- Europe: The New Political Weapon Of 'Islamophobia'
Europe: The New Political Weapon Of ‘Islamophobia’
Authored by Alain Destexhe via The Gatestone Institute,
France is once again profoundly divided over Islam. Last Sunday, November 10, a “March against Islamophobia” was held in Paris in response to an appeal from 50 public figures. In an op-ed in the leftist newspaper Libération, the demonstrators pleaded to “stop Islamophobia and stop the growing stigmatization of Muslims, victims of discrimination and aggression”.
Two recent incidents ignited the public debate and served as a pretext for the march. On October 26, an 84-year-old man shot and injured two men while trying to set fire to the mosque of Bayonne. Earlier in October, in the Regional Assembly of Burgundy, a member of the National Rally party (RN) complained about the presence in the gallery of a woman wearing an Islamic headscarf. The French political class and media condemned both incidents almost unanimously.
Among the signatories of the op-ed are Jean-Luc Mélenchon, president of La France Insoumise (“Unsubmissive France”), the most prominent leftist political party in the French National Assembly; Benoît Hamon, the Socialist Party candidate in the last presidential election; Philippe Martinez, leader of the Communist trade-union General Confederation of Labor (CGT); Yannick Jadot, a prominent Member of European Parliament from the Green party and Edwy Plenel, editor of Mediapart, a successful online media news platform and former editor of the newspaper Le Monde.
The op-ed sparked a national debate. How could these established public figures sign a text alongside known Islamist sympathizers, such as Nader Abou Anas, an imam who believes that “women can only go out with the permission of their husband”, or Marwan Muhammad, the former CEO of the Collective against Islamophobia in France (CCIF) — an organization suspected of links with the Muslim Brotherhood — who compared the situation of Muslims in France today with those of the Jews in Germany in the 1930s, going so far as to add that “in France, mosques are machine-gunned” (“mitraillé“)?
The debate was particularly tense within the Left. Historically, the Left in France was always a powerful advocate of secularism (“laïcité” in French; a strong separation between church and state). However, a portion of the Left now chooses to support multiculturalism and so-called “identity politics” and to ally itself with Islamists whose agenda opposes having a secular state. The alliance between the traditional Left and Islamists is often described as “Islamo-gauchisme” (“Islamo-leftism”). The controversy became so great that some of the signatories even decided to abstain from participating in the demonstration.
The choice of the word “Islamophobia” as the central rallying call was, of course, not neutral. As noted by the journalist Stéphane Charbonnier, murdered in the Charlie Hebdo attack in 2015, in his posthumous book, Islamophobia “is not only a poorly chosen word but also a dangerous one.”
Historically, the word Islamophobia — coined in the 1910s by a French colonial administrator — was rarely used until the 1990s. After Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, particularly after Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa against Salman Rushdie following the publication of The Satanic Verses, the term became used as a political weapon. The objective appears to have been to make Islam untouchable by placing any criticism of it as equivalent to racism or anti-Semitism.
The word “Islamophobia” deliberately intends to transform the critique of a religion — a fundamental right in Western societies — into a crime.
Pascal Bruckner, a French philosopher, suggested the role played by the concept. According to him:
“The term ‘Islamophobia’ serves several functions. It denies the reality of an Islamic offensive in Europe all the better to justify it. It attacks secularism by equating it with fundamentalism. Above all, however, the term is intended to silence Muslims who question the Koran, who demand equality of the sexes, who claim the right to renounce their religion, and who want to practice their faith freely and without submitting to the dictates of the bearded and dogmatic.”
Unfortunately, many media outlets and human rights groups fell directly into the trap and often use the word “Islamophobia” despite its lack of any legal basis or precise definition. Every time the word is used, it is a small victory for the Islamists.
A phobia is an extreme irrational fear or an aversion to something. Why, however, is it irrational to be afraid of Islam when terrorists murder, and call for murder, in the name of their God? — even if the perpetrators are but a small minority among Muslims. Forty years ago, who could have imagined that terrorist attacks could be perpetrated in the United States or Europe in the name of a religion? In this context, being “Islamophobic” (being afraid of a religion) is not a crime. And it is light years’ different from “hating” Muslims “for being Muslims”. It is not Muslims people “hate,” any more than they hate Hindus or Buddhists or Shintos. It is the violence and coercion that some adopt — what is known as jihad or holy war — that people reject.
The signatories were also severely criticized for their bias regarding the facts. Muslims are not targeted in France. According to the official records of the French government, last year, with 100 incidents, anti-Muslim acts were actually at their lowest level since 2010.
By comparison, after two years of decline, the number of anti-Semitic incidents in 2018 rose sharply: 541 compared to 311 in 2017 — an increase of 74%. Eighty-one of the incidents included violence, attempted homicide, or homicide. The number of recorded anti-Christian incidents reached 1063, ten times more than anti-Muslim ones.
The demonstration “against Islamophobia,” which drew 13,500 persons, took place on November 10, three days before the commemoration of the massive jihadi attacks in Paris in 2015 at the Bataclan Theater and other sites, in which terrorists murdered 131 persons and wounded 413. Is it irrational to remember who was calling those shots?
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/15/2019 – 02:00 - Understanding The Deep State's Propaganda
Understanding The Deep State’s Propaganda
Authored by Eric Zuesse via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
Propaganda is essential to the Deep State’s operation…
The Deep State is the small number of people who control the organizations that donate the majority of the funds which finance the political careers of national officials, such as Presidents, Prime Ministers, and members of the national legislature. Almost always, the members of the Deep State are the controlling stockholders in the international corporations that are headquartered in the given nation; and, therefore, the Deep State is more intensely interested in international than in purely national matters. Since most of its members derive a large portion of their wealth from abroad, they need to control their nation’s foreign policies even more than they need to control its domestic policies. Indeed, if they don’t like their nation’s domestic policies, they can simply relocate abroad. But relocating the operations of their corporations would be far more difficult and costly to them. Furthermore, a nation’s public know and care far less about the nation’s foreign than about its domestic policies; and, so, the Deep State reign virtually alone on the nation’s international issues, such as: which nations will be treated as “allies” and which nations will instead be treated as “enemies.” Such designations are virtually never determined by a nation’s public. The public just trust what the Government says about such matters, like, for example, the US regime’s standard allegation, for decades, that “Iran is the leading state sponsor of terrorism”, which is clearly a blatant lie.
Iran, of course, is the world’s leading Shia nation, whereas Saudi Arabia is the world’s leading Sunni nation; and the US aristocracy are bonded to the aristocracies of both Saudi Arabia and Israel, against Iran. This allegation against Iran has always been promoted by the royal family who own Saudi Arabia, the Saud family, and also by the billionaires who control Israel, as well as by the billionaires who control the US So: this allegation is by the Deep State, which controls at least these three countries: US, Saudi Arabia, and Israel.
But, as was just said, this allegation by the Deep State is false: On 9 June 2017, I headlined “All Islamic Terrorism Is Perpetrated by Fundamentalist Sunnis, Except Terrorism Against Israel” and listed 54 terrorist attacks which had been prominent in US-and-allied media during 2001-2017, and all of them except for a few that were against Israel were attacks by Sunni groups — not affiliated with Iran. Subsequently, Kent R. Kroeger’s 16 May 2019 study “Is Iran the biggest state sponsor of terrorism?” concluded that overwhelmingly the majority of terrorist attacks ever since 1994 have been by Sunni groups, but he attributed the attacks by Yemen’s Shiite Houthis against Sunni Saudi Arabia as being “terrorist” attacks, even though these were instead actually responses to the Sauds’ war against, and to eliminate, Houthis in Yemen. Also, Kroeger attributed those Houthi actions to “Iran,” which is absurd. (The Houthis simply did not like being exterminated. And the US, of course, supplied the weapons and the military planning, for this attempted ethnic cleansing operation.) There were many other methodological flaws. And yet, still, even with its methodological flaws, Kroeger, concluded: “The distorted US propagandized image of Iran’s aggression looming over the Middle East is, frankly, ‘fake news.’” This is how untrustworthy the Deep State’s ‘news’ actually is. The term “fake news” is, in fact, misleading (or itself fake news) if it is not referring to the Deep State’s propaganda. In my 27 November 2017 “How the US Came to Label Iran the Top State Sponsor of Terrorism”, I described specifically the Deep State’s operation that had created the phrase “Iran is the leading state sponsor of terrorism”. But this is the way the Deep State operates, routinely, on all international issues. It operates by deceit. This is how it achieves the consent of the public, whom it actually rules. This is entirely consistent with the scientific findings about the United States, that it is a dictatorship, not a democracy. All of the evidence is consistent.
The Deep State here is the US-and allied Deep State, no merely national organization. It consists mainly of America’s billionaires, plus of the billionaires in US-allied countries such as UK, France, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Israel — but many more (including, for example, in Honduras, Brazil, etc.). These people number fewer than 2,000 in total, and they do deals together, and their contacts with one-another are both direct person-to-person, and indirect by means of representatives or agents. However, America’s billionaires lead the US-and-allied Deep State. That’s to say, the leaders are among the 607 US billionaires, the people who mainly fund American national political campaigns and candidates — and these 607 individuals determine who will get an opportunity to become a US President or member of Congress, and who won’t. For example: these individuals don’t necessarily select the politician who will become America’s President, but they do select who will get the opportunity to be among the serious contenders for that position. (Basically, what the mullahs do in Iran, these super-rich do in America. Whereas in Iran the clergy rule, in America the aristocracy rule.)
One, in particular, is George Soros, and this article will detail the views of one of his many beneficiaries. Another of these billionaires is Charles Koch, but he will not be discussed here, and inside the United States he is popularly considered to be an enemy of George Soros, only because the two men oppose each other on domestic issues. (Billionaires tend to be much more concerned with, and united about, foreign affairs than about domestic affairs, though they do oppose both their taxation and their regulation — they are for ‘free markets’, both domestically and abroad, and yet they also favor imposition of economic sanctions against countries which resist becoming controlled by them, and so they don’t really favor free markets except to the extent that free markets favor their own increase in power and thus tend toward oligopoly and away from competition.) Both men are much more alike than different, and both represent what’s called “neoliberalism,” which is the universal ideology of billionaires, or at least of all billionaires who donate to (i.e., invest in) politicians. Only few billionaires don’t invest in politicians; and, though politicians disagree with one-another, almost all of them are neoliberals, because politicians who aren’t that are not funded by the Deep State (the billionaires). The foreign policies of neoliberals are called “neoconservative” and this means supporting regime-change in any country that’s labeled by billionaires and their government an “enemy” nation. So, “neoconservative” is merely an extension of “neoliberal”: it favors extending neoliberalism to other nations — it is internationally aggressive neoliberalism; it is imperialistic neoliberalism. It is fascism, but so is neoliberalism itself fascist; the difference between the two is that neoconservatism is the imperialistic extension of fascism — it is the imperialistic fascism that, in World War II, was represented by the three Axis powers — Germany, Italy, and Japan — not by the purely domestic fascism that was represented by Spain. Whereas Spain was merely neoliberal, the Axis were also neoconservative (expansionist neoliberal), and the latter is what the Allies in WW II were warring against. But now the US has emerged as the world’s leading neoconservative regime, invading and occupying country after country, none of which had ever invaded nor even threatened to invade the United States. Propaganda is necessary in order to ‘justify’ doing that. This article will describe how that’s done.
The Deep State doesn’t concern domestic issues, because virtually all of its members control international corporations, and the Deep State is almost entirely about international issues: foreign policies, diplomacy, military issues, and international spying agencies called “intelligence agencies” — extending the empire. The Deep State controls all of that, regardless of what Party is nominally in power. (The public care little about foreign policy, pay little attention to it, and believe the government when it alleges that “national security” is about protecting them, and not about expanding the power and wealth of the billionaires.)
