece makes her particularly dangerous as she is holding a position where she can do bad things. She has been shooting from the lip since she assumed office with only minimal vetting by the Trump Administration, and, as in the recent imbroglio over her “confusion,” it is never quite clear whether she is speaking for herself or for the White House.

    She Has Her Own Foreign Policy

    Haley has her own foreign policy. She has declared that Russia “is not, will not be our friend” and has lately described the Russians as having their hands covered with the blood of Syrian children. From the start of her time at the U.N., Haley has made it clear that she is neoconservatism personified and she has done nothing since to change that impression. In December 2017 she warned the U.N. that she was “taking names” and threatened retaliation against any country that was so “disrespectful” as to dare to vote against Washington’s disastrous recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, which she also helped to bring about.

    As governor of South Carolina, Haley first became identified as an unquestioning supporter of Israel through her signing of a bill punishing supporters of the nonviolent pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, the first legislation of its kind on a state level. Immediately upon taking office at the United Nations she complained that “nowhere has the U.N.’s failure been more consistent and more outrageous than in its bias against our close ally Israel” and vowed that the “days of Israel bashing are over.” On a recent visit to Israel, she was feted and honored by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. She was also greeted by rounds of applause and cheering when she spoke at the annual meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in March, saying “When I come to AIPAC I am with friends.”

    Nikki Haley’s embrace of Israeli points of view is unrelenting and serves no American interest. If she were a recruited agent of influence for the Israeli Mossad she could not be more cooperative than she apparently is voluntarily. In February 2017, she blocked the appointment of former Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to a diplomatic position at the United Nations because he is a Palestinian. In a congressional hearing she was asked about the decision: “Is it this administration’s position that support for Israel and support for the appointment of a well-qualified individual of Palestinian nationality to an appointment at the U.N. are mutually exclusive?” Haley responded yes, that the administration is “supporting Israel” by blocking every Palestinian.

    She’s Decided She Wants Regime Change

    Haley is particularly highly critical of both Syria and Iran, reflecting the Israeli bias. She has repeatedly said that regime change in Damascus is a Trump administration priority, even when the White House was saying something different. She has elaborated on an Administration warning that it had “identified potential preparations for another chemical weapons attack by the Assad regime” by tweeting “…further attacks will be blamed on Assad but also on Russia and Iran who support him killing his own people.” At one point, Haley warned “We need to see Russia choose to side with the civilized world over an Assad government that brutally terrorizes its own people.”

    At various U.N. meetings, though Haley has repeatedly and uncritically complained of institutional bias towards Israel, she has never addressed the issue that Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians might in part be responsible for the criticism leveled against it. Her description of Israel as a “close ally” is hyperbolic and she tends to be oblivious to actual American interests in the region when Israel is involved. She has never challenged the Israeli occupation of the West Bank as well as the recent large expansion of settlements, which are at least nominally opposed by the State Department and White House. Nor has she spoken up about the more recent shooting of three thousand unarmed Gazan demonstrators by Israeli Army sharpshooters, which is a war crime.

    Haley’s hardline on Syria reflects the Israeli bias, and her consistent hostility to Russia is a neoconservative position. A White House warning that it had “identified potential preparations for another chemical weapons attack by the Assad regime led to a Haley elaboration in a tweet that “…further attacks will be blamed on Assad but also on Russia and Iran who support him killing his own people.” Earlier, on April 12, 2017 after Russia blocked a draft U.N. resolution intended to condemn the alleged Khan Shaykhun chemical attack, which subsequently turned out to be a false flag, Haley said, “We need to see Russia choose to side with the civilized world over an Assad government that brutally terrorizes its own people.”

    Bolton: Not as badas Nikki.

    Haley is particularly critical of Iran, which she sees as the instigator of much of the unrest in the Middle East, again reflecting the Israeli and neocon viewpoints. She claimed on April 20, 2017 during her first session as president of the U.N. Security Council, that Iran and Hezbollah had “conducted terrorist acts” for decades within the Middle East, ignoring the more serious terrorism support engaged in by U.S. regional allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar. She stated in June 2017 that the Security Council’s praise of the Iran Nuclear Agreement honored a state that has engaged in “illicit missile launches,” “support for terrorist groups,” and “arms smuggling,” while “stok[ing] regional conflicts and mak[ing] them harder to solve.” All are perspectives that might easily be challenged.

    So, Nikki Haley very much comes across as the neoconservatives’ dream ambassador to the United Nations–full of aggression, a staunch supporter of Israel, and assertive of Washington’s preemptive right to set standards for the rest of the world. And there is every reason to believe that she would nurture the same views if she were to become the neocon dream president. Bearing the flag for American Exceptionalism does not necessarily make her very good for the rest of us, who will have to bear the burdens and risks implicit in her imperial hubris, but, as the neoconservatives never feel compelled to admit that they were wrong, one suspects that Haley’s assertion that she does not do confusion is only the beginning if she succeeds in her apparent quest for the highest office in the land. Worse than John Bolton? Absolutely.

  • Dysfunctional CalPERS Board Distracted By Petty Squabbling As Fund Lurches Toward Bankruptcy

    California’s perennially underfunded pension system is struggling with an internecine conflict among its governing board members that some observers worry could impact the fund’s performance as it goes all-in on “creative” scam financials and projections that have pushed the fund further into the bubbly equities.

    And what’s worse, the dispute is escalating just as CalPERS is heading into its busy season: Seemingly never-ending stream of annual shareholder meetings where CalPERS makes always unwelcome activist recommendations to the companies in which it owns shares.

    Brown

    The conflict started when newly elected CalPERS administrative board member Margaret Brown, a SoCal school district administrator who unseated an incumbent CalPERS advisory board member during last fall’s election, leaked a video to the press purporting to show that she had been locked out of her office. In the footage, she suggests that the lock-out was the work of board chairwoman Priya Mathur, who has clashed with Brown on a number of issues including allegations that she leaked sensitive information to the press. Mathur insists the lockout wasn’t intentional, and was instead a glitch in the board’s security system.

    But that excuse did little to quiet hostilities. Brown has since leaked a story to a friendly financial blog about her conflict with Mathur, which has only further inflamed the situation.

    Here’s more from the Sacramento Bee.

    CalPERS Board of Administration member Margaret Brown recorded herself failing to open the door, shared the video with a friendly financial blog and allowed it be posted to YouTube under a headline calling the incident an “illegal lockout.” “I have a badge and I’m trying to get in my office, and, yeah, it doesn’t work. Very, very nice,” she says in the video.

    Her assumption that she was being “locked out” and her decision to share the video on social media are signs of escalating tension on the board that handles $350 billion in assets for 1.9 million California public employees and retirees.

    Brown declined an interview request from The Sacramento Bee. She wrote in an email, “I was elected as an outsider and defeated an incumbent who had the endorsement of nearly every then-member of the board, including Mathur. So it’s not surprising, though disappointing, that some of the people who opposed my candidacy have continued to make me unwelcome, to the point of interfering with my rights and privileges as a board member.”

    The conflict first came into view of the public when Brown theatrically declared that she feared being arrested at the next board meeting – which swiftly aroused the interest of the press.

    Their rift blew into the open at a public meeting where Brown asked whether she would be arrested for showing up at the job California public employees and retirees elected her to do.

    The conflict is “extraordinary,” said Charles Elson, the director for the Center of Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware. “It’s unusual with a large pension fund where you have seemingly dysfunctional conflict. They’re going to have to resolve it. It’s not good for the fund.”

    The conflict has also aroused widespread interest since Brown ran as a reformer and upset a longtime incumbent – something that her peers on the board haven’t forgiven her for, she alleges.

    In some ways, the drama at CalPERS is a hangover from last fall’s election. Brown as an underdog challenger unseated union-backed incumbent Michael Bilbrey.

    Brown cast herself as a watchdog for retirees and Bilbrey as an uncritical board member; Bilbrey’s campaign drew attention to four settlements one of Brown’s previous employers paid to resolve workplace retaliation claims that initially named her.

    Brown declined an interview request from The Sacramento Bee. She wrote in an email, “I was elected as an outsider and defeated an incumbent who had the endorsement of nearly every then-member of the board, including Priya Mathur. So it’s not surprising, though disappointing, that some of the people who opposed my candidacy have continued to make me unwelcome, to the point of interfering with my rights and privileges as a board member.”

    Some board members told the Bee that Brown and Mathur’s deteriorating relationship wouldn’t impact the fund’s performance – and added that it would likely be put to rest at the next CalPERS board meeting, where the organization is set to review procedures for how board members are disciplined.

    Board member Bill Slaton said the public disagreements were not “irreversible.”

    “I think that any organization as large and complex as CalPERS is going to have disputes and is going to have from time to time conflict. That is all the more reason for us to put as much effort as possible into resolving disagreements in ways that advance the mission of CalPERS,” he said.

    New board member David Miller viewed the conflict as a learning curve for Brown and Mathur. He considered Mathur’s reprimand to Brown as an “extremely judicious” message not to bring visitors into restricted areas again.

    He and other board members said they’d like CalPERS to hold an open discussion on how board members are disciplined.

    “The board doesn’t really have clear, systematic tools to deal with those issues,” he said.

    But regardless of how this dispute is resolved, the pension fund which has been described as “near insolvency” by a former board member will still need to figure out how it can right itself and return to a path of long-term sustainability, before the resources in its fund are drained by overly generous pension benefits which cannot be supported by returns or current contributions. Back in February, former board member Steve Westly made the following admission after the fund voted to increase the amount of contributions made by California’s cities by making a “relatively small” ($350 billion) change to its amortization policy.

    As things stand now, CalPERS, once more than 100 percent funded, now has scarcely two-thirds of what it would need to fully cover all of the pension promises to current and future retirees. And that assumes it will hit a lofty investment earnings target of 7% per year, which many authorities have criticized as too optimistic.

    At some point, the board members will need to band together to make an unpopular decision (cutting benefits) that could risk all of them being thrown out by the public union employees who elect them.

    But as long as this squabbling continues, the already remote likelihood of the board embracing radical change continues to shrink.

  • CIA Whistleblower: Trump Is Doing What Kennedy Tried To

    Via Greg Hunters’ USA Watchdog blog,

    Former CIA Officer and whistleblower Kevin Shipp says what is going on with Donald J. Trump “is an ongoing coup to remove a duly elected President.” Shipp contends, “This is a huge constitutional crisis like the country has never seen before. This makes Watergate look like a Sunday school class.”

    On Friday, Shipp and other retired top officials at the CIA, FBI, DOJ and NSA held a press conference and demanded Attorney General Jeff Sessions prosecute top Obama era officials for obvious crimes against the incoming Trump Administration. Shipp says,

    “We have a coup within our government right now at the senior levels at the CIA, DOJ and the FBI attempting to unseat a duly elected President who was elected by the American people and remove him from office…

    This is, at worst, treason with senior officials in the shadow government or Deep State . . . to attack Donald Trump and remove him from office. . . . We have not seen anything like this since the Presidency of John F. Kennedy (JFK), when CIA Director Allen Dulles attacked him, and we saw what happened there…

    There is crystal clear evidence that the CIA was, at least, involved with the cover-up of the JFK assassination.  Now, we have the same thing happening again…

    Remember what Chuck Schumer said, and it was chilling.  He said, ‘If you cross the intelligence community, they can hit back at you six ways from Sunday.’  That’s what we are seeing now.  It’s collusion or a coup with senior officials at the FBI, DOJ and CIA along with Robert Mueller to unseat an elected president.”

    Shipp goes on to explain, “There is essentially a civil war involving parts of senior management and upper parts of our government that is occurring in the United States. It’s between the ‘Dark’ side and the ‘Constitutional’ side.”

    “There has never been anything like this in history.  It is extremely serious, and this is an extremely serious hour for our government and especially for our constitutional freedoms…

    This essentially is a global criminal cabal that has penetrated into our government and now has senior level officials colluding and, I would argue, conspiring to unseat this president.”

    In closing, Shipp says, “People need to understand that the Democrat Party today is not the Democrat Party of John F. Kennedy.”

    “The Democrat Party with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton is more Marxist than anything else.  They think the Constitution should be a ‘progressive’ document.  In other words, the Constitution is outdated and should be redone.  They are both directly connected into George Soros, who wants to destroy the sovereignty of the U.S. government…

    The Democrat Party is now made up of Marxists and leftists that have penetrated that entire organization. . . . Their entire goal is to change our form of government and destroy our sovereignty.”

    Join Greg Hunter as he goes One-on-One with CIA whistleblower Kevin Shipp, founder of the website ForTheLoveofFreedom.net.

  • Massive Fireballs Light Up Syrian Sky After Israeli Strike; "Dozens" Of Iranian Soldiers Reportedly Killed

    Update 2: Multiple early unconfirmed reports from journalists inside Syria have put casualties at 40 killed and 60 wounded, mainly from the Zaynabiyoun Iranian-backed group which was located at the 47th brigade supply base targeted in Hama.

    In Aleppo 7 rockets were reported to have exploded in apparently empty areas around Aleppo international airport. There are no reports of injuries or deaths in Aleppo, but images show an area was clearly hit.

    As we mentioned previously, the strikes produced a small earthquake as monitors in Lebanon and Turkey recorded seismic activity that registered over 2 on the Richter scale.

    Neither Israel nor the United States has yet to formally acknowledge the sizable missile attack, and there’s some speculation in early Western media reporting that it could have been a U.S. coalition action, as it came the same day that pro-Syrian government militias clashed with US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) near the eastern city of Deir Ezzor.

    Notably, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said earlier this month his country will continue “to move against Iran in Syria,” and last Thursday Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman vowed to strike at any attempt by Iran to establish a “military foothold” in Syria.

    * * *

    Update: initial reports of mass injuries and perhaps casualties following the Iranian strike appear accurate, and as reporters on the ground located at the Hama National Hospital show, “civilians are donating blood for the Soldiers & Civilians who were wounded by the Israeli Israel Air Strikes tonight.”

    * * *

    Syrian state news reports a possible foreign attack on military bases in Hama and Aleppo provinces, citing multiple reports and videos now circulating which show massive fireballs lighting up the night sky. 

    Dozens of pro-government social media accounts are claiming an Israeli strike on Brigade 47 weapons depot in Hama Sunday night. Syrian sate media says rockets from an “unspecified enemy” hit military locations inside Syria, citing “a new aggression with hostile missiles” but stopped short of identifying the aggressor.    

    Danny Makki — a well-known journalist reporting from on the ground in Syria — also reports an official military source as saying “A hostile Foreign attack took place at locations in Hama and Aleppo at 10:30 local time tonight.”

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    Makki further reports “the attacks this evening mainly targeted locations/positions with a strong presence of Iranian backed militias.” This indicates that the likely attacker is Israel, though still not immediately confirmed. 

    There are also widespread rumors of the recent landing of an Iranian transport plane at Hama Military Airport, possibly targeted in the attack, and reports that explosions were so big due to a direct hit on ammunition warehouses. 

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    Pro-rebel media also appears to be uploading footage of the strike — apparently so big it could be seen for miles — and these sources are also confirming a foreign military attack on government locations. Makki notes the airstrikes “caused an earthquake measuring 2.6 on the Richter scale.”

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    Iranian state media has also confirmed the strikes amidst rumors that Iranian military personnel were targeted in the attacks. 

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    According to Makki, citing Middle East experts, the Israelis might “continue striking these different targets and there are between 20-25 targets to choose from so it will play out considerably.”

    Should Israel be confirmed to have carried out the strikes, it would be the third such high level Israeli attack on Syria within a month. 

    Meanwhile according to unconfirmed Twitter reports, “dozens upon dozens” of Iranian soldiers were killed in the attack.

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    What is concering is that the attacks take place after Putin personally warned Netanyahu against further strikes in Syria.

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    Developing story.

  • Bill Smead: "Two Things Collided In 1987 And The Market Fell 40% In 78 Days"

    Submitted by Finanz und Wirtschaft

    Bargain hunters have a hard time in today’s financial markets. That’s especially true in the United States where equity valuations – even after the recent correction – remain at elevated levels and the enormous popularity of stocks like Amazon and Netflix has caused the market to narrow significantly. “Right now, we have the highest concentration of technology in the S&P 500 since the end of 1999″, observes Bill Smead. The renowned value investor from Seattle warns that this will end ugly and lead to a 1987 like market crash.

    Nonetheless, the founder of Smead Capital Management sees no reason to panic for astute investors. He argues that the American economy is on solid ground and will accelerate in the coming years when the millennials are going to fuel consumption. As a field-tested contrarian, he spots buying opportunities in sectors like old media, retail and biotech.

    Q. Mr. Smead, the stock market has lost steam. Four months into 2018, the S&P 500 is basically trading at the same level as at the beginning of the year. How concerning is this slump?

    Historically, the S&P 500 spends about 80% of its time doing a pretty good job of representing the overall market. But 20% of its time it represents over popularity of just a few sectors. That’s because investors often act like a herd of sheep which are notorious creatures of habit. They will go to a pasture and it starts out being green pasture. But then they will graze until there is nothing green left and they will start digging in into the roots and stuff until it’s unhealthy.

