- Iranians Panic – "Can't Find Dollars" After Government Enforces Currency Controls
Yesterday saw the Iranian Rial crash to a record low 60,000 per USDollar on the unregulated markets, according to Tasnim News agency, having lost more than a third of its value in the last six months.
This prompted an angry response from Iran’s First Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri who said in a statement recorded for state TV and published on its website that enemies of the Islamic Republic and of the government were behind the instability.
As Bloomberg reports, Jahangiri said the sudden decline was “unnatural and unprecedented” because tens of billions of dollars worth of foreign currency had flowed into Iran in recent weeks from the country’s export revenues and this showed that a wider political plot sought to discredit the government of President Hassan Rouhani and foment instability.
“It’s natural that our enemies and opponents, especially the Americans, after the nuclear deal was agreed and after Trump took office, have made great efforts to try and present Iran’s economy as turbulent and try to discourage anyone from working with Iran,” Jahangiri said.
And so Iran enforced a rate of 42,000 Rial per USD warning that anyone found selling the dollar at rates higher than 42,000 rials “will be dealt with severely” by judicial authorities and the police, Jahangiri said.
“We do not officially recognize any other rate than this one,” he said.
“From tomorrow, any other price that’s offered in the market will be considered contraband, in the same way that illegal drugs are contraband.”
Still, things remain ugly for those holding Rials…
“We will certainly use all of the state’s strengths and capabilities in order to, God-willing, steady the market,” government spokesman Mohammad Bagher Nobakht said in a statement shown on state TV. “We accept that this situation is not a good one and it’s against what we want.”
As one would expect, this news prompted widespread concern among Iranians who flocked to exchange offices on Tuesday only to find there were none to buy.
As GulfNews reports, on Ferdowsi Street in central Tehran, home to dozens of banks and currency exchanges, many had hoped to find much cheaper dollars than the day before.
But all along Ferdowsi Street, exchangers were turning hundreds of people away or had signs up saying: “We have no dollars to sell”, while rate boards showed blank spaces for US and European currencies.
“Last night on TV I heard it’s 42,000 so I came here to buy some for my son who is overseas. I’ve checked every exchanger but I couldn’t find any dollars,” said Tahmoores Faravahar, a 71-year-old retired oil sector worker.
Many businesses were forced to halt work amid the uncertainty created over prices and the availability of imported materials.
“After speaking to my usual printer, I’ve had to cancel a project because they weren’t selling anything,” said Payam, a 38-year-old in Tehran who owns a small advertising and publishing company. “I was also planning to advertise for new personnel on Saturday — I’ve also canceled that plan now.”
Some said this had only created fear and confusion.
“People don’t have hope in the political and economic situation in this country. People are confused and just want to keep their money safe by turning it into dollars.”
One exchange office said it was never clear when the central bank would deliver dollars for them to sell.
“I don’t know why they haven’t come yet today,” he said in the early afternoon. “But the new rate is good. The price was not normal these last few days.”
But this seemed to sum things up well…
“The truth is that the people can’t trust the word of the government that their money will be safe,” said a trader who sold currency on the street and asked to remain anonymous.
One street trader said exchangers would find ways to fiddle the system to get round the new fixed rate, even though Vice-President Eshagh Jahangiri warned this would be considered smuggling.
- The Future Of Europe Is Civil War
Authored by Ash Sharp via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
Europe is committing suicide – or at least it’s leaders have decided to commit suicide. Whether European people decide to go along with this is, naturally, another matter. ~ Douglas Murray, The Strange Death of Europe
Europe is my home. It is where I live. Everything I value is here – on this continent. Everything I love and will suffer to lose is here.
My country, separate, slightly odd, provincial and uncool; Brexit Britain, land of bad food and uncharitable reputations on dental hygiene and house cleanliness, is a European country too.
God knows it is a conflicted time to be an Englishman abroad.
God knows it hurts to look at the goldfish bowl from outside. Yesterday brought the story of 78-year-old Richard Osborne-Brooks.
A Scotland Yard spokesman said:
‘At 00:45hrs on Wednesday, 4 April, police were called by a homeowner to reports of a burglary in progress at an address in South Park Crescent, Hither Green SE6, and a man injured.
