- CNN’s Cuomo Equates the ‘N Word’ with Using the Term ‘Fake News’ Against Journalists
These people are unbelievably tone deaf — insulated in their word of fetishes and drugs and all of the worst elements of mankind. Here is neo-liberal Chris Cuomo from CNN, in an interview with Michael Smerconish on Sirius XM yesterday, telling his listeners that saying ‘fake news’ to a journalist is the same, mind you, as calling a black person the ‘N word’ or derogatory term to an Italian (if alive, his father would smack him in the face with a meatball hero).
Nevermind the fact that the ‘N word’ is rooted in hatred for a group of people for nothing other than the color of their skin. Juxtapose that against the term ‘fake news’, used against corrupt journalists and organizations using their platforms to deceive people, purposely, for political/social justard means, and one could make an indelible argument that Mr. Chris Cuomo is, in fact, a fucking moron.
Let’s not forget his infamous foray into the Wikileaks dilemma this summer, telling viewers that it was, in fact, illegal to view the Wikileaks — that they should reserve such a privilege to the professionals in the media.
Content originally generated at iBankCoin.com
- Politicians Are Now Making Plans In Case The Public Turns Against Them Violently
Submitted by James Holbrooks via TheAntiMedia.org,
As protests continue to break out all around the nation over President Donald Trump’s desire to scrap Obamacare, Politico reported Tuesday that many politicians are beginning to worry about their own personal safety — to the point where some are having private sessions to discuss the matter.
Citing sources who were in the room, Politico writes:
“House Republicans during a closed-door meeting Tuesday discussed how to protect themselves and their staffs from protesters storming town halls and offices in opposition to repealing Obamacare.”
Some of the suggestions, the news outlet reports, include “having a physical exit strategy at town halls, or a backdoor at congressional offices to slip out of, in case demonstrations turn violent; having local police monitor town halls; replacing any glass office-door entrances with heavy doors and deadbolts; and setting up intercoms to ensure those entering congressional offices are there for appointments, not to cause chaos.”
While protests are popping up all over, the Republicans’ private session was no doubt prompted by events that happened over the weekend. While speaking before a raucous crowd in Roseville, California, Representative Tom McClintock had to be escorted from the stage and away from the event by local police officers.
McClintock, who held town hall meetings during the politically volatile days of both the Tea Party and Occupy movements, told The Hill he’s never seen anything like it:
“This was something very different. After an hour, the incident commander for the Roseville Police Department advised us the situation was deteriorating and felt it necessary to get me out of the venue. That’s never happened before.”
This sentiment appeared to be echoed at Tuesday’s closed-door session. Commenting on the meeting, Republican Study Committee Chairman Mark Walker of North Carolina stated:
“The message was: One, be careful for security purposes. Watch your back. And two, be receptive. Honor the First Amendment, engage, be friendly, be nice. Because it is toxic out there right now. Even some of the guys who have been around here a lot longer than I have, have never seen it to this level.”
Sources told Politico that the potential for violence is serious enough, in fact, that the House sergeant-at-arms has asked congressional offices to report any threat. That office is also passing out manuals on best practices to keep staffers safe.
Ironically, the backlash over the possible repeal of Obamacare that Republicans are facing now is similar to the backlash faced by Democrats years back as they were trying to force Obamacare into law.
“It’s not that you run from protesters,” Representative David Reichert of Washington said during an interview after the meeting, “but if someone presents some sort of physical threat or are espousing a verbal threat that could lead to a physical threat, if you feel that you’re in danger and your staff is in danger, call 911 and leave and go out the back door.”
In other words…run. Call the cops and run.
- China Vice Premier: "Those Who Manipulate Economic Data Will Be Punished"
Ask any economist or trader over drinks, or in any other setting, what they think about Chinese economic data or financial reporting and the answer will be one and the same: it’s all fake.