    Q. And what’s the analogy regarding the stock market?

    Investors act like sheep by continuing to walk through the same ruts to feed at the same trough. And that’s what happens to the S&P 500. It has no ability to transfer money away because it’s a capitalization weighted index. And right now, it is a glorified growth stock index. In the prior four years until early 2018, around 60% of the gain of the index came from seven of the 500 companies. That is unbelievably narrow. So the old rule is that narrow markets end badly. The crash of 1929 would prove this, as well as 1972 and 1999. So whatever the darling of that narrowness is needs to be avoided.

    Q. Then again, so far in this bull market bets on growth stocks like Amazon and Netflix have turned out to be pretty clever investments. Why should that change now?

    You should not confuse brains with a bull market, meaning when stocks go way up for an extend time everybody looks like they’ve got a lot of brains. It’s like sitting on a boat and the high tide comes in: your boat is going to float just as high as the other ones. Today, a large segment of the stock market capitalization is tied up in the euphoria surrounding the pioneering efforts of companies like Amazon, Netflix, Tesla, Facebook and Google. Right now, we have the highest concentration in the S&P 500 of technology since the end of 1999. And the market, once a great deal of success happens, wants to extrapolate and attempts to predict the future by what has been going on in the recent past. So I’m reminded of a quote by the American businessman Shelby Cullom Davis. He figured out that “the thing that makes you rich the prior twenty years is usually the thing that makes you poor the following ten.”

    Q. But isn’t there also lot of potential in new technologies like artificial intelligence and autonomous cars?

    That’s what I call a “well known fact”. A well-known fact is a body of economic information that is known by pretty much everyone in the marketplace and has been acted upon by pretty much everyone with access to capital. In effect, when the taxi driver is giving you stock tips, whatever his theory is, it’s more than likely a well-known fact. For instance, looking back at the last twelve months, it’s a well-known fact that whatever business Amazon goes into, they are likely to ruin it for the people that are already in it.

    Q. But isn’t that the case? Just look at the wave of bankruptcies in the US retail industry.

    That’s not my point. For example, at the end of 1999 the well-known fact was that the internet was going to change our lives. And it did but people lost 80 to 90% of their money with dotcom stocks. In 1929, the well-known fact was that radio was going to dominate entertainment for the next fifty years. And it did, but that didn’t stop RCA from going from $500 a share in 1929 to $5 in 1932. At the end of 1972, the well-known fact was that there were fifty growth companies, called the “Nifty Fifty”. They seemed to be oblivious to what happens to the economy and all you had to do was to buy these fifty stocks. They even were called «one decision stocks» because all you had to do was buy them. But what happened to you on these stocks, even with the companies which succeeded like Disney, McDonald’s and Coca-Cola, you lost most of your money in the next two years and you really didn’t start getting it back until 1982.

    Q. Now what does this all mean for investors in the spring of 2018?

    One of the most important factors in the investment markets right now is that the rate of interest that you use to discount future cash flows is extremely low relative to history. So in theory, the net present value of the future income streams of businesses is very high. And since interest rates have been going down since 1981 in the United States people tend to not include something else happening in their mechanism for discounting. In other words: the rate on the ten year treasury is around 3% right now and people kind of worry what would it be like at 3.25 or 3.5%. But they don’t spend a lot of time to try to figure out what it would be like at 4 to 5%.

    Q. So what would it be like?

    If the US economy improves dramatically in the next twelve months and we move from the 2% level on real GDP growth to, let’s say, 4 or 5% a year over the next two years, interest rates are going to rise a lot higher and they are going to go up fast. That means this will probably result in a bear market. It would be a bear market which has to do with overvaluation, not a bear market which has to do with earnings. And that’s what happened in 1987: The stock market went from 800 to 2700 from 1982 to 1987 and in the spring of 1987 the ten year treasury interest rate went from 7% to 10%. And when those two things collided, the market fell 40% in 78 days.

    Q. On October 19, 1987, a day that became known as “Black Monday” the Dow Jones plunged 22.6%, its largest single-day percentage drop. Nevertheless, the economy didn’t fall into a recession. What would happen today after a stock market crash like 1987?

    Another argument that’s kind of a well-known fact is that we are late in the economic cycle in the United States. So as mentioned, you can lose a lot of money betting on a well-known fact. But you can make even more money betting that a well-known fact ends up being wrong. For contrarian investors like me nothing is better than that!

    Q. Nevertheless, the last recession in the US happened around ten years ago. So we’re already looking back at one of the longest economic expansions since World War II.

    But we also had the most anemic economic recovery coming off a deep recession that we just about ever had. Today, the stock market is built around the idea that the economics that exist right now will be the same ten years from now. But in the coming years the millennials are beginning to dominate the economy of the United States. This means that the largest demographic group, which has been late to be impactful on the overall economy with home and auto buying, is just getting started. So how could the United States be late in the economic cycle when its largest adult population group is just getting started?

    Q. But aren’t millennials quite different from prior generations when it comes to spending and their lifestyle in general?

    What we know is that the number of 35 to 44-year-old Americans will growth as explosively in the next twelve years as it did when the baby boomers turned 35 to 44 years old. And when the number of 35 to 44 year olds is high you have the most people in society making really good money and they have to spend it all to make their life work. So for example, today’s number of homes is way below what is going to be needed to meet the demand of people who have waited into their 30s to have children. Also, the market thinks it knows that when the millennials are 35 to 44 years old that their choices of how they access products and services will be heavily influenced by the convenience of the internet. But no one has proposed what they are going to do with all the time they have because they aren’t doing a lot of the things their parents did.

    Q. What are the implications of this demographic shift from an investor’s perspective?

    Companies that are threatened by e-commerce are trading very, very cheaply. And that’s where we spot our best opportunities. Because if these companies have any kind of decent economics in the coming years the financial opportunity for investors is dramatically greater than when you invest in the success of companies which you have to pay a very high price to get involved in.

    Q. So in which sectors are you putting your money?

    For example, in the entertainment world. The market assumes that the distribution methods are going to be more important than the content. So Disney trades at 14 times earnings and Netflix trades right now probably at 250 because the market thinks that the distribution channel is going to be more valuable and that those distribution channels are preeminent to the actual creation of content. That’s why companies like Disney and Discovery Communications are on sale on a relative basis right now. And that creates opportunities. In the case of Discovery, we know that one of their channels called HGTV has the best audience and the best advertising experience for an advertiser with respect to women in the age of 30 to 50. So it really doesn’t make any difference whether you are going to watch HGTV’s shows on Netflix, on replay or live being streamed by Hulu or on cable.

    Q. Where else do you see value?

    A great question to ask someone who runs a portfolio is how happy they would be owning shares in the next bear market. We went through the worst bear market in 80 years in 2008-2009 and the quality of the companies identified by our eight criteria is one of the things which got us through that torturous decline. Most of these criteria are quite simple like meeting an economic need, high and consistent profitability, long history of a constantly high cash flows, immense balance sheet strength, strong insider ownership, shareholder friendliness and of course: Is the stock a bargain compared to the last five to ten years? Right now, our portfolio trades at 13 times what the companies are expected to make in earnings this year. At the start of 2012, it was trading at 12 times earnings. So basically, our portfolio offers the same kind of value it did six years ago. On the other hand, a growth manager at the start of 2012 properly had a portfolio trading at about 16 or 18 times earnings and that portfolio now trades at 25 times earnings. In other words: the spread between these two investment styles is as high as it ever gets.

    Q. So what are other key positions in your portfolio?

    Stocks like Lennar, Amgen , Walgreens and Target look really interesting to us. And again: All that interest is very closely tied to the fact that these companies fit our criteria for common stock selection and we know that the general market psychology is extremely negative associated with investing in them.

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Apr 29

Today’s News 29th April 2018

  • Yemen War Great For US Jobs: Watch CNN's Wolf Blitzer Proclaim Civilian Deaths Are Worth It

    With the still largely ignored Saudi slaughter in Yemen now in its fourth year, RT’s In The Now has resurrected a forgotten clip from a 2016 CNN interview with Senator Rand Paul, which is currently going viral.

    In a piece of cable news history that rivals Madeleine Albright’s infamous words during a 1996 60 Minutes appearance where she calmly and coldly proclaimed of 500,000 dead Iraqi children that “the price is worth it,” CNN’s Wolf Blitzer railed against Senator Paul’s opposition to a proposed $1.1 billion US arms sale to Saudi Arabia by arguing that slaughter of Yemeni civilians was worth it so long as it benefits US jobs and defense contractors. 

    At the time of the 2016 CNN interview, Saudi Arabia with the help of its regional and Western allies — notably the U.S. and Britain — had been bombing Yemen for a year-and-a-half, and as the United Nations noted, the Saudi coalition had been responsible for the majority of the war’s (at that point) 10,000 mostly civilian deaths. 

    At that time the war was still in its early phases, but now multiple years into the Saudi-led bombing campaign which began in March 2015, the U.N. reports at least “5,000 children dead or hurt and 400,000 malnourished.”

    And now as the death toll tragically stands at many tens of thousands, and with a subsequent U.N. report from 2017 documenting in detail “the killing and maiming of children” on a mass scale, Blitzer’s words are even more revealing of the role that CNN and other major American networks play in enabling and excusing U.S. and allied partners’ war crimes abroad.

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    Senator Paul began the interview by outlining the rising civilian death toll and massive refugee crisis that the U.S. continued facilitating due to deep military assistance to the Saudis:

    There are now millions of displaced people in Yemen. They’re refugees. So we supply the Saudis with arms, they create havoc and refugees in Yemen. Then what’s the answer? Then we’re going to take the Yemeni refugees in the United States? Maybe we ought to quit arming both sides of this war.

    Paul then narrowed in on the Pentagon’s role in the crisis: “We are refueling the Saudi bombers that are dropping the bombs. It is said that thousands of civilians have died in Yemen because of this.” 

    CNN’s Blitzer responded, “So for you this is a moral issue. Because you know, there’s a lot of jobs at stake. Certainly if a lot of these defense contractors stop selling war planes, other sophisticated equipment to Saudi Arabia, there’s going to be a significant loss of jobs, of revenue here in the United States. That’s secondary from your standpoint?”

    Paul countered, “Well not only is it a moral question, its a constitutional question.” And noted that Obama had partnered with the Saudi attack on Yemen without Congressional approval: “Our founding fathers very directly and specifically did not give the president the power to go to war. They gave it to Congress. So Congress needs to step up and this is what I’m doing.”

    * * *

    For further context of what the world knew at the time the CNN interview took place, we can look no further than the United Nations and other international monitoring groups.

    A year after Blitzer’s statements, Foreign Policy published a bombshell report based on possession of a leaked 41-page draft UN document, which found Saudi Arabia and its partner coalition allies in Yemen (among them the United States) of being guilty of horrific war crimes, including the bombing of dozens of schools, hospitals, and civilian infrastructure. 

    The U.N. study focused on child and civilian deaths during the first two years of the Saudi coalition bombing campaign – precisely the time frame during which the CNN Wolf Blitzer and Rand Paul interview took place. 

    Foreign Policy reported:

    “The killing and maiming of children remained the most prevalent violation” of children’s rights in Yemen, according to the 41-page draft report obtained by Foreign Policy.

    The chief author of the confidential draft report, Virginia Gamba, the U.N. chief’s special representative for children abused in war time, informed top U.N. officials Monday, that she intends to recommend the Saudi-led coalition be added to a list a countries and entities that kill and maim children, according to a well-placed source.

    The UN report further identified that air attacks “were the cause of over half of all child casualties, with at least 349 children killed and 333 children injured” during the designated period of time studied, and documented that, “the U.N. verified a total of 1,953 youngsters killed and injured in Yemen in 2015 — a six-fold increase compared with 2014” – with the majority of these deaths being the result of Saudi and coalition air power.

    Also according AP reporting at the time: “It said nearly three-quarters of attacks on schools and hospitals — 38 of 52 — were also carried out by the coalition.”

    But again, Wolf Blitzer’s first thought was those poor defense contractors:

    …Because you know, there’s a lot of jobs at stake. Certainly if a lot of these defense contractors stop selling war planes, other sophisticated equipment to Saudi Arabia, there’s going to be a significant loss of jobs, of revenue here in the United States.

    * * *

    This trip down memory lane elicited suitable responses on Twitter:

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    And here’s the full CNN interview segment from 2016: 

    As Wolf Blitzer is known to pal around with Clinton’s former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, it appears he’s a quick understudy:

    Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?

    Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it.

    —60 Minutes (5/12/96)

  • David Stockman: Jumping The Great White Shark Of Bubble Finance

    Authored by David Stockman via Contra Corner blog,

    Wall Street has now truly jumped the shark – the one jockeyed by Jeff Bezos.

    Last night Amazon reported a whopping 41% plunge in free cash flow for the March 2018 LTM period compared to prior year. Yet it was promptly rewarded by a $50 billion surge in market cap—-with $10 billion of that going to the guy riding topside on the Great White Shark of Bubble Finance.

    That’s right. Amazon’s relatively meager operating free cash flow for the March 2017 LTM period had printed at $9.0 billion, but in the most recent 12 months the number has slithered all the way down to just $5.3 billion.

    And that’s where the real insanity begins. A year ago Amazon’s market cap towered at $425 billion—meaning that it was being valued at a downright frisky 47X free cash flow. But fast forward a year and we get $780 billion in the market cap column this morning and 146X for the free cash flow multiple.

    Folks, a company selling distilled water from the Fountain of Youth can’t be worth 146X free cash flow, but don’t tell the giddy lunatics on Wall Street because they are apparently just getting started.

    Already at the crack of dawn SunTrust was out with a $1900 price target—meaning an implied market cap of $970 billion and 180X on the free cash flow multiple.

    At this point, of course, you could say who’s counting and be done with it. But actually it’s worse—-and for both Amazon and the US economy.

    That’s because Amazon is both the leading edge of the most fantastic ever bubble on Wall Street and also a poster boy for the manner in which Bubble Finance is hammering growth, jobs, incomes and economic vitality on main street.

    Moreover, soon enough a collapsing Wall Street bubble will bring the already deeply impaired main street economy to its knees. So Amazon is a double-destroyer.

    In this context, Bezos e-Commerce juggernaut racked up $174 billion of sales during the March LTM period, which represented a massive $45 billion or 35% gain over prior year (both figures exclude AWS). By way of comparison, that one-year gain is nearly double Macy’s total annual sales!

    Even when you adjust for the Whole Foods acquisition that was not in the 2017 LTM numbers, the sales gain was about $35 billion or 27%.

    Either way, the robo-traders got damn excited, scooping up AMZN’s shares hand-over-fist on the back of its “great sales momentum”. But as we said yesterday, headline reading algos don’t get far below the surface, and in this case they didn’t even break the skin.

    Fully 96% of Amazon’s $5.0 billion of  LTM operating income was accounted for by its cloud services business (AWS).

    The e-Commerce juggernaut, by contrast, posted just $188 million of  LTM operating income, which am0unts to, well, 0.1% of sales on a computational basis. But we’d round that to zero—especially because Amazon’s e-Commerce business was already almost there in the year ago period when its margin on sales came in a tad higher at 0.6%!

    Needless to say,  AWS  has nothing to do with e-Commerce, and, instead, is in the brute force, capital-intensive server farm business. As the leader of a rapidly growing pack of cloud farmers,  AWS racked up a 44% year-on-year sales gain.

    Even then, the world can only migrate from desk tops and discrete devices to the cloud once—so there is no conceivable way that current growth rates can be sustained or should be capitalized in perpetuity.

    Still, give AWS the benefit of the doubt and value it at Microsoft’s red hot multiple of 50X, which we don’t think makes much sense, either. After all, it’s a 42-year old company that has posted essentially zero earnings growth over the last 7 years and much volatility of results.

    In any event, at Microsoft’s elevated multiple of the moment, the cloud business is worth $200 billion. That reflects 50X the $4 billion of LTM net income attributable to AWS, which happens to be 100% of AMZN’s net income because e-Commerce earned zero after attributable interest and taxes.

    Needless to say, that means the loony bins down on Wall Street are valuing Bezos’ profit-free e-Commerce monster at $580 billion. And that goes right to our double-destroyer point.

    Amazon is undoubtedly one of the craziest momo stocks of all-time—meaning that there is $300 billion or even more of bottled air lodged in the implied $580 billion value of e-Commerce. That’s because the vast bulk of Amazon is in the GDP business—-that is, the moving and storage and delivery of good and services.

    These grow at 3-4% per year in today’s geriatric US economy, and therefore merit perhaps a 15X multiple of steady-state operating free cash flow. And that would be generous in a world with normalized cap rates, which sooner or later must come.

    Accordingly, to be worth even $280 billion, e-Commerce would have to generate nearly $19 billion of free cash flow, and that would be no lay-up. There are not that many malls left in the US to destroy and AMZN’s attempt to go international has been a huge thumb-sucker.

    To wit, North American e-Commerce sales ex-Whole Foods were $26.5 billion in the quarter just ended and represented a 26% gain from prior year. At the same time, the LTM operating loss for the international e-Commerce business has grown from $1.2 billion in the December 2016 LTM period to $2.6 billion in Q3 2017 and $3.2 billion for the LTM period just ended.

    In other words, Amazon’s e-Commerce business is digging deeper and deeper into red ink abroad and growing steadily slower at home, where it does manage to eek out a marginal profit. So how does it ever generate the above postulated $19 billion of free cash flow?

    Indeed, therein lies the skunk in the woodpile. Customers love Amazon precisely because it doesn’t generate any free cash flow at all and never could. The implicit business model is that Amazon returns to customers 100% of the prices they pay in the form of costs for logistics, storage, transportation, fulfillment and the underlying goods and services.

