• Times Change Out From Under Us – Paul Craig Roberts Opens "The Floodgates Of 'His' Memory"

  Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

  He had lugged the 50 lb. bag of Milorganite into the garden in order to discover, as on many prior occasions, that he had nothing with which to open it. He blamed this on the war on terror and the TSA. As a youth he, as did every boy, had a pocket knife. Always. It was expected. There was no school rule against pocket knives. Once for a period they even all had switchblades. You could get them for 99 cents, a large amount in those days, enough to buy a case of 24 Coca-Colas. The switchblades met with school and parental disapproval as they smacked of New York gangs. But before teachers and parents came up with a policy, the boys had abandoned the switchblades. The knives had weak springs. Fascinated with the speed with which the knives opened with a satisfying click and locked the blade into place, the boys quickly wore out the springs on their switchblades. Unlike their trusty pocket knives, the switchblades quickly became useless.

  He no longer carried a pocket knife. He had learned long ago that things that go into pockets become habitual. He would forget to take the knife out when he rushed to catch his flight, just as he always forgot to put the knife in his pocket when he went to work in the garden. There would be a scene at the airport, confiscation of the knife, which had been his grandfather’s, and TSA questioning. They might want him to be strip searched. He could miss his flight. Such a large expensive organization as TSA needs justification, and so whereas the TSA officers might be reasonable, he could not count on it. Under the law he could be accused and prosecuted. One never knew.

  He could remember the air shuttle between Washington and New York. The planes flew on the hour. You could show up 10 minutes before takeoff and be seated. If one airplane wasn’t enough, they would provide a second. There was no security, no delays.

  He didn’t like being drawn back into memories of the past. It made him acutely aware how difficult just simple things had become over the course of his life, like carrying a pocket knife.

  A couple of weeks ago he had been on vacation at a gated mountain resort. He enjoyed hiking along the streams and visiting the waterfalls. He had managed to rent at the airport a sports sedan and was looking forward to a morning workout at the exercise center and then a semi-spirited drive along mountain roads outside the resort. As he was changing into his workout clothes, the telephone rang. As he rushed to stay on schedule his billfold with driving license did not make the clothes change.

  He discovered this at the exercise center. It was 10 minutes back to his cabin and then 10 minutes back in the direction of the exit gate. Why had he agreed to a telephone interview? If he went back for his license, his drive would be rushed and not enjoyable. He could go without his license, but suppose something happened, such as a collision with a deer. Would the police accept a reasonable story and the car rental papers for ID, or would he be hauled to jail, a long flight away from his lawyer? The days of reasonable police, he thought, were bygone days. The morning was shot. The only thing to do was to vent his frustration in exercise and return to his cabin for the telephone interview.

  Even the innocence of words had been lost. There were many words that could no longer be used. They had been banished down the memory hole. A professor friend had told him that he was subjected to a dressing down by a dean because he had used the word “girl” in class. “Girl” is now considered offensive to womyn.

  In restaurants in the South, waitresses called the men “honey.” “What will it be, honey?” The men called the waitresses “darling.” He wondered about that today. Perhaps in small towns. Since the advent of interstate highways, small towns had passed out of his experience. He wondered if they still had restaurants or just fast food franchises.

  It got worse. The floodgates of memory had opened. He was given his first firearm at age 10. It was a single barrel .410 shotgun. When he was 12 he was given a .22 pistol. Many of his friends had guns. The countryside was nearby and many urban families had farm relatives. He remembered, too, that all the kids were subjected to corporal punishment. Today a parent who spanked a kid or provided one with a firearm would be arrested, likely prosecuted, and the kid put into foster care where there was risk of being leased out to a pedophile group.

  He could remember riding his horse into the town three miles from his grandparents’ farm with a real pistol strapped to his side and a rifle in the scabbard when he was 12 or 13. No one said a thing. Today a SWAT team would be on the scene. He would be lucky not to be shot dead and never know the fate of his grandparents, who would be guilty of all sorts of offenses, including failure to supervise a minor.

  That reminded him of what he had recently read in a newspaper. On a cul-de-sac devoid of car traffic a mother sat in a chair outside the house while her child played in the front lawn. A busybody neighbor, trained to report parental malfeasance, whose view of the mother was blocked by shrubbery, saw an unsupervised child at play and called the police. When the police arrived, they arrested the mother on the basis of the unverified report from the neighbor. The mother was taken to jail. The newspaper did not say what had happened to the child, whether the kid was taken to foster care and whether the husband had to rush home from his job and ply lawyers with money to help put his family back together. These kinds of horrors inflicted on families by public authorities often have worse consequences than the predations of criminals. He wondered if parents and children would be safer if the police were disbanded and outlawed.

  Yet, society had accepted these abuses as justified. What, he thought, would have been the public reaction when he was a kid? The policemen would have been fired, the chief disciplined, and the mayor would have lost the next election. It would not have been possible for them to become heroes by destroying a family. The busybody neighbor would have become a pariah in the community.

  Just the other day he had seen a grandmother at the supermarket with tattoos and face piercings. A grandmother? How had this come about? At the mountain resort pool and exercise center it wasn’t just the men. He had seen young women who were covered in tattoos. A friend told him that some women not only had face and tongue piercings, but also navel, labia, and clitoris piercings. Piercings were what he remembered from boyhood days of looking through stacks of National Geographic magazines from the 1940s and 1950s. Articles explained with words and photographs facial piercing practices by tribes in “darkest Africa.” Now they were the practices of upper class womyn who played in resorts.

  He recalled his father’s first rule of business: “Never hire anyone with a tattoo.” Tattoos were what sailors did who got drunk in Asian ports. They demonstrated poor judgment and a lack of self-restraint. If anyone sober got a tattoo, it indicated a lack of self-respect. If an employee did not respect himself, he would not respect the job. His father would have a hard time assembling a work force today.

  A couple of years ago a college classmate told him that their noble old fraternity had been suspended by the college president. A black female student claimed that racial slurs had been shouted at her from an open window. The fraternity was able to show that all the windows had been painted shut for years, probably dating back to when the house was air conditioned. But the college president wasn’t going to dispute a black female’s word on the basis of evidence. It could mean protests, charges of racism, broken windows, newspaper and trustee inquiries. Bad PR for the college. It was safer to hand the fraternity a bit of injustice.

  Recently, he had arrived at the supermarket in a cloudburst. There were a dozen parking spaces by the entrance, but they were marked “Handicapped Parking $500 Fine.” He remembered when the handicapped said that they wanted to be treated like everyone else. Now they had privileges. He wondered about those signs. Did they give offense? “Handicapped” was one of those discarded words. They hadn’t got around to replacing the signs.

  He remembered, too, when males did not use four-letter words in front of parents or females. Now the young womyn could out-cuss his male generation.

  More memories. If you scraped a car while street parking, you were expected to leave a note with name and telephone number and expect to pay for the repair. He had once told some young people this and they laughed at the joke.

  Something had happened. He had been brought up to be a citizen in a world that no longer existed.

  At least there still were gardens. He put away his thoughts and went to get his knife.

  

  

• Is It Racist? Most Americans Would Not Hire Hairy Women

  A slight majority of U.S. adults, 53 percent, would say ‘no’ when asked if they were likely or unlikely to hire a woman for a public role who had hair on her face.

  

  You will find more statistics at Statista

  As Statista's Isabel von Kessel notes, this is the result of a YouGov survey of 2,159 adults at the end of June 2017. Also, many participants were unlikely to hire a woman for a job which included public appearances if she had hairy armpits (36 percent unlikely to hire, 33 percent likely), legs (36 percent unlikely, percent likely) or face (53 percent unlikely to hire, 20 percent likely).

  Broken down by gender, the survey indicates that men were generally more critical of female facial appearances: 57 percent stated that they would not hire a woman with facial hair, while 48 percent of women subscribed to this statement. Broken down by age groups, it's baby boomers (55+) who are least open to women sporting facial hair (64 percent), while 39 percent of millennials suggest that they are more likely to hire hairy women if they were the hiring manager for a company.

  Of course, the big question from all of this is… How long before the Leftists begin to side with the 'hirsute'?

  Isn't it time someone stood up for the rights of women with more hair than average? Make America Hairy Again?

  

  

• Photos Of Aleppo Rising: Swimsuits, Concerts And Rebuilding In First Jihadi-Free Summer

  When taxi and bus drivers take journalists into Syria via the Beirut-Damascus Highway these days, there’s a common greeting that has become a kind of local tradition as the drivers pull into their Damascus area destinations. They confidently tell their passengers: “welcome to the real Syria.” Local Syrians living in government areas are all too aware of how the outside world perceives the government and the cities under its control. After years of often deceptive imagery and footage produced by opposition fighters coordinating with an eager Western press bent on vilifying Assad as “worse than Hitler”, many average Syrian citizens increasingly take to social media to post images and scenes of Syria that present a different vision: they see their war-torn land as fundamentally secular, religiously plural, socially tolerant, and slowly returning to normalcy under stabilizing government institutions.

  As the most intense phase of fighting in Aleppo was unfolding in 2016, veteran journalist Stephen Kinzer took to the editorial pages of the Boston Globe to remind Americans that the media has created a fantasy land concerning Syria. Kinzer painted a picture quite opposite the common perception:

  Coverage of the Syrian war will be remembered as one of the most shameful episodes in the history of the American press… For three years, violent militants have run Aleppo. Their rule began with a wave of repression. They posted notices warning residents: “Don’t send your children to school. If you do, we will get the backpack and you will get the coffin.” Then they destroyed factories, hoping that unemployed workers would have no recourse other than to become fighters. They trucked looted machinery to Turkey and sold it…

   

  The United States has the power to decree the death of nations. It can do so with popular support because many Americans — and many journalists — are content with the official story.

  Now, during the first summer of relative calm Aleppo residents have seen in over four years of grinding conflict, the city commonly referred as “the jewel of Syria” is once again rising from the ashes. Foreign journalists are also accessing places like East Aleppo and the heart of the walled ‘old city’ for the first time. Some few honest correspondents, unable to deny the local population’s spirit of hopefulness and zeal with which they undertake rebuilding projects, acknowledge that stability and normalcy have returned only after the last jihadists were expelled by the Syrian government and its allies.

  
  Aleppo orchestra concert, Summer 2017/via Sarah Abdallah

  A Western press and political class which generally mourned the liberation of the city from al-Qaeda groups like Nusra (AQ in Syria), calling government actions a ‘massacre’ and ‘genocide’, now finds a reality that can’t be ignored or denied: Aleppines are returning to ravaged parts of the city to rebuild, they are enjoying nightlife, going to music concerts, staying out late at cafes; families are swimming at local pools, women are strolling around in t-shirts and jeans free of the oppressive Wahhabi fighters that once ruled parts of the city.

  Kinzer’s Boston Globe piece further concluded that the entire web of assumptions on Syria woven by the media and fed to the public over the years were “appallingly distant from reality” and warned that these lies are “likely to prolong the war and condemn more Syrians to suffering and death.” As new photos continue to emerge of the real Aleppo and the real Syria it is essential to revisit the most destructive among the lies that have helped serve to prolong this tragic and brutal war.

  Aleppines didn’t want to live under Wahhabi Islamist rule

  
  Andalusia Swimming Pool in Aleppo, Summer 2017/via Syria Daily

  According to multiple eyewitness reports and studies, the story of how war entered Aleppo’s environs was not primarily one of mass public protests and government crackdown, but of an aggressive jihadist insurgency that erupted suddenly and fueled from outside the city. According to then Indian ambassador to Syria, V.P. Haran (Amb. to Syria from 2009 to 2012), Aleppo on the whole was unwillingly dragged into the war after remaining silent and stable while other cities raged. In an interview which detailed his own on-the-ground experience of the opening years of war in Syria, the ambassador said:

  Soon parts of Latakia, Homs and Hama were chaotic but Aleppo remained calm and this troubled the opposition greatly. The opposition couldn’t get the people in Aleppo to rise up against the regime so they sent bus loads of people to Aleppo. These people would burn something on the streets and leave. Journalists would then broadcast this saying Aleppo had risen.

  Why did it take until July 2012 – well over a year since conflict in Syria began – for Aleppo to see any fighting? Why did residents not “rise up” against the government?

  The answer is simple. The majority of Syrians, whether Sunni, Shia, Alawi, Christian, Kurd, or Ismaili, are sane individuals – they’ve seen what life is like under the “alternative” rebel rule marked by sharia courts, smoke and alcohol bans, public floggings, street executions, desecration of churches, and religious and ethnic cleansing of minorities. They recognize that there is a real Syrian national identity, and it goes beyond mere loyalty to the current ruling clique that happens to be in power, but in Syria as a pluralistic Levantine society that rejects Saudi style theocracy.

  
  Rebuilding Aleppo, Summer 2017. Latin Parish of St. Francis/via Sarah Abdallah

  The kind of religious and cultural pluralism represented in the liberal democracies of the West are present in Syria, ironically, through a kind of government-mandated “go along, get along” policy backed by an authoritarian police state. One can even find Syrian Jews living in the historic Jewish quarter of Damascus’ walled old city to this day.

  Syrian urban centers have for decades been marked by a quasi-secular culture and public life of pluralist co-existence. Aleppo itself was always a thriving merchant center where a typical street scene would involve women without head-coverings walking side by side with women wearing veils (hijab), cinemas and liquor stores, late night hookah smoke filled cafés, and large churches and mosques neighboring each other with various communities living in peaceful co-existence. By many accounts, the once vibrant secular and pluralist Aleppo is now coming back to life (and largely never left government-held West Aleppo).

  “Moderates” did not “liberate” Aleppo, but gave cover to an ISIS and al-Qaeda invasion

  
  Image: “moderate” rebels mock a Christian government soldier—This photo was originally posted online by a Swedish based terror group in Syria after the Summer 2013 rebel offensive against the Menagh airbase near Aleppo. A rebel fighter mocks a captured Christian government soldier’s cross. Another photo posted in the original set reveals that the soldier was later tortured by being crushed with a large rock on his chest as he lay on his back.

  One of the most under reported and least understood events surrounding the history of how all of Aleppo province and the Northern Syria region became a hotbed of foreign jihadists is the fall of the strategically located Menagh airbase near Aleppo. As a Reuters timeline of events indicates:

  In early 2012 rebels take control of the rural areas northwest of Aleppo city, besieging the Menagh military air base and the largely Shiite towns of Nubl and Zahra.

  After a lengthy siege of Menagh, the base finally fell to jihadist factions under the command of the US-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) in August of 2013. This event was key to rebel fighters gaining enough territory to cut off the Aleppo-Damascus Highway, which allowed them to encircle all of Aleppo for much of that year. But a little known yet hugely important detail of the Menagh episode is that rebels only got the upper hand after being joined by ISIS suicide bombers commanded by Omar the Chechen (ISIS’ now deceased most senior military commander). The fall of this government base is what opened a permanent jihadi corridor in the North, allowing terrorists to flood the area. The commander for the operation was US Ambassador Robert Ford’s personal friend, Col. Abdel Jabbar al-Okaidi, who was head of the US and UK funded Revolutionary Military Council of Aleppo (FSA). Okaidi worked in tandem with ISIS military commander Omar the Chechen and his crew for the operation – all while being supported by the United States and Great Britain.

  Concerning US-backed Okaidi’s close relationship to the ISIS faction in the summer of 2013, there is actually video evidence and eyewitness testimony (US Ambassador Ford himself later admitted the relationship to McClatchy News). Amazingly, the video, titled “US Key Man in Syria Worked Closely with ISIL and Jabhat al Nusra” never had very widespread public distribution, even though it has been authenticated by the top Syria expert in the U.S., Joshua Landis, of the University of Oklahoma, and author of the hugely influential Syria Comment. Using his Twitter account, Dr. Landis commented: “in 2013 WINEP advocated sending all US military aid thru him [Col. Okaidi]. Underscores US problem w moderates.”

  The video, documenting (now former) U.S. Ambassador Robert Ford’s visit to FSA Col. Okaidi in Northern Syria, also shows the same Col. Okaidi celebrating with and praising a well-known ISIS commander, Emir Abu Jandal, after conducting the joint Menagh operation. In an interview, this U.S. “key man” at that time, through which U.S. assistance flowed, also praised ISIS and al-Qaeda as the FSA’s “brothers.” Abu Jandal was part of Omar the Chechen’s ISIS crew assisting the FSA. Further video evidence also confirms Omar the Chechen’s role at Menagh. The videos also show Okaidi proudly declaring that al-Nusra (Al-Qaeda in Syria) makes up ten percent of the FSA. The FSA was always more of a branding campaign to sell the rebels as “moderates” to a gullible Western media than a reality on the ground; it was a loose coalition of various groups espousing militant jihad with the end goal of establishing an Islamist polity in Syria.

  
  Foreign fighters flooded Aleppo Province. The U.S. State Department’s own numbers: read the full report at STATE.GOV

  In the end, terror groups like ISIS enjoyed a meteoric rise in Syria due to US government and media support for these so-called “moderate rebels” – all entities which collectively sought regime change at all costs – even the high cost of mass civilian death and suffering that inevitably results from unleashing an insurgency in urban areas.

  The Syrian Army and government were never “Shia” or sectarian-based

  
  Al Aziziyah neighborhood in Aleppo/via Syria Daily

  The Arab Spring narrative was the ideological lens through which experts initially pit the oppressive supposedly “Alawite/Shia regime” against a popular uprising of Syria’s majority Sunnis. As Sunnis make up about 70% of Syria’s population, it was simply a matter of numbers, and of time. But this view proved overly simplistic, and according to one little known West Point study, utterly false. It was commonly assumed that the Syrian Army was a hollowed out Alawite institution with its Sunni conscripts apprehensively waiting for the right moment to defect to the rebel side. This was the fundamental supposition behind years of repetitious predictions of the Assad regime’s impending collapse, and predicated upon a view of the Syrian military as a fundamentally weak and sectarian institution. But West Point’s 2015 study entitled Syria’s Sunnis and the Regime’s Resilience concluded the following:

  Sunnis and, more specifically, Sunni Arabs, continue to make up the majority of the regular army’s rank-and- file membership.

  The study’s unpopular findings confirmed that the Syrian Army, which has been the glue holding the state together throughout this war, remains primarily a Sunni enterprise while its guiding ideology is firmly nationalistic and not sectarian.

  The highest ranking Syrian officer to fall victim to rebel attack was General Dawoud Rajiha, Defense Minister and former chief of staff of the army, in a major 2012 bombing of a Damascus national security office. General Rajiha was an Orthodox Christian. Numerous Christians and officers of other religious backgrounds have served top positions in the Syrian Army going back decades – a reflection of Syria’s generally nationalist and religiously tolerant atmosphere.

  Mainstream press did not report from Aleppo, but was hundreds of miles away.

  
  Outside the Citadel of Aleppo: life returning to normal, Summer 2017/via Syria Daily

  The heavily populated urban areas of Syria continue to be held by the government. But most reporting has tended to dehumanize any voice coming out of government held areas, which includes the majority of Syrians. The war has resulted in over 6.5 million internally displaced people – the vast majority of which have sought refuge in government territory. 

  The fact remains that there are some popular figures in the establishment media and analyst community who speak and write frequently about Syria, and yet have never spent a significant amount of time in the country. Throughout much of the war they’ve primarily reported from Western capitals – thousands of miles away – or, if they are in a Middle East bureau, without ever leaving the safety of places like Beirut or Istanbul. Fewer still have the necessary Arabic language skills to keep pace with local and regional events. Some have never been to Syria at all. They become willing conduits of rebel propaganda beamed through WhatsApp messages and Skype interviews, which was especially the case when it came to the battle for Aleppo. That much of the world actually considers these people as authorities on what’s happening in Syria is a joke – it’s beyond absurd.

  
  Outdoor concert venue and Aleppo springs back to life, Summer 2017/via Maram Kasem

  We are hopeful that the jihadist menace will be fully expelled and that the international proxy war which has taken so many lives and reduced much of a beautiful nation to rubble will finally come to an end. Aleppines and other Syrians are rebuilding – they are optimistically preparing for the future. Welcome to the real Aleppo.

  
  Final national exams just before summer 2017/via Syria Daily

  

  

• Research Team Slams Global Warming Data In New Report: "Not Reality… Totally Inconsistent With Credible Temperature Data"

  Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

  

  As world leaders, namely in the European Union, attack President Trump for pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement which would have saddled Americans with billions upon billions of dollars in debt and economic losses, a new bombshell report that analyzed Global Average Surface Temperature (GAST) data produced by NASA, the NOAA and HADLEY proves the President was right on target with his refusal to be a part of the new initiative.

  According to the report, which has been peer reviewed by administrators, scientists and researchers from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.), and several of America’s leading universities, the data is completely bunk:

  In this research report, the most important surface data adjustment issues are identified and past changes in the previously reported historical data are quantified. It was found that each new version of GAST has nearly always exhibited a steeper warming linear trend over its entire history. And, it was nearly always accomplished by systematically removing the previously existing cyclical temperature pattern. This was true for all three entities providing GAST data measurement, NOAA, NASA and Hadley CRU.

   

  As a result, this research sought to validate the current estimates of GAST using the best available relevant data. This included the best documented and understood data sets from the U.S. and elsewhere as well as global data from satellites that provide far more extensive global coverage and are not contaminated by bad siting and urbanization impacts. Satellite data integrity also benefits from having cross checks with Balloon data.

   

  The conclusive findings of this research are that the three GAST data sets are not a valid representation of reality. In fact, the magnitude of their historical data adjustments, that removed their cyclical temperature patterns, are totally inconsistent with published and credible U.S. and other temperature data. Thus, it is impossible to conclude from the three published GAST data sets that recent years have been the warmest ever –despite current claims of record setting warming.

   

  Finally, since GAST data set validity is a necessary condition for EPA’s GHG/CO2 Endangerment Finding, it too is invalidated by these research findings. (Full Abstract Report)

  Of course, this won’t stop global climate normalcy deniers from saying it’s all one big conspiracy to destroy the earth. They’ll naturally argue that data adjustments to the temperatures need to be made for a variety of reasons, which is something the report doesn’t dispute. What it does show, however, is that these “adjustments” always prove to be to the upside. Always warmer, never cooler:

  While the notion that some “adjustments” to historical data might need to be made is not challenged, logically it would be expected that such historical temperature data adjustments would sometimes raise these temperatures, and sometimes lower them. This situation would mean that the impact of such adjustments on the temperature trend line slope is uncertain. However, each new version of GAST has nearly always exhibited a steeper warming linear trend over its entire history.

  In short: The evidence has been falsified.

  Karl Denninger sums it up succinctly:

  It is therefore quite-clear that the data has been intentionally tampered with.

   

  Since this has formed the basis for plans to steal literal trillions of dollars and has already resulted in the forced extraction of hundreds of billions in aggregate for motorists and industry this quite-clearly constitutes the largest economic fraud ever perpetrated in the world.

   

  I call for the indictment and prosecution of every person and organization involved, asset-stripping all of them to their literal underwear.

  The real data looks something like this:

  

  (Via ZeroHedge.com)

  And the establishment, along with their fanatical global warming myrmidons, continue to push the need for massive, costly initiatives to reduce green house gases and global temperatures to “normal” levels.

  The problem, of course, is that there is no global warming according to the above referenced report.

  Moreover, none of those supporting the Paris Climate Agreement and other initiatives have any idea what these behemoth regulations will actually do to curb climate change, as evidenced by the following video of Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine, who despite his best efforts, can’t seem to figure out exactly how these agreements actually lower temperatures and help Americans:

  

  

• Italy Threatens EU With "Nuclear Option": Give 200,000 Migrants EU Visas, Sending Them North

  Two weeks after Italy reacted with anger to Austria’s deployment of troops and armored vehicles to the border between the two nations, while reactivating border controls at the Brenner Pass over concerns that Italy will be unable to handle the roughly 85,000 migrants and refugees who have entered the country so far in 2017, the Italian government has threatened to retaliate in way that assures an imminent migrant crisis as well as an escalation of tensions between the two EU nations.

  According to The Times, an Italian minister and a senator have threatened to issue temporary EU visas to thousands of migrants in an effort to “resolve” Italy’s escalating migrant and refugee crisis, which would then allow the refugees to travel north. The move, which has been described as a ‘nuclear option,’ would allow the nearly 200,000 migrants currently stranded in Italy, to travel across Europe using a Brussels directive loophole.

  Paolo Gentiloni, the prime minister, is livid that the rest of Europe has refused to take its fair share of migrants and that they have closed ports to rescue ships as the number of refugees attempting the treacherous crossing from Libya to the Continent has surged.

  Italy previously called on its EU neighbors to help with the escalating humanitarian crisis but it has been disappointed by their complete lack of action. The face off prompted former Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi to shock the European liberal establishment, when last Friday he released excerpts from a new book in which he said that “we need to free ourselves from a sense of guilt. We do not have the moral duty to welcome into Italy people who are worse off than ourselves” adding that “we need to escape from our ‘do gooder’ mentality.“

  

  Migrants disembark from the Medecins Sans Frontiers ship Vos Prudence after
  being rescued at sea, at Salerno’s harbor, Italy, on Friday

  Renzi also warned last Friday that Rome would look to curb funding to EU nations that had refused to offer help. “They are shutting their doors. We will block their funds,” he said, sounding suspiciously like Turkey’s Erdogan who has so far prevented a new refugee crisis in Europe by gating some 2 million migrants inside Turkey’s borders.

  One week later, not even Renzi’s dramatic reversal has prompted a reaction from the EU, leaving Italy in the same place as before, which as a reminder is that due to its geographic location, Italy has been one of the first entry points  for people fleeing from the south to reach Europe. More than 86,000 migrants have crossed the Mediterranean to Italy already this year, leaving the nation scrambling – and struggling – to cope with the huge increase of people fleeing north Africa.

  

  Meanwhile, hundreds of asylum seekers are packed into overcrowded centers – dubbed ‘human warehouses’ by locals  – scattered across small villages throughout the country.  Mattia Toaldo, a senior analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told The Times: “If migrants continue to arrive and Italy decides to give them papers to cross borders and leave Italy it would be a nuclear option.“

  And since “Italians have lost any hope of getting help from the EU” they may say, “If you won’t make it a common challenge, we will” Toaldo added.

  This is precisely what some in Gentiloni’s government are already doing: Mario Giro, Italy’s deputy foreign minister, and Luigi Manconi, a senator with the ruling Democratic Party, told The Times that issuing migrants with temporary visas was under discussion. Giro believes that Italy can exploit European Council Directive 2001/55, developed after the Balkans conflict to give temporary European entry permits to a large number of displaced people.

  Needless to say, if Italy pursues this course of action, and ultimately activates the “nuclear option”, support for the Schengen scheme, which allows all EU citizens to travel freely across the Continent, may be in jeopardy. Worse, since for most of the migrants the final destination will be Germany, it may rekindle the same migrant crisis which at the end of 2015 saw Angela Merkel’s approval rating plummet as her countrymen slammed her “Open Door” (since shut) policy.

  
  The Italian rescue ship Vos Prudence arrives in the port of Salerno carrying 935
  migrants, including 16 children and 7 pregnant women on Friday

  The move will also drastically escalate tensions with not only Austria, but neighboring Frace, which have used dogs and the threat of armoured vehicles to push back migrants who try to enter through Italy’s northern border. France 24 reports that perhaps in anticipation of such a move, vast white tents erected in a former military zone on the outskirts of the tiny village of Conetta, house some 1,400 men from across Africa, packed onto endless rows of bunks.

  “I used to call this place a modern lager,” Cona mayor Albero Panfilio told AFP, referring to concentration camps. The commune of Cona includes the little village of Conetta. “After two years this is (still) a place where human beings are squashed in together, with no hope for the future.”

  “Now I call it a human warehouse. The migrants arrive, they don’t know where to put them, they have a warehouse, they dump them here.” He added that the asylum seekers were treated “like garbage.”

  Meanwhile, 10 kilometers away, in Bagnoli di Sopra, 700 migrants are crowded into another former military base surrounded by barbed wire fences with no access to journalists. 

  Finally, a question emerges: with Europe helpless to prevent Italy from pursuing this path should Rome choose to do so, will Brussels activate its own “nuclear response” in retaliation. Recall that in 2011, a “united Europe” and the ECB removed then-PM Sylvio Berlusconi almost overnight when the former premier threatened to exit the Eurozone, by sending yields on Italian bonds soaring above 10%. While this time Italy’s economy is (relatively) sound, should Rome proceed to dump 200,000 unwanted migrants in Europe’s lap, the one certain response would be a financial one, with Mario Draghi sending a very clear message if not to his native country, then certainly the current government, which will immediately be blacklisted by Europe, with any and all measures taken to remove it.

  

  

• Global Stocks Soared $1.5 Trillion This Week – Now 102% Of World GDP

  Thanks, it seems, to a few short words from Janet Yellen, the world's stock markets added over $1.5 trillion to wealthy people's net worth this week, sending global market cap to record highs.

  The value of global equity markets reached a record high $76.28 trillion yesterday, up a shocking 18.6% since President Trump was elected. This is the same surge in global stocks that was seen as the market front-ran QE2 and QE3.

  This was the biggest spike in global equity markets since 2016.

  

   

   For the first time since Dec 2007, the market value of global equity markets is greater than the world's GDP…

  

  h/t @Schuldensuehner

  Of course – the big question is – how long can 'they' keep this dream alive?

   

  

  President Trump hopes a little longer…

  Stock Market hit another all-time high yesterday – despite the Russian hoax story! Also, jobs numbers are starting to look very good!

  — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 15, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  

  

• Canada's Multi-Million-Dollar Pay-Out To A 'Foreign Terrorist Fighter'

  Authored by Ruthie Blum via The Gatestone Institute,

  • "Has any soldier who fought FOR Canada ever received as generous a reward as this soldier who fought against us?" — Canadian Senator Linda Frum.
  • In 2003, Khadr confessed to throwing the grenade that killed U.S. Special Forces Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer and caused Sgt. 1st Class Layne Morris to lose an eye. Years later, he retracted his confession, claiming it had been extracted under duress. In fact, it was part of a plea deal that enabled him to be extradited to Canada to serve the rest of his sentence there.
  • "There was a Canadian flag flying along with the American flag at our base there, so it's quite a thing that now Canada is giving millions to a guy who would attack a compound where Canadians were serving. I don't see this as anything but treason. As far as I am concerned, Prime Minister Trudeau should be charged." — Sgt. 1st Class Layne Morris, who lost an eye from the grenade thrown by Omar Khadr.

  The government of Canada recently issued an official apology — and acknowledged awarding an "undisclosed" sum of money — to Toronto-born Islamist terrorist Omar Khadr for his "ordeal" at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and "any resulting harm" he was caused by the "torture" (specifically, sleep deprivation, solitary confinement and threats) that led to his confession.

  On July 7, Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland and Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Ralph Goodale released a statement announcing the "hope that this expression, and the negotiated settlement reached with the Government, will assist him in his efforts to begin a new and hopeful chapter in his life with his fellow Canadians."

  The civil settlement was reached with Khadr, 30, who was 10 when his family returned to the Middle East, and 15 when he was arrested fighting in Afghanistan with al Qaeda and the Taliban, the terrorist organizations to which his father was affiliated — on the basis of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

  In 2003, Khadr confessed to throwing the grenade that killed U.S. Special Forces Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer and caused Sgt. 1st Class Layne Morris to lose an eye. Years later, he retracted his confession, claiming it had been extracted under duress. In fact, it was part of a plea deal that enabled him to be extradited to Canada to serve the rest of his sentence there.

  With news of the large settlement he received — 10,500,000 Canadian dollars (approximately USD $8,000,000) — he gave an extensive interview to CBC's Power & Politics host Rosemary Barton, in which he said he thinks that the apology from the Canadian government "restores a little bit my reputation here in Canada, and I think that's the biggest thing for me." He declined to comment on having just received multi-millions in tax-free dollars.

  He also had the effrontery to say that he just wants "to be a normal person" and finish his nursing degree to help under-served communities. "I have a lot of experience with… and appreciation of pain," he explained, expressing only sorrow that the Speer and Morris families consider him responsible for their own pain.

  Amid harsh criticism against the Liberal government by opposition Conservatives and members of the public outraged that their tax dollars are going to a convicted terrorist, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responded to reporters' questions on the matter during a press conference marking the July 8 close of G20 summit in Hamburg.

  Trudeau said that the settlement had nothing to do with Khadr's 2002 actions on the battlefield in Afghanistan, but rather with the fact that his rights had been violated. This is precisely what the Canadian Supreme Court ruled in 2008 and 2010, after Khadr's lawyers sued for damages.

  Trudeau added that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects all Canadians, "even when it is uncomfortable. When the government violates any Canadian's Charter rights, we all end up paying for it."

  Meanwhile, Goodale tried to evade responsibility, by casting aspersions on the previous government, headed by Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, in power when Khadr was returned to Canada in 2012 to serve the remainder of his prison sentence for five counts of war crimes. Goodale accused Harper of having "refused to repatriate Mr. Khadr or otherwise resolve the matter."

  In spite of the fact that Khadr was arrested and detained when Liberal governments were in power in Canada, Goodale was referring to appeals during Harper's tenure — which began in 2006 — by Canadian Liberal and human rights lawyers to "bring Omar Khadr home."

  In 2008, former Canadian Justice Minister Irwin Cotler wrote:

  "I join other scholars and associations of jurists in calling for Omar Khadr to be transferred into the custody of Canadian law enforcement officials, to be afforded due process under Canadian law, with prospects for appropriate rehabilitation and integration."

  Cotler also stated,

  "Admittedly, the Khadr family has emerged, as some have put it, as synonymous with terrorism. But, the test of the rule of law is not its application in the easy cases, but its retention in the unpopular ones… Omar Khadr, a child victim, should now be afforded the justice denied him all these years, however unpopular and unpalatable his case may appear to be."

  In response to Goodale's implication that had it not been for the previous government, the current one would not have been forced to apologize to and pay Khadr, Harper immediately took to social media, writing:

  The government today attempted to lay blame elsewhere for their decision to conclude a secret deal with Omar Khadr. The decision to enter into this deal is theirs, and theirs alone, and it is simply wrong. Canadians deserve better than this. Today my thoughts are with Tabitha Speer and the families of all Canadian and allied soldiers who paid the ultimate price fighting to protect us.

  Canadian Senator Linda Frum railed against the settlement, tweeting: "Has any soldier who fought FOR Canada ever received as generous a reward as this soldier who fought against us?"

  Given Khadr's family history, Frum's fury is justified.

  As the New York Post reported, Khadr is the son of a Palestinian mother and an Egyptian father (Ahmed Khadr), who had strong ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, and became one of Osama bin Laden's loyal lieutenants. After 9/11, Ahmed Khadr was placed on the FBI's most-wanted list in relations to the attacks. He was arrested in Pakistan in 1995 on suspicion of financing the suicide bombing at the Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad, in which 16 people were killed. Protesting his innocence, he went on a hunger strike, and the Canadian government, then headed by Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, rallied behind him.

  While on a trade mission to Pakistan, Chrétien appealed to Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, and a few months later, Ahmed was released from prison and sent back with his family to Toronto. However, according to the New York Post, the Khadr clan soon returned to Pakistan, where Ahmed Khadr resumed his connections with al Qaeda and the Taliban. Young Omar Khadr not only met with the leaders of these terrorist groups, but lived with his parents and siblings in the bin Laden family compound, attending al Qaeda training camps, which his father — who was killed in 2003 — partly funded.

  The report continued:

  "A month before he joined an al Qaeda cell in 2002, Omar was sent by his father for private instruction in explosives and combat… [where he] learned to launch rocket-propelled grenades and became skilled at planting improvised explosive devices that were used to blow up US armored vehicles in Afghanistan."

  In his interrogation about the incident that led to his arrest and subsequent incarceration at Guantanamo, Omar Khadr said he had been on a suicide mission "to kill as many Americans as possible."

  In this still image taken from a video found in the rubble of the compound where Omar Khadr was captured on July 27, 2002, a 15-year-old Khadr constructs an improvised explosive device. (Courtesy U.S. Defense Operations/Wikimedia Commons)

  This did not prevent the U.S. military from flying an ophthalmologist to the Bagram Air Base — where was being treated for wounds he sustained while fighting American and Canadian soldiers — to save his eyes and keep him from going blind.

  Nor did it cause Omar to experience gratitude on the one hand, or remorse on the other. On the contrary, as military court documents revealed, when he was informed that Speer had died, he said he "felt happy" for having murdered an American. He also said that whenever he remembered killing Speer, it would make him "feel good."

  According to a report in the Globe and Mail, the Toronto lawyer representing Morris and Tabitha Speer — who won a default judgment in 2015 in the U.S. against Omar for $134 million – began proceedings to contest the Canadian government's settlement and prevent it from going forward.

  It is clearly too late for that; the money has already been transferred to Omar. Furthermore, the transaction was done swiftly and "quietly," to make legal action by taxpayers in Canada or the Morris and Speer families in America virtually impossible.

  Morris is understandably angry and hurt. "The fact is Chris Speer and myself were fighting with Canadians in Afghanistan," he said.

  "We were alongside the PPCLI (Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry). There was a Canadian flag flying along with the American flag at our base there, so it's quite a thing that now Canada is giving millions to a guy who would attack a compound where Canadians were serving. I don't see this as anything but treason… As far as I am concerned, Prime Minister Trudeau should be charged."

  Thus far, the administration in Washington has remained silent on Khadr pay-out, which came to light during the weekend of the G20 summit in Germany, where U.S. President Donald Trump heaped praise on his Canadian counterpart.

  Trump even opened his speech at a World Bank event to promote and finance women entrepreneurs in developing countries by declaring: "We have a great neighbor in Canada and Justin [Trudeau] is doing a spectacular job… Everybody loves him, and they love him for a reason…"

  This assertion, given the information that has since emerged about Khadr case, was unfortunate. Far more ironic under the circumstances, however, was the "Statement on Countering Terrorism," signed by the leaders of the G20.

  Its 21 clauses include a commitment to "address the evolving threat of returning foreign terrorist fighters … from conflict zones such as Iraq and Syria and remain committed to preventing [them] from establishing a foothold in other countries and regions around the world," and to "facilitate swift and targeted exchanges of information between intelligence and law enforcement and judicial authorities… [to] ensure that terrorists are brought to justice."

  Such words are empty without actions to back them up. Omar Khadr is a classic example of a "foreign terrorist fighter." Yet the Canadian legal system categorized him — in Cotler's words — as a "child victim, [who] should… be afforded the justice denied him all these years."

  It is bad enough to describe a teenager who set out to "kill as many Americans as possible" in this way. It is far worse that he is a free — and still very young — man, paid not only respect by the government whose values he was raised to abhor, but millions of dollars, to boot. If anything serves to encourage other terrorists to leave North America and Europe to fight in the Middle East, it is stories such as this one.

  The Trump administration must call Trudeau to task for this perversion, and offer an immediate and very public apology to Khadr's American victims, who did not receive a penny for their patriotic sacrifice.

  

  

• Friend Insists Death Of Republican Operative Behind WSJ Collusion "Bombshell" Wasn't A Suicide

  Yesterday we reported how the death of Peter Smith, a longtime Republican operative and financier, had been ruled a suicide. Smith was the primary source for a bizarre WSJ story that tried to link National Security Adviser Mike Flynn with a group of individuals organized by Smith who bargained with a Russian hacker group for copies of what were purportedly Hillary Clinton’s missing 30,000 emails.

  Smith died on May 14 – 10 days after he was interviewed by WSJ for the piece. Though a reporter initially described his death as stemming from natural causes, the Chicago Tribune reported Friday that it had been, in fact, a suicide, citing local police records that describe the manner of death – asphyxiation due to helium poisoning – and an alleged suicide note that cited his recent ill health and the coming expiry of a life insurance policy as Smith’s reasons for taking his own life.

  

  But before that narrative could catch hold, a longtime associate of Smith who may have been the last person to speak with him has come forward, telling the Daily Caller that he doesn’t believe the police’s suicide ruling…and neither should you.

  Charles Ortel, a Wall Street investment banker and market analyst, told the DC that there were no indications the Chicago businessman and anti-Clinton political investigator was about to take his life when the two spoke on the phone the day before his death.

  “He may have been a fantastic actor but I certainly didn’t leave that phone call saying, ‘oh shit, the guy’s at the end of his rope,’” Charles Ortel, a Wall Street investment banker and market analyst, told The Daily Caller News Foundation’s (TheDCNF) Investigative Group.

   

  “This does not seem like a settled story. It made perfect sense to me he might have died of natural causes, but little chance he would have killed himself,” Smith said.

  Ortel and Smith had a common interest in the Clintons. Ortel has dug deeply into the financial operations of the Clinton Foundation. He first came to public attention in 2007 by exposing questionable accounting practices at General Electric, according to the DC.

  And Smith reportedly had a hand in exposing then Gov. Bill Clinton’s “Troopergate” scandal, where the future president used state troopers to guard him while he was having sex with various women who were not his wife.

  Ortel said in his last phone call to him, Smith seemed to be upbeat and very interested in future projects.

  Initially, Ortel assumed Smith died of natural causes, but after reading the police report, which included a description of a jerry-rigged suffocation device that’s widely used by terminally ill patients who opt to take their own lives, he’s not so sure.

   “There are lots of older guys like him who still ‘have it ‘and they’re still smart.  They like projects. They like the intellectual stimulation. He was very interested and pleased with his work,”  Ortel said.

  Ortel also said the description of the suicide note – with its all-caps type – was out of character for Smith, and that, out of all the emails they’d sent to each other, he couldn’t remember a single example of Smith typing in all caps.

  Ortel also was suspicious about the note Smith allegedly left behind, written in all caps, stating “NO FOUL PLAY WHATSOEVER.”

  He also noted that many life insurance policies typically exclude payments to beneficiaries in the case of suicide.

  He wrote that he was taking his own life because of a “RECENT BAD TURN IN HEALTH SINCE JANUARY, 2017” and that his timing was related “TO LIFE INSURANCE OF $5 MILLION EXPIRING.”

  Assuming, for a moment, Smith’s death was the result of foul play: what’s the explanation? Could it have been a politically motivated attack? In the original WSJ story, Smith said he’d received a cache of documents purporting to be the missing 30,000 emails that Clinton withheld from the FBI and State Department, but withheld them because he had doubts about their veracity. Maybe Smith was in possession of the legitimate emails, but lied about turning them over to Wikileaks. What if the Democrats were somehow warned about what Smith had in his possession, or at least what he believed he might have had. Is another "Seth Rich" scenario emerging?
   

  

  

• 3 Examples That Show How Common Core Is Destroying Math Education In America

  Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

  Whenever you let federal bureaucrats get their hands on anything they are probably going to ruin it.  During the Obama administration, the Department of Education spearheaded a transformation of American education that was absolutely breathtaking.  Over a period of about five years, Common Core standards were implemented in almost every state in the entire nation.  Unfortunately, this has resulted in a huge step backward for public education in this country.  Common Core has been called “state-sponsored child abuse”, and it is a big reason why U.S. students are scoring so poorly on standardized tests compared to much of the rest of the world.

  According to Wikipedia, at one point 46 states had adopted Common Core, but now some states are having second thoughts…

  46 states initially adopted the Common Core State Standards, although implementation has not been uniform. At least 12 states have introduced legislation to repeal the standards outright,^[1] and Indiana has since withdrawn from the standards.

  Sadly, many parents don’t even understand how dramatically our system of education has been tampered with.  In her book entitled The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids, Joy Pullmann exposes how the Gates Foundation has been one of the key players in the effort to get Common Core introduced into classrooms all over America…

  Organized in seven chapters, her book describes how the Gates Foundation promoted and continues to promote one extremely wealthy couple’s uninformed, unsupported, and unsupportable ideas on education for other people’s children while their own children are enrolled in a non-Common Cored private school. It explains how (but not exactly why) the Gates Foundation helped to centralize control of public education in the U.S. Department of Education. It also explains why parents, teachers, local school boards, and state legislators were the last to learn how the public schools their local and state taxes supported had been nationalized without Congressional knowledge or permission; and why they were expected to believe that their local public schools were now accountable for what and how they teach … not to the local and state taxpayers who fund them or to locally-elected school boards that by law are still supposed to set education policies not already determined by their state legislature … but to a distant bureaucracy in exchange for money to their state department of education to close “achievement gaps” between unspecified groups.

  But this isn’t just an issue about control.  The truth is that the approach to teaching basic fundamentals such as how to add and how to subtract is fundamentally different under Common Core.

  Let me share just three examples that show how much Common Core is changing the way that U.S. students learn math.  All of these examples have been floating around Facebook, and if you have never seen these before they are likely to make you quite angry.

  If I asked you to subtract 12 from 32, how would you do it?  Well, the “new way” is much, much more complicated than how we were all taught to do it…

  

  If that first one seemed bizarre to you, than you really aren’t going to like this one…

  

  And this last one was so confusing that a parent with a degree in engineering decided to include his own commentary on his child’s homework…

  

  How are kids supposed to function in the real world if this is how they are learning to do basic math?

  Personally, I am going to teach my daughter that 9 + 6 equals 15.  But that isn’t how it is supposed to be done under Common Core.  You can watch a video of a teacher explaining the very convoluted Common Core way to solve that math equation right here.

  And of course it isn’t just math that is the problem.  Common Core is systematically “dumbing down” our young people, and that may help to explain why the average U.S. college freshman now reads at a seventh grade level.

  So what is the answer?