And it’s not just skeptical outsiders who share this view: China has made it all too easy for anyone to be convinced, with reports such as this one “China Threatens Its Economists And Analysts To Only Write Bullish Reports, Or Else“, and, of course “Chinese Province Admits It Fabricated Economic Data For Three Years.” Apparently, China is also a master when it comes to deadpan humor and/or self-referential irony – or is merely galactically obtuse – because on Thursday China’s Vice Premier, Zhang Gaoli, warned that economic statistics “must not be fabricated” and that those caught manipulating data should be punished and face consequences in their careers.
According to Xinhua, the central government requires authentic and reliable economic data to set policy, and China should have a traceable system to punish those found responsible for faking statistics, Zhang said Wednesday during a visit to the National Bureau of Statistics, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
Zhang also encouraged local authorities and other agencies to better coordinate their work and enact statistical reforms.
It gets better.
Following the recent humiliation when in January it was revealed that Liaoning province had faked its fiscal revenue and other statistics from 2011 to 2014, the government was humiliated, not so much that Chinese data was fabricated data – everyone knew that was the case long ago – but that it was caught. And since the genie was officially out of the bottle, Beijing had no choice but to show a bold facade and signal that China’s leaders are “attaching greater importance to data accuracy”, to demonstrate to the world just how serious it is in cracking down against data manipulators.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg reported last month that the central government has planned steps that will “improve” the independence of data collection and reduce the influence of local governments. In other words, Beijing is trying to scapegoat provinces and regional governments, for engaging in what it itself does.
And since the data rigging will not end for the economy which always comes within 0.1% – and usually just above – of the “consensus” GDP number, we wonder if the Chinese government will be as quick to “punish” its own members once more data manipulation cases are exposed following the crackdown on “regionally” fabricated data. We doubt it.
- Trump's Game Of Chess
Submitted by NicklethroweR via The Burning Platform blog,
During the last 18 months or so I’ve heard a lot of talk about chess. This guy or that guy is playing chess while everyone else is playing checkers or some mastermind is playing 3 dimensional chess, etc. I find it odd that these statements are made given that only a tiny percentage of Americans know how to play chess with that number sitting around 5% or slightly over 14 million people. This is too bad because if the population, as a whole, had a better understanding of chess then the actions of President Trump would make perfect sense.
History: The school district where I was employed drastically cut its music programs and decided that chess would be an appropriate alternative to music instruction. I was not entirely opposed to this as there were published research papers extolling the virtues of chess and there appeared to be a direct relationship between playing chess and higher academic achievement. Besides, anyone can play chess while not everyone has the dexterity to be a musician. Wishing to be part of the solution, I agreed to become a coach and took on after school chess programs on three different campuses.
Our school district was kind enough to foot the bill for some necessary chess coaching and needed chess supplies. Not only that but I had the great fortune of having World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov’s former full time coach as my new teacher as the former Russian coach had relocated to the very city where I lived and had been contracted by the School District to get us up to speed. Private lessons with Kasparov’s coach! Can you imagine it?
It took my new coach all of about 30 seconds to figure out my level of chess competence which was not very high and I will paraphrase what he said next: “You are not very good and there is not enough time to teach you the correct way. But, I can teach you simple rules that will enable you to defeat anyone that doesn’t study chess full time.” He called his method “active chess” whereas a weak player like myself could use a simple formula to play the most aggressive game possible and win against stronger players. He believed that strategy flowed from tactics and his method allowed for a very fluid game of strategy.
So, what did he teach me and how does it relate to our president? Is Trump playing chess?
Chess is a game where the number of possible positions rises at an astronomical rate. By the 2nd move of the game there are already 400 possible positions and after each person moves twice, that number rises to 8902. My coach explained to me that I was not trained enough to even begin to keep track of those things and that my only chance of ever winning was to take the initiative and never give it up. “You must know what your opponent will do next by playing his game for him.” was the advice I received.
Now, I wont bore you with the particulars but it boiled down to throwing punches each and every turn without exception. In other words, if my opponent must always waste his turn responding to what I am doing then he never gets an opportunity to come at me in the millions of possibilities that reside in the game. Again, if I throw the punch – even one that can be easily blocked, then I only have to worry about one combination and not millions.