    Moreover, minor tweaks like the announced increase of the Prime membership fee to $119 per year ( from $99) won’t make any difference because more than the resulting $2 billion gain ($20 X 100 million members) is being absorbed into the maws of Amazon video streaming and entertainment content services which are free to Prime members.

    In short, there is $300 billion, $400 billion or even more bottled air in the e-Commerce business and the $200 billion we have ascribed to AWS isn’t all that rock solid, either. That’s because you simply can’t value “growth” stemming from a one-time shift to the cloud at a 50X multiple—-especially in the case of a capital intensive business like server farms.

    Perhaps that’s why Amazon doesn’t break-out assets by segment: the return on capital at AWS, as opposed to sales, might look at lot less impressive.

    Stated differently, Amazon’s $780 billion market cap is a giant momo hotel, and when that mega-bubble finally breaks the contagion and spillover effect will be monumental. Even our Microsoft benchmark will take a pasting.

    After all, if not for the enormous forces of momentum in the casino, you couldn’t explain the chart below, either.

    During the LTM period reported last night, Microsoft generated net income of $14.2 billion, and even if you reverse out the huge write-downs last year, the annualized run-rate is no higher than $20 billion. Yet its net income has been cycling around the $20 billion mark for the last 7 years.

    At the same time, its market cap more than tripled from $200 billion to $740 billion—meaning that its valuation multiple also tripled.

    Why?

    We’d bet its the same reason that AMZN is capitalized at $780 billion: Namely, it reflects a casino that has run wild on central bank Bubble Finance, and that is itching for a giant fall now that central bankers are trying to climb off the ledge.

    MSFT Net Income (TTM) Chart

    And that gets us to the second part of the doubly-whammy. Amazon is just the poster boy for value destruction on main street owing to the Fed’s Bubble Finance regime.

    In this case, Jeff Bezos was paid another $10 billion last night for filling a report with the SEC which implicitly documented his massive predation on the main street economy and Amazon’s far reaching destruction of assets embodied in regional malls, shopping centers and mom and pop emporiums alike.

    Yes, we understand all about Schumpeter’s “creative destruction” and that the genius of free market capitalism is that it continuously innovates and invents the new and discards the old, inefficient and obsolete. But the great Austrian also presumed that there was a level playing field—an honest free market, and most especially when it comes to pricing capital, debt and money.

    Today there is no such thing—-that’s the ultimate evil of monetary central planning. It substitutes the fallible will of 12 mortals on the FOMC for the genius and continuously self-correcting verdicts of the free market.

    And that lamentable result is not a bad thing just in the abstract. In fact, it’s a terrible thing in the concrete here and now because it utterly distorts the signaling system of the capital markets.

    At the moment, those central bank engineered signals are telling Bezos and his army that their profit-free predator is worth nearly $600 billion, and that they should keep doing more of the same.

    We will address this point at greater length in the near future, but suffice it to say that the C-suites all over the US economy are being given the same kind of false signals. And, most especially, signals to invest their cash flows and balance sheet capacity in Wall Street financial engineering schemes rather than main street growth, productive assets and human resources.

    Unfortunately, the metrics which inform the daily economic narrative are rooted in the Keynesian models from which the GDP statistics are derived. That means current spending for consumption and capital goods get added to GDP but the current period costs of destroyed malls and their support infrastructure including employees don’t get deducted.

    In the longer run, of course, the premature and non-free market based destruction of capital and other economic resources takes its toll. Ultimately, the result is lower productivity, reduced output, less GDP and lower living standards.

    In the interim, however, Amazon’s predation is actually contributing to officially measured GDP because it’s building warehouses and distribution infrastructure like there is no tomorrow.

    Yet that’s just another version of Bastiat’s broken window fallacy. The stones are being thrown by the Great White Shark of Bubble Finance, but the incentive to do so was mediated by Wall Street and fostered in the Eccles Building.

    That is worth mentioning because  lurking beneath this morning’s slight beat on real GDP was a living example of this very broken window fallacy. When you strip-out the volatile short-term impact of inventories and exports, you get a reasonably serviceable measure of contemporaneous economic activity as measured by the Keynesian concept of “spending”.

    Needless to say, a lot of windows were broken last summer during the great storms of 2017 and heavily repaired during Q4. So it is not surprising that the annualized rate of real final sales surged by 4.5%.

    It’s also not surprising that the number reverted back to its tepid trend line in Q1, when real final sales expanded by only 1.6% at an annual rate.

    As is also evident from this chart, even Keynesian style spending is running out of gas after 9-years of tepid business expansion, and in the Amazon story we have the reason why.

    Bubble Finance is breaking way too many windows.

  • Early Facebook Investor And Zuckerberg Mentor: "I Feel My Baby Has Turned Out To Be Something Horrible"

    Even if Facebook’s stellar Q1 earnings report hadn’t helped erase some of the losses that Facebook shares incurred in the aftermath of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook executives Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sanderberg would still believe that the company’s troubles are largely behind them and that the company had essentially repaired the damage done to its reputation.

    That was the assessment delivered by early Facebook investor and one-time Zuckerberg mentor Roger McNamee, who warned during an appearance at an event organized by Quartz in Washington DC last week that the company’s leaders are deeply complacent and still haven’t accepted the fact that Facebook has badly mislead its users about how the company profits off their data.

    Facebook

    Despite Zuckerberg’s warning, embedded in his opening statement to Congress earlier this month, that the company planned to make changes that could “significantly impact” profitability, McNamee believes it’s likely Facebook is “going to get away” with the bad things that it has done, which is “particularly dangerous” considering the 2018 midterm elections are only months away. McNamee said he’s deeply disappointed in how Zuckerberg and Sandberg have responded to the crisis by refusing to accept responsibility.

    During their post-crisis media tour, both executives insisted on blaming Cambridge Analytica for “misleading” Facebook, even though Facebook never bothered to alert users whose data had been affected.

    “They’ve done bupkis to protect us,” McNamee said.

    The whole affair has left McNamee – who considers his involvement with Facebook during its early days to be the “highlight of a long career” – deeply saddened.

    “Every part of this has made me sadder and sadder and sadder. I feel like my baby has turned out to be something horrible, and these people I trusted and helped along have forgotten where they came from,” he said in a conversation with Kevin Delaney, Quartz’s editor-in-chief.

    McNamee has become an outspoken critic of the company, comparing its role in the 2016 US election to “the plot of a sci-fi novel” while at the same time admitting that he has “profited enormously” by backing Facebook early on. The organization he helped found, the Center for Humane Technology, has made it a mission to expose Facebook’s multiple flaws, and to try to fix them.

    The longtime venture investor explained that he had started becoming disillusioned with Facebook long before the latest in string of scandals involving the company. During his talk, he echoed criticisms by early Facebook executive, Chamath Palihapitiya, who compared Facebook to “Internet crack” and said it’s “ripping apart the social fabric of how society works.”

    Like Palihapitiya, McNamee believes Facebook isn’t doing enough to mitigate the negative effects of social media addiction and misinformation spread on its platform. In other words, Facebook is sacrificing the well-being of its users in the name of uninterrupted growth.

    It’s not just about the money, McNamee said, comparing his former protégé to a cult leader. “Zuckerberg believes he’s given the world a massive gift,” he said, and the mentality at the company remains focused on becoming “the most important thing in the world.”

    Because of these issues, McNamee said the last 12 months have been “the most depressing of his life.”

    Of course, like Palihapitiya before him, McNamee’s criticisms would carry a lot more heft if they were followed by action – perhaps establishing some kind of organization meant to combat social media’s near-total influence over society. 

    Still, McNamee is hardly alone: A recent survey revealed that nearly one-third of Americans believe Facebook has a negative impact on society. And with early indicators showing user engagement numbers starting to slip in the aftermath of the company’s user-data scandal, perhaps we’ll need to wait until the company’s next batch of quarterly results to see how its users are responding to the latest user-data crisis.

    * * *

    Meanwhile, Facebook’s campaign to win back the trust of its vast user base is manifesting in an advertising blitz that has already arrived in the corridors of New York City’s subway system.

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

  • Inside New York's 700-Member "Millennials-Only" Sex Club

    Daniel Saynt, a Puerto Rican bisexual ex-Jehovah’s Witness who changed his name and opened up 700-member NYC “Millennials only” sex club “NSFW” (New Society for Wellness), has a few rules for those seeking to get their group-sex on.

    • You have to be hot
    • You have to be young
    • You have to be interesting and active on social media
    • Saynt has to be able to imagine himself having sex with you or next to you
    NSFW has 700 members who all meet the following criteria: attractive, successful and social-media savy

    “If a guy applies and says, ‘I just want to have sex with as many girls as possible,’ that’s not someone we want here,” said Saynt. “I use my bi[sexual] sense … Like, do I want to hook up with them? Would I want this person having sex next to me? If not, then we won’t accept them.”

    All is not lost however for fat, sexually frustrated New York City millennials – as they’ll have ample time to work on their sex-club bodies and social skills while NSFW chews through its waiting list of over 300 horny people, while more than 9,000 applicants didn’t make the cut. 

    The average age of a NSFW member is 28, who pay a one-time membership fee of $96, and an extra charge of $30 – $150 per sex party. Around 60% of members are in open relationships, and the majority are bisexual. As we’ve mentioned, Saynt’s standards are incredibly high. 

    “Being a hot woman, I don’t want to fuck everyone and I don’t want ­everyone to think they can fuck me,” said member Lola Jean, 28, who works as a sex educator and is known in the sex-club community as a wrestling dominatrix. “At other parties, it’s hard to be the hottest person in the room and have all this attention coming at you — but here, everyone is hot so they all get it.”

    The club also holds thematic events:

    THE bacchanals — the biggest of which take place at city venues such as House of Yes — celebrate themes ranging from BDSM and foot-fetish workshops to caviar dinner parties, but all end with little to no clothing on and plenty of hooking up.

    “Members dress in layers to allow for various stages of nudity as the night develops,” said member Melissa Vitale, 25, a publicist. Sometimes there is a strict all-black dress code that includes masks. –NY Post

    Saynt, born Daniel Santiago, grew up poor in New York. Raised by Puerto Rican parents who were strict Jehovah’s Witnesses, he attended church every Sunday, woke up at 6 a.m. every day, and spent 10 hours a week at Bible study. 

    “As per the tenets of his religion, he did not celebrate birthdays or holidays, including Christmas.” –NY Post

    “It’s not just a religion, it’s a lifestyle,” said Saynt. “Your friends, family and everyone you interact with are all Jehovah’s Witnesses.”

    Then Saynt had his first sexual experience at 13 with another boy from the neighborhood.

    “It was very confusing and scary being in a faith that is so traditional in their approach to LGBT people,” Saynt said of the Jehovah’s Witnesses – who consider homosexuality a punishable sin. “It really stunts you.”

    In 2001 – against his parents’ wishes to become a missionary, Saynt enrolled at Berkeley College in Midtown, graduating in 2005 with a degree in e-commerce and legally changing his surname to from Santiago. Saynt says that he began to sexually experiment in college, hooking up with men and women on Craigslist and attending sex parties. 

    After a failed six-year attempt at a straight marriage, Saynt left the digital lifestyle-marketing company he co-founded and opened up an Eyes-Wide-Shut tier sex club in NYC. 

    “I got tired of selling shoes and handbags and beauty things that people don’t need,” said Saynt of his fashion-marketing days. “I wanted to sell things that make people happy, like sex.”

    SAYNT began accepting applications for NSFW in 2015. Potential members must answer a detailed questionnaire about their fantasies and preferences, submit photos of themselves and provide links to their social-media accounts. –NY Post

    “We look for people with a story to share,” said Saynt. “If you can’t share a conversation with someone, you can’t share a bed.”

    In order to decide who makes the cut, Saynt has a trusted “council” of five judges “want people who post photos of themselves with friends and at local hot spots, doing fun activities and traveling the world. Hateful political views, too few photos or awkward close-ups are an automatic “No.”

    Members who enter NSFW’s Williamsburg clubhouse will find six beds in the basement with mesh dividers, adorned with Christmas lights, lanterns, and a large “XXX” marquee sign which greets guests over the door. 

    Photos of tattooed models holding pizza and hot dogs over their genitals line the walls. Black leather toys are on display for members to test.

    Wonder if they’ve got this one?

    Saynt isn’t just selling experiences either – he’s selling sex dolls out of his sex club!

    Saynt’s marketing company, also called NSFW, works with brands such as Real Love Sex Dolls to market directly to club members by letting them test out and buy discounted products. The partnerships, in turn, help fund the parties.

    So – in addition to all the hot sex with incredibly attractive people, members receive the fringe benefit of a discount on a wide variety of sex toys. 

  • "Prepare For The Worst Possible Outcome" Migrant Caravan Warned As It Enters The US

    Around 400 migrants about to cross into San Diego are refusing the advice of immigration attorneys, who say the asylum-seekers risk a lengthy detention, or being separated from their families, before eventual deportation back to Central America.

    Kenia Elizabeth Avila, 35, appeared shaken after the volunteer attorneys told her Friday that temperatures may be cold in temporary holding cells and that she could be separated from her three children, ages 10, 9 and 4.

    But she in said an interview that returning to her native El Salvador would be worse. She fled for reasons she declined to discuss. –AP

    After crossing through Mexicali earlier last week, the migrants been gathering in Tijuana on Tuesday. So many reportedly showed up that the shelter they were occupying was overflowing by Wednesday. Most members of the group are from Guatemala, El Salvador or Honduras, and are fleeing their homes, they say, because of death threats from local gangs, or political persecution.

    That, according to many, is worth dealing with US authorities and deportation for the small chance they might be granted asylum. 

    “If they’re going to separate us for a few days, that’s better than getting myself killed in my country,” said Avila.

    “We are the bearers of horrible news,” said Nora Phillips, a Los Angeles immigration attorney while taking a break from legal workshops in Tijuana where around 20 lawyers are offering free information and advice. “That’s what good attorneys are for.”

    The mostly-Guatemalan migrants, many traveling as families, plan to test President Trump’s resolve after he instructed the National Guard and the Border Patrol to arrest any migrants caught trying to sneak into US territory – a move that US-based advocacy group Pueblos Sin Fronteras says is illegal.

    The organization is actively organizing a plan for the migrants to cross over the main pedestrian bridge into the U.S. on Sunday, after reacting angrily to an initial plan to try and cross in smaller groups over a more spread-out period of time. 

    President Donald Trump and members of his Cabinet have been tracking the caravan, calling it a threat to the U.S. since it started March 25 in the Mexican city of Tapachula, near the Guatemala border. They have promised a stern, swift response.

    Attorney General Jeff Sessions called the caravan “a deliberate attempt to undermine our laws and overwhelm our system,” pledging to send more immigration judges to the border to resolve cases if needed. –AP

    Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristjen Nielsen said that the migrants’ asylum claims wikll be handled “efficiently and expeditiously,” adding however that the asylum-seekers should first ask Mexico if they can stay there. (lol) 

    Any asylum-seeker making false claims to U.S. authorities may also be prosecuted – along with anyone who “assists or coaches” immigrants on how to make the false claims, Neilsen added. The Trump administration claims that asylum fraud is growing, and many of the migrants are heavily coached on the “correct answers” to obtain it. 

    The group of 20 immigration attorneys giving seminars in Tijuana have denied coaching any of the roughly 400 people from the caravan currently camping out in shelters throughout Tijuana. 

    Some migrants received one-on-one counseling to assess the merits of their cases and groups of the migrants with their children playing nearby were told how asylum works in the U.S.

    Asylum-seekers are typically held up to three days at the border and turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. If they pass an asylum officer’s initial screening, they may be detained or released with ankle monitors.

    Nearly 80 percent of asylum-seekers passed the initial screening from October through December, the latest numbers available, but few are likely to eventually win asylum. –AP

    As Reuters pointed out on Thursday, the timing of their arrival could sabotage NAFTA talks after President Trump repeatedly threatened to scrap the deal if Mexico doesn’t do more to stop Central American migrants from traveling through its territory.

    Moving from town to town, the migrant caravan became a stumbling block for U.S.-Mexico relations after Trump unleashed a series of tweets in early April, telling Mexican authorities to stop them. More busloads of migrants arrived during the course of the day, overflowing the first shelter.

    Local migrant aid groups said it was the biggest single group they had seen arrive together as they scrambled to find places in ten shelters.

    “Thanks to god we’re here,” said 34-year-old Aide Hernandez from Guatemala who had four children in tow. She said she planned to seek asylum in the United State. When asked why, she looked down, ashamed to detail a case of domestic abuse.

    […]

     

    “The wall doesn’t look that tall,” said Kimberly George, a 15-year-old girl from Honduras as she looked toward a stunted barrier a few feet away. “I really want to cross it.”

    Get the popcorn, a border showdown is about to occur. 

  • Twitter Sold Information To Researcher Behind Facebook Data Harvesting Scandal

    Twitter has now also become embroiled in the Facebook data harvesting scandal – as the Sunday Telegraph reveals that the social media giant sold user data to Aleksandr Kogan, the Cambridge University researcher and director of Global Science Research (GSR), who created an app which harvested the data of millions of Facebook users’ without their consent before selling it to political data firm Cambridge Analytica.