  The first step in fixing our education system is to repeal Common Core.  But even in red states such as Idaho there is a lot of resistance…

  Since their inception, the Idaho Core Standards have been enmeshed in controversy.

   

  Some legislators and citizens have pushed for a repeal of the Idaho Core Standards, the state’s version of Common Core standards in math and English language arts. Those repeal efforts have gone nowhere in the Legislature.

  I don’t know what is wrong with our legislators.  The Republicans have full control in this state, and so there is absolutely no excuse for not getting something done.

  As I end this article, I want to give you an idea of just how far the quality of education in America has fallen over the past 100 years.  In Kentucky, an eighth grade exam from 1912 made a lot of headlines when it was donated to the Bullitt County History Museum.  As you can see, it is doubtful whether many of our college students would be able to pass such an exam today…

  

  

  

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• Retired Green Beret Warns: "There Could Be A Nuclear Strike Against The US Coming Soon"

  Authored by Jeremiah Johnson (nom de plume of a retired Green Beret of the United States Army Special Forces) via SHTFplan.com,

  For approximately the past five years, the Mainstream Media (MSM) and the Obama-administration supported research “think-tanks” for monitoring the North Korean situation have had a field day.  They consistently (along with the brain-dead public’s crowds of naysayers) and intentionally understated the capabilities of North Korea.  The experts in the field (such as Dr. Peter V. Pry, Admiral Bill Gortney, General Curtis Scapparotti) have not been able to be denied; however, they have been marginalized and made to seem to be “in conflict” with the prevailing, majority “view.”  The “tyranny of the majority,” in this case, was needed to accomplish the objectives of the Obama administration: appear to be “strong” on sanctions, and “aloof” with diplomacy, i.e., Barack Hussein Obama II’s not “lowering” himself to deal with North Korea diplomatically.

  

  The true objective of Obama regarding North Korea was to pursue a laissez-faire policy and allow North Korea to progress, becoming a viable threat, as it is today.

  All of this was deliberately planned by Obama and his handlers.  As far back as April 7, 2015, Admiral Bill Gortney (the former commander of North American Aerospace Defense, a.k.a. NORAD) gave a press conference in which he warned of North Korea’s capabilities with an ICBM, an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile…warned that North Korea could strike the United States with a nuclear warhead on an ICBM…he stated this in 2015.  Six months prior, in October of 2014 Admiral Gortney stated that North Korea had nuclear weapons, had miniaturization capabilities, and could place them on missiles that could reach the continental United States.

  Fast-forward to this year.  There was a joint article that was penned by Dr. Peter V. Pry, America’s foremost expert on EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) threats posed to the United States by foreign nations and the head of every committee to brief Congress on those issues.  A former analyst with the Central Intelligence Agency, Dr. Pry is currently the Executive Director of the EMP Task Force on National and Homeland Security.  The article was co-authored by R. James Woolsey, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.  Here are excerpts from that article, released on March 29, 2017 by The Hill:

  “The mainstream media, and some officials who should know better, continue to allege North Korea does not yet have capability to deliver on its repeated threats to strike the U.S. with nuclear weapons.  False reassurance is given to the American people that North Korea has not “demonstrated” that it can miniaturize a nuclear warhead small enough for missile delivery, or build a reentry vehicle for an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of penetrating the atmosphere to blast a U.S. city.

   

  Yet any nation that has built nuclear weapons and long-range missiles, as North Korea has done, can easily overcome the relatively much simpler technological challenge of warhead miniaturization and reentry vehicle design.

   

  The notion that North Korea is testing A-Bombs and H-Bomb components, but does not yet have the sophistication to miniaturize warheads and make reentry vehicles for missile delivery is absurd.

   

  …North Korea should be regarded as capable of delivering by satellite a small nuclear warhead, specially designed to make a high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack against the United States.

   

  According to the Congressional EMP Commission, a single warhead delivered by North Korean satellite could blackout the national electric grid and other life-sustaining critical infrastructures for over a year – killing 9 of 10 Americans by starvation and societal collapse.  Two North Korean satellites, the KMS-3 and KMS-4, presently orbit over the U.S. on trajectories consistent with surprise EMP attack.

   

  Why do the press and public officials ignore or under-report these facts?  Perhaps no administration wants to acknowledge that North Korea is an existential threat on their watch.  Whatever the motives for obfuscating the North Korean nuclear threat, the need to protect the American people is immediate and urgent…”

  There you have the main points to substantiate what was written earlier: a deliberate obfuscation of the facts by the Obama administration coupled with the complicit MSM to allow North Korea the time to develop the capabilities to strike the continental United States.  Let’s also try not to forget that a “standard” ICBM is not the only focus of North Korea: the SLBM (Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missile) is a threat.  Recall that CNN put this report out on April 24, 2016:

  “After previous launch attempts by Pyongyang failed, this one seems to have gone much better, one U.S. official noted.  “North Korea’s sub launch capability has gone from a joke to something very serious,” this official said. “The U.S. is watching this very closely.”  Asked whether the test was successful, another U.S. official told CNN, “essentially yes.”

  (CNN, from Don Melvin, Jim Sciutto, and Wil Ripley)

  For years, now, the paid think-tank naysayers have decried the capabilities of North Korea and downplayed their programs of missile and nuclear warhead developments.  on September 7, 2016, two days prior to the North Korean nuclear test of September 9th, a DoS (Denial of Service) attack crashed the website of the Project on Crowdsourced Satellite Imagery based in California.  Working on this “project” are two analysts, Melissa Hanrahan, and Jeffrey Lewis.  Both have consistently and repeatedly denied North Korea’s nuclear capabilities and as late as this year, both have stated that North Korea “was years away from perfecting an ICBM.”  Not only have they been proven wrong, but Lewis “backpedaled” and declared that this latest launch from last week was indeed a North Korean-launched ICBM.              

  Fast-forward to today: The United States just flew a live-fire “exercise” on the border of North Korea, and the United States is now screwing with North Korea’s money.

  Two American B-1 B bombers dropped live bombs on simulated missile battery targets while accompanied by South Korean fighter aircraft targeting simulated underground bunkers.  North Korea responded in their state-run media with such:

  “The US, with its dangerous military provocation, is pushing the risk of a nuclear war on the peninsula to a tipping point.”

  They labeled the maneuver as “…a dangerous military gambit of warmongers who are trying to ignite the fuse of a nuclear war on the peninsula,” and went on to add this, of great importance for you to focus upon, so much so that I’ve underlined the important part:

  “A small misjudgment or error can immediately lead to the beginning of a nuclear war, which will inevitably lead to another world war.”

  Do you realize the silent significance of the underlined portion?  The MSM has tried to paint a picture of North Korea as a “rogue” state with an insane leader.  In truth, there are other nations, such as China and Russia that conduct commerce with North Korea as well as having pledged military alliances.

  Does anyone really think that China and Russia will sit this one out, and that it will all be just an EMP by North Korea followed by a couple of nukes dropped by the U.S.?

  In the meantime, it has just been revealed by Jonathan Stempel of Reuters that the U.S. is going after North Korea’s money.  Here is an excerpt of that article:

  “U.S. authorities have tried to seize millions of dollars associated with several companies that deal with North Korea, including the country’s military, from eight large international banks, according to court filings made public on Thursday.  The effort was revealed two days after North Korea tested a long-range missile capable of reaching Alaska, ratcheting up tensions with the United States and adding to worries about North Korea leader Kim Jong Un’s nuclear weapons plans.  Thursday’s filings show that Chief Judge Beryl Howell of the federal court in Washington, D.C. on May 22 granted U.S. prosecutors’ applications for “damming” seizure warrants against Bank of America Corp, Bank of New York Mellon Corp, Citigroup Inc, Deutsche Bank AG, HSBC Holdings Plc, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Standard Chartered Plc and Wells Fargo & Co.  Prosecutors believe the banks have processed more than $700 million of “prohibited” transactions on behalf of entities tied to North Korea since 2009, including the period after Donald Trump was elected U.S. president, the filings show.”

  With measures such as military exercises and money seizures, it can be clearly seen that Un and North Korea are being maneuvered into a situation where the only recourses are capitulation to the U.S./IMF hegemony (which we know will not occur) or to conduct a strike against the United States.  North Korea has that capability right now…to launch a nuclear strike against the continental United States.

  The next world war will be initiated by an EMP, and North Korea will either launch it or take the blame for it by a country that did launch it…to include the United States.

  Do not be in denial of the threat: be the “10^th Man,” as in the movie “World War Z.”  Think outside of the confines that society places upon your intellect.  It is not “fear porn” to continuously “sound off” about what is going on around us, especially when people are either unaware of it or denying that it can happen.  The MSM is either silent on the subject, or it skews the information.  There are still those who are unaware of the current threats to the U.S. outlined in this article.  There are still many people who will be reading this information for the first time: those who may have heard bits and pieces of it and are not aware of what is going on or the depth and significance of it.

  It is primarily for them that I write this piece, and secondly to those who may wish to review some of the previously-released information and reflect upon it…for them to make the right decisions regarding preparations for themselves and their families.

  Bottom line: everyone is pretty much on their own…everyone and their families.  The “sink or swim” tenet does apply.  It is stupid to discount information that may help you when the time comes (or before it does) just because of “going along with the crowd,” or skepticism.  Many people would willingly burn to a crisp and stay in a target area just to emphasize their denial and disagreement with someone else’s view.  Throughout history, these people follow a stubborn refusal to admit there is always more than what appears on the surface. To act upon such information and decisively (at the critical point) is paramount.

  I implore everyone to study carefully the buildup by the parties involved and weigh the reasons (who, what, when, where, how, and…most importantly, why) there could be a strike against the U.S. coming soon.  Many people believe that it is, and I am one of them.  I’d rather be wrong a thousand times than be “right” once on it, but the situation changes day to day.  It is better to be prepared for it.  If it comes, I’m not going to take any satisfaction at those who constantly deride or detract.  Instead I’m going to thank God that I’m safe and pray that others took steps to keep themselves and their families safe, too, and make it through the times to come.  Perhaps the whole country will come crashing down, but maybe…just maybe, we can survive and make it better than it was before.

  I close with the words of Dr. Pry:

  “…North Korea is a mortal nuclear threat to the United States – right now.  North Korea has already successfully tested and developed nuclear weapons.  It has also already miniaturized nuclear weapons for ballistic missile delivery and has armed missiles with nuclear warheads.

   

  Any nuclear weapon detonated above an altitude of 30 kilometers will generate an electromagnetic pulse that will destroy electronics and could collapse the electric power grid and other critical infrastructures – communications, transportation, banking and finance, food and water – that sustain modern civilization and the lives of 300 million Americans.  All could be destroyed by a single nuclear weapon making an EMP attack.

   

  A Super-EMP attack on the United States would cause much more and much deeper damage than a primitive nuclear weapon…North Korean nuclear tests look suspiciously like a Super-EMP weapon. A Super-EMP warhead would have a low yield, like the North Korean device, because it is not designed to create a big explosion, but to convert its energy into gamma rays, that generate the EMP effect.

   

  Reportedly South Korean military intelligence concluded, independent of the EMP Commission, that Russian scientists are in North Korea helping develop a Super-EMP warhead. In 2012, a military commentator for the People’s Republic of China stated that North Korea has Super-EMP nuclear warheads.  A Super-EMP warhead would not weigh much, and could probably be delivered by North Korea’s ICBM.  The missile does not have to be accurate, as the EMP field is so large that detonating anywhere over the United States would have catastrophic consequences.

   

  So, as of Dec. 12, North Korea’s successful orbit of a satellite demonstrates its ability to make an EMP attack against the United States – right now.”

   

  Dr. Peter Vincent Pry, December 19, 2012, Washington Times, “PRY: North Korea EMP     attack could destroy U.S. – now.”

  

  

• Most Republicans Say Universities Negatively Impact America

  A majority of Republicans think higher education is having a negative effect on the U.S. according to new polling from the Pew Research Center.

  As Statista's Niall McCarthy notes, both Democrats and Republicans are deeply divided about the impact of a whole host of institutions and in many instances, that partisan divide has widened significantly over the past 12 months. The level of division is most evident when it comes to America's colleges and universities…

  

  You will find more statistics at Statista

  While 55 percent of the public think U.S. colleges and universities are having a positive effect on the country, Republicans are particularly downcast about higher education. Pew found that an overwhelming 72 percent majority of Democrats think colleges and universities are exherting a positive influence while 58 percent of Republicans say they are having a negative effect.

  Republican skepticism of the national news media is no secret so it comes as little surprise that 85 percent say it is having a negative effect on the country. Democrats are more divided on the media with 46 percent saying it is negative and 44 percent feeling it is positive. When it comes to banks and financial institutions, Democrats are more skeptical than Republicans while majorities in both parties are positive about churches and religious organizations.

  

  

• The New Silk Road Will Go Through Syria

  Authored by Pepe Escobar via Asia Times,

  China and Syria have already begun discussing post-war infrastructure investment; with a 'Matchmaking Fair for Syria Reconstruction' held in Beijing

  

  Amid the proverbial doom and gloom pervading all things Syria, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune sometimes yield, well, good fortune.

  Take what happened this past Sunday in Beijing. The China-Arab Exchange Association and the Syrian Embassy organized a Syria Day Expo crammed with hundreds of Chinese specialists in infrastructure investment. It was a sort of mini-gathering of the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), billed as “The First Project Matchmaking Fair for Syria Reconstruction”.

  And there will be serious follow-ups: a Syria Reconstruction Expo; the 59^th Damascus International Fair next month, where around 30 Arab and foreign nations will be represented; and the China-Arab States Expo in Yinchuan, Ningxia Hui province, in September.

  Qin Yong, deputy chairman of the China-Arab Exchange Association, announced that Beijing plans to invest $2 billion in an industrial park in Syria for 150 Chinese companies.

  Nothing would make more sense. Before the tragic Syrian proxy war, Syrian merchants were already incredibly active in the small-goods Silk Road between Yiwu and the Levant. The Chinese don’t forget that Syria controlled overland access to both Europe and Africa in ancient Silk Road times when, after the desert crossing via Palmyra, goods reached the Mediterranean on their way to Rome. After the demise of Palmyra, a secondary road followed the Euphrates upstream and then through Aleppo and Antioch.

  Beijing always plans years ahead. And the government in Damascus is implicated at the highest levels. So, it’s not an accident that Syrian Ambassador to China Imad Moustapha had to come up with the clincher: China, Russia and Iran will have priority over anyone else for all infrastructure investment and reconstruction projects when the war is over.

  The New Silk Roads, or One Belt, One Road Initiative (Obor), will inevitably feature a Syrian hub – complete with the requisite legal support for Chinese companies involved in investment, construction and banking via a special commission created by the Syrian embassy, the China-Arab Exchange Association and the Beijing-based Shijing law firm.

  Get me on that Shanghai-Latakia cargo

  Few remember that before the war China had already invested tens of billions of US dollars in Syria’s oil and gas industry. Naturally the priority for Damascus, once the war is over, will be massive reconstruction of widely destroyed infrastructure. China could be part of that via the AIIB. Then comes investment in agriculture, industry and connectivity – transportation corridors in the Levant and connecting Syria to Iraq and Iran (other two Obor hubs).

  What matters most of all is that Beijing has already taken the crucial step of being directly involved in the final settlement of the Syrian war – geopolitically and geo-economically. Beijing has had a special representative for Syria since last year – and has already been providing humanitarian aid.

  Needless to add, all those elaborate plans depend on no more war. And there’s the rub.

  With the demise of Daesh (ISIS), or at least its imminent loss of any significant urban center, no one knows in what manner a fragmented, phony Caliphate “Sunnistan” might be manipulated into cutting Syria from its New Silk Road future.

  Qatar has already provided a game-changer; Doha has gotten closer to Tehran (common interests in South Pars/North Dome gas-field oblige), as well as Damascus – much to the despair of the House of Saud. So, unlike the recent past, Qatar is not engaged in regime change anymore. But still there are the diverging interests of Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Israel and, of course, Washington, to accommodate.

  A possible scenario out of what Putin and Trump negotiated in Hamburg – that was not relayed by either Lavrov or Tillerson – is that the ceasefire in southwestern Syria, assuming it holds, could mean US peacekeeping forces in effect sanctioning the creation of a demilitarized zone (DMZ) between the Syrian Golan and the rest of the country.

  Translation: the Golan de facto annexed by Israel. And the “carrot” for Moscow would be Washington accepting Crimea de facto re-incorporated into the Russian Federation.

  That may sound less far-fetched than it seems. The next few months will tell if this is indeed a plausible scenario.

  The other big sticking point is Ankara against the YPG Kurds. Contrary to the ominous and quite possible Balkanization scenario, Washington and Moscow might well decide, in tandem, to let them sort things out by themselves. Then we will inevitably have the Turkish army occupying al-Bab for the foreseeable future.

  The bottom line: that Saudi Arabia gets nothing. And Israel and Turkey get political/military “wins”. It’s hard to imagine how Moscow could possibly sell this arrangement to Iran as a victory. Still, Tehran may not have a free flow Iran-Iraq-Syria-Hezbollah route totally back in action, but it will maintain close relations with Damascus and be engaged in the expansion of the New Silk Roads.

  The key question from now on seems to be whether Washington will follow the deep state “Syraq” policy – as in “Assad must go” mixed with support or weaponizing of non-existent “moderate rebels”; or whether Trump’s priority – to eliminate Daesh/ISIS for good – will prevail.

  Beijing, anyway, has made up its mind. It will work non-stop for the Iran-Iraq-Syria triumvirate to become a key hub in Obor. Any bets against a future, booming Shanghai-Latakia container route?

  

  

• China Warns Japan: "Get Used To Our Warplanes", Sends Spy Ship Near Alaska

  In an unexpectedly brazen rattling of sabers, just days after China deployed troops to its first foreign base in Djibouti, a move which the Global Times clarified is “about protecting its own security, not about seeking to control the world, Beijing made a less than subtle reversal, when it told Japan on Friday to “get used to it” after it flew six warplanes over the Miyako Strait between two southern Japanese islands in a military exercise.

  It all started late on Thursday night, when Japan’s defense ministry issued a token statement describing the flyover by the formation of Xian H-6 bombers, also known as China’s B-52, earlier that day as “unusual”, while noting that there had been no violation of Japanese airspace.

  

  The flyover was hardly surprising: the Chinese navy and air force have been carrying out a series of exercises in the Western Pacific in recent month, both as they hone their ability to operate far from their home shores, as well as a trial balloon to gauge the reactions of their increasingly more nervous neighbors.

  What made this flyover different, is that usually following a formal protest by the “offended” country, Beijing would take note and issue a token statement of its own, “neither admitting nor denying” guilt, but certainly without assurances of further transgressions. But not this time. On Friday the Chinese defense ministry said it was “legal and proper” for its military aircraft to operate in the airspace and that it would continue to organize regular training exercises according to “mission requirements.”

  In other words, Beijing pushed back against Japan’s complaint suggesting that China had not only done nothing wrong, but that this behaviour would escalate:

  “The relevant side should not make a fuss about nothing or over-interpret, it will be fine once they get used to it,” the ministry said in a statement.

  Furthermore, the Miyako Strait is between Japan’s islands of Miyako and Okinawa, to the northeast of self-ruled Taiwan, which China claims as its own.

  

  It wasn’t just Japan: also on Thursday, Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense said the Chinese bombers flew just outside its air defense identification zone and that it had “closely followed” the movements.

  It is probably safe to assume that several more such close encounters, coupled an escalation in the harsh language – don’t expect Japan to back off diplomatically, especially not under Abe who militant ambitions are hardly secret – and a repeat of the tensions that erupted in 2013/2014 over territorial claims in the East China Sea, and which ended with diplomatic relations between China and Japan collapsing as well as nationalist sentiment in both China and Japan erupting, appears likely.

  In a separate close encounter, at the same time that the US was conducting a succeeful THAAD-based intercept of a ballistic missile on Tuesday, a Chinese spy ship was lurking just 100 miles from Alaska’s coast to witness the said test for itself, Fox News reported. Furthermore, it was the first time the North American Aerospace Defense Command had seen this class of Chinese spy ship before near Alaska, an official told Fox News. The ship was spotted off the coast of Kodiak, on Alaska’s southern tip.

  The THAAD test came after North Korea successfully test launched an alleged ICBM missile (this has subsequently been challenged with many claiming the missile was only intermediate range) that flew longer than any test conducted by Kim’s regime to date. Officials have said that Kim may now have the capability to strike Alaska. Prior to the test, both China and Russia have repeatedly demanded that the US remove its THAAD installations from South Korea over concerns that the balance of power in the Pacific Rim could shift, and destabilize the region.

  China has sent warships to Alaska before, most famously in 2015 when former Barack Obama visited Alaska, China “greeted” him by sending five ships, while more recently a Chinese warship trailed a U.S. warship when it sailed earlier this month near a contested island in the South China Sea.

  China also recently launched a new class of destroyer in Shanghai, which military experts say is on par with modern U.S. Burke class guided-missile destroyers. Furthermore, China now has roughly the same number of destroyers, cruisers and submarines as the U.S. Navy, according to new study from CNAS a Washington think tank.

  In a separate naval adventure, China’s first fully functional aircraft carrier recently sailed near Taiwan after making a port call in Hong Kong that marked 20 years since the British handed the city over. The carrier was declared combat ready following initial tests in November. It does not, however, have advanced steam catapults to launch jets like a modern U.S. Navy aircraft carrier.

  It was not clear where the Chinese spy ship had moved to after its brief trip to the Alaska coast.

  

  

• Is It Time To Think And Act Differently On North Korea?

  Authored by George Koo via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

  North Korea’s latest test of a missile with a range capable of threatening American cities has left the Trump Administration somewhere between wishful thinking and a hard place. Too bad neither represents a realistic resolution of the conundrum.

  The easy way out, for the US at least, is to “let China do it.” President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defense Secretary James Mattis and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley have in unison chanted the same basic mantra: The problem would be solved if China would apply more pressure on North Korea.

  First there is no evidence China can tell North Korea what to do with any real hope of success. The two countries are not buddies and there is no love lost between China’s President Xi Jinping and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. They have not met since both leaders came to power in 2012 and they communicate via messengers.

  China has supported a UN resolution strongly condemning North Korea. The Kim regime no more pays heed to China than it has to protests from South Korea, Japan or the United States.

  Just as China cannot stop North Korea from developing nuclear weapon and intercontinental missile technology, North Korea is not developing these technologies for China’s sake. North Korea believes it needs nuclear strike capability in order to be taken seriously by the US.

  To date, sanctions on North Korea have not worked. The American response has been to ask the UN Security Council to impose more sanctions. In particular, Trump does not feel China is tightening the screws hard enough.

  Shutting down North Korea’s economy might bring Kim to heel from the American perspective but clearly such a move is unacceptable from China’s view. Economic collapse would trigger a massive humanitarian crisis and China would be left to deal with the refugees as they take the only viable option and migrate north into China.

  There is a flip side to this approach. Even if the sanctions bring North Korea to its knees, it does not mean the Kim regime will become more conciliatory. Kim may decide he has nothing to lose and simply launch an attack on the south.

  The other tough approach is to launch a Rumsfeldian shock and awe military bombardment on North Korea before the North can attack.

  There is virtually no chance, however, that carpet-bombing could vaporize the array of artillery and missiles facing South Korea. The consequent damage to Seoul and other parts of South Korea from the retaliation would be significant, not to mention the danger to the 30,000 American troops stationed in the south.

  There is also no assurance any precision strikes could successfully take out Kim and his inner circle nor knock out all the country’s nuclear weapons and development centers. The risks of failure are simply too great to contemplate.

  There is a more sensible approach that an increasing number of commentators and foreign policy observers are suggesting the Trump Administration consider: offer talks without preconditions.

  North Korea fears the US and knows Beijing cannot commit on behalf of Washington. Pyongyang wants to deal directly with Washington and does not see China as a credible intermediary. Why not begin a direct conversation?

  The Clinton Administration almost reached an agreement with Pyongyang when the clock ran out on Clinton’s term. George W. Bush elected to ignore North Korea and then imposed preconditions before being willing to resume negotiations.

  Pyongyang saw the Bush White House as dealing in bad faith and that the only way to gain American respect was to complete the development of a nuclear bomb. North Korea detonated its first nuclear bomb in October 2006, during Bush’s second term.

  The Obama administration, unfortunately, followed the Bush line: no negotiations without preconditions. To push for North Korea’s agreement, Washington bandied the threats of sanctions and solicited Beijing for help.

  In the 16 years since the end of the Clinton administration, Washington and Pyongyang have made no progress in reaching a common understanding. Each has accused the other of acting in bad faith. The US threatened more sanctions; North Korea kept testing weapons with bigger bang and missiles with longer range.

  This endless cycle is not going anywhere and the threat of an American shock-and-awe style attack clearly worries Pyongyang. Why can’t Washington soften a bit and show a willingness to talk without pre-conditions? What does it have to lose?

  Will the world respect us less as a fearsome hegemon because we are willing to swallow our pride, or will it applaud us for taking the first step towards peace? Donald Trump has an opportunity to accomplish an important foreign policy triumph that has eluded his two predecessors.

  

  

• Mexico's Gasoline Thieves Go Full Mad Max As Competing Cartels Declare War On Each Other And The Army

  Fuel theft in Mexico used to consist of a few villagers drilling holes in Pemex pipelines and carrying away just enough gasoline to fill their vehicles and maybe a couple extra gallons to sell on the side of the freeway.  But as The Columbian notes, illegally tapping into pipelines and stealing gas from Mexico’s state-owned oil company has morphed into a very well organized criminal enterprise, run by well-armed regional cartels and supported by distribution on a commercial scale to factories and petrol stations.

  Heavy arms and violence seen in Tuesday’s confrontation in Puebla state reflect its growth into a billion-dollar business that supplies not just the people selling gas on the sides of highways — called “huachicoleros” — but factories and gasoline station chains.

   

  It has become an industrial-scale operation, involving a string of villages and hamlets along pipeline routes, not just in Puebla, but in Guanajuato, Veracruz, Tamaulipas and other Mexican states. The government says more than 6,000 illegal pipeline taps were found in 2016 and officials have been detecting an average of about 20 taps a day this year.

   

  “Of all the fuel that is stolen, only 10 percent is sold to the public” by roadside vendors, said Jesus Morales, the top police official in Puebla state. “The other 90 percent goes to big business groups, to gas stations, factories.”

  Meanwhile, the collection and distribution of stolen fuel has become every bit as barbaric as the drug trade with local villagers being given quotas by organized cartels and then suffering brutal consequences when those quotas aren’t met.

  As the stakes have risen, fuel theft has become a blood industry.

   

  In early July, nine people were killed, including five men whose bodies were burned, in a dispute between fuel thieves in the town of Huehuetlan in Puebla state. Morales said the killings involved a gang of distributors trying to collect from local vendors who were unable to meet their sales quotas because of police raids.

   

  “They committed this barbarous act as a gesture of anger,” said Morales, who claimed that vendors have recently raised the price of stolen fuel to near that of legitimate gasoline — it used to be half as much — because their supplies are being cut off.

   

  As the police officers waited near the cornfield in Puebla, they saw a huge column of smoke rise into the sky after a clandestine warehouse of stolen fuel went up in flames about two miles down the road.

   

  Authorities couldn’t go into the area to fight the blaze because they risked a confrontation with villagers.

   

  “They don’t even let the fire department enter,” Assistant Public Safety Secretary Jose Tlachi said. “They usually try to put the fires out themselves.”

   

  Pemex workers and local villagers paint a surreal scene of the carnage left in the wake of this relatively nascent criminal enterprise which includes 1,000’s of abandoned “Max Max-style” vehicles and gasoline literally flooding entire fields after pipeline taps are drilled and then simply abandoned once tanks have been filled.

  A former soldier carrying an AR-15 and extra clips who was patrolling the pipeline for Pemex said the police officers had earlier been attacked by three armored trucks, explaining their reluctance to confront the thieves a second time.

   

  “You can tell they are armored by the weight of the vehicles. They are better-armed than we are,” he said.

   

  The battle against the fuel thieves has left a strange “huachicolero” landscape east of Mexico City. Fields are littered with leaking illegal taps, abandoned fuel tanks and Mad Max-style vehicles whose interiors have been ripped out to hold thousand-liter tanks. Fires from stolen fuel are common.

   

  The vehicles the gangs use are usually stolen and abandoned after a few trips. Over 1,700 of such vehicles have been seized in the last two months.

  Meanwhile, just like with the drug cartels, local police forces are finding themselves outgunned by the thieves who have the benefit of better weapons and armored vehicles.

  The police officers gripped their assault rifles tightly as they stared at the men filling plastic tanks and loading them onto a dozen pickup trucks in a cornfield in central Mexico. Even though a crime was being committed in front of them, the officers said it was too dangerous to move in.

   

  They had to wait until the army arrived to advance because the suspects were better-armed than they were and an earlier attempt to arrest them had been repelled by gunfire, officials said.

   

  “In the morning there were 40 trucks loading,” said Francisco, a security employee with the state oil company Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, who asked that his last name not be used for safety reasons. “We saw them loading, we went in, and they started shooting at us. The criminals had an armored car.”

  Of course, gas thieving skyrocketed in Mexico earlier this year after President Pena Nieto decided to remove federal subsidies and hike prices a little over 20%, a move intended to offset budget deficits.  In hindsight, the price hike has cost the state-owned oil company, Pemex, at least $1 billion worth of stolen fuel and launched a brand new cartel war…probably not the expected outcome.

  

  

• Human Guinea Pigs: Congress Slams Door On Pentagon Biochemical Weapons Testing Declassification

  In the 1960’s and 1970’s the US government tested chemical and biological weapons on US troops in still little known secret programs called Projects 112 and SHAD (Shipboard Hazard and Defense). The Vietnam era tests involved some 6,000 military personnel being subject to experiments involving deadly nerve agents like sarin and VX, as well as biological agents like E. Coli, all of which can result in quick death or potential lifelong debilitating health issues such as long-term central nervous system failure. A fatal dose of VX nerve agent, for example, can kill in minutes, but it is unknown if the program resulted in deaths because documents remain classified as “Top Secret” even 50 years later. Veterans advocacy groups have long tried to get specifics of the program declassified in the hopes that disclosure might allow victims of the tests access to health benefits and better medical treatment, but on Thursday Congress slammed the door on these attempts, leaving veterans and some congressional sponsors outraged.

  
  USS George Eastman personnel were among those identified by the National
  Academies of Sciences as subject to US government experiments in biochem warfare.

  Some limited details of the highly classified program came to light in 2000, when the Department of Veterans Affairs obtained documents related to the program from the Pentagon in order to study medical treatments for claimants. But veteran victims of testing have long been left in the lurch as the Pentagon decides how much information should be shared with the public. Veterans Affairs has an official statement on its website – the result of in-house studies in coordination with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, claiming there’s no evidence that exposure has led to ill-health:

  Project 112/Project SHAD, or Shipboard Hazard and Defense, was a series of tests conducted by the Department of Defense from 1962 to 1974. Servicemembers participated in conducting the tests. The purpose was to determine the potential risks to U.S. warships and American forces from chemical and biological warfare agents.

   

  To date, there is no clear evidence of specific, long-term health problems associated with participation in Project SHAD.

  Disturbingly, the National Academies admits in a 2016 study that among the 6000 personnel involved in the tests…

  Only some of the involved military personnel were aware of the nature of the tests at the time they were conducted.

  

  Table: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine study of
  Project SHAD agents used on troop personnel and hypothesized health effects.

  Reps. Mike Thompson, D-Calif., Don Young, R-Alaska, and Walter Jones, R-N.C. have worked on behalf of veterans groups to put the issue before Congress. The congressmen sponsored language in a defense policy bill this week that would force the secretary of defense to either declassify documents related to the chemical program or explain to Congress why he can’t. The Pentagon has kept silent on the issue.

  On Thursday the House Rules Committee, which decides what goes before the House floor, struck down the proposal, so the declassification won’t even be up for discussion before Congress. An enraged Rep. Thompson called the fact that it didn’t even make it out of committee “shameful” and took to the house floor saying:

  These tests were an ugly part of our history. They put veteran lives at risk. And our veterans have every right to know what it was they were exposed to, how much they were exposed to, we need to think about their safety and their security.

  A number of veteran spokespersons questioned how greater public knowledge of the experiments would compromise national security, which appears to be the Pentagon’s position. Government classification often has more to do with covering up embarrassing secrets and preventing lawsuits than national security. A number of outrageously immoral programs going back to the middle of the last century are already well-known and documented, including Mk-Ultra, Operation Paperclip, and nuclear testing on soldiers. Thompson told McClatchy News just prior to the proposal going to committee:

  It’s been over 50 years since these tests were conducted and the DOD has yet to provide a complete accounting of what truly happened to our service members. Veterans can’t wait any longer.

  It is entirely possible that buried amidst the stacks of Top Secret DoD documentation on project SHAD is the United States’ own horrific Ronald Maddison story. Maddison was victim of what is widely considered to be the most sickeningly scandalous case of human experimentation in UK history. In 1953 Maddison, a 20-year-old Royal Air Force engineer, thought he had volunteered for mild experiments related to curing the common cold. Instead he was given a large dose of liquid sarin drops applied directly to his skin by military scientists at England’s Porton Down labs in order to study the effects. Maddison died an agonizing death, which the UK government spent decades covering up.
   
  
  Ronald Maddison, subject of
  UK chemical testing at Porton Down

  Details of the Ronald Maddison story only came to light over 50 years after his death, when an unwitting eyewitness named Alfred Thornhill went public. Thornhill told The Guardian:

  “I saw his leg rise up from the bed and I saw his skin begin turning blue. It started from the ankle and started spreading up his leg. It was like watching somebody pouring a blue liquid into a glass, it just began filling up. I was standing by the bed gawping. It was like watching something from outer space and then one of the doctors produced the biggest needle I had ever seen. It was the size of a bicycle pump and went down onto the lad’s body. The sister saw me gawping and told me to get out.”

  Maddison’s ordeal was not an isolated case of chemical weapons testing using human guinea pigs in either Britain or America, but it was certainly one of the ugliest in terms of the circumstances of his death. As 6000 possibly sick US veterans got the door slammed in their faces yesterday regarding project SHAD, we must ask: what is the Pentagon hiding?

  

  

• Locals Furious At Plan To Dump Radioactive Water From Fukushima Into Pacific Ocean

  In the latest sign that the area surrounding the destroyed Fukushima power plant is far from ready for the return of human inhabitants, locals and fishing groups are criticizing a plan to release water containing radioactive tritium from the ruined Fukushima power plant into the ocean, according to the Telegraph. Officials of Tokyo Electric Power Co., the operator of the plant, say tritium poses little risk to human health and is quickly diluted by the ocean. But for some, the plan undoubtedly dredges up uncomfortable memories from 2013, when it was revealed that 300 tonnes of radioactive material had been leaking into the Pacific Ocean from the devastated plant every day. It was also revealed that TEPCO had known about the leaks, but had tried to cover them up.

  TEPCO has been tasked with decommissioning the plant, and has been using robots to find and clean the melted nuclear fuel debris that is believed to be creating exorbitant levels of radiation in the area surrounding the plant. Though the company had to pull some of its robots out in February after radiation reached such high levels that not even machinery could function correctly, according to the International Business Times.

  

  In March 2011, a magnitude 9 undersea megaquake triggered a massive tsunami that battered coastal North Eastern Japan, and triggered the level seven meltdowns of three nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, and the evacuation of 160,000 residents and the implementation of a 310 square mile uninhabitable zone. The quake was the worst to ever hit Japan, and it caused the worst nuclear disaster the world had seen since Ukraine’s Chernobyl meltdown in 1986. The three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant melted down when the tsunami caused a blackout at the plant that shut off its cooling systems.

  Six years after the disaster, some residents are beginning to return as the Japanese government prepares to lift restrictions on four towns in the affected area. But a completed cleanup effort could take decades, and the government must still find a way to exterminate the radioactive boars that have overrun the area.

  Takashi Kawamura, chairman of TEPCO, told local media "The decision has already been made” regarding the tritium infused water. He added, however, that the utility is waiting for approval from the Japanese government before going ahead with the plan and is seeking the understanding of local residents.

  

  The tritium is building up in water that has been used to cool three reactors that suffered fuel melt-downs after cooling equipment was destroyed during the earthquake and tsunami. Around 770,000 tons of highly radioactive water is being stored in 580 tanks at the site. Many of the contaminants can be filtered out, but the technology does not presently exist to remove tritium from water.

  Environmental activist say dumping the tritium-infused water is part of a pattern of negligence on the part of TEPCO stretching back to before the earthquake even happened, when the company failed to take proper precautions to reinforce the cooling systems at the plants’ reactors.

  "This accident happened more than six years ago and the authorities should have been able to devise a way to remove the tritium instead of simply announcing that they are going to dump it into the ocean", said Aileen Mioko-Smith, an anti-nuclear campaigner with Kyoto-based Green Action Japan.

  "They say that it will be safe because the ocean is large so it will be diluted, but that sets a precedent that can be copied, essentially permitting anyone to dump nuclear waste into our seas", she told The Telegraph.

  Fishermen who operate in waters off the plant say the release of any radioactive material will devastate their industry, which is still struggling to recover from the initial nuclear disaster, according to the Telegraph.

  "Releasing [tritium] into the sea will create a new wave of unfounded rumours, making all our efforts for naught", Kanji Tachiya, head of a local fishing cooperative, told Kyodo News.
   

  

  

• BEHOLD: The Greatest Trump vs CNN Fake News Meme, Motion Picture Edition

   

  Content originally published at iBankCoin.com

  After a week of pure chaos, I thought you’d enjoy this.

  Watch.

  

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• Oust Trump, War With Russia

  Authored by Finian Cunningham via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

  Behind the sensational Western media coverage now linking the US president’s son to alleged Russian collusion in the American election, the real euphoria stems from relief that, at last, some «evidence» has been found.

  For more than seven months now, the US corporate media have been running unrelenting claims that somehow Donald J Trump colluded with Russian state-sponsored hackers to get elected over his Democrat rival Hillary Clinton.

  The media campaign has been dismissed as a witch hunt by Trump. Perhaps more sinisterly, US-Russia relations have also become deeply toxic due to the allegations. Not even a friendly meeting between Trump and Putin at last weekend’s G20 summit in Germany seems able to lift the poisonous cloud over bilateral relations.

  However, the never-ending «Russia-gate» story was, to be frank, at risk of boring people to death from the sheer lack of evidence to shore up the conjecture of Trump being a Russian stooge. Despite the fact that three separate government probes have been working on the issue, they have nothing to show for it.

  Then this week the «Russia-gate» story-tellers got a lifeline with reports that the president’s eldest son, Donald Jr, held a meeting with a Russian lawyer over a year ago at Trump Tower in New York City. The disclosure came from emails sent by Trump’s son to a mediator who promised «dirt on Clinton» that would damage her election campaign.

  Democrats, Republicans, supporters of Clinton and the anti-Trump media are now cock-a-hoop that they have a «smoking gun» to prove the narrative of Trump-Russia collusion. Trump Jr is being accused of betraying his country by consorting with a foreign enemy, Russia.

  A Washington Post comment noted: «Donald Trump Jr’s emails are the clearest indication yet that Trump campaign officials and family members were willing to deal with a foreign adversary in their mutual goal of taking down Hillary Clinton, and their revelation is dramatic proof that the Russia investigation is alive with no end in sight».

  Meanwhile, the New York Times reported: «Rancor at White House as Russia Story Refuses to Let the Page Turn». It goes on to comment with a tone of satisfaction: «Every time the president tries to put the furor behind him, more disclosures thrust it back to the fore, and people close to him are anonymously blaming one another».

  What the media outlets decline to say is that the Russia-gate story has not gone away precisely because the media have dutifully amplified leaks and anonymous intelligence claims – more accurately, innuendo – pillorying Trump as a Russian patsy.

  The Deep State rulers of the US, comprising the military-intelligence apparatus, never wanted businessman Trump to become president. Unlike Clinton, Trump was insufficiently hawkish towards Russia. Ever since his shock election last November, the Deep State and its media machine have been full throttle to oust the «wrong president». The «Russian collusion» claims are the spearhead of this attack, an attack could qualify as a «soft coup» against the elected president.

  With Trump’s son now admitting that he met with a Russian lawyer last summer as the head of his father’s election campaign, the anti-Trump campaign senses a mortal wound and are going full pelt to exploit it.

  But the drama has the hallmarks of yet more media-driven sensation that is out of all proportion to the facts. Trump Jr’s lawyer dismissed the latest claims as «much ado about nothing».

  The Russian government, which has consistently rejected any claims of interfering in the US election, said that the speculation about Trump and the «Kremlin-connected attorney» is «making a mountain out of a molehill».

  As Trump Jr told Fox News this week, he held the meeting simply because he was interested in hearing «opposition research» on Hillary Clinton. As it turned out, no such information was forthcoming and the meeting ended inconclusively after only 20 minutes. That was the end of it. Apparently, Trump Sr wasn’t even told about the brief interview, so insignificant was it at the time.

  It seems a fair and plausible observation that Trump Jr was simply doing what any political campaigner would do. Get dirt on opponents.

  The US media are thus guilty of «protesting too much» about what is a rather prosaic matter. Apart from the obvious axe they want to grind against President Trump, the other reason for the media hysteria over the latest twist in the Russia-gate affair is that the Deep State and their media machine have, at last, something resembling hard evidence. This is why they are grandstanding. It is from relief that they have found something approximating a story to justify all the months of shrill speculation.

  The hypocrisy of the pious media, pundits and politicians over Trump Jr’s betrayal is quickly revealed when one considers that Hillary Clinton’s campaign actively worked with the CIA-backed Kiev regime to dig up dirt on Trump during the election, as reported by Cristina Laila. «Where is the call for Hillary Clinton and her aides to be interviewed by the Senate intelligence panel», she asks.

  According to US media interviews given by Nataliya Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer at the center of the Trump brouhaha, she is adamant that she was not acting for the Kremlin. The Kremlin also denies knowing her. She maintains that she not did approach the Trump campaign to provide «dirt» on Clinton, but rather to lobby against US sanctions imposed on her Russian business clients.

  The claim that Veselnitskaya was «acting on Russian government information to help Donald Trump» apparently stems solely from the assertion made by the former British tabloid journalist Rob Goldstone, who wrote to Donald Jr to set up the meeting. It was Goldstone who described the meeting with Veselnitskaya as conveying «Russian government information to help your father’s campaign».

  In other words that is not «proof» of Russian government involvement. It is simply hearsay from a tabloid hack with self-serving reasons.

  Questions that the US media should be asking are: Was Goldstone hamming up his Russian government claims in order to sell Trump a mediation service and a scoop? Also, how did private emails between Goldstone and Trump end up in the possession of the New York Times? Did Goldstone flog them to the newspaper in order to cash in on the brewing Russia-gate scandal?

  The lawyer for the family of Emin Agalarov, the Russian singer who asked Goldstone to set up the meeting between Trump Jr and Veselnitskaya, has now come out to rubbish the claims made by Goldstone.

  «The vast majority of what Rob Goldstone said in email exchange with Donald Trump Jr is not accurate», Agalarov’s family attorney, Scott Balber, told RT. «The only thing that’s true is that Emin asked the meeting to be arranged. The rest of it is not true, it’s false».

  As with so much else in the Russia-gate affair, the latest twist seems to be another concoction to turn wild speculation into the semblance of fact. It is as if the US media conceived the headline «Trump colluded with Russia» a long time ago, and have ever since been chasing to find a «story» to fit the headline.

  There are too many holes in the whole Russia-gate affair for it to stand up. It is only the servile US media operating on the agenda of the powerful anti-Trump Deep State that make this non-story appear to stand up.

  So desperate is the Deep State to oust Trump from office, it is willing to damage US-Russia relations beyond repair, to the point of risking all-out war.

  

  

• London Transport Employees Instructed to Not Use Phrase "Ladies and Gentlemen" Anymore

   

  Content originally published at iBankCoin.com

  The London Mayor, Sadiq Khan, in conjunction with the gay rights group, Stonewall, scored a major victory today by banning the phrase “ladies and gentlemen” from the vernacular used by London Transport employees. It’s simply not in touch with the times, as genders defined by the DNA helix are old hat, worn, and not the reality that is supported by the far left — which is filled with hermaphrodites who can literally copulate with themselves.

  More on this important, groundbreaking, civil rights victory for the gay class.

  The phrase “ladies and gentleman” is to be scrapped from announcements on the Tube in a bid to make them gender-neutral.
   
  London Underground staff have been told to instead use greetings such as “good morning everyone” to ensure that all passengers feel “welcome”.
   
  All new pre-recorded announcements will also be changed to use the new phrases, Transport for London (TfL) said.
   
  Campaigners had said the phrase “ladies and gentleman” – which is commonly used by drivers – was “outdated”, adding that it is“polite, but really belonging to yesterday”.
   
  Stonewall, the LGBT campaign group, welcomed the decision, which comes after months of campaigning and was supported by London mayor Sadiq Khan.
   
  The change of phrases follows similar moves in other companies, universities and schools across the country to use gender-neutral language.
   
  “We want everyone to feel welcome on our transport network,” said Mark Evers, director of customer strategy at TfL.
   
  “We have reviewed the language that we use in announcements and elsewhere and will make sure that it is fully inclusive, reflecting the great diversity of London.”
   
  Mr Khan said he was “keen” that TfL speak in a “more neutral way”.
   