My Russian chess coach next taught me that I should Proudly Announce what exactly I am doing and why I am doing it. He explained to me that bad chess players believe that they can hide their strategy even though all the pieces are right there in plain sight for anyone to see. A good chess player has no fear of this because they will choose positions that are unassailable so why not announce them? As a coach, I made all of my students tell each other why they were making the moves that they made as well as what they were planning next. It entirely removed luck from the game and quickly made them into superior players.
My Russian coach next stressed Time as something I should focus on to round out my game. He said that I shouldn’t move the same piece twice in a row and that my “wild punches” should focus on getting my pieces on to the board and into play as quickly as possible. So, if I do everything correctly, I have an opponent that will have a disorganized defense, no offense and few pieces even in play and this will work 9 out of 10 times. The only time it doesn’t work for me is when I go against players that have memorized hundreds of games and have memorized how to get out of these traps.
With all that said, let’s see if President Trump is playing chess.
First, we can all agree that Trump, if nothing else, throws a lot of punches. We really saw this in the primaries where barely a day could go by without some scandal that would supposedly end his presidential bid. His opponents and the press erroneously thought that responding to each and every “outrage” was the correct thing to do without ever taking the time to think whether or not they had just walked into a trap. They would use their turn to block his Twitter attack but he wouldn’t move that piece again once that was in play but, instead, brought on the next outrage – just like my coach instructed me to do.
Second, Trump is very vocal in what he is going to do. Just like I had my students announced to each other their plans, Trump has been nothing but transparent about what he intends to do. After all, announcing your plans only works if your position is unassailable. It demoralizes your opponent. You rub their face in it. Another benefit to being vocal is that it encourages your opponent to bring out his favorite piece to deal with said announced plans. This is a big mistake as any good chess player will quickly recognize which piece his opponent favors and then go take them.
Time has been the one area that our president is having problems. Executive Orders and Twitter Wars have pushed the opposition off balance but he has not been able to use this time to get all of his pieces into play. The Justice Department (his Queen) is still stuck behind a wall of pawns. Furthermore, only 5 of his 15 Cabinet picks have been confirmed as of this writing. Without control over these departments, the president can fight a war of attrition but he really can’t go on the offensive. In chess, I will gladly trade a piece for a piece if it means you have to waste your turn dealing with it. It isn’t a long term strategy if you do not have all of your pieces ready to go.
In the end it would appear that Trump is playing the kind of game that I was taught to play by my coach.
His opponents are never given time to mount an attack.
Their queen – the MSM has been removed from the board and their favorite piece – the Celebrities are locked in a war of attrition while Trump gets the rest of his pieces on the board.
Remember, these are all Tactics but Strategy flows from Tactics.
Sooner or later the Left will find itself in some terrible position and the Strategy to drain the swamp will present itself.
Also, since I did mention Garry Kasparov’s, he had this to say on his Twitter feed just yesterday.
“It’s the birthday of Ronald Reagan, whose courage and moral clarity helped win the Cold War & free many millions from Communist servitude.”
Damn right Garry, damn right.
- Nearly Half Of Early-20s Millennials Still Get A Monthly Housing Allowance From Mom And Dad
In an age when our pampered, snowflake millennials can’t manage to engage in a simple conversation with someone holding a dissenting opinion, at least not without being “triggered” repeatedly by a barrage of “micro-aggressions”, let along determine their own gender absent a pamphlet from their enabling college of choice, it should come as no surprise that nearly half of young adults between the ages of 22-24 receive monthly housing allowances from their parents.
According to a study by Patrick Wightman of the University of Michigan, roughly 40% of millennials between the ages of 22-24 receive an average of $3,000 from their parents every year. Per the New York Times:
According to surveys that track young people through their first decade of adulthood, about 40 percent of 22-, 23- and 24-year-olds receive some financial assistance from their parents for living expenses. Among those who get help, the average amount is about $3,000 a year.
It’s a stark reminder that social and economic mobility continues past grade school, high school and even college. Economic advantages continue well into the opening chapters of adulthood, a time when young people are making big personal investments that typically lead to higher incomes but can be hard to pay for.