    Aleksandr Kogan, who created tools for Cambridge Analytica that allowed the political consultancy to psychologically profile and target voters, bought the data from the microblogging website in 2015, before the recent scandal came to light. –Sunday Telegraph

    Kogan says that the data was only used to generate “brand reports” and “survey extender tools” which were not in violation of Twitter’s data policies. 

    While most tweets are public information and easy for anyone to access, Twitter charges companies and organizations for access to information in bulk – though Twitter bans companies which use the data for political purposes or to match with personal user information found elsewhere. 

    A Twitter spokesman confirmed the ban and said: “Twitter has also made the policy decision to off-board advertising from all accounts owned and operated by Cambridge Analytica. This decision is based on our determination that Cambridge Analytica operates using a business model that inherently conflicts with acceptable Twitter Ads business practices.

    The company said it does not allow “inferring or deriving sensitive information like race or political affiliation, or attempts to match a user’s Twitter information with other personal identifiers” and that it had staff in place to police this “rigorously”.-Sunday Telegraph

    Data licensing made up 13% of Twitter’s 2017 revenue at $333 million. In a March blog post, Citron Research said that Twitter’s 2018 data-licensing business will generate $400 million (analysts polled by FactSet say $387 million) and that it represents the fastest-growing segment of the company’s operations (which it is, according to FactSet). 

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

    Citron says it is shorting Twitter because it’s data business is “vastly more successful and profitable than the company’s advertising,” along with a large amount of insider selling, low short interest and the unlikely prospect of a near-term acquisition. 

    “Dynamics are in place to short Twitter,” Citron said four weeks ago. 

    Of note, Twitter says that it doesn’t sell direct messages as part of its data-licensing businesses. 

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

    A spokesman for Cambridge Analytica said that they used Twitter for political advertising, but had not engaged in “a project with GSR focusing on Twitter data and Cambridge Analytica has never received Twitter data from GSR,” adding “Cambridge Analytica is a data-driven marketing agency and does not ‘manipulate political views’.”

    Kogan, meanwhile, told the UK’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport last week that his company, GSR, was founded in 2014 to specifically cater to Cambridge Analytica parent company, SCL Group. 

    Last week, the Moldovan-born researcher from Cambridge University said he’s being used as a scapegoat in the data harvesting scandal, and that there are “tens of thousands” of other apps do the same thing, Kogan said. “It’s certain”

    “In reality, I think, the truth is we’ve got tens of thousands of over apps that did the same thing, probably on a much bigger scale than me,“ Kogan told CNBC’s Power Lunch. “And they’re all out there and Facebook has no accounting for it.”

    “The amazing thing is if you go and look at Facebook apps literally right now, many, if not most will have language in the terms of service that say they can transfer the data to third parties. I’m not talking about small companies, I am talking about some of the biggest companies in the world. And you can go and do this yourself right now. And Facebook is still not policing it.“

  • "This Nonsense Has Been Going On Long Enough…"

    Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

    Who hit Kanye with that white privilege stick? The rapper / fashion maven / theologian / Kardashian arm candyman sent chills through the Twitterverse when he declared himself, somewhat elliptically, off-the-bus of the Progressive #Resistance movement and an admirer of the Golden One in the Oval Office. This came in his endorsement of YouTube blogger Candace Owen, who happens to not be down with the cause of the national victim lottery. Both Kanye and Candace have apparently crossed some boundary into a Twilight Zone of independent thought. Many probably wonder how they are able to get out of bed in the morning without instructions from Don Lemon.

    Speaking as a white cis-hetero mammal, I’m not quite as dazzled by the president, but it’s a relief to see, at last, some small rebellion against the American Stasi who have turned the public arena into a giant holding pen for identity offenders — though it is but one corner of the triad-of-hysteria that also includes the Hate Russia campaign and the crusade against men. This nonsense has been going on long enough, while the country hurtles heedlessly into a long emergency of economic disarray.

    Next in line after Kanye and Candace, a popular Twitter critter name of Chance the Rapper endorsed Kanye endorsing Candace, more or less, by tweeting “black people don’t have to be Democrats.” The horror this thought aroused! Slavery, these days, it turns out, has a lot of appeal — maybe not so much for laboring in the canefields under the noonday sun as for serving juleps in the DNC plantation house. It happened that Kanye’s mom was a college professor, Chance’s dad was an aide to Chicago Mayor Daley (Jr.), and later worked in Mr. Obama’s Department of Labor. Candace describes her childhood home in Stamford, CT, as “very poor,” but she rose far-and-fast out of college to become an executive on Wall Street in her twenties. What they seem to have in common is being tainted with bourgeois values, horror again!

    In speaking up against the Victim Cartel, it is thought that they threaten a solidarity of narrative: that the USA (perhaps all of Western Civ) is composed of identity victims and identity oppressors. Candace, being a more conventional polemicist (i.e. not a rapper) makes the point overtly and repeatedly in her writing that all the “help” and solicitude black Americans have gotten from their overseers on the Democratic Party plantation has only made life worse for them — especially policies based on the idea that black people need lots of assistance to overcome structural racism and the legacies of slavery.

    Luckily for the rest of us, the DNC has decided to put its mojo behind a lawsuit against Russia and Wikileaks for ruining the 2016 election. It’s an amazing exercise in idiocy — like, who, exactly, in Russia do they expect to subpoena for this epic showdown in court? If the suit finds a sympathetic judge who does not laugh it off — not so difficult these days — we’ll be treated to a fabulous Chinese fire drill in a three-ring circus of clowns running around in DNC dirty laundry. The party may not survive the suit. They’ve Whigged themselves into a final, fatal apoplexy of irrelevance.

    I dunno about the perpetually scowling Kanye, with his periodic mood problems and spotlight-stealing antics on stage, or Chance the Rapper’s artificial hood raptures, but Candace makes the argument for the value of a common culture that might bind us together as a nation of individuals, not hostile tribes, starting with a language that everybody can understand. Of course, the whole Kanye / Candace dust-up may be forgotten by the middle of next week, and the country can go back to gaslighting itself into either a new civil war or world war three. Candace seems to have drive, guts, and stamina and there’s no sign that she’s going to shut up. Won’t some Ivy League university please invite her to speak, just to see what happens?

  • David Tepper: "We May Have Reached The Highs For The Year"

    Billionaire investor David Tepper, who is one of the few remaining hedge fund icons who moves markets with a single word, took some time out from browbeating the owners of the Carolina Panthers to participate in a Q&A Thursday evening with students from Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business (yes, you too can give a speech in a business school named after you if you donate $125 million).

    During the wide-ranging discussion, the former Goldman trader turned distressed investing billionaire shared his views on a range of topical issues – from the potentially catastrophic fallout from a US-China trade war to his take on what’s in store for interest rates and equities for the balance of this year – while also providing the type of career-management advice that box-checking b-school students crave.

    The early part of the the discussion included several amusing anecdotes from Tepper’s early-career days – most notably his time as a trader at Goldman Sachs, where he was mentored by Bob Rubin (whose arb desk spawned countless hedge funds and then went on to serve as Treasury Secretary under President Bill Clinton), and his feud with Jon Corzine (profiled extensively by NY Mag).

    At the start of the Q&A, one student asked Tepper how he managed to retain his integrity and commitment to ethics during his early career on Wall Street (and especially working at Goldman). Tepper responded with a lengthy story about an incident during his time at Goldman when a senior manager ordered him to buy a bond that had been on Goldman’s restricted list.

    “When I was at Goldman Sachs, they set up this bankruptcy fund and the person who set up this fund. The person who set up the fund was the head of M&A – and this was back after Drexel Burnham went under. So the guy who was in charge was in charge of this fund that was buying assets. He wanted to buy this one company’s bonds and he gave an order and I refused his order because the company was on the restricted list because we had information inside the firm and he had it taken off then told me to buy it the next day. So I told him ‘I’m not buying it’. So it was a big thing – we went to legal. And legal said to me ‘it’s okay’. But I refused to buy anything for this guy. Now, this hurt me next time I was up for partner. But it hasn’t really hurt me in my career. So next time somebody tells you to do something that you think isn’t right – don’t do it.”

    The conversation drifted to Tepper’s feelings about President Trump and the potential fallout from a full-blown trade war with China. The hedge-fund manager made light of an incident where he called Trump a “demented narcissistic scumbag“, but also admitted that, though he doesn’t agree with everything Trump has done (the feud with Amazon was “insane” Tepper alleged), the Trump tax cuts as well as his push for deregulation have largely benefited the economy.

    “Although I did call him a demented narcissistic scumbag – but that’s beside the point – from a policy standpoint some of the regulation stuff was probably good for the economy…some of those things had to happen and I think it was holding back the economy. And the tax policies, I don’t think they were all good, but I think something needed to be done. I don’t know if they needed to cut some stuff for higher income people.

    And while threatening to impose tariffs on effectively all Chinese goods entering the US might’ve been “nuts”, particularly considering that Trump didn’t consult his cabinet before threatening to impose tariffs on another $100 billion of Chinese imports, Trump has a point about China’s theft of intellectual property.

    “The tariffs – I think tariffs in general isn’t the best way to go about it. Steel companies support so few jobs in the economy that I’m not sure that was the best place to start. On the other hand, if you talk to tech companies, they believe – and there has been proof – that China has taken intellectual property. The first $50 billion in tariffs I don’t know if I agree with it but it was a shot across the bow and I guess that’s okay – but the $100 billion in tariffs he didn’t tell anybody in his cabinet so that’s just nuts…they probably will get a NAFTA agreement.

    That said, Tepper is sufficiently worried that Trump may take his trade war with Beijing far enough that it eventually transforms into a real, shooting war with Beijing.

    …You probably don’t want to take things too far with China because I can tell you the steps that it will go to and you get to the fourth step, it’s a war – it’s a real war. If you look at the history of tariffs, they’ve resulted in – a lot of times – real wars. So I get a little nervous every time you start down that path.”

    Asked about the importance of mentorship early in his career, Tepper offered an amusing anecdote about how scumbags mentors can sometimes let you down – even when they go on to become the Secretary of the Treasury, especially dealing with other scumbags mentors end up blowing up MF Global.

    “So I had a mentor at Goldman Sachs, his name was Bob Rubin who became co-chair of the firm and eventually became Secretary of the Treasury. But there’s the third time, when I didn’t become a partner, it was kind of Bob Rubin’s fault. He was a mentor and he liked being on the floor and he liked talking to me. At some point Bob had the role of head of fixed income before he became chairman and vice chairman. So I would talk to Bob and I was the head trader and I would go talk to him. Eventually, this guy named Jon Corzin, who eventually became the governor of New Jersey, became the head of fixed income. Now, when Corzin became the head of fixed income he came from the government side Bob Rubin came from merger arbitrage – so I was in junk bonds. Bob Rubin knew about junk bonds because they had an equity component so I would talk to him still and I wouldn’t go to Corzine’s office. But Bob Rubin should’ve said “go to Corzine’s office”. Because when my third shot at partner came, Corzine killed me – or so I heard. So even if you have a mentor who becomes Secretary of the Treasury, you still got to think for yourself. That was the reason I didn’t get it – he didn’t think I was one of his people.”

    But what was certainly the highlight of the Q&A (at least as far as Tepper’s views on capital markets are concerned) one student asked Tepper where he anticipates bond and stock markets finishing 2018. The answer, suggesting that Tepper was reading a bit too much Morgan Stanley recently, won’t please the bulls (5:20 into Part 2)

    “Listen, it’s tough right now. Because historically yields have been fairly low. Actually tonight I’m trying to figure out what the BOJ’s doing because either this meeting or next meeting they might change their policy which would affect our Treasurys and will effect the stock market. So I think as far as the stock market is concerned I think they’re okay. I don’t think it’s great. I think we might’ve reached the highs for the year.

    Why the uncharacteristic (for Tepper) pessimism? Why rates, of course: here is Tepper’s two cents on the topic du jour (and d’annee): where will the yield on the 10Y break equities:

    And a lot of it has to do with interest rates. We’re right on the cusp of breaking out on interest rates at this level around 3%. I think they closed at around 2.98% on the 10-year – actually I know because I just looked. But a lot of people don’t think they’re going to break higher – most people are only saying they’re only going to 3.25%. And I think if they only go to 3.25% for the rest of the year then stocks might be up. But too many people are saying that. And when too many people are saying one thing that’s when I start to get worried. So if we break above that, then stocks might have a problem.”

    Finally, another student – who we imagine is tenuously exploring the likelihood that one will be able to make a sustainable living as a sell-side or buy-side trader – asked Tepper whether he believes algorithms will soon take over Wall Street. Tepper responded that machines and trading algos – whose performance is sucking this year – are only as good as the traders writing them, which to Tepper is a great advantage in an environment such as this one where rates are rising and yet the machine programming remains the same… 

    “Machines are doing shitty this year. Really bad. Not good. I’m kicking their ass. When I went to Goldman Sachs, they had a trading model on the desk and it was just wrong. That was one of the great things about being here I just knew the option prices were wrong – they were just wrong. But now when people talk about machines taking over, the machines are only as good as the people who are programing the machines. But now, when people talk about machines taking over, the people are only as good as the people programming the machines. And when you have times that are changing – like when interest rates are rising as we come out of this QE environment, sometimes you have people programming the same thing. When times change, the programs don’t change unless the people programming them make them change. And when the times are changing fast.”

    We couldn’t have put it better ourselves. Watch Parts 1 and 2 of the Tepper Q&A below, and check back tomorrow for Tepper’s thoughts on Bitcoin.

    h/t @dennycrane550

  • Freddie Mac Launches "3% Down" Mortgage With No Income Restrictions

    It’s been a while since the US made a wholesale push to get more cash and income-strapped households into the ever more unaffordable American dream of owning a house, three years to be exact, which is when nationalized housing agency Freddie Mac last rolled out a conventional mortgage that only required a 3% down payment for certain borrowers.

    The problem is that what modest requirement the mortgage program had back in 2015, meant that most Americans who needed access would be excluded. The program, which as we described at the time was designed for qualified (that being the key word) low-and moderate-income borrowers – i.e., Millennials – saw limited progress over the last few years, with FHFA Director Mel Watt telling Congress last year that Freddie’s 3% down program (along with a similar one from Fannie Mae) was continuing to grow.

    It just wasn’t growing fast enough, because while putting 3% down may not have been especially challenging for most Americans, having even the modest income required to go along with it, was.

    So fast forward to last week, when Freddie Mac announced on Thursday it was about to supercharge its 3% down program and launch a widespread expansion of the offering, when it announced that it is rolling out a new conventional 3% down payment option for qualified first-time homebuyers, – effectively the same as the 2015 program… with one small difference: there would be no geographic restrictions; more importantly there no longer will be any income restrictions. To wit:

    In other words, whereas many Americans could not qualify for the original 3% down program because, well, they lacked virtually any income, that will no longer be a hindrance and the government will effectively backstop the lack of income as a new wave of ‘income-challenged’ Americans rushes in to buy houses.

    Amusingly, the new program, which is called HomeOne (full brochure below), puts Freddie Mac in direct competition for mortgage business with the Federal Housing Administration, which also only requires 3% down on some mortgages.

    Furthermore, according to Freddie Mac, this new offering is not replacing its Home Possible 3% down mortgages. Rather, the program is meant to complement the Home Possible program, which will still be available to low-and moderate-income borrowers.

    “Freddie Mac’s HomeOne mortgage is part of the company’s ongoing efforts to support responsible lending, provide sustainable homeownership and improve access to credit,” Danny Gardner, senior vice president of single-family affordable lending and access to credit at Freddie Mac, said in a statement.

    It was not quite clear how it is responsible to lend money to households which have saved only enough to put down 3% equity value, oh, and which have no income to even give the false impression their equity stake may grow in the future.

    It gets better. As Housing Wire summarizes the terms of HomeOne, Freddie Mac said that the new mortgage is designed for first-time homebuyers, who currently make up nearly half of all home purchases.

    According to Freddie Mac, a HomeOne mortgage must be underwritten through its Loan Product Advisor, which makes a complete risk assessment based on several factors as it relates to credit, capacity and collateral.

    Additionally, the HomeOne mortgage is offered only for conforming fixed-rate mortgages that are secured by a 1-unit primary residence. And, at least one of the borrowers must be a first-time homebuyer.

    There is one potential hurdle: when all the borrowers are first-time homebuyers, at least one borrower must participate in homeownership education in order to qualify for the mortgage.

    Yes, one may have no income and still qualify as long as one watches a few videos explaining why having an income is critical to avoid having another housing market crash, or something.

    None of that matters however, as the US government is once again clearly more interested in well and truly blowing another housing bubble, where not Countrywide or New Century, but the government itself is issuing NINJA loans.

    “The HomeOne mortgage will provide our customers the flexibility they need to help borrowers anywhere in the country achieve the milestone of homeownership and overcome the common down payment resource hurdle,” Gardner continued. “HomeOne is a great solution for aspiring homebuyers to grab that first rung of the property ladder and enjoy the financial and social benefits of participating in homeownership.”

    What was unsaid is that now that rates just happen to be rising, making homes even more unaffordable and resetting ARM mortgages higher, the generously funded by taxpayers HomeOne also assures another housing crisis, and even more GSEs/Fredde/FHA bailouts in the near future.

    The fun beguns on July 29, 2018, when the new HomeOne mortgage will become available.  For more, check out the program detail and marketing materials from Freddie Mac.