  He added: “TfL serves a vibrant, diverse and multicultural city, and provision of an inclusive transport service is at the heart of TfL’s purpose.
   
  “I am aware however, that some customers may not relate to or feel comfortable with the way that certain station announcements are made.”
   
  TfL said it had told staff about the use of the new phrases, but that “from time-to-time, well-meaning staff may still use the term ‘ladies and gentlemen”.
   
  “If this happens frequently, we will issue reminders to staff,” it added.
   
  Stonewall said in a statement: “Language is extremely important to the lesbian, gay, bi and trans community, and the way we use it can help ensure all people feel included.

  “We welcome gender neutral announcements to be rolled out across TfL as it will ensure that everyone – no matter who they identify as – feels accounted for.”

  When I say ‘they’ are trying to control language, indoctrinate your children through the schools, and through pop culture, I mean it. The very best thing you can do, providing you have a little money, is to send your children to good private schools and explain to them that policies like this are wrong and there is nothing improper with being polite and addressing people as ‘ladies’ or ‘gentlemen.’ Take it from me, a parent who has sent his children to both public and private schools — it’s not even comparable. Two different worlds.

  This is a key pillar in the establishment’s plot to destroy the nuclear family, neuter the male gender, and corral the lower classes into group think slave camps of thought, and then have them become loyal serfs —  broken spiritually and physically.

  Society is more augmented than you know.

  

• Tacos Vs Burritos Index: The Great Divide In Mexican-American Cuisine

  Via Priceonomics.com,

  Americans love the genre of cuisine generally known as "Mexican food". The cuisine of our southern neighbor has been ingrained in our culture since the early 20th century. In many respects, it has evolved beyond its origins to become something uniquely American (think Tex-Mex and giant breakfast burritos).

  You can find it anywhere, from just across the border to the farthest corners of our northern states. This presents a great opportunity to explore which parts of the country offer the most for Mexican food aficionados. Which city has the most Mexican restaurants? Do some regions of the United States exhibit any preferences for tacos versus burritos?

  We analyzed restaurant menu data from Priceonomics customer Datafiniti to see who serves Mexican food and what kind of food that actually is. With the ability to filter for cuisine as well as restaurants with available menu data, we easily found several thousand records to start our investigation. From this initial dataset, we extracted over 100,000 menu items and searched for specific instances of tacos or burritos. Finally, by grouping this data geographically, we were able to compare cities.

  Ultimately we found that most major cities (e.g. NYC), as well as cities in the Southwest and California, had the most Mexican restaurants to offer. Cities in Texas, Colorado, and California reign supreme for the most restaurants per capita. In the taco vs. burrito debate, the overall skew of menu items was 56% tacos and 44% burritos nationally. Most notably, cities in Texas offered mostly taco options, while cities in the middle of the country and Northwest offered more burrito options.

  ***

  To start our analysis, we need to determine which cities have the most Mexican restaurants. Below, we’ve charted the top 25 cities.

  

  Data source: Datafiniti

  As we can see, the largest cities in the country dominate this list. Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles hold the top three positions. Cities on the list are from all over the country, though there is an abundance of cities from the Southwest (especially Texas).

  This list is a bit disingenuous though, and I’ll explain why. As we said at the beginning, we are looking for the cities with the most Mexican food – when I hear that, I think of independently owned restaurants or smaller chains. This list above includes many fast food and fast casual chains that many taco/burrito enthusiasts would not consider authentic, for example, Taco Bell. 

  We’ve plotted which restaurants have the most locations in our dataset to illustrate that point.

  

  Data source: Datafiniti

  Taco Bell makes up nearly 20% of the listings, and in total, the top ten (which includes other popular chains like Chipotle) make up 28% of listings. As we continue our analysis of Mexican restaurants, we will want to remove these kinds of places. With the help of additional secondary research, we’ve identified 20+ restaurants that would be considered fast food chains and ultimately will exclude from the analysis. In total, these make up about 33% of our initial records. To clarify, we’ll still include smaller local chains in the dataset.

  Now that we’re only looking at authentic restaurants, we’ll determine the restaurant most listings by city.

  

  Data source: Datafiniti

  The rankings are very similar to our previous analysis, but we can see that some cities have jumped up in our rankings. Houston moved up to third while San Francisco, Tucson, and Washington D.C. also jumped up several positions. Cities such as Portland and Phoenix dropped.

  Now we want to investigate the ratio between tacos and burritos for each of these cities. We will show which cities you should visit if you’re a fan of either option. We’ve arranged our results from most taco percentage to least. Across the country, the average breakdown is 56% tacos to 44% burritos, and we’ve added highlighting to show when a city skews towards a particular entree. 

  

  Data source: Datafiniti

  San Antonio and Dallas, have the greatest percentage of tacos at 84%. Indianapolis has the greatest percentage of burritos at 62%. In general, more cities on our list lean towards tacos. Another interesting trend is that all cities in Southwest, from Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, are taco cities. Burrito cities are mostly from the Midwest and West. California has cities in both categories. It appears that SoCal prefers tacos (LA and San Diego), while NorCal prefers burritos (San Francisco, Sacramento, San Jose).

  Our previous lists were made up of cities with large populations, which would naturally have a greater number restaurants of all kinds. By accounting for population and calculating the number of Mexican restaurants per person, we can highlight some smaller cities with a lot of Mexican cuisine to offer.

  

  Data source: Datafiniti

  Similar to our first analysis, we will list the 25 cities with the most Mexican restaurants, but this time we will look at restaurants per 10,000 residents. You should also note that we are still excluding the fast food and fast casual restaurants that we removed earlier.

  Humble, TX has a staggering 7.2 restaurants per 10,000 residents. That is almost about 1.5 times that of the second place city, Littleton, CO with 4.8. In this analysis, we see a lot more small cities from the Southwest and California. Larger cities including Tucson, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Denver still made the cut though.

  Now how will these cities compare when looking at their offerings for tacos and burritos? Again we will look at the ratio of taco and burrito options, ordering our list from most taco percentage to least.

  

  Data source: Datafiniti

  These cities seem to lean more towards a particular dish than the larger cities. McAllen, TX is clearly a taco town with 93% tacos. Berkeley, CA is king of the burritos with 68% burritos. Overall, we see that there are a lot more places that skew towards burritos than our previous list. Colorado, in particular, appears to have several smaller cities that have many burrito options. It also appears the trend for cities in Texas to prefer tacos holds true. 

  ***

  Ultimately, we found that if you love Mexican food, you can really find a lot of options anywhere in the country, especially in bigger cities that can provide you with plenty of options. If you’re looking for tacos, head to Texas, southern California, or other Southwestern states. Burrito enthusiasts can find what they are looking for in the rest of the country, especially northern California and Colorado.

  

  

• The Striking Reason Why The US Just Spent A Record $429 Billion In One Month

  On Thursday morning the CBO released a surprisingly upbeat assessment of Donald Trump’s proposed budget, calculating that it would cut the cumulative US deficit by 30% over the next decade, preventing the US debt from spiraling out of control (even further).

  

  That however. may be an overly optimistic assessment, especially following the release of the latest monthly budget data, which showed that not only did the US deficit surge to $90 billion, far above the $38 billion consensus estimate, and a “NM” compared to the $6.3 billion budget surplus in June of last year, but the US also saw the biggest one month outlay on record, at $429 billion, 33% higher than the $323 billion in outlays one years ago.

  

  What prompted this massive surge in outlays?

  The biggest reason for the outlier print is that according to Stone McCarthy, outlays increased by roughly $60 billion in “other” items relative to baseline because the Treasury revised up its estimates of the subsidy cost of student loans, and to a lesser extent housing, it guarantees.
  

  Here is the CBO explanation:

  Outlays for the Department of Education rose by $31 billion (or 51 percent), because the department revised upward, by roughly $39 billion, the estimated net subsidy costs of loans and loan guarantees issued in prior years—a change much larger than last year’s $7 billion upward revision. If the effects of those revisions were excluded, outlays for the department for the first nine months of fiscal year 2017 would have fallen by $2 billion (or 3 percent).

   

  Outlays for the Department of Housing and Urban Development rose by $29 billion, primarily because the department made upward revisions in June 2017, but downward revisions in April 2016, to the estimated net subsidy costs of loans and loan guarantees issued in prior years.

  The cost of those loans is treated in the budget on a present value basis, not a cash basis and the Treasury periodically revises these costs. (It should be noted that the associated increase in outlays doesn’t impact Treasury borrowing or debt under the debt limit.) If not for these special factors, Treasury would have reported another small surplus for June… however it did not.

  On the revenue side, things were just as bad with the US Treasury collecting only $338.7BN, just 9% higher than the $330BN in June of 2016.

  

  What makes the surge in the deficit especially surprising is that June is often a surplus month, as the Treasury receives large corporate and non-withheld individual tax payments in that month.

  One theory explaining the shortfall in revenues reflects taxpayers delaying the recognition of income in 2016, anticipating tax cuts this year. That revenue should eventually be recovered. About a third of the revision was on the outlay size, with a large chunk due to changes in the estimated subsidy costs described above. Based on the CBO revisions, it appears that the deficit for the fiscal year, which has three months left, will be in the $650 billion to $700 billion range, if not even higher, mostly due to the surge in “subsidy costs of housing and student loans” guaranteed by the Treasury.

  Combining these two means that YTD, the deficit jumped to $523.1BN vs $399.2BN last year.
  While many analysts had a deficit base case for fiscal 2017 at roughly
  $575BN (the year ends on Sept 30), the CBO recently revised its
  projection for the fiscal 2017 up by $134 billion to $693 billion. Most of the CBO revision reflects weaker than expected revenues, which means it will be even more surprised when it finds out what is going on with outlays.

  

  To summarize: what the unexpected surge in government spending means is that quietly and mostly behind the scenes, the student debt bubble has begun to burst, and the Treasury is “provisioning” for it in real time, with all US taxpayers once again on the hook.

  Finally, since the $1.4 trillion and rising student debt bubble is expected to end up with discharges of 35% if not higher, it means that over the next several years, the budget deficit will be incrementally boosted by approximately $500 billion as America’s taxpayers are once again taken to the cleaners, this time to bail out millions of liberal arts majors who for one reason or another just can’t pay back their student loans.

  h/t @SMRA

  

  

• China Says Trade With North Korea Grew Only 10.5% In First 6 Months Of 2017

  New data released by the Chinese government suggests trade with its restive neighbor, North Korea, has only increased by a modest degree since the beginning of the year, rebutting criticisms from President Donald Trump and UN ambassador Nikki Haley that the world's second-largest economy is undermining US efforts to curb trade with the North.

  

  A Chinese official said Thursday that China's trade with isolated North Korea rose more than 10 percent in the January-June period from a year earlier, according to Reuters. The data show a sharp decline in trade in April, May and June after data released by China Customs in April showed a 37.4 percent increase in trade with North Korea in the first quarter of 2017. However, data released a week ago by China's Ministry of Commerce show trade between the two countries grew by 13.7 percent from January to May, suggesting a significant dip since April, according to CNBC.

  Trump has leaned on China to curb trade that might help support North Korea’s nuclear program – even coaxing the Communist Party to verbally commit its support for "complete, verifiable and irreversible" denuclearize of the Korean Peninsula. But Chinese reluctance to act against their longtime ally forced the US’s hand last month, when it introduced sanctions against 10 Chinese entities suspected of helping support the North’s nuclear program.

  The data appear to support China’s claims that it is fully enforcing United Nations sanctions on nuclear-armed North Korea and there is nothing wrong with what it terms "normal" trade with Pyongyang, referring to areas not covered by sanctions.

  “Chinese customs spokesman Huang Songping told a briefing on China's overall trade figures that total trade with North Korea expanded by 10.5 percent to $2.55 billion in the first six months of the year. While China's imports from North Korea dropped 13.2 percent to $880 million in the period from January to June, exports to North Korea rose 29.1 percent to $1.67 billion, he said.

   

  The exports were largely driven by textile products and other traditional labor-intensive goods not included on the United Nations embargo list, Huang added.

   

  'As neighbors, China and North Korea maintain normal business and trade exchanges,' he said, adding that goods for ordinary people and those used for humanitarian reasons are not subject to sanctions."

  Reuters said that overall trade with North Korea declined in June, compared with previous second-quarter months, while trade in dollar terms with North Korea rose about 12% from the previous month to $499 million. In May, trade with North Korea gained 14.5 percent from April to $443.5 million, previously released customs data show.

  As a Chinese government spokesman noted, China has complied with UN Security Council sanctions on North Korea  – though, in its role as a permanent member of the security council, the North’s only major ally has worked persistently to soften international sanctions against the hermit kingdom and its officials. It is also responsible for 90% of trade with North Korea.

  “Numbers showing an increase are not evidence that China is failing to enforce UN resolutions, with imports from North Korea falling every month since March, Huang added. China suspended imports of North Korean coal in February, while imports of iron ore accord with relevant U.N. resolutions, he said.

   

  'China customs have all along fully, accurately, conscientiously and strictly enforced relevant Security Council resolutions.'"

  Relations between China and the US have cooled in recent weeks – a development highlighted by the North’s July 4 test of its first genuine ICBM. Late last month, the US antagonized the Chinese by finalizing a $1.4 billion arms sale to Taiwan in defiance of its longstanding "one China" policy.

  While China has been angered by North Korea's repeated nuclear and missile tests, it also blames the US and South Korea for worsening tensions with their military exercises, while not doing enough to open talks with the North Koreans, as Beijing has proposed. China's Foreign Ministry this week urged a halt to what it called the "China responsibility theory" on North Korea, saying all parties needed to pull their weight, according to Reuters.

  Trade between China and North Korea has declined in both 2015 and 2016, a senior government-backed academic said in a front-page comment in the overseas edition of the official People's Daily on Wednesday.

  In this particularly trying time for US-China relations, US officials would do well to remain well alert – particularly after Guo Wengui, a billionaire investor who fled China and moved to New York after becoming a major critic of the Chinese regime, revealed that Chinese intelligence might have more than 25,000 deep-cover operatives in the US. Their primary mission is to steal military technologies. But they’re also here to “buy” high level government officials, as well as political and corporate elites who can give China favorable business deals.

  

  

• IMF Rings The Alarm On Canada's Economy

  Shortly after yesterday’s rate hike by the Bank of Canada, its first since 2010, we warned that as rates in Canada begin to rise, the local economy which has seen a striking decline in hourly earnings in the past year, which remains greatly reliant on a vibrant construction sector, and where households are the most levered on record, if there is anything that can burst the local housing bubble, it is tighter monetary conditions. And a bubble it is, as the chart below clearly demonstrates… one just waiting for the pin, which as we suggested yesterday in “”Canada Is In Serious Trouble” Again, And This Time It’s For Real“, may have finally been provided thanks to the Bank of Canada itself.

  

  Now, one day after our warning, the IMF has doubled down and on Thursday issued its latest consultation report, in which it said that while Canada’s economy has regained some momentum, it warned that business investment remains weak, non-energy exports have underperformed, housing imbalances have increased and uncertainty surrounding trade negotiations with the United States could hurt the recovery.

  The report – which concerningly was written even before the BOC hiked rates by 0.25% – also said the Bank of Canada’s current monetary policy stance is appropriate, and it cautioned against tightening.

  “While the output gap has started to close, monetary policy should stay accommodative until signs of durable growth and higher inflation emerge,” the IMF said, adding that rate hikes should be “approached cautiously”.

  Directors noted that Canada’s financial sector is well capitalized and
  has strong profitability, but that there are rising vulnerabilities in
  the housing sector…  Directors agreed that monetary policy should stay
  accommodative and be gradually tightened as signs of durable growth and
  inflation pressures emerge. They recognized that monetary easing could
  complement fiscal stimulus, and may need to be considered along with
  unconventional measures if economic activity contracts significantly,
  although there is a risk that it could exacerbate housing imbalances.

  While one can accuse the IMF of being traditionally dovish: recall Christine Lagarde – who famously said the IMF would be out of business if there were no world crises – has been screaming at central banks for hiking rates (in retrospect she will be proven right, just not yet), in this case she may be right: the recent sudden surge in Canadian interest rates especially on the long end will have a severe impact on loan demand, not to mention mortgage rates and, of course, housing demand.

  

  Furthermore, in a statement following its annual policy review with Canada, the IMF
  cautioned that “risks to Canada’s outlook are significant” particularly
  – drumroll – “the danger of a sharp correction in the housing market, a further
  decline in oil prices, or U.S. protectionism.”

  Risks to the outlook are significant. On the upside, stronger-than-expected growth in the U.S. could boost export and investment in the near term. On the downside, risks stem from several potential factors—including the risk of a sharp correction in the housing market, high uncertainty surrounding U.S. policies, or a further decline in oil prices—that can be mutually reinforcing. Policy choices will therefore be crucial in shaping the outlook and reducing risks.

  The monetary fund also said that financial stability risks could emerge if the housing correction is accompanied by a recession, but there was good news: the IMF noted that recent stress tests have shown Canadian banks could withstand a “significant loss” on their uninsured residential mortgage portfolio, in part because of high capital position.

  Well, we are about to find out.

  Meanwhile, house prices in Toronto and Vancouver have more than doubled since 2009 and the boom has fueled record household debt, a vulnerability that has also been noted by the Bank of Canada. As Reuters adds, some economists believe the rate hike this week was at least partly aimed at reducing financial system imbalances, which is admirable… the only problem is that the first casualty of a correction in imbalances will be the blue line in the chart at the top.

  “The main risk on the domestic side is a sharp correction in the housing market that impairs bank balance sheets, triggers negative feedback loops in the economy, and increases contingent claims on the government,” the IMF warned, sounding the loudest alarm yet on Canada’s economy even if it was reiterating previous warnings about Canada’s long housing boom.

  There was another danger: Trump. The Fund also warned U.S. trade protectionism could hurt Canada’s economy, and laid out a scenario for an increase in tariffs that could come with the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement. The IMF was also kind enough to quantify just how little it would take to send the local economy into a tailspin: the IMF said if the United States raises the average tariff on imports from Canada by 2.1 percentage points and there is no retaliation from Canada, there would be a short-term negative impact on real GDP of about 0.4%. Naturally, if tariff increases were higher, an outright recession was virtually guaranteed.

  

  

• Is This Why The UN Human Rights Council Is Silent As Venezuelans Die Oppressed Under Socialism?

  Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

  The United Nations Human Rights Council has been silent on the death of Venezuelans at the hands of their democratic socialist government. The UN has sided with death, but that isn’t surprising, considering the horrific plans they have laid out for most humans.

  

  The Miami Herald is calling the UN’s lack of response to blood in the streets in Venezuela a “travesty.” Despite Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s bloody repression of opposition protests that have resulted in more than 100 dead, thousands of wounded and hundreds of political prisoners over the past three months, the United Nations Human Rights Council, UNHRC, has not uttered a single word about Venezuela’s human rights crisis.

  But there’s a reason for the silence, and all one has to do to figure it out, is lightly scratch the surface. The UN doesn’t care about human rights.  It’s a front for their ability to massively depopulate the earth for the advancement of Agenda 21.

  In 1992, at a Venezuela conference, the United Nations passed something called “Agenda 21,” for which the elder US President, George Bush, publicly gave his support. It referred to something called “Sustainable Development,” but what this plan laid out very clearly was a one world government. This idea of One World Rule is not new to the Bush clan, or even to the modern day Illuminati. It has been around at least since the times of the Roman Empire, and before. –The Daily Sheeple

  Could this be the reason the UN doesn’t care about a few hundred Venezuelans and their oppressed deaths? Possibly, but don’t expect the mainstream media to report on the horrors of socialism.  Human beings who seek freedom are the biggest threat to the political structures which are planning to destroy most of mankind, which is why governments are using brainwashing techniques and propaganda on the weak masses.  Humans will always gravitate toward their freedom unless brainwashed to accept their own oppression. This is the reason we have so many people across the globe cannot see taxation as the theft that it is. But the explanation for the UN’s silence gets even more disturbing.

  Some have an even more sinister reason for the UN’s silence on the oppression of the Venezuelan people.

  There is a reason for that inaction, of course. About half of the council’s 47 member countries are dictatorships — including Cuba, China, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Venezuela — who defend one another against charges of human-rights violations. In fact, the UNHRC is a mutual protection society for the world’s worst dictatorships. –Miami Herald

  That isn’t exactly comforting.  Dictatorships, which the US is headed quickly towards becoming, are in control of “human rights,” so expect the eventual announcement that there is no such thing by those claiming ownership over others. Neither the United States nor any other socialist democracies represented at the council have presented any motions to the council condemning Venezuela’s human rights abuses. That’s because death is a necessary outcome to those who seek infinite power over the lives of others.

  As the United States stumbles toward tyranny and becomes more socialist, the changes of our streets looking like those of Venezuela increase.  The hypocrisy of instituting the very same socialist policies which caused Venezuela to collapse would appear too obvious for those attempting to brainwash the public in the United States.

  Hope seems all but lost against a world takeover, but those on the bottom forget that they are many while the elites are few.

  

  

• Janet Yellen's Bitcoin Troll Gets $15,000 In Donations

  In what was perhaps the most amusing act of protest to occur during testimony by one of the world’s most powerful central bankers since ECB President Mario Draghi was glitter-bombed by far-left activist Josephine Witt two years ago, an anonymous bitcoiner trolled Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen by holding up a hand-made sign that read “Buy Bitcoin” during Yellen’s testimony before the House financial Services Committee on Wednesday.

  

  Though the attendee and a friend who accompanied him were ultimately asked to leave by a staffer, the moment quickly went viral on twitter, sparking a community-wide hunt to uncover the brazen bitcoiner’s identity and bitcoin wallet ID so they could send him donations as a sign of solidarity.

  The community’s response to the still unnamed man's act of defiance yielded dozens of tweets, memes and, to date, more than $15,000 in donations to a bitcoin wallet purportedly belonging to the young troublemaker.

  My list of heroes 1 Jesus 2 my dad 3 #BitcoinSignGuy ???? AKA #thenewbitcoinjesus

  — briansBTCbrain (@BrianChillenman) July 13, 2017

  Bitcoiner @cryptoethan, an 18-year-old trader who claims to be a close friend of “bitcoin sign guy” satisfied the community’s demands by posting a photo of sign guy holding another sign that advertised a bitcoin wallet address where donations could be sent. As of press time, the wallet has received more than six-and-a-half coins – equal to more than $15,000 at the current bitcoin price of about $2,340 per coin. Readers can check out the wallet in real time on blockchain.info.

  Crypto Ethan, for his part, insists that he isn’t sign guy, and that, by posting the wallet address, he was merely helping out a friend.

  Only posted Sign Guy's address because some people asked. Don't send it you don't trust me or don't want to.

  — Ethan (@CryptoEthan) July 12, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  The moment provided a moment of levity for the bitcoin community, which is facing a day of reckoning that could ultimately split the network in two. On July 21, the bitcoin core development team will release its SegWit2x proposal. The software update would increase the amount of transaction data that the network can process every ten minutes, while also allowing the network to shift some of the transaction data onto side networks. As Bloomberg explains, Segwit2.0 has been made viable by a defection of miners to the bitcoin core camp. Previously, miners, many of whom are based in China, had presented a nearly unified front in opposition to SegWit2x.

  Bloomberg goes into more detail about the conflict here:

  “Behind the conflict is an ideological split about bitcoin’s rightful identity. The community has bitterly argued whether the cryptocurrency should evolve to appeal to mainstream corporations and become more attractive to traditional capital, or fortify its position as a libertarian beacon; whether it should act more as an asset like gold, or as a payment system.

  The seeds of the debate were planted years ago: To protect from cyber attacks, bitcoin by design caps the amount of information on its network, called the blockchain. That puts a ceiling on how many transactions it can process — the so-called block size limit — just as the currency’s growing popularity is boosting activity. As a result, transaction times and processing fees have soared to record levels this year, curtailing bitcoin’s ability to process payments with the same efficiency as services like Visa Inc.

   

  To address this problem, two main schools of thought emerged. On one side are miners, who deploy costly computers to verify transactions and act as the backbone of the blockchain. They’re proposing a straightforward increase to the block size limit.

   

  On the other is Core, a group of developers instrumental in upholding bitcoin’s bug-proof software. They insist that to ease blockchain’s traffic jam, some of its data must be managed outside the main network. They claim that not only would it reduce congestion, but also allow other projects including smart contracts to be built on top of bitcoin.

   

  But moving data off the blockchain effectively diminishes the influence of miners, the majority of whom are based in China and who have invested millions on giant server farms. Not surprisingly, Core’s proposal, called SegWit, has garnered resistance from miners, the most vocal being Wu Jihan, co-founder of the world’s largest mining organization Antpool.

   

  ‘SegWit is itself a great technology, but the reason it hasn’t taken off is because its interest doesn’t align with miners,’ Wu said.

   

  Still, after previous counter-proposals championed by Wu fell through, miners last month agreed to compromise and support SegWit, in exchange for increasing the block size. Wu says the plan will alleviate short-to-medium term congestion and give Core enough time to flesh out a long-term solution. That proposal is what is known as SegWit2x, which implements SegWit and doubles the block size limit.”

  Chris Coney, host of the Cryptoverse podcast, featured the photobombing as the main topic in his daily podcast. Coney noted a key detail that went unnoticed by much of the media coverage surrounding the incident: The fact that the kid raised the sign just as Florida Rep. Bill Posey was asking Chair Yellen about what the Fed's biggest fears are.

  Coney sent the kid about 0.4 bitcoin, equal to about $96, live on air, praising bitcoin sign guy's "creative" ploy to try and entice more people to join the bitcoin community – an act Coney described as "pure gangster": “do yourself a favor, do me a favor, do the bitcoin network a favor, do the bitcoin community a favor and send this kid a tip."

  So, what’s Yellen’s biggest fear, anyway?

  She responded to the Florida Congressman’s question by saying the growing mismatch between workers’ skills and those needed to succeed in an increasingly tech-oriented workforce iss one of her biggest concerns.  

  “The kinds of jobs that will be available and the types of skills to use those jobs…to my mind education and training are absolutely central for the new kinds of workers who will fill these types of jobs…”

  That's right: It's Jobs, jobs, jobs…

  Perhaps the world's under-educated workers can take a page out of bitcoin sign guy’s yellow legal notepad and start committing absurdist acts of protest in the hopes of earning the patronage of hundreds of strangers on the internet… for what it’s worth, it looks to fun – and may end up being lucrative, just avoid getting arrested.
   

  

  

• Tech Billionaires Are Funding A Plan To Break The Human Race Out Of The Matrix

  Authored by Jake Anderson via TheAntiMedia.org,

  On the southwestern edge of Lake Titicaca, Peru, there is an ancient 23-foot doorway known as the Aramu Muru. Local natives call it the “Puerta de hayu Marca,” the gateway to the lands of the gods and immortal life. Throughout their history, the natives have described people disappearing and appearing at this doorway.

  

  In 1998, purported extraterrestrial contactee Jerry Wills claimed a tall blonde humanoid named Zo taught him how to access Aramu Muru and enter “another universe.” Wills further claimed that Zo illustrated to him how our universe is an experimental simulation within his species’ universe. They built it to understand their own reality, which is itself nested inside a larger universe.

  The next year, in 1999, the blockbuster science fiction film The Matrix came out and forever emblazoned into our collective subconscious the idea that our existence is a simulation created by a more advanced race of beings. Incidentally, the film also made long black trench coats, black sunglasses, and my last name all the rage, but I digress…

  

  A few years after the release of The Matrix, philosopher Nick Bostrom published the Simulation Argument, a concise paper entitled “Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?” It presented a trilemma, a mathematical breakdown of why at least one of three provocative scenarios must be true.

  “(1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a ‘posthuman’ stage;

   

  (2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof);

   

  (3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. It follows that the belief that there is a significant chance that we will one day become posthumans who run ancestor-simulations is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation.”

  The “posthuman civilization” to which Bostrom refers defines a period of time after which humans have merged with technology. This is sometimes referred to as post-Singularity, with the ‘Singularity’ describing futurist Ray Kurzweil’s designation of a society in which humans are post-biological, living synergistically with artificial intelligence.

  The Simulation Argument presupposes the development of this posthuman civilization, at which point, Bostrom states, advanced humans or AI might develop simulations of the past in the same way that current scientists create test environments; some of the simulations would likely be for entertainment reasons, as well, in the same way humans currently create video games and movies.

  In recent years, a number of high-profile figures have come out to state their belief that we are living in a simulation. Chief among them is tech magnate Elon Musk, who has stated that the video game No Man’s Sky confirmed his belief that someday simulations would approximate reality so comprehensively that they would be indistinguishable from reality. Apparently, he was sitting in a hot tub with friends when he finally converted.

  Musk is the CEO and brains behind Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and OpenAI. In recent years, he has expressed bold plans for his companies that he believes will advance the human race: with Tesla, he wants to spearhead a transportation infrastructure that doesn’t rely on burning hydrocarbons; with SpaceX, he wants to assist in humanity’s gradual extraplanetary migration to Mars; and with Neuralink and OpenAI, he wants to facilitate humanity’s merger with advanced computer technology.

  When he was asked about whether humans are living inside a computer simulation, Musk made headlines last year by saying he thinks the chances are one in billions that we aren’t.

  “The strongest argument for us probably being in a simulation I think is the following: 40 years ago we had Pong – two rectangles and a dot,” Musk stated. “That’s where we were. Now 40 years later we have photorealistic, 3D simulations with millions of people playing simultaneously and it’s getting better every year. And soon we’ll have virtual reality, we’ll have augmented reality. If you assume any rate of improvement at all, then the games will become indistinguishable from reality, just indistinguishable.”

  Here Musk is referring to the exponential growth of technology, the lynchpin of the Singularity theory. If in 40 years we’ve gone from the two-dimensional pong to the cusp of augmented and virtual reality, imagine where we’ll be in another forty, or a hundred, or 400. Provided the human race survives, one may assume we will achieve the ability to produce simulations with sentient beings. Already, the Department of Defense has created the Sentient World Simulation, a real-time “synthetic mirror of the real world with automated continuous calibration with respect to current real-world information, such as major events, opinion polls, demographic statistics, economic reports, and shifts in trends,” according to a working paper on the system.

  In recent years, other scientists have conducted research and even experimentation in attempts to show actual evidence of the Simulation. Heads turned last year when theoretical physicist S. James Gate announced he had found strange computer code in his String Theory research. Bound inside the equations we use to describe our universe, he says, is peculiar self-dual linear binary error-correcting block code.

  A team of German physicists has also set out to show that the numerical constraints we see in our universe are consistent with the kinds of limitations we would see in a simulated universe. These physicists have invoked a non-perturbative approach known as lattice quantum chromodynamics to try to discover whether there is an underlying grid to the space/time continuum.

  So far their efforts have recreated a minuscule region of the known universe, a sliver of a corner that is but a few femtometers across. But this corner simulates the hypothetical lattice of the universal grid, and their search for a corresponding physical restraint turned up a theoretical upper limit on high-energy particles known as the Greisen–Zatsepin–Kuzmin, or GZK cut off. In other words, there are aspects of our universe that look and behave as a simulation might.

  With news that there are two anonymous tech billionaires working on a secret project to break us out of the Matrix, it’s hard to know whether we should laugh or scream in horror. 

  Simulation talk is great epistemological fun and metaphysical amusement of the highest order, but it may speak to an underlying anxiety regarding the merging of our reality with machines, or an underlying existential loneliness. It’s even been posited as a solution to the Fermi Paradox. Why haven’t we met aliens? Well, because we live inside a world they built.

  Our earth is marooned in a cosmic void so vast it would take our current Deep Space I propulsion system an astonishing 81,000 years to reach the nearest star — in a galaxy of hundreds of billions, which is, itself, just one of hundreds of billions. The thought that it’s all 1s and 0s rendered by a futuristic microprocessor is philosophically sexy but, perhaps, sociologically lazy.

  That there is anxiety about reality being manufactured in a society obsessed with simulated pleasure and mediated experience isn’t altogether surprising. It’s the ultimate, though perhaps accidental, expression of resistance to a culture steeped in consumerism and artificial growth.

  

  

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• Hackers Steal Swedish Security Company CEO's Identity, Declare Him "Bankrupt"

  The 59-year old CEO of Swedish Security Firm Securitas was declared bankrupt this week after hackers stole his identity, took out a loan in his name, then filed for bankruptcy.  As Bloomberg noted, “the sub-optimal branding implications were hard to miss.”

  Securitas AB hopes to have put the whole awkward incident behind it by the end of the day. According to Bloomberg, the appointed bankruptcy trustee has been informed and will support the appeal of the bankruptcy decision, which is expected to be removed, Securitas said. Securitas CEO Alf Goransson is appealing the July 10 bankruptcy decision by the Stockholm District Court, which acted on false information, the company said on Wednesday. The appointed bankruptcy trustee has been informed and will support the appeal of the bankruptcy decision, which is expected to be removed, Securitas said.

  

  “The perpetrator used the CEO’s identity to seek a loan of an undisclosed amount, after which a bankruptcy application was filed in his name. The identity theft took place in March. Goransson didn’t know he’d been hacked until this week, the company said.”

   

  The hack attack “has no effect on the company, other than that our CEO has been declared bankrupt,” spokeswoman Gisela Lindstrand said. “And that will hopefully only last until later today, depending on how soon they can remove the decision.”

  However, the theft, as Bloomberg notes, raises questions about security in a society that is leading the way in digitization. Sweden is well ahead of most of the rest of the world in replacing cash with digital payments – even homeless groups there accept credit cards.

  Even a museum dedicated to the pop group Abba – the group that popularized the song “Money, Money, Money” – doesn’t accept cash.

  At the country’s Abba museum, tourists aren’t allowed to pay for anything with cash.

  Has Sweden’s commitment to transparency created an environment where identity theft is commonplace? The statistics would say yes.

  “The country’s efforts to embrace transparency in all fields are also well documented. Sweden encourages widespread access to public information (employees can find out what their colleagues earn by checking with the tax authorities) and, like most other rich countries, online shopping and loan applications are on the rise. All of this has coincided with a sharp increase in identity fraud. Sweden responded last year by introducing specific legislation to target the development. Goransson’s case was one of 12,800 crimes involving hacked identities reported in Sweden in the first six months of 2017.”

  Goransson has been de-registered as chairman of Loomis, a cash-handling company that used to be part of Securitas, in accordance with formal procedures of the Swedish Companies Registration Office. Goransson is also expected to appeal this decision after he gets the bankruptcy ruling thrown out, according to Bloomberg.

  

  

• Russia-US Relations: Dim Light Does Not Get Brighter

  Authored by Alex Gorka via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

  The US administration backs the new sanctions on Russia. «The administration is fully supportive of those sanctions», said White House Director of Legislative Affairs Marc Short at a press briefing on July 10.

  The statement comes in the wake of US and Russian presidents’ meeting at the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany. Following the event, President Trump said he wanted to move forward «working constructively with Russia». Does he mean that introducing tougher sanctions is a way to promote «constructive» relationship?

  «Could the White House be working against it? They well could be. Have they contacted us to work against it? No», said Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.). The only worry on the part of the administration is that the bill does not include «certain national waivers that have always been consistently part of sanctions bills in the past». For the administration, a softer bill with a provision for sanctions waivers would be just the thing it wants. It finds the strengthened sanctions and other things to spoil the relations with Russia acceptable.

  The legislation had sailed through the Senate to get stalled in the House. It is expected to be voted on till the Congressional recess in August. When in force, it would require a congressional review if President Donald Trump attempted to ease or end punitive actions on Russia. A foreign policy issue is supposed to be delegated to Congress to set an unusual precedent of constrained presidential authority. So, it’s the procedures, not the substance, that evokes the administration’s concern.

  In late December, 2016, the Obama administration expelled 35 Russian diplomats and shut down the embassy compounds in Maryland and New York. Back then, Moscow abstained from taking a reciprocal action. President Putin even invited US diplomats and their families to a party in the Kremlin.

  More than half a year has passed. The White House has not yet resolved the issue of the compounds. It keeps on hanging in the mid-air to become a serious irritant to affect the bilateral relations. This prompts Russia to consider retaliatory steps. On July 11, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said he was «considering specific measures» in response, but did not elaborate. According to him, it is «simply shameful for such a great country as the United States, a champion of international law, to leave the situation in such a state of suspended animation».

  Moscow may well expel a number of American diplomats and seize some US diplomatic buildings to complicate the relationship President Trump says he wants to improve. Obviously, Russia’s patience has run out. After all, the seizure of the embassy property is an egregious violation of the Vienna Convention, it cannot go unanswered forever.

  There is another irritant looming. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-Calif.) filed legislation – the «Russia Arms Trade Limitation Act» – on July 7 to impose fresh sanctions on Russia for violations of the landmark 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. The lawmaker submitted the proposal as an amendment to the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a must-pass annual bill that sets policy for the Defense Department.

  The NDAA defense already has a provision saying that if Russia continued to violate the treaty within 15 months of the legislation’s enactment, the United States «would no longer be legally bound by the treaty as a matter of domestic law».

  Actually, the bill envisages a unilateral withdrawal without a serious attempt to solve the differences and address Russia’s concerns. The US would make a move to almost certainly launch an arms race without even consulting the European NATO allies. After all, this is a European problem; the intermediate range missiles cannot strike the United States from the Old Continent.

  Russia has denied violating the treaty while no explanations have been produced to explain Russia’s accusation that the US Mk-41 launcher installed in Europe as a part of ballistic missile defense is capable of firing long range cruise missiles in a clear breach of the agreement’s terms. Anyway, this is a separate issue to be discussed by experts; it should not negatively affect the whole range of issues on the Russia-US agenda. Disagreeing on the INF Treaty does not prevent the powers from cooperating on Syria and other problems.

  The domestic political strife has dealt a heavy blow to the Russia-US relations. The lawmakers have no time for crucial tax and health reforms but they do find time for anti-Russia bills. Congress and media have taken on a hostile attitude towards Russia while the current administration has not taken any real step to improve the ties so far. On the contrary, the Treasury Department even tightened the sanctions on June 20.

  Hopes are high for the upcoming meeting between Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov and US Under Secretary of State Thomas Shannon. But if the abovementioned bills become laws and the problems continue to pile up, there will hardly be a light to see at the end of the tunnel. This is the wrong environment for achieving progress during the talks on arms control, the fight against terrorism or crisis management to end the ongoing war in Syria.

  One thing leads to another. It’s impossible to build mutually beneficial, business-like and pragmatic relations under the conditions of hostile attitude on the part of Congress and inability or unwillingness of the administration to do anything about it.

  

  

• NEOCONS GET IN HERE: Tucker Carlson Just Humiliated Max Boot on National TV

   

  Content originally published at iBankCoin.com

  Over the past 30 years, the neocons have presided over the worst foreign policies in American history — pursuing their Trotskyite schemes of war that have accelerated to an ebb tide that peaked during Bush the Idiot’s reign.

  Men like Max Boot, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Bill Kristol, Richard Perle, and many others, have attached themselves to the republican party like a cancerous tumor — transforming it from a checkered pants, cigar smoked room, boys club into a satanic cult out for the blood of the indigenous.

  At the root of the neocon “plan”, being disciples of Trotsky, is the destruction of “Mother Russia.” It’s in their blood — because they’re still mad at Stalin. This has been a constant since the 50’s. It was only after the Berlin Wall fell and there was a detente between the United States and Russia in the 90s did these revolutionaries affix themselves to the GOP with real energy.

  The net result of neocon led foreign policies have resulted in thousands of dead Americans, the entire middle east reduced to rubble, millions of civilians dead and/or displaced — and they have the stones to call Putin evil.

  Pray tell me, who has killed more people in the world over the past 30 years, America or Russia? Moreover, how has America benefited by these wars, which has bankrupted the treasury and led to an enormous spike in commodities, helped produce a housing bubble and subsequent financial meltdown and the ruin of countless people — worldwide — all because they had to export America democracy in order to “make America safe”?

  How has that worked out so far, Max Boot? Have you taken a look into Rome, Munich or Paris recently?

  This heated and contentious debate with the former defense policy adviser to Mitt Romney, Max Boot, and Tucker Carlson, should be archived and saved for the sake of posterity. I will not transcribe it for you — because you’ll miss out on the essence of this verbal and intellectual beat down. The world is a dangerous place. At the vanguard of that danger are respected ‘intellectuals’ like Max Boot — trying hard to promote a demonic brand of foreign policy that will kill your sons.

  

• Shkreli Told Investors He Had Millions Under Management When His Fund Was Broke

  The prosecution has continued to call witnesses and show evidence in the trial of Martin Shkreli, providing the jury with documents to prove that Shkreli mislead investors by telling them he was managing $100 million when his fund had a balance of negative 33 cents in its prime brokerage account.

  Another witness and former Shkreli investor told the jury how couldn’t tell if Shkreli’s flirts were genuine, or if the “Pharma Bro” really did have feelings for him.

  According to the New York Daily News, Steven Richardson — a man who told Brooklyn federal jurors he’s had a domestic partner for 25 years — testified Tuesday he wondered if Shkreli’s quips about hookups and sex were just ploys to strike a rapport with the 63-year-old investor.

  

  It got to the point that Richardson had to have a March 2010 talk with Shkreli, 34. After cocktails at Richardson’s Chelsea apartment, he said he sat Shkreli down on his bed. “I said, ‘Do you have any physical feelings for me?’ He took a second he said, ‘No, I like you a lot but I don’t.’”

  Prosecutors also called Dr. Lindsay Rosenwald as a witness to discuss how his $100,000 investment with Shkreli turned out. Rosenwald ended up with Retrophin stock that he ended up selling for between $400,000 and $600,000. He also told a story about when Shkreli awkwardly hit him up about a dating lead. Shkreli allegedly asked Rosenwald if a certain woman was single. He then said he wanted it to be known “there is a handsome young hedge fund millionaire she should be dating.”

  Meanwhile, a government accountant called by the prosecution went through bank-account records to try and corroborate the government’s argument. A bank account maintained by one of Martin Shkreli's hedge funds in July 2011 had a balance of "negative 33 cents" in it, at the same time he was telling investors his funds had tens of millions of dollars under management, an accountant testified Tuesday, according to CNBC.

  That accountant also said that an analysis of one of Shkreli's funds, MSMB Capital Management, showed that it never at any one point had a total of more than $1.2 million in its bank account and brokerage account combined. And the combined balance of a brokerage account and several bank accounts maintained by his other fund, MSMB Healthcare, never topped $1.6 million, Wendy Spaulding, the accountant, testified in Brooklyn, New York, federal court.

  The accountant revealed Tuesday that Retrophin, a drug company founded by Shkreli, paid $10,000 for Jay-Z concert tickets at a time when the company had just tens of thousands of dollars in its own bank accounts.

  And the accountant testified that records showed more than $1.3 million from Retrophin being transferred to Shkreli's personal bank account, and another $26,000 being transferred into that account from MSMB Capital.

  Spaulding’s testimony could be damning for Shkreli, CNBC noted, because several witnesses have already testified that he told them he was managing between $30 million and $50 million.

  Prosecutors also accuse Shkreli of looting Retrophin of money and stock to pay off investors in his hedge funds once they began demanding their money back.

  Those investors also have said that Shkreli told them his hedge funds had a balance of long and short positions in publicly traded stocks, and that the funds as a rule did not have more than 10 percent of their investments in any single company.
   

  

  

• CNN Cracks the Case, Publishes Video of Trump Dining with Goldstone and Agalarov's

   

  Content originally published at iBankCoin.com

  The plot just thickened, yet again. You have to play six degrees of separation in trying to understand how Trump Jr. got in touch with that Russian lawyer. There are varying theories out there — from Trump Jr. being set up by the deep state — to this meeting being the touchstone which introduced Wikileaks and John Podesta’s emails to the world.

  Judging by the evidence available, I’d say the Russian lawyer who met with Trump Jr., at a minimum, is suspect.

  Here’s the Russian lawyer who met with Trump, to deliver dirt on Hillary. The only problem, she was massively ANTI-TRUMP. Pic related pic.twitter.com/NFiWxX7SSq

  — The_Real_Fly (@The_Real_Fly) July 12, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Nevertheless, here’s CNN, publishing ‘exclusive’ video of Trump dining with Goldstone and the Agalarov’s — proving the point that the President was familiar with them and that he had ‘Russian ties.’
  
  EXCLUSIVE: One of Trump’s Russian ties

  

• The New World Order Takeover Is Very Real… And Will Begin With Germany And China

  Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

  

  In numerous articles over the years I have outlined in acute detail the agenda for a future one-world economic and governmental system led primarily by banking elites and globalists; an agenda they sometimes refer to as the "New World Order." The term has gained such public exposure and notoriety recently that the globalists have fallen back to using different terminology. Some of them, like the International Monetary Fund's Christine Lagarde, refer to it as the "global economic reset." Others call it the "new multilateralism." Still others refer to it as the "end of the unipolar order," referring to the slow death of the U.S. economy as the central pillar of the global economy.

  Whatever label they decide to use, all of them signal a full spectrum destabilization of the "old world" financial and geopolitical system and the ascendance of a tightly controlled one world edifice dominated openly by globalist hubs like the IMF and the BIS.

  Too many people, even in the liberty movement, tend to examine only the veneer of this agenda. Some have deluded themselves into thinking the U.S. and the dollar are actually the core of the NWO and are therefore indispensable to the globalists. As I have shown time and time again, the Federal Reserve is now on a fast track to complete its sabotage of the U.S. economy; they would not be instigating instability and crisis to deflate the massive fiscal bubbles they have created unless America was at least partially expendable.