Unsurprisingly, the frequency and amount of financial assistance varies greatly depending on each young millennial’s chosen field of study. To our complete shock, “Art and Design” students are the most likely to require help from mommy and daddy and get $3,600, on average, each year.
The amount of help that parents provide varies by career and geography. Among young people who aspire to have a career in art and design, 53 percent get rent money from their parents. Young people who live in urban centers are more likely to have their parents help pay the rent.
The choice of career path matters. Those in the art and design fields get the most help, an average of $3,600 a year. People who work in farming, construction, retail and personal services get the least.
Some jobs in science, technology, engineering, management and law have clearer and more substantial payoffs after years of internships and postgraduate training. But pay in art, design and education is low in the early years, and for some people, it remains low.
Someone who wants to go into graphic design or marketing requires a fair amount of time to get up to the point where you’re independent,” Mr. Wightman said. “Someone contemplating that kind of career isn’t going to take that first step unless they know they’re going to have that support to take an unpaid internship. If you don’t have other sources of support, that’s not even an option.”
Of course, the amount of annual parental support required by millennials is also highly dependent upon where they’re living. We can’t honestly expect young Johnny or Susie to become wildly successful actors without living in Manhattan or Hollywood, now can we?
But don’t worry, young millennials, we’re sure everything will work out in due course…
- The Game (Theory) Of Trump – "Not Every Tweet Is A Constitutional Crisis"
Submitted by Ben Hunt via Salient Partners' Epsilon Theory blog,
Death inspires me
Like a dog inspires a rabbit.
? Twenty One Pilots, “Heavydirtysoul” (2017)Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
? Sigmund Freud, who probably never actually said this (but should have)Over the past few weeks, I’ve had a fight with my wife, spoiling an otherwise wonderful night out, and email spats with two of my best and oldest friends. It was about Trump, of course. Not directly, but always on some silly tangential issue like “Should Sally Yates have resigned instead of countermanded an executive order on the basis of her personal beliefs?” or, better yet, “Is Lady Gaga authentic?” In each case, I didn’t recognize that we weren’t really talking about what I thought we were talking about, and by the time I did recognize the real issues, I was already too far down the path of combative Ben (think Bruce Banner but without the green skin) to care. Not my finest moments.
I suspect a lot of Epsilon Theory readers have had similar individual experiences of late. Certainly it seems that our collective experience as a nation and political society is breaking down this way.
What I want to write about today is not the specifics of this policy or that policy. It’s not to make an argument of any sort. It’s to write about argumentation itself, and the way in which the GAME of our politics and our society has shifted. Yeah, I know this is all very meta and has zero direct impact on your investing or portfolio decisions. But it’s actually the only thing that I think really matters for our social lives, including our lives as citizens and as investors, because it’s only by recognizing the game that we’re playing that we can survive it. Together. Maybe.
The most widely read Epsilon Theory note ever was “Virtue Signaling: Or Why Clinton is in Trouble”, published last September, where I wrote about why I thought Hillary could lose the election. The argument was that this was a turn-out election for a handful of swing states, and Democrats were all too keen to proclaim their political virtue by being anti-Trump in easy places like the Huffington Post or California metro advertising markets, where lots of like-minded Democrats would see them, rather than to barnstorm FOR Clinton in places where unlike-minded Democrats would see them, like Pennsylvania or Michigan or Wisconsin. Hubris, thy name is Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the rest of the DNC cartel.
But here’s what I wrote about Trump in that note:
Trump, on the other hand … I think he breaks us. Maybe he already has. He breaks us because he transforms every game we play as a country — from our domestic social games to our international security games — from a Coordination Game to a Competition Game.
Blowing up our international trade and security games with Europe, Japan, and China for the sheer hell of it, turning them into full-blown Competition Games … that’s really stupid. But we have a nasty recession and maybe a nasty war. Maybe it would have happened anyway. We get over it. Blowing up our American political game with citizens, institutions, and identities for the sheer hell of it, turning it into a full-blown Competition Game … that’s a historic tragedy. We don’t get over that.