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Apr 28

Today’s News 28th April 2018

  • Bill Gates Warns "Millions Could Die" If US Doesn't Prepare For Coming Pandemic

    Should a deadly pandemic comparable to the 1918 influenza outbreak reach the US in the relatively near future, the US government would be powerless to stop it. And in all likelihood, hundreds of thousands – if not, millions – of Americans will die. That’s the message from a Washington Post interview with Microsoft founder Bill Gates, which touched on many of the same subjects from a talk he gave Friday before the Massachusetts Medical Society.

    Bill Gates says the U.S. government is falling short in preparing the nation and the world for the “significant probability of a large and lethal modern-day pandemic occurring in our lifetimes.”

    Gates discussed his efforts to convince the Trump administration to set aside more funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and to prioritize the creation of a national response plan that would govern how resources are deployed during a pandemic or biological weapons attack.

    Gates

    During the interview, the billionaire who appears to have gotten such a touch eccentric in his gray years, confirmed that he had raised the issue of pandemic preparedness with President Trump, and that he tried to convince the president that he has a chance to lead on the issue of global health security.

    According to Gates, Trump told him to raise these issues with officials at the Health and Human Services Department, the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration. Gates said he also met with HR McMaster, who was ousted as National Security Advisor last month, and he hopes to meet with McMaster’s successor John Bolton. He is probably the only one.

    That said, Gates may have a point: Even this winter’s flu season – the worst in years – overwhelmed hospitals, some of which were forced to pitch tents outside the facilities and deploy other emergency accommodations.

    Gates, whose Gates Foundation focuses on public health initiative, has shifted his focus in recent years to international pandemic awareness and preparation. To be sure, he’s not the only one who believes the developed world is dangerously ill-prepared to beat back such a threat.

    Gates and his wife, Melinda, have repeatedly warned that a pandemic is the greatest immediate threat to humanity. Experts say the risk is high, because new pathogens are constantly emerging and the world is so interconnected.

    Many experts agree that the United States remains underprepared for a pandemic or a bioterrorism threat. The government’s sprawling bureaucracy, they say, is not nimble enough to deal with mutations that suddenly turn an influenza virus into a particularly virulent strain, as the 1918 influenza did in killing an estimated 50 million to 100 million people worldwide.

    Even this winter’s harsh seasonal flu was enough to overwhelm some hospitals, forcing them to pitch tents outside emergency rooms to cope with the crush of patients.

    If a highly contagious and lethal airborne pathogen like the 1918 influenza were to take hold today, nearly 33 million people worldwide would die in just six months, Gates noted in his prepared remarks, citing a simulation done by the Institute for Disease Modeling, a research organization in Bellevue, Wash.

    So what should the US do according to Gates: the nation needs to prioritize the development of better vaccines – including a “universal” flu vaccine – and other treatments as well as new diagnostic capabilities to help doctors detect and identify a pandemic before it has the opportunity to spread, according to the Microsoft founder.

    In those remarks, Gates highlighted scientific and technical advances in the development of better vaccines, drugs and diagnostics that he said could revolutionize how we prepare for and treat infectious diseases moving forward. He praised last year’s formation of a new global coalition, known as CEPI, to create new vaccines for emerging infectious diseases. He also announced a $12 million Grand Challenge in partnership with the family of Google Inc. co-founder Larry Page to accelerate the development of a universal flu vaccine.

    But vaccines, he noted, take time to research, deploy and generate protective immunity.

    “So we need to invest in other approaches, like antiviral drugs and antibody therapies that can be stockpiled or rapidly manufactured to stop the spread of pandemic diseases or treat people who have been exposed,” he said in his speech.

    Among the advances in these areas are a new influenza antiviral recently approved in Japan that Gates said “stops the virus in its tracks” by inhibiting an enzyme it needs to multiply; research on antibodies that could protect against a pandemic strain of a virus; and a diagnostic test that harnesses the powerful genetic-engineering technology known as CRISPR and has the field-use potential to check a patient’s blood, saliva or urine for evidence of multiple pathogens. That test could, for example, identify whether someone is infected with Zika or dengue virus, which have similar symptoms.

    But even the most cutting-edge remedies are useless without a plan to deploy them, something Gates says the Trump administration recognizes.

    Trump and senior administration officials have affirmed the importance of controlling infectious disease outbreaks. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is facing a loss of emergency funding provided in the wake of the 2014 Ebola epidemic and has begun to dramatically downsize its epidemic-prevention activities in 39 out of 49 countries where disease risks are greatest.

    Congress provided additional funding in last month’s spending bill. But it also directed the administration to come up with a comprehensive plan to strengthen global health security at home and abroad.

    “This could be an important first step if the White House and Congress use the opportunity to articulate and embrace a leadership role for the U.S.,” Gates said in the speech.

    No other country, he noted, has the depth of scientific or technical expertise that the United States possesses, drawing on the resources of institutions such as NIH, CDC and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, as well as the Defense Department’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

    While Gates’s sense of urgency is admirable, other experts on the likelihood of a global pandemic emerging in the relatively near future make Gates look like a Walt Disney-level optimist. 

    “We know that it is coming, but we have no way of stopping it,” said WHO infectious disease specialist Dr. Sylvie Brand.

    If you haven’t already, now would probably be as good a time as any to invest in some surgical masks. Unless of course Elon Musk is correct with his own doomsday prediction, and sentient, AI-capable killer robots have already bought out the entire inventory.

  • Danes Furious After Immigration Minister Says Migrants "Cheat, Lie And Abuse"

    In an editorial that has drawn the fury of progressives in Denmark, possibly the most conservative of the Nordic states, the country’s immigration minister said “a significant group” of refugees “cheats, lies and abuses our trust” to soak the Danish government for additional benefits – or to cheat on exams that allow them to receive asylum status.

    Inger Stojberg

    According to Inger Stojberg’s editorial, which was published in the Danish BT tabloid, thousands of migrants pose as adolescents to receive the additional benefits that the state of Denmark bestows on unaccompanied minors seeking asylum in the country. In fact, as many as two-thirds of the refugees admitted to Denmark have later been found to be older than the age they gave during their arrival. More from RT (translation theirs):

    Another problem that Stojberg highlighted is the age of so-called minors among migrants, many of whom are believed to be grown men posing as adolescents. “We also see young people under the age of 18 who cheat their way into getting better treatment and more benefits,” she stated, stressing that an unaccompanied minor costs over 500,000 kroner ($80,000) per year for the state. “In fact, two thirds of those whom we later age-tested proved to be older than they originally stated,” she added.

    Stojberg also cited Facebook Groups found online where refugees share answers to Danish language and culture tests that every migrant entering Denmark must take.

    Denmark

    However, rather than inciting popular demand to have these loopholes closed once and for all, Stojberg’s editorial, which she also posted on her Facebook page, has triggered a backlash, with Danish citizens accusing her of “cheating” the Danish people by spreading lies and hate.

    Stojberg’s remarks, which she also posted on her Facebook page, have caused an online controversy, with people saying that it is the Danish immigration minister who “cheats and abuses the Danish people’s trust.”

    “You are a sad example of Denmark’s idea and understanding of integration,” one person wrote, while another stated that Stojberg’s rhetoric criminalizes people “who happen to come from another country and are on the run.”

    That said, the government’s immigration curbing policies are working: according to government data, more than 3,000 people applied for asylum in Denmark last year – a steep drop from the spring of 2016, when numbers were near their peak. Over the past three years, the country has taken in some 30,000 refugees, mostly Syrians, Eritreans and Afghans.

  • Here Are The "Missing" Strzok-Page Texts The DOJ Handed Over To Congress

    The Justice department has finally produced 49 pages comprising around 300 previously “missing” text messages sent between two anti-Trump FBI employees in charge of investigating him. The messages, sent between FBI special agent Peter Strzok and FBI counsel Lisa Page, who were also having an extramarital affair together, span the period between December 16, 2016 and May 23, 2017.

    As the Daily Caller reports, many of the messages are in shorthand and out of context. Congressional investigators will be sifting through them and piecing them together with previously released text messages to see if there is further evidence of political bias from two people acting in roles which required the utmost impartiality.

     

    Interestingly, one of the text messages refers to opening “a case we’ve been waiting on” and doing it “now while Andy is acting.” 

    Another text shows Strzok’s concern over former Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and FBI employee Sally Yates all playing into the “there should be an unmasking request/record” for incidental collection incorrect narrative.”

    Independent investigator George Webb (Sweigert), who is notably suing Andrew McCabe, Hillary Clinton, Fusion GPS, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Huma Abedin, Anthony Weiner, the Awan family and John Podesta – notes that there are only two texts per day in today’s release, vs. 12 texts per day in prior releases – implying that the DOJ is withholding texts. 

    Strzok notably spearheaded the Clinton email investigation with Page’s help, while the pair also headed up the FBI’s original counterintelligence investigation into Donald Trump’s alleged relationship with Russia surrounding the 2016 US election. 

    Knowledge of the missing texts was revealed in a January letter from Ron Johnson (R-WI), Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC) – after the Committee received an additional 384 pages of text messages between Strzok and Page, several of which contained anti-Trump / pro-Clinton bias. The new DOJ submission included a cover letter from the Assistant AG for Legislative Affairs, Stephen Boyd, claiming that the FBI was unable to preserve text messages between the two agents for a five month period between December 14, 2016 and May 17, 2017 – due to “misconfiguration issues” with FBI-issued Samsung 5 devices used by Strzok and Page (despite over 10,000 texts which were recovered from their devices without incident).

    The original explanation by the DOJ for the missing texts was “misconfiguration issues related to rollouts, provisioning, and software upgrades that conflicted with the FBI’s collection capabilities.“

    A group of House GOP issued a criminal referral to the DOJ, writing a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Attorney John Huber, and FBI Director Christopher Wray – asking them to investigate Strzok and Page, along with former FBI Director James Comey, Hillary Clinton and others, for a laundry list of potential crimes surrounding the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

    In regards to Strzok and Page, the referral reads: 

    • “We raise concerns regarding their interference in the Hillary Clinton investigation regarding her use of a personal email server.” 
    • Referring to a Wall Street Journal article from January 22, 2018 – “The report provides the following alarming specifics, among others: “Mr. Strzok texts Ms. Page to tell her that, in fact, senior officials had decided to water down the reference to President Obama to ‘another senior government official.” By the time Mr. Comey gave his public statement on July 5, both references – to Mr. Obama and to “another senior government official” had disappeared.” 

     The pair are recommended for criminal charges of obstruction and corruption. 

     

  • "No Attacks, No Victims": Syria Chemical Attack Video Participants Speak At OPCW Briefing

    Russian officials brought fifteen people to The Hague from the city of Douma, Syria, said to have been present during the alleged April 7 chemical attack – including  11-year-old Hassan Diab, who was seen in a widely-distributed video taken by the controversian NGO organization known as the “White Helmets,” who filmed themselves giving Diab “emergency treatment” after the alleged incident. 

    “We were at the basement and we heard people shouting that we needed to go to a hospital. We went through a tunnel. At the hospital they started pouring cold water on me,” said Diab, who was featured in the video which Russia’s ambassador to the Netherlands says was staged.

    The boy and his family have spoken to various media outlets, who say there was no attack. 

    Others present during the filming of Diab’s hospital “cleanup” by the White Helmets include hospital administrator Ahmad Kashoi, who runs the emergency ward. 

    “There were people unknown to us who were filming the emergency care, they were filming the chaos taking place inside, and were filming people being doused with water. The instruments they used to douse them with water were originally used to clean the floors actually,” Ahmad Kashoi, an administrator of the emergency ward, recalled. “That happened for about an hour, we provided help to them and sent them home. No one has died. No one suffered from chemical exposure.” –RT

    Also speaking at The Hague was Halil al-Jaish, an emergency worker who treated people at the Douma hospital the day of the attack – who said that while some patients did come in for respiratory problems, they were attributed to heavy dust, present in the air after recent airstrikes, but that nobody showed signs of chemical warfare poisoning.

    The hospital received people who suffered from smoke and dust asphyxiation on the day of the alleged attack, Muwaffak Nasrim, a paramedic who was working in emergency care, said. The panic seen in footage provided by the White Helmets was caused mainly by people shouting about the alleged use of chemical weapons, Nasrim, who witnessed the chaotic scenes, added. No patients, however, displayed symptoms of chemical weapons exposure, he said. –RT

    Emergency paramedic Ahmad Saur who is with the Syrian Red Crescent, said that his hospital ward did not receive any patients exposed to chemical weapons the day of the alleged incident, and that all the patients either needed general medical care or help with injuries. 

    That said, none of these people’s testimony will make it into the “official record” as it currently stands. Russia’s permanent representative to the OPCW, Aleksandr Shulgin, said that the OPCW has already interviewed six alleged Douma witnesses brought to The Hague , and they won’t interview any more. 

    “The others were ready too, but the experts are sticking to their own guidelines. They’ve picked six people, talked to them, and said they were ‘completely satisfied’ with their account and did not have any further questions”  -Aleksandr Shulgin

    Shulgin also said that “certain Western countries” accusing Russia and Syria of trying to “hide” witnesses to the attack is not true. 

    Meanwhile, the West – unhappy with this unexpected diversion to its narrative – has called the Russian press conference a “stunt” – with Britain and France both denouncing it as an “obscene masquerade.”

    “This obscene masquerade does not come as a surprise from the Syrian government, which has massacred and gassed its own people for the last seven years,” said France’s ambassador to the Netherlands, Philippe Lalliot.

    “The OPCW is not a theatre,” Britain’s envoy to the agency, Peter Wilson, said in a statement. “Russia’s decision to misuse it is yet another Russian attempt to undermine the OPCW’s work, and in particular the work of its fact-finding mission investigating chemical weapons use in Syria.”

    In other words, the West is happy to bomb a sovereign nation based on nothing more than non-public “evidence” suspected to have been staged and provided by the White Helmets, but when actual residents of Douma show up to tell their side of it, they are condemned as an “obscene masquerade” and denied an opportunity to submit their testimony on the record. Sounds about right for the military industrial complex which if nothing else scored a few extra billion in procurement contracts thanks to the latest farcical attack on Syria.

  • Amazon Admits Hackers Could Turn Echo Speakers Into Listening Devices

    One month ago, a wide swath of the US population – most of which is a card-carrying member of the Amazon Prime collective – freaked out when news spread that that Alexa-enabled gadgets would utter an unprovoked “bone-chillingly creepy” cackle or “sinister laugh.”

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

    Shortly after, Amazon confirmed that Alexa was indeed laughing out of the blue, and promptly fixed whatever glitch was plaguing the matrix at the time.

    Yet while bizarre and sinister, the incidents were largely innocuous.

    That however was not the case with the latest bug uncovered in Amazon’s Echo which allowed hackers to listen in to the speaker, a privilege which until recently, most speculated was only granted to Amazon… and the NSA of course.

    Amazon Echo speakers

    According to The Telegraph, researchers had found way to make the the Echo Speakers continue listening long after they should have been switched off. Amazon countered that this would not allow the recordings to be passed to hackers, but would have stayed with Amazon itself.

    The way the Amazon Echo speakers work is they listen for the word “Alexa” before completing a command, like “Alexa, read tell me today’s news”. Any interaction with Alexa is recorded to improve the service, but once the command is finished, Alexa stops recording. At least on paper, because security researchers from Checkmarx developed an Alexa Skill that would keep Alexa listening long after it should have switched itself off and automatically transcribe what it hears for an attacker.

    When an Alexa skill completes its task it is supposed to stop listening. However, sometimes Alexa doesn’t hear a command correctly, which will lead the Echo to ask for the user to repeat it. This “re-prompt” feature could be exploited, the researchers found, and be programmed to carry on listening, while muting Alexa’s responses.

    “For the Echo… listening is key,” Checkmarx said. “However, with this device’s rise in popularity, one of today’s biggest fears in connection to such devices is privacy. Especially when it comes to a user’s fear of being unknowingly recorded.”

    The good news: Amazon has since addressed the flaw to better detect Skills which appear to be built for listening to users and automatically detecting long listening sessions by an Echo. Manipulating the Echo didn’t actually require any attacks on the Echo itself, only a Skill coded to exploit its current features.

    “We have put mitigations in place for detecting this type of Skill behavior and reject or suppress those Skills when we do,” Amazon said.

    The bad news: if others can do it, so can Amazon, and so can all other agencies, governmental or not, which Jeff Bezos is closely aligned with. And if Americans freaked out when they learned that Facebook collects all their private information – something that should have been obvious to 5-year-olds – we can’t wait for the Congressional hearings in 2-4 years when the Kangaroo Court will have Jeff Bezos in the hot seat explaining how and why he wired tens of millions of Americans with 24/7 surveillance, something not even the NSA has been able to do.

  • This Is The Military "Batmobile" That May Soon Be Protecting The US Border

    It might look like a golf cart from a distance, but “nothing this light and agile ever offered so much protection for a 3-man crew.” At least, that’s how Israeli company Plasan is marketing its new Yagu “battle buggy”, which features lightweight armor that can withstand concentrated automatic-weapons fire without slowing down.

    As the Drive reports, the company is pitching the design, called the Yagu, as a tool for border patrol or local law enforcement. But Plasan explains that the vehicle could also be used for military excursions and special operations, offering a better protected, lightweight vehicle.

    Golfcart

    The buggy, which Plasan is calling the Yagu, can also be outfitted with “optional” features that would essentially transform it into the world’s most lightweight tank.