  Some believe the NWO is a purely "western" construct and that eastern nations are defending themselves against an encroaching globalist empire. I have also shown that this is nonsense, and that eastern nations work closely with the same exact globalists they are supposedly at war with. This includes Russia's Vladimir Putin, a figure often ignorantly praised by select liberty activists.

  What we see in the mainstream is conflict, yes; but it is theatrical conflict. At the end of the day, Eastern leaders pander to globalist high priests at the IMF and BIS and have lunch with NWO icons like Henry Kissinger, just as heads of the Republican Party and even Donald Trump's family go out to parties with Democrat strategists and George Soros.

  It's all a kabuki play. All the world is a stage…

  So, the question then remains, since the NWO and a one world economic system is in fact a real threat proven to exist through considerable evidence including the very words of prominent globalists, how does such a thing begin? If the U.S. is merely a limb that the globalists are willing to sacrifice in trade to gain even greater centralization, where will the NWO actually take root? As noted, both Eastern and Western nations are at the disposal of the international financiers, so it should come as no surprise that the NWO is seemingly taking shape around the relationship between two nations; one from either side.

  As Bloomberg announces with apparent glee in an article titled "China, Germany Step Up As U.S. Retires From World Leadership," Donald Trump risks "uniting cold war allies and foes alike against him." In other words, the future is extreme socialism, the populists are a dangerous and dying breed and globalization marches on without them. The narrative is clearly being established.

  The relationship between China and Germany might seem strange, but the two countries are far more alike than many people comprehend. Germany is the industrial and economic centerpiece of the European Union.  China is the economic and industrial pillar of Asia.  China sells itself as a communist society with capitalist hobbies. Germany sells itself as a capitalist society integrating socialist (communist) programs and social justice mantras. In reality, both nations are collectivist hell-holes, but this is exactly the kind of model the globalists want for the entire world.

  Germany has set the stage for the self-flagellating model of "multiculturalism." Angela Merkel is obsessive in her pursuit of the ideal, and this makes sense from a globalist perspective. Multiculturalism requires absolutely uninhibited movement of ideologies and populations across borders, making borders essentially obsolete. Idiot leftists duped by pie-in-the-sky fantasies like "it takes a village to raise a child" have been exploited by the globalists as a tool to push the end of national sovereignty. Merkel's Germany has been at the forefront of this movement in Europe and is now apparently being groomed as an antithesis to Trump.

  Germany has also for many years stood as a kind of socialist paradise, with over 25% of their GDP going into entitlement programs so pervasive it is possible for German citizens (women in particular) to live most of their lives without ever having to work. It was this constant flow of tax dollars into welfare programs that attracted a vast number of so-called "refugees" from Islamic countries into the EU, virtually overwhelming the entitlement system and forcing Germany to put restrictions on new citizens.

  China has served the NWO model as more of an oppressive economic testing ground. Welfare and universal health insurance is indeed at the forefront of the Chinese government's latest "five year" program. Of course, with hundreds of millions of Chinese living on less than one U.S. dollar per day, the population has no choice but to rely on the generosity of the state. This has molded an economy that is barely tolerable for many, but tolerable enough to keep them from revolting. It is a dynamic the elites would like to apply in every nation.

  The Chinese government oversees every aspect of the corporate networks that make up its economy. A Chinese business is in most cases a Chinese government business. There is no such thing as free enterprise in China. China's relationship with globalist institutions is well known. They are one of the first nations to openly call for a new global currency system headed by the IMF and based on the SDR basket. China has also recently been inducted into membership in the SDR basket by the IMF, showing that the back scratching is mutual.

  It is this strategy of elevating the SDR basket and replacing the dollar's world reserve status as a precursor to a global currency that has been brought up time and time again by globalists. Recently by Mohamad El-Rian, former CEO of PIMCO in an article titled "Could The IMF's World Currency Help Encourage Global Unity?" Take special note that El-Erian suggests the shift into a global currency system as a way to fight back against the recent "rise of populism."

  In order for such a plan to be launched, there has to be some stability somewhere on the world. While many nations face financial crisis on a scale not seen since the Great Depression, the globalists still need to have places to consolidate capital and establish a beachhead for the next assault on sovereignty. This beachhead may come in the form of an economic union between Germany and China, the two NWO favorites.

  China is Germany's largest trading partner and Germany has been the top place for Chinese investment in Europe. Last month Merkel and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang met with the intention of "deepening ties" in the face of "protectionism" promoted by Donald Trump. Merkel stated:

  "China has become a more important and strategic partner…"

   

  "We are living in times of global uncertainty and see our responsibility to expand our partnership in all the different areas and to push for a world order based on law…"

  Germany's ambassador to Beijing, in a recent briefing with reporters leading into G20 stated:

  "The economic and political dynamic from a German perspective is moving toward the east."

   

  "The U.S. has left somewhat of a vacuum in the region by abandoning the proposed 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade agreement…"

  As I have argued since before the 2016 election, Donald Trump's job is to be the catalyst for multiple globalist programs which have actually been in the works for decades. Trump is now the excuse for everything. Trump and populism are the excuse for renewed "multilateralism," the excuse for German and Chinese cooperation, the excuse for a new global currency system and, most likely, the scapegoat for the inevitable final stage of our ongoing economic collapse.

  Where Trump is supposed to represent the old world order and its "barbarism," Germany and China obviously are being staged as the symbol of something new; a New World Order in which cooperation and interdependency are the great virtues of our epoch. It is my suspicion that along with Russia and China, Germany will be one of the first nations to fully dump the U.S. dollar as the world reserve currency when the time comes to shift into the SDR basket system. And, that time is approaching quickly. It is also my suspicion that the globalists are seeking an economic power base from which to project their NWO, and Germany and China fit the bill nicely.

  I suggest alternative analysts watch the relationship between these two countries very closely. Their behaviors may signal many changes and dangers ahead.

  

  

• WHo KiLLeD SeTH RiCH?

  

  //embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

• Got Milk? First 165 Cows Airlifted To Qatar

  It appears that the Gulf blockade against Qatar will remain in place for the foreseeable future after representatives from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain and the UAE dismissed Qatar's response to their 13 demands as “not serious” and pledged to continue to keep the Gulf state under political and economic sanctions until it changes its policies.

  And after a local businessman said he would import 4,000 cows to the gulf desert late last month, the first cows are already starting to arrive. As CNN Money reports, Qatar has taken delivery of 165 cows that were airlifted into the Gulf state to ease a milk shortage caused by sanctions imposed by Qatar’s neighbors. They are the first shipment for local dairy company, Baladna, which is ramping up production just weeks after Qatar's four Arab state antagonists cut off diplomatic ties.

  

  Qatar has repeatedly denied allegations that it supports terrorism, and has said it would not comply with the gulf state’s other demands, including shuttering its media properties, including Al Jazeera. The first cows, purchased from a German supplier, arrived Tuesday on a Qatar Airways flight from Budapest, Hungary. Other cows are expected to be sourced from the Netherlands, the U.S. and Australia.

  Most of Qatar's fresh milk and dairy products, meant for Doha’s more than 1 million residents, came from Saudi Arabia up until the sanctions were declared. That supply was cut off after the kingdom and its allies cut transport links with "a country that spends $500 million a week to prepare stadiums and a metro before the soccer World Cup in 2022.

  In an act of generosity toward its distressed Gulf neighbor, Iran dispatched four cargo planes of food to Qatar and plans to provide 100 tons of fruit and vegetable every day. Qatar has also been holding talks with Iran and Turkey to secure food and water supplies after Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain cut links, accusing Doha of supporting terrorism.

  Within days of the embargo, Turkish and Iranian products filled empty shelves in the supermarkets of Qatar and local factories ramped up production.

  According to Bloomberg's calculations, it will take as many as 60 flights for Qatar Airways to deliver the 590-kilogram beasts that Moutaz Al Khayyat, chairman of Power International Holding, bought in Australia and the U.S. “This is the time to work for Qatar,” he said. In addition to the abovementioned airlifted Turkish dairy goods and Iranian fruit and vegetables, there’s also a campaign to buy home-grown produce. Signs with colors of the Qatari flag have been placed next to dairy products in stores. One sign dangling from the ceiling said: “Together for the support of local products.”
   

  

  

• Infowars, Breitbart, Drudge Could Soon Face An FEC 'Inquisition' Over Russian "Collusion"

  Authored by Alexander Paul via PlanetFreeWill.com,

  Conservative news outlets like Infowars, Breitbart and the Drudge Report could soon be facing an inquisition from the FEC for coordinating with the Russians to blitz the realm of social media with deceptive anti-Clinton stories that effectively could have influenced the 2016 presidential election.
  

  This could happen if top Federal Election Commission Democrat, Ellen Weintraub, is able to get her way during this Thursday’s FEC meeting.

  The Washington Examiner reports:

  The plan, set for discussion at Thursday’s FEC meeting, could open the door to political subpoenas targeting the websites, their editorial news decisions, and their owners, maybe even Matt Drudge and Alex Jones, according to an expert analysis.

   

  In her effort targeting foreign influence in federal and state elections, Commissioner Ellen Weintraub would probe spending by overseas sources and even partially-foreign-owned U.S. firms on campaigns, including their media buys. Foreign influence is illegal in elections.

   

  She said that tackling foreign influence in elections could be the FEC’s finest hour, adding, “I believe that this Commission can indeed rise to the challenge of understanding what happened in the 2016 election and plugging any legal or procedural holes that could allow foreign actors to interfere with our future elections.”

   

  Politico recently reported that “Weintraub’s interest was piqued by an article published last week by Time magazine that revealed intelligence officials had evidence that Russian agents bought Facebook ads to disseminate election-themed stories. It also indicated that congressional investigators were examining whether Russian efforts to spread such content were boosted by two U.S. companies with deep ties to Trump — Breitbart News and Cambridge Analytica.”

  The Time Magazine article which influenced Weintraub also pointed to Russian ties to conservative ownership and funding as a potential target of investigators. The report reads, citing McClatchy, “FBI counterintelligence investigators were probing whether far-right sites like Breitbart News and Infowars had coordinated with Russian botnets to blitz social media with anti-Clinton stories, mixing fact and fiction when Trump was doing poorly in the campaign.”

  The FEC will decide at this Thursday’s meeting whether or not to investigate websites like the Drudge Report, Infowars, Breitbart, and others on the right for violating election spending rules by allowing advertising on their Facebook pages by Russian entities.

  “It’s pretty easy to see how this quickly becomes an inquisition into conservative media outlets,” an elections laws expert and critic of the Weintraub bid told the Washington Examiner.

   

  “Commissioner Weintraub appears to be laying the groundwork to subpoena people at Breitbart, Drudge, and Infowars – maybe even Matt Drudge and Alex Jones themselves,” he added.

  Infowars founder Alex Jones responded on Tuesday to the news of Weintraub’s actions by saying that he is under a “criminal espionage investigation by the FBI,” and denied ever taken any money from Russia.

  “I have never gotten one scintilla of money from Russia. I’ve never got any directives from Russia,’ Jones said. “This is outrageous! I mean, they want us shut down.”

  On his Tuesday Broadcast, Jones was correct to point out that this Russian election tampering narrative that will not go away in Democratic circles has been, as CNN’s Van Jones put it so eloquently, a “nothing burger.”

  According to Jones, Infowars is almost exclusively funded by sales from their online store which sells books, water filters, and nutritional supplements. The rest of the funding is transparent, according to Jones, who said his organization receives funding from third party ad generators like Google and AdBlade.

  The Infowars founder said that he would be willing to testify publically before Congress.

  Ellen Weintraub has been a big opponent of the Citizens United decision expanding corporate political spending and foreign ownership in politically active U.S. firms and in the past has denied claims of targeting or regulating the media or internet sites. She was part of the FEC commission who targeted Fox News in 2015.

  In her proposal, she wrote, “the American public is justifiably alarmed by the reports of foreign attempts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.” She added, “This is an all-hands-on-deck moment for our democracy.”

  “It is this Commission’s duty to do respond, and to respond forcefully. Whether a hostile foreign power provided anything of value in connection with a federal, state, or local election goes to the very heart of the Federal Election Commission’s mission and jurisdiction,” the proposal continued.

  The possible FEC Inquisition is coming at an interesting time, as it has been recently revealed that the U.S. actually has a big problem with foreign influence in its election; that is, in the form of noncitizen voters.

  The research organization Just Facts in New Jersey has taken a fresh look at post-election polling data and concluded that the number of noncitizens voting illegally in U.S. elections is likely far greater than previous estimates.

  The group found that many as 5.7 million noncitizens may have voted in the 2008 election, playing a large role in the election win of Barack Obama.

  The work of professors at Old Dominion University in Virginia also found that as many as 2.8 million noncitizens could have voted in 2008.

  For 2012, Just Facts said that 3.2 million to 5.6 million noncitizens were registered to vote and 1.2 million to 3.6 million of them voted.

  The suspicion over illegal votes being cast in U.S. elections sparked the Trump Administration to create a commission on election fraud to investigate voter fraud and voter suppression.

  Trump has alleged that some 3-5 million illegals voted in the 2016 election, robbing him of a better result in the popular vote.

  The commission had given states until July 14 to provide data including names, birth dates and partial Social Security numbers of voters but has since delayed the data turnover as the Administration awaits the ruling of a lawsuit filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington.

  While the mainstream media railed against any claim that noncitizens voted in 2016, all it takes is a turn to the evidence in North Carolina where an independent and bipartisan agency that oversees elections in the state found hundreds of illegal votes, including votes cast by felons and non-citizens, double voting, voter impersonation, and irregularities that affected mail-in absentee ballots.

  With an estimated 11-12 million illegal aliens roaming the Unites States and the lax voting controls in many areas, it seems very foolish to deny that non-citizens voted in 2016. It is even more foolish to continue to case Russian influence in the election when it is clear that the vote count in the U.S. may have been bloated due to the lack of border security and voting legitimacy.

  

  

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• Tear Gas, Guns, & Riot Squads: The Police State's Answer To Free Speech Is Brute Force

  Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

  Forget everything you’ve ever been taught about free speech in America.

  It’s all a lie.

  There can be no free speech for the citizenry when the government speaks in a language of force.

  What is this language of force?

  Militarized police. Riot squads. Camouflage gear. Black uniforms. Armored vehicles. Mass arrests. Pepper spray. Tear gas. Batons. Strip searches. Surveillance cameras. Kevlar vests. Drones. Lethal weapons. Less-than-lethal weapons unleashed with deadly force. Rubber bullets. Water cannons. Stun grenades. Arrests of journalists. Crowd control tactics. Intimidation tactics. Brutality.

  This is not the language of freedom.

  This is not even the language of law and order.

  Unfortunately, this is how the government at all levels—federal, state and local—now responds to those who choose to exercise their First Amendment right to peacefully assemble in public and challenge the status quo.

  Recently, this militarized exercise in intimidation reared its ugly head in the college town of Charlottesville, Va., where protesters who took to the streets to peacefully express their disapproval of a planned KKK rally were held at bay by implacable lines of gun-wielding riot police. Only after a motley crew of Klansmen had been safely escorted to and from the rally by black-garbed police did the assembled army of city, county and state police declare the public gathering unlawful and proceed to unleash canisters of tear gas on the few remaining protesters to force them to disperse.

  To be clear, this is the treatment being meted out to protesters across the political spectrum.

  The police state does not discriminate.

  As a USA Today article notes, “People demanding justice, demanding accountability or demanding basic human rights without resorting to violence, should not be greeted with machine guns and tanks. Peaceful protest is democracy in action. It is a forum for those who feel disempowered or disenfranchised. Protesters should not have to face intimidation by weapons of war.”

  A militarized police response to protesters poses a danger to all those involved, protesters and police alike. In fact, militarization makes police more likely to turn to violence to solve problems.

  You want to turn a peaceful protest into a riot?

  Bring in the militarized police with their guns and black uniforms and warzone tactics and “comply or die” mindset. Ratchet up the tension across the board. Take what should be a healthy exercise in constitutional principles (free speech, assembly and protest) and turn it into a lesson in authoritarianism.

  Frankly, any police officer who tells you that he needs tanks, SWAT teams, and pepper spray to do his job shouldn’t be a police officer in a constitutional republic.

  All that stuff in the First Amendment sounds great in theory. However, it amounts to little more than a hill of beans if you have to exercise those freedoms while facing down an army of police equipped with deadly weapons.

  It doesn’t have to be this way.

  There are other, far better models to follow.

  For instance, back in 2011, the St. Louis police opted to employ a passive response to Occupy St. Louis activists. First, police gave the protesters nearly 36 hours’ notice to clear the area, as opposed to the 20 to 60 minutes’ notice other cities gave. Then, as journalist Brad Hicks reports, when the police finally showed up:

  They didn’t show up in riot gear and helmets, they showed up in shirt sleeves with their faces showing. They not only didn’t show up with SWAT gear, they showed up with no unusual weapons at all, and what weapons they had all securely holstered. They politely woke everybody up. They politely helped everybody who was willing to remove their property from the park to do so. They then asked, out of the 75 to 100 people down there, how many people were volunteering for being-arrested duty? Given 33 hours to think about it, and 10 hours to sweat it over, only 27 volunteered … and were escorted away by a handful of cops. The rest were advised to please continue to protest, over there on the sidewalk … and what happened next was the most absolutely brilliant piece of crowd control policing I have heard of in my entire lifetime. All of the cops who weren’t busy transporting and processing the voluntary arrestees lined up, blocking the stairs down into the plaza. They stood shoulder to shoulder. They kept calm and silent. They positioned the weapons on their belts out of sight. They crossed their hands low in front of them, in exactly the least provocative posture known to man. And they peacefully, silently, respectfully occupied the plaza, using exactly the same non-violent resistance techniques that the protesters themselves had been trained in.

  As Forbes concluded, “This is a more humane, less costly, and ultimately more productive way to handle a protest. This is great proof that police can do it the old fashioned way – using their brains and common sense instead of tanks, SWAT teams, and pepper spray – and have better results.”

  It can be done.

  Police will not voluntarily give up their gadgets and war toys and combat tactics, however. Their training and inclination towards authoritarianism has become too ingrained.

  As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, if we are to have any hope of dismantling the police state, change must start locally, community by community. Citizens will have to demand that police de-escalate and de-militarize. And if the police don’t listen, contact your city councils and put the pressure on them.

  Remember, they work for us. They might not like hearing it—they certainly won’t like being reminded of it—but we pay their salaries.

  We must adopt a different mindset and follow a different path if we are to alter the outcome of these interactions with police.

  The American dream was built on the idea that no one is above the law, that our rights are inalienable and cannot be taken away, and that our government and its appointed agents exist to serve us.

  It may be that things are too far gone to save, but still we must try.

  

  

• Mt. Gox Chief Denies Stealing $500 Million In Bitcoin As Trial Starts

  Two-and-a-half years after the collapse of Mt. Gox ushered in a multi-year bear market in the world of digital currencies, the trial of former Gox chief executive officer Mark Karpeles began Tuesday in Tokyo.  Karpeles pleaded “not guilty” to charges of embezzlement and fraud stemming from the collapse of what was once the world’s most-active platform for buying and selling digital currencies. Some 850,000 bitcoins – then worth around half a billion U.S. dollars – were stolen in the hack, which was disclosed in February 2014, along with $28 million in cash from the exchange's bank accounts, according to Reuters.

  “The 32-year-old chief executive of defunct Mt. Gox pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to charges relating to the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of bitcoins and cash from what was once the world's biggest bitcoin exchange.

   

  French national Mark Karpeles filed the plea in response to charges of embezzlement and data manipulation at the Tokyo District Court, according to a pool report for foreign journalists.”

  Karpeles was indicted for transferring 341 million yen ($3 million) from a Mt. Gox account holding customer funds to an account in his name during September to December 2013. The prosecution also alleged Karpeles boosted the balance of an account in his name in Mt. Gox's trading system.

  

  In its opening statement to the court, Karpeles' defense team did not dispute that the transfers took place, but denied they amounted to embezzlement. Karpeles told the court he was an information technology engineer.

  While the Gox bankruptcy badly damaged the public’s perception of digital currencies – particularly among risk-averse Japanese investors – it did spur Japanese lawmakers to develop a legal framework that officially recognizes digital currencies as legal, regulated assets. It also created a system for grating licenses to digital currency exchanges. Japan this year became the first country to regulate exchanges at the national level, part of a government effort to reestablish its lost influence over the crypto market.

  That framework, passed into law earlier this year, officially took effect in April and presaged the entrance of Japanese banks into the digital currencies marketplace.

  * * *

  However, institutional investors in Japan remain wary, say those running virtual currency exchanges in Tokyo. Only 4 percent of large and mid-sized Japanese firms plan to use bitcoin in the near to medium term, showed a Reuters poll last month.

  Karpeles, who disappeared from public view shortly after Gox’s collapse, was rumored to have been the target of a super subpoena, preventing him from discussing Gox or the pending case against him.
  But now that the trial is underway, the public may soon receive some long-awaited answers about the hack. Namely: How did hackers infiltrate Mt. Gox? Exactly how long did Karpeles wait to disclose the theft to the public. Mt. Gox subsequently said it had found 200,000 of the missing bitcoins – where were they, who found them, and how?

  And, most importantly: Were any Mt. Gox employees complicit in the theft?
   

  

  

• CFPB Makes It Easier For Customers To Sue Banks

  The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau just made it easier for ordinary citizens to sue banks by restricting how they can use mandatory arbitration to block class-action lawsuits, according to Bloomberg. But the decision – inspired by a 2015 investigative series in the New York Times about how US companies, particularly credit card companies and payday lenders, abuse the practice – likely won’t stay on the books for long. As the LA Times writes:

  It's all but certain that Republican lawmakers in control of the House and Senate will move quickly to overturn the rule as part of their ongoing efforts to cripple the consumer-watchdog agency and create a more business-friendly regulatory landscape.”

  

  Clauses requiring arbitration to settle disputes are inserted routinely in contracts for credit cards, payday loans and other financial products. They typically prevent consumers from filing lawsuits or banding together in class actions.

  "Arbitration clauses in contracts for products like bank accounts and credit cards make it nearly impossible for people to take companies to court when things go wrong," CFPB Director Richard Cordray said in a statement.

   

  “These clauses allow companies to avoid accountability by blocking group lawsuits and forcing people to go it alone or give up. Our new rule will stop companies from sidestepping the courts and ensure that people who are harmed together can take action together.”

  From the time they formally receive the ruling, lawmakers have 60 legislative days to overturn the bureau’s decision. Republicans have been using the Congressional Review Act, a little-known provision, to undo more than a dozen Obama-era regulations during the closing days of his presidency, including the CFPB’s plans to implement tougher standards for prepaid debit cards.

  “As a matter of principle, policy and process, this anti-consumer rule should be thoroughly rejected by Congress,” Representative Jeb Hensarling, the Texas Republican who leads the House Financial Services Committee, said in a statement.

  Congress isn’t the only body that’s skeptical of the ruling: In an unusual move, the head of a key banking regulator wrote to Cordray to raise concerns about it. Keith Noreika, the acting Comptroller of the Currency, asked that the CFPB share data used to develop its arbitration rule, according to a letter dated Monday that was obtained by Bloomberg.

  “We would like to work with you and your staff to address the potential safety and soundness implications of the CFPB’s arbitration proposal,” Noreika said in the letter. “That is why I am requesting the CFPB share its data.”

  Noreika cited a section of the Dodd-Frank Act that gives the Financial Stability Oversight Council – a panel of regulators headed by the Treasury secretary – power to set aside any CFPB rule that can be shown to put the safety of the wider financial system at risk.

  Our new rule ensures that groups of people harmed by the same financial products can take action together. pic.twitter.com/rXYzHz67ea

  — consumerfinance.gov (@CFPB) July 10, 2017

  However, studying the fairness of arbitration clauses appears to be well within the bureau’s remit: Dodd-Frank says the CFPB "may prohibit or impose conditions or limitations on the use" of arbitration clauses if it determines that restricting such provisions "is in the public interest and for the protection of consumers,” according to the LA Times.

  During its study, the CFPB found that hundreds of millions of contracts include arbitration provisions and that companies have used the clauses to keep fights out of court almost two-thirds of the time. Very few consumers even consider bringing individual actions against financial-service providers in court or in arbitration.

  Despite the rule’s near-certain erasure, Christine Hines, legislative director for the National Assn. of Consumer Advocates, told the LA Times that the CFPB isn’t thumbing its nose at Republican lawmakers who have insisted for years that the agency is a rabid regulatory pit bull in need of either a very short leash or a trip to a farm.

  “The agency has to continue doing its job,” she said, “even though there are very anti-consumer people in power.”

  Other consumer advocates echoed that sentiment.

   

  “The rule will help to combat the culture of companies profiting from charging illegal fees and committing other crimes against their customers,” said Rohit Chopra, senior fellow at the Consumer Federation of America.

   

  Said Lisa Donner, executive director of Americans for Financial Reform: “The consumer agency’s rule will stop Wall Street and predatory lenders from ripping people off with impunity, and make markets fairer and safer for ordinary Americans.”

  The new rule will cover new agreements for products such as credit cards, auto loans, credit reports and even mobile phone services that provide third-party billing. Companies can still include arbitration clauses in contracts, but they must state that those can’t be used to stop individual consumers from joining class-action cases.

  According to Bloomberg, it is also possible that industry groups will sue to overturn the CFPB rule. Groups including the US Chamber of Commerce have said arbitration is a valuable tool to prevent frivolous, expensive lawsuits that often don’t do much to benefit borrowers. Meanwhile, consumer advocates say restricting arbitration clauses will deter bad actors and force companies to reconsider certain activities because consumers will be more inclined to sue.

  

  

• Paul Craig Roberts Warns Of "Ever More Official Lies" From The US Government

  Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

  The false reality constructed for Americans parallels perfectly the false reality constructed by Big Brother in George Orwells’ dystopian novel 1984.

  Consider the constant morphing of “the Muslim threat” from al-Qaeda to the Taliban, to al-Nusra, to ISIS to ISIL, to Daesh with a jump to Russia. All of a sudden 16 years of Middle East wars against “terrorists” and “dictators” have become a matter of standing up to Russia, the country most threatened by Muslim terrorism, and the country most capable of wiping the United States and its vassal empire off of the face of the earth.

  Domestically, Americans are assured that, thanks to the Federal Reserve’s policy of quantitative easing, that is, flooding the financial markets with newly printed money that has driven up the prices of stocks and bonds, America has enjoyed an economic recovery since June of 2009, which must be one of the longest recoveries in history despite the absence of growth in median real family incomes, despite the growth in real retail sales, despite the falling labor force participation rate, despite the lack of high value-added, high productivity, high wage jobs.

  The “recovery” is more than a mystery. It is a miracle. It exists only on fake news paper.

  According to CNN, an unreliable source for sure, Jennifer Tescher, president and CEO of the Center for Financial Services Innovation, reports that about half of Americans report that their living expenses are equal to or exceed their incomes. Among those aged 18 to 25 burdened by student loans, 54% say their debts are equal to or exceed their incomes. This means that half of the US population has ZERO discretionary income. So what is driving the recovery?

  Nothing. For half or more of the US population there is no discretionary income there with which to drive the economy.

  The older part of the population has no discretionary income either. For a decade there has been essentially zero interest on the savings of the elderly, and if you believe John Williams of shadowstats.com, which I do, the real interest rates have been zero and even negative as inflation is measured in a way designed to prevent Social Security cost of living adjustments.

  In other words, the American economy has been living on the shrinkage of the savings and living standards of its population.

  Last Friday’s employment report is just another lie from the government. The report says that the unemployment rate is 4.4% and that June employment increased by 222,000 jobs. A rosy picture. But as I have just demonstrated, there are no fundamentals to support it. It is just another US government lie like Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, Assad’s use of chemical weapons against his own people, Russian invasion of Ukraine, and so forth and so on.

  The rosy unemployment picture is totally contrived. The unemployment rate is 4.4% because discouraged workers who have not searched for a job in the past four weeks are not counted as unemployed.

  The BLS has a second measure of unemployment, known as U6, which is seldom reported by the presstitute financial media. According to this official measure the US unemployment rate is about double the reported rate.

  Why? the U6 rate counts discouraged workers who have been discouraged for less than one year.

  John Williams counts the long term discouraged workers (discouraged for more than one year) who formerly (before “reforms”) were counted officially. When the long term discouraged are counted, the US unemployment rate is in the 22-23 percent range. This is borne out by the clear fact that the labor force participation rate has been falling throughout the alleged “recovery.” Normally, labor force participation rates rise during economic recoveries.

  It is very easy for the government to report a low jobless rate when the government studiously avoids counting the unemployed.

  It is an extraordinary thing that although the US government itself reports that if even a small part of discouraged workers are counted as unemployed the unemployment rate is 8.6%, the presstitute financial media, a collection of professional liars, still reports, in the face of the government’s admission, that the unemployment rate as 4.4%.

  Now, let’s do what I have done month after month year after year. Let’s look at the jobs that the BLS alleges are being created. Remember, most of these alleged jobs are the product of the birth/death model that adds by assumption alone about 100,000 jobs per month. In other words, these jobs come out of a model, not from reality.

  Where are these reported jobs? They are where they always are in lowly paid domestic services. Health care and social assistance, about half of which is “ambulatory health care services,” provided 59,000 jobs. Leisure and hospitality provided 36,000 jobs of which 29,300 consist of waitresses and bartenders. Local government rose by 35,000. Manufacturing, once the backbone of the US economy, provided a measly 1,000 jobs.

  As I have emphasized for a decade or two, the US is devolving into a third world workforce where the only employment available is in lowly paid domestic service jobs that cannot be offshored and that do not pay enough to provide an independent existence. This is why 50% of 25-year olds live at home with their parents and why there are more Americans aged 24-34 living with parents than living independently.

  This is not the economic profile of a “superpower” that the idiot neoconservatives claim the US to be. The American economy that offshoring corporations and financialization have created is incapable of supporting the enormous US debt burden. It is only a matter of time and circumstance.

  I doubt that the United States can continue in the ranks of a first world economy. Americans have sat there sucking their thumbs while their “leaders” destroyed them.

  

  

• Former DOJ Official: Trump Jr. Didn't Commit a Crime

   

  Content originally published at iBankCoin.com

  Unfortunately, the smoking gun evidence of Trump Jr. meeting with a Russian lawyer isn’t a crime, according to Robert Driscoll, former Deputy Assistant Attorney General and Chief of Staff, Civil Rights Division, U.S. Department of Justice.

  This man’s integrity and mastery of the law cannot and will not be repudiated. All of you crackpot internet lawyers need to shut up and take those nooses that were made for Trump Jr. and save them for Comey. More on that in a minute.

  “I think people will make hay over the willingness to have the meeting. At the end of the day, it’s still very vague as to what statuary violations there would be. Collusion, in and of itself, isn’t a crime. There would need to be conspiracy to violate another law. And so this notion that there was a meeting, it may be politically unpalatable, but it’s certainly not a crime to say ‘ok I’ll listen.’ If you wanted to piece together a legal theory of criminal activity… I haven’t seen anything, other than esoteric campaign finance theories that don’t make a lot of sense.”

  On the matter of Comey, inquiring minds want to know why he was seen walking into the NY Times building on June 22nd, 2017. The official story was Comey’s attendance of nice charity event. But that easily could’ve been arranged by the Times as a cover to meet with him.

  
  Disgraced Former FBI Head, James Comey, heading into NY Times, most likely in tow with Rod Goldstone emails
   
  While everyone is fixated on the contents of the Trump Jr. emails, which of course are important, I think more energy should be directed into finding out who leaked them. After all, these leaks are far more serious than the Wikileaks that the democrats bemoan over. They were used in an effort to derail a reviled and corrupt Presidential candidate, whereas these leaks are meant to destroy and take down a sitting President. The implications of the latter could have profound effects, including loss of life, should the schemes bear any fruit.

  Enter Ben Wittes, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, a close friend of James Comey.

  Shortly after Comey got fired, Wittes told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that Comey ‘had a story to tell’ and that the President should be scared.

  I want you to pay attention to the following timeline, illustrated beautifully by Zerohedge.

  On May 16th, Wittes tweeted this, just before the contents of Comey’s memo contents were leaked to the NY Times.

  tick tick tick tick tick tick

  — Benjamin Wittes (@benjaminwittes) May 16, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  He did it again on May 18th, just before a story broke that said Comey asked AG Sessions to not leave him alone with Trump.

  By the twitching of my thumbs,
  Something wicked this way comes.

  tick tick tick tick tick tick tick

  — Benjamin Wittes (@benjaminwittes) May 18, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Then on June 23rd, just 1 day after Comey was seen entering the NY Times building, Wittes, aka Mr. Tick, tweeted this gem.

  TICK TICK TICK TICK TICK TICK pic.twitter.com/yuL0o0TBbT

  — Benjamin Wittes (@benjaminwittes) June 23, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Today, following Trump Jr. published the Goldstone emails, Wittes gloated with a “Boom” tweet.

  BOOM!https://t.co/Mx3PoWvUpE pic.twitter.com/NrcxYzyUNz

  — Benjamin Wittes (@benjaminwittes) July 11, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Perhaps he’s just a shitposter and this is all one big odd coincidence. Or, on the maniacal side, he’s a sociopath who cannot help but attract attention to himself by blurting out cryptic messages to his sycophantic fans regarding illegal intelligence leaks.

  Your call.

  

• The Most And Least Popular U.S. Senators

  According to a new poll by Morning Consult, the most popular senator in the U.S. is independent and once presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.

  As Statista's Martin Armstrong points out, voters in his state of Vermont have given him a net approval rating of 54 percent – 75 percent saying they approve of the job he is doing, 21 percent saying they disapprove.

  

  You will find more statistics at Statista

  At the other end of the scale is Republican Jeff Flake, who with 37 percent approval and 45 percent disapproval is sitting on a minus 8 percent net rate in Arizona.

  The Grand Canyon State is generally unhappy with its Senators – John McCain has a net rating of minus 4 percent.

  

  

• Welcome To Donald Trump's Very Own Big, Fat, Ugly Bubble

  Authored by David Stockman via The Daily Reckoning,

  The overwhelming source of what ails America economically is found in the Eccles Building. During the past three decades the Federal Reserve has fostered destructive financial mutations on Wall Street and Main Street.

  Bubble Finance policies have fueled an egregious financial engineering by the C-suites of corporate America. This bubble has skyrocketed to the tune of $15 trillion of stock buybacks, debt-fueled mergers deals and buyouts of the last decade.

  The Fed fostered a borrowing binge in the household sector after the 1980s. It eventually resulted in Peak Debt and $15 trillion in debilitating debts on the homes, cars, incomes and futures of what used to be middle class America.

  

  It also led politicians down the path of free lunch fiscal policy. By monetizing $4.2 trillion of Treasury and GSE debt during the last three decades, the Fed numbed the US economy from effects of crowding out and rising interest rates that would have come from soaring government deficits. This left the public sector impaled on Peak Debt.

  Ever since Alan Greenspan launched Bubble Finance in the fall of 1987, public debt outstanding has increased by nearly 9 times. Measured against national output, the Federal debt ratio has risen from 47% to 106% of GDP.

  

  These actions have stripped-mined balance sheets and cash flow from main street businesses. The Fed has stifled economic growth while delivering multi-trillion windfalls into the hands of a few thousand speculators on Wall Street.

  These rippling waves of financial mutation are why the US economy is visibly failing and why vast numbers of citizens in Flyover America voted for Donald Trump for president.

  Ironically, even as he stumbled to his victory on November 8, Trump barely recognized that the force behind all the economic failure that he railed against was the nation’s rogue central bank.

  Only when it occurred to him that Janet Yellen was doing everything possible to insure Clinton’s victory did he let loose an attack on the Fed. In his famous warning, he leveled that America was threatened by a big, fat, ugly bubble.

  Unfortunately, there was never even a hint of policy content behind this campaign statement. It said nothing of a coherent plan to liberate the American economy from the nation’s central bank.

  When Wall Street launched a phony Trump Reflation trade during the wee hours of election night, the Donald forgot all about the great bubble. In fact, he quickly embraced it as a sign that investors were enthusiastically embracing Trump-O-Nomics.

  No new arrival in the Oval Office was ever more mistaken. The gambling halls of Wall Street were a clear and present danger to his presidency, but Trump had only a small window of time for a counter-strategy.

  He needed to quickly puncture the bubble, not embrace it; and his first, second and third actions on the economic policy front should have been to clean house at the Fed. He should have named names and insured that the current Fed incumbents get the blame when the inflated stock and bond markets finally implode.

  All the tools were there. The Fed had three vacancies out of seven seats on the Board, and he could have cleared more by demanding the resignation of Janet Yellen and Stanley Fischer from day one.

  Instead, the Donald got off-track from the get-go with aiming his efforts against immigrants and refugees; nonsense about the Mexican border; and the hideously bloated Pentagon budget.

  While all of that was bad, the Donald’s fatal error was delegating economic policy to Wall Street errand boys. Trump handed economic power to Steve Mnuchin, Wilbur Ross and Goldman Sachs’ next-in-line gatekeeper to Washington, Gary Cohn.

  These characters are a slap-in-the-face to the populations in the rust belts which elected him.

  At the end of the day, the lines of demarcation are crystal clear. The Fed is Wall Street’s angel and Main Street’s enemy.

  The Donald has ended up handing the keys to economic policy to a cabal of Wall Street operators, who have wasted six months doing nothing on the central banking file.

  Mnuchin has even toyed publicly with the idea that Yellen might be reappointed because she has done a “good job”.

  You cannot talk about reappointing Janet Yellen and making the American economy great again in the same sentence.

  To do so is to voluntarily take ownership of the very big, fat ugly bubble that has brought so much hardship to Flyover America.

  Yesterday’s announcement of an appointment to one of the Fed vacancies leaves nothing to the imagination.

  After finally announcing a candidate for a job which will determine whether American capitalism can even survive, the Trump White House picked the absolute worst candidate available. Trump named Randall Quarles, a veritable creature of the Wall Street/Washington establishment, as his nominee for vice chairman for supervision at the Federal Reserve.Randy Quarles is the former Under Secretary of the Treasury in the George W. Bush Administration. Before founding Cynosure, Mr. Quarles was a longtime partner of The Carlyle Group, one of the world’s largest private equity firms.

  In addition to his record as a successful investor, he has long experience at the highest levels of the international financial architecture, having represented the U.S. for many years in the G7, G20, and Financial Stability Forum, and having served the U.S. as Executive Director of the International Monetary Fund, Executive Director of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and as a member of the Board of Directors of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation.

   

  Earlier in his career, Mr. Quarles spent many years working as a partner at the Wall Street law firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell, where he was the co-head of the firm’s Financial Institutions Group and advised on transactions that included a number of the largest financial sector mergers ever completed.

   

  Do not take comfort from the fact that Quarles mimics the Hoover Institution’s version of economics. The notion that it’s fine to intrude deeply into the mainspring of capitalism in the financial markets and distort all financial asset prices, but it should be done based on formulaic rules rather than “data-dependent” policy discretion.

  Quarles has professed an affinity for the Taylor Rule, a Rube Goldberg policy contraption invented by one of Milton Friedman’s disciples, and named for himself.

  It should be clear to anybody not drinking the Fed’s kool-aid, that it is impossible to accurately measure the Fed’s goals for unemployment and inflation on which the massive $4.4 trillion balance sheet is premised.

  How else do you account for the rampant gains in the cost of living plaguing Flyover America that the BLS neglects to even measure? This measure has caused those members of the Fed working in the Eccles Building to pursue even higher levels of inflation.

  During the first 14 years of this decade the Fed claimed price levels rose by only 31.7% when everything households in Flyover America were buying to survive had inflated by multiples – in some case 100-300%.

  How can there be “full-employment” at 4.4% unemployment claimed by the BLS and the Fed’s monetary central planners, when there are 103 million adults without jobs?

  

  What Randal Quarles brings to the table is a vision of anti-market monetary central planning that is far worse than what has already brought American capitalism to its knees.

  The Donald now owns the Bubble and has left his Presidency and the American economy squarely in harms’ way.

  There is no doubt that they are bubble blind and have no understanding of the rampant speculation and driven risk-taking their policies have unleashed in the casino. Even Barron’s last cover story made it clear that robo-machines, ETF’s and other forms of passive “investing,” have set the markets up for a thundering crash.

  Needless to say, the Fed is only now beginning to apprehend the train-wreck that lies dead ahead. Thus, the June FOMC minutes were grasping for something dimly worrisome:

  According to the minutes, some FOMC members acknowledged that “equity prices were high when judged against standard valuation measures.”  Some are even “concerned that subdued market volatility, coupled with a low equity premium, could lead to a buildup of risks to financial stability.”

  Do ya think?

  Does the Donald have a clue?

  

  

• 5 Charts That Explain Just How Screwed Your State Is

  We’ve spent a lot of time of late discussing the precarious financial positions of states like Illinois, Connecticut and New Jersey which each suffer from their own myriad of financial threats including massive budget deficits, monstrous unfunded pension liabilities, pending debt downgrades, etc.  In case you’ve missed those notes, here is a recap for your amusement:

  • Illinois State Official: “We Are In Massive Crisis Mode, This Is Not A False Alarm”
  • “From Horrific To Catastrophic”: Court Ruling Sends Illinois Into Financial Abyss
  • Connecticut Capital Hartford Downgraded To Junk By S&P
  • Connecticut Gov. Signs Exec. Order Taking Over Spending After State Fails To Pass Budget

  Of course, while Illinois gets all the bad press for being the undisputed champion of the “worst state in the union” honor, there are many other “up and comers” (yes, we’re looking at you California with your massive unfunded pension obligation) aggressively vying for the title.

  In fact, the Mercatus Center at George Mason University (GMU) has recently compiled a fairly comprehensive study, based on a number of objective financial metrics, ranking the 50 U.S. states according to their overall fiscal condition.  Among other things, GMU analyzed the following metrics:

  • Cash solvency.  Does a state have enough cash on hand to cover its short-term bills?
  • Budget solvency. Can a state cover its fiscal year spending with current revenues, or does it have a budget shortfall?
  • Long-run solvency. Can a state meet its long-term spending commitments? Will there be enough money to cushion it from economic shocks or other long-term fiscal risks?
  • Service-level solvency. How much “fiscal slack” does a state have to increase spending if citizens demand more services?
  • Trust fund solvency. How large are each state’s unfunded pension and healthcare liabilities?

  All of which resulted in the following ranking map. 

  Ironically (which, in case it weren’t brutally obvious, we mean in the most sarcastic way possible), the resulting map looks eerily similar to the 2016 electoral college map with the Democrat-leaning states on the bottom end of the “fiscal condition” ranking and Republican-leaning states making out a bit better, on a relative basis.

  

   

  Maybe it’s just coincidence…then again, maybe promising every entitlement under the sun to your residents without a clue as to how to finance those entitlements is a really bad idea over the long term…just a thought.

  But it’s not just the overall ranking where the conservative states seemed to fare better. 

  In terms of “cash solvency” (ability to meet short-term funding requirements), 8 of the 10 worst states were all blue states.

  

   

  Of course, the lack of near-term solvency plaguing America’s liberal states isn’t for a lack of trying to aggressively over tax their residents…

  

   

  Meanwhile, on net unfunded pension obligations (with liabilities discounted at the risk-free rate), the mix between red and blue states was more equal on the bottom end of the spectrum even though California’s massive $900 billion obligation is roughly 3x that of the next worst state of Illinois.  Even more staggering is the fact that the aggregate unfunded state pension liabilities total over $5 trillion…and that doesn’t count local and federal pension obligations.

  

   

  And the coup de grâce, when it comes to the ability of the states to meet their long-term spending obligations, literally 12 of the 13 worst states in the union are controlled by Democrats and voted Democrat in the 2016 presidential election…which is even more amazing when you realize that only 19 states voted Democrat in the 2016 election in aggregate.

  

   

  Perhaps it’s time to admit that liberal economic policies, which can be summarized as higher taxes and higher entitlement spending, may not be working all that well?

  

  

• Baltimore Citizens Urge "Nobody Kill Anybody" Ceasefire At The Start Of August

  Authored by Alastair Williamson via Squawker.org,

  Breaking story out of Baltimore City, Maryland, where a citizen ceasefire is being issued by the community for August 04, 2017 through august 06, 2017.

  

  The ‘no violence for 72-hours’ or ‘nobody kill anybody’ campaign comes at a time where the city is spiraling out of control. According to WJZ, “Baltimore struggles with a record high murder rate, and those in power are desperate for solutions”.

  

  In April, Baltimore’s Mayor asked Federal Agencies including the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and Federal Bureau of Investigation for help before entering the rough summer months.

  

  The Federalization of Baltimore is nothing new and perhaps it’s the new trend for America’s crumbling inner cities.

  

  Alastair Williamson describes the ceasefire in Baltimore City, Maryland, along with taking us on a journey through two recent gun violence scenes in the highest homicide rate area in the United States. The mainstream media is not allowed to show you this, because it destroys their narrative.

  

  

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• The Saker: The Syrian Powderkeg – "I'm Not Convinced There Is A US Strategy"

  Authored by Adam Taggart via PeakProsperity.com,

  Following up on our recent warning about the situation in Syria, Chris sits down this week for a conversation with The Saker, who writes extensively on geo-political and military matters. The Saker (a nom-de-plume), is a former intelligence expert with professional and personal insights into Russia and the Middle East.