The dictatorship of the US Deep State really is more international than national; it provides the continuity in international relations, when it chooses and defines which nations (which foreign governments) are “allies” (meaning “we sell arms to them”) and which are instead “enemies” (meaning “we should sanction them and maybe even bomb them”). Both allies and enemies are essential in order for the military-industrial-press-government complex (here: “MIPGC”) to thrive, and the Deep State controls the entire MIPGC. In other words: the Deep State is an international empire, and, as such, its supreme aspiration is to conquer (via subversion, sanctions, coups, and/or invasions) all countries that it labels as “enemies.”
The way that the Deep State views things, there is no need for an ‘enemy’ to threaten or invade the United States in order for it to be “an enemy,” but, instead, the United States and its allies possess a God-given right to impose sanctions against, or coups overthrowing, or invasions of, any country they choose, so long as they can criticize that other country for being a ‘dictatorship’, or for ‘violating human rights’, or for otherwise doing what the Deep State itself actually does more than any other government on this planet does (and particularly does it to its selected ‘enemies’ — such as were Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran, Venezuela, and any other country that’s either friendly toward, or else an ally of, Russia, which is the other nuclear super-power, and the Deep State’s central target).
However, though those few super-wealthy individuals (in addition to the general public’s taxes) fund its operations, their many operatives are true-believing followers (believers in neoliberalism-neoconservatism), and this is the reason why the masters fund those individuals’ careers. It’s why these masters provide the platforms and personal connections and employment which enable the true-believers to advance, while opponents of the Deep State (i.e., opponents of the billionaires’ collective dictatorship) cannot find any billionaires to patronize them. In a society that has extremely concentrated wealth, this means that there will be virtual penury for opponents of the billionaires’ collective dictatorship. Especially the major politicians need patrons amongst the aristocracy, the billionaires, in order to have successful careers.
The beneficiary of the Deep State who will be exemplified, discussed, and finally quoted, here, will be Jacek Rostowski, who is also known as Jan Anthony, and as Jan Anthony Vincent-Rostowski. Wikipedia’s article on him opens:
Jan Anthony Vincent-Rostowski, also known as Jacek Rostowski (Polish pronunciation: [ˈjan ˈvint͡sɛnt rɔsˈtɔfskʲi]; born 30 April 1951, London) is a British-Polish[1] economist and politician who served as Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister of the Republic of Poland.
He was a candidate for Change UK in London at the 2019 European Parliament election in the United Kingdom.[2]
It also says:
From 1995 he has been Professor of Economics and was the head of the Department of Economics at the Central European University in Budapest during the periods: 1995–2000 and 2005–2006.[9] …
Later career[edit]
Rostowski was a member of Britain’s Conservative Party. In the beginning of 2010, it was announced that two months prior[15] he has become member of the Civic Platform party (PO). In the wake of the Parliamentary Elections of 2011, he became Member of Parliament, being elected from the list of Civic Platform Party (PO).[16]
In late 2015, Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz appointed Rostowski as her top political adviser.[17]
Vincent-Rostowski has published around 40 academic papers on European enlargement, monetary policy, currency policy and the transformation of post communist economies. He is the author of academic books including Macroeconomic Instability in Post-Communist Countries published by Oxford University Press.
On November 3rd, the Ukrainian ‘news’-medium Apostrophe interviewed him, and published the interview in Ukrainian. (The interviewee isn’t fluent in Ukrainian, but the article’s translator into Ukrainian isn’t identified.) What will be posted here is an English translation of that Ukrainian original.
The English “About” page on Apostrophe’s site says:
Apostrophe started in August 2014.
The site was aimed to prepare informational and analytical materials, presentations of important events in politics, economics, society and culture. Apostrophe’s editorial policy is based on principles of impartiality, precision and veracity, velocity, objectivity and balance in the presentation of information. Apostrophe sticks to journalism ethical standards. That is why published materials should not propagate violence, cruelty, cause racial, national or religious hatred. Apostrophe is a proponent of the common humanism values, peace, democracy, social progress and human rights.
The project functions with the direct participation and use of the resources of the International Centre for Policy Studies (ICPS). Apostrophe’s idea lies within the framework of synergy between journalists and analysts.
The “About” page on the International Centre for Policy Studies (ICPS) says:
ICPS was founded in 1994 upon the initiative of the Prague-based Open Society Institute (OSI). At that moment, ICPS was the first independent think-tank in Ukraine.
The Open Society Institute was founded by George Soros. He also founded the Central European University in Budapest, where the interviewee was employed for five years.
Those are just the obvious ways in which the interviewee had been funded and advanced by Mr. Soros.
Soros also had helped to fund the overthrow of the democratically elected and internationally non-aligned President of Ukraine in 2014 and to replace him with a nazi anti-Russian regime which serves as a terrific asset for the US-and-allied Deep State, because of Ukraine’s having a 1,625-mile border with the country that the US-installed regime in Ukraine hates: Russia (hates it because the Deep State craves, above all, to control also the other nuclear super-power; so, this is hatred-on-command).
A basic presumption of that interview, both by the interviewer and by the interviewee, is the Russian Government’s being wrong in everything, and the Ukrainian Government’s — the regime which Obama (another of Soros’s beneficiaries) had installed — being right in everything. Here is this interview, as an illustrative example of how propaganda is professionally done:
ORIGINAL OF THIS ARTICLE (in Ukrainian) (now translated here into English):
Apostrophe: How would you describe the current state of security in the European region?
Jan Anthony: Since 2014, military security has become a more important topic of discussion in Europe. After all, the events in Crimea and Donbass caused shock. After a long period of time, when defence issues were put on the back burner, they are now again becoming an important factor in the European security environment. Now there are serious problems requiring high priority and serious solutions. And, of course, there are other problems that relate to the same issue — the fight against terrorism, for example.
The EU and NATO work very closely together to prepare for different types of threats. Now there is a return to a potential military conflict with Russia. In addition, there is an unsustainable security situation in the south, in Africa, because of the conflict in Libya, and in the Sahara. They can also pose a terrorist threat. Therefore, the issue of European security has become more complex than it was 5-10 years ago.
“You specialize in managing military conflicts. How do you think the conflict in Ukraine can be solved?
“Conflict management and conflict resolution are different things. Now I see attempts to create a more positive context in the Donbass issue. We need to return to the Minsk agreements as a basic resolution on the conflict. As you know, discussions are under way on the so-called Steinmeier formula. Therefore, now there is an opportunity to return to the discussion of how the Minsk agreements should be implemented. There are serious questions about the sequence of points — what should be done in the first place. And there is also the question of how to confirm the parties’ compliance with their obligations, because now there is a very low level of trust among the participants. Therefore, everything that will be done, it is necessary to immediately demonstrate — behold, it is fulfilled.
“How about the implementation of Minsk? Especially given that it has not worked for almost 5 years.
“As I see it, no one is discussing any alternatives now. Perhaps among the people discussing ways to implement the agreements, there are other options, but I have no idea what they can be. The Minsk agreements are still in the spotlight.
“Let’s talk about Crimea. What are the threats on the peninsula?
“With Crimea it’s a different story than with Donbass. In Crimea there are facilities that can be a base for Russian nuclear weapons, including the Russian navy, capable of carrying nuclear weapons in the Black Sea. [NOTE HERE: Obama’s takeover of Ukraine was originally aimed at taking over Russia’s naval base in Crimea and installing an even larger US naval base there, against Russia.]
“So the main threat is nuclear weapons?
“Of course, it is an extremely serious threat by its nature. Any use of it would be disastrous.
“Will the Kremlin decide to use these weapons in the near future? Or is it just a way to intimidate the West?
“The primary objective of nuclear weapons is deterrence. This is the main goal with which Russia placed it in Crimea.
“Is it possible to compare the situation with the Cuban crisis?
“I would not say that these two situations are similar. There the crisis came very, very close to escalating into an armed conflict. I don’t think we’re going to get to that level of confrontation. [NOTE HERE: Both the interviewer and the interviewee ignore that instead of the Soviet Union’s 1962 attempt to place nuclear missiles on the island of Cuba 95 miles from America’s border, the US ploy now is to place its nuclear missiles right on Russia’s 1625-mile border with Russia — the discussants’ assumption reverses the actual threat, and thus insults their readers’ — or else their own — basic intelligence.] But now it is a very dangerous situation. We need to find more stable mechanisms that cannot be developed by comparing the situation to the Cuban crisis.
“How can the Western world force Russia to take its weapons from Crimea?
“Of course, the sanctions have had an effect. I’m sure they’ll stay — I don’t see any reason to take them off. International pressure on Russia will continue. Normalization of relations with it is impossible as long as the current situation in Crimea remains. And since Russia has no intention of leaving the peninsula, we will live for a long time in difficult relations with it, including sanctions, as well as cooperation of Western countries, taking into account possible military confrontation.
“Let’s recall the attack on Ukrainian military vessels in the Kerch Strait, which occurred almost a year ago. How can we avoid the threat of further Russian attacks on Ukrainian and foreign ships?
“Ukraine has lost control of part of its navigation, as well as guaranteed access to the Sea of Azov — and this is a complex problem. This issue must therefore remain the focus of international attention. Ukraine should have access to the water area and carry out commercial operations in ports. Georgia faced the same problem — the loss of control over navigation in a certain area. A special mechanism is needed to address these issues. But I have no suggestions on what it should be.
“Russia recently blocked international waters in the Black Sea and thus blocked trade routes. How should the international community respond to such behaviour?
“We must respect the International Convention on Navigation. We must continue to conduct military exercises in the Black Sea and it is important that NATO countries participate in them. Of course, there remains a risk that Russia will also organize its exercises. I think the ships will enjoy the freedom of navigation established by the International Convention. Some issues may need to be discussed more broadly for the sake of a future long-term convention. We need to make it more relevant to modern security requirements. It is important to revise time limits on stay in the Black Sea for NATO ships. Nato’s defence and deterrence plans should also be changed. NATO must have greater access to the Black Sea and its naval forces spend more time there.
“Does the need to renegotiate international agreements on the weakness of international institutions, as well as their unpreparedness for strikes by Russia, speak?
“Many countries have entered into bilateral agreements with Russia to ensure their confidence in the use of the sea. I think such deals need to be modernized, as well as add another agreement, which spells out a mechanism for discussing maritime incidents on the basis of international organizations, for example, under the OSCE umbrella. This will avoid misunderstandings that may arise from disregard for the rules.
In the case of deliberate violations, for example, when military exercises block part of the Black Sea, other measures of influence will have to be used. And in that case, there must be a clear international response. If you look at the 2014 NATO summit at Brussels, there have been decisions that have had a very tough response in the event of any crisis. The only question is what to do to Ukraine, which is not a member of the Alliance and does not obey its decisions.
“Regarding Russian military power. During the “Grom-2019” exercises, which were held recently under the personal guidance of Vladimir Putin, the nuclear submarine cruiser K-44 “Ryazan” fired only one ballistic intercontinental missile R-29R. The other missile just didn’t come out of the mine. This is not the first time that the Russian army has failed. So the question arises, is Russia really a threat to peace, all this is just a demonstration?
“Russia can solve the problems that you have named. But no one doubts that it has an extremely powerful nuclear arsenal. Despite some problems with weapons, Russia is still very strong.
“The Kremlin has promised to develop short- and medium-range missiles and deploy them to confront the West (in fact, they already exist — Iskanders). Does this mean that now the situation in Europe is close to the state of the Cold War, when the USSR and the West deployed iCBM for mutual deterrence?