Geez. Like anyone else with a public persona, I loooove being right. But I didn’t expect to be this right, this quickly. The election of Trump IS breaking us, and not because of the specifics of his policies or whether they’re right or wrong or anything like that. It’s breaking us because of the nature of repeated-play competitive games and the shifting meaning of cooperation.
That first bit — the nature of repeated-play competitive games — is a mouthful. All it really means, though, is that our real-life social interactions, whether in politics or markets or everyday life with our family and friends, are never a single, solitary game. We play the same core game over and over and over, each single interaction setting the stage for the next, and what we really should be concerned about is the overall pattern of the entire set of interactions. That’s real life, as opposed to some 2×2 matrix of Cooperate/Defect like you’d see in a game theory textbook.
And famously, repeated plays can help improve competitive games that otherwise end up in a sad equilibrium, like the Prisoner’s Dilemma. A political scientist named Robert Axelrod (not to be confused with David Axelrod of Obama campaign and CNN fame … this is a different guy) wrote a really influential book back in 1984 called The Evolution of Cooperation, where he showed that a cooperative but non-patsy player (i.e., willing to cooperate first and reluctantly forgive an opponent’s occasional defection) would, over time, find enough similarly “nice” players to create an ecosystem of cooperators and dominate, over time, those not-so-nice players who were looking to WIN BIGLY in every single interaction. Axelrod’s book was one of the most popular political science books of the past 40 years, and it spawned a cottage industry of academics looking to expand this insight in theory and practice. It’s a powerful idea because it’s a hopeful idea for nice people. If only us nice people can signal each other and band together, why golly, this proves that there’s nothing we can’t overcome together in this mean old world.
Unfortunately, the evolution of cooperation through adopting “nice” strategies is not a particularly robust finding. Or rather, it’s robust, but only in a particular subset of competitive games and only if the players agree on the meaning of cooperation. For example, if you’re playing a game of Chicken over and over again rather than a game of Prisoner’s Dilemma over and over again, being nice and forgiving doesn’t work very well. At all. Google “Sudetenland 1938” if you don’t believe me. In fact, the entire concept of repeated-play doesn’t fit neatly with the competitive game of Chicken, which is a problem because it’s the dominant competitive game form in the modern world, both internationally and domestically. It wasn’t always this way, particularly in our domestic politics. But it sure is now.
The fundamental reason that a repeated-play cooperative strategy doesn’t work in a game of Chicken is that the meaning of cooperation is different in this class of games. You see it in the title of the game itself. If you cooperate in a game of Chicken — i.e., you’re driving your tractor straight on at Kevin Bacon’s pick-up truck and you veer off from the looming crash, or you and James Dean are racing towards a cliff and you put on your brakes first — you are the LOSER. You are the COWARD. That becomes your identity and your reputation, which means that others will now treat you like a loser and a coward in the games that they play with you in the future. Compare that to the meaning of cooperation in a game of Prisoner’s Dilemma, where cooperation — i.e., you refuse to rat out your partner and cut a deal for yourself at his expense — means that you are STRONG and LOYAL. The words and the examples used to illustrate bloodless, mathematical game theoretic matrices are not accidental! If we believe that our identity is at risk in a repeated-play competitive game, we behave very differently than if it’s not. More to the point, we should behave differently if our identity is at stake. It’s the rational thing to do. If Trump inspires you like a dog inspires a rabbit, then you should never cooperate if it’s a game of Chicken with his tribe and you should always cooperate if it’s a Prisoner’s Dilemma game with your tribe. Maybe you’ll crash the car in this particular game of Chicken and maybe your partner will rat you out in this particular game of Prisoner’s Dilemma. But your identity and reputation will be strengthened, not damaged, for the next game you play with the other tribe or within your own tribe. And there’s always another game.