    But many of the Yagu’s other optional features point to its potential utility in military missions, as well. At its core, the buggy is a modified Arctic Cat Wildcat 4x 1000 all-terrain vehicle. It uses the same 95-horsepower engine and automatic transmission, which has the same ability to switch between two and four-wheel drive modes, as the Wildcat.

    On top of that, though, Plasan, a specialized in vehicle armoring and composites, has added a new lightweight armored shell with bullet-resistant front and side windows. The company says this provides B6+ level protection on all sides for the crew of three, though an auxiliary power unit and air conditioning system are both exposed at the rear.

    A European standard, B6 type armor can stop many high-powered rifle rounds, such as the NATO-standard 5.56x45mm and the ever popular Soviet-era 7.62x39mm. The “+” suggests that Plasan’s protective suite should be able to defeat more powerful cartridges, such as the NATO 7.62x51mm and the Soviet-designed 7.62x54mmR, but only if they don’t have special armor-piercing bullets.

    In the past, achieving the level of protection available on the Yagu required installing ballistic steel at least a third of an inch in thickness. But by designing a special composite material, Plasan has achieved this level of protection with a curb weight of just over 3,300 pounds, making it lighter than the General Dynamics Flyer 72.

    Further rounding out the “optional” features, Plasan is also offering a drone launching system and remote weapons system, which are both options that Plasan has heavily emphasized in the marketing literature.

    Golf

    The vehicle comes equipped with flashing lights for police enforcement activities, though electro-optical or infrared cameras and other sensors could be installed as well. The remote weapons system can accommodate either a 5.56x45mm Israel Weapon Industries Negev squad automatic weapon or a 7.62x51mm FN MAG-type light machine gun. Meanwhile, the unmanned aircraft, a small quad-copter type design, can fly for 30 minutes at a time.

    The vehicle, according to Plasan’s marketing materials, is particularly well suited to patrol border territories threatened by increasingly well-armed and organized criminal gangs, conditions that exist both in Israel and the US.

    Three

    One reason Plasan pursued the development of the Yagu is that the US military had expressed displeasure with the MRZR, a glorified armored golf cart, which military leaders said offered too little protection and had “limited utility” for combat missions.

    “I’m sure they use it a lot in noncombat advisory roles in Africa,” an anonymous Marine told Marine Corps Times. “[But] getting a foot outside the wire in Iraq took an act of God, so tactical golf carts wouldn’t cut it.”

    Given this fact, it’s likely Plasan will find an eager customer in the US military – though the Yagu is still vulnerable to heavy weapons fire.

    Plasan could easily pitch Yagu to the U.S. military, as well as other military and para-military organizations, as an alternative to MRZRs or similar unarmored all-terrain vehicles. Its new design could also provide a more practical option for missions requiring a more robust internally-transportable vehicle that is easier to load on and off helicopters and Ospreys than the Flyer 72. This could be even more of an issue if the added weight of new weapon mounts and armor weigh those vehicles down and make them harder to transport and less mobile over certain terrain.

    Of course, Yagu still lacks the kind of protection necessary to survive against an enemy with heavy weapons, such as large-caliber machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, and would almost certainly suffer badly at the hands of roadside bombs. Additional lightweight protective suites, such as high-tensile netting that can deflect or pre-detonate incoming anti-tank rockets, or small active protection systems, might help mitigate some of those issues, but at the cost of added weight and bulk.

    With its “Batmobile”-like appearance, the Yagu’s science-fiction appeal could boost its sales. After all, the $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill that President Trump just passed features an unprecedented increase in military spending.

    So in terms of being a sales-slam dunk, well, Plasan probably couldn’t have picked a better time to introduce the vehicle.

  • The Crash Of 1929: "Can It Happen Again?"

    Submitted by GnS Economics

    In the 4th of February, we published a blog entry detailing the similarities of the current stock market environment with that before the stock market crash in 1987. On February 5th, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) experienced the worst daily point decline of its history. Since then, the stock market has recovered, but are we out of the woods?

    At the aforementioned entry, we also warned that the situation in the global economy actually resembles more of the time before the Great Depression than that before of the Black Monday in 1987. Worryingly, the same holds for the US equity markets. In fact, almost all of the developments that led to the Great Crash of 1929 are already visible in the US. We may thus be heading towards the worst asset market crash in 90 years.

    Prequisites: The ‘Roaring Twenties’

    The 1929 crash marked the end of the ‘Roaring Twenties’. The era got its name from consumer and stock market booms driven by the automobile and building sectors. The gold standard and the neutralization of all gold purchases from abroad by the newly created central bank, Federal Reserve or Fed, controlled the consumer price inflation. Due to low inflation, Fed had only limited incentives to intervene on the speculation by increasing the short-term interest rates. The easy credit era was let to persist fueling the boom in the consumer durables, commercial property market, automobile industry and the stock markets.

    The tide switched in January 1928. The Fed decided that the boom had gone far enough and started to raise its discount rate and sell its holdings of government securities in effort to stem the speculation. But, rising money market rates made the brokers’ loans viable options for the bank loans because the former were mostly funded by the large balance sheets of corporations. The call loan rates were also clearly higher than the Fed discount rate, which meant that banks were able to borrow cheaply from the Fed and earn a nice margin on loans to investors. The higher interest rates set by Fed thus increased both the bank and non-bank funds available for stock market speculation. Contrary to the aim of the Fed, the financial conditions eased further and the speculation increased. The twenties kept on roaring.

    The Great Crash

    In 4 December 1928, President Coolidge had given a reassuring State of the Union speech and 1929 started with positive expectations. The stock market kept rising and the consumer boom continued. It was a common belief that earnings and dividends are growing because of the systematic industrial application of the science together with the development of modern management technologies and business mergers. Still, the first half of 1929 was marked with increasing volatility.

    By the summer a dubious mood started to creep. The dividend growth was solid but the economy started to look mature. The first hints about the approaching recession arrived in July 1929 as the index of the industrial production of the Fed diminished. Mixed news and rising interest rates in the US and abroad warned of a looming recession. In September, the stock market started to drift downwards. The fear of a recession started to set in.

    On Thursday October 24, after a turbulent week, the prices hovered for all while at the start, but then fell rapidly and the stock ticker started to lag behind. The prices kept falling and the ticker fell further behind. The pace of the sell orders grew at an increasing rate and by eleven o’clock a ferocious selling had gripped the market. A few selected quotations given by the bond ticker showed that the that the current values were far below the now seriously lagging tape. Margin calls started to roll in and many investors were forced to liquidate their stock holdings. The increasing uncertainty made the investors even more scared and by eleven-thirty there was a sheer panic. The frenzy of selling could even be heard outside the New York Stock Exchange, where crowds gathered.

    At noon, the reporters learned that several notable bankers had gathered at the office of the J.P. Morgan & Company. At one thirty, the vice-president of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), Richard Whitney, appeared on the trading floor and started to make large purchases of variety of stocks (starting from the Steel post). This had a clear message: the bankers had stepped in. The effect was imminent. The fear eased and the stocks rallied.

    On Friday, the volume of trading was large, but the prices held up. During the weekend, there was a sense of relief. The disaster had been avoided and the actions of the bankers were celebrated. But then came Monday.

    On Monday, October 28, the market opened to uneasy tranquility which was quickly broken. The selling started, then accelerated, and by noon the market was in a full panic mode. The bankers gathered again but the savior was never seen on the floor. Heavy selling continued throughout the day, and the market melted down, with the DJIA closing down by almost 13 percentage points for the day. After the close, there was not a word from the bankers or from anyone else, for that matter. During the night, a panic spread through the nation.

    On Tuesday, October 29, the selling orders flooded the NYSE in the open. The prices plunged right from the start, feeding the panic. The sell orders from all over the country overwhelmed the ticker and sometimes even the traders. During the day, massive blocks of stocks were sold indicating that the ”big players” (banks, investment funds etc.) were liquidating. During the worst selling periods, there was a countless number of the selling orders but no buyers. This meant that, at times, the markets were in a complete free fall. There was a brief rally before the end of trading but despite this, the ”Black Tuesday” was one of the most brutal days at the NYSE with the DJIA falling by 11 % with heavy volumes.  Within a week, DJIA had lost 29 % of its value.

    The daily closing values of Dow Jones Industrial Average during the year 1929. Source: GnS Economics, MacroTrends

    Are we in a time loop?

    The crash of 1929 marked the end of a long stock market boom fed by several years of easy credit. Because inflation was low for most of the 1920’s, Fed did not bother to curb the speculation by rising rates and when it did, the rise was too little too late. The signals for an upcoming recession broke the highly over-valued stock market in 1929. Actually, for example the dividends grew even in the last quarter of 1929 but the faith for the future of the market was broken and the investors panicked.

    Currently, we are in a situation where, according to several metrics, the stock market is the most over-valued in the history of the NYSE. The central banks, with their orthodox and unorthodox monetary policies, have fed the asset market mania for nine years now but, currently, they are in a tightening cycle. Moreover, the global economy is in a risk of a dramatic slowdown.

    This indicates that the main components of the crash of 1929: an over-valued stock market, a central bank tightening cycle (higher interest rates) and a slowing economy are almost all present in the US. We will thus soon know how well the history rhymes.

    The historical accounts are based on the “The Great Crash 1929“ by John K. Galbraith, “The stock market boom and crash of 1929 revisited” by Eugene White and on “Lessons from the 1930’s Great Depression” by Nicholas Crafts and Peter Fearon.

  • Mainstream Media Duped By "Student Loan" Expert Who Never Existed

    While searching for sources for their stories about America’s blossoming student-loan debt, CNBC, Fox News And the Washington Post all cited the work of a self-styled “journalist” and “student loan expert” who portrayed named David Cloud, the founder of an “independent” news outlet the Student Loan Report.

    But as a report published this week by the Chronicle of Higher Education revealed, Cloud has a serious credibility problem: He doesn’t exist.

    The Chronicle became suspicious after Cloud “authored” an article about a survey about students using financial aid money to fund cryptocurrency investments. According to Cloud, the “survey” revealed that an astonishing 21% of student loan borrowers had used the money they received to fund crypto investments.

    Cloud

    Several reporters immediately suspected that this sounded like a specious claim, and decided to do a little more digging into Cloud’s background…which is when they learned that he was a fabrication invented by several writers at the Student Loan Report.

    After The Chronicle spent more than a week trying to verify Cloud’s existence, the company that owns The Student Loan Report confirmed that Cloud was fake. “Drew Cloud is a pseudonym that a diverse group of authors at Student Loan Report, LLC use to share experiences and information related to the challenges college students face with funding their education,” wrote Nate Matherson, CEO of LendEDU.

    Before his true identity (or lack thereof) was discovered, Cloud’s work had been used in many salacious stories about the tremendous lengths that US students would supposedly go to live an existence free of debt.

    He’s always got the new data, featuring irresistible twists:

    One in five students use extra money from their student loans to buy digital currencies.

    Nearly 8 percent of students would move to North Korea to free themselves of their debt.

    Twenty-seven percent would contract the Zika virus to live debt-free.

    All of those surveys came from Cloud’s website, The Student Loan Report.

    And not only did Cloud’s name exist solely on the website – individuals claiming to be Cloud also corresponded with reporters, suggesting story topics and offering to participate in on-the-record interviews.

    After The Chronicle spent more than a week trying to verify Cloud’s existence, the company that owns The Student Loan Report confirmed that Cloud was fake. “Drew Cloud is a pseudonym that a diverse group of authors at Student Loan Report, LLC use to share experiences and information related to the challenges college students face with funding their education,” wrote Nate Matherson, CEO of LendEDU.

    Before that admission, however, Cloud had corresponded at length with many journalists, pitching them stories and offering email interviews, many of which were published. When The Chronicle attempted to contact him through the address last week, Cloud said he was traveling and had limited access to his account. He didn’t respond to additional inquiries.

    And on Monday, as The Chronicle continued to seek comment, Cloud suddenly evaporated. His once-prominent placement on The Student Loan Report had been removed. His bylines were replaced with “SLR Editor.” Matherson confirmed on Tuesday that Cloud was an invention.

    Pressed on whether he regretted deceiving news organizations with a fake source, Matherson said Cloud “was created as a way to connect with our readers (ex. people struggling to repay student debt) and give us the technical ability to post content to the WordPress website.”

    Several news organizations, including WaPo and the Boston Globe have offered embarrassing editors’ notes on these stories.

    Here’s Wapo…

    Note

    …And the Globe.

    Note

    In addition to the truth about Cloud, the Chronicle for the first time publicized the Student Loan Report’s connection with LendEDU. The company runs a student-loan refinancing business, and the Student Loan Report’s articles often included links to LendEDU and its services. When people reached out to Cloud to inquire about strategies for mitigating their debt payments, he’d often suggest refinancing their loan…through LendEDU.

    Of course, in the modern media landscape, funding shortages and deteriorating editorial standards have allowed “Fake News” to flourish, even in such respectable and reputable media organizations as the Washington Post.

  • A US Ally Is Literally Beheading People Over Nonviolent Drug Charges

    Submitted by Carey Welder of AntiMedia

    Saudi Arabia, the United States’ main ally in the Middle East, has executed 48 people so far this year, half of them over nonviolent drug charges, Human Rights Watch reported this week.

    “Many more people convicted of drug crimes remain on death row following convictions by Saudi Arabia’s notoriously unfair criminal justice system,” the advocacy organization said in a release.

    Though Human Rights Watch did not specify the method of execution, the Guardian classified the 48 killings as beheadings, and the Saudi government has a reputation for this type of sentence.

    “Saudi Arabia has carried out nearly 600 executions since the beginning of 2014, over 200 of them in drug cases. The vast majority of the remainder were for murder, but other offenses included rape, incest, terrorism, and ‘sorcery,’” HRW noted.

    As far back as 2004, CBS reported that “[t]he Saudi government beheaded 52 men and one woman last year for crimes including murder, homosexuality, armed robbery and drug trafficking,” adding that the Kingdom argues the practice is acceptable under Islamic law, which governs the country. At the same time, they condemned beheadings by militant groups. CBS noted that while Islam allows for the death penalty “few mainstream Muslim scholars and observers believe beheadings are sanctioned by Sharia, or Islamic law.”

    Nevertheless, the Saudi government has continued the practice, beheading 157 people in 2015, the highest since 1995, when 192 were executed. Nonviolent drug offenders were among those killed that year, as well.

    “Human Rights Watch (HRW) found that of the first 100 prisoners executed in 2015, 56 had been based on judicial discretion and not for crimes for which Islamic law mandates a specific death penalty punishment,” the Guardian noted at the time.

    In its latest update, Human Rights Watch discussed the difficulty of obtaining a fair trial in Saudi Arabia, highlighting that, among other issues,  longstanding due process violations in Saudi Arabia’s criminal justice system that makes it difficult for a defendant to get a fair trial even in capital cases.”

    The organization said that in cases they analyzed, “authorities did not always inform suspects of the charges against them or allow them access to evidence, even after trial sessions began.”

    The Kingdom also criminalizes protest and received widespread condemnation in 2017 for its efforts to execute 14 Shia minority demonstrators who protested during the Arab Spring. One of those protesters was a Saudi student who was arrested on his way to study abroad in the United States, and an advocacy groups’ appeals to President Trump to intervene on his behalf, the White House offered no indication it intended to help him.

    Others who have spoken out against the monarchy have faced floggings and crucifixion. Nevertheless, in 2015, the kingdom’s representative to the U.N. Human Rights Council, Bandar al-Aiban, insisted the death penalty is applied “only [to] those who commit heinous crimes that threaten security.”

    Though the country’s Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman has expressed his intent to reform the country and reduce the number of executions, it’s extremist roots make this a daunting task that will likely take a significant amount of time.

    Considering the Saudi kingdom has funded the spread of radical Islam around the world and has also been linked to financial sponsorship of ISIS and the 9/11 terror attacks, it is not surprising they continue to impose the death penalty against even nonviolent offenders and that they are one of the top executioners in the world.

    Meanwhile, the U.S. government remains fixated on largely unsubstantiated claims of atrocities by geopolitical rivals in the region, failing to display a modicum of principle in its ultimately tepid opposition to oppression and radicalism as it continues to facilitate the sale of billions of dollars worth of weaponry to extremist regimes.

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Apr 27

Today’s News 27th April 2018

  • These Countries Have The Highest Density Of Robot Workers

    The rise of the machines has well and truly started.

    Data from the International Federation of Roboticsreveals that the pace of industrial automation is accelerating across much of the developed world with 66 installed industrial robots per 10,000 employees globally in 2015.

    A year later, Statista’s Niall McCarthy says that increased to 74. Europe has a robot density of 99 units per 10,000 workers and that number is 84 and 63 in the Americas and Asia respectively. China is one of the countries recording the highest growth levels in industrial automation but nowhere has a robot density like South Korea.

    Infographic: The Countries With The Highest Density Of Robot Workers | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    In 2016, South Korea had 631 installed industrial robots per 10,000 employees. That is mainly due to the continued installation of high volume robots in the electronics and manufacturing sectors. 90 percent of Singapore’s industrial robots are installed in its electronics industry and it comes second with a density of 488 per 10,000 employees. Germany and Japan are renowned for their automotive industries and they have density levels of just over 300 per 10,000 workers. Interestingly, Japan is one of the main players in industrial robotics, accounting for 52 percent of global supply.