“Yes, Russia has already developed and deployed the ICBM. We don’t know if they’re all equipped with nuclear weapons. But for the balance of power, NATO must have a significant force with nuclear weapons.
There are differences with the Cold War. Then there was complete separation and no contact between East and West. And now we have significant economic cooperation. It is still possible to hold political discussions, including with the participation of intergovernmental organizations. So now the situation is not quite the same as during the Cold War. But, as I said, the security situation in Europe is very difficult and relations with Russia deteriorate. The absence of signs that this deterioration is coming to an end is worrying. There are no very effective ways to improve relations with Russia. Therefore, there are different reasons for concern.
“The Kremlin sent the S-400 division and the Panzir-S battery to Serbia to the Russian Air Defense Forces. This is, in fact, Russian military exercises near the EU. [NOTE HERE: The problem isn’t that Russia is moving too close to the EU — such as the discussants imply — but that NATO has moved right up to Russia’s borders. Again, the presumption insults readers’ — and/or their own — basic intelligence.] Is this preparation for a strike against the West?
“Serbia’s position is that they want to have good relations with both their neighbors and NATO countries, but also with Russia. Serbia is also training with NATO countries. Serbia wants a balance of power, but in the event of a conflict it will support EU membership. It is politically and economically related to Western countries. Therefore, I do not believe that such exercises are the Kremlin’s preparation for an attack on the EU.
“How would you assess the military threats to Europe in Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova?
“It is difficult to answer because these are three different countries and the situation in each of them is completely different from the other.
“Ukraine and Moldova have similar situations. Russian soldiers are still in Transnistria – the only difference is that the conflict there is frozen.
“Yes, they are there, but they do not fight like in Ukraine.
Do you believe that this frozen conflict can continue?
“Today we think it’s not very likely.
“Is Europe expecting a military strike from Russia?
“No, we don’t expect it and we don’t expect it. But we do not rule it out, we allow it in our defense plans. Preparations are under way for these attacks, which means that their probability is reduced.
“Russia invests heavily in European political parties like the French National Front or the League of the North in Italy. Is there any evidence that the Kremlin is investing in “militia” in EU countries and supplying weapons to Europe to shake up the situation. Perhaps it is funding crime to influence the situation in the EU?
“There have been many investigations into ties with the Kremlin, in particular financial ties from politicians. The EU discusses a lot of cyber threats, the possibility of attacks on infrastructure, as well as information attacks. But I have never seen the Kremlin supply weapons to non-state organizations, especially criminal groups.
“Russia has taken up the settlement of the issue in Syria. What’s going on out there now?
“Officially, Russia is helping Bashar al-Assad’s forces gain control over Syrian territory. But what is happening now is, from the Kremlin’s point of view, the formation of a single strategic space, including the Black Sea and the eastern Mediterranean. Russia has free access to the Black Sea and now the Russian Navy has gained much greater access to the waters of the eastern Mediterranean. They plan to use this strategic space for a possible confrontation with NATO forces.
“How can this affect Europe?
“It’s a very difficult question. One issue of concern is the influx of refugees and temporarily displaced persons to Turkey and Europe. On the other hand, again, Russia’s creation of a single strategic space, interference in the Mediterranean.
“Let’s go back to Ukraine. You are a nuclear safety expert. We have many nuclear power plants, can they pose a threat to the world in the event of full-scale aggression?
“Yes, this is a very big threat, first of all for Ukraine itself, then for the rest of the world. One of the Ukrainian officials stated that this is why there was a significant revision of the concept of Ukraine’s security. It includes so-called “internal threats” to nuclear equipment and the creation of national protection, will protect and defend nuclear reactors. I think that the threat to the infrastructure of the nuclear power plant in Ukraine is real. But the Ukrainian government takes this seriously and takes the necessary measures.
Conclusion
As can be clearly seen there, the basic method of the Deep State’s propagandists is to ask questions which have assumptions that are the reverse of reality, and to answer these questions in ways that confirm those falsehoods.
This is what many millions of people get paid to do.
And it creates “Big Brother” or the Deep State here, just as, in 1948, George Orwell might have been thinking that it would do in 1984. And a good example of how the Deep State ‘justifies’ itself in America, is shown here.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/14/2019 – 23:45 - The Cheapest Places To Rent An Apartment In The U.S.
The Cheapest Places To Rent An Apartment In The U.S.
Americans who are looking for a deal on an apartment might want to check out Ohio…
As Statista’s Maria Vultaggio notes, the state has two cities with with the least expensive zip codes in the U.S., according to ApartmentGuide.com.
You will find more infographics at Statista
A one-bedroom apartment in Columbus, Ohio, costs $489 a month. It’s the only zip code on the list that’s under $500.
Rogers, Arkansas and Greenville, Texas, were tied for second least expensive, with monthly rents costing $510. Cities like Oklahoma City, Champaign, Illinois and Shreveport, Louisiana, cost under $550 per month.
Conway, Arkansas fell in the middle of the last with $555 per month for a one-bedroom apartment and Amarillo, Texas, Derby, Kansas, and Youngstown, Ohio finished off the least expensive zip codes by costing renters about $600 per month.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/14/2019 – 23:25 - Casualties Of War: Military Veterans Have Become America's Walking Wounded
Casualties Of War: Military Veterans Have Become America’s Walking Wounded
Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
Come you masters of war / You that build the big guns
You that build the death planes / You that build all the bombs
You that hide behind walls / You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know / I can see through your masks….
You fasten all the triggers / For the others to fire
Then you sit back and watch / When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion / While the young people’s blood
Flows out of their bodies / And is buried in the mud.
— Bob Dylan, “Masters of War”
War drives the American police state.
The military-industrial complex is the world’s largest employer.
War sustains our way of life while killing us at the same time. As Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent and author Chris Hedges observes:
War is like a poison. And just as a cancer patient must at times ingest a poison to fight off a disease, so there are times in a society when we must ingest the poison of war to survive. But what we must understand is that just as the disease can kill us, so can the poison. If we don’t understand what war is, how it perverts us, how it corrupts us, how it dehumanizes us, how it ultimately invites us to our own self-annihilation, then we can become the victim of war itself.
War also entertains us with its carnage, its killing fields, its thrills and chills and bloodied battles set to music and memorialized in books, on television, in video games, and in superhero films and blockbuster Hollywood movies financed in part by the military.
Americans are fed a steady diet of pro-war propaganda that keeps them content to wave flags with patriotic fervor and less inclined to look too closely at the mounting body counts, the ruined lives, the ravaged countries, the blowback arising from ill-advised targeted-drone killings and bombing campaigns in foreign lands, or the transformation of our own homeland into a warzone.
Nowhere is this double-edged irony more apparent than during military holidays, when we get treated to a generous serving of praise and grandstanding by politicians, corporations and others with similarly self-serving motives eager to go on record as being pro-military.
Yet war is a grisly business, a horror of epic proportions.
In terms of human carnage alone, war’s devastation is staggering. For example, it is estimated that approximately 231 million people died worldwide during the wars of the 20th century. This figure does not take into account the walking wounded—both physically and psychologically—who “survive” war.
Many of those who have served in the military are among America’s walking wounded.
Despite the fact that the U.S. boasts more than 20 million veterans who have served in World War II through the present day, the plight of veterans today has become America’s badge of shame, with large numbers of veterans impoverished, unemployed, traumatized mentally and physically, struggling with depression, suicide, and marital stress, homeless, subjected to sub-par treatment at clinics and hospitals, and left to molder while their paperwork piles up within Veterans Administration offices.
According to a recent report by the Department of Veterans Affairs, at least 60,000 veterans died by suicide between 2008 and 2017.
On average, 6,000 veterans kill themselves every year, and the numbers are on the rise.
As Brené Brown, research professor at the University of Houston, observed, “For soldiers serving in Afghanistan and Iraq, coming home is more lethal than being in combat.”
Unfortunately, it’s the U.S. government that poses the greater threat to America’s military veterans, especially if they are among that portion of the population that exercises their First Amendment right to speak out against government wrongdoing.
Consider: we raise our young people on a steady diet of militarism and war, sell them on the idea that defending freedom abroad by serving in the military is their patriotic duty, then when they return home, bruised and battle-scarred and committed to defending their freedoms at home, we often treat them like criminals merely for exercising those rights they risked their lives to defend.
The government even has a name for its war on America’s veterans: Operation Vigilant Eagle.
As first reported by the Wall Street Journal, this Department of Homeland Security (DHS) program tracks military veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and characterizes them as extremists and potential domestic terrorist threats because they may be “disgruntled, disillusioned or suffering from the psychological effects of war.”
Coupled with the DHS’ dual reports on Rightwing and Leftwing “Extremism,” which broadly define extremists as individuals, military veterans and groups “that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely,” these tactics bode ill for anyone seen as opposing the government.
Yet the government is not merely targeting individuals who are voicing their discontent so much as it is taking aim at individuals trained in military warfare.
Don’t be fooled by the fact that the DHS has gone extremely quiet about Operation Vigilant Eagle.
Where there’s smoke, there’s bound to be fire.
And the government’s efforts to target military veterans whose views may be perceived as “anti-government” make clear that something is afoot.
In recent years, military servicemen and women have found themselves increasingly targeted for surveillance, censorship, threatened with incarceration or involuntary commitment, labeled as extremists and/or mentally ill, and stripped of their Second Amendment rights.
An important point to consider, however, is that under the guise of mental health treatment and with the complicity of government psychiatrists and law enforcement officials, these veterans are increasingly being portrayed as threats to national security.
In light of the government’s efforts to lay the groundwork to weaponize the public’s biomedical data and predict who might pose a threat to public safety based on mental health sensor data (a convenient means by which to penalize certain “unacceptable” social behaviors), encounters with the police could get even more deadly, especially if those involved have a mental illness or disability coupled with a military background.
Incredibly, as part of a proposal being considered by the Trump Administration, a new government agency HARPA (a healthcare counterpart to the Pentagon’s research and development arm DARPA) will take the lead in identifying and targeting “signs” of mental illness or violent inclinations among the populace by using artificial intelligence to collect data from Apple Watches, Fitbits, Amazon Echo and Google Home.
These tactics are not really new.
Many times throughout history in totalitarian regimes, such governments have declared dissidents mentally ill and unfit for society as a means of disempowering them.
As Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anne Applebaum observes in Gulag: A History: “The exile of prisoners to a distant place, where they can ‘pay their debt to society,’ make themselves useful, and not contaminate others with their ideas or their criminal acts, is a practice as old as civilization itself. The rulers of ancient Rome and Greece sent their dissidents off to distant colonies. Socrates chose death over the torment of exile from Athens. The poet Ovid was exiled to a fetid port on the Black Sea.”
For example, government officials in the Cold War-era Soviet Union often used psychiatric hospitals as prisons in order to isolate political prisoners from the rest of society, discredit their ideas, and break them physically and mentally through the use of electric shocks, drugs and various medical procedures.
Insisting that “ideas about a struggle for truth and justice are formed by personalities with a paranoid structure,” the psychiatric community actually went so far as to provide the government with a diagnosis suitable for locking up such freedom-oriented activists.
In addition to declaring political dissidents mentally unsound, Russian officials also made use of an administrative process for dealing with individuals who were considered a bad influence on others or troublemakers.
Author George Kennan describes a process in which:
The obnoxious person may not be guilty of any crime . . . but if, in the opinion of the local authorities, his presence in a particular place is “prejudicial to public order” or “incompatible with public tranquility,” he may be arrested without warrant, may be held from two weeks to two years in prison, and may then be removed by force to any other place within the limits of the empire and there be put under police surveillance for a period of from one to ten years. Administrative exile–which required no trial and no sentencing procedure–was an ideal punishment not only for troublemakers as such, but also for political opponents of the regime.