Okay, Ben, fair enough. We don’t want to be cowards but we still want to think of ourselves as nice. For the big identity-is-at-stake games, we should play nice strategies within our own mob and play mean strategies with the other guys. Got it. But how do we avoid crashing the car in our everyday lives? How do we avoid talking past or yelling at our friends, family, and fellow citizens with whom we share so much common ground on the really big ideas of what it means to be Americans or, more fundamentally still, a good human being?
Well … first off I’m going to suggest that we should all prepare for impact. The evolution of competition and the success of “mean” strategies in games like Chicken is at least as robust as the evolution of cooperation and the success of “nice” strategies in games like Prisoner’s Dilemma. Once you introduce, say, mustard gas into the trench warfare game, it doesn’t just un-introduce itself on its own. These bells are really hard to un-ring, and it typically takes a lot of car crashes on both sides before you get a peace treaty and a chance to rebuild a cooperative game structure. That’s at least four mixed metaphors, but you get what I mean. And unfortunately, all of these metaphors apply just as aptly to a social structure of family and friends as to a social structure of a political party or an entire nation. The evolution of competition is a powerfully contagious virus, and it hops easily from a big tribe like a nation to a small tribe like a family.
But I do have two suggestions to limit the damage that the evolution of competition inevitably spews in its wake.
First, whatever competitive social interaction we’re having, at whatever level we’re having it, the most important thing in that interaction is to figure out the meaning of cooperation for yourself and whoever you’re dealing with. Otherwise you’re going to find yourself playing a different game from the other person, and that never ends well. This is a tough piece of advice to follow (myself included!) because we assume that whatever our “identity weighting” might be for a given issue, the person or group we’re interacting with attaches that same meaning. So, for example, if you voted for Clinton as an affirmation of a personal identity that rejects the racism and sexism you see in Trump, your natural assumption is going to be that anyone who voted for Trump similarly did so as an affirmation of a personal identity, but one that accepts racism and sexism. Or vice versa. Or whatever. We’ve all seen a dozen variations of this theme over the past eight weeks, and we’ve all (yes, every single one of us) engaged in it, as well. This sort of projection is an innate behavioral bias of the human animal. I get it. But it is also entirely wrong-headed when it comes to complex and over-determined social behaviors like voting. Or buying a stock. Believe it or not (and many people reading this note won’t), behaviors like voting or purchasing or speaking or tweeting are not necessarily markers of personal identity. Maybe they are, and when they are they MUST be respected if you care about having a peaceful social interaction. But maybe they aren’t. And that must be respected, too.
Second, it’s crucial to recognize that not all political arguments or competitive games are really existential in nature or fraught with questions of identity. Not every tweet is a constitutional crisis. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. This is also a tough piece of advice to follow (also myself included!) because the ringleaders of the various Team Elite cabals, whether it’s the Trump Plutocrats or the Davos Globalists or the Central Bank Mandarins or the NeoCon Spymasters or whoever, are working diligently day in and day out to convince you that it is. That every action or statement by the other ringleaders is an OUTRAGE. That this is how Hitler got started or how liberty is lost.
Of course, the really scary thing is that this IS how Hitler got started and it IS how liberty is lost, it’s just not clear to me which of our contending factions or geographies is supplying the 21st century version. History rhymes roughly; it doesn’t repeat neatly.
Meanwhile the barrage of fiat news and alternative facts continues from all sides unabated. We are caught in the crossfire of the “mean” strategies implemented by the various factions as they quite rationally engage in a massive repeated-play game of Chicken, where winning means mobilizing the hearts and minds of the cannon fodder. And by cannon fodder I mean us.
It’s the oldest saying in poker, and one I can’t repeat often enough. If you’ve been playing poker for 30 minutes and you don’t know who the sucker is … it’s you. We are — all of us, without exception — being played. That doesn’t mean we stop playing the game, whether it’s the game of markets or the game of citizenship. It means, though, that we resolve not to be the sucker. That we turn a clear eye to the stories that others tell us and the stories that we tell ourselves. That we demand to be treated as the rightful, autonomous owners of our identities, and we extend that right to others.
Know thyself.
Treat others as you would have them treat you.