  He shares our deep concern for the dangerously misdirected current state of US foreign and military policy, as well as the potentially lethal repercussions these threaten to have in the powderkeg that is Syria.

  In this week's podcast, The Saker provides an excellent distillation of the complex forces in play in Syria — as well as in the brewing friction between the US and Russia — and why the risk of nuclear war has now grown higher than it has been in decades:

  I'm not convinced there is a US strategy. I think there is a CIA strategy, a Pentagon strategy, a State Department strategy. There used to be a White House strategy. Right now, I am not even sure. We should go deeper into who is doing what inside the Pentagon and the military. I mean, there is chaos.

   

  There has been chaos since at least Obama because he was an extremely weak president. When a superpower like the United States is ruled by more or less an absent man in the White House, the agencies themselves start implementing their own policies. This is happening now under Trump, who was elected under specific platform and now is basically giving it up. There has been a coup against him by the neo-cons who basically got him under control. He wanted to drain the swamp, but the swamp basically drowned him.

   

  I'm not sure there's anything I can identify as a US policy. There is, however, an Israeli and a Saudi policy. And those two happen to be very, very closely aligned. Because those two, first of all, are extremely powerful as we know, inside the United States. But not only inside the United States but they are also objectively aligned in the region, which is very counter intuitive. It's natural to wonder: What would the Saudi Wahhabis have in common with the Israelis? What they have in common is an immense fear of Iran, first and foremost. And generally, the Saudis and the Israelis have the same exact interest for the Arab Muslim world, which is to keep it in chaos and weak. That allows them to rule it. It's that simple(…)

   

  [Provoking Russia in Syria] is completely nuts. And it is due to that fact that I 'm convinced the neocons are not American patriots. They have their ideology. They have their agenda. They are just like parasites sitting in the United States and using that country for their own petty ideological interests. Which is the same thing the Saudis have been doing, by the way. Our government has been hijacked, and that's the real problem.

   

  By patriot, I simply mean a person who loves his country. Through that lens, Americans should immediately see that Russia and the United States have no conflict. There's nothing to fight over and a great deal to work together with. This is something that the neocons do not want. And that's why they basically crushed Trump. That is why both the Democratic party and the Republican party don't let the people who are for a non-aggressive foreign policy — like someone like Ron Paul — get anywhere near power. If you look at the Republican and Democratic national committees they always take away money from these candidates – even if means losing a Congressional seat. There is a real problem here in the United States. And that problem could end up with international nuclear war.

  Click the play button below to listen to Chris' interview with The Saker (45m:51s).

  

  

• German Minister Compares Left-Wing Extremists To "Despicable Islamic Terrorists"

  The violent riots that engulfed the city of Hamburg during the G20 summit have prompted some deep soul-searching among ordinary Germans while provoking a wave of indignation among German politicians, who demanded a radical change of approach toward violent protests, as well as to left-wing extremism. Speaking to Bild, Germany’s Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said “Germany’s image in the international community has been severely damaged due to the incidents in Hamburg” following three nights of violent clashes between the left-wing radicals and police in the German northern port city that hosted the G20 summit.

  

  “All alleged political motives for this orgy of violence are full of deceit and should just serve as a disguise for the real motive of the offenders that [came] from all parts of Europe: violence in itself,” Gabriel blasted, perhaps not knowing that NYC Mayor de Blasio flew to Hamburg with the explicit “noble” intention of encouraging said group of protesters.

  The minister also demanded the creation of an EU-wide special investigative committee that would launch an inquiry against all those involved in the violent riots in Hamburg. “A state governed by the rule of law must now demonstrate an ability to defend itself.”

  Echoing Gabriel, Germany’s Justice Minister Heiko Maas also spoke about the necessity of an EU-wide response to outbreaks of left-wing extremism. He particularly demanded the establishment of the European information databank on extremists as well as more intensive exchange of data on extremists committing violent crimes. “We have faced a new form of violence, to which we should respond with enhanced cooperation in fighting extremists,” Maas told the German media on Monday in Berlin. He also vowed to employ a tougher approach toward violent extremists’ supporters. “Those, who support rampant violence will also have to stand trial,” he said, as cited by the Der Tagesspiegel daily.

  Maas told German broadcaster NDR he backed creation of a “database of left-wing extremists”, but said it could take a long time to set up. In the meantime, countries should at least exchange data about those convicted of violent acts, he said.

  Also on Monday, German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere compared the left-wing rioters in Hamburg to neo-nazis and islamic terrorists. “The brutality with which extremely violent anarchists have proceeded in Hamburg since Thursday is unfathomable and scandalous,” de Maiziere told reporters. “Those were not demonstrators. Those were violent and felonious radicals,” the minister said during a press conference on Monday, adding that those who staged violent riots in Hamburg were “despicable, violent extremists just like neo-Nazis and Islamist terrorists.” He added that people who had thrown paving slabs from rooftops had essentially been “preparing attempted murder”.

  He also echoed Gabriel’s words, saying that they have no right to use any political motives to justify their actions and expressed his hope that the German courts would pass “tough sentences” upon them. He went on to say that summits similar to the G20 would continue to be hosted in major German cities, despite any threats of violence from various extremists. “Any other approach would be a capitulation of the law-bound state,” the minister added.

  Martin Schulz, the Social Democrat (SPD) challenger to Chancellor Angela Merkel in Germany’s national election in September, said the militants had acted like terrorists. He said the “marauding gangs” could not claim to have any political legitimacy for their actions, adding: “It had the characteristics of terrorism.”

  “Such small-minded skirmishes are the business of people who took a whole city hostage for their dim-wittedness in an almost terrorist manner,” said Schulz, whose party is trailing Merkel’s conservatives in the opinion polls.

  * * *

  There were also mutual accusations among Germany’s political parties, as many politicians focused specifically on the flaws of the existing approach towards left-wing extremism and violence in Germany by saying that this problem has long been neglected by the authorities.

  The head of the Free Democratic Party (FDP), Christian Lindner, did not go quite as far as Maas’ suggestion of a database of left-wing extremists, but demanded that extremists’ activities be “much more closely monitored” by the German domestic security service, the BfV, which is usually tasked with dealing with terrorist activities or far-right extremists.  A member of the presidium of the German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, Jens Spahn, told Bild on Sunday that “the extent of left-wing extremism in Germany has been downplayed for years.”

  If those were neo-Nazis who reduced Hamburg to “wreckage and ashes,” the public indignation would be rightfully big, he said, adding that “the left-wing fascists with their hatred and violence need just the same clear response.”

  The politician also went further, accusing the Social Democrats, Greens and Left parties of deliberately downplaying the left-wing violence and “closing their eyes” to it. His words were echoed by CDU Secretary General Peter Tauber, who told Bild that “nobody would come to the idea of just tolerating far-right extremist centers” while, “in case of the left-wing extremist centers such as Rigaer Strasse in Berlin or the Rote Flora in Hamburg, people are often too reserved.”

  “That must change,” Tauber added.

  His words were echoed by Stephan Mayer, an MP from the CDU’s ally, the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) party, who said that the city authorities in Berlin and Hamburg “should no longer tolerate squatting by left-wing extremists and lawless zones in Rigaer Strasse and the Rote Flora.” Both places were squatted by left-wing groups after being abandoned years ago. Similar ideas were expressed by the head of the Federal Chancellor’s Office, Peter Altmaier, who said that the closure of the left-wing extremists’ centers would be a “test” for Germany.

  “We should not tolerate any lawless zones,” he said, adding that the left-wing extremists consistently spread the idea that “damage to property is not that bad.” He went on to say that tolerating such ideas is a “grave mistake.”

  In his Twitter post, Altmaier also compared what he called “repulsive extreme terror” in Hamburg to terror from right-wing extremists and Islamists. He also thanked Hamburg police for its efforts aimed at containing the rioters.

  Linksextremer Terror in Hamburg war widerwärtig und so schlimm wie Terror von Rechtsextremen und Islamisten. Danke Polizei. Danke Hamburg.

  — Peter Altmaier (@peteraltmaier) July 8, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  * * *

  Police said almost 500 officers were injured during the protests, with 186 people arrested and 225 taken into custody.

  As Reuters reports, some commentators have criticized Merkel’s choice of Hamburg, a seaport with a strong radical leftist tradition, to host the meeting, saying her desire to demonstrate her commitment to freedom of speech had backfired.

  To be sure, the chancellor also condemned the violence in her speech at the summit.

  “I sharply condemn the rampant violence and unrestrained brutality the police was facing over and over again during the G20 summit,” she said at that time, adding that “there is not the slightest justification for looting, arson and brutal attacks.”

  Merkel promised compensation to those who had property damaged. De Maiziere said he expected judicial authorities to pass tough sentences on the militants and added that breaching the peace could result in prison sentences lasting several years.

  

  

• Globalism & Pesticides Are Behind Massive Honeybee Die-Off, Bayer Study Confirms

  Authored by Michael Hart and StockBoardAsset via StockBoardAsset.com,

  Despite Big Agriculture claiming for years that their pesticides only kill pests, a report published in late June in the Journal Science proved what many people have suspected for years: the type of pesticides that Bayer pioneered, known as neonicotinoids, are responsible for diminishing numbers of honeybees.

  “Two studies, conducted on different crops and on two continents … find that bees near corn crops are exposed to neonicotinoids for 3 to 4 months via nontarget pollen, resulting in decreased survival and immune responses, especially when co-exposed to a commonly used agrochemical fungicide.” the report said.

  The studies even found neonicotinoid residue inside of hives where no chemicals had been used nearby. The study also noted that the presence of these insecticide residues was correlated with fewer queen bees in the hives and fewer egg cells in solitary bees nests.

  This comes on the heels of the United States placing the rusty patched bumblebee on the endangered species list earlier this year.

  

  This is especially troubling, because bees are responsible for pollinating nearly 75 percent of all crops grown for human and animal consumption worldwide.

  

  And US honeybee colonies have been on a steady decline for the last four decades, as this chart illustrates:

  

  However, perhaps the major contributing factor to not only the threats facing the honeybee but also many other species of plants and animals is the threat of globalization. A 2012 report in the journal Nature noted the following:

  “Here we show that a significant number of species are threatened as a result of international trade along complex routes, and that, in particular, consumers in developed countries cause threats to species through their demand of commodities that are ultimately produced in developing countries. We linked 25,000 Animalia species threat records from the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List to more than 15,000 commodities produced in 187 countries and evaluated more than 5 billion supply chains in terms of their biodiversity impacts. Excluding invasive species, we found that 30% of global species threats are due to international trade.”

  

  This map shows the species threat hotspots caused by US consumption. The darker the color, the greater the threat caused by the consumption. The magenta color represents terrestrial species, while the blue represents marine species.
  Credit: Daniel Moran and Keiichiro Kanemoto

  While the Donald Trump presidency has placed the spotlight on the ways in which globalist policies have harmed the economies of the US as well as many other countries in the developed world, we tend to overlook the ways in which the demand for cheaper and more goods from the developing world harm our environment.  Indeed, the Trump era has ushered in a demand not only for political decentralization, but also for the decentralization of our media, our currencies, and now our food supply as the damage of agricultural centralization becomes apparent. Our demand for 99 cent hamburgers has taken us to the edge of total ecological collapse, and at this point it is unclear if the damage is irreversable.

  

  An interesting development over the last few years has seen large cities in the US most acutely ravaged by globalist policies, such as Detroit and Baltimore, turning derilect buildings within the city into multiacre urban farms as a solution to growing food insecurity within these deindustrialized urban centers. Urban flight from these cities over the years has facilitated the use of large swaths of the city to satiate demand for locally produced fresh produce, and has led to the growth of many year-round farmers markets that have helped to increase food security in these areas while decreasing dependence on these global agribusiness cartels. It seems that some of the Districts in our Hunger Games society are attempting to gain independence from the Capital.

  

  Urban farms, such as this one in Baltimore, have increased food security in cities that have been hit hard by globalism and free trade.

  Certainly, as we have noted before in previous columns, we are living in an era where massive change is taking place in almost every sphere of human activity. Right now is the critical juncture in which we will decide whether power will be returned to the people, or will be further consolidated into the hands of those who wish to micromanage every aspect of the human and natural world for their own private gain. The fight for control over the food supply is just one of many battlegrounds in this war for the future of the planet and our lives. Growing public awareness about the dangers of these pesticides as well as GMOs, and an increased demand for locally produced organic agriculture are signs that the public is waking up and understanding the great peril that agricultural centralization poses to not only our health, but the health and wellbeing of our entire planet.

  

  

• Here's How (Rich & Poor) Americans Spend Their Time

  Today’s visualization comes from data scientist Henrik Lindberg, and it shows America’s favorite past-times based on the participation of people in different income brackets.

  It uses data from the American Time Use Survey that is produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) to break down these activities.

  

  Courtesy of: Visual Capitalist

   

  COMMON INTERESTS

  As Visual Capitalist's Jeff Desjardins notes, while activities are all over the map, it appears that some past-times are more common across all income groups.

  Team sports and solo pursuits both are represented well in the center. In fact, reading for personal interest, dancing, computer use, hunting, hiking, walking, playing basketball, or playing baseball can all be found in the middle of the spectrum, appealing to Americans in every income group.

  Closer to the top and bottom of the visualization, however, we see where income groups diverge in how they spend their time. It’s probably not surprising to see that people with higher incomes spend more time golfing, playing racket sports, attending performing arts, and doing yoga than average. On the flipside, lower income Americans spend more time watching television, listening to the radio, and listening to/playing music.

  CURIOUS ANOMALIES

  Every data set has its own peculiarities. Sometimes these things can be explained, and sometimes they are just aberrations created as a result of how data was collected (i.e. how a survey was worded, bias, or some other error).

  Here are some of the stranger anomalies that appear in this data set. We won’t attempt to explain them here, but feel free to speculate in the comments section:

  • Higher income Americans disproportionately enjoy softball – while baseball has more universal appeal across income groups.
  • While activities like boating are typically associated with higher income levels, the activity of running is generally not. Yet, running is disproportionately enjoyed by higher income Americans, according to this survey.
  • Despite playing baseball being fairly universal across the spectrum, watching baseball skews higher income.
  • Writing for personal interest has an interesting distribution: it is enjoyed disproportionately by poorer and richer Americans, but is underrepresented in the middle class.

  Can you find anything else that stands out as being an anomaly?

  

  

• Former Investor Says Shkreli Reminded Him Of "Rain Man"

  The prosecution in the trial of former Turing Pharmaceuticals CEO Martin Shkreli called more investors to testify about alleged malfeasance by Shkreli during his time as a hedge-fund manager on Monday. And while two witnesses echoed earlier descriptions of Shkreli being evasive when investors asked for their money, both ultimately admitted that they were paid back with interest.

  One corroborated an earlier witness’s claim that Shkreli became evasive when asked to return clients’ money, stalling for more than a year before making investors whole with questionable payouts from Retrophin, the pharmaceutical company he co-founded, as well as grants of Retrophin stock, which is now worth $20 a share.

  Another played into the portrayal of Shkreli that defense attorney Benjamin Brafman has sought to sell to the jury: That any liberties taken by Shkreli were ultimately made in good faith, but his clients’ odd behavior and personality quirks at times caused friction between him and his clients.

  

  Schuyler Marshall, chairman of the board of the real estate company Rosewood Corp, said the former drug company executive reminded him of Dustin Hoffman's autistic character in the movie "Rain Man," according to Reuters. Though Marshall added under cross-examination by Shkreli's lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, that he was not claiming Shkreli was autistic.

  "'The reference here was that this was just an intensely focused, bright guy who knew his stuff,'" Marshall told jurors. Hoffman's character in the 1988 film is an autistic savant with exceptional mental abilities but difficulty relating to other people.

   

  Like other investors who have testified in the trial, Marshall, who invested more than $200,000 in MSMB Capital, said that while Shkreli misled him about the fund's operations, he did not lose money. At one point, Marshall testified, he even used the phrase "no harm, no foul" in a communication with Shkreli.

   

  'He paid back my investment and then some,' Marshall said.”

  Shkreli is being tried on eight counts of securities fraud and wire fraud related to his time running two hedge funds, MSMB Capital and MSMB Healthcare, and a pharmaceutical company he founded called Retrophin. In particular, Shkreli has been accused of falsifying investor statements, backdating documents and misleading investors about his record as a fund manager. He also allegedly misstated how much money was in the funds, according to prosecutor G. Karthik Srinivasan, who, in his opening statement, accused Shkreli of being a “con man” who managed to convince his investors that he was “a Wall Street genius.”

  Last week, judge Kiyo Matsumoto hit Shkreli with a partial gag order, prohibiting him from talking about his case in or around the Brooklyn courthouse after he went on a rant to reporters gathered there last week. The order leaves him free to speak with journalists and conduct his marathon livestreams on YouTube.  

  Another witness on Monday, the seventh day of a trial that’s expected to last for as long as six weeks, was somewhat less charitable.

  Richard Kocher, 65, told a Brooklyn federal jury Monday that his construction business saw a deal fall apart while he begged Shkreli to return his investments in a hedge fund, but the former pharmaceutical executive told him he was too busy running his new drug company, according to Bloomberg.

  Kocher told the Brooklyn jury that, in one of his first forays into the hedge fund world in early 2012, he put $100,000 into Shkreli’s fund because he was assured investors could get their money back anytime. In May 2012, Kocher said he bailed out the fund, putting in another $100,000 after one of Shkreli’s employees told him it had a shortfall. Shkreli announced in September of 2012 he was closing his funds to focus on Retrophin Inc., but promising customers a full refund or shares in the startup pharmaceutical company.

   

  Kocher pleaded for his money for five months but said he got a “run around” and Shkreli only offered 23,654 shares of Retrophin stock, which at the time he couldn’t sell.

  “When you were in trouble and needed $100,000, I wired it over to you the next day,” Kocher wrote Shkreli in a March 2013 email. “I expect to get, in addition to this (insulting) untradable stock” my money back, he wrote.

  However, Kocher too was eventually paid back…with interest. Though he says it's hard to say if he ultimately came out ahead, given the opportunity costs.

  “Shkreli eventually returned Kocher’s investments. Kocher also sold the Retrophin stock, after several years, making about $350,000 in total profit. But Kocher said he had to pay a lawyer, lost a business deal and lost time from his business, so he’s not sure if he ended up ahead.”

  If convicted, Shkreli could face up to 20 years in prison. He has repeatedly proclaimed his innocence.
   

  

  

• Pissy Rant About IPO Prices

  From the Slope of Hope: OK, time to unload………

  It is Monday evening, and ever since the closing bell, I’ve been seeing story after story about how that piece-of-shit company SNAP is now below its IPO price. Huge publications – – hundreds of times larger than our beloved Slope – – are making hay out of this big event, with such headlines as this:

  

  Now, there’s no reason to single out TechCrunch in particular, but I’ll do it all the same. As you can see, I’ve highlighted a particular sentence, which seems to assert, now that the closing price is below the IPO price (by all of a penny……..) that, at last, public investors at at last lost money on this. In other words, since it came public at $17, and has been trading above it ever since, everyone has been just fine and dandy until now.

  Let me share my first reaction to this: AIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. Oh, and I’ll add ARRRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!

  OK, moving on………..

  The young woman who wrote the story appears to be well-credentialed – – certainly far more than me – – as evidenced by her profile (and, let’s face it, her glasses):

  

  But why……..WHY………does the business press continue to press forward this canard that the “public” all bought in at the IPO price?

  Let’s take the chart of SNAP as the obvious example. Here’s the chart of its entire life as a public firm:

  

  Let’s all get this nice and perfectly clear: the IPO price doesn’t necessarily have ANYTHING to do with what the public pays. NOTHING! Nada! Zilch!

  The first public investors in SNAP paid $24 per share, not $17. That was the opening price on its first day of launch. The investment banks were delighted, of course, because they were, in fact, the ones who enjoyed the $17 price (a little less, but we’ll keep this simple) and got to sell it to the public for whatever the public was willing to pay.

  So SNAP had a good first day (high of $26.05) and a good second day (high of $29.44).

  And that, my friends, was the end of the SNAP success story. From then on, it sucked whale, and since that time, it has lost nearly HALF its value in a little over four months.

  So ever since the SECOND DAY of the company’s public existence, this company has been a money loser for “investors”. The losing didn’t start just today. It started almost immediately after the public offering! And yet the web is littered with ludicrous nonsense like this:

  

  The “return from IPO” was never 60% (except for the investment bankers). We’re talking about the PUBLIC here, right? The greatest return was actually 25% for the lucky bastard (if any, which I doubt) that bought at the open and sold at exactly the next day’s high.

  So I hope I’ve made my point. My own view, as I’ve expressed countless times on Slope, is that SNAP is heading for the single digits, and it might not even exist as a public entity in a couple of years. I was very ambivalent about SNAP at first, but once I saw this cover story on Time in March, I knew they were doomed beyond redemption. The “genius” of Snapchat my ass……..

  

  

• "There Is A Dark Side To Our Species" This Is What People Fear The Most In A Societal Collapse…

  Authored by Joshua Krause via ReadyNutrition.com,

  

  There are a lot of reasons why people prep for disasters, but there’s one reason that’s far more popular than the others. What people fear most when they think about what would happen if society collapsed, isn’t hunger, disease, or exposure. They fear what other people might do to them when the chips are down. They worry that members of their community might hurt or kill them to survive.

  And though most preppers won’t admit it, I think most of us fear what we might be capable of in a bad situation. We don’t have to find out if we have enough food stocked up in our pantries.

  However, it should be noted that there is an alternate view on what most people will do if society collapses. For historians who study disasters and social collapse, there is hope that people won’t automatically turn into savages if the grid goes down. A writer for Slate recently interviewed several experts on this topic, and here’s what they had to say:

  Can this ray of sunshine be trusted? I’d love to believe it can be. I asked Scott Knowles, a historian of disaster, what historians and sociologists who study collapses and disasters have to say. His answer: It depends. “We help, and also we don’t,” Knowles said in an email to me.

   

  Over the years, academic researchers have gone back and forth on the question. “This whole area of work really got going in the Cold War when defense planners wanted to model post-[nuclear] attack scenarios,” Knowles wrote. The Disaster Research Center at Ohio State University (which has since moved to the University of Delaware) “did the work over years to model community response, and they pushed back strongly on the idea of social collapse—they found instead too much of the opposite—people converge on a disaster scene!”

  And there are countless examples of people being altruistic and coming together during disasters; perhaps even more so than examples of people turning on each other.

  In a 1961 paper (unpublished until 1996), sociologist Charles Fritz laid out the case for this “contrary perspective” that disasters and other majorly stressful events don’t necessarily result in social breakdown and trauma.

   

  Fritz, who had begun his observations of disasters while stationed in Britain during the Blitz, reported that during that time he saw “a nation of gloriously happy people, enjoying life to the fullest, exhibiting a sense of gaiety and love of life that was truly remarkable,” with Britons reaching beyond class distinctions, sharing supplies, and talking to people they had never spoken with before.

   

  Marshaling sociological and historical evidence, Fritz recounts example after example of people pulling together in the middle of tragedy: black and white police and militia members uniting to maintain order during the yellow fever epidemic in Memphis in 1878; enemies forgetting old quarrels during the German bombing of Krakow in World War II; community members reporting strengthened personal relationships with neighbors after the White County, Arkansas, tornado of 1952.

   

  In general, researchers agree that people will try to form alliances and help each other.

  This shouldn’t come as a surprise. If humans didn’t have an inclination towards supporting each other, then we wouldn’t have a sophisticated society to begin with.

  However, I think we all know that there is a dark side to our species as well, and many of the examples provided by the author don’t reflect that. It is true that we are a social species whose members would rather work together to build a society, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t disasters which could easily bring out the worst in us.

  The best example that comes to my mind, is the Siege of Leningrad during World War Two. For more than two years, the city was encircled by German forces who cut off all supplies to the city. This led to the deaths of more than a million civilians, mainly due to starvation. And during that time there were thousands of people who were arrested for murdering others for their ration cards, or killing strangers and family members before cannibalizing them. And in most cases, these people were found to have no criminal records when they were caught.

  Point being, there are disasters that will drive ordinary people to commit heinous crimes, and there’s a big difference between those incidents, and the disasters that don’t lead to massive crime waves. In most cases, a destructive event only leads to temporary disruptions to the supply of food, medicine and fuel. People are happy to work together, knowing that everything will return to normal in short order.

  But on the rare occasion that a disaster disrupts the flow of goods and energy for months or years at a time, a significant percentage of the population will turn on their neighbors to survive. There’s a direct relationship between how desperate people are, and how far they’re willing to abandon their morality to keep themselves and their family fed, and that’s something that preppers should never forget.

   

  

  

• Packaged-Goods Companies Slash Marketing Spending As Amazon Makes Sales "All About Price"

  Amazon’s dominance of all things retail-related in the US is starting to effect on how packaged goods are marketed: Big Brands are starting to give up on expensive advertising campaigns because customers no longer see the value in expert branding. Now, thanks to Jeff Bezos and his algorithms, they're fixated at finding the lowest price available.

  According to MarketWatch, as Amazon and Wal-Mart make bigger pushes into the packaged-goods categories, brand names are spending less on marketing and backing away from their original models, James Cakmak, an analyst at Monness, Crespi, Hardt wrote in a Monday note. The $800 billion consumer packaged-goods category includes name-brand detergents, foods and personal care items, with large companies such as PepsiCo Inc., Johnson & JNJ and Mondelez International Inc.

  

  “We see these companies starting to give up, and that’s a bad thing for the industry, consumers and the country,” Cakmak said.

  Amazon’s Prime Service, which attracted millions of customers by offering two-day shipping, comprehensive music and movie libraries, monthly deals and even discounts to customers on government assistance. According to estimates from Morningstar, nearly 79 million U.S. households now have an Amazon Prime membership, up from around 66 million at the end of last year – a number that rivals the total cable subscribers in the US.

  

  In the past, packaged-goods companies were able to dominate their sector by controlling how the goods were distributed and placed on the shelf at retail stores. With prime presentation in stores, the companies would spend heavily on marketing, which made up 20% to 25% of their budgets, to influence consumers’ buying decisions.

  Now, instead of fighting for shelf space, Cakmak says the companies appear to be scaling back spending. In his quarterly check with major advertising agencies, he found that consumer packaged-goods companies were spending less on marketing. More worrying were reports that these companies were more focused on protecting the bottom line, rather than investing in growth and new innovative strategies to combat the online models.

  Packaged-goods spending is also suffering as Americans face stagnant wage growth and rampant inflation in housing, health care and tuition costs.

  Cakmak says this trend will only intensify with Amazon leading this change as it increases its push into food and other goods, with its own private label brands and its recent bid for Whole Foods Market Inc. Wal-Mart is also playing a part, as it has shifted more into e-commerce with its acquisition of Jet.com in August 2016 and its discounts for online orders.

  With their fixation on price, Amazon and Wal-Mart have commodified packaged goods, transforming the market into one that’s dependent more on pricing than on brand reputation.

  “Now it’s all about price, especially as Amazon and Wal-Mart fight on a race to the bottom,” Cakmak wrote.

  Let the deflationary race-to-the-bottom price wars begin.
   

  

  

• Confiscation – The Second Half Of The Government's Pincer

  Authord by Jeff Thomas via InternationalMan.com,

  “Welcome to America, where your assets are literally the government’s business, and freedom is anything but free.”—Claire Bernish, The Free Thought Project

  For some time, I’ve been forewarning readers that, as the governments of the former “free” world unravel, they’ll introduce capital controls, both to continue to fund their failing policies and to limit the freedom of their citizenries.

  I’ve envisioned this as a “pincer” of sorts.

  First, it would be necessary to institute laws that allow authorities to confiscate the assets of anyone whom they “suspected” of a crime. (It’s essential to understand that an actual arrest is unnecessary, as that would allow the individual the opportunity to prove his innocence in a trial. No trial means he can never regain the confiscated assets.)

   

  The second half of the pincer would be a law requiring the reporting of assets – a detailed declaration of all monetary holdings. (Of course, it would not be possible to keep such reporting thoroughly up to date, as it would be ever-changing. This would ensure virtually continual guilt through the failure to report.)

  Civil Asset Forfeiture

  In observing the US, we’re witnessing the completion of the pincer. The first half has been in place for some time, under civil asset forfeiture laws. It’s been described as a process in which law enforcement officers take assets from persons suspected of involvement with crime or illegal activity without necessarily charging the owners with wrongdoing.

  That concept may seem odd to the reader, as, surely, if someone had committed a crime, the authorities would wish to charge him, then see to it that he was tried in court, so that he could be punished for his transgressions.

  But what if the individual in question was not, in the traditional sense, a criminal; that a law had been written that would effectively define virtually all citizens as criminals? And what if the objective were not to prosecute offenders, but simply to rob them of their possessions?

  In this light, civil asset forfeiture makes complete sense. First, the authorities decide that they want to take what they desire from others. Then they target an individual who possesses desired assets (i.e., home, car, business, bank accounts, wealth in a safe deposit box, etc.). They then detain the individual, state that he’s suspected of a crime (suspected drug dealer? Terrorist sympathiser? Possible tax cheat?) and seize his assets.

  In this scenario, the authorities are actually advantaged by not charging the individual. He has no recourse, as he can’t demand his day in court for a charge that hasn’t been laid against him. Therefore, he can’t regain his assets, and they become the property of the authorities.

  Although civil asset forfeiture never seems to appear on the evening news, it’s not because it’s a minor operation. Indeed, the total annual take now exceeds that of the annual total for burglaries by traditional criminals (those who rob others without a badge).

  Declaration of Assets

  Considering the severity of the above, it would be difficult to imagine that civil asset forfeiture laws are only half of the pincer, yet that’s exactly the case.

  The other half is Senate Bill 1241, which is intended “to improve the prohibitions on money laundering, and for other purposes.” It requires that anyone travelling beyond US borders declare his assets in writing and in detail, plus provide ongoing access to all accounts held by the individual. In essence, it’s providing the government with a license to track your cash, cryptocurrencies, and other assets in perpetuity. Should, at any point, your declaration come into question as to its accuracy, the entirety of those assets could be seized, not just those that were unreported. In addition, you could face a prison sentence of up to five years.

  The bill also seeks to curtail the individual’s right to travel outside the US. Whilst this may seem to be a less significant loss, as compared to the above, it serves the purpose of making it impossible for the individual to escape the clutches of his government by relocating to another country. He is, in effect, a trapped rat.

  In addition, he’s a trapped rat who, having lost his assets to arbitrary confiscation, has been crippled economically. He can no longer defend himself, as he no longer has the means to pay an attorney.

  How This Is Likely to Play Out

  At present, asset confiscation is undertaken largely at a local level. Police go after many people at random. However, they also have the ability to target specific individuals that they know of, either for personal reasons or because they feel the haul would be substantial. Senate Bill 1241 places the robberies on a national level. It provides a database by which authorities can review possible targets, based upon their assets. It also allows the authorities the opportunity to go after those people who behaved in a manner deemed unacceptable to authorities.

  For example, a national repository of information would allow authorities to target specific individuals who questioned the government or sought to live independently of governmental controls. Both Aldous Huxley and George Orwell described this concept as being central to the assurance that all citizens would be fully compliant with their rulers’ edicts, 100% of the time. One deviation from acceptable behaviour could result in a total loss of assets and freedom.

  It would work like this: Like the FATCA legislation in the US, the premise is:

  1. An individual is required to provide a detailed report of his wealth (however small).

  2. The regulatory body chooses to regard the report as “in error,” or “incomplete.”

  3. The law then allows all the assets to be confiscated, including those portions that were correctly reported.

  Of course, we’d like to think that no reasonable government would abuse power in this way. Unfortunately, history shows that any government that issues a license to itself to rob its citizenry, invariably uses (and abuses) that license.

  The beauty of such a system is that it need not be enforced often. Once people understand that, at any moment, they could lose everything and have no recourse whatsoever, they learn to keep their heads down and be compliant.

  From that point on, fear of government is a constant, and the population is effectively under house arrest.

  In the late eighteenth century, American founding father Thomas Jefferson reportedly stated, “When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.”

  When a country degrades to the point that the government can grip its people in the pincers of arbitrary loss of assets, with no chance of recompense through the justice system, it’s safe to say that people can plan on henceforth living in fear.

  *  *  *

  The pincer’s grip grows tighter by the day… Unfortunately, the coming global economic crisis will only make the bankrupt US government a more aggressive thief. If you haven’t taken steps to protect your money, it’s almost too late. This is a frightening truth. But if you act now, you can still do something about it. New York Times best-selling author Doug Casey and his team can show you concrete ways to protect your financial freedom. Click here for the details.

  

  

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• Saudi King To Visit Russia: Bringing Relationship To New Phase

  Authored by Alex Gorka via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

  

  Much has been said about the much vaunted trip of US President Donald Trump to Saudi Arabia where he was lavished with extravagant royal pomp. The $110 billion arms deal was signed and the plans to create an Arab NATO set the agenda. The visit – the president’s first foreign trip – was described as a major step to boost the US clout in the Middle East but the days when the region was Washington’s exclusive sphere of influence are gone.

  The Kingdom has launched an ambitious Vision 2030 program to start a new chapter in its history, turning itself from a US dependent oil exporter to a regional powerhouse with diversified economy, gradually opening the doors to the whole world. Investment flows are to come from different directions with money put into different baskets. Saudi Arabia is intensifying its diplomatic efforts to change its perception to start a new era. Russia is viewed as a partner in the far-reaching plans.

  The blossoming relationship between Russia and Saudi Arabia signals yet another sea change in the ever-evolving global order. King Salman is to become the first Saudi monarch to visit Russia. The trip is expected this month with talks on the way to specify the date. The visit acquires special importance as the King has taken a decision not to attend the July 7-8 summit of the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany.

  On May 30, President Putin welcomed then Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the Kremlin and both men said they would deepen cooperation in oil and work on narrowing their differences over Syria. The visit came on the heels of US President Donald Trump’s historic visit to Riyadh.

  Prince Mohammed bin Salman was recently appointed to the position of Crown Prince and heir to King Salman of Saudi Arabia. This appointment bodes well for the Russia-Saudi relations. The crown prince has overseen the ties with Moscow and has visited Russia many times. Russian President Vladimir Putin has called him a «very reliable partner with whom you can reach agreements, and be certain that those agreements will be honored».

  Russia and Saudi Arabia might launch joint projects in petrochemical industry, in the field of renewable energy and liquefied natural gas (LNG) technologies among others. The Russia-Saudi Arabia brokered and recently extended oil output cut agreement between OPEC and non-OPEC members has become the flagship symbol of cooperation.

  On June 2, Russia's largest oil producer, Rosneft, and the Kingdom’s national oil company Aramco announced that they would look into joint investments in Saudi Arabia. The announcement was made after Rosneft head Igor Sechin and Saudi Aramco Chief Amin Nasser had held their first ever formal, scheduled meeting on May 30, going beyond brief encounters at international oil events.

  The parties discussed possible ways of cooperating in Asia, including Indonesia and India, as well as in other markets. Cooperation in Asia between the world's two biggest oil exporters would be unprecedented. Saudi Arabia via its oil giant Aramco has openly stated to be interested in global gas investment opportunities, starting in Russia’s Siberian region.

  Investments have all chances to be a true ram. Saudi Arabia would particularly consider the issue of participating in the Arctic LNG projects. Russia and Saudi Arabia give indications of a possible OPEC 2.0 scenario, with Russia becoming a member. This would confront the market with a renewed and stronger oil cartel.

  Russian gas giant Lukoil has revealed that it will also consider marketing oil alongside Saudi Aramco. Another Russian oil company, Tatneft, has announced it is open for cooperation with Saudi Arabia.

  Saudi Arabia has confirmed it would evaluate the possibility of joining Russia's arctic liquid natural gas (LNG) project. Saudi Aramco has always been heavily involved in the gas sector, as it is already a very large gas producer. It is pursuing shale gas in the future, with first production expected around 2020-2021.There are prospects for OPEC – non-OPEC cooperation going beyond crude oil to integrate the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF). A new cartel would be powerful enough to stabilize the energy market and protect it from negative developments.

  The parties do not agree on Syria and some other issues but the differences in political contacts are limited and do not affect the neutrality of Riyadh with respect to Crimea, the events in Ukraine and sanctions against Russia, which Saudi Arabia has never joined.

  According to Dmitry Shugaev, the head of Federal service on military-technical cooperation (FSMTC), arms deals are being discussed. Russia's Rostec state corporation has been in talks with Saudi Arabia and on the T-90S third-generation main battle tanks deal. Riyadh wants to purchase Russia MiG-35 lightweight fighters. S-400 cutting edge air defense systems are also on the table.

  No doubt, the Qatar crisis will be part of the agenda. Russia has not taken sides in the current dispute between Qatar and other Arab states and it has a recent history of cooperation with all sides of this conflict. As a result, Russia is well suited to act as a mediator and a communications channel between Riyadh and those who support Doha – such influential actors as Iran and Turkey.

  Evidently, Saudi Arabia wants to introduce adjustments to its policy of one-sided focus on the United States. Russia has improved its strategic stance in the region significantly in recent years. The King’s visit will be a "turning point" in relations between the two countries. Riyadh’s desire to boost the relations with Moscow can be seen as a shift to affect the political dynamics of the Middle East and even global politics.

  

  

• JaCKaSS CoMeY…

  

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• Still Living In Propaganda-ville

  Authored by Robert Parry via ConsoortiumNews.com,

  As much as the U.S. mainstream media wants people to believe that it is the Guardian of Truth, it is actually lost in a wilderness of propaganda and falsehoods, a dangerous land of delusion that is putting the future of humankind at risk as tension escalate with nuclear-armed Russia.

  

  Russian President Vladimir Putin addresses a crowd on May 9, 2014, celebrating the 69th anniversary of victory over Nazi Germany and the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Crimean port city of Sevastopol from the Nazis. (Russian government photo)

  This media problem has grown over recent decades as lucrative careerism has replaced responsible professionalism. Pack journalism has always been a threat to quality reporting but now it has evolved into a self-sustaining media lifestyle in which the old motto, “there’s safety in numbers,” is borne out by the fact that being horrendously wrong, such as on Iraq’s WMD, leads to almost no accountability because so many important colleagues were wrong as well.

  Similarly, there has been no accountability after many mainstream journalists and commentators falsely stated as flat-fact that “all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies” concurred that Russia did “meddle” in last November’s U.S. election.

  For months, this claim has been the go-to put-down whenever anyone questions the groupthink of Russian venality perverting American democracy. Even the esteemed “Politifact” deemed the assertion “true.” But it was never true.

  It was at best a needled distortion of a claim by President Obama’s Director of National Intelligence James Clapper when he issued a statement last Oct. 7 alleging Russian meddling. Because Clapper was the chief of the U.S. Intelligence Community, his opinion morphed into a claim that it represented the consensus of all 17 intelligence agencies, a dishonest twist that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton began touting.

  However, for people who understand how the U.S. Intelligence Community works, the claim of a 17-agencies consensus has a specific meaning, some form of a National Intelligence Estimate (or NIE) that seeks out judgments and dissents from the various agencies.

  But there was no NIE regarding alleged Russian meddling and there apparently wasn’t even a formal assessment from a subset of the agencies at the time of Clapper’s statement. President Obama did not order a publishable assessment until December – after the election – and it was not completed until Jan. 6, when a report from Clapper’s office presented the opinions of analysts from the Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency – three agencies (or four if you count the DNI’s office), not 17.

  Lacking Hard Evidence

  The report also contained no hard evidence of a Russian “hack” and amounted to a one-sided circumstantial case at best. However, by then, the U.S. mainstream media had embraced the “all-17-intelligence-agencies” refrain and anyone who disagreed, including President Trump, was treated as delusional. The argument went: “How can anyone question what all 17 intelligence agencies have confirmed as true?”

  

  Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (right) talks with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office, with John Brennan and other national security aides present. (Photo credit: Office of Director of National Intelligence)

  It wasn’t until May 8 when then-former DNI Clapper belatedly set the record straight in sworn congressional testimony in which he explained that there were only three “contributing agencies” from which analysts were “hand-picked.”

  The reference to “hand-picked” analysts pricked the ears of some former U.S. intelligence analysts who had suffered through earlier periods of “politicized” intelligence when malleable analysts were chosen to deliver what their political bosses wanted to hear.

  On May 23, also in congressional testimony, former CIA Director John Brennan confirmed Clapper’s description, saying only four of the 17 U.S. intelligence agencies took part in the assessment.

  Brennan said the Jan. 6 report “followed the general model of how you want to do something like this with some notable exceptions. It only involved the FBI, NSA and CIA as well as the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. It wasn’t a full inter-agency community assessment that was coordinated among the 17 agencies.”

  After this testimony, some of the major news organizations, which had been waving around the “17-intelligence-agencies” meme, subtly changed their phrasing to either depict Russian “meddling” as an established fact no longer requiring attribution or referred to the “unanimous judgment” of the Intelligence Community without citing a specific number.

  This “unanimous judgment” formulation was deceptive, too, because it suggested that all 17 agencies were in accord albeit without exactly saying that. For a regular reader of The New York Times or a frequent viewer of CNN, the distinction would almost assuredly not be detected.

  For more than a month after the Clapper-Brennan testimonies, there was no formal correction.

  A Belated Correction

  Finally, on June 25, the Times’ hand was forced when White House correspondent Maggie Haberman reverted to the old formulation, mocking Trump for “still refus[ing] to acknowledge a basic fact agreed upon by 17 American intelligence agencies that he now oversees: Russia orchestrated the attacks, and did it to help get him elected.”

  

  New York Times building in New York City. (Photo from Wikipedia)

  When this falsehood was called to the Times’ attention, it had little choice but to append a correction to the article, noting that the intelligence “assessment was made by four intelligence agencies — the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency. The assessment was not approved by all 17 organizations in the American intelligence community.”

  The Associated Press ran a similar “clarification” applied to some of its fallacious reporting repeating the “17-intelligence-agencies” meme.

  So, you might have thought that the mainstream media was finally adjusting its reporting to conform to reality. But that would mean that one of the pillars of the Russia-gate “scandal” had crumbled, the certainty that Russia and Vladimir Putin did “meddle” in the election.

  The story would have to go back to square one and the major news organizations would have to begin reporting on whether or not there ever was solid evidence to support what had become a “certainty” – and there appeared to be no stomach for such soul-searching. Since pretty much all the important media figures had made the same error, it would be much easier to simply move on as if nothing had changed.

  That would mean that skepticism would still be unwelcome and curious leads would not be followed. For instance, there was a head-turning reference in an otherwise typical Washington Post take-out on June 25 accusing Russia of committing “the crime of the century.”

  A reference, stuck deep inside the five-page opus, said, “Some of the most critical technical intelligence on Russia came from another country, officials said. Because of the source of the material, the NSA was reluctant to view it with high confidence.”

  Though the Post did not identify the country, this reference suggests that more than one key element of the case for Russian culpability was based not on direct investigations by the U.S. intelligence agencies, but on the work of external organizations.

  Earlier, the Democratic National Committee denied the FBI access to its supposedly hacked computers, forcing the investigators to rely on a DNC contractor called CrowdStrike, which has a checkered record of getting this sort of analytics right and whose chief technology officer, Dmitri Alperovitch, is an anti-Putin Russian émigré with ties to the anti-Russian think tank, Atlantic Council.

  Relying on Outsiders

  You might be wondering why something as important as this “crime of the century,” which has pushed the world closer to nuclear annihilation, is dependent on dubious entities outside the U.S. government with possible conflicts of interest.

  

  President Donald Trump being sworn in on Jan. 20, 2017. (Screen shot from Whitehouse.gov)

  If the U.S. government really took this issue seriously, which it should, why didn’t the FBI seize the DNC’s computers and insist that impartial government experts lead the investigation? And why – given the extraordinary expertise of the NSA in computer hacking – is “some of the most critical technical intelligence on Russia [coming] from another country,” one that doesn’t inspire the NSA’s confidence?

  But such pesky questions are not likely to be asked or answered by a mainstream U.S. media that displays deep-seated bias toward both Putin and Trump.

  Mostly, major news outlets continue to brush aside the clarifications and return to various formulations that continue to embrace the “17-intelligence-agencies” canard, albeit in slightly different forms, such as references to the collective Intelligence Community without the specific number. Anyone who questions this established conventional wisdom is still crazy and out of step.

  For instance, James Holmes of Esquire was stunned on Thursday when Trump at a news conference in Poland reminded the traveling press corps about the inaccurate reporting regarding the 17 intelligence agencies and said he still wasn’t entirely sure about Russia’s guilt.

  “In public, he’s still casting doubt on the intelligence community’s finding that Russia interfered in the 2016 election nearly nine months after the fact,” Holmes sputtered before describing Trump’s comment as a “rant.”

  So, if you thought that a chastened mainstream media might stop in the wake of the “17-intelligence-agencies” falsehood and rethink the whole Russia-gate business, you would have been sadly mistaken.

  But the problem is not just the question of whether Russia hacked into Democratic emails and slipped them to WikiLeaks for publication (something that both Russia and WikiLeaks deny). Perhaps the larger danger is how the major U.S. news outlets have adopted a consistently propagandistic approach toward everything relating to Russia.