Sound familiar?
This age-old practice by which despotic regimes eliminate their critics or potential adversaries by declaring them mentally ill and locking them up in psychiatric wards for extended periods of time is a common practice in present-day China.
What is particularly unnerving, however, is how this practice of eliminating or undermining potential critics, including military veterans, is happening with increasing frequency in the United States.
Remember, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) opened the door for the government to detain as a threat to national security anyone viewed as a troublemaker. According to government guidelines for identifying domestic extremists—a word used interchangeably with terrorists—technically, anyone exercising their First Amendment rights in order to criticize the government qualifies.
It doesn’t take much anymore to be flagged as potentially anti-government in a government database somewhere—Main Core, for example—that identifies and tracks individuals who aren’t inclined to march in lockstep to the government’s dictates.
In fact, as the Washington Post reports, communities are being mapped and residents assigned a color-coded threat score—green, yellow or red—so police are forewarned about a person’s potential inclination to be a troublemaker depending on whether they’ve had a career in the military, posted a comment perceived as threatening on Facebook, suffer from a particular medical condition, or know someone who knows someone who might have committed a crime.
The case of Brandon Raub is a prime example of Operation Vigilant Eagle in action.
Raub, a 26-year-old decorated Marine, actually found himself interrogated by government agents about his views on government corruption, arrested with no warning, labeled mentally ill for subscribing to so-called “conspiratorial” views about the government, detained against his will in a psych ward for standing by his views, and isolated from his family, friends and attorneys.
On August 16, 2012, a swarm of local police, Secret Service and FBI agents arrived at Raub’s Virginia home, asking to speak with him about posts he had made on his Facebook page made up of song lyrics, political opinions and dialogue used in a political thriller virtual card game.
Among the posts cited as troublesome were lyrics to a song by a rap group and Raub’s views, shared increasingly by a number of Americans, that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were an inside job.
After a brief conversation and without providing any explanation, levying any charges against Raub or reading him his rights, Raub was then handcuffed and transported to police headquarters, then to a medical center, where he was held against his will due to alleged concerns that his Facebook posts were “terrorist in nature.”
Outraged onlookers filmed the arrest and posted the footage to YouTube, where it quickly went viral. Meanwhile, in a kangaroo court hearing that turned a deaf ear to Raub’s explanations about the fact that his Facebook posts were being read out of context, Raub was sentenced to up to 30 days’ further confinement in a psychiatric ward.
Thankfully, The Rutherford Institute came to Raub’s assistance, which combined with heightened media attention, brought about his release and may have helped prevent Raub from being successfully “disappeared” by the government.
Even so, within days of Raub being seized and forcibly held in a VA psych ward, news reports started surfacing of other veterans having similar experiences.
“Oppositional defiance disorder” (ODD) is another diagnosis being used against veterans who challenge the status quo. As journalist Anthony Martin explains, an ODD diagnosis
“denotes that the person exhibits ‘symptoms’ such as the questioning of authority, the refusal to follow directions, stubbornness, the unwillingness to go along with the crowd, and the practice of disobeying or ignoring orders. Persons may also receive such a label if they are considered free thinkers, nonconformists, or individuals who are suspicious of large, centralized government… At one time the accepted protocol among mental health professionals was to reserve the diagnosis of oppositional defiance disorder for children or adolescents who exhibited uncontrollable defiance toward their parents and teachers.”
Frankly, based on how well my personality and my military service in the U.S. Armed Forces fit with this description of “oppositional defiance disorder,” I’m sure there’s a file somewhere with my name on it.
That the government is using the charge of mental illness as the means by which to immobilize (and disarm) these veterans is diabolical. With one stroke of a magistrate’s pen, these veterans are being declared mentally ill, locked away against their will, and stripped of their constitutional rights.
If it were just being classified as “anti-government,” that would be one thing.
Unfortunately, anyone with a military background and training is also now being viewed as a heightened security threat by police who are trained to shoot first and ask questions later.
Feeding this perception of veterans as ticking time bombs in need of intervention, the Justice Department launched a pilot program in 2012 aimed at training SWAT teams to deal with confrontations involving highly trained and often heavily armed combat veterans.
The result?
Police encounters with military veterans often escalate very quickly into an explosive and deadly situation, especially when SWAT teams are involved.
For example, Jose Guerena, a Marine who served in two tours in Iraq, was killed after an Arizona SWAT team kicked open the door of his home during a mistaken drug raid and opened fire. Thinking his home was being invaded by criminals, Guerena told his wife and child to hide in a closet, grabbed a gun and waited in the hallway to confront the intruders. He never fired his weapon. In fact, the safety was still on his gun when he was killed. The SWAT officers, however, not as restrained, fired 70 rounds of ammunition at Guerena—23 of those bullets made contact. Apart from his military background, Guerena had had no prior criminal record, and the police found nothing illegal in his home.
John Edward Chesney, a 62-year-old Vietnam veteran, was killed by a SWAT team allegedly responding to a call that the Army veteran was standing in his San Diego apartment window waving what looked like a semi-automatic rifle. SWAT officers locked down Chesney’s street, took up positions around his home, and fired 12 rounds into Chesney’s apartment window. It turned out that the gun Chesney reportedly pointed at police from three stories up was a “realistic-looking mock assault rifle.”
Ramon Hooks’ encounter with a Houston SWAT team did not end as tragically, but it very easily could have. Hooks, a 25-year-old Iraq war veteran, was using an air rifle gun for target practice outside when a Homeland Security Agent, allegedly house shopping in the area, reported him as an active shooter. It wasn’t long before the quiet neighborhood was transformed into a war zone, with dozens of cop cars, an armored vehicle and heavily armed police. Hooks was arrested, his air rifle pellets and toy gun confiscated, and charges filed against him for “criminal mischief.”
Given the government’s increasing view of veterans as potential domestic terrorists, it makes one think twice about government programs encouraging veterans to include a veterans designation on their drivers’ licenses and ID cards.
Hailed by politicians as a way to “make it easier for military veterans to access discounts from retailers, restaurants, hotels and vendors across the state,” it will also make it that much easier for the government to identify and target veterans who dare to challenge the status quo.
After all, no one is spared in a police state.
Eventually, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we all suffer the same fate.
It stands to reason that if the government can’t be bothered to abide by its constitutional mandate to respect the citizenry’s rights—whether it’s the right to be free from government surveillance and censorship, the right to due process and fair hearings, the right to be free from roadside strip searches and militarized police, or the right to peacefully assemble and protest and exercise our right to free speech—then why should anyone expect the government to treat our nation’s veterans with respect and dignity?
Here’s a suggestion: if you really want to do something to show your respect and appreciation for the nation’s veterans, why not skip the parades and the flag-waving and instead go exercise your rights—the freedoms that those veterans swore to protect—by pushing back against the government’s tyranny.
It’s time the rest of the nation did its part to safeguard the freedoms we too often take for granted.
Freedom is not free.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/14/2019 – 23:05 - China Is About To Get Angry: US Senate To Vote Show Of Support For Hong Kong Protesters
China Is About To Get Angry: US Senate To Vote Show Of Support For Hong Kong Protesters
As noted moments ago, futures ramped to new record highs rising above 3,100 following a quote from top Trump advisor Larry Kudlow, who has figured out that he gets most bang for the buck in juicing futures when liquidity is virtually nil, around 8pm or so, when he told reporters that Phase One of the China deal is “down to the short strokes”, adding that “we are in communication with them every single day right now”, and repeating that “a deal is close”, even if “it’s not done yet.”
And yet, while such Deal On/Deal Off market manipulation is nothing new and has been going on for over a year and a half, there is the possibility that China is about to be royally pissed off, if not by Trump for whom a China (non) “deal” is critical to pushing the market to all time highs just before the 2020 presidential election and thus will not dare to anger Xi Jinping over the ongoing fiasco that is Hong Kong, then by the Senate, which is preparing for quick passage of legislation to show support for pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong by placing the city’s special trading status with the U.S. under annual review.
According to Bloomberg, the Senate is set to bring the bill to the floor under an expedited process that would allow for quick passage unless there is an objection, according to the lead sponsor, Republican Senator Marco Rubio. And since it is unlikely anyone will object, the bill is expected to pass as early as next week.
“The world witnesses the people of Hong Kong standing up every day to defend their long-cherished freedoms against an increasingly aggressive Beijing and Hong Kong government,” Rubio said. “Now more than ever, the United States must send a clear message to Beijing that the free world stands with Hong Kongers in their struggle.”
Rubio and Democratic co-sponsor, Senator Ben Cardin, have garnered broad bipartisan support for their bill, including from Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jim Risch, who has pressed Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for a swift vote. Rubio and McConnell met late Wednesday to hash out a way forward for the legislation, which would also levy sanctions on people the president finds responsible for human rights violations.
“The world needs to see that the United States will stand up and tell the Chinese Communist Party that what they are doing to the people of Hong Kong is wrong,” Risch said in a statement. “The U.S. stands with the people of Hong Kong, and I look forward to continuing to work with Senate leadership and my colleagues across the aisle to move this bill swiftly.”
While it is unclear what the Senate’s vote will achieve, besides potentially removing any hope for even a “phase one” deal, Hong Kong has been paralyzed since Monday morning, when a demonstrator was shot during protests.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg notes that the White House declined to comment Thursday when asked whether Trump would sign it into law; a veto by Trump would indicate that for all the belligerent posturing, Trump and Xi have long since reached an agreement behind the scenes, whereby China “folds” to Trump’s demands, while Trump refuses to intervene in Hong Kong.
The Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act would require the State Department to certify at least once a year whether Hong Kong should keep its special status under U.S. law. This legislation is slightly different from the version passed by the House of Representatives, which means the two bills would have to be reconciled and passed by both chambers before going to President Donald Trump.
Predictably, on a day when China’s president Xi said that “stopping the storm and restoring order” in Hong Kong is the most urgent task for Hong Kong, once again raising the possibility of military intervention by the PLA, the Chinese Foreign Ministry on Thursday warned of retaliation if the measure passes Congress, adding that China will take resolute measures to safeguard its interests, and repeating that the US should immediately stop interference in Hong Kong issues.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/14/2019 – 22:45 - PBS Frontline's "In The Age of AI" Exposes Big-Tech's Ongoing Abuse Of Public Trust
PBS Frontline’s “In The Age of AI” Exposes Big-Tech’s Ongoing Abuse Of Public Trust
Authored by B.N.Frank via AcivistPost.com,
You won’t see cell phones or personal computers much in movies or TV shows until the late 1990s because most people didn’t own them. Of course most people didn’t need them either. If you couldn’t afford a “home phone” – pay phones usually weren’t hard to find. Anyone who needed to be “on call” – like doctors – wore pagers.
People who grew up without new technology know firsthand that it has made the world better in some ways.
We also know that it has made it worse in others. People who never knew the world without new technology have been conditioned to believe that all of it is necessary as well as beneficial. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. 5G is very dangerous (see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8). Artificial Intelligence (AI) is associated with many risks as well.
There will always be people who want more technology regardless of the human and environmental consequences. Those kinds of people are not going to like Frontline’s “In the Age of AI”.
FRONTLINE investigates the promise and perils of artificial intelligence, from fears about work and privacy to rivalry between the U.S. and China. The documentary traces a new industrial revolution that will reshape and disrupt our lives, our jobs and our world, and allow the emergence of the surveillance society.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/14/2019 – 22:25 - Forget GDP: Here Is The Scariest Data From China
Forget GDP: Here Is The Scariest Data From China
Yesterday, shortly before China’s data deluge, we reported that a Beijing-based think tank became the first Chinese economic research institute linked to the government to predict that China’s economic growth rate will slow below 6.0% next year. Specifically, The National Institution for Finance and Development (NIFD) on Wednesday said that China’s economic growth rate will slow to 5.8% in 2020 from an estimated 6.1% this year, a number which is already quite ambitious, not to say artificially goalseeked.