Pretty good advice 2,000 years ago in some pretty hard times. Pretty good advice today.
- US, China Military Aircraft Have "Unsafe, Close Encounter" Over Contested Islands
After years of 'close encounters' of the Russian-kind, it appears the US military has found a new nation to fly close to.
Nine months after China demanded US "immediately cease" spying near its borders…
"It must be pointed out that U.S. military planes frequently carry out reconnaissance in Chinese coastal waters, seriously endangering Chinese maritime security," China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei Hong told reporters, adding that "we demand that the United States immediately cease this type of close reconnaissance activity to avoid having this sort of incident happening again."
CNN reports that two US defense officials confirmed that there was an "unsafe" close encounter between a US Navy P-3 Orion aircraft and a Chinese surveillance aircraft Wednesday in the general vicinity of the contested Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea.
One official said the Chinese plane was a People's Liberation Army Air Force KJ-200.
CNN reports the two planes flew within 1,000 feet of each other in the general vicinity of the contested Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea.
A second official said that the American P-3 had to alter course to ensure that there wasn't an aerial collision.
A spokesperson for US Pacific Command, which oversees US troops in the region confirmed, the incident, calling it "unsafe" in a statement provided to CNN.
"The U.S. Navy P-3C was on a routine mission operating in accordance with international law," Maj. Rob Shuford said.
"The Department of Defense and US Pacific Command are always concerned about unsafe interactions with Chinese military forces," he added.
"We will address the issue in appropriate diplomatic and military channels."
While the Navy considers the encounter to be "unsafe," it does not assess that any malign intent was behind the incident, though the event was considered serious enough to be raised up the chain of command.
The official called encounters between US and Chinese aircraft like the one that took place Wednesday "extremely rare," noting that there were zero such incidents in 2015 and two in 2016. It was the first such instance of 2017.
We look forward to China's official response tomorrow, especially considering President Trump's positive outreach earlier today.
- Record Number Of Americans Renounce U.S. Citizenship In 2016; 2,200% Surge During Obama Reign
Obama warned everyone back in 2009 that “elections have consequences.” Now, eight years later, we learn that apparently the “consequences” of running around the country for nearly a decade threatening to raise taxes, “spread the wealth around” and pursue any number of other socialist policies are a record number of people renouncing their U.S. citizenship.
Per a post from the International Tax Blog, the U.S. Treasury recently published the names of individuals who renounced their U.S. citizenship or terminated their long-term U.S. residency (“expatriated”) during the fourth quarter of 2016 and it shattered all previous records.
The number of published expatriates for 4Q 2016 was 2,365, bringing the total number for 2016 to 5,411, setting a new all-time quarterly and annual record. By comparison, the number of expatriates for 2016 reflects a 26% increase over 2015 and a 58% increase over 2014 (3,415).
Taking a more granular look at the past 20 years illustrates the staggering surge in the number of published expatriates that “coincidentally” corresponds with Obama’s election in 2008. In fact, the 2016 list is over 22x larger than 2008, the year just before Obama moved into the White House.
As the New York Times notes, perhaps the most notable citizenship renouncement came from British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson who gained fame as one of the most vocal supporters of the Brexit referendum and an early critic of Trump describing him as “out of his mind” and of “a quite stupefying ignorance.”
Boris Johnson, Britain’s colorful and blustery foreign secretary, who is perhaps best known for his leading role in campaigning for his country’s departure from the European Union, has given up his American citizenship, a United States Treasury Department list showed Wednesday.
Born in New York, Mr. Johnson, 52, held dual citizenship until last year. He had long complained about having to pay taxes in the United States even though he was 5 when he last lived there. Unlike most countries, the United States taxes nationals who live abroad on their worldwide income.
Mr. Johnson, a Conservative, has not been known for his diplomatic skills. His relations with Donald J. Trump took a blow in December 2015, when he accused Mr. Trump, then a presidential candidate, of being “out of his mind” and of “a quite stupefying ignorance” that made him unfit for the presidency.