‘The 78-year-old resident found two males inside the address. A struggle ensued between one of the males and the homeowner. The man, aged 38, sustained a stab wound to the upper body.
‘London Ambulance Service took the injured male, who was found collapsed in Further Green Road, SE8, to a central London hospital. He was pronounced dead at 03:37hrs.’
What happened next? Of course, this pensioner was arrested on suspicion of murder. Murder! A crime which requires premeditation and to be without lawful excuse, for stabbing an intruder to your home.
With his disabled wife upstairs, Mr. Osborne-Brooks encountered and subsequently killed an armed man who was intruding in his home, the purported castle of the Englishman. No more a castle, you are a serf of the state and subject to prosecution for doing what any man ought to do in such circumstances. Are we to accept that criminals may just enter our homes, threaten our lives and take what they will?
This is a travesty of justice at any time, let alone the crime nightmare we find ourselves in today. You are more likely to be raped in London than New York. Terrorism is impossible to control. Islam is appeased and treated as an exalted religion over our own and is in control of increasingly large territories across the country. The leader of the Christian faith in Britain has simply given up. White Britons are a minority in their own capital. Free speech died long ago in the land of my fathers. You’ve heard this song from me and others before. The rhetoric of terrorism will never win and strong and stable becomes a little more shrill with every passing assault on my people. The police investigate online hate speech but not muggings – as the unfairly maligned Katie Hopkins said, if this terrorism losing, I’d hate to see it win.
Our enforcement officers are visiting mosques today to speak to residents about hate crime concerns.
If you face anti-Muslim hate, report it to @TellMamaUK and always dial 999 in an emergency. #WeStandTogether pic.twitter.com/j92uOU6UgCThis is not a police officer. This is an enforcement officer, whose job is to collect information about crimes committed against the good name of Islam. He has no power to arrest, nor to issue any fines. This young man is employed by the state to sniff out hate. The kind of hate that obeys neo-Marxist ideas, the perceived hate for the minority projected into the heart of the White Briton, hate that is subjectively felt- on behalf of the minority! If you feel someone hates someone, then it is so and neither party need agree with you.
I’m from a little place called Great Britain,
But I dunno if I love or hate Britain,
These words upon my page written,
Are the things that make and break Britain. ~ Scroobius Pip
Maybe your European country has similar problems that are being unreported. Maybe you are a Swede, lied to about your democratic socialist wonderland, or German and told that your generation must suffer the intolerable, for the indelible sins of the Reich. The Reich, the idea of which remains to this day the great weapon against the people of all Europe, against our national identity. It seems that wherever you turn, suggesting that perhaps our nations are ill-served by the Multi-Kulti experiment draws the accusation: “Nazi!”
Is it the case that this fifty-something school teacher is a Nazi when she says with sadness of her majority immigrant students;
“I believe the difference between their world at home and our world is so large they cannot reconcile them. The Sharia is, for many students, surely superior.”
Only the fool or the ideologue can disagree with this assessment. Anyone who thinks for longer than ten-seconds about the nature of faith can see how obeying the laws of God is more important to the faithful than integrating with a sad shadow of a Western civilization that knows not for whom it stands. We know not why we exist. No longer allowed a national identity, Europeans are simply chattle. Though we are told that we are free, the truth is we have no freedom at all and no respite from the Orwellian demands of our masters that we ignore the obvious in favor of the fantastical.
The sad reality is that, in all likelihood, war will come again to our continent. It will be unlike the war that nearly killed national identity, in that no more will a nation-state invade her neighbors for territory and conquest. This war will be continent-wide, but internal – and I believe firstly ideological. As the demographics slide further and further towards the annihilation of White Europeans in many countries, the powers that be – the globalist, rootless and self-serving elites that lead most European countries – will ramp up the programming. State news channels will increase the propaganda, of how values are all that matter. We will see enforcement officers like in Hackney rolling out across the land. The taxpayer will pay for their own imprisonment, fearing to leave their houses, and unable to defend their homes in any case.