“The economic slowdown is already a trend,” said former central bank adviser Li Yang, who heads the institute that is affiliated to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS). “We must resort to deepened supply-side structural reform to change it or smooth the slowdown, rather than solely rely on monetary or fiscal stimulus.”
The problem is that even a sub-6% number is wildly optimistic and misrepresents the true state of China’s economy considering that back in August, Fathom Consulting calculated that growth in the second largest economy had already shrunk to 4.6% and was declining.
Source: Bloomberg
Of course, shortly thereafter China released its latest retail sales, fixed investment and industrial production data, all of which missed badly and worse, the data showed the weakest retail sales growth since 2003 and weakest Fixed-Asset Investment growth since 1998.
Source: Bloomberg
However, while the slowdown in China’s economy has been widely telegraphed for years, a more ominous development is taking place in China’s financial system, which at roughly $40 trillion is not only nearly double the size of that of the US, but is the world’s biggest. It is here, that one find not only an escalating loss of faith by the market, but confirmation that China’s all important credit channel is increasingly clogged up, if not outright broken.
Following the Q3 earnings releases from Chinese banks, Saxo Bank’s Peter Garnry has updated his market cap to total assets ratio for the four largest commercial banks in China. What he found is that the ratio hit a new all-time low of 5.8% in Q3 as total assets grew an annualized 8% in Q3 while market cap of the four banks declined.
This means that Chinese investors – who happen to know best what is truly going on behind the scenes – are not valuing these new assets as high quality, and the most likely dynamic in China right now is that the current credit expansion is just offsetting the surge in bad loans, whose real amount Beijing is naturally keep under wraps. The net effect is zero credit transmission to the real economy in China constraining economic growth, which in a time of collapsing total social credit…
… and virtually non-existent credit impulse…
… simply means that the country that in 2008 pulled the world out of a global depression, will not be able to do so again.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/14/2019 – 22:05 - DHS Expects To Have The Biometrics Data Of 259 Million People By 2022
DHS Expects To Have The Biometrics Data Of 259 Million People By 2022
Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,
The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) expects to have face, fingerprint, and iris scans of at least 259 million people in its biometrics database by 2022. Is there any way to escape the mass surveillance and tracking that George Orwell warned us all about in his iconic book, 1984?
The Orwellian police state is upon us, but don’t expect it to improve at all. In fact, as George Orwell said: “If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.”
According to a recent presentation from the DHS’s Office of Procurement Operations which was reviewed by Quartz, the 259 million in the database is about 40 million more than the agency’s 2017 projections. In those estimates, the agency expected to have the data of 220 million unique identities by 2022, according to previous figures cited by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a San Francisco-based privacy rights nonprofit.
The agency is transitioning from a legacy system called IDENT to a cloud-based system (hosted by Amazon Web Services) known as Homeland Advanced Recognition Technology, or HART. The biometrics collection maintained by DHS is the world’s second-largest, behind only India’s countrywide biometric ID network in size. The traveler data kept by DHS is shared with other US agencies, state and local law enforcement, as well as foreign governments. –Quartz
Your data hasn’t been private for a long time and it won’t be ever again as long as governments believe they are allowed to hoard it – all in the name of keeping you safe, of course. The first two stages of the HART system are being developed by United States defense contractor Northrop Grumman, which won the $95 million contract in February 2018. DHS wasn’t immediately available to comment on its plans for its database.
Biometrics “make it possible to confirm the identity of travelers at any point in their travel,” Kevin McAleenan, US President Donald Trump’s recently-departed acting DHS secretary, told Congress last year. The criteria used by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers, a division of DHS, to screen out specific travelers as suspicious is top secret, but was determined in conjunction with Palantir, the Silicon Valley data-mining firm co-founded by controversial billionaire and ardent Trump supporter Peter Thiel. The EFF said it believes CBP could be tracking travelers “from the moment they begin their internet travel research.” As the group has noted, DHS says “the only way for an individual to ensure he or she is not subject to collection of biometric information when traveling internationally is to refrain from traveling.” –Quartz
Last month’s DHS presentation describes IDENT as an “operational biometric system for rapid identification and verification of subjects using fingerprints, iris, and face modalities.” According to further reporting by Quartz, the new HART database “builds upon the foundational functionality within IDENT,” to include voice data, DNA profiles, “scars, marks, and tattoos,” and the as-yet-undefined “other biometric modalities as required.” EFF researchers caution some of the data will be “highly subjective,” such as information gleaned during “officer encounters” and analysis of people’s “relationship patterns.”
So basically, if you ever leave your house, expect the government to track and monitor your every move and make sure “highly subjective” information is used to ensure you remain enslaved. The “land of free?” I hardly think so.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/14/2019 – 21:45 - Russia Says BRICS Seeking Common, Non-Dollar Payment System
Russia Says BRICS Seeking Common, Non-Dollar Payment System
The fracturing of the global economy and de-dollarization appear to be full-steam ahead.
Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, simplified as BRICS, are five emerging national economies that are developing a new universal payment system to challenge the US’ SWIFT international payment network, a Russian official was quoted by Reuters on Thursday.
Russia’s de-dollarization effort has gained momentum in the last several years, in line with President Putin’s commitment to reduce the country’s vulnerability to the continuing threat of US sanctions. But it’s not just Russia who wants to lessen their dependence on dollars for trade, it’s the entire economic bloc.
Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), said, “increasing non-market risks of the global payment infrastructure” is behind the push to develop a new international payment system for BRICS peers.
“An efficient BRICS payment system can encourage payments in national currencies and ensure sustainable payments and investments among our countries, which make up over 20% of the global inflow of foreign direct investment,” Dmitriev said.
Dmitriev said BRICS peers have also been discussing a new common cryptocurrency for mutual payments as another workaround to the dollar.
He said Russia had made a considerable effort over the last several years to reduce dollars in foreign trade. In the last several years, Russian foreign trade payments in dollars have dropped to 50% from 92%, while rouble transactions have jumped from14% to 3%, he added.
On Wednesday, Russian Deputy Finance Minister Vladimir Kolychev was quoted by Reuters as saying the Russian sovereign wealth fund will reduce US Dollars and is studying whether it should add Chinese yuan.
Last month, Russian Economy Minister Maxim Oreshkin told the Financial Times that the country would continue down the path of de-dollarization and begin trading some oil transactions in Euros and roubles.
Russia’s desire to abandon the dollar is a trend that continues to flourish — now it appears BRICS peers could be following down the same path. This will certainly irritate Washington.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/14/2019 – 21:25 - Soros Demands Fox News Ban "Ludicrous" Trump Ally Joe DiGenova
Soros Demands Fox News Ban “Ludicrous” Trump Ally Joe DiGenova
The president of George Soros’ Open Society Foundations demanded that Fox News ban former federal prosecutor and Trump ally Joe diGenova for claiming that the Hungarian-American billionaire “controls a very large part of the career foreign service of the United States State Department.”
In response to diGenova’s comments, Open Society president Eric Wemple said in a Friday letter to Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott that diGenova’s comments are “beyond fiction” and “beyond ludicrous.”Last night, yet again, Fox gave air time to McCarthyism. This has to stop. My letter to @FoxNews:
cc @ErikWemple @brianstelter pic.twitter.com/qMdSfE94Xk— Patrick Gaspard (@patrickgaspard) November 14, 2019
Others, such as ADL President Jonathan Greenblatt, suggested diGenova was using an ‘anti-Semitic trope’ against Soros, who is Jewish.
Invoking #Soros as controlling the State Dept, FBI, and Ukraine is trafficking in some of the worst anti-Semitic tropes. @FoxNews won’t have Chris Farrell on for making similar remarks, and they should hold the same standard for @JoeDiGenova. https://t.co/IbCQCdXZfL
— Jonathan Greenblatt (@JGreenblattADL) November 14, 2019
As The Hill’s John Solomon reported in March, in 2016 Obama administration officials sought to suppress a Ukrainian corruption probe into an NGO bankrolled by both the US government and Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros.
When Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office tried to investigate an alleged misallocation of $4.4 million in US funds, which was supposed to go toward anti-corruption initiatives, US embassy officials came down hard to shut down the investigation altogether. “We ran right into a buzzsaw and we got bloodied,” a senior Ukrainian official told The Hill.
George Kent Notably, former State Department official George Kent (One of the Democrats’ star witnesses in Wednesday’s public impeachment hearings), recommended in April 2016 that Ukraine stop investigating a Soros-funded entity in Ukraine, AntAC.
“The investigation into the Anti-Corruption Action Center (sic), based on the assistance they have received from us, is similarly misplaced,” wrote Kent.
While the 2016 presidential race was raging in America, Ukrainian prosecutors ran into some unexpectedly strong headwinds as they pursued an investigation into the activities of a nonprofit in their homeland known as the Anti-Corruption Action Centre (AntAC).
The focus on AntAC — whose youthful street activists famously wore “Ukraine F*&k Corruption” T-shirts — was part of a larger probe by Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office into whether $4.4 million in U.S. funds to fight corruption inside the former Soviet republic had been improperly diverted.
The prosecutors soon would learn the resistance they faced was blowing directly from the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, where the Obama administration took the rare step of trying to press the Ukrainian government to back off its investigation of both the U.S. aid and the group. –The Hill
DiGenova, an attorney for Solomon, may be included in a batch of communications that a federal judge ordered the State Department to hand over regarding Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani’s communications with top department officials.
The judge ruled that the department had 30 days to turn over the documents, but that both parties needed to meet to narrow the scope of American Oversight’s request.
The State Department is agreeing to search for records related to external communications between Giuliani, his associates Victoria Toensing and Joseph diGenova and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, according to the status report released Wednesday.
The report says that “to the extent responsive records exist” the State Department will “process and produce” the documents “with appropriate redactions” by Nov. 22.
The department has also agreed to process communications between Giuliani and some of Pompeo’s advisers, including including State Department counselor Ulrich Brechbuhl and former senior adviser Michael McKinley. –The Hill
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The State Department search for records will include a review of emails, text messages, calendar entries and messaging platforms – as well as any correspondence regarding Giuliani, Toensing or diGenova’s plans to travel to Ukraine or encourage the country’s government to investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter, who have been accused of corruption.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/14/2019 – 21:25 - Red Ponzi Panic: Chinese Hospitals Begging Nurses For Loans To Stay Afloat
Red Ponzi Panic: Chinese Hospitals Begging Nurses For Loans To Stay Afloat
Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk,
Speculative loans in China are souring rapidly. Ruzhou, a city of one million people provides examples.
Struggling to keep its economy growing, the city of Ruzhou spent big, but is now asking its health care workers for cash to stay afloat.
Great piece. The problem isn’t incompetent officials: the problem is unrealistically high GDP growth targets that clearly cannot be met except by borrowing and overbuilding (and, of course, capitalizing investment losses that should be expensed).https://t.co/cWAJ8ANqsG
— Michael Pettis (@michaelxpettis) November 11, 2019
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Begging Nurses for Money
The New York Times asks How Bad Is China’s Debt?
Ruzhou, a city of one million people in central China, urgently needed a new hospital, their bosses said. To pay for it, the administrators were asking health care workers for loans. If employees didn’t have the money, they were pointed to banks where they could borrow it and then turn it over to the hospital.
Ruzhou is a city with a borrowing problem — and an emblem of the trillions of dollars in debt threatening the Chinese economy.