  Hating Putin

  This pattern traces back to the earliest days of Vladimir Putin’s presidency in 2000 when he began to rein in the U.S.-prescribed “shock therapy,” which had sold off Russia’s assets to well-connected insiders, making billions of dollars for the West-favored “oligarchs,” even as the process threw millions of average Russian into poverty.

  

  Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who pushed for the Ukraine coup and helped pick the post-coup leaders.

  But the U.S. mainstream media’s contempt for Putin reached new heights after he helped President Obama head off neoconservative (and liberal interventionist) demands for a full-scale U.S. military assault on Syria in August 2013 and helped bring Iran into a restrictive nuclear agreement when the neocons wanted to bomb-bomb-bomb Iran.

  The neocons delivered their payback to Putin in early 2014 by supporting a violent coup in Ukraine, overthrowing elected President Viktor Yanukovych and installing a fiercely anti-Russian regime. The U.S. operation was spearheaded by neocon National Endowment for Democracy President Carl Gershman and neocon Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, with enthusiastic support from neocon Sen. John McCain.

  Nuland was heard in an intercepted pre-coup phone call with U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt discussing who should become the new leaders and pondering how to “glue” or “midwife this thing.”

  Despite the clear evidence of U.S. interference in Ukrainian politics, the U.S. government and the mainstream media embraced the coup and accused Putin of “aggression” when ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine, called the Donbas, resisted the coup regime.

  When ethnic Russians and other citizens in Crimea voted overwhelmingly in a referendum to reject the coup regime and rejoin Russia – a move protected by some of the 20,000 Russian troops inside Crimea as part of a basing agreement – that became a Russian “invasion.” But it was the most peculiar “invasion,” since there were no images of tanks crashing across borders or amphibious landing craft on Crimean beaches, because no such “invasion” had occurred.

  However, in virtually every instance, the U.S. mainstream media insisted on the most extreme anti-Russian propaganda line and accused people who questioned this Official Narrative of disseminating Russian “propaganda” – or being a “Moscow stooge” or acting as a “useful fool.” There was no tolerance for skepticism about whatever the State Department or the Washington think tanks were saying.

  Trump Meets Putin

  So, since Trump met with Putin at the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, the U.S. mainstream media has been in a frenzy, linking up its groupthinks about the Ukraine “invasion” with its groupthinks about Russia “hacking” the election.

  

  Washington Post columnist David Ignatius. (Photo credit: Aude)

  In a July 3 editorial, The Washington Post declared, “Mr. Trump simply cannot fail to admonish Mr. Putin for Russia’s attempts to meddle in the 2016 presidential election. He must make clear the United States will not tolerate it, period. Naturally, this is a difficult issue for Mr. Trump, who reaped the benefit of Russia’s intervention and now faces a special counsel’s investigation, but nonetheless, in his first session with Mr. Putin, the president must not hesitate to be blunt. …

  “On Ukraine, Mr. Trump must also display determination. Russia fomented an armed uprising and seized Crimea in violation of international norms, and it continues to instigate violence in the Donbas. Mr. Trump ought to make it unmistakably clear to Mr.Putin that the United States will not retreat from the sanctions imposed over Ukraine until the conditions of peace agreements are met.”

  Along the same lines, even while suggesting the value of some collaboration with Russia toward ending the war in Syria, Post columnist David Ignatius wrote in a July 5 column, “Russian-American cooperation on Syria faces a huge obstacle right now. It would legitimize a Russian regime that invaded Ukraine and meddled in U.S. and European elections, in addition to its intervention in Syria.”

  Note the smug certainty of Ignatius and the Post editors. There is no doubt that Russia “invaded” Ukraine; “seized” Crimea; “meddled” in U.S. and European elections. Yet all these groupthinks should be subjected to skepticism, not simply treated as undeniable truths.

  But seeing only one side to a story is where the U.S. mainstream media is at this point in history. Yes, it is possible that Russia was responsible for the Democratic hacks and did funnel the material to WikiLeaks, but evidence has so far been lacking. And, instead of presenting both sides fairly, the major media acts as if only one side deserves any respect and dissenting views must be ridiculed and condemned.

  In this perverted process, collectively approved versions of complex situations congeal into conventional wisdom, which simply cannot be significantly reconsidered regardless of future revelations.

  As offensive as this rejection of true truth-seeking may be, it also represents an extraordinary danger when mixed with the existential risk of nuclear conflagration.

  With the stakes this high, the demand for hard evidence – and the avoidance of soft-minded groupthink – should go without question. Journalists and commentators should hold themselves to professional precision, not slide into sloppy careerism, lost in “propaganda-ville.”

  

  

• 38 Incredible Facts About The Modern U.S. Dollar

  We’ve previously showed you 31 Fascinating Facts About the Dollar’s Early History, which highlighted the history of U.S. currency before the 20th century. This was a very interesting period in which we looked at the money used by the first colonists, the extreme bust of the Continental currency, the era of privately-issued bank notes, and Congress’ emergency issuance of the fiat “greenback” during the Civil War.

  However, as The Money Project – an ongoing collaboration between Visual Capitalist and Texas Precious Metals that seeks to use intuitive visualizations to explore the origins, nature, and use of money – notes, the modern era of the U.S. dollar is just as interesting. We have it starting in 1913, when the Federal Reserve Act was passed by Woodrow Wilson. Not only did it establish a new central bank, but it also gave the Fed the authority to issue the Federal Reserve Note, which is (for now) the dominant form of U.S. currency both domestically and abroad.

  

  Courtesy of: The Money Project

  A New Legal Tender

  Leading up to the 20th century, there were four main forms of U.S. currency being used:

  • Gold and silver coins
  • Gold and silver certificates
  • Commercial bank notes, issued by private banks and backed by government bonds
  • “Greenbacks”, a fiat currency declared legal by Congress to help fund the Civil War

  In 1913, however, the Federal Reserve Note was authorized as U.S. currency. The new notes were supposed to be backed by gold or other “lawful money”, based on the stipulations of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.

  However, this only lasted about 20 years. By the time of the Great Depression, the Fed considered itself to be in a tight spot. It simply did not have enough gold to back all Federal Reserve Notes and Gold Certificates in circulation, and at the same time wanted flexibility with monetary policy to fight deflation and unemployment.

  In 1933, the Emergency Banking Act was passed by President Roosevelt, and Executive Order 6102 was also signed. The latter move famously criminalized monetary gold, and ended the gold standard.

  After all, if gold can’t be legally owned, it can’t be legally redeemed.

  Modern Paper Money

  After a brief return to a pseudo gold standard after WWII, Nixon severed all remaining ties between gold and money in 1971. Since then, U.S. money has been purely fiat, and backed by the government rather than any physical commodity or precious metal.

  Some facts on today’s paper money:

  • There is $1.54 trillion of U.S. currency in circulation, and 97% of that is Federal Reserve Notes
  • Over two-thirds of all $100 bills are held outside the U.S.
  • Dollar bills can be folded at least 8,000 times, which is 20x more than a normal sheet of paper
  • That’s because dollar bills are made of a special 75% cotton and 25% linen blend, patented by Crane & Co.
  • The U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing produces 38 million notes every day, worth $541 million
  • The two facilities, located in Washington, D.C. and Fort Worth, Texas use 9.7 tons of ink per day
  • For 2017, the Fed ordered 7.1 billion new notes, worth $209 billion
  • More than 70% of these notes are used to replace damaged ones
  • Notes with smaller denominations ($1, $5, $10) tend to last for shorter periods of time, due to more frequent usage

  Coins

  The coins used today are similar to U.S. Federal Reserve Notes in that their face values tend to greatly exceed their intrinsic values.

  This is because cheaper metals such as copper, zinc, and nickel are used instead of gold or silver.

  • The average lifespan of a coin is 25 years, according to the U.S. Mint
  • It’s estimated that Americans throw away around $62 million of coins every year
  • In 2016, the U.S. Mint produced 16 trillion coins, valued at over $1.09 billion
  • The amount of copper in a penny has fluctuated over the years. It ranges from 0% (in WWII, pennies were made of steel so copper could be used for ammunition) to 95%.
  • Today’s pennies are 2.5% copper, with the remainder being 97.5% zinc

  Just Remember, Nothing Last Forever…

  

  Source: The Burning Platform

  

  

• Exposed! Bussed-In Baltimore Protesters Promote Violent Revolution In America

  Co-authored by Taylor Larson, StockBoardAsset , Derp McDergal, and Carlisle du Rozel via StockBoardAsset.com,

  Over the weekend, Squawker Media attended a “Unity March,” which was organized in support of the immigrant community in Baltimore, Maryland. In a Facebook group titled “Patterson Park Neighbors,” City Councilman Zeke Berzoff-Cohen of District 1 said in a post, “The march was organized by local Baltimore young people as part of the Free Minds Free People Conference. This will be a family march and I invite everyone to come out and show love and support.”

  

  What we’re about to show you is the true nature of the groups actively working to ensure that America remains divided. The above Facebook post by Councilman Berzoff-Cohen deceptively telling the citizens of Baltimore that the march was organized by Baltimore’s youth demonstrates a harrowing reality: operatives are trying to undermine the system. Such operatives receive hundreds of thousands of dollars from organizations dedicated to undermining the social cohesion of the United States and have infiltrated even local city politics. From this report, and the exclusive video captured on-site at the protest, you will see firsthand just how deeply George Soros’ Open Society Foundation is entrenched in our political system, even at the municipal and local levels.

  The video below shows throngs of anti-Trump, pro-immigration protestors bused into a protest on Eastern Avenue. Footage depicts protestors stepping off of unmarked buses and entering the site of the protest.

  In the next video, after all the protestors are brought in, a female keynote speaker rails against President Trump, calling him “a monster.” While much of what she said about disappearing jobs and crumbling infrastructure as the result of globalization rings true, she fails to place the blame where it rightfully belongs: at the feet of the globalist svengalis. When she gave a resounding call to arms at the end of her speech, a chilling reminder of “America divided” rang through her radical insistence for protesters to grab pitchforks, shovels, and bats.

  “If we don’t stand together, and you and I unite like we’ve never been before, if we don’t pool our resources together, and our spirits together, and our souls together, and everything we can think of together… revolutions were fought with pitchforks and shovels, and bats, and cans, and anything and everything we can get our hands on.”

  In the second half of the video, Casa De Maryland Inc., an entity funded directly by George Soros, then leads a march down the streets of Baltimore, actively disrespecting traffic ordinances and shutting down streets. For the record, there were no traffic marshals in this march, as evidenced by the content provided above.

  Soros’s Open Society Foundation has its tentacles in the funding of urban protests, disruption, and chaos. Soros has been directly linked to the Ukrainian Revolution and the ouster of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. The Open Society Foundation has also been linked to other groups in various European countries that promote revolutionary calls to action.

  

  Soros is notorious for funding revolutionary ideologies and has openly contributed $81.7M toward “Human Rights Movements & Institutions” in 2017, a portion of which is clearly seen in the recently disruptive Baltimore protest. Additionally, Soros’s Open Society Foundation has contributed $82.8M to matters of “Equality & Anti-Discrimination,” which is essentially euphemistic for the advocation of culturally regressive social reforms.

  Despite the massive amounts of funding to Baltimore from the pocket of Soros, Baltimore’s homicide, opioid abuse, and overall crime rates are only skyrocketing.

  

  

• Guess How Many Tesla Vehicles Were Registered In April In Hong Kong?

  And the hits just keep on coming for Elon Musk.

  

  After a tax incentive for electric cars was slashed in Hong Kong, new registrations of Teslas vehicles dropped from 2,939 to zero…

  Hong Kong, though relatively small, is a significant outpost of luxury car buyers and trend setters. Its government had long waived its vehicle registration tax for newly purchased electric automobiles, adding to the attractiveness of Tesla’s cars.

   

  Citing increased congestion of privately owned vehicles on its streets, the government said in February that it would be changing the policy so the tax would be waived only on the first 97,500 Hong Kong dollars (about US$12,500) of an electric car’s purchase price for individuals.

   

  After the change came into effect on April 1, the cost of a basic Tesla Model S in Hong Kong effectively rose to around US$130,000 from less than US$75,000.

  And the reaction – demand tumbled…

  The Wall Street Journal reports that Tesla sales in Hong Kong plummeted after authorities slashed a tax break for electric vehicles on April 1, demonstrating how sensitive the company’s performance can be to government incentive programs. Official data from Hong Kong’s Transportation Department, analyzed by The Wall Street Journal, show that no newly purchased Tesla Model S sedans or Model X sport-utility vehicles were registered in April in the Chinese territory, and only five privately owned electric vehicles were registered in May.

  The collapse followed a surge just before the tax change, which had been announced in February, with new registrations of almost 3,700 Tesla vehicles in the first quarter – including 2,939 in March alone – compared with 1,506 vehicles in the entire second half of 2016.

  The end of the tax exemption “has really put the brakes on electric-vehicle adoption in Hong Kong,” said Mark Webb-Johnson, a founder of Charged Hong Kong, a group that promotes electric vehicles.

  In a statement, Tesla said…

  “Tesla welcomes government policies that support our mission and make it easier for more people to buy electric vehicles, however, our business does not rely on it."

  The company said its sales revenue in China, where it faces large tariffs, has risen without government incentives.

  “At the end of the day, when people love something, they buy it,” it said.

  Except it appears they're not!

  *  *  *

  We have one last question – does anyone feel like this recent string of terrible headlines (and reality checks) for Musk and Tesla smells a lot like the recent collapse in Uber? Is the smoke starting to clear? Are the mirrors starting to break?

  

  

• Comey Bombshell: FBI Director's Leaked Trump Memos Contained Classified Information

  Amid the constant media outrage over everything Trump, Trump, Trump, some might have forgotten that in the political rollercoaster over the past 12 months, there were numerous other high-profile individuals involved, including not only former DOJ head Loretta Lynch, whose every interaction with the Clinton campaign is about to be probed under a Congressional microscope, but the man who some say started it all: former FBI Director James Comey.

  

  First loved by the Democrats when he personally absolved Hillary Clinton of any sins regarding her (ab)use of her personal email server, then furiously loathed when he reopened the FBI probe into Hillary Clinton one week before the election, then finally getting into a feud with President Trump which cost his him job, Comey ultimately admitted to leaking at least one memo which contained personal recollections of his conversations with the president, in hopes of launching a special probe into the president’s alleged Russian collusion. 

  There was just one problem: according to a blockbuster report from The Hill, in addition to the leaked memos, Comey also leaked classified information in gross and direct violation of FBI rules and regulations. And just like that Comey finds himself in trouble. Only not just any trouble, but the virtually same trouble that Hillary Clinton was in in the summer of 2016… and which James Comey was tasked to investigate.

  We’ll repeat the above because it bears repeating: in the purest definition of irony, James Comey is about to be investigated for the exact same thing which he absolved Hillary Clinton of doing last summer. Almost as if neither Comey nor Clinton were aware of – or willing to abide by – the security protocol of the agency they were in charge of.

  Aside from once again confirming that Trump may have been right all along in his accusation of the ex-FBI chief’s motives, this shocking revelation raises the possibility that Comey broke his own agency’s rules – by putting his own interests above those of his country – but far more grotesquely, ignored the same security protocol that he publicly criticized Hillary Clinton for in the waning days of the 2016 presidential election, in order to settle his vendetta with President Trump.

  Amusingly, Comey’s alleged flagrant disregard for FBI regulations would explain why he also found Clinton’s email server transgressions to not be a material concern, contrary to what most Republicans claimed at the time. After all, if it was good – or rather not bad enough for Clinton, maybe it was the same with Comey’s own abuse of confidential data? The only problem is that while Comey was generous enough to let Hillary go, now that the ex-FBI chief is facing the president of the US as his adversary, he may not be quite so lucky.

  Upon hearing of Comey’s alleged transgressions, the now former Chair of the House Oversight Committee said simply that “IF true, this is bombshell news.”

  Comey’s private memos on Trump conversations contained classified material https://t.co/XCncK9Ijl1 IF true, this is bombshell news

  — Jason Chaffetz (@jasoninthehouse) July 10, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Incidentally, the first to warn of Comey’s imminent headaches, was Breitbart News, which on Friday reported that a new Senate report said recent leaks by former FBI Director James Comey’s leaking of memos could “potentially harm national security.” The report, released by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Thursday, found that there were 125 separate leaks in President Trump’s first 126 days that were potentially damaging to national security. The report said it included Comey’s leaking of his memos after he was fired by Trump in May.

  * * *

  Comey’s troubles started when he testified under oath last month that he considered the memos he prepared to be personal documents and that he shared at least one of them with a Columbia University lawyer friend. As Comey later disclosed, he asked that lawyer to leak information from one memo to the news media in hopes of increasing pressure to get a special prosecutor named in the Russia case after Comey was fired as FBI director.

  The Hill recounts that particular exchange with Senator Roy Blunt:

  “So you didn’t consider your memo or your sense of that conversation to be a government document?,” Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) asked Comey on June 8.  “You considered it to be, somehow, your own personal document that you could share to the media as you wanted through a friend?”

   

  “Correct,” Comey answered. “I understood this to be my recollection recorded of my conversation with the president. As a private citizen, I thought it important to get it out.”

  Comey insisted in his testimony he believed his personal memos were unclassified, though he hinted one or two documents he created might have been contained classified information. “I immediately prepared an unclassified memo of the conversation about Flynn and discussed the matter with FBI senior leadership,” he testified about the one memo he later leaked about former national security adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn. Additionally, he added, “My view was that the content of those unclassified, memorialization of those conversations was my recollection recorded.”

  That’s when the problems escalated, because according to The Hill – which for the first time disclosed that the total number of memos linked to Comey’s nine conversations with Trump – when the seven memos Comey wrote regarding his nine conversations with Trump about Russia earlier this year were shown to Congress in recent days, the FBI claimed all were, in fact, deemed to be government documents.

  Oops.  As The Hill reveals, four, or more than half, of the seven memos had markings making clear they contained information classified at the “secret” or “confidential” level, according to officials directly familiar with the matter.

  This is a major problem for Comey because FBI policy forbids any agent from releasing classified information or any information from ongoing investigations or sensitive operations without prior written permission, and mandates that all records created during official duties are considered to be government property.

  “Unauthorized disclosure, misuse, or negligent handling of information contained in the files, electronic or paper, of the FBI or which I may acquire as an employee of the FBI could impair national security, place human life in jeopardy, result in the denial of due process, prevent the FBI from effectively discharging its responsibilities, or violate federal law,” states the agreement all FBI agents sign.

  FBI policy further adds that “all information acquired by me in connection with my official duties with the FBI and all official material to which I have access remain the property of the United States of America” and that an agent “will not reveal, by any means, any information or material from or related to FBI files or any other information acquired by virtue of my official employment to any unauthorized recipient without prior official written authorization by the FBI.”

  Comey indicated in his testimony the memos were in his possession when he left the bureau, leaving him in a position to leak one of them through his lawyer friend to the media. But he testified that he has since turned them over to Robert Mueller, a former FBI chief and now spearheading the investigation about possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.  It is not clear whether Comey as director signed the same agreement as his agents, but the contract is considered the official policy of the bureau. It was also unclear when the documents were shown to Congress whether the information deemed “secret” or “confidential” was classified at the time Comey wrote the memos or determined so afterwards, the sources said.

  Meanwhile, Congressional investigators have already begun examining whether Comey’s creation, storage and sharing of the memos violated FBI rules, but the revelation that four of the seven memos included some sort of classified information opens a new door of inquiry into whether classified information was mishandled, improperly stored or improperly shared.

  Where things get especially ironic, is that this was the same issue the FBI – under Comey – investigated in 2015-16 about Clinton’s private email server, at the time the most sensitive and controversial issue of the Clinton campaign, where as secretary of State she and top aides moved classified information through insecure channels.

  Ultimately, Comey concluded in July 2016 that Clinton’s email practices were reckless, but that he could not recommend prosecution because FBI agents had failed to find enough evidence that she intended to violate felony statutes prohibiting the transmission of classified information through insecure practices. While the news initially was loved by Democrats as it let Hillary get off scott-free from any potential criminal probe, Comey’s subsequent decision to restart the FBI probe into Clinton’s email server one week before the election is what eventually prompted both Hillary and John Podesta to claim that James Comey was one of the two factors that cost Clinton the presidency… along with the “Russian hacking” of course.

  The only problem is that while there is yet no evidence of Russian hacking, suddenly with the factual emergence of Comey’s transgression, questions may emerge not only into the ex-FBI chief’s actions and motives, but whether the FBI’s clearance of Clinton’s use of an email server under Comey was proper after all…

  * * *

  So what happens next? According to The Hill, congressional investigators are likely to turn their attention to the same issues to determine if Comey mishandled any classified information in his personal memos.

  In order to make an assessment, congressional investigators will have to tackle key questions, such as:

  • Where and how were the memos were created, such as whether they were written on an insecure computer or notepad.
  • Where and how the memos were stored, such as inside his home, his briefcase or an insecure laptop.
  • Were any memos shown to private individuals without a security clearance and did those memos contain any classified information
  • When was it determined by the government that the memos contained classified information, before Comey took them and shared one or after.

  One avenue for answering those questions is for a panel like Senate Intelligence, House Intelligence or Senate Judiciary to refer the matter to the Justice Department’s internal watchdog, the inspector general, or to the Director of National Intelligence and its inspector general. One thing is certain: the near-future will see many more of Comey’s sworn Congressional testimonies, and the vendetta between Trump and Comey is about to not only be rekindled but escalate to previously unseen levels. For an appetizer of what’s to come, look closely at Trump’s twitter feed once the president learns the news of Comey’s alleged transgressions.

  

  

• What Russian Journalists Think Of How American Reporters Cover Putin & Trump

  Authored by Joshua Yaffa via The New Yorker,

  As James Clapper, the former director of National Intelligence, put it, Watergate “pales” in comparison to the current political scandal surrounding the White House. For the past six months, the U.S. media has followed the story of Russia’s interference in the 2016 Presidential election – and the question of possible collusion between figures close to Donald Trump and the Kremlin – with vigor, intensity, and the deployment of an extraordinary amount of newsroom resources. In advance of Trump and Putin’s first meeting, on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Hamburg, I decided to ask Russia’s sharpest and most experienced political journalists and investigative reporters what they thought of this coverage.

  The Russian media is under nearly omnipresent pressure from numerous entities: political operatives in the Kremlin, who tightly monitor what is said in the press about Putin and the myriad arms of the Russian state; media owners, who neuter coverage and readily get rid of overly ambitious reporters and editors; and financial constraints, namely a small advertising market and a tiny number of readers willing to pay for independent journalism. The result is that the space for independent, muckraking journalism has shrunk further. Yet, even given these many constraints, Russia is nevertheless home to a coterie of talented and self-motivated journalists, who produce work that is courageous and illuminating.

  I spoke to more than a half-dozen of them, all of whom found themselves in some way bemused, frustrated, or disappointed in the way that the U.S. press has covered Putin and Russia—especially concerning the question of election interference—over the last months.

  On the whole, said Mikhail Zygar, a political journalist and the author of “All the Kremlin’s Men,” a well-sourced insider look at the cloistered world of Russian politics, the way the U.S. media has covered the Russia scandal has made “Putin seem to look much smarter than he is, as if he operates from some master plan.” The truth, Zygar told me, “is that there is no plan—it’s chaos.”

  By way of an example, Zygar narrated what he saw as the total disorder that has marked Russia’s military campaign in Syria, which began with a surprise incursion of air power, in September, 2015. Putin seems to consider the intervention a success, because it outmaneuvered Western attempts to isolate him and elevated him to the position of global statesman; but, whatever the achievements, they came out of an absolutely slapdash policy, according to Zygar. “Nothing was calculated,” Zygar said. “There was no strategy, no preparatory work, no coördination with Iran, none with Turkey either, which is how we almost ended up in a war—not to mention the huge amount of money that was simply stolen in the course of this operation.”

  According to Zygar’s sources, Putin forced Russia’s military prosecutor into retirement, in April, before he could deliver a report to the country’s upper house of parliament that would have revealed substantial financial losses in Syria due to corruption. Such cynicism and malfeasance is more the rule than the exception, Zygar said. He retold the story of how Putin showed Oliver Stone a video that was supposedly of Russian forces bombing ISIS fighters – “our aviation at work,” Putin told Stone – which turned out to be a lifted clip from 2013 of U.S. pilots attacking Taliban positions in Afghanistan. Zygar shook his head with laughter. “They couldn’t even film a two-minute video!”

  From the beginning, much of the U.S. coverage of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election has focussed on the hacks of the e-mail accounts of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign adviser, John Podesta. There is little concrete information available regarding the world of Russian state hackers, with reporting on the subject somewhere between difficult and impossible. Some of the best reporting appeared in an investigation last winter by Danya Turovsky, a correspondent for Meduza, an online publication that is based in Riga, Latvia, in order to circumvent the pressure and attempts at censorship faced by newsrooms in Moscow. (Turovsky and his editors ended up in a dispute with the Times, with Meduza claiming that an article from a series on Russia and its projection of power abroad, which won this year’s Pulitzer Prize, were based on Meduza’s reporting and not given proper citations. After an internal review, the Times determined that the article in question was based on original reporting.) In his articles, Turovsky identified private companies that had lucrative cybersecurity contracts with Russian intelligence agencies, uncovered Russian military-recruiting videos for would-be hackers, and documented a case of Russian officials testing a DDoS attack.

  When I asked him what he thought of how American journalists have described both the composition and tactics of Russian hacking squads, he said that the general understanding “is correct, but, all the same, there isn’t really much in the way of real evidence.” It’s one thing to say Russia has both the motive and, with its cyber forces, the technical ability to hack U.S. accounts, Turovsky told me—but, after that, things get very murky. “We can be sure that Russian cyber forces exist, that there are a lot of people involved, that the special services are capable of something like this—but that doesn’t mean we can say with one-hundred-per-cent certainty they are guilty.” It appears that the primary sources for many Washington-based reporters are U.S. intelligence agencies, which unanimously concluded that the effort to disrupt the election was directed by Putin and emanated from Russia. That makes it possible that American journalists know more about the hacking than their Russian colleagues do.

  Still, Turovsky is suspicious of the level of specificity in U.S. reporting on Russian hackers. For example, the way that the terms “Fancy Bear” and “Cozy Bear”—nicknames for hacking units linked to Russian intelligence services—entered the American journalistic lexicon gave him pause. “As I understand, there aren’t really groups, just a lot of different people who do this work; it’s pure conjecture to think they form into discrete, particular squads that you could call this or that,” Turkovsky said. He told me that, during the course of his reporting, he was struck by how technologically backward much of the Russian state’s security apparatus appeared—a nuance he said that he hasn’t often observed in American press coverage of the situation. Once, a source took Turovsky inside a cybersecurity facility run by the F.S.B., Russia’s main security service and the successor agency to the K.G.B. As he described it, “the F.S.B. officers had to give up their phones upon entering. There were no computers connected to the Internet—just one for each floor. To access it, they have to sign up in advance and get a key that was good for a certain amount of time. They were complaining that it was impossible to investigate anything in such conditions.”

  Even as Turovsky was cautious about some of the more sweeping allegations directed at hackers working for the Russian state, he acknowledged that the chances of the claims being true were just as high as the chances of them being false—that is the hall-of-mirrors reality of reporting on Kremlin plots and intrigue. “Oftentimes, in Russia, what seems totally absurd actually turns out to be the truth,” he said, pointing to the story, reported in detail by my colleague Adrian Chen, of a so-called “troll farm” run out of a nondescript office in St. Petersburg. “Who would have imagined there was a building where people go to work and get paid salaries to sit all day and write online comments in different languages?” Turovsky said.

  I also spoke with Roman Shleinov, an investigative editor at Novaya Gazeta, the newspaper that was home to Anna Politkovskaya, the fearless reporter killed in 2006, and which first broke the news of an anti-gay crackdown in Chechnya. Shleinov was the Russian coördinator for reporting on the Panama Papers, which revealed high cash flows to offshore accounts run by close Putin friends and associates. He told me that the U.S. press was unduly focussed on the particulars of real-estate deals surrounding Trump, parsing which Russians had purchased apartments from Trump or lived in buildings operating under the Trump name. “It’s hard to say for sure, but the idea that a Russian person who buys an apartment somewhere—say, in Trump Tower—is trying to get influence over someone, to me it seems strange,” Shleinov said.

  The most important thing that U.S. reporters should remember, Shleinov told me, is that “money is fleeing Russia in all directions, people are trying to invest anywhere they can, to get their assets out before the secret services or their competitors show up and try and take them all.” On the whole, Shleinov said, a wealthy Russian—even a politically connected one—is likely buying real estate abroad “as a place to run to,” not on Putin’s orders.

  Shleinov was more intrigued by the meeting, last December, between Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and a White House adviser, and Sergey Gorkov, the head of Vnesheconombank, or V.E.B., a Russian state bank. What exactly the two discussed is under some dispute. The White House said that Kushner was acting in a political capacity. V.E.B. said that the meeting was about business interests. Shleinov called the very fact that the two sat down at Trump Tower “curious—now that’s interesting, something to actually talk about.” He went on to explain V.E.B.’s role in the Putin state: “All these state banks are not really businesses, they are meant to carry out state functions. If the head of V.E.B. was talking about possibly financing projects connected to the son-in-law of the President of the United States, that was certainly discussed on the highest levels here in Moscow.”

  A notion I have heard from Russian journalists again and again is that the U.S. media, in its reporting of the possible Russia ties of Trump associates, can veer toward trafficking in the conspiracy theories that define so much of Russian coverage of the United States. Elena Chernenko is head of the foreign desk at Kommersant, a Russian paper that started out as a respectable and independent chronicler of business and politics but is now a rather muted one. Chernenko is among its remaining high-profile reporters, and the paper’s international coverage continues to be strong. She has written on Russian foreign policy and the country’s Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, for the past seven years. Every morning, before she reads the Russian press, she checks the Times and the Washington Post. For years, she said, they represented a “moral compass and a model of what I strived for.” These days, she said, it seemed as if American journalists had lowered their standards when reporting on Russia. “Now, I don’t exclude that this indeed was an operation carried out by the Russian special services,” she told me, referring to the notion of Russian effort to influence the election. But, so far, she hasn’t seen incontrovertible evidence. “The way the American press writes about the topic, it’s like they’ve lost their heads,” she complained.

  Chernenko compared the U.S. media’s fixation on the comings and goings of Sergey Kislyak, Russia’s Ambassador in Washington, to how the Russian media treated Michael McFaul, who served as the U.S. Ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014. “The state media would take every one of his unfortunate statements and blow it up to an unimaginable degree,” she said. On state airwaves, McFaul was portrayed as being behind all manner of nefarious American plots to weaken Russia, a narrative that Chernenko said she now sees in reverse. She thought it was silly then, and she thinks the same of it now. For her, the height of the U.S. media’s “unbelievable hysteria” came when Lavrov visited Trump at the White House, in May. American journalists were kept out of the meeting but a photographer from a Russian state news agency was allowed to attend and take photos of a grinning Trump hamming it up with Lavrov and Kislyak. “Lavrov did what he always does, he is not guilty for the fact the White House did not let in the American press,” Chernenko said. She told me the resulting speculation in some corners of the U.S. media that the Russian photographer may have sneaked a listening device into the Oval Office was “full face-palm.”

  Perhaps the most unexpected skeptic of U.S. coverage whom I talked to was Alexey Kovalev, who runs an online project called Noodleremover, a play on the Russian expression “to hang noodles on your ears,” which means to knowingly tell someone nonsense. The Web site is dedicated to debunking the most galling factual errors on Russian state media, with RT a regular and favorite target. Kovalev described himself to me as “one of RT’s biggest critics,” and added, “but I’m critical of what deserves to be criticized: namely, that RT is home to conspiracy theories, has a general disregard for objectivity, and gives a platform to lunatics to get on air.” But Kovalev is convinced that the channel’s reach and propaganda effect in the United States are minimal, and that the attention it has received is “absolutely oversized” compared to its actual power in affecting the American political agenda—which he said is basically zero.

  “Bernie Sanders gave a forty-minute interview to RT,” Kovalev said, pointing me to comments in which the head of the channel, Margarita Simonyan, called Sanders the “coolest” candidate in last year’s campaign. “And nobody gave a shit. You know why? Because, in truth, nobody really watches RT.” He explained that the channel’s broadcast footprint in the United States is so small that it fails to register on the Nielsen ratings system. And when people do watch, they tend not to click on political content. A 2015 investigation by the Daily Beast showed that, on RT’s YouTube channel, “political news videos, featuring the content by which it seeks to shape Western opinion and thus justify its existence, accounted for a mere 1 percent of its total YouTube exposure.” Kovalev said that, these days, the biggest beneficiaries of all the undue attention are RT executives, Simonyan above all. “People in RT have been telling me it’s been six months of Christmas for them,” he told me.

  That echoes another refrain I heard from several Russian journalists: that Putin, like a naughty kid in school, finds all this attention—even if its uniformly critical— flattering and even rewarding, a salve for years of feeling ignored. Zygar told me that, as far he understands, Putin “likes the image of himself as a kind of Bond villain, that Fareed Zakaria calls him the most powerful man in the world. That’s what he has been aspiring for this whole time, that he is respected, on the top of the world.” When I spoke with Anton Zhelnov, a political reporter at Dozhd, a scrappy and creative independent cable channel, which is in perpetual danger of shutting down, he said that his contacts in the Kremlin can’t help but be pleased by the multiple U.S. investigations into Russian interference, whether by the media or Congress. “Yes, it’s unpleasant, but at the same time they like that Russia is being discussed all the time, that Russia has become a topic in American politics. They like this very much, and don’t try and hide it in private conversations,” Zhelnov said.

  Ultimately, among the Russian journalists I talked to, one of the most consistent reactions is simple exhaustion with the endless amount of Trump-Russia coverage.

  “I have the sense a lot of these articles are being published without new information, that we are going around in circles,” Turovsky, the Meduza journalist, told me.

   

  Yet he still starts his day browsing the headlines in the American press, a ritual that takes an hour or more.  “Of course, what can I do,” he told me.

   

  “I read this stuff every day.”

  Indeed…

  

  

• Trump Folds On Russia Cybersecurity Cooperation

  Just fourteen hours after crowing proudly of his success during discussions with Russian President Putin in forming an 'impenetrable cyber security unit'…

  Putin & I discussed forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking, & many other negative things, will be guarded..

  — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 9, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  And after //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js“>various Democrats and Republicans blasted him for "the dumbest idea ever"…

  Rubio, on Twitter, said:

  "While reality & pragmatism requires that we engage Vladimir Putin, he will never be a trusted ally or a reliable constructive partner.

   

  "Partnering with Putin on a 'Cyber Security Unit' is akin to partnering with (Syrian President Bashar al) Assad on a 'Chemical Weapons Unit'."

  But it was Graham that really let loose on NBC News' 'Meet the Press'… (via The Hill)

  “When it comes to Russia I am dumbfounded, I am disappointed, and at the end of the day he’s hurting his presidency by not embracing the fact that Putin is a bad guy,”

   

  “He is literally the only person I know of who doesn’t believe Russia attacked our election in 2016,” Graham said of Trump, who has said that “nobody really knows” whether the Russians were behind attempts to hack the 2016 presidential election.

  President Trump appears to have reversed course rather quickly… or already given up hope…

  The fact that President Putin and I discussed a Cyber Security unit doesn't mean I think it can happen. It can't-but a ceasefire can,& did!

  — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 10, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  But, hey, at least we got a ceasefire in Southwest Syria (for now).

  

  

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• Australian Reporter's Takedown of Trump Goes Viral on the Left, Says America is 'Isolated' and 'Friendless'

   

  Content originally published at iBankCoin.com

  It doesn’t make a lot of sense for me to sit down to rebut the thoughts of a garrulous drama queen reporter, marooned on an island of indignity, twisting and contorting his own world view and thrusting it upon his viewers as ‘news.’ In many respects, the main stream media should be looked upon like the catholic church. It’s old, out of date, and filled with pedophiles.

  Here’s a reporter from ABC Australia saying that Trump has ceded leadership in the world — because he didn’t follow the lead of others into trade and climate deals designed to hurt America’s people. One of his main arguments is the lack of rhetoric coming from Trump at the G20, regarding N. Korea’s missile test. Perhaps this bloke should review the meaningless speeches over the years, by doing nothing leaders, who’ve never followed up on their words — because they had nothing to back them up with.
  

  So because Trump didn’t castigate N. Korea with harsh words at the G20, providing all of the feckless leaders there with a feel good moment to talk tough and feel good about themselves, and their failing societies, Trump has, thereby, relinquished the mantle of leadership in the world to both China and Russia? I don’t think so.

  This is idiot tier thinking — completely dismissing the fact that Trump just slapped sanctions on a Chinese bank over N. Korea, and has done nothing to aid Russia’s so called ascension to power.

  Here’s a reminder for those of you with short memories.

  The United States will do upwards of $19 trillion in GDP this year. Russia will do a little over $1.2 trillion.

  China will do roughly $11.5 trillion.

  The United States will spend upwards of $700 billion on its military this year. China will spend ~$200b and Russia will spend ~65b.

  The Unites States has more military bases abroad than any other empire in the history of the world. The number is hard to pin down — since we’re literally and figuratively omnipresent. It is rumored to be more than 800. Both China and Russia have less than 10.

  The flowery words of disgruntled reporters are nothing more than fading whispers in a dark, cold, and brutal sea of nothingness. Some view them as calls to action, proverbial life rafts, that will help them realize joy by triumphing over fictitious and manufactured enemies. Needless to say, 99% of us are on the same side, but we’re split down the middle — angered over meaningless issues that will never be resolved and are merely wedges for those interested in keeping order.

  

• CoNaN THe BaVaRiaN…

  

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• The End Of The Cycle: "Government Will Gladly Enter War To Cleanse The Balance Sheet And Cull The Herd"

  Authored by Jeremiah Johnson (nom de plume of a retired Green Beret of the United States Army Special Forces (Airborne)) via SHTFplan.com,

  In the days following the 241^st anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the country is in an even more precarious position than it was in 1776. 

  

  We face a situation of a fiat currency about to collapse as the consumer-based economy follows.  Whether orchestrated by our imperialistic government or following actions of a hostile foreign nation (prompted or unprompted) the government will gladly enter a war to “cleanse” the balance sheet and cull the herd.  Concurrently, the country is deeply divided domestically along lines of racial unrest.

  The country also faces a threat to its existence in the face of Muslim extremists who are fostered by the traitorous socialist-Marxists in our government who enabled their entry under Obama as protected “refugees.”  U.S. policy in every arena is a chariot drawn by horses with no driver, jerking toward the “Blues” of the socialist Democrats or the “Reds” of the socialist, pseudo-Republicans in the domestic quagmire, the Circus Maximus partially in ruin after years of Barack Hussein Obama II’s reign.

  The superficial and superfluous, in the meantime, becomes the public focus and hence the distraction: “Simulacra and simulation,” so to speak.  The majority have gone forward in their consumer-driven Habitrail according to the sacred Hallmark Calendar…the one that has a “THX-1138 Consumer Day” at least one day every month.  The one with a fixed venue: everyone left the house to shop, to eat, to plan on the big barbecue in the afternoon.  Finally, in the evening, everyone then piled into the cars to watch the fireworks.  Then they all went home, to mount the treadmill again in the morning.

  The fireworks: thousands of tons of them, made in the People’s Republic of China.  It was a perfect, patriotic display, complete with “Ooh’s” and “Aah’s” as the Communist-Chinese fireworks simulated the rockets’ red glare and the bombs bursting in air.  Make no mistake: it is nighttime, and although our flag is still there, the country that it symbolizes is not whole anymore.  We have become an entitlement nation, where those who did not work and contribute to the system believe they are entitled to the fruits of those whose labors enable the country to keep chugging along.

  The government believes it is entitled to what those who pay taxes earn.  And those who support the system?  We believe that we are entitled to reset everything based on the merits of hard work and conservative values: an automatic, bloodless reset.  All these “entitlement” mindsets, forgetting that everything is cyclical.  We are at the end of the cycle for the United States.  We peaked long ago, and now we are deep in the decline-phase.  The Founding Fathers summed up in words what we are truly entitled to…a loss of our freedoms following the moral and societal degradation that we have allowed as a nation.  Some fostered it (the Marxists) and we the conservatives allowed them to do it.

  We didn’t put a stop to the degradation that occurred through the decades, and this is the result.  A law-abiding people is most easily controlled by the law.  There is no news today!  There is no coverage over what is happening in the rest of the world!  Where was the coverage…live…when the Egyptians were fed up with Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood and enlisted the aid of the army…and aided it, rioting in the streets to oust those extremists that Obama allowed to take power?  Where was the true coverage of the coup d’états we fostered, supported, and enabled in Ukraine and in Libya?  No, the “coverage” is limited to the lives of tabloid celebrities and distortions of any objectivity.  Why?

  To keep the citizens dumbed down, uninformed, working, taxed, consuming, mesmerized by sports and sex, and stultified to prevent them from taking any action against a government that is becoming more tyrannical, more repressive by the day.

  The media obfuscates: they aid, and in turn are aided by, the government.  Benghazi, Libya.  An embassy of the United States destroyed, and the ambassador and four members of his consulate killed, and nothing…nothing…has happened to the perpetrators.  The Secretary of Defense just released a report that the armed forces of the United States are in severe disarray and lacking both manpower and materials.  Most of us (the conservatives) are recognizing all of this.

  Thomas Jefferson wrote about the Tree of Liberty.

  The situation was arrived upon because the populace overall does not take any personal responsibility.  That reason covers the entire spectrum of the basis for the entitlement mentality.  Conservatives have lied to themselves, saying “It’ll all balance out eventually,” or “We’ll just vote the bums out of office and it’ll be made right,” or “Somebody will take care of it.”  The “somebody” needed to be us.  The problem is that Americans don’t sack the Curia or burn down the Bastille.  Americans fear the lack of law-abiding action, fear the potential for anarchy.

  But anarchy can also take form when the law-abiding do not put a stop to the lawmakers and their machinery turning a Republic into a tyranny: the controlled, purposed anarchy that follows is an anarchy of lawless laws, that only serve to empower the powerful and subjugate the subjects.

  The payment of taxes serves to feed the jailers and build the ever-growing cage of surveillance and control that is inexorably tightening upon society and every citizen.  The 8-year destructive actions of Obama left the country on the verge of collapse and war, with only agonal breathing on its deathbed: the country visits its own wake.  Now we have an administration that supplies the formerly anaerobic society with about 4 liters of oxygen per minute when a full 16 is called for: a “watered-down” Republicanism with fifth columnists preserving Obamacare and that hand of government control is still tightening on the throat of the people.  The hand is a mail gauntlet with the thin veneer of a velvet overlay.

  In just 3 ½ years, that velvet will fade, and the gauntlet will fully and openly reemerge once more.  If we make it for that length of time.  In truth, we face a larger problem that we have never encountered since the country’s founding.  We face the dual threat of war (orchestrated or otherwise) and a concurrent collapse of the economy, complete with civil war/social upheaval domestically.  The funeral dirge has been playing awhile, now.

  Bottom Line: All of this is the planned and deliberate globalists’ agenda: to destroy the United States from without and from within, by any means necessary.

  To truly celebrate the “birthday” of the United States, it will have to be “born again.”  The possibility exists that this means being born from the ashes of what remains after it hits rock bottom…through warfare, internal collapse, or a combination of both.  Society (and the stance of individual men) are both fragile things.  We also face the problem of needing to act, but it may be too late to act until everything is taken to the ground.  What will emerge from that is then up to those who survive the initial event.  Food for thought, after Independence Day, perhaps at the Twilight’s Last Gleaming.

  

  

• The G-20 Summit Post-Mortem (Summarized In 1 Cartoon)

  “…frenemies?”

   

  

  Source: MichaelPRamirez.com
  

  

  

• "It's Too Late" – 7 Signs Australia Can't Avoid Economic Apocalypse

  Authored by Joe Hildebrand and John Adams via News.com.au,

  AUSTRALIA has missed its chance to avoid a potential “economic apocalypse”, according to a former government guru who says that despite his warnings there are seven new signs we are too late to act.

  The former economics and policy adviser has identified seven ominous indicators that a possible global crash is approaching — including a surge in crypto-currencies such as Bitcoin — and the window for government action is now closed.

  John Adams, a former economics and policy adviser to Senator Arthur Sinodinos and management consultant to a big four accounting firm, told news.com.au in February he had identified seven signs of economic Armageddon.

  He had then urged the Reserve Bank to take pre-emptive action by raising interest rates to prevent Australia’s expanding household debt bubble from exploding and called on the government to rein in welfare payments and tax breaks such as negative gearing.

  Adams says he has for years been publicly and privately urging his erstwhile colleagues in the Coalition to take action but that since nothing has been done, the window has now closed and Australia is completely at the mercy of international forces.

  “As early as 2012, I have been publicly and privately advocating that Australian policy makers take pre-emptive policy action to deal with the structural imbalances within the Australian economy, especially Australia’s household debt bubble which in proportional terms is larger than the household debt bubbles of the 1880s or 1920s, the periods which preceded the two depressions experienced in Australian history,” he told news.com.au this week.

   

  “Unfortunately, the window for taking pre-emptive action with an orderly unwinding of structural macroeconomic imbalances has now closed.”

  

  Former Coalition economic adviser John Adams.Source:The Daily Telegraph

  Adams has now turned on his former party and says both its most recent prime ministers have led Australia into a potential “economic apocalypse” and Treasurer Scott Morrison is wrong that we are heading for a “soft landing”.