    In the United States, the pace of automation is slower with a density rate of 189. China is eager to expand its level of automation in the coming years, targeting a place in the world’s top-10 nations for robot density by 2020. It had a density rate of 25 units in 2013 and that grew to 68 by 2016. India is still lagging behind other countries in automation and it has only three industrial robots per 10,000 workers in 2016.

     

  • How False Flag Operations Are Carried Out Today

    Authored by Phillip Giraldi via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    False Flag is a concept that goes back centuries. It was considered to be a legitimate ploy by the Greeks and Romans, where a military force would pretend to be friendly to get close to an enemy before dropping the pretense and raising its banners to reveal its own affiliation just before launching an attack. In the sea battles of the eighteenth century among Spain, France and Britain hoisting an enemy flag instead of one’s own to confuse the opponent was considered to be a legitimate ruse de guerre, but it was only “honorable” if one reverted to one’s own flag before engaging in combat.

    Today’s false flag operations are generally carried out by intelligence agencies and non-government actors including terrorist groups, but they are only considered successful if the true attribution of an action remains secret. There is nothing honorable about them as their intention is to blame an innocent party for something that it did not do. There has been a lot of such activity lately and it was interesting to learn by way of a leak that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has developed a capability to mimic the internet fingerprints of other foreign intelligence services. That means that when the media is trumpeting news reports that the Russians or Chinese hacked into U.S. government websites or the sites of major corporations, it could actually have been the CIA carrying out the intrusion and making it look like it originated in Moscow or Beijing. Given that capability, there has been considerable speculation in the alternative media that it was actually the CIA that interfered in the 2016 national elections in the United States.

    False flags can be involved in other sorts of activity as well. The past year’s two major alleged chemical attacks carried out against Syrian civilians that resulted in President Donald Trump and associates launching 160 cruise missiles are pretty clearly false flag operations carried out by the rebels and terrorist groups that controlled the affected areas at the time. The most recent reported attack on April 7th might not have occurred at all according to doctors and other witnesses who were actually in Douma. Because the rebels succeeded in convincing much of the world that the Syrian government had carried out the attacks, one might consider their false flag efforts to have been extremely successful.

    The remedy against false flag operations such as the recent one in Syria is, of course, to avoid taking the bait and instead waiting until a thorough and objective inspection of the evidence has taken place. The United States, Britain and France did not do that, preferring instead to respond to hysterical press reports by “doing something.” If the U.N. investigation of the alleged attack turns up nothing, a distinct possibility, it is unlikely that they will apologize for having committed a war crime.

    The other major false flag that has recently surfaced is the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury England on March 4th. Russia had no credible motive to carry out the attack and had, in fact, good reasons not to do so. The allegations made by British Prime Minister Theresa May about the claimed nerve agent being “very likely” Russian in origin have been debunked, in part through examination by the U.K.’s own chemical weapons lab. May, under attack even within her own party, needed a good story and a powerful enemy to solidify her own hold on power so false flagging something to Russia probably appeared to be just the ticket as Moscow would hardly be able to deny the “facts” being invented in London. Unfortunately, May proved wrong and the debate ignited over her actions, which included the expulsion of twenty-three Russian diplomats, has done her severe damage. Few now believe that Russia actually carried out the poisoning and there is a growing body of opinion suggesting that it was actually a false flag executed by the British government or even by the CIA.

    The lesson that should be learned from Syria and Skripal is that if “an incident” looks like it has no obvious motive behind it, there is a high probability that it is a false flag. A bit of caution in assigning blame is appropriate given that the alternative would be a precipitate and likely disproportionate response that could easily escalate into a shooting war.  

  • How The Internet Turned Bad

    Authored by Arnold King via HackerNoon.com,

    The 1990s Vision Failed…

    It has been 25 years since I formed my first impressions of the Internet. I thought that it would shift the balance of power away from large organizations. I thought that individuals and smaller entities would gain more autonomy. What we see today is not what I hoped for back then.

    In 1993, I did not picture people having their online experience being “fed” to them by large corporations using mysterious algorithms. Instead, I envisioned individuals in control, creating and exploring on their own.

    In hindsight, I think that four developments took place that changed the direction of the Internet.

    1. The masses came to the Internet. Many of the new arrivals were less technically savvy, were more interested in passively consuming entertainment than in contributing creatively, and were less able to handle uncensored content in a mature way. They have been willing to give up autonomy in exchange for convenience.

    2. At the same time, the capability of artificial intelligence grew rapidly. Better artificial intelligence made corporate control over the user experience more cost-effective than had been the case earlier.

    3. The winner-take-all mentality took over. Entrepreneurs and consultants were convinced that only one firm in each market segment would dominate. In recent years, this has become almost a self-fulfilling prophecy, as stock market investors poured money into leading firms, giving those firms the freedom to experiment with new business ventures, under-price competitors, and buy out rivals.

    4. The peer-to-peer structure of the Internet and the services provided over it did not scale gracefully. The idea of a “dumb network” of fully distributed computing gave way to caching servers and server farms. The personal blog or web site gave way to Facebook and YouTube.

    Blogs vs. Facebook

    To me, blogs symbolize the “old vision” of the Internet, and Facebook epitomizes the new trend.

    When you read blogs, you make your own deliberate choices about which writers to follow. With Facebook, you rely on the “feed” provided by the artificial intelligence algorithm.

    Blog writers put effort into their work. They develop a distinctive style. In general, there are two types of blog posts. One type is a collection of links that the blogger believes will be interesting. The other type is a single reference, for which the blogger will provide a quote and additional commentary. On Facebook, many posts are just mindless “shares” where the person doing the sharing adds nothing to what he or she is sharing.

    Bloggers create “metadata.” They put their posts into categories, and they add keyword tags. This allows readers to filter what they read. It has the potential to allow for sophisticated searching of blog posts by topic. On Facebook, the artificial intelligence tries to infer our interests from our behavior. We do not select topics ourselves.

    The most popular environment for reading and writing blogs is the personal computer, which allows a reader time to think and gives a writer a tool for composing and editing several paragraphs. The most popular environment for reading and posting to Facebook is the smart phone, which favors rapid scrolling and photos with just a few words included.

    Catering to the mass market

    Before August of 1995, ordinary households were kept off the World Wide Web by significant technical barriers. Until Microsoft released Windows 95, people with Windows computers could not access the Internet without installing additional software. And until America Online provided Web access, the users of the most popular networking service were limited to email and other more primitive Internet protocols.

    The fall of 1995 began the period of mass-market adoption of the Internet. Another important leap occurred early in 2007, when Apple’s iPhone spurred the use of Internet-enabled smart phones.

    As the masses immigrated to the Internet, the average character of the users changed. Early settlers were very focused on preserving anonymity and privacy. Recent arrivals seem more concerned with getting noticed. Although early settlers were intrigued by entertainment on the Internet, for the most part they valued its practical uses more highly. Recent arrivals demand much more entertainment. Early settlers wanted to be active participants in building the World Wide Web and to explore its various strands. Recent arrivals are more passive users of sites like Google and Wikipedia.

    Hal Varian, a keen observer of technology who became the chief economist at Google, once wrote a paper that contrasted software that is easy to learn with software that is easy to use. Sometimes, software that is a bit harder to learn can be more powerful. But catering to the mass market can lead software developers to focus on making the software easy to learn rather than easy to use. This distinction may be useful for understanding how Facebook triumphed over blogging.

    Big Data and Big Organizations

    Back in the 1990s, many of us thought that since everyone could have their own web site, all web sites were created approximately equal. In Free Agent Nation, Dan Pink exuberantly proclaimed that the Internet fulfilled Marx’s vision of workers owning the means of production. We thought that the “means of production” were computers connected to the Internet, and they were accessible to individuals.

    Instead, enormous advantages accrued to large companies that could amass vast stores of user data and then mine that data using artificial intelligence. If the “means of production” today are Big Data and the algorithms to exploit it, then the means of production are much more accessible to Facebook, Apple, Amazon, and Google than they are to ordinary individuals.

    Walled Gardens vs. the Jungle

    Although America Online was a powerful franchise in the mid-1990s, its glory soon faded. We thought that the reason for this was that AOL was a “walled garden,” as opposed to the open Internet. The pattern that we noticed was that closed systems tended to lose out. This was the explanation for the near-demise of Apple Computer, which was much less friendly to outside developers than its competitor, Microsoft.

    Today, the iPhone is much closer to a walled garden than smart phones that use the Android operating system. Yet the iPhone has maintained a powerful market position.

    Facebook is much closer to a walled garden than is the world of blogs. But Facebook grew rapidly in recent years, and blogs are getting less attention.

    Push vs. Pull

    Traditional mass media was “pushed” to the users. If you wanted to watch a TV program in 1970, you could not record it or stream it. You had to turn your set to the right channel at the right time.

    The World Wide Web was designed as a “pull” technology. You would make the choice to visit a web site, often by following links from other web sites.

    Big corporations and advertisers are more comfortable with “push” than with “pull.” But in the 1990s, it looked like “pull” was going to win. One of the first efforts at “push technology,” Pointcast Network, famously flopped.

    Today, “push technology” is everywhere, in the form of “notifications.” 21st-century consumers, especially smart phone owners, seem to welcome it.

    Fraying at the Edge

    The traditional telephone system put a lot of intelligence in the middle of the network. Central switchboards did a lot of the connecting work. Sound pulses traveled over wires, and your phone, sitting on the edge of the network, did not have to be intelligent to make sound pulses intelligible. But by the same token, your phone could only respond to sound pulses, not to text or video.

    With the Internet, all forms of content are reduced to small digital packets, and the routers in the middle of the network do not know what is in those packets. Only when the packets reach their destination are they re-assembled and then converted to text, sound, or video by an intelligent device located on the edge.

    Hence, the Internet was described as a dumb network with intelligence on the edge. One of the characteristics of such a network is that it is difficult to censor. If you do not know the content of packets until they reach the edge, by then it is too late to censor them.

    Today, governments are better able to meet the challenge of censoring the Internet. Part of the reason is that the Internet is less de-centralized than it once was. It turns out that in order to process today’s volume of content efficiently, the Internet needs more intelligence in the network itself.

    The advent of “cloud computing” also changes the relationship between the edge and the network. The “cloud” is an intelligent center, and the many devices that rely on the “cloud” are in that respect somewhat less intelligent than the computers that used the Internet in the 1990s.

    Another factor is the importance of major service providers, such as Google and Facebook. These mega-sites give government officials targets to attack when they are not pleased with what they see.

    Governance

    One of the aspects of the Internet that intrigued me the most in 1993 was its governance mechanism. You can get the flavor of it by reading this brief history of the Internet, written twenty years ago. In particular, note the role of Requests for Comments (RFCs) and Internet Engineering Task Force Working Groups, which I will refer to as IETFs.

    I compare IETFs with government agencies this way:

    — IETFs are staffed by part-time or limited-term volunteers, whose compensation comes from their regular employers (universities, corporations, government agencies). Agencies are staffed by full-time permanent employees, using taxpayer dollars.

    — IETFs solve the problems that they work on. Agencies perpetuate the problems that they work on.

    — A particular group of engineers in an IETF disbands once it has solved its problem. An agency never disbands.

    When I hear calls for government regulation of the Internet, to me that sounds like a step backward. The IETF approach to regulation seems much better than the agency approach.

    Things Could Change

    Call me a snob or an old fogy, but I am not happy with where the Internet is today. I believe that things could change. I think that a lot of people are unhappy with the current state of the Internet. But I suspect that the enemy is us.

    I am not sure what the solution will look like. I don’t think that regulating Facebook is the answer, especially if the main driver of regulation is that people are upset that Donald Trump won the 2016 election.

    I don’t think that blockchain is the answer, even though it has some of the characteristics of the 1990s Internet. I have little confidence that blockchain can scale gracefully, given what we have seen so far and given the way that the Internet has evolved. And even if blockchain is able to overcome scaling problems, I think that the lesson of the last 25 years is that culture pushes on technology harder than technology pushes on culture.

    I think that the challenge that we face on the Internet is the challenge that we face in society in general. In our modern world, we thrive by doing less ourselves and getting more from the services provided by others. But we seem tempted to become passive and careless in ceding power to governments and other large organizations.

    In short, how can we sustain an ethic of individual responsibility while enjoying the benefits of extreme interdependence?

  • FBI Investigates Joy Reid Homophobic Blog Posts As Daily Beast Suspends Column

    The FBI has opened an investigation into Joy Reid’s claims that some dozens of homophobic comments published to a now-defunct blog were actually “fabricated” by someone who either hacked into the “Wayback Machine”internet archive, or accessed her website before the controversial comments were archived.   

    “In December I learned that an unknown, external party accessed and manipulated material from my now-defunct blog, The Reid Report, to include offensive and hateful references that are fabricated and run counter to my personal beliefs and ideology,” Reid said in a statement to Mediaite.

    “I began working with a cyber-security expert who first identified the unauthorized activity, and we notified federal law enforcement officials of the breach. The manipulated material seems to be part of an effort to taint my character with false information by distorting a blog that ended a decade ago.”

    Reid’s lawyer, John H. Reichman, said the FBI is looking into the claims.

    “We have received confirmation the FBI has opened an investigation into potential criminal activities surrounding several online accounts, including personal email and blog accounts, belonging to Joy-Ann Reid,” he said in a statement through MSNBC.

    Many of the offensive posts can be seen by clicking on the below tweet and reading the 48-part tweetstorm by user Jamie Maz, documenting Reid’s comments. 

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

    After Reid’s claims that the Wayback Machine had been hacked, the internet archive hit back – claiming they hadn’t identified anything “to indicate tampering or hacking of the Wayback Machine” versions of Reid’s blog.

    This past December, Reid’s lawyers contacted us, asking to have archives of the blog (blog.reidreport.com) taken down, stating that “fraudulent” posts were “inserted into legitimate content” in our archives of the blog. Her attorneys stated that they didn’t know if the alleged insertion happened on the original site or with our archives (the point at which the manipulation is to have occurred, according to Reid, is still unclear to us).

    When we reviewed the archives, we found nothing to indicate tampering or hacking of the Wayback Machine versions. At least some of the examples of allegedly fraudulent posts provided to us had been archived at different dates and by different entities. –Internet Archive

    Given the fact that copies of the homophobic posts in question were archived by the Wayback Machine less than a month after they were published in some cases, means that if the Wayback machine wasn’t hacked, the “unknown, external party” would have needed to manipulate Reid’s entry within six weeks of its original publication in order to be included in the internet archive. Then, this malicious actor said nothing for over a decade before they were unearthed last December.

    Oh Joy…

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    In an effort to suggest that the site just had to have been hacked, Reid’s cybersecurity expert, Jonathan Nichols, said that credentials were available for The Reid Report as recently as five months ago. Which still wouldn’t explain how copies archived in 2007 contain the bigoted language. 

    Late Tuesday, Reid’s cybersecurity expert, Jonathan Nichols, said in a statement provided to the Daily News that login information to The Reid Report “was available on the Dark Web” five months ago. He also said that the screenshots of the blog had been manipulated “with the intent to tarnish Ms. Reid’s character.” –NY Daily News

    Meanwhile, the Daily Beast has suspended Reid as a contributor over the controversy, and it doesn’t look like they’re buying the hacker excuse. 

    “We’re going to hit pause on Reid’s columns,” said Shachtman in an email reviewed by TheWrap. “As you’re well aware, support for LGBTQ rights and respect for human dignity are core to Daily Beast. So we’re taking seriously the new allegations that one of our columnists, Joy Reid, previously wrote homophobic blog posts during her stint as a radio host.”

    “Obviously, this is a difficult situation,” Shachtman added. “We’ve all said and done things in our lives that we wish we hadn’t done. We deserve the room to grow beyond our past. But these allegations are serious enough that they deserve a full examination”

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    As Tucker Carlson noted, all Reid had to do was say that her views had changed and she was a different person a decade ago – but nope, “it wasn’t me” is the road she’s on now. Good luck.

  • Black-White Homeownership-Rate-Gap Has Widened Since 1900

    Authored by Skylar Olsen via Zillow.com,

    • In 1900, the gap in the homeownership rate between black and white households was 27.6 percentage points. It’s now 30.3 percentage points.

    • It’s the widest gap among whites, blacks, Hispanics and Asians – although the difference between white and Hispanic homeownership rates has more than tripled.

    • Asians have seen the largest gains, although their homeownership rate still lags whites.

    At the dawn of the 20th century, the end of slavery was still within living memory. Lynching was widespread. Segregation was the law in some states and practiced in others.

    Under those conditions, it probably is not surprising that black citizens had nothing approaching economic parity with whites. In 1900, 48.1 percent of whites in the United States owned homes, while only 20.5 percent of blacks did – for a homeownership gap of 27.6 percentage points.

    More disturbing is that that gap is even wider today.

    While more households of each race own homes now – 71.3 percent of whites and 41 percent of blacks – the gap is 30.3 percentage points, according to 2016 U.S. Census data.

    It’s the widest gap among whites, blacks, Hispanics and Asians – although the difference between white and Hispanic homeownership rates has more than tripled over the past century from 7.9 percentage points in 1900 to 25.7 percentage points in 2016.

    Asians have seen the largest gains: By 2016, 58.1 percent of Asian households owned a home – up from 10.1 percent in 1900.

    New Zillow research shows that in 2017, Asian home buyers had the most buying power and could afford a home worth $155,000 more than the typical U.S. buyer. A white household could reasonably afford a home almost two-thirds more expensive than a black household.