Local governments borrowed for years to create jobs and keep factories humming. Now China’s economy is slowing to its weakest pace in nearly three decades, but Beijing has kept the lending spigots tight to quell its debt problems. Increasingly these deals are going sour, as they did in Ruzhou, and the loans are going unpaid. Lenders have accused three of Ruzhou’s hospitals and three investment funds tied to the city of not paying back their debts.
Local officials have long used big spending to keep the economy growing. Ruzhou is home to a number of white-elephant projects, including a stadium and sports complex turned e-commerce center, now largely unused. A shantytown redevelopment project, begun four years ago to give rural residents new homes, has been slowed for lack of money, locals said.
Doctors and nurses at the traditional Chinese medicine hospital complained to one local state-owned newspaper that they were being ordered to give between $14,000 and $28,000. At Ruzhou Maternal and Child Health Hospital, nurses and doctors were told they had to invest between $8,500 and $14,000, according to government online forums and state media.
Ruzhou officials did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Two employees of The New York Times who traveled to the city were briefly held by the police and forced to leave.
Tip of the Iceberg
Ruzhou has several hospitals in trouble, an unused sports stadium, a cultural complex in shambles, and a failed shantytown project.
Play this same scene throughout China.
It’s everywhere.
Nobody is quite sure how big the problem might be. Beijing says the total is about $2.5 trillion. Vincent Zhu, an analyst at Rhodium Group, a research firm, puts the figure at more than $8 trillion.
Factor in the world’s worst air pollution and water supplies you would have to be crazy to drink from.
Yet, US hyperinflationists think the dollar will collapse to nothing, Chinese debt somehow doesn’t matter, China will soon rule the world, and the yuan will displace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.
I suggest Forget the Yuan: King Dollar is Here to Stay for quite some time.
The yuan is not even close to competing with the dollar for at least six reasons.
Meanwhile, Chinese growth is hugely overstated and its massive debt problem little understood.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/14/2019 – 21:05 - Dems Aren't Going To Condemn This Trump-Putin Cooperation
Dems Aren’t Going To Condemn This Trump-Putin Cooperation
Independent journalist David Mizner notes “Dems aren’t going to criticize this Trump-Putin cooperation” as Moscow has now recognized Jeanine Añez as Bolivia’s self-declared interim president until the protest-wracked South American nation’s next elections.
This came two days after Washington did the same, with Acting Assistant Secretary for US Department of State’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs Michael Kozak being the first to announce Tuesday, “Acting Senate Presidetn Anez has assumed responsibilities of Interim Constitutional President of Bolivia.”
Kozak added, “We look forward to working with her and Bolivia’s other civilian authorities as they arrange free and fair elections as soon as possible, in accordance with Bolivia’s constitution.” And on Wednesday Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also congratulated Añez as Evo supporters clashed in the streets with riot police.
Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov was quoted in RIA Novosti news agency as saying, “Russia will perceive Mrs. Añez as Bolivia’s leader, but only until the elections.”
This despite Ryabkov expressing that Russia views the series of events which led to President Evo Morales’ ouster as tantamount to a state coup. He said Moscow “took into account that there was no quorum in the parliament at the time of her confirmation in this position.”
Interestingly, it appears Russia is taking a route of pragmatic acquiescence, perhaps given Evo is already in Mexico where he was provided political asylum, and Bolivia’s army is now firmly in support of Anez. In the case of socialist Venezuela, it must be remembered, where the US recognizes opposition leader Juan Guaido as ‘interim president’ and has led failed coup efforts, Russia has firmly stuck by President Nicolás Maduro.
Clashes between police and demonstrators have spilled out onto the streets of La Paz #Bolivia pic.twitter.com/nOcNA5wmlP
— In the NOW (@IntheNow_tweet) November 14, 2019
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Former president Morales was quick to respond from his place of asylum in Mexico that Añez is a “coup-mongering right-wing senator” and said his supporters’ attempts to access the Senate had been denied. Morales also called the series of events which led to his rapid ouster at the start of the week “the sneakiest, most nefarious coup in history.”
Meanwhile security forces have vowed to take back the streets, deploying heavily in the administrative capital of La Paz, where throngs of angry Morales supporters squared off against police. The US embassy has evacuated all non-essential personnel according to reports, as pro-Evo socialist demonstrators have vowed to reject the “right-wing coup”.
The White House had been quick to issue a statement on Morales’ ouster, describing it as a “significant moment for democracy in the Western Hemisphere”.
On Thursday Añez took the further provocative move of declaring that Evo Morales would not be welcome in any new elections, which she would like to see held soon. Morales’ Movement for Socialism (MAS) party would be allowed to participate, but “They should start searching for a candidate,” she said, according to Reuters.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/14/2019 – 20:45 - Trump Impeachment Is Blueprint To Overthrow Government From Within
Trump Impeachment Is Blueprint To Overthrow Government From Within
Authored by Jenna Ellis Rives, op-ed via The Hill,
The House began public hearings this week, furthering the partisan move by the Democrats to impeach President Trump in a blatant abuse of constitutional authority. Representative Adam Schiff said in a press conference, “These open hearings will be an opportunity for the American people to evaluate the witnesses for themselves and also to learn firsthand about the facts of the president’s misconduct.”
There are several problems with this statement.
First, Schiff is already characterizing the outcome of the investigation. As the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, he serves as a key arbiter of the inquiry under the resolution. As such, he is in a position that demands an unbiased irreproachable ethic in evaluating requests for subpoenas and testimony. Any judge in a similar position would be required to recuse himself with even a hint of the pure bias Schiff has displayed, including coordination with the Ukraine whistleblower and other actions.
The Democrats do not even pretend that their impeachment game is fair or actually about fact finding. This is simply about using a grant of power in the Constitution arbitrarily and politically, outside the bounds of due process and the purpose of that authority. Although the House does have the “sole power” of impeachment, that is a grant of jurisdiction, not a license to proceed on purely partisan motivation. Article One must work coordinately and not inconsistently with Article Two, which provides the legal basis upon which a sitting president may be impeached.
Second, Schiff demonstrates this is all about media play in the court of public opinion. Voters have no power or responsibility in an impeachment proceeding. The drafters of the Constitution intended the impeachment and removal process to be exercised only when there was sufficient evidence that the subject of the impeachment had committed a legally qualifying offense. This is not about whether impeachment is popular in the polls or whether a majority of Americans prefer it. Transparency in the context of this quasi judicial process is to provide fundamental fairness and due process for the president. Why are the Democrats so hellbent on blatantly refusing to allow Republican subpoenas and witnesses?
It is because it is a sham. Yet the Democrats are openly admitting that their goal is to try this in the media and attempt to dishonestly convince us that somehow we too should hate Donald Trump. They are hoping to convince us not to vote for him. That is not a legitimate or constitutional purpose of an impeachment. It is rather ironic that they claim his “crime” is an alleged quid pro quo to gain political advantage, while they are manipulating the power of impeachment for their political advantage. It is Schiff and other Democrats like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who should be impeached. There is an actual constitutional basis for that.
Third, Schiff is proving beyond doubt that this entire impeachment is merely a coordinated partisan attack against President Trump and, even more importantly, against the government of the United States. There was a bipartisan effort was against impeachment, with two Democrats and all Republicans in the House voting against the inquiry. The Democrats are abusing the power of impeachment and, if they are allowed to move forward, they are not only setting a terrible precedent that impeachment can be wielded as a political weapon that it was never intended to be, but also attacking the Constitution and undermining the rule of law.
In the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton explained the problem of political motivation with the power of impeachment. He wrote,
“A well constituted court for the trial of impeachments, is an object not more to be desired than difficult to be obtained in a government wholly elective. The subjects of its jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or in other words from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated political, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself. The prosecution of them, for this reason, will seldom fail to agitate the passions of the whole community, and to divide it into parties, more or less friendly or inimical, to the accused.”
He was right. Schiff and Pelosi are not interested in real demonstrations of innocence or guilt. Their only interest is staging a political coup against their adversaries. But this is even bigger than the president. This is an attempt to overthrow the federal government from the inside.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/14/2019 – 20:25 - Stocks, Yuan Surge After Yet Another Kudlow Trade Headline Claiming "Deal Is Close"
Stocks, Yuan Surge After Yet Another Kudlow Trade Headline Claiming “Deal Is Close”
Algos have gone full retard…again.
In an exact mirror of yesterday’s idiocy – by which a series of headlines raise doubts about the US-China trade deal, spark a rapid plunge in stocks which is instantly bid into the US cash market close and then ramped even higher as Japan opens on the back of “trade deal is close” comments from someone in the US administration – US equity futures and offshore yuan are spiking tonight…
White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow tells reporters:
“We are in communication with them every single day right now,” referring to U.S. talks with China trade negotiators over a phase one trade pact.
“We are coming down to the short strokes,” Kudlow adds noting that a deal is “close…it’s not done yet.”
And for the 51289932nd time, algos panic buy futures!!
Dow futures are now over 200 points off the intraday lows – on nothing at all!
Offshore Yuan is also following a similar pattern…
Source: Bloomberg
For some context, The Dow is now over 1800 points higher since Trump said “phase one” of the deal was complete and Offshore Yuan is 15 handles stronger… oh yes and The Fed’s balance sheet is $280 billion bigger, which is of course all that matters…
Source: Bloomberg
As one veteran trader exclaimed, “this is becoming f**king ridiculous.”
Never gets old https://t.co/2RSLRzEpA4
— Stalingrad & Poorski (@Stalingrad_Poor) November 14, 2019
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Well, to be honest, it does!
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/14/2019 – 20:01 - Ukraine For Dummies (And Congressmen)
Ukraine For Dummies (And Congressmen)
Authored by Ray McGovern via ConsortiumNews.com,
At Wednesday’s debut of the impeachment hearings there was one issue upon which both sides of the aisle seemed to agree, and it was a comic-book caricature of reality.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff led off the proceedings with this:
“In 2014, Russia invaded a United States ally, Ukraine, to reverse that nation’s embrace of the West, and to fulfill Vladimir Putin’s desire to rebuild a Russian empire…”
Five years ago, when Ukraine first came into the news, those Americans who thought Ukraine was an island in the Pacific can perhaps be forgiven. That members of the House Intelligence Committee don’t know — or pretend not to know — more accurate information about Ukraine is a scandal, and a consequential one.
As Professor Stephen Cohen has warned, if the impeachment process does not deal in objective fact, already high tensions with Russia are likely to become even more dangerous.
So here is a kind of primer for those who might be interested in some Ukraine history:
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Late 1700s: Catherine the Great consolidated her rule; established Russia’s first and only warm-water naval base in Crimea.
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In 1919, after the Bolshevik Revolution, Moscow defeated resistance in Ukraine and the country becomes one of 15 Republics of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
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In 1954, after Stalin’s death the year before, Nikita Khrushchev, a Ukrainian, assumed power. Pandering to Ukrainian supporters, he unilaterally decreed that henceforth Crimea would be part of the Ukrainian SSR, not the Russian SSR. Since all 15 Republics of the USSR were under tight rule from Moscow, the switch was a distinction without much of a difference — until later, when the USSR fell apart..
Khrushchev: Gave Ukraine away. (Wikipedia)
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Nov. 1989: Berlin wall down.
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Dec. 2-3, 1989: President George H. W. Bush invites Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to summit talks in Malta; reassures him “the U.S. will not take advantage” of Soviet troubles in Eastern Europe. Bush had already been pushing the idea of a Europe whole and free, from Portugal to Vladivostok.
A Consequential Quid Pro Quo
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Feb. 7-10, 1990: Secretary of State James Baker negotiates a quid pro quo; Soviet acceptance of the bitter pill of a reunited Germany (inside NATO), in return for an oral U.S. promise not to enlarge NATO “one inch more” to the East.