  “The policy approach by the Abbott and Turnbull Governments as well as the Reserve Bank of Australia and the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, which has been to reduce systemic financial risk through new macro-prudential controls, has been wholly inadequate,” he says.

   

  “I do not share the Federal Treasurer’s assessment that the economy and the housing market are headed for a soft landing. Data released by the RBA this week shows that the structural imbalances in the economy are actually becoming worse with household debt as a proportion of disposable income hitting a new record of 190.4 per cent.

   

  “Because of the failure of Australia’s political elites and the policy establishment, the probability of a disorderly unwinding, particularly of Australia’s household and foreign debt bubbles, have dramatically increased over the past six months and will continue to increase as global economic and financial instability increases.

   

  “Millions of ordinary, financially unprepared, Australians are now at the mercy of the international markets and foreign policy makers. Australian history contains several examples of where similar pre conditions have resulted in an economic apocalypse, resulting in a significant proportion of the Australian people being left economically destitute.”

  Following his landmark seven signs of the economic apocalypse, which was read by a quarter of a million people, Adams has now identified seven signs that it is too late for Australia to take action. Here they are in his own words:

  SIGN 1: TIGHTENING MONETARY POLICY

  

  The US Federal Reserve has raised interest rates. Picture: Andrew Caballero-ReynoldsSource:AFP

  A cycle of global monetary tightening has begun. For example, the US Federal Reserve has raised short term interest rates in December 2016, March and June 2017 with more forecasted increases to come. The US Federal Reserve also announced a program, expected to commence within months, which would shrink its balance sheet (i.e. quantitative tightening) by selling its holdings of $US6 billion a month from Treasuries and $US4 billion a month from mortgage bonds, increasing each quarter until the Fed’s balance sheet is being reduced by a total of $US50 billion a month or $US600 billion per year.

  Market expectations are now being set by officials at the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England for higher interest rates in both Canada and the UK in the near future.

  Due to Australia’s record high foreign debt, increases in the international cost of credit are being passed onto Australian borrowers through the banking system, particularly on interest-only and investor loans.

  SIGN 2: INVERTED AND FLATTENING YIELD CURVES

  

  Chinese officials kick off trading on the long awaited Bond Connect link. Picture: Vincent YuSource:AP

  In May 2017, the Chinese Government bond market recorded its first ever inverted yield curve. Also, the US Government bond yield curve, over the past 6 months, has significantly flattened as some market analysts anticipate an inverted US yield curve in late 2017.

  Inverted yield curves (or where long-term debt instruments have a lower yield than short-term debt instruments of the same credit quality) are known as a market predictor of a coming market crash or broader economic recession.

  SIGN 3: SOVEREIGN AND CORPORATE DEFAULTS

  

  Corporate defaults are emerging around the world. Picture: Bryan R. SmithSource:AFP

  Sovereign government and corporate defaults in both developed and developing economies are beginning to emerge. For example, China has registered in 2017 its highest level of corporate defaults in the first quarter of a calendar year on record. Delinquencies and charge-offs in the United States soared to $US1.4 billion in the first quarter of 2017, the highest recorded level since the first quarter of 2011.

  Also, in May 2017, creditors to the International Bank of Azerbaijan (Azerbaijan’s biggest bank) were forced to take a 20 per cent haircut (i.e. a partial default) which was upheld in June by a US Bankruptcy court in New York.

  SIGN 4: FALLING CONFIDENCE AND CREDIT DOWNGRADES

  In May 2017, six major Canadian banks were downgraded by Moody’s Investor Service (Moody’s) as concerns rise over soaring Canadian household debt and house prices leave lenders more vulnerable to losses. Moody’s also downgraded China’s sovereign debt in May 2017 for the first time since 1989 and has warned of further downgrades if further reforms are not enacted.

  In May 2017, S&P has downgraded 23 small-to-medium Australian financial institutions as the risk of falling property prices increases and potential financial losses start to increase. In June 2017, Moody’s downgraded 12 Australian banks, including Australia’s four major banks.

  Standard and Poor’s and Moody’s downgraded bonds for the US State of Illinois down to one notch above junk bond status as the state has over $US 14.5b in unpaid bills. Despite a new budget deal passing the Illinois state legislature which raises more revenue through higher taxes, Moody’s this week has placed the state government’s bonds under review for possible downgrade.

  SIGN 5: EMERGING CHINESE CREDIT CRISIS

  

  There could be big trouble in big China. Picture: Keith TsujiSource:Getty Images

  Significant concerns among international observers are now being discussed publicly regarding the $US4 trillion Chinese Wealth Management Product (WMP) market as Chinese bank regulators are now taking significant interventionist steps to drain liquidity and reduce financial risk. As a result of recent interventionist steps, the one-year Shanghai Interbank Offered Rate hit a two year high at 4.30% in May 2017.

  The Chinese WMP market has, in the past few years, experienced significant growth involving long term asset acquisition funded through the use of short term liabilities. Evidence is emerging that the long-term assets within WMPs are not performing consistent with expectations resulting in difficulties meeting short term debt obligations.

  The WMP market represents approximately 10% of the Chinese banking system whereas the 2006 07 subprime mortgage backed securities crisis only represented 2% of the US banking system.

  SIGN 6: SIGNIFICANT GROWTH IN VALUE OF CRYPTO CURRENCIES

  

  Bitcoin is on the rise, which is not comforting news. Picture: Roslan RahmanSource:AFP

  In the past five months, the crypto currencies industry (especially the leading five internationally recognised cryptocurrencies) have experienced tremendous growth in market capitalisation indicating that investors are seeking to escape the formal banking and financial system as well as government mandated fiat currencies.

  This is particularly acute in Japan where Japanese businesses and citizens have been pouring into Bitcoin given the Bank of Japan’s unconventional monetary policy measures, such as negative interest rates, as well as that Bitcoin has become legal tender in Japan in April 2017.

  For example, Bitcoin has experienced growth in market capitalisation by approximately 170% in the past 4 months, while Ethereum has grown by an approximate 2504%, Ripple by an approximate 4025%, NEM by an approximate 3194% and Litecoin by 1236%.

  SIGN 7: DISCREDITED AUSTRALIAN FISCAL AND MONETARY POLICY

  

  Australian policy makers have failed to address economic imbalances. Picture: Stefan PostlesSource:Getty Images

  The 2017-18 Turnbull Government Budget, as well as recent decisions by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) and the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA), have failed to address the structural imbalances and impediments plaguing the Australian economy.

  For example, many of the assumptions underpinning the Turnbull Government’s 2017-18 Budget, including assumptions relating to growth in real Gross Domestic Product, non-mining investment, wages and household consumption, are highly questionable and almost certain not to eventuate, placing significant risk that the Federal Government will not deliver a budget surplus in FY2020-21 as currently projected.

  Moreover, despite the introduction of new macro prudential rules by APRA, artificially low interest rates by RBA driven by a flawed monetary policy framework, has seen Australian household debt as a proportion of disposable income continue to climb to a new record high and now stands at 190.4%.

  *  *  *

  Adams' comments confirm the grave fears of Philip Parker, who serves as Altair's chairman and chief investment officer, who just returned hundreds of millions of dollar of his fund's money to clients…

  "…this is not a winding up of Altair, but a decision to hand back client monies out of equities which I deem to be far too risky at this point."

   

  "We think that there is too much risk in this market at the moment, we think it's crazy," Parker said with a candidness few of his colleagues are capable of, at least when still managing money.

   

  "Valuations are stretched, property is massively overstretched and most of the companies that we follow are at our one-year rolling returns targets – and that's after we've ticked them up over the past year. Now we are asking 'is there any more juice in these companies valuations?' and the answer is stridently, and with very few exceptions, 'no there isn't'."

   

  "Let me tell you I've never been more certain of anything in my life," Parker said. "I am absolutely certain we are in a bubble in this property market. Mortgage fraud is endemic, it's systemic, it's just terrible what's going on. When you've got 30-year-olds, who have never seen a property downturn before, borrowing up to 80 per cent to buy three and four apartments, it's a bubble."

   

  In a rather dire forecast, Parker outlined a situation where the stock market could fall as low as 5200 points in the coming months, depending on the confluence of his identified risk factors.

   

  "Australia hasn't had its GFC event, we've been living in this fool's paradise. But if China slows down the way the guys think it will towards the end of this year, then that's 70 per cent of our exports [affected]. You can see already that the commodity market is turning down."

   

  Some speculated whether there is another motive behind the sudden shuttering, but Parker stridently denied any suggestion that there were other factors at play other than a pure investment decision. No personal issues, no position that has blown up and forced his hand. "No, God no," he said. "We've sold out all of our positions at huge profits for our clients."

   

  

  

• "Ready To Blow" – National Geographic's Guide To The Yellowstone Supervolcano

  Amid a growing 'swarm' of over earthquakes (now over 1000), and Montana's largest quake ever, scientists are growing increasingly concerned that the so-called 'super-volcano' at the heart of Yellowstone National Park could be building towards a Category 7 eruption. So what is a 'super-volcano' and what does its explosion mean for life on earth? NatGeo explains…

  As National Geographic details…

  Think of Yellowstone as a gigantic pressure cooker, fueled by a massive supervolcano. Water from rain and snowmelt, much of it centuries-old, percolates through cracks in the Earth’s crust until heated by molten rock reservoirs deep below. The water then filters upward, eventually finding release in the thousands of geysers, hot springs, and other hydrothermal wonders.

  

  Eruptions of this supervolcano expel so much material that the crust caves in, creating a craterlike depression called a caldera.

  Yellowstone is known as a supervolcano because of the violence and size of its explosions.

  

  The plume of hot rock has been calculated at more than 600 miles deep. But scientists suspect it actually descends as far as 1,800 miles, all the way to what’s known as the Earth’s outer core-mantle boundary.

  

  The reservoirs and plume are superheated, spongelike rock holding pockets of molten material called magma. The reservoirs’ heat, which originates in the plume, is what keeps the area’s geysers boiling.

  

  Ancient rain and snowmelt seep down to just above the volcano’s magma reservoirs, until they are superheated and rise again through the fractures. Volcanic heat and gases help propel steam and water toward the surface, where they escape through hot springs or geysers.

  

  Hot water rises from a deep reservoir into a teapot-shaped chamber. As water and gases fill the sealed space, pressure builds, preventing boiling. Some water spills into the spout, releasing pressure and allowing the water in the chamber to boil. Steam and water then blast up the spout.

  

  Pressure builds behind a narrow constriction until steam shoots through. Some water splashes out, then jets of steam and water explode, rising on average 130 feet. As the chamber drains, pressure drops, and the process begins again.

  • Highest recorded eruption – 184ft
  • Eruptions per day on average – 17
  • Minutes length of eruption – 1.5 to 5

  The park’s hydrothermal features cluster in basins at the margins of lava flows or near faults. Rivers and streams are heated as they pass through these basins. Heat and escaping gases are also evidence of the subterranean forces that lie below Yellowstone.

  

  So how would a supervolcanic eruption at Yellowstone impact the regional ecosystem, and the US more broadly? Well, as The American Dream blog's Michael Snyder points out, it would be nothing short of catastrophic.

  Hundreds of cubic miles of ash, rock and lava would be blasted into the atmosphere, and this would likely plunge much of the northern hemisphere into several days of complete darkness. Virtually everything within 100 miles of Yellowstone would be immediately killed, but a much more cruel fate would befall those living in major cities outside of the immediate blast zone such as Salt Lake City and Denver.

  

  Hot volcanic ash, rock and dust would rain down on those cities literally for weeks. In the end, it would be extremely difficult for anyone living in those communities to survive. In fact, it has been estimated that 90 percent of all people living within 600 miles of Yellowstone would be killed.

  Experts project that such an eruption would dump a layer of volcanic ash that is at least 10 feet deep up to 1,000 miles away, and approximately two-thirds of the United States would suddenly become uninhabitable. The volcanic ash would severely contaminate most of our water supplies, and growing food in the middle of the country would become next to impossible.

  In other words, it would be the end of our country as we know it today.

  The rest of the planet, and this would especially be true for the northern hemisphere, would experience what is known as a “nuclear winter”. An extreme period of “global cooling” would take place, and temperatures around the world would fall by up to 20 degrees. Crops would fail all over the planet, and severe famine would sweep the globe.

  In the end, billions could die.

  So yes, this is a threat that we should take seriously.

  

  

• The U.S. Has Been At War For Over 220 In 241 Years

  Authored by Robert Fantina via AHTribune.com,

  

  The United States presents itself to the world as a beacon of liberty and a proponent of human rights around the world, ready and willing to stand up for and defend the downtrodden. Florida Senator Marco Rubio recently said that the world looks to the U.S. as an example of democracy. This myth is not believed outside of the United States’ borders, and decreasingly within. There is simply too much evidence to the contrary.

  The U.S. has been at war for over 220 of its 241 year history. During that time, it has shown a complete lack of respect for the human rights of both the citizens of the nations against which it wages war, and its own soldiers. We’ll take a look at examples from recent history, and see how the U.S. continues these barbaric practices today.

  

  Source: Wikipedia

  During the U.S. war against Viet Nam, which lasted for several years, conservative estimates indicate that at least 2,000,000 men, women and children were killed. Entire villages were burned; soldiers were told to assume that anyone, of an age, was the enemy.

  U.S. soldiers gave poisoned cookies to children seeking their help. The My Lai massacre, in which between 350 and 500 innocent people were killed, mostly women, children and elderly men, garnered international publicity, but was only one example of U.S. barbarity.

  U.S. soldiers returned home from this and later wars with severe physical and emotional problems. Veterans’ organizations worked for years to have the effects of ‘Agent Orange’, a chemical defoliant used in Viet Nam that caused birth defects in the children of soldiers who used it, recognized by the government so they could get government assistance. A generation later, the reality of Gulf War Syndrome was denied for years by the U.S. government.

  How does this continue in the current environment? When the U.S. invaded Iraq early in the administration of President George Bush, it bombed residential areas in a country where over half the population was under the age of 15. It destroyed government institutions, even as it protected oil lines, leaving millions of people without essential services.

  In Yemen, drones have killed at least 6,000 people. In the first drone attack authorized by then President Barack Obama, 34 people were killed. Of these, two were suspected of having ties to so-called terrorist groups. The other 32 were innocent men, women and children. And these atrocities continue to this day.

  In Syria, the U.S. is supporting radical groups that are causing untold suffering. At least one third of the population of Syria has fled their homes; recently, due to the efforts of the Syrian army and its allies, some have begun to return. The death toll, directly attributable to the actions of the U.S., is at least half a million.

  When it comes to a nation’s need to defend itself, the U.S. again has no equal when it comes to hypocrisy. Palestinians who defend themselves with rocks against the U.S.-provided weaponry with which Israel kills and oppresses them, are called terrorists. IDF terrorists and settlers, also terrorists, living in the West Bank in violation of international law, kill unarmed Palestinians with impunity.

  What does all this mean for the basic human rights of the people whose nations fall victim to U.S. imperialism? Death, disease, homelessness, life in refugee camps, hunger, lack of medical care, lack of education opportunities, and much more.

  The United States, despite its own claims to the contrary, has one of the worst records of human rights abuses of all the countries on the planet. They are worsened in war time, and as I mentioned earlier, the U.S. has been at war almost constantly since 1776.

  This is the United States, that self-proclaimed beacon of peace and justice. This is international hypocrisy at it most blatant and deadly. People within the U.S. and without are working tirelessly to resolve these issues, but they are opposed by powerful interest groups. Yet such shocking cruelty and violations of international law and the human right of millions of innocent people cannot continue forever. The end of the injustices perpetrated by the United States will be a welcome day around the world.

  

  

• Infowars Decorates CNN's Coffin With Hilarious $20,000 Meme Contest

  

  Content originally published at iBankCoin.com

  While most of the MSM hand-grenades itself into irrelevancy using embarrassingly transparent propaganda to attack Donald Trump, CNN’s death throes have made for some of the most entertaining and unscripted reality TV in the history of humankind.

  After firing three employees for publishing Fake News amid tanking ratings – right before an undercover sting exposed the Trump-Russia witch hunt as nothing more than a ratings grab, CNN went full Gomer Pyle when they blackmailed a Reddit user for thought crimes.

  Never before has a network done so much damage to their brand in so little time.

  History will note

  The great meme war began after CNN journalist Andrew Kaczynski – who has a history of ‘doxing’ people, harassing women, and may have driven a guy to suicide – blackmailed a Reddit user who made a satirical video of President Trump ‘beating up CNN’ in an old WWF bit which the President tweeted last Sunday. After the Redditor apologized to CNN for his thought crimes, Kaczynski wrote that CNN “reserves the right to publish his identity should any of that change.“

  Really bad move

  In response to CNN’s bullying, the internet exploded with rage. In addition to 4chan launching “operation autistic storm,” Infowars launched a contest with a $20,000 prize for the best meme – judged by Infowars journalist Paul Joseph Watson.

  This isn’t the first time Infowars has impacted US politics with hilarious contests. Last October, they offered $1,000 to anyone who made it onto television with a shirt reading “Bill Clinton is a rapist,” and $5,000 for anyone who shouted the phrase on TV while wearing similar attire. The results made national headlines.

  And in May following an incident in which CNN host Kathy Griffin took part in some assassination porn, Infowars launched another contest – offering $1,000 – $2500 to anyone wearing a “CNN is ISIS” shirt who also shouted the phrase on TV.

   

  TO THE MEMES! 

  Trump supporters far and wide have taken the contest by storm, offering up witty and hilarious submissions in the quest for $20,000 in cold hard cash. There are way too many to post here, so check out twitter hashtag #CNNMemewar

  Enjoy!

  First – the_donald’s current favorite – created by @Carpedonktum

    

   

  I love this one lol. #CNNMemeWar #FakeNews #VeryFakeNews #CNNBackmail #CNN pic.twitter.com/tJrNoFsh6M

  — #ByeFreeSpeech????????? (@_Mister_E) July 8, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  pic.twitter.com/m4UbMKmdsm

  — CNNBlackmail (@EveCooze) July 6, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  One of the best I’ve seen.

  Want to win 20 grand?

  I’m judging this contest: https://t.co/JRTPvZbt2X pic.twitter.com/YYlAIx1pXc

  — Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) July 6, 2017

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  #Editorial This is probably my second favorite meme from the great #CNNMemeWar so far. #MAGA@realdonaldtrump pic.twitter.com/2J4JEqsjH6

  — The Columbia Bugle (@ColumbiaBugle) July 8, 2017

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  ’10 points for GryffinDonald!’ #CNNBlackmail pic.twitter.com/LReglnULCP

  — Chet Cannon (@Chet_Cannon) July 5, 2017

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  The #CNNMemeWar keeps on going ???? #MemeWars #MemeWars2017 pic.twitter.com/fVWdzmmyPr

  — ????????Jojoh888???????????? (@jojoh888) July 8, 2017

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  LOL pic.twitter.com/xAOszOm8ls

  — ZeroPointNow (@ZeroPointNow) July 7, 2017

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  “I would have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for you meddling memers and your damn frog!”#CNNMemeWar pic.twitter.com/dySNz9OamK

  — The Columbia Bugle (@ColumbiaBugle) July 8, 2017

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  In 4chan news: #Kekistani forces press forward, in pursuit of the retreating CNN army.#CNNBlackmail #CNNMemeWar #AutismStorm #Shadilay pic.twitter.com/LAdPj1rz7H

  — Lord Molyneaux (@LordMolyneaux) July 8, 2017

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  I entered the $20,000 meme war by infowars. memes made of Trump owning CNN. my first submission #InfoWars #CnnMemeWar@RealAlex @MarkDice pic.twitter.com/kYAbHBs0Hp

  — Nick NorthCutt (@7salazarNick) July 6, 2017

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  #CNNBlackmail is going insane on Twitter and @CNN is completely losing their minds. #CNNMemeWar has just begun. #FreeSpeech #MAGA #FakeNews pic.twitter.com/dPbV3hLB8P

  — Wild Bill (@wmmII88) July 7, 2017

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  Dankest of dank. #CNNBlackmail #CNNMemeWar pic.twitter.com/jUEW3Poqdr

  — Brent Skilton (@brent_skilton) July 8, 2017

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  This Is Just Too Funny!!!#CNNMemeWar pic.twitter.com/GEXhb3jR1R

  — Politick_Rick (@Politick_Rick) July 8, 2017

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  #CNNMemeWar contest #infowars #CNNBlackmail pic.twitter.com/WMXcWLt36x

  — dasranai (@dasranai) July 5, 2017

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  Oops #CNNMemeWar #AutismStorm pic.twitter.com/gfJ19dAjBn

  — Keks Army (@ArmyKeks) July 8, 2017

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  The Silver Fox paying his respects. #CNNMemeWar pic.twitter.com/COZRDTJMg3

  — The Columbia Bugle (@ColumbiaBugle) July 8, 2017

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  CNN is taking a beating. Will they apologize? #CNNMemeWar pic.twitter.com/mZQove3Rty

  — Democrats for Trump (@YoungDems4Trump) July 8, 2017

  Follow on Twitter @ZeroPointNow § Subscribe to our YouTube channel

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• New York Mayor Defends Decision To Attend Hamburg G-20 Protest

  After facing a backlash for his decision to travel to Hamburg, Germany and speak at an anti-capitalist, protester-organized gathering on Friday outside the G-20 conference, NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio, who’s facing re-election this year, defended his decision, arguing that it’s up to local officials like himself to speak up on issues like climate change now that President Donald Trump has taken the US out of the Paris Accord, Bloomberg reports.

  De Blasio, who left NYC the day after NYPD officer Miosotis Familia was assassinated in the Bronx, didn’t publicly disclose his plans to appear as the keynote speaker at the anti-capitalist rally in Germany until just hours before his departure. He left the city as New Yorkers were struggling with a deteriorating subway system, a spike in crime, uncollected bulk trash, an increase in homelessness, and myriad other problems. He also skipped an NYPD swearing-in ceremony for 524 new NYPD recruits, further damaging his already strained relationship with the police.

  

  Yet Hizzoner says it was all worth it to show the people of Germany that not all Americans are like Trump, according to Bloomberg:

  “It’s a variation on the concept of voting with your feet,” de Blasio, a Democrat, said in an interview before speaking at the “Hamburg Shows Attitude” protest on Saturday. “While the national governments will probably only make limited progress, the rest of us don’t have that choice. If we make only limited progress we’ll only be going backwards.”

  “We almost have Washington as an island at this point, unrepresentative of the views of the American people on many levels, and that’s going to take a different kind of politics to address,” de Blasio said.

  Eric Phillips, de Blasio’s spokesman, said the mayor only agreed to go grandstand in Hamburg after making sure he would be able to attend Familia’s funeral, scheduled for July 11. He returns to New York on Sunday. De Blasio, who met Hamburg’s mayor on Friday, tried to spin the trip as a reconnaissance mission to learn more about Hamburg’s renewable energy and early-childhood education programs, though he also said it was also important to make sure people understand President Donald Trump’s views are not shared by all Americans.” Because apparently some within the G-20 have never watched CNN, and think that everyone in the US agrees with Trump?

  I'm at the G20 to remind the world that on issues like equality, climate change and more, our cities — and their people — lead the way. pic.twitter.com/t2qyp7mRfy

  — Bill de Blasio (@NYCMayor) July 8, 2017

  The organizers of the rally where de Blasio, 56, was to speak distanced themselves from the violent clashes between protesters and police that have broken out at the G20.

  Meanwhile, in a trolling of the Mayor, New York City’s Sergeants Benevolent Association kept up its criticism, tweeting that 160 police had been injured during the protests. “Whose side are you on, Mr. Mayor??” the group asked the socialist mayor.

  So far 160 police officers have injured by protesters at this year's G20 summit. Whose side are you on Mr. Mayor?? https://t.co/OB3nG7VByZ

  — SBA (@SBANYPD) July 7, 2017

  Adding to the insults, De Blasio’s  Republican challenger in November’s mayoral election, Staten Island Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis, posted an image on Twitter of de Blasio’s face photo-shopped onto a picture of a man in lederhosen sitting in front of tall glasses of beer and a plate stacked with sausage and sauerkraut.

  “While #NYC ’s subways crumble, sex crimes increase double digits, litter on streets pile up & the number of street homeless soars… #G20,” Malliotakis wrote.

  While #NYC 's subways crumble, sex crimes increase double digits, litter on streets pile up & the number of street homeless soars…#G20 pic.twitter.com/JsYoHhHaVG

  — Nicole Malliotakis (@NMalliotakis) July 6, 2017

  Meanwhile, Trump's trip to Germany – in which he established “personal relations” with Russian President Vladimir Putin and achieving a “breakthrough” truce involving the southern de-escalation zone in Syria  – appeared more successful, and actually prompted the G-20 to conclude that the 2-day meeting wasn't a waste, even though during his speech de Blasio voiced his 'doubts' that the world leaders could resolve important global issues at the G20 summit. You can watch more below:

  

  

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• Women's March Organizer Calls For Jihad Against "Fascists Reigning In The White House"

  Authored by Daniel Lang via SHTFplan.com,

  

  The far-left and radical Islam have made strange bedfellows in recent years. You would think that they’d be completely in opposition to each other, given how different their values are, but the far-left is shockingly tolerant of radical Islam. They’ll rail against what they think is an injustice in their own society, like the patriarchy, the wage gap, or rape culture in the West (all of which are provably false). But they’ll turn a blind eye to radical Islam, which is an actual patriarchy that treats women like chattel, routinely executes gays, and punishes women when they’re raped.

  No one embodies this cognitive dissonance more than Linda Sarsour. She was one of the lead organizers of the Women’s March earlier this year, and has since become a rising start among the left. But despite her progressive credentials, she also frequently expresses support for sharia law, and has been known to work with convicted terrorists.

  She claims to be an advocate for peace, but some of her statements would suggest otherwise. Last weekend she gave a speech at the Islamic Society of North America Convention, and called for “jihad” against the Trump administration.

  “I hope that we when we stand up to those who oppress our communities that Allah accepts from us that as a form of jihad. That we are struggling against tyrants and rulers not only abroad in the Middle East or in the other side of the world, but here in these United States of America where you have fascists and white supremacists and Islamophobes reigning in the White House,” Sarsour said.

   

  “Our number one and top priority is to protect and defend our community, it is not to assimilate and please any other people and authority,” she said. “Our obligation is to our young people, is to our women, to make sure our women are protected in our community.”

   

  “Our top priority and even higher than all those other priorities is to please Allah and only Allah,” Sarsour declared.

  You can see the speech for yourself below.

  Sarsour is emblematic of a trend that we’re seeing on the left these days. They’re becoming attached at the hip with radical Islam, despite the fact that these ideologies don’t seem to have anything in common.

  Though these belief systems are very different, they do have a common enemy. What the left and radical Islam share is a hatred for Western civilization and values (hence her call to refuse any form of assimilation). Perhaps they aren’t such strange bedfellows after all.

  

  

• It's Not Just Mexico – Mapping Border Disputes Worldwide

  If territorial boundaries are not given by nature, they are usually drawn by humans and have most often evolved over decades of fighting and conflict.

  As Statista’s Isabel von Kessel notes, since humans existed on earth, the soil they inhabited has been of huge importance to them and as long as boundaries exist, people have found themselves in dispute over them. Hence, territorial and even maritime boundaries are not necessarily static, they have shifted back and forth to all cardinal directions and likewise, existing countries have been wiped out from the map while new ones have been created.

  When it comes to conflict on territory, most countries on the globe are currently involved in territorial disputes and surprisingly few are not. Therefore, this infographic gives an idea of the status quo on a world that still experiences a lot of disputes about territory…

  

  You will find more statistics at Statista

  While new conflicts have emerged though, some others have also been settled in recent years, such as the border disputes between Burkina Faso and Niger in 2013, India and Bangladesh in 2015 or Chile and Peru in 2014, to name just a few.

  

  

• The US Is Not "One Nation" – And It Never Was

  Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

  Patrick Buchanan is an informative and interesting writer. On foreign policy, especially, he's long been one of the most reasonable voices among high-level American pundits.

  When it comes to cultural matters, however, Buchanan has long held to a peculiar and empirically questionable version of American history in which the United States was once a mono-culture in which everyone was once happily united by "a common religion," a "common language," and a "common culture."

  Now, he's at it again with his most recent column in which he correctly points out that the United States is culturally fractured, and speculates as to whether or not Thomas Jefferson's call to "dissolve political bands" in the Declaration of Independence might be sound advice today.

  Buchanan is correct in noting that the US is culturally divided today.

  But, he appears to have a selective view of history when he contends there was a time when this was not so. If there ever was such a period, it's unclear as to when exactly it was. 

  Buchanan can't be referring to the mid-19th century when Northern states and Southern states were becoming increasingly hostile toward each other. Many of these differences flared up over slavery, but larger cultural differences were there too, exemplified by a divide between agrarian and industrialized culture, and the hierarchical South versus the more populist North. The result was a civil war that killed more than 2 percent of the population. It was a literal bloodbath. 

  Was that version of the United States culturally united?

  Nor can Buchanan possibly be referring to the US of the so-called Gilded Age. After all, during this period, the US was flooded with immigrants from a wide variety of backgrounds, 

  Historian Jon Grinspan notes:

  American life transformed more radically during the 19th century than it ever had before. Between the 1830s and 1900, America's population quintupled … at least 18 million immigrants arrived from Europe, more people than had lived in all of America in 1830.

  This hardly led to a period of religious or linguistic unity. 

  Certainly Catholics of the 19th century in the United States — who were commonly denounced as being non-Christians by the majority Protestants — would be at a loss if asked to describe the way the United States was united by a common religion. 

  This alleged unity would be news to the Catholics whose schools were being closed by government edict — as happened in Oregon where the state government deliberately outlawed private schools in the hope of eradicating the Catholic education system. This unity was certainly absent for the Catholics who were victims in the Know-Nothing riots in Philadelphia in 1844. 

  The Mormons may have fared even worse, and fled to the wilds of Utah. Even there they couldn't avoid the iron fist of the federal government. When disagreements flared over polygamy and territorial representation, James Buchanan sent 2,500 troops to Utah in 1857 as part of a shooting war with Mormons to force them into better compliance with federal law. 

  Nor were the foreign languages of immigrants immediately stamped out as many imagine in their nostalgia. Well into the 20th century, German continued to be a widely-spoken language, with Americans of German descent demanding their own German-language schools and government documents printed in German. Many Germans actively sought to avoid cultural integration with others by demanding more taxpayer-funded German-language-only schools.

  According to historian Willi Paul Adams:

  [S]ome states mandated English as the exclusive language of instruction in the public schools, while Pennsylvania and Ohio in 1839 were first in allowing German as an official alternative, even requiring it on parental demand. Some public and many private parochial schools taught exclusively in German throughout many decades, mostly in rural areas.

  Nor was the German lobby confined to these two states. The original Colorado constitution, for example, mandates that all new laws be distributed in German, Spanish, and English, so as to cater to speakers the three most common languages in the area. 

  According to the census bureau, there were more than two-million German-speaking foreign-born United States residents in 1920, which means more than 2 percent of the population was speaking German. If the same proportions held up today, there'd be more than six million foreign-born German speakers in the US. Moreover, Germans weren't even the largest foreign language group at the time. There were even more foreign-born speakers of "Slavic languages" including Russian, Czech, and Polish. Taken all together — out of a population of 100 million — there were more than ten million foreign-born Americans with a "mother tongue" other than English in 1920. It is likely that many of these people also knew and spoke English — some of the time. But the reality hardly paints a picture of linguistic and cultural unity as imagined by Buchanan. 

  And then, of course, there is the Spanish-speaking population. As noted above, the State of Colorado was tri-lingual from the day it became a state. And then there is New Mexico where Spanish speakers prior to statehood comprised at least half the state's population. Not surprisingly, the New Mexico constitution has always stipulated that the Spanish language enjoys special status, and that no citizen of the state may be denied any state services or rights based on being only able to speak Spanish. 

  Much of this linguistic diversity was a legacy of the Mexican War in which the US annexed vast territories that included many Spanish speakers. Generally forgotten today is the fact that the Mexican border was once located a mere 100 miles south of Denver along the Arkansas River. The special status granted Spanish in the 19th century in these regions was not a result of an influx of new immigrants. It was the result of a linguistic reality imposed on the population of the American Southwest by an American war of conquest.

  We might also mention ongoing ethnic tensions caused by the war, such as those caused by the notorious Land Act of 1851 which robbed the Californios of their property. And then there were decades of anti-Mexican policies in southern Texas that disenfranchised the Spanish-speaking minority there. In some cases, this led to outright violent rebellion as with Juan Cortina and his guerrilla fighters.  

  So, is the cultural disunity in the United States something novel and unprecedented as Buchanan imagines? It's unlikely. 

  Any theory about unity in American history that just breezes over the American Civil War is questionable at best, and English is likely more widespread today than at any point in the last 150 years thanks to the dominance of American popular culture. 

  Nevertheless, Buchanan has a point. 

  There are very real divides in the US today, especially between the religious and the anti-religious, between the urban residents and suburbanites, and between leftists and conservatives. Recent data even suggests that communities are now segregating themselves along ideological lines.

  So what is the answer? 

  As is so often the case, the answer simply lies in decentralization. As Buchanan seems to suggest, now may be the time to "dissolve the political bands which have connected" Californians with Texans and Vermonters with Indianans. 

  After all, as Buchanan notes, if unity were put up to a vote, would the confederation we call 'the United States" even survive? 

  Could the Constitution, as currently interpreted, win the approval of two-thirds of our citizens and three-fourth of our states, if it were not already the supreme law of the land? How would a national referendum on the Constitution turn out, when many Americans are already seeking a new constitutional convention?

  The answers to these questions are not obviously "yes." 

  Buchanan also correctly points out that the US does not qualify as "a nation" – at least not according to the romantic definition he uses. Buchanan quotes the Frenchman Ernest Renan who identifies at least two criteria for status as a nation: "One is the possession in common of a rich legacy of memories; the other is present consent, the desire to live together, the desire to continue to invest in the heritage that we have jointly received."

  Buchanan suggests this description no longer applies to the US. He's half right. It doesn't apply to the US today. But unless we studiously ignore and gloss over the enduring religious, linguistic, cultural, and ideological differences that have always existed, we must admit it never really applied to the United States at all. 

   

  

  

• Artist's Impression Of Failed Socialist States

  Presented with no comment…

   

  

  Source: Townhall.com

  

  

• Dead Mall Stalking: One Hedge Fund Manager’s Tour Across Middle-America – Part 2

  Via AdventuresInCapitalism.com,

  Continued from Part 1…

  Malls are bearing the brunt of changes in retail, but they’re only the canary in the coal mine.

  Let’s start with a simple premise; commercial real estate (CRE) will change more in the next decade than it has in the past hundred years. Anyone who thinks they can fully foresee how it will evolve is lying to you. The only certainty is that highly leveraged real estate investors and lenders will be obliterated as current models evolve faster than anticipated.

  In the past, retail was retail, warehouse was warehouse and office was office—the same for all other CRE classes. There was some cross-over, but the main commercial real estate components stayed segmented for the most part. Now, with big box stores, the lowest hanging fruit for online shopping to knock off, going to dodo-land, there will be hundreds of millions of feet of well-located space suddenly becoming available. People act as if there are enough Ulta Beauty and Dick’s Sporting Goods to go around. However, you cannot fill all of this space with the few big box retail concepts still expanding—especially as many stalwarts are themselves shrinking.

  

  As a result, a huge game of musical chairs is about to take place. Why pay $20/ft for mid-rise office space, if you can now move into an abandoned Sports Authority for $5/ft. Sure, it doesn’t come with windows, but employees like open plan space and there’s plenty of parking. Besides, with the rental savings, you can offer your staff an in-house fitness facility and cafeteria for free. Does your mega-church need a larger space? There’s probably a former Sears or Kmart that perfectly accommodates you at $3/ft. Have an assisted living facility with an expiring lease? Why not move it to an abandoned JC Penney—the geriatrics will feel right at home, as they’re the only ones still shopping there.  

  Go onto any real estate website and you will find out that huge plan space is nearly free. No one knows what the hell to do with it and the waves of bankruptcy in big box are just starting. As online evolves, these waves will engulf other segments of retail as well.

  Type Macy’s into Loopnet.com and look at how many millions of feet of old Macy’s are available for under $10/ft to purchase. Retail’s problems are about to become everyone’s problems in CRE. When the old Macy’s rents for $2/ft, what happens to everyone else’s rents? EXACTLY!!! What happens if a CRE owner is leveraged at 60% (currently considered conservative) and leasing at $15/ft when the old HHGregg across the street is offered for rent at $3/ft? An office owner can lower his rents a few dollars, but at the new price deck, he cannot cover his interest cost, much less his other operating expenses. What happens to a suddenly emptying mid-rise office building? It has higher operating expenses than the box store due to full-time security and cleaning—maybe it’s a zero—in that future market rents no longer cover the operating expenses of the asset, much less offer a return on investment. I know, crazy—that’s how musical chairs works when demand contracts and the supply stays the same.

  What happens to the guys who lent against these assets? Kaplooey!!!

  

  America currently has more feet of retail space per capita than any other country. For that matter, America has more feet of office and other CRE types per capita as well. A decade of low interest rates has made this problem substantially worse. Think of the two malls that I spoke about in the last piece—they weren’t done in by the internet, they were done in by a tripling of retail space in a cities that are barely growing. These cities simply ran out of shoppers for all of this space. Now the mall is empty—heck the strip retail is only partly filled in. The next step is that rents will drop—dramatically. The owners of each asset, the mall and the strip center will go bust. Neither has a cap structure that is designed for dramatically lower rents. Neither has an org structure designed for carving up this space for the sorts of eclectic tenants that will eventually absorb it over the next few decades.

  CRE has had it so good for the past 35 years, that most owners have never seen a down cycle. Sure, Dallas had too much supply in the early ‘90’s. Silicon Valley over-expanded in the early ‘00’s. It took a few years for it to be absorbed. Anyone who had capital during the bust made a fortune. This time may really be different. There’s too much supply. Short of blowing it up, it will be with us for years into the future. Without dramatic economic or population growth, some of it may NEVER be absorbed.

  As an investor, this is all interesting to understand, but you don’t fully comprehend it until you have visited a few dozen of these facilities and seen how owners are trying to cope with the problem. In Miami, space is constricted. In Texas, there’s more CRE than I’ve ever seen. They keep putting it up—even if there isn’t demand currently. For three decades, they’ve always been able to fill it over time. For the first time ever, they can’t seem to fill it—in fact, demand is now declining. It is now obvious; there will be a whole lot of pain for CRE owners and lenders. Of course, someone’s pain can be someone’s gain.

  To be continued…

  

  

• Rachel Maddow Caught In Latest Fake News Scandal; Proof Her "Forged NSA Document" Segment Was A Hoax

  She thought she had it.  The smoking gun that would prove someone in Trump’s campaign colluded with the Russians to steal the 2016 election.  But, when a forged NSA document sent to Rachel Maddow turned out to be just more bad information from more anonymous sources, it left the crusading MSNBC host feeling a bit “triggered.”  As such, she opened her show last night with the following segment:

  “Somebody, for some reason, appears to be shopping a fairly convincing fake NSA document that purports to directly implicate somebody from the Trump campaign in working with the Russians in their attack in the election.”

   

  “This is news, because: why is someone shopping a forged document of this kind to news organizations covering the Trump-Russia affair?”

   

  Not surprisingly, Maddow uses the discovery to imply that someone within the Trump administration is intentionally planting fake information in an attempt to discredit her show.  She goes on to imply that similar efforts may have caused the recent firing of 3 ‘journalists’ at CNN who simply couldn’t be bothered with verifying the anonymous tip they received.

  Here are more details of Maddow’s show from the Daily Caller:

  On June 7, an unidentified person sent documents to an online tip line for Maddow’s show, she said.

   

  That was two days after The Intercept published legitimate NSA documents that were stolen by Reality Winner, a contractor for the agency.

  And that’s where Maddow’s faux-outrage breaks down. 

  You see, if it’s clear that Maddow received her forgery after the intercept published their documents then there’s really no ‘there’ there.  Pretty much anyone with an internet connection could have simply taken the Reality Winner documents from The Intercept website and used them create a forgery to send to Maddow. 

  Of course, Maddow knew that her whole story was bullshit unless she could convince her viewers that the forgery she received was created before The Intercept published it for the world to see.  If she could prove that, then she could insist the forged document must have come from someone on the ‘inside.’

  So, she decided to get ‘technical’ and take a look at the “metadata” on the document she received.  As it turns out, the “creation date” on the document she received was roughly 3.5 hours before The Intercept published their Reality Winner story.  See, it’s all laid out right here on this lovely timeline graphic.  Checkmate, Mr. Trump!

  

   

  Except, not.  Ironically, by stretching the truth in an attempt to prove that her story was in any way relevant, Maddow unwittingly proved exactly the opposite. 

  As The Intercept has subsequently pointed out, the “creation date” on the document received by Maddow (see the timeline above) perfectly matches, to the exact second, the “creation date” on The Intercept’s Reality Winner document. 

  Why?  Because that is the exact time in which The Intercept created their document and published it to their cloud server. 

  All of which simply proves that Maddow’s source didn’t have a sneak peak at the Reality Winner documents…they actually used The Intercept document as their source for creating their forgery. 

  Now, we could be wrong here…but, if the Trump administration wanted to dupe Rachel Maddow we suspect they could have gotten their hands on clean copies of the Reality Winner docs without having to lift them from The Intercept’s website.

  

   

  So, what seems more likely to have happened here is that Maddow’s staff could easily tell the “NSA document” was a forgery from the start and simply ignored it at first. Afterall, she received the document on June 7th and is just now deciding to talk about it a month later?  Unlikely. 

  But, when 3 journalists from CNN lost their jobs for publishing fake news, Maddow saw an opportunity to launch a whole new narrative attacking the Trump administration by alleging that they’re planting fake intelligence reports with the media.  Never let a good crisis go to waste…as they say.

  Edward Snowden summarized the situation the best in a series of tweets:

  Maddow’s lawyerly defense of why her implication was wrong is disappointing. Such caution should come prior to raising alarm on national TV.

   

  When the media’s credibility is under attack, rushing stories out before checking facts and contacting the subject is hard to comprehend.

   

  That said, journalism is hard and mistakes happen. When they do, as in this Maddow case, apologies should be frank and unequivocal.

   

  When we start getting economical with facts, we lose. This important story was mangled by needlessly injected an unsupportable conspiracy.

   

  Each time the media gets a prominent story wrong right now, I wince. More than egg on a famous face, it risks a generation’s trust in news.

   

  If our most famous journalists are so proud they can’t admit to what is now an obvious error, how can they hope to hold the public trust?

   

  Most folks can’t read three different papers every day. If we don’t set the highest standard, many give up and say the truth is unknowable.

   

  That is the twilight of an age.

  When the media’s credibility is under attack, rushing stories out before checking facts and contacting the subject is hard to comprehend.

  — Edward Snowden (@Snowden) July 7, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  When we start getting economical with facts, we lose. This important story was mangled by needlessly injected an unsupportable conspiracy.

  — Edward Snowden (@Snowden) July 7, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  If our most famous journalists are so proud they can’t admit to what is now an obvious error, how can they hope to hold the public trust?

  — Edward Snowden (@Snowden) July 7, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  That is the twilight of an age.

  — Edward Snowden (@Snowden) July 7, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

   

  Still, we do feel badly for the liberal ‘journalists’ of the world…all the embarrassing fake news stories of late means that they may have to actually start doing their jobs rather than just blindly running stories from ‘anonymous sources.’

  

  

• How Google Rigs Search And Hurts Consumers

  Authored by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

  I’m sure all of you heard about the $2.7 billion fine imposed by the EU on Google as a result of its anti-competitive behavior, but not many of you probably know exactly what the search giant did to earn it. To shine some light on the topic, let’s take a look at a few excerpts from a recent article written by Silicon Valley antitrust lawyer Gary Reback.

  Below are some choice excerpts from the piece, You Should Be Outraged at Google’s Anti-Competitive Behavior:

  Before 2007, if a user searched for a product on Google, other sites listing prices for that product would appear among the general search results, ranked in the order of their quality to users. These “comparison shopping sites” were designed to identify merchants with the lowest prices. The more accurate and comprehensive their results, the higher they were ranked and the more traffic they generated.

   

  But the more successful that comparison shopping sites became, the more they threatened Google’s business plan. Google makes money by selling ads placed next to its free search results, and merchants could not be expected to bid for ad placement if the listings in comparison shopping sites on the same search undercut their prices.

   

  To address this, Google developed a cunning plan, the first phase of which was documented in a report by the FTC. Portions of the report were published by the Wall Street Journal more than two years ago.

   

  Quoting internal Google documents and emails, the report shows that the company created a list of rival comparison shopping sites that it would artificially lower in the general search results, even though tests showed that Google users “liked the quality of the [rival] sites” and gave negative feedback on the proposed changes.

   

  Google reworked its search algorithm at least four times, the documents show, and altered its established rating criteria before the proposed changes received “slightly positive” user feedback. Internal Google documents predicted that the proposed changes would reduce rivals’ user traffic up to 20 percent and subsequently reported producing the desired results once the changes were implemented.

   

  At the same time, Google started putting the results from its own comparison shopping service at the top of search results. After these changes, the only source of low-price information readily available on Google’s search platform came from Google’s own comparison shopping service, known at the time as Google Product Search, which listed the lowest prices for products in its database at no charge to merchants.