Guess we can add this to the “Obama legacy”…
- NGO Fleet Bussing Migrants Into The EU Has Ties To George Soros, Hillary Clinton Donors
In November 2016, a number of NGO’s were revealed by independent European news source GEFIRA to be smuggling migrants from the northern coast of Africa across the Mediterranean into the EU using a ramshackle fleet of ships. Research by Disobedient Media shows that a number of the organizations sponsoring ships in the armada are funded in part by Hillary Clinton donors and organizations run by billionaire George Soros. The actions taken by sponsors of ships in the fleet may be illegal under EU law and possibly run the risk of aiding ISIS operatives hiding among the migrant population.
I. A Fleet Of NGO Operated Ships In The Mediterranean Operate Around The Clock Delivering Migrants From North Africa To Italy
On November 15, 2016 GEFIRA published evidence they had gathered that various NGOs were utilizing a fleet of more than a dozen boats in the Mediterranean to illegally transport migrants from the North African coast to Italy. GEFIRA used AIS Marine Traffic (Ship-tracking software) signals, Twitter and the live reports of a Dutch journalist on board of the ship Golfo Azzurro to document alleged collaboration between NGOs, the Italian Coast Guard and smugglers coordinate their actions. The ships were caught on radar moving between the Italian and Libyan coast moving migrants into the EU.
Source: GEFIRA
The Italian coast guard directed ships in the fleet to Libyan territorial waters, where they would engage in “rescue operations” and take migrants onboard before delivering them to the Sicilian coast of Italy. This would allow migrants to bypass Malta, which is used as a major processing center for immigrants and refugees entering the EU. GEFIRA speculated that the Dutch, Maltese and German based NGOs’ facilitation of human smuggling made them, in effect, operations of international criminal organizations.
Source: GEFIRA
The NGOs tied to boats involved in the operation were Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS), Jugend Rettet, Stichting Bootvluchting, Médecins Sans Frontières, Save the Children, Proactiva Open Arms, Sea-Watch.org, Sea-Eye and Life Boat.
II. Several Organizations Operating Ships In The Fleet Have Ties To George Soros, Hillary Clinton Donors
Information uncovered in an investigation by Disobedient Media has revealed that several of the NGO groups involved with the migrant fleet have received funds from George Soros aligned organizations or financial backers of Hillary Clinton.
The Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS) was founded in 2014 by entrepreneurs Christopher and Regina Catrambone. MOAS operates the ships the Topaz Responder and the Phoenix in the migrant fleet. Mr. Catrambone was listed as a major donor to Hillary Clinton, giving over $416,000 to her presidential campaign bid in 2016. Another major supporter of MOAS is avaaz.org, who donated €500,000 to MOAS’ “search and rescue operations.” Avaaz.org was founded by Moveon.org, an American organization owned by George Soros. Avaaz.org acts as the European branch for Moveon.org.
NGO group Save the Children operates the Astral in the migrant fleet. Save the Children is supported in part by George Soros’ Open Society Foundation.
Médicins Sans Frontiéres (MSF) also operates several ships in the migrant fleet – the Dignity 1, the Bourbon Argos and the Aquarius. MSF has also received funding from the Open Society Foundation.
Other organizations running ships in the fleet, such as Sea Eye, have denied to news sources that they were delivering migrants to Italy, despite being caught by GEFIRA doing exactly that.
No matter what good intentions might be behind the decisions of these various NGO groups to operate ships in this fleet, they are likely illegal and are in effect subverting European law. The financial involvement of George Soros and other big name supporters raises questions about the true intentions of various sponsors operating ships within the fleet.
Many of the migrants seeking entry to the EU are not refugees and are attempting to enter for purely economic reasons. Even more concerning are recent reports that terror group ISIS has begun to dominate the trafficking networks in North Africa and is actively recruiting members from among the migrant population with promises of small amounts of cash and guaranteed safe passage into the EU. The involvement of ISIS in human trafficking and recruitment indicates that there is a very real possibility that the NGO groups operating ships within this fleet may be (intentionally or not) aiding and abetting terror by transporting undercover operatives into the EU.
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