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Dec. 1991: the USSR falls apart. Suddenly it does matter that Khrushchev gave Crimea to the Ukrainian SSR; Moscow and Kyiv work out long-term arrangements for the Soviet navy to use the naval base at Sevastopol.
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The quid pro quo began to unravel in October 1996 during the last weeks of President Bill Clinton’s campaign when he said he would welcome Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic into NATO — the earlier promise to Moscow notwithstanding. Former U.S. Ambassador to the USSR Jack Matlock, who took part in both the Bush-Gorbachev early-December 1989 summit in Malta and the Baker-Gorbachev discussions in early February 1990, has said, “The language used was absolute, including no ‘taking advantage’ by the U.S. … I don’t see how anybody could view the subsequent expansion of NATO as anything but ‘taking advantage,’ particularly since, by then, Russia was hardly a credible threat.” (From 16 members in 1990, NATO has grown to 29 member states — the additional 13 all lie east of Germany.)
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Feb. 1, 2008: Amid rumors of NATO planning to offer membership to Ukraine, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warns U.S. Ambassador William Burns that “Nyet Means Nyet.” Russia will react strongly to any move to bring Ukraine or Georgia into NATO. Thanks to WikiLeaks, we have Burns’s original cable from embassy in Moscow.
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April 3, 2008: Included in Final Declaration from NATO summit in Bucharest: “NATO welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO.”
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Early September 2013: Putin helps Obama resist neocon demands to do “shock and awe” on Syria; Russians persuade President Bashar al-Assad to give up Syrian army chemical weapons for destruction on a U.S. ship outfitted for chemical weapons destruction. Neocons are outraged over failing to mousetrap Obama into attacking Syria.
Meanwhile in Ukraine
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Dec. 2013: In a speech to the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation, Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland says: “The United States has supported Ukraine’s European aspirations. … We have invested over $5 billion to assist Ukraine in these and other goals that will ensure a secure and prosperous and democratic Ukraine.”
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Feb. 4, 2014: Amid rioting on the Maidan in Kiev, YouTube carries Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland’s last minute instructions to U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt regarding the U.S. pick for new Ukrainian prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk (aka “Yats”) and other plans for the imminent coup d’etat in Kiev. (See: ) When Pyatt expresses concern about EU misgivings about mounting a coup, Nuland says “Fuck the EU.” She then apologizes to the EU a day or two later — for the profanity, not for the coup. She also says that Vice President Joe Biden will help “glue this thing together”, meaning the coup.
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Feb. 22, 2014: Coup d’etat in Kyiv; appropriately labeled “the most blatant coup in history” by George Friedman, then President of the widely respected think-tank STRATFOR.
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Feb. 23, 2014: The date that NATO, Western diplomats, and the corporate media have chosen – disingenuously – as the beginning of recent European history, with silence about the coup orchestrated in Kyiv the day before. President Vladimir Putin returns to Moscow from the winter olympics in Sochi; confers with advisers about Crimea, deciding — unlike Khrushchev in 1954 — to arrange a plebiscite to let the people of Crimea, most of whom strongly opposed the coup regime, decide their own future.
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March 16, 2014: The official result from the voters in Crimea voted overwhelmingly for independence from Ukraine and to join Russia. Following the referendum, Crimea declared independence from Ukraine and asked to join the Russian Federation. On March 18, the Russian Federal Assembly ratified the incorporation of Crimea into Russia.
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In the following days, Putin made it immediately (and publicly) clear that Yatsenyuk’s early statement about Ukraine joining NATO and – even more important – the U.S./NATO plans to deploy ABM systems around Russia’s western periphery and in the Black Sea, were the prime motivating forces behind the post-referendum re-incorporation of Crimea into Russia.
Putin: Reacted to coup. (Russian government)
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No one with rudimentary knowledge of Russian history should have been surprised that Moscow would take no chances of letting NATO grab Crimea and Russia’s only warm-water naval base. The Nuland neocons seized on the opportunity to accuse Russia of aggression and told obedient European governments to follow suit. Washington could not persuade its European allies to impose stringent sanctions on Russia, though, until the downing of Malaysian Airlines MH17 over Ukraine.
Airplane Downed; 298 Killed
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July 17, 2014: MH 17 shot down
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July 20, 2014: Secretary of State John Kerry told NBC’s David Gregory, “We picked up the imagery of this launch. We know the trajectory. We know where it came from. We know the timing. And it was exactly at the time that this aircraft disappeared from the radar.” The U.S., however, has not shared any evidence of this.
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Given the way U.S. intelligence collectors had been focused, laser-like, on that part of the Ukrainian-Russian border at that time, it is a near certainty that the U.S. has highly relevant intelligence regarding what actually happened and who was most likely responsible. If that intelligence supported the accusations made by Kerry, it would almost certainly have been publicized.
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Less than two weeks after the shoot-down, the Europeans were persuaded to impose sanctions that hurt their own businesses and economies about as much as they hurt Russia’s – and far more than they hurt the U.S. There is no sign that, in succumbing to U.S. pressure, the Europeans mustered the courage to ask for a peek at the “intelligence” Kerry bragged about on NBC TV.
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Oct. 27, 2016: Putin speaks at the Valdai International Discussion Club.
How did the “growing trust” that Russian President Putin wrote about in his September 11, 2013 New York Times op-ed evaporate?
How did what Putin called his close “working and personal relationship with President Obama” change into today’s deep distrust and saber-rattling? A short three years later after the close collaboration to resolve the Syrian problem peacefully, Putin spoke of the “feverish” state of international relations and lamented: “My personal agreements with the President of the United States have not produced results.” And things have gone downhill from there.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/14/2019 – 19:45 -
- South Korea Slaughters 380,000 Pigs After China's Pig Ebola Crosses Border
South Korea Slaughters 380,000 Pigs After China’s Pig Ebola Crosses Border
Cross-border transmissions of African swine fever is becoming a significant issue across Asia.
Just last week, we warned about China exporting the hog-killing disease to Russia. Now it appears North Korea, a country that borders China, has already exported the virus to South Korea.
South Korean authorities have been scrambling to contain the outbreak since mid-September.
A new report from Reuters, indicates 380,000 pigs have been slaughtered since the end of September, in the northern region bordering North Korea.
“#Gimpo City and the Island of #Ganghwa #Incheon #SouthKorea are without a pig, not even a single pig. All are buried alive. Total almost 200K in the island (next to Gimpo) and Gimpo&Paju City. The price of pork stays the same”
📰https://t.co/j5MTHItiNH
ℹhttps://t.co/8qBc6UIZyi pic.twitter.com/a9FLdg7rNa— SaveKoreanDogs (@NamiKim_DogsSK) October 17, 2019
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Already, the government has led a significant effort to slaughter nearly 3% of the country’s pig herd to prevent further spread. The first swine-fever case emerged in mid-September.
Woo Hee-jong, a veterinary professor at Seoul National University, said government authorities aggressively killed pigs in the northern region to prevent the spread to large pig farms in the southern part of the country.
As of October 10, swine fever cases were zero, and the attempt to prevent a further outbreak might have worked but has come at the cost of 380,000 pigs.
So far, there are no reports of wild boar infected with the disease, but if that were the case, then the spread across the country would become unstoppable.
The epicenter of the hog-killing disease started in China, where authorities have killed at least 50% of its pig herd this year.
The cross-border spread of African swine fever from China to Russia; China to North Korea; and now North Korea to South Korea suggests the virus is becoming uncontrollable for governments.
The spread of the virus across China has already led to skyrocketing food prices for pork, and rapid food inflation is likely to be seen in neighboring countries.
Meanwhile, the US is sitting on record cold storage of pork bellies, something that China, Russia, North/South Korea might be interested in…
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/14/2019 – 19:25 - Billionaires Savage Elizabeth Warren Over Virtue Smoke-Signaling Campaign Ad
Billionaires Savage Elizabeth Warren Over Virtue Smoke-Signaling Campaign Ad
Elizabeth Warren was sorely mistaken if she thought she could get away with attacking prominent billionaires without repercussions, she was sorely mistaken.
After flipping out on Warren Wednesday night for not knowing “who the f**k she’s tweeting,” billionaire investor Leon Cooperman told CNBC’s ‘Halftime Report’ on Thursday that Warren’s proposed wealth tax “makes no sense,” adding “It would lead to unnatural acts, be near impossible to police, and is probably unconstitutional… it will make the wealthy flock to gold in order to hide their wealth, like you wouldn’t believe.”
“In my opinion, she represents the worst in politicians as she’s trying to demonize wealthy people because there are more poor people (than) wealthy people,” said Cooperman, adding “if this lady wins, we’re in big trouble.“
Of course, Warren is playing to her (young) base, and when asked why do so many Millennials seem to prefer socialism to capitalism? Cooperman exclaimed that “they’re exposed to all this crap by left-leaning university professors.”
Then Cooperman dared to ask: “How can a college professor and politician gain an $18mm net worth?” he also asked.
Oh my!! Lee Cooperman goes all in–Hyman Roth!!!!
— Jim Cramer (@jimcramer) November 14, 2019
Cooperman was joined in his criticism by Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, who was also featured in the Massachusetts Senator’s ad.
“Surprised to be featured in Sen Warren’s campaign ad, given the many severe critics she has out there,” Blankfein tweeted on Thursday. “Not my candidate, but we align on many issues. Vilification of people as a member of a group may be good for her campaign, not the country. Maybe tribalism is just in her DNA.”
Surprised to be featured in Sen Warren’s campaign ad, given the many severe critics she has out there. Not my candidate, but we align on many issues. Vilification of people as a member of a group may be good for her campaign, not the country. Maybe tribalism is just in her DNA.
— Lloyd Blankfein (@lloydblankfein) November 14, 2019
Warren’s proposal would levy a 2% tax on household net worth over $50 million and a 6% tax on those with over $1 billion.
Cooperman says he will support fellow billionaire Mike Bloomberg if he formally enters the 2020 race and maintains moderate policy positions, according to CNBC.
The son of a Bronx plumber who became one of Wall Street’s most successful investors, Copperman started the Omega Advisors hedge fund in 1991. Last year, he returned outside investor money and converted Omega into a family office. His net-worth is estimated at more than $3 billion. Prior to starting Omega, he spent 25 years at Goldman Sachs.
Cooperman has also been a major philanthropist. He has signed The Giving Pledge, created by Bill Gates and his wife Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett. The Giving Pledge invites the ultra-wealthy to give away more than half of their fortunes to help society. –CNBC
Watch Warren’s ad below:
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/14/2019 – 19:11 - Hearsay, Your Honor!
Hearsay, Your Honor!
Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,
Watching Day 1 yesterday of the impeachment inquiry that isn’t one, I was thinking about an old children’s game, which is just as useful for adults, in which, in a wide circle of persons, no. 1 tells no. 2 a story, no. 2 tells no. 3, and so forth. If the total numbers of persons in the circle is large enough, it’s certain that the story, if it has enough details, will have changed unrecognizably by, say, no. 20.
That little game is a nice illustration of why you’ve all heard the words “Hearsay, Your Honor” spoken by some lawyer or another in 1000+ movies and TV series. And hearsay was all there was yesterday from “witnesses” Bill Taylor and George Kent. They are both “witnesses” who didn’t witness anything related to the hearing in course and neither ever met or spoke to President Trump, but both claim to know exactly what he was thinking, why he did what he did, and said what he said, based on things they heard from third parties, quite a few of whom remain anonymous.