    It’s important to remember that the demographic makeup of the U.S. Hispanic and Asian populations was far different in 1900. Beginning in the 1960s, more immigrants joined their ranks, and new immigrants tend to have different challenges and experiences with homeownership.

    While homeownership is not the only measure of economic well-being, it can be a strong stabilizing force. Roughly half of the total wealth accumulated by the typical U.S. homeowner is tied up in a primary residence – and that share is even higher for black and Hispanic homeowners.

    The highest homeownership rate among the country’s largest 35 metro areas is Pittsburgh, where 69.7 percent of all households – no matter what race or ethnicity – own their primary residence. However, the disparity between the share of white and black households that own their home is 40.9 percentage points – more than 10 points above the national gap.

    2018

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    The major metro area with the largest black/white homeownership gap is Minneapolis, where 75.1 percent of white households own their primary residence, compared to 23.9 percent of black households – for a gap of 51.1 percentage points. (African Americans in the Minneapolis area are more likely than African Americans elsewhere in the country to be recent immigrants — particularly from East Africa.)

    The narrowest black/white homeownership gap among the largest 35 metro areas is Austin, Texas, where 64.1 percent of white households own their primary residence, compared to 42.5 percent of black households – for a gap of 21.6 percentage points.

    In those major metros, the highest black homeownership rates are in Philadelphia (48.4 percent), Washington, D.C. (48.3 percent) and Miami (45 percent), Atlanta (44.7 percent) and Baltimore (44.6 percent).

    The highest white homeownership rates are in Detroit (77.7 percent), Baltimore (76.4 percent) and St. Louis, Mo. (75.8 percent), Charlotte, N.C. (75.3 percent), Philadelphia and Minneapolis (tied at 75.1 percent).

    The highest Asian homeownership rates are in Riverside, Calif. (70.3 percent), Washington, D.C. (68.7 percent), Orlando, Fla. (67.6 percent), Houston (67.3 percent) and Miami (66 percent).

    The highest Hispanic homeownership rates are in Detroit (58 percent), San Antonio (57.2 percent), Riverside, Calif. (54.7 percent), St. Louis, Mo. (52.9 percent) and Kansas City, Mo. (52.1 percent).

    Among more than 500 markets analyzed, only two had a greater share of black than white households owning their primary residences. One is Yuba City, Calif., where the black homeownership rate is 82.9 percent, compared to 56.9 percent for whites – a 26 percentage point gap with blacks owning more homes. The other is Tullahoma, Tenn., an area of just over 100,000 residents where 75.4 percent of black households and 70 percent of white ones own their homes – for a gap of 5.4 percentage points with blacks owning more homes.

    There are myriad reasons for these homeownership gaps. We compiled some of those reasons for these three groups:

    *  *   *

    Editor’s Note: April 11, 2018 marks the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s signing of the landmark Fair Housing Act, which now prohibits discrimination in housing on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status and/or disability. The housing market has changed a great deal since then, as have social and cultural attitudes toward race and discrimination — but while a lot has improved, there is still much progress to be made toward ensuring true equality in housing. Zillow Research will be examining this topic throughout April in honor of Fair Housing Month, and we invite you to read all of our related research and analysis here.

  • How NBC's $69 Million Bet On Megyn Kelly Completely Backfired

    Once upon a time NBC snatched Megyn Kelly from her 12-year role at Fox News, agreed to pay her $69 million over there years, and then set her loose to do her “thing” on a now-canceled Sunday night show meant to compete with 60 Minutes, along with the 9 a.m. hour of the network’s iconic morning show – rebranding it “Megyn Kelly Today.”

    This was pretty much the result; an awkward dance around the corpse of Kelly’s once-legitimate career, and the terrible ratings that accompany a radioactive personality: 

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    As it turns out, fewer viewers continue to watch the Today show once Kelly’s segment begins.

    Breaking down overall viewership between pre-Kelly Today and, today’s Today, we see an 18% dropoff overall, with women in the 25-54 age demographic feeling particularly sour on Kelly.

    Kelly’s first gig with NBC was a poorly received “Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly” interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin – attracting only six million viewers, around half of the show’s usual audience. 

    Weeks later, only 3.5 million viewers tuned in to watch Kelly try and skewer Infowars boss Alex Jones in the same time slow, only to come in behind a 60 Minutes rerun and America’s Funniest Home Videos. Ouch!

    Kelly’s Sunday night debacle was pulled before it finished its scheduled run of episodes, with the network saying that she will host “occasional prime-time specials as her schedule permits,” according to the WSJ.

    “I don’t think I fully appreciated how much work the morning show was going to be and how many hours it was going to require of me,” Ms. Kelly said, adding that she thought occasional shows outside of Today would be a “good compromise.”

    Kelly orphaned herself during the 2016 election – while her conservative views on the “war on Christmas,” Black Lives Matter and Gay Rights ingratiated her with the right, Kelly’s anti-Trump rhetoric turned off Fox viewers. As a result, nobody really likes her. – especially the 25-54 female demographic.

    She won some fans outside of the channel’s conservative base when she challenged then-presidential candidate Donald Trump over his statements about women during a live debate. But she has struggled to parlay that attention into a compelling TV personality who resonates with daytime viewers, bouncing between segments on cooking, domestic abuse and concussions. –WSJ

    Local NBC affiliates aren’t too happy with Kelly’s sagging ratings either. “At WAVE-TV, the affiliate station in Louisville, Ky., the audience for “Megyn Kelly Today” is more than 40% smaller than what the previous incarnation of that hour was averaging a year ago,” reports the Journal. “We’re certainly not happy with the Nielsen numbers,” said Ken Selvaggi, vice president and general manager of WAVE-TV.

    Meanwhile, the Today show costs over $30 million a year, leaving many wondering how it can remain profitable. Some close to the show say it makes less than its pre-Kelly predecessor, however an NBC spokeswoman told the Journal that Kelly’s show is profitable. 

    Kelly received a ratings boost during the #MeToo movement which emanated from the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse scandal.

    Ms. Kelly received praise from critics and a lift in the ratings when she leaned into the #MeToo movement, featuring women on her show who had made accusations against movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, journalist Mark Halperin and others. Ms. Kelly has also mentioned her own experiences at Fox News, where she alleged harassment by Roger Ailes, the late CEO of the network, who denied the charge. –WSJ

    Kelly spent the next several weeks focusing on sexual harassment – keeping Weinstein’s name in the headlines, while also shining a spotlight on former Today host Matt Lauer, who was accused by several staffers of sexual misconduct – which many at NBC thought was a “cheap shot” at Lauer and a ratings stunt. 

    “I understand that,” Ms. Kelly said. “They loved him. They’d been working with him for decades, and it is hard when you care about the person who is at the center of these stories—trust me, I know.”

    Megyn then got into a massive argument with Jane Fonda – who took offense to Kelly asking about her plastic surgery during an interview about a new movie with Robert Redford. Fonda “made jokes and mocked Ms. Kelly several times after that,” reports the Journal – prompting Kelly to launch a “Fox News-style attack” on Fonda. 

    “This is a woman who is synonymous with outrage. Look at her treatment of our military during the Vietnam War. Many of our veterans still call her ‘Hanoi Jane’ thanks to her radio broadcasts, which attempted to shame American troops,” Ms. Kelly said on her show in January.

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    Kelly’s “Hanoi Jane” rant, as it has become known, was seen by Today insiders as an extreme overreaction, but Megyn doesn’t see it that way. “I’m all for turning the other cheek but sometimes one has to stand up for one’s self,” she said.

  • Watch Live: Historic Summit Between North And South Korea

    Live feed:

    Update 2: A live feed from inside the room, as Kim Jong Un, seated next to his sister, offers opening remarks to Moon Jae-in, together with intelligence chief Suh Hoon to his right and chief of staff Im Jong-seok to his left.

    Meanwhile, here’s the message Kim Jong Un wrote on the guestbook at the Peace House summit venue, which reads “A new history begins now – at the starting point of history and the era of peace.” (h/t Hawon Jung)

    * * *

    Update: *KIM JONG UN BECOMES FIRST NORTH KOREAN LEADER TO ENTER SOUTH

    As AP reports, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has made history by crossing over to the southern side of the world’s most heavily armed border to meet rival South Korean President Moon Jae-in. It’s the first time a member of the Kim dynasty has set foot on southern soil since the end of the Korean War in 1953 and the latest bid to settle the world’s last Cold War standoff.

    The overwhelming focus of the summit, the country’s third-ever, will be on North Korea’s growing arsenal of nuclear weapons.

    Kim’s news agency said earlier Friday that the leader would “open-heartedly” discuss with Moon “all the issues arising in improving inter-Korean relations.”

    The two leaders shook hands and inspected an honor guard before later holding a closed-door discussion about Kim’s nuclear weapons.

    Across the Pacific, the White House said it is hopeful the summit between the two Korean leaders will achieve progress toward peace.

    The White House said in a statement that it is “hopeful that talks will achieve progress toward a future of peace and prosperity for the entire Korean Peninsula. … (and) looks forward to continuing robust discussions in preparation for the planned meeting between President Donald J. Trump and Kim Jong Un in the coming weeks.”

    Follow photos of Kim emerging from North Korea and crossing over into the South.

    * * *

    As reported earlier, in a meeting that’s widely seen as a preamble to a historic summit involving President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, the leaders of the two Koreas – North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in – are meeting at the border at 9:30 am local time on Friday (Thursday 8:30pm EDT).

    The summit will take place in the Peace House in in the border town of Panmunjom, located in the heart of the demilitarized zone.

    Korea

    Im Jong-seok, the chief of staff for President Moon, provided a full itinerary of the meeting – which will involve the ceremonial planting of a pine tree on the border – to Bloomberg:

    • Kim to walk across border to South
    • Kim to review South Korean military’s honor guard after walking together with Moon
    • Moon, Kim to start summit at 10:30am local time Friday
    • Moon, Kim to have lunch separately after morning meeting
    • Moon, Kim to plant pine tree on border after lunch
    • Moon, Kim to walk together around border before afternoon session
    • Two Koreas to sign, announce agreements after summit
    • Moon to host banquet for Kim from 6:30pm at peace house
    • No Plan to extend summit to Saturday for now
    • S. Korea: undecided whether Kim’s wife will accompany; hopes Kim’s wife to join dinner
    • Kim Jong Un’s sister part of North Korean delegation
    • S. Korea says issues related to denuclearization can’t be fully resolved at the inter-Korean summit; S. Korea would consider the summit a success if the North’s intention of denuclearization is included in the agreement

    During the summit, Kim will become the first North Korean leader to cross the DMZ. According to watchers, if the two leaders can produce a written statement of understanding “on a broad set of issues”, then the meeting would be considered a success.

    That said, as Bloomberg’s Kyoungwha Kim writes, Friday’s summit marks “only the start of what even optimists would tell you is sure to be a long, fraught road toward a denuclearized and peaceful Korean peninsula.” The analyst lays out some key subjects markets are watching for developments.

    1. Denuclearization — Investors would like to see a concerted commitment to starting the denuclearization process, in writing and with a timetable
    2. Peace Treaty — Will this meeting officially put an end to the 1950-53 Korean war?
    3. Economic access and development — how would Kim open up North Korea’s economy? Could he use China as a role model for economic development? Or could he rely on inter-Korean economic cooperation as a gateway to the outside world?

    Whatever the outcome is, Seoul’s financial markets look set for a sunny day, carrying over from Thursday’s excitement. Equity futures indicate a strong open for the Kospi, while one-month USD/KRW NDFs are defying the dollar’s bounce.

  • An Orderly Unwind Of Stock Market Leverage?

    Authored Wolf Richter via WolfStreet.com,

    That would be a first, but it might be happening. Everything in slow motion, even market declines?  

    There is nothing like a good shot of leverage to fire up the stock market. How much leverage is out there is actually a mystery, given that there are various forms of stock-market leverage that are not tracked, including leverage at the institutional level and “securities backed loans” offered by brokers to their clients (here’s an example of how these SBLs can blow up).

    But one type of stock-market leverage is measured: “margin debt” – the amount individual and institutional investors borrow from their brokers against their portfolios. Margin debt had surged by $22.9 billion in January to a new record of $665.7 billion, the last gasp of the phenomenal Trump rally that ended January 26. But in February, as the sell-off was rattling some nerves, margin debt dropped by $20.7 billion to $645.1 billion.

    By March, those worries have settled down, and margin debt ticked up a bit to $645.2 billion, but remained $20.5 billion below January, according to FINRA, which regulates member brokerage firms and exchange markets, and which has taken over margin-debt reporting from the NYSE.

    In January, days before the sell-off began, FINRA warned about the levels of margin debt. It was “concerned,” it said, “that many investors may underestimate the risks of trading on margin and misunderstand the operation of, and reason for, margin calls.” Investors might not understand that their broker can liquidates much or all of their portfolio “under unfavorable market conditions,” when prices are crashing. “These liquidations can create substantial losses for investors,” FINRA warned. And when the bounce comes, these investors, with their portfolios cleaned out, cannot participate in it.

    This is why leverage such as margin debt is the great accelerator for stocks on the way up as it creates new liquidity that goes into buying stocks. And this is also why margin debt is the great accelerator on the way down, when forced selling kicks in and liquidity just disappears.

    But this is not the scenario the markets are in at the moment. Everything is so orderly, though it’s a lot more volatile than it was during the run-up last year. And margin debt too has declined in an orderly manner:

    For the 12-month period through March, margin debt rose $67.6 billion, down by nearly half from the 12-month period ended in January, when margin debt had soared $112.2 billion, the fifth-largest 12-month gain in the history of the data series, behind only the 12-month periods ending in:

    • December 2013 ($123 billion)
    • July 2007 ($160 billion)
    • March 2000 ($133.7 billion)
    • November 1997 ($132 billion).

    Margin debt has soared since 2009, with only a few noticeable down-periods – including during the Oil Bust when the S&P 500 index dropped 19%, and the 2011 sell-off when the S&P 500 index dropped 18%. In March, it exceeded the prior peak of July 2007 ($416 billion) by 55%. But that’s down from 60% in January.

    This chart shows the longer view:

    During margin debt’s peak-to-peak surge of 60%, nominal GDP (not adjusted for inflation) rose 32% and the Consumer Price Index 20%. Historically, this disconnect has had a tendency to correct via messy panicked crashes and deleveraging. The last three spikes in margin debt are indicated in the chart above. The first two were followed by market crashes. And now?

    Clearly, this will correct again. It always does. But the manner in which it corrects may well be very different, more orderly rather than panicky, taking its goodly time, given the glacial pace of the Fed’s tightening and the large amounts of liquidity still in the market looking for a place to go. And this type of gradual unwinding of stock-market leverage would be a first, but it might be happening before our very eyes.

    The Fed’s new paradigm: everything in slow-motion. Read…  What’s Going On in the Treasury Market?

  • Israeli Defense Minister: "The Iranian Regime Is In Its Final Days"

    Israel’s Defense Minister says Iran is on the brink of economic and military collapse, and that Israel will attack Tehran “and destroy every Iranian military outpost in Syria threatening Israel,” according to Arab-language publication Elaph and reported by Israeli media Thursday. 

    “They know that the Iranian regime is in its final days and will soon collapse,” said Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, adding “If they attack Tel Aviv, we will attack Tehran.”

    Liberman suggested Iran is vulnerable on two fronts, economic and military – and that an American withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal would significantly damage the regime’s economy during a period in which the Islamic Republic is devoting resources to a military build-up in Syria against the West. 

    “Iran is trying to establish bases in Syria and arm them with advanced weapons,” Lieberman said. “Every military outpost in Syria in which Iran seems to be trying to dig in militarily, we will destroy.”

    Lieberman says that Israel must prevent an Iranian military build-up on their border. “We won’t allow it, whatever the cost,” he said.

    Iran has repeatedly hit back against similar rhetoric, threatening to attack Israel directly. 

    “If you provide an excuse for Iran, Tel Aviv and Haifa will be razed to the ground,” Ali Shirazi, an adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said in mid-April according to the Washington Times. 

    Meanwhile, Axios reports that Israel has approached Russia several times over the last few weeks with demands that the Kremlin adhere to a cease fire arrangement signed with the U.S. last November, which includes preventing pro-Iranian militias from entering a buffer zone on the Syrian-Israeli border. 

    The protests show Israel’s growing nervousness over the Iranian buildup in Syria. Recent flashpoints between Israel and Russia in Syria are also making it harder for the countries to maintain close coordination.

    Israeli officials told me the message has been passed to the Russians by the Israeli ambassador to Moscow, by Israeli defense officials and at a senior political level. –Axios

    Axios puts the cease fire deal in context: 

    • Last November, Russia the U.S. and Jordan signed a cease fire deal in southern Syria which established de-escalation zones on the Syrian-Israeli border and on the Syrian-Jordanian border. As part of the deal, a buffer zone was to be established which Pro-Iranian forces would be excluded from.
    • According to the deal, the Russians were the responsible for enforcing the zone. But Israeli officials told me that’s not happening at all. They claim pro-Iranian Shiite militias and Hezbollah elements are inside the buffer zone in violation of the deal.  

    Will Russia rein-in Iranian rabble-rousers in Syria? Will the United States pull out of the Iran oil deal? Find out on the next episode of “not our problem.”

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