   

  Google’s conduct certainly hurt its rivals, particularly after a second round of search-listing demotions documented by the European Union. Many companies have been forced to lay off all of their employees and even shut down operations.

   

  In 2012, Google took the extraordinary step to kill Google Product Search, replacing it with Google Shopping. This new service did not display the lowest price (or even a low price) in the general search results; rather, it displayed ads at the top of the search results page in response to the user’s search term. The ads were carefully placed by Google’s algorithms to minimize price competition among merchants, by, for example, showing ads next to each other that featured different product models at different price points.

   

  Google Shopping also permitted merchants to purchase ads on a separate shopping page. Merchants — no longer promoted in search results for having lower prices — now must pay for better placement. Not surprisingly, they have raised prices to cover these costs.

   

  Google’s competitors argued in a study, which I submitted to the European Commission a few years ago, that the prices in Google Shopping ads for specified products on search results pages were among the highest in Google’s database. Google’s displayed prices for everyday products, such as watches, anti-wrinkle cream and wireless routers, were roughly 50 percent higher — sometimes more — than those on rival sites. A subsequent study by a consumer protection group found similar results. A study by the Financial Times also documented the higher prices.

   

  The Post’s editorial board claimed that the online availability of large merchant sites might restrain Google’s power over consumers. But those sites haven’t stopped Google from executing its plan so far. There is no denying that Google eliminated services showing the lowest prices, free to merchants, and replaced them with high-priced ads.

  Some people like to blame all of the world’s problems on government.

  Others blame business for everything that ever goes wrong.

  I don’t fall into either of these categories. I think the greatest threat to humanity, freedom and our overall happiness comes down to concentrations of power.

  Too much concentration of power within business or government ultimately leads to tyranny and oppression, and the best solution is for all of us to fight against concentrations of power in all its manifestations. Personally, I think Google has far too much power in a service as important to modern life as search, and it seems executives there are doing what always happens with concentrated power — abusing their position.

  

  

• Canadians Brace For A "Perfect Storm" Brewing In Housing Market

  We’ve spent a fair amount of time discussing Canada’s housing market over the past several months as Chinese money laundering operations have sprouted up bubbles all over the place.  Here’s a modest sampling of our recent work:

  • All Hell Breaks Loose In Toronto’s House Price Bubble
  • Canada’s Housing Bubble Explodes As Its Biggest Alternative Mortgage Lender Crashes Most In History
  • Canada Housing Regulator Warns Of “Strong Evidence Of Housing-Market Problems”
  • The Toronto Housing Market Is About To Collapse By This Measure

  But, as the Globe and Mail notes today, there could very well be a “perfect storm” brewing in several Canadian housing markets as the result of extreme pricing bubbles, over-indebted consumers, a major tightening of mortgage rules and the prospect of rising rates.

  On the regulatory front, Canada’s Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI), is considering new rules that would require lenders to effectively “stress-test” borrowers to confirm they would be in compliance with credit metrics even if rates were to rise 200 bps.  From a practical standpoint, such a move would immediately remove roughly 20% of the average Canadian’s home buying power.

  Canada’s banking regulator (OSFI) is proposing that anyone who gets a mortgage at a bank or bank-funded lender prove they can afford a rate that is at least 200-basis-points higher than their actual rate.

   

  A similar debt-ratio “stress test” is already in place for folks getting a default insured mortgage, as well as most variable-rate and short-term borrowers.

   

  If OSFI’s change goes through as planned, otherwise credit-worthy borrowers would qualify for roughly 18 per cent less mortgage, other things equal. This one change would have more of an impact to mortgage shoppers than any Bank of Canada rate hike in history.

  Of course, with mortgage rates at multi-decade lows, they likely only have one direction to go.  Moreover, as rates rise, it will only serve to amplify the impacts of the proposed OSFI regulations noted above.

  If you believe the Bank of Canada’s hints and bond market probabilities, there’s a real chance we’ll see higher floating rates as soon as next week’s rate meeting, or at its meeting in September. (Albeit, Thursday’s OSFI news could limit the BoC’s rate hike plans.)

   

  As for fixed mortgage rates, they’ve already shot up on the back of a 50-basis-point surge in bond yields since June 6. RBC, Canada’s de facto leader in setting mortgage rates, hiked most of its advertised fixed rates by 20 basis points on Thursday morning. Most other lenders have done the same and it may be only the first of multiple moves.

  

   

  All of which leads the Globe & Mail to ask ‘what should Canadian consumers do now?’ 

  Well, luckily for our northern neighbors, we would point out that the U.S. had a similar housing bubble issue a few years back…here’s a hint on what you should do next…

  

  

  

• Dilbert Creator Suggests Novel Solution To The North Korea Situation

  Via Dilber Creator Scott Adams' blog,

  I have some spare time this morning so I thought I would solve the North Korean nuclear threat problem.

  The current frame on how all sides are approaching the problem is a win-lose setup. Either North Korea wins – and develops nukes that can reach the mainland USA – or the United States wins, and North Korea abandons its nuclear plans, loses face, loses leverage, and loses security. Our current framing of the situation doesn’t have a path to success. 

  So how do you fix that situation?

  First we must acknowledge that a win-lose model has no chance of success in this specific case because North Korea responds to threats by working harder to build nukes. That’s no good. You need some form of a win-win setup to make any kind of deal. That’s what I’m about to suggest. And by winning, I mean both sides get what they need, even if it isn’t exactly what they said they want. 

  What the U.S. wants is a nuclear-free North Korea. That would be our win.

  What North Korea wants is an ironclad national defense, prestige, prosperity, and maybe even reunification of the Koreas on their terms. So let me describe a way to get there. 

  The main principle to keep in mind is that you can almost always reach a deal when two parties want different things.

  If we frame the situation as North Korea wanting nuclear weapons, and the U.S. not wanting them to have those nukes, no deal can be reached. There is no way for North Korea to simultaneously have nukes while having no nukes.

  So you need to reframe the situation. The following deal structure does that.

  Proposed North Korean Peace Deal

  China, Russia, and U.S. sign a military security agreement to protect

   

  BOTH

   

  North Korea and South Korea from attack

   

  BY ANYONE

   

  for 100 years, in return for North Korea suspending its ICBM and nuclear weapons programs and allowing inspectors to confirm they are sticking to the deal.

   

  *  *  *

   

  At the end of a hundred years, North Korea and South Korea agree to unify under one rule. No other details on how that happens will be in the agreement. North Korea will be free to tell its people that the Kim dynasty negotiated to be the rulers of the unified country in a hundred years. South Korea will be free to announce that unification is a goal with no details attached. We will all be dead in 100 years, so we can agree to anything today. (That’s the key to making this work – all players will be dead before the end of it.)

   

  The U.S. withdraws military assets from South Korea.

   

  South Korea and North Korea reduce their non-nuclear military assets that point at each other.

   

  Over the course of the 100-year deal, there could be a number of confidence-building steps in the agreement. For example, in ten years you might have a robust tourist arrangement. In twenty years, perhaps you can do business across borders. In fifty years, perhaps a unified currency (by then digital).

   

  A hundred years is plenty of time for the Kim family to make their fortunes and move to Switzerland, or wherever, before unification is an issue. The deal might require some sort of International amnesty agreement for any North Korean leaders looking to get out of the country before unification.

  Under this proposed deal structure all sides get what they want.

  North Korea’s leader can tell his people that their nuclear program was a big success because it resulted in the United States withdrawing forces, and it led to an eventual Korean unification on his terms. There is no opposition press in North Korea to dispute that framing. This looks like total victory to North Korea. That’s a win.

   

  For the United States, a credible deal to get rid of North Korean nukes is a win. China and Russia would look like the adults in the room. They win too.

   

  South Korea wins too, obviously. 

  And this deal would probably result in Nobel Peace Prizes for the leaders of all countries involved. 

  Students of history will recall that Great Britain agreed to lease Hong Kong from China for 99 years to avoid any risk of China taking Hong Kong militarily. The long lease period allowed both countries to agree to a deal that could not have been reached for a shorter time period. And it gave everyone time to plan for the peaceful transfer. No two situations are alike, but you can see how a hundred-year deal makes it easy to agree to difficult things today. We’ll all be dead before any of it matters. And if you work toward a common goal for a hundred years, the odds are good that it can happen. One way or another.

  This is the sort of deal that would have been impossible in prior years. But the Trump administration understands the structure of dealmaking. This solution is available for the taking.

  Read more here…

  

  

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• Is Terrorism Transforming America Into A Police State?

  Authored by Ted Galen Carpenter via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

  

  For at least three decades, experts have noted the growing militarization of America’s police forces. The proliferation of Special Weapons and Tactics forces, or SWAT forces, is the most obvious example of that trend. Originally, such units were designed to deal with exceptionally dangerous situations (such as mass hostage incidents) in which lightly armed police would be outgunned. Not surprisingly, the first SWAT contingents originated in America’s largest and most dangerous cities.

  That situation has changed dramatically. Small cities and even some modest-sized towns now have such heavily armed units utilizing military hardware and traveling in armored vehicles. They look—and act—far more like military combat units than anyone’s traditional conception of police. And the missions of SWAT forces have greatly expanded since their original formation. Increasingly, local authorities use them in routine matters that involve little or no danger of major violence from the targets of police action.

  A recent incident in Hutto, Texas, a sleepy, outlying suburb of Austin, illustrates just how dangerously promiscuous the utilization of SWAT teams has become. On June 26, local police conducted a raid to implement a search warrant on a house in a low-crime, middle-class neighborhood. The alleged crime? Police suspected that some residents of the target house were involved in gambling. Investigators were backed up by a SWAT unit with nearly a dozen officers in full combat regalia pouring out of an armored vehicle.

  Needless to say, the neighbors were both stunned and alarmed to see such an operation take place in their quiet community. One mother stated: “I went to my daughter’s room and looked outside their window to see if I could get a better view of what was going on, and there was a man in fatigues with a sniper rifle laying in my neighbor’s driveway.”

  What was even more striking is that the police spokesman admitted to a reporter that the authorities “had no reason to believe” that the residence undergoing the search was involved in any violent activity. In other words, police were using paramilitary tactics and forces to execute a search warrant involving a nonviolent (indeed, victimless, crime) in a low-crime neighborhood. Such arrogant bullying should alarm anyone who cherishes domestic civil liberties.

  Unfortunately, such incidents have become all-too-common as local authorities seek new missions to justify the existence of SWAT teams and to keep the personnel alert and well trained. The expansion of SWAT units and missions is closely correlated to the existence of federal programs making surplus military hardware available at little or no cost to local police forces.

  Such deadly toys have become a prime justification for law enforcement budget increases and the receipt of federal grants in communities around the country.

  The war on illegal drugs has been the primary justification that authorities use to create and expand SWAT units, and antidrug raids are their primary mission. The drug-war rationale has some plausibility, since narcotics traffickers are sometimes extremely violent criminals. As concerns about terrorism became more salient, especially after the 9/11 attacks, that mission augmented the drug-war justification. Politicians, even in small communities with virtually a nonexistent possibility of being a terrorism target, highlight the alleged danger (along with the menace of illegal drugs) to pump-up police budgets and gain the military hardware from Washington.

  Thus far, efforts to rescind or even curtail the federal program have proven unsuccessful. The militarization of America’s local police proceeds unabated. That is an alarming development. General Colin Powell, at the time chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, observed that the military’s purpose is to “kill people and break things.” Military forces operate in enemy territory and tend to view all people there as potential adversaries who could prove deadly to them.

  The purpose of America’s police forces is (or at least should be) totally different. Their legitimate role is to protect the life, liberty and property of people living in a free, constitutional republic. It is extremely unwise to confuse or conflate that role with the function of the U.S. military. Yet, that is what is occurring at an alarming rate.

  The Posse Comitatus Act, which Congress passed in 1878, severely restricts the role of the military in domestic law enforcement. Unfortunately, that restriction has experienced significant erosion in recent decades, with some prominent political figures deriding the statute as “archaic.”

  Even if the language of the act remains more or less intact, it will have little relevance if the proliferation of SWAT units continues. SWAT personnel are combat soldiers in everything but name. It matters little if they are technically police operating as part of a local government if their weapons and tactics are those of an occupying army. The old adage that if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck, applies to the SWAT phenomenon. The sight of such combat forces deployed in civilian neighborhoods in the United States is jarringly reminiscent of the images Americans once believed confined to repressive police states. It is tragic that such images are now the norm in America itself.

  

  

• The Demonization of Martin Shkreli

  Remember the terrorist bombing at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia?  If you’ll recall (or follow the link and read), Richard Jewell, the security guard who discovered the backpack containing the bomb, heroically warned people away and prevented it from creating a larger tragedy than the two lives it claimed.  His hero status was short-lived, however, as he became the prime suspect.  With only an accusation, his name was gleefully dragged through the mud by every mainstream news outlet at the time until he was eventually cleared by the FBI.  Though ultimately vindicated,  Jewell’s life was just about ruined.

  The US media is always casting heroes and villains in their contrived narratives, packaged and delivered for the consumption of the common American nitwit, many of whom swallow it whole and then follow the lead by piling on in social media forums, twittering and facebooking and generally being the good hapless dupes that they are.   The latest Bad Guy of the week is Martin Shkreli, former CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals.  As anyone reading this probably already knows, Shkreli has been demonized for buying the rights to an outdated drug, Daraprim, that treats a rare condition called Toxoplasmosis and jacking the price up 5000%.  On the face of it, it sounds absolutely awful.  Martin was excoriated in the public sphere as the worst kind of greedy exploitative capitalist scumbag, accused of holding a captive audience virtually hostage and making them pay a hefty ransom if they wanted to live (Toxoplasmosis is fatal if left untreated).  And Martin did his image no favors, happily donning the costume of the evil caricature that was custom-tailored for him by the American press, a nice bespoke suit of fine villainy.

  However, as with every story, there’s much more nuance here than is fathomed by the short-attention-spanned and feeble-minded MSM lapdogs reporting it.  Thanks to the internet–and in this case, Martin’s proclivity to make himself accessible to anyone in the world by way of a series of YouTube livestreams–we can actually get his side of the story.  Let’s investigate.

  Martin claims his company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, purchased Daraprim and jacked up its price in order to finance the development of a much more effective modern drug to treat Toxoplasmosis.  The problems with Daraprim, as Martin explains, is that it’s very old (invented in the 1940s), it doesn’t work that well, and it’s toxic to bone marrow and can be as deadly to the patient as to the disease itself.  There was no incentive to create a better drug because the disease was so rare, and there was already a cheap (if problematic) drug on the market to treat it, so it has mostly gone unnoticed in the pharmaceutical industry.  Martin wants to replace Daraprim with a new drug that targets the enzyme that causes the disease without the bone marrow toxicity.  To accomplish this, his plan is to raise the drug’s price from $13.50 to $750 per pill.  At $750 per pill for an 84 pill course, the total cost is now $63,000 to cure the disease, which as Martin points is both rare and fatal.  There are similar drugs on the marketplace (i.e. for other fatal ailments) that cost anywhere from $80,000-$130,000 per course, so Daraprim is still relatively cheap for a what is a life-saving medication.  Martin explains that, while the price hike is indeed extreme, his company has made it easier for patients to get the drug by lowering the co-payment to “almost nothing”, with the insurance companies picking up the tab and, furthermore, that Turing gives away 60% of their Daraprim to patients who can’t afford it, leaving the company with a 40% gross margin.  He says that nets out overall to $25,000 in profits for Turing per treatment course, virtually all of which goes back into R&D for a Daraprim replacement.

  So, as the plan goes, by buying Daraprim and ramping up the price, Turing Pharmaceuticals will be able to use the profits to invent a new, more effective drug, while in the meantime being compassionate to Toxoplasmosis sufferers by making sure they can still get Daraprim affordably.  He claims no one is dying as a result of the price hike and emphasized those who need it can still get it.  Martin’s full explanation is nicely encapsulated in the following video:

  http://www.youtube.com/v/E3Ezyd50nMU

  I think the most likely reason people have a knee-jerk reaction to Martin and the price-hike is because he makes himself so easy to hate on, as is clearly demonstrated during his brief questioning before the House Oversight Committee earlier last year.  He puts off an annoyingly smug self-confidence (a front, really, but in any event justified in my opinion) and the balls to tell a bunch of pompous, high-powered congressfags to fuck the fuck off with his repeated assertion of his 5th Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.  Drug companies are always raising prices on other more common drugs without a resulting media storm, but the thing is no one likes a smug asshole and Martin certainly plays the part all too well.  When he’s not under the spotlight (as the video above and the one following below demonstrate) he otherwise gives off what I believe is the genuine demeanor of a slightly insecure nerd.  The guy is clearly intelligent, highly so, but in the end, no one likes a smart ass, and so he was easy to demonize.

  So, is Martin a bad guy?  I don’t think so.  In the interview above he states, “If you just raise prices and you don’t do the research, I think that’s wrong.”  Of course anyone can say that, especially sociopathic CEOs, but I don’t think Martin is one of them, and I believe he’s sincere.  Check out this Vice interview from a year and a half ago, just after he raised the price of Daraprim.  While he still comes off as somewhat arrogant, he portrays a very different person than that of his more well-known public image:

  http://www.youtube.com/v/2PCb9mnrU1g

  In the interview, Martin is asked if he’s evil.  He answers, “Am I evil?  No.  I think I’m the opposite of evil. …The reality is you’re talking to someone that cares deeply about helping peoples’ lives.  I don’t like most drug companies.  I think most of them do a bad job.”  He goes on to say, “I’m a capitalist.  I’d love to make an even bigger fortune than I have now, but I’m not going to do it at the expense of a human life. …We sell our drugs for a dollar to the government, but we sell our drugs for $750 a pill to Walmart, to Exxon-Mobile, to all these big companies, and they pay full price because, fuck them, why shouldn’t they?  And if I take their money and I’m using it to do research for dying kids, I think I’m a hero.”  Assuming he’s being genuine (I believe he is), and ignoring the minor self-aggrandizement, who can argue with that?  From what I can see, Martin also possesses a certain humility and seems overall to be decent guy.  I became interested in the brouhaha and spent time watching some of his recorded YouTube broadcasts last year.  Here’s a CEO of a pharmaceutical corporation just hanging out in front of his computer and talking to anyone curious enough to come by on the internet and say hello and ask questions, or to tell him what a piece of shit they think he is.  It was actually entertaining watching him dispatch prissy snowflakes who would come along to give him a piece of their mind, only to be savagely destroyed by his wit and logic.  The first clip I linked above is the one that stood out above all.  His explanation was clear, concise and logical.  Upon seeing that, it became clear to me that Martin is just a good old shit-posting troll when he’s attacked, and has no problem playing the heel that he’s been cast into by the nattering nabobs of the MSM.  “I’ll be the Bond villain!”, he cheerfully exclaims to the Vice interviewer.  He certainly seems to be a firm believer in the adage that there is no such thing as “bad publicity”.

  Here’s another clip of Martin being interviewed on CBS News in August of last year, at the time when Mylan raised the price of the EpiPen.  No antics or smugness here, but a (if sometimes cringey) display of diplomacy and salesmanship:

  http://www.youtube.com/v/RoMlxVimwiU

  In conclusion, I hope you’ll agree with me that Martin Shkreli has been demonized by the media (I would say “unfairly” but he really brought it onto himself, and he knows this), whereas the reality is a far cry from the shadows being cast.  Notwithstanding the SEC charges he’s currently facing, once you realize that he’s not some heartless and cruel capitalist profiteering on other peoples’ illnesses and misery but rather a brash and highly intelligent young entrepreneur with what by all measures looks to be some good busy savvy, you can’t help but respect the man.  I certainly do, and I wish him well.

  I’m hoping once Shkreli gets past all this and successfully launches a replacement drug for Daraprim, he’ll turn his sights towards a cure for VD as it seems a good majority of our political and media class seem to be afflicted with late stage syphilis.

  I am Chumbawamba.

  

• 200 Years Of Immigration – Who Came To America, And When?

  The United States has a long-standing history of being a “nation of immigrants”, and today the country is home to roughly 46.6 million residents that were born outside of the country. Courtesy of Visual Capitalist's Jeff Desjardins, here are three maps and data visualizations that give us some history of who came to America, and when it all happened.

  200 YEARS OF IMMIGRATION

  To begin, this video from Metrocosm shows immigration to the U.S. starting from 1820. Each dot represents 10,000 people.

  At first, immigration is coming almost exclusively from Europe.

  But by around 1900, immigration from Russia, China, Canada, Turkey and Japan picks up – but then WWII devastates global mobility, and immigration to the U.S. grinds to a halt.

  After WWII, it is the Cold War era, but the rate of arrivals slowly picks up again. Immigration eventually peaks between 1990-2000 after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Asian and Mexican immigration is also particularly strong around this time.

  ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE

  Here’s another look – this time, it’s a data visualization from Insightful Interaction using data from the Yearbook of Immigration Statistics from 1820 to 2015.

  

  Similar peaks in immigration near 1900 and 2000 can be seen. The dip from WWII is even more pronounced when visualizing the data this way.

  The boom in newcomers from Mexico is also evident in the 1990s, though it has tapered off significantly in recent years.

  MADE IN AMERICA

  Over time, more people start feeling like their roots are tied to America, rather than having ancestry from somewhere else.

  This final visualization from Overflow Data that shows the percentage of people in each state that claim to have American ancestry:

  

  People in the country’s heartland and southern states are more likely to identify as having American ancestry, while folks along the coasts and northern states tend to see themselves as having ancestry from other parts of the world.

  The highest rates of self-identification happen in Kentucky (17.6%), Tennessee (16.0%), and Alabama (16.4%). The lowest can be found in Hawaii (1.5%), D.C. (2.0%), and California (3.1%).

  

  

• Tucker Carlson: America's Birthright is Worth Defending

   

  Content originally published at iBankCoin.com

  Thoughts on this?

  Jingoism and nationalistic fervor are often reviled by both leftists and cynics. In my younger years, I regaled in the glory of America — up until the point that I felt it was being used to emotionally control people to pursue an agenda that ran counter to the best interests of the people.

  In other words, it feels good to be patriotic and to flaunt pride for God and Country — but what’s the point when the people we elect use that emotional currency to bomb the brains out of people overseas — exposing our bravest to depleted uranium — treating them like shit when they come home to continue life as a normie?

  I get the conundrum that if we don’t control the narrative being woven, someone else would — like dog eating fish faces in Asia. It’s hard to ‘love’ an entire country with so many degenerates and malevolent places of ill repute. I’ve come to realize that ‘country’ is better defined as the friends and family close to me — even some of you internet people who might reside in third world shit-holes, like Canada.

  Nevertheless, the following Tucker Carlson monolog is inspirational, in spite the fact that it reeks with idealism. If being a ‘team player’ for America requires me to send my son’s overseas to die for some war that was designed to help elite’s at one of our many gigantic globalist corporations — count me out.

  If we’re talking freedom to say these things without the NSA monitoring every text or email that I make, whilst watching subversive content online, maybe I’ll waive a flag or two on the 4th of July.

  

• Deep State Begins Anti-Russia Media Blitz Ahead Of Trump-Putin Meeting

  Update: We have a fourth Trump attack story as MSNBC's Rachel Maddow claims that "someone is shopping a carefully forged, fairly convincing fake NSA document" to news organizations pointing to Trump campaign collusion with Russia… "we don't know who is doing it but we're wroking on it."

  *  *  *

  It's been relatively quiet in the last few weeks on the "the Russians did it, and Trump's Putin's best-buddy" propaganda-fest, but it appears the Deep State had three stories tonight – just hours ahead of Trump's face-to-face with Putin – claim Russian hackers are targeting US nuclear facilities, the Russians are nonchalantly stepping up their spying, and that Russia alone interfered with the US election.

  With all eyes on the 'handshake' as Putin and Trump come face-to-face for the first time as world leaders, it seems the Deep State is desperately fearful of some rapprochement, crushing the need for NATO, and destroying the excuses for massive, unprecedented military-industrial complex spending.

  And so, three stories (2 anonymously sourced and one with no facts behind it) in The New York Times (who recently retracted their "17 intelligence agencies" lie) and CNN (where do we start with these guys? let's just go with full retraction of an anonymously sourced lie about Scaramucci and Kushner and the Russians) should stir up enough angst to ensure the meeting is at best awkward and at worst a lose-lose for Trump (at least in the eyes of the media).

  First off we have the 'news' that hackers have reportedly been breaking into computer networks of companies operating United States nuclear power stations, energy facilities and manufacturing plants, according to a new report by The New York Times.

  The origins of the hackers are not known. But the report indicated that an “advanced persistent threat” actor was responsible, which is the language security specialists often use to describe hackers backed by governments.

   

  The two people familiar with the investigation say that, while it is still in its early stages, the hackers’ techniques mimicked those of the organization known to cybersecurity specialists as “Energetic Bear,” the Russian hacking group that researchers have tied to attacks on the energy sector since at least 2012.

  And Bloomberg piled on…

  The chief suspect is Russia, according to three people familiar with the continuing effort to eject the hackers from the computer networks.

  So that's that 5 people – who know something – suspect it was the Russians that are hacking US nuclear facilities (but there's no proof).

  Next we move to CNN who claim a 'current and former U.S. intelligence officials' told them that Russian spies have been stepping up their intelligence gathering efforts in the U.S. since the election, feeling emboldened by the lack of significant U.S. response to Russian election meddling.

  "Russians have maintained an aggressive collection posture in the US, and their success in election meddling has not deterred them," said a former senior intelligence official familiar with Trump administration efforts.

   

  "The concerning point with Russia is the volume of people that are coming to the US. They have a lot more intelligence officers in the US" compared to what they have in other countries, one of the former intelligence officials says.

  But, according to Steve Hall, retired CIA chief of operations, the Russians could also be seeking more information on Trump's administration, which is new and still unpredictable to Moscow

  "Whenever there is a deterioration of relations between countries — the espionage and intelligence collection part becomes that much more important as they try to determine the plans and intentions of the adversarial government,"

  So that's more anonymous sourcing about Russian spies… doing what they would normally do during a presidential transition.

  And so finally, a third story – with CNN trotting out former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, to pin the 'Russians did it' tail on the "this is why we lost the election" donkey…

  Former DNI James Clapper: I think Russia’s goal here is to “prep the battlefield” for the 2018 elections https://t.co/lkEj7yTPQd

  — CNN (@CNN) July 6, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Claiming that the Russians alone were responsible for interference…

  "As far as others doing this, well that's new to me," Clapper, who served under former President Barack Obama, said during an interview on CNN's "The Situation Room."

   

  "We saw no evidence whatsoever that [there] was anyone involved in this other than the Russians," he said. 

  Clapper's comments draw a contrast from Trump, who declined earlier Thursday to single out Russia for interference in the 2016 White House race.

  So in summary – 3 stories pinning Russia for shameful acts against 'Murica that just happen to hit hours before Trump shakes hands with Putin… ensuring that unless Trump slams Putin to the ground like a wrestling-CNN-logo, he will be adjudged as being soft… and therefore clearly in cahoots with the Russian leader. Seriously, do the Deep State realy think Americans are that dumb? (rhetorical question)

  

  

• Freedom Is Not Necessarily The Absence Of Tyranny

  Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

   

  Is it true that freedom is an overly idealized concept? Perhaps, but it is one of the few concepts worthy of idealization. It is so worthy, that it is worth dying for.

  

  Since the dawn of recorded history human beings have fought and sacrificed to attain freedom. It is an inherent psychological construct. It is a principle that is rooted not only in the mind of man, but his spirit or soul. Scientists in the realm of the mind have struggled for generations to understand where it comes from — others have sought to dismiss it as a fanciful notion or societal construct. Nihilists claim it doesn't really exist, while other people center their entire lives on the proliferation of it. The concept of freedom, love it or hate it, is central to all cultures and all civilizations. The most common dismissal of the idea of freedom that I have seen is the argument that none of us is really free because "tyranny exists". Tyranny is a constant, therefore, in the view of the nihilists, freedom cannot exist. I believe this dim way of thinking stems from a misconception of what freedom is and where it comes from.

  Freedom, first and foremost, begins in the mind, or the heart; whatever you are inclined to put more stock in. To think critically or to imagine wildly is indeed to be free. Tyranny, by extension, rises from the mire and muck in the physical world around us and ends in the mind and the heart. If one is free of mind, then one is never truly enslaved.

  I have heard so many times the ignorant accusation that freedom requires action before consequence. That is to say, if you have suffered the consequences of a tyrannical system, then you have already failed to prevent your own enslavement. This is not how freedom functions. It has never worked this way.

  There is no such thing as a world without the consequences of tyranny. Tyrants are everywhere, always. There are little tyrants in our everyday lives, and big tyrants that pull strings from behind the curtains and from the darker places. There are people reading this article right now that think they are liberty-minded, but act like tyrants towards those around them. There are people who think they are slaves when one simple choice or action could easily make them free.  There are people who see private property as tyranny and seek to supplant it….with an even greater tyranny of entitlement and socialism.  And, there are people who think freedom means freedom for them, but not for others.  Each tyrant takes time to understand and remove from our lives. Some we simply need to walk away from; others need to be destroyed.

  The point is, we are forever dealing with tyranny, and many of us are forever working to topple it. As long as we are able to pursue that goal, we are still free. The true slaves are those that have given up completely out of laziness or fear. Tyranny is always present, after all; why take a bath today when you are just going to end up soiled again tomorrow?

  The idea that one can do nothing in the face of the machine is an old idea proven wrong time and time again, yet, it is also a very easy and comfortable lie to live in. Struggle is difficult. Sacrifice is foreboding and ugly. There are a million-and-one excuses and rationalizations as to why it is better to "accept fate" or circumstances. There is always another excuse that can be used to paper over cowardice.

  Tyrants can, in fact, win and keep winning for the length of an epoch, exactly because of the logical fallacy that they cannot be resisted or be beaten. It is the self-fulfilling prophecy of nihilism that makes tyranny possible. Without it, tyrants inevitably fail and fall.

  The great monster of our time that must be slayed is the monster of organized conspiracy. Past generations have confronted and defeated appendages of this monster, but they never beheaded it, and this is why our particular brand of tyranny persists. It is not enough for us to fight the tentacles of the beast anymore — it is the job of the freedom fighters of our era to stab at the brains of the wretched thing.

  I am of course speaking of the banking cabal, the cult of financiers and elites that make up the globalist hierarchy. They pervade the halls of numerous institutions and think tanks, from the Federal Reserve and the Council on Foreign Relations to the International Monetary Fund and the Bank for International Settlements. They sit in positions of great political influence and hold council (and some would say considerable sway) over world leaders. They write "theoretical" policies which are quickly adopted by governments and made into law. They are primary stockholders and owners of our mainstream media. Their slithering fingers are wrapped around academia and many scientific communities. They insinuate themselves into every foundation of thought, because thought is what they most wish to control.

  They prefer to divide and conquer, to pit one group against another, or to give their ideological enemies enough rope to hang themselves with. If they can't rule the psyche of a society or succeed in 4th generation warfare, they will fall back to the old standard of brute force. In fact, they might just do that anyway, because what tyrant doesn't love instilling abject terror every once in a while?

  And yet, these "elites" stand on a razor's edge. Despite all their supposed power, despite all their wealth, despite the vast spiderwebs they weave, all of it can be turned to ash in an instant and they know it. Empires like this rely on anonymity, and they are anonymous no longer. The cabal is out in the open; they have to be.

  To shift the world into true globalism and true centralization requires actions which can be masked from some people but not all people. They believe the intricate digital networks they have funded will buy them total information awareness, but these same networks also provide us with the tools to understand who they are and what they want. This double-edged sword of full spectrum data creates a Catch-22 timeline. The longer the globalists wait to implement the one world system they desire, the more time we have to educate millions of people. The faster they implement their one-world system, the more likely they are to make a mistake.

  Time is running out. Time is working against them. Time is the master here, and the globalists are nothing but paper boats on a tidal wave.

  This organized conspiracy increases its odds of success through psychological manipulation. There will come a time, perhaps sooner rather than later, when banking elites and their political allies can no longer stand outside the game unscathed. Risk is coming. So, they must encourage as much self-defeat in the minds of freedom champions as possible.

  They will conjure crisis and catastrophe, they will conjure puppet enemy after puppet enemy, they will exploit useful idiots with collectivist views as cannon fodder, they will engineer conflicts between East and West. They will try to grind us down and break the legs of our resolve.

  However, as long as there are people who know who the globalists are that are willing to hunt them down, the globalists cannot win. For what they desperately want is to stand out in the sun with criminal impunity, and without fear. They want to be untouchable. They want to be gods.

  Real gods do not suffer consequences, and these people will suffer consequences.

  The nihilists will cry, "When?! How?! Never!" But this is the nature of freedom. Freedom is in the fighting; winning is transitory. Tyranny can be subtle and it can be blunt, freedom is the same way. If you think because there is no shooting going on yet that a war is not happening, then you do not understand the nature of warfare.

  Yes, it is possible that the fall of one globalist cabal might give rise to another, and another. But we are free to be there and to fight again. As long as we fight, we prevail. When we abandon the fight completely, that is when true slavery begins. Today, we fight using information versus propaganda, and we must be adept at this. We also must be adept at other forms of combat as the conflict escalates.

  There will never be total absence of tyranny. The naysayers against the principle of freedom are delusional, or maybe they know such a standard is unattainable and this will make them forever "right." When will the fight begin? It already has. It has been going on since time immemorial and we are merely here to continue it. This might seem like a task for Sisyphus – an endless circular nightmare. I look at it another way: We are a changing of the guard. We have inherited a responsibility beyond all responsibilities. In this age, we are the freedom fighters, and if we fail now then we pass an even more difficult horror on to some other generation down the line.

  In my view this is unacceptable. The opportunity to end one longstanding tyranny is now. We must counter using information as long as is needed, and we must wake up as many people as possible, so when the time comes to storm the castle, the shared sacrifice is that much easier to bear. If you have taken up this fight in one form or another never let anyone tell you you are not free. Your ability to think and to act is concrete proof otherwise.

  

  

• California One Step Closer To Becoming A Sanctuary State

  California is once again seeming to prove it wants to be its own nation as legislators in Sacramento have pushed SB 54, the so-called “Santuary State Bill”, one step closer to reality after it “sailed through” the Assembly Judiciary Committee.

  The bill was drafted by Senate President Pro Tem Kevin De Leon (D-Los Angeles) and would stop state and local cops, in every town across California, from helping the feds enforce immigration law. Under the measure, ICE agents would no longer be allowed to go into jails to deport undocumented prisoners, and they’d have restricted access to state databases.

  Here is DeLeon explaining why it’s ok for California legislators to simply pick and choose which laws they will enforce.  Per CBS Sacramento:

  “During the Trump administration, the first 100 days, arrests of undocumented immigrants with no criminal record has jumped to 150% during the same period as last year. We will protect those who contribute to making California the sixth largest economy in the world,” said Senate President Pro Tem Kevin De Leon (D-Los Angeles).

   

  De Leon maintains his bill will allow authorities to respond to ICE inquiries, only about convicted violent offenders. And support is strong, from union groups representing undocumented workers to faith-based organizations that shield immigrant families. First in line, Former state Supreme Court judge Cruz Reynoso, the son of Mexican immigrants and a professor of law at UC Davis.

   

  “It’s up to the federal government to enforce federal laws and the state don’t need to cooperate with the federal government,” he said.

  

   

  Of course, not everyone in California’s Senate agrees with the liberal policies pushed by the majority of legislators from Los Angeles and San Francisco.  Senator Jeff Stone (R-Temecula) recently appeared on Fox News to express his opposition:

  The bill protects people convicted of human trafficking, child abuse or assault with a deadly weapon from deportation, he said.

   

  “Basically we are going to be putting these dangerous criminals back into our streets and neighborhoods,” Stone said on Fox & Friends Tuesday morning.

   

  To be clear, immigrants who commit these crimes would still face justice. SB 54 does not prevent the police from arresting people, prosecutors from filing charges, judges from sentencing or jails from detaining anyone.

   

  However, Stone argues that people convicted of serious crimes who have served their sentence will be released from jail instead of being deported and, because there is a high recidivism rate, they are likely to commit more crimes.

   

  There are more than 3 million undocumented immigrants living in California and about 11,000 of them have been convicted of serious and violent felonies, according to state lawmakers.

  Meanwhile, Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood has also spoken out against the bill and has asked his county’s Board of Supervisors to a adopt a resolution that would declare Kern a “law and order” county and not a “sanctuary” county.  Per The Daily Caller:

  Far from limiting cooperation with federal immigration authorities, Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood wants to ensure that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have continued access to his jails so they can identify and deport illegal alien felons.

   

  “Sheriff’s deputies don’t enforce immigration laws and we don’t go on federal immigration sweeps, but we do have to allow our federal partners to do their job,” Youngblood told the LA Times.

   

  A Republican and Vietnam veteran, Youngblood has no shortage of critics in California, which has emerged as the leading opponent to the immigration policies of the Trump administration. Activists and Democratic opponents say he is setting his own immigration enforcement agenda in defiance of state law.

  Of course, somehow we suspect the few voices of the opposition will drown in California’s vast sea of progressivism.

  

  

• Dead Mall Stalking: One Hedge Fund Manager's Tour Across Middle-America – Part 1

  Via AdventuresInCapitalism.com,

  For the past few years, most retailers have struggled. Of course, it’s easy to blame Amazon.com, but it is only one of many causes. At the same time, for us hedgies living in major cities with luxury malls, there is confusion about the problem itself – my mall is crowded and people are shopping. After having debated with friends endlessly on what the real root of the problem is, I decided it was time to actually go investigate. Every city has its own story and the local mall is the nexus of that story.

  In my mind, the only way to get real answers was a 4-day, 1,500 mile meandering road-trip through the lower mid-west, where we planned to hit as many malls and take as many meetings with facility managers and brokers as we could organize along the way. Besides, when an asset class like mall real estate is down 90% in a few years’ time, a different viewpoint can create huge upside.

  The overriding question was: is retail suffering because of Amazon.com cannibalizing store-fronts or are rising health care costs, with stagnant wage growth, what’s really cannibalizing disposable spending power in middle-America? Is shopping still America’s pastime or do we prefer food and “experiences” instead? Every industry evolves. Why hasn’t the mall changed in the past three decades – it’s still the same cinema, crappy food court and undifferentiated retailers that I knew when I was a teen—where’s the fun in that? Other countries are perfecting “shoppertainment,” why hasn’t America? In summary, what is the real issue with retail?

  

  When you scroll through http://deadmalls.com there is a certain eeriness about a million square feet of empty space.

  However, the images don’t, in any way, prepare you for an almost-dead mall on its last gasps. As we wandered one facility with the head of leasing, we could look straight ahead at a thousand feet of almost vacant space, dimly lit from sky-lights as none of the lighting fixtures still worked—the air conditioner had long ago failed and it was 95 degrees inside this mall. However, there was one light that drew us forward. As we approached, we heard music and sure enough, it was the Victoria’s Secret that time forgot (corporate probably forgot it too). In a mall with only 7 tenants and even fewer shoppers, Victoria’s Secret was still jamming out. No customers, but 2 girls tending shop, blasting music and throwing light into a dark hallway.

  As we rounded another corner, we heard the unmistakable sound of a Zumba Class at 100 decibels. As we drew nearer, we saw the first mall visitors in almost an hour – what looked like an instructor with a half dozen middle-aged women trying to do exercises that they were hopelessly unfit to accomplish.

  I turned to the leasing agent;

  Me: Any idea how much they pay in rent?

   

  Him: Actually, I think they’re squatting in here. I don’t show any record of them being a tenant.

   

  Me: Is anyone going to make them pay rent?

   

  Him: Why bother, at least it brings people to the mall…

  

  With no security or cleaning staff, who's watering the plants?

  All of this segwayed into the meeting with the leasing agent afterwards.

  Me: Can I meet the facility manager when we’re done chatting?

   

  Him: Funny story; actually, she quit a few months back. Unfortunately, the owner only told me last week that I am now in charge of managing this mall. I’m doing my best, but I live an hour away, so I can only come here a few times a week.

   

  Me: So who’s been locking up at the end of the day lately?

   

  Him: Hmmm…. Honestly, I’m not sure. That’s a pretty good question.

   

  Me: Would anyone notice if they never locked the doors?

   

  Him: Probably not…

  Of course, you cannot quite put this into context until you realize that I was sitting there in a nearly pitch black food court, in 95 degree heat, with only a beam of light from the sky-light above to guide the conversation – yet despite the odds, one vendor still remained at the food court – ironically it was the sushi place.

  

  I wonder what decade these gumballs are from?? I didn't know they could turn brown.

  While the tour was entertaining, what I really wanted to know was; why did this place, surrounded by a thriving community somehow fail? This is where the story actually deviates from the usual narrative.

  This mall was in a community of about 100,000 people. A decade ago, this had been a thriving mall. Then, a new major highway was placed about 5 miles west of the mall, which diverted regional traffic away from the mall. Even worse, a massive open air retailing complex was built alongside the new highway, siphoning shoppers from the mall. In a town that was big enough to support one large shopping complex, the newer one with better access from the highway had ultimately won out. However, this mall was still muddling forward with a handful of national tenants who hadn’t quite thrown in the towel, despite no lighting, air conditioning or adult supervision at the mall. It lead to a real epiphany; malls die a slow strange death—not the cataclysmic collapse depicted by most analysts.

  

  We saw a similar situation on the following day at another mall about 100 miles away. In this situation, a new retailing facility had been built closer to the local university to compete with the mall. This facility had stolen a number of the key tenants from the mall. At the time, it looked like this mall would also surrender to the newer facility in the better location. Instead, the mall was sold to new owners who; injected substantial capital to remodel the mall, offered discounted rent to retain existing tenants and had put up a fight to the death with the newer facility. Now, nearly a decade later, neither facility was full and both were desperately fighting it out for the minds of tenants and shoppers in a winner-take-all battle, a veritable retailing Battle of Verdun in the north of Texas—where even the winner will be a loser for having spent so much capital to win the booby prize of top retail destination in a town of about 125,000 people. Even worse, with no clear winner, new retailing concepts were hesitant to guess wrong in their expansion plans and simply chose to pass this town by when expanding—further sapping the strength of both facilities.

  In fact, we continued to see similar stories as we ventured north. Retail may not be dead; instead there may simply be too much retail (both property and competing concepts) fighting it out for too few customers. This is further compounded by too much cheap capital developing more retail as a result of ultra-low interest rates. Naturally, there will be losers in this process – in fact; the losses have only just begun. There will also be huge winners.

  To Be Continued…

  

  

• Tesla Registrations Plunge 24% In California, Its Largest Market

  After a week full of abysmal news for Tesla, which some have said is rapidly becoming the new Uber on the bad-to-worse news front, the weekend couldn’t come fast enough for Elon Musk who by now is begging for the simple company of “a little red wine, vintage record and some Ambien.”

  A little red wine, vintage record, some Ambien … and magic!

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 7, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  But before that can happen, there is even more bad news for the electric car company which today entered a bear market after hitting all time highs just 2 weeks ago: according to Reuters, Tesla registrations in California – by far the largest market of the luxury electric car maker – fell 24% in April from a year ago, based on IHS Markit data. The latest report showing a plateau for Tesla’s products comes amid both investor concerns that demand for Tesla’s luxury Model S sedan is waning ahead of the mass market Model 3 launch, the sales of its Model X actually declined…

  

  … and follows a scathing Goldman report which effectively said that Tesla can kiss its aggressive growth forecasts goodbye.

  The punchline: IHS reported April Tesla registrations fell to 2,177 from 2,867 in California. Nationally they dropped nearly 10 percent to 3,911 from 4,334.

  Tesla declined to comment on California registration figures and reverted back to its Monday’s press release that second-quarter global deliveries rose 53 percent from a year earlier, to just over 12,000 Model S and just over 10,000 Model X, which incidentally allso missed consensus expectations of 22,900 sales. Inexplicably, Musk blamed battery pack production problems for holding back vehicle output in the second quarter until early June, even though Tesla producted 2,000 more cars than it sold, and also completely forgot to inform investors of this material adverse development for more than two months, and also during its May earnings call.

  Willing to give Tesla the benefit of the doubt, IHS analyst Stephanie Brinley said that “if Tesla had an issue with its production for the month, that could explain” the drop in registrations, she said, noting in particular the problems with battery pack output. Still, she said, Tesla’s Model S, could be in need of a refresh.

  “They haven’t changed much on the exterior or much on the package,” and it is a high-fashion car, she said. “I can certainly understand where Model S sales may be softening a little bit because it’s an older product. That could be contributing to the issue.“

  The car was launched in 2012 and is unchanged since as Musk has been far too busy looking for taxpayer subsidies and scapegoats on which to pin the ongoing disappointments of his business plan.

  Industry data reviewed separately by Reuters showed that the Model S registrations in California were uneven over the first four months of 2017, varying by more than 1,000 units month-to-month. In percentage terms Model S growth peaked in February, decelerated in March and turned negative in April in California.

  IHS measures vehicle registration, which comes after a sale. Registration in California and overall in the United States rose sharply for the combined first four months of the year, but April showed steep declines. IHS has not released data for May or June.

  While Brinley said it was difficult to assess whether that reflected demand or availability, the fact that Tesla has chornically overproduced more cars than it delivered in any given quarter, we would think the answer should be obvious.

  

  

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