Little of what they said would therefore be ruled admissible in a court of law. But the House inquiry is not a court of law. It can probably best be compared to a grand jury, a very one-sided format designed to let a prosecutor find and present enough evidence to let a case go to court. If Taylor and Kent had been in a court room, you would have heard “Hearsay, Your Honor” about once in every ten seconds. That gets old fast.
So why do we have this circus going on when it is obvious that round 2 (or 3, if you think the basement hearings were round 1), the Senate trial which must follow if the Dems decide to impeach Trump, has to acquit him because the House based its entire case on hearsay? I don’t know, but perhaps we see some of it in Democrat Rep. Mike Quigley (IL)’s statement: “Hearsay can be much better evidence than direct … and it’s certainly valid in this instance”
Democrat Rep. Mike Quigley (IL) on evidence: “Hearsay can be much better evidence than direct … and it’s certainly valid in this instance” pic.twitter.com/JD0Ui6acxD
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) November 13, 2019
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Note that Quigley in that little video got shut down very rapidly in his enthusiasm for using hearsay by someone (I can’t see who) saying none of the exceptions he seemed to refer to applied to “this testimony”. And that’s the crux here: courts may have in the past, after much deliberation, allowed hearsay in specific cases, but Quigley tries to make it look as if that is now some general rule, and that is certainly not true.
Before I forget, something that struck me at the start yesterday was how both Adam Schiff and Bill Taylor in their openings emphasized their focus on Russia, while this case is not about that, but about Ukraine. And Russia Russia Russia has been shot down along with Robert Muller in his memorably awful “defense” of his failed report a few months ago.
Schiff’s opening words:
In 2014, Russia invaded a United States ally, Ukraine, to reverse that nation’s embrace of the West, and to fulfill Vladimir Putin’s desire to rebuild a Russian empire. In the following years, thirteen thousand Ukrainians died as they battled superior Russian forces.
There is so much wrong and debatable and leading and what not in just those few words, I don’t even know where to start. I guess perhaps I should be shouting out “Hearsay, Your Honor” at the top of my lungs. Then there’s Taylor:
After his opening statement, Taylor answers questions. He tells committee members: “If we withdraw or suspend or threaten to withdraw our security assistance” to Ukraine, it sends a “message to Ukrainians, but its just as important to the Russians who are looking for any sign of weakness”. “That affects us” he adds. It affects the world that we live in; that our children and grandchildren will grow up in,” he adds, appearing to become emotional. “Ukraine is on the front line of that conflict,” he concludes.
These statements are important because they tell us that Schiff and Taylor both see the world through the same glasses. The Russians are looking for signs of US weakness that they can use to advance their grand plan to (re) build a grand empire. That comes with the idea that the US didn’t cause the mayhem in Ukraine in 2014 with their coup, no, it was Russia which reacted so it wouldn’t lose its only warm water port.
Back to the hearing.
Taylor said it was his “clear understanding” that President Trump withheld military aid to Ukraine until the Bidens and other matters were investigated. At the very least there is no proof of that. It’s much more likely from what we know today that Ukraine didn’t know Trump withheld the aid until after the July 25 phone call this whole thing rests on. It was suggested yesterday that they didn’t know until the end of August, but I’ve seen people claim that they knew a few weeks earlier. But Zelensky didn’t know on July 25, that we can agree on.
And anyway, this is merely Taylor’s opinion. Based on hearsay. Based on what some guy told him some other guy told him etc etc. And though Taylor never met Trump, the very idea of withholding aid to one of the most corrupt nations on the planet scares the heebees out of him because Russia Russia Russia.
Taylor is a career diplomat who has bought hook line and sinker into established US policy in the region, and who will defend it until his dying breath. And if that means going against the president of the country he allegedly serves, who has every right to rebalance that policy, Taylor will do it. That is what he was saying.
Taylor came close to matching Mueller’s uber-bumbling performance the other day, though he didn’t quite get there. Kent was not quite that bad, but he’s in the same camp, the same career field, and the same deep state, FBI-CIA controlled policy-making no matter who gets elected president. And looking at Bill Taylor, how can one not question the wisdom of people like him making decisions on matters such as that?
Republican counsel Steve Castor started off strong, at least from what I saw, but seemed to fizzle out a little because he became lost in his own one question every five seconds model.
Perhaps it was the format, maximum time limits etc., which you don’t have in a courtroom. Jim Jordan did well, he just got named to the committee, but he could have been more effective as well. Still, this part was strong:
Jordan: You didn’t listen in on President Trump & Zelensky’s call?
Taylor: I did not.
Jordan: You’ve never talked with Chief of Staff Mulvaney?
Taylor: I never did.
Jordan: You’ve never met the President?
Taylor: That’s correct.
Jordan: And you’re their star witness.
All in all, if you thought yesterday was a good day for the Democrats, for the inquiry, or for Adam Schiff, you really need to check a few fundamental issues. All Schiff managed to bring to the table was hearsay. And it’s only because of the grand jury-like format that he even gets to start day 2. No judge would have let him. But there is no judge, and there is no jury. There’s only an executioner.
PS I found this thing from the BBC intriguing and illustrative:
Bill Taylor, the acting US ambassador to Ukraine, said a member of his staff was told Mr Trump was preoccupied with pushing for a probe into Mr Biden. He was speaking at the first public hearings in the impeachment inquiry.
[..] During a detailed opening statement, Mr Taylor said a member of his staff had overheard a telephone call in which the president inquired about “the investigations” into Mr Biden. The call was with Gordon Sondland, the US ambassador to the European Union, who reportedly told the president over the phone from a restaurant in Kyiv that “the Ukrainians were ready to move forward”. After the call, the staff member “asked ambassador Sondland what President Trump thought about Ukraine”, Mr Taylor said. Mr Taylor said: “Ambassador Sondland responded that President Trump cares more about the investigations of Biden.”
First, it argues that a member of Taylor’s staff was told something by a third party, but later it changes to him/her hearing the president “live”. Albeit through an allegedly private phone call in which Trump may have sounded a bit loud. You want to impeach your president on the basis of a maybe overheard phone call that someone told you someone told someone else about?
By the way, that phone call allegedly was between Trump and Gordon Sondland, hotelier cum US ambassador to the EU, the same person who testified in the famous Schiff basement and whose laywer at some point contested Taylor’s statements about what Sondland told him, after which the latter went back to the basement to change his testimony. He said she said but then he said and then she said and so on.
What’s on the schedule for the circus tomorrow, is it the clowns or the elephants? I may take a day off. We have weeks more of this. And already I have no idea left of who told whom what.
* * *
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Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/14/2019 – 19:05 - SolarCity Lawsuit Reveals Almost All Of Elon Musk's Merger Promises Were "Misleading Or False"
SolarCity Lawsuit Reveals Almost All Of Elon Musk’s Merger Promises Were “Misleading Or False”
As we dive further into the depositions and discovery documents from the ongoing SolarCity lawsuit, it becomes clearer and clearer that the transaction was simply a bailout of Elon Musk’s cousin and SolarCity shareholders, and that much of the hype surrounding the idea in the first place was drummed up solely to create enthusiasm for the deal.
And now, even the media is starting to notice, with Bloomberg’s Dana Hull saying that the thousands of pages of documents released via the lawsuit “show that the CEO’s promises about SolarCity were misleading or false.”
“The move was called a catastrophe for Tesla, a $2 billion-plus bailout of a debt-saddled company of which Musk himself was chairman and the largest shareholder,” Hull reminds us.
The merger was pitched a different way to Tesla shareholders. Elon Musk called it “blindingly obvious” and a “no brainer” at the time.
But it seems even Musk has come to terms with what he has done, though. In a deposition, Musk reversed his course on the acquisition, stating: “At the time I thought it made strategic sense for Tesla and SolarCity to combine. Hindsight is 20-20. If I could wind back the clock, you know, I would say [I] probably would have let SolarCity execute by itself.”
And the shareholders that approved the deal to begin with really only had Musk’s word to go on. Musk told shareholders that the idea of combining the two companies was always part of his master plan and that it would create the world’s first vertically integrated clean energy company. The idea was that Tesla driving consumers would go home to their solar paneled homes to charge their vehicles.
And if you don’t support that utopian image, you must hate the environment.
The SolarCity deal was consummated about 3 years ago this month and now, looking back, it’s easy to see that “almost every significant promise Musk pitched publicly [was] either misleading or false.”
The situation behind the scenes for SolarCity was called “dire” and Hull says that “the documents in the lawsuit offer an unprecedented look at what happens when Musk’s reality-distortion field comes up against the reality of testifying under oath.”
Musk said publicly that SolarCity was on solid financial footing, but then behind the scenes was saying that it needed to solve its “liquidity crisis”. SolarCity was, of course, burning cash and in danger of defaulting on its debt.
Tesla’s board – and Evercore, who the company hired to evaluate the deal – both thought it wasn’t a good idea. But Evercore, like everyone else involved in the public markets, gave way to Elon Musk’s decision making. “It’s Elon’s world. We just live in it,” an Evercore banker wrote in one email.
Even Tesla’s CFO spoke out against the idea: “We have Model 3 happening. We have a lot of things going on. We ourselves have a large debt load. Why do we need to do this now, Elon?”
On top of that was the obvious conflicts of interest:
Besides his cousins Lyndon and Peter Rive running SolarCity, its board and Tesla’s had complicated overlaps. Six of Tesla’s seven directors were Musk associates (including his brother, Kimbal) with SolarCity ties. Antonio Gracias was on the board of both companies. What’s more, Musk had used his other entities to raise capital for SolarCity: SpaceX, for example, had purchased $255 million of SolarCity bonds. Musk bought $65 million worth. Tesla’s directors had to grapple with this apparent self-dealing as Musk pushed them to reconsider the acquisition in May 2016. Musk said he recused himself from these deliberations, but court filings indicate he remained actively involved, even advocating for the move directly with bankers and investors.
But this didn’t stop Musk from coming up with the idea of the Solar Roof (debunked by one solar expert in a podcast here and here) to try and win over shareholders. Musk showed off the product in 2016 to an impressed audience but it was later revealed the demos weren’t functional. Regardless, the acquisition received approval several weeks later.
The roof was supposed to be central to the merger, but Tesla has still failed to develop a mass market version of the product and high volume manufacturing has been delayed several times over the last few years. Tesla and SolarCity Director Antonio Gracias said there were only “50 to 100 of these things operating today in tests on people’s roofs.”
Meanwhile, last year, the company’s head of energy, Sanjay Shah, said he had “high confidence” they were on track to ramp up solar roof production in 2019. He said if more delays came up, “we will be more transparent than ever before to make sure you guys hear from us why.”
We can’t wait for that explanation.
Musk claimed in his deposition that Shah was actually focused on Model 3 development during his time at Tesla.
Tesla executives also knew that the SolarCity acquisition would be risky. In a 2017 memo, Tesla’s top brass exchanged talking points in a memo, saying the acquisition “wasn’t a bailout” and that “family-run businesses can lead to long-term success”.
“The collaboration has been great,” the memo says, stating that development was “going extremely well”.
But SolarCity was falling apart behind the scenes. In Q4 2017, solar deployments fell by 56% YOY and Tesla had gutted the company’s sales team. The Rive brothers left the company after the merger and Musk admitted that despite “synergies”, he had redeployed much of the SolarCity staff to work on the Model 3 launch.
“We’re turning our attention to solar, and we’re going to fix it,” Musk said in a deposition, when asked.
When the plaintiff’s lawyer asked for more details, Musk called him “shameful” and a “very, very bad person”.
Musk seems ready to go to trial. “I can’t wait. It will be great. You’re going to lose,” he told the plaintiff’s counsel.
We can only hope this trial is nationally televised.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/14/2019 – 18:45
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