“There is a rise in knife crime because nothing is being done about it. Gang crime and gangland violence should be taken seriously as terrorism by the state. Statistical trends over the years show more fatalities of gangland activities than terrorist activities. There is no voice of reason from state officials and an absence of debate.”Dr. Mohammed Rahman
What I contend we are seeing is the weaponization of minority groups by the state itself. One has to admit, using Islamophobia to repress verbal dissent and feral immigrant youth to make the streets so dangerous – or at least give that impression – that most civilians will simply stay at home would be a brilliant idea if your agenda is to create a submissive and servile nation of tax-cows. The neoliberal debt machine needs feeding; so for as long as the music plays the aim has to be to keep the majority dancing to the tune while they are robbed blind, and ultimately replaced by the migrants Israel is too proud to take.
The state must encourage the Muslim community to tell stories of hate crimes, which suggests the hate crimes are few. Tell Mama, a Muslim run and state-funded collector of anti-Muslim sentiment is regularly pushed through the media as an authority on the matter, despite previously losing funding for misrepresenting statistics. Imagine if you were being persecuted – would you need enforcement officers and campaigners to encourage you speak out?
Imagine, a state-funded NGO and enforcement officers on the streets of Telford, of Oxford, of Rotherham. Where was the state then? Looking away. Gathering evidence of anti-Muslim hate, I suppose. Imagine a constable patrolling Mr. Osborne-Brooks’ street in the wee hours of Wednesday morning. Where was the state then? Not protecting the law-abiding citizen, that is for sure.
Imagine recognizing that for all the faults in our society that this society is British, not the dar al-Islam; and that British law -not Islamic- has to rule. Imagine that offense had to be taken and not given. Imagine that instead of stifling the legitimate questions many Britons have about Islam and immigration we could be trusted to discuss them and find peaceful grounds, and non-violent solutions. Instead, old men are arrested for defending their wives and homes from burglars; criticism of Islam is banned, and London itself has been turned over to criminal gangs – the vast majority of whom are non-British in ethnicity.
I have been a vocal opponent of interventionalist foreign policy and war in general for most of my adult life – primarily from a leftist position. I abhor violence. I find no pleasure then in telling you that we are headed for civil war in the United Kingdom if we persist in treating the native population as little more than a tax farm. For far less insult the American Revolution began, and like almost all civil conflicts we will see bloodshed in England when the financial situation becomes untenable for a critical mass of citizens. For reasons best known to themselves, our leaders – and this I fear is true of most Western nations – have abdicated. Capitulated. Do they care about anything other than living out their lives in comfort, secure that their childless lineages end during times of relative prosperity?
[Society] is a partnership in all science, a partnership in all art, a partnership in every virtue and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born. ~ Edmund Burke
For whatever reason, we believe that war is over in Europe, that it may never return. Seventy years of peace with forty years of paranoid cold war have resulted in a kleptocrat European Union and brainless, soulless political elites who know nothing of their own cultures; wishing only that all Europe becomes a federal state. Looking to a utopian future has always proven to be a recipe for disaster for mankind.
It will not start out as a race war; first Britons will first turn on each other as the hard left demands more state support and the right refuses to pay for it. The socialist cries that the government has sold the family silver will carry some weight- enough to mobilize the anti-capitalists against the working class, who are already beginning to gather together in self-interest. The riots of the disenfranchised Black youths in London will again be played off in the media and by the liberals as a just and expected response to this austerity; and Islam will continue to be protected at all costs, despite further evidence of rape gangs, jihad, and terror plots. In such an environment, all it will take is a single flashpoint to turn economic strife into sectarian violence the likes of which we have not seen since The Troubles. The fight will be undesired by all, not that this will save us.
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” ~ John F. Kennedy
In a time of chaos, human beings revert to tribal states. We seek solace and comfort in those that are like ourselves. Can we deny that on some cultural-wide subconscious level that this is happening at greater and greater levels? The desire for ingroup identity is rising, across all demographics. You can feel it in the air and water itself- this is why identitarians are looked at with fear by the state. The elites know what the rise of these groups portend for the future, that none of these events are happening in isolation, that they are all connected to the state’s failure to enforce the laws fairly. Is civil war inevitable? Maybe- I hope it can be avoided. I hope, as always, that I am wrong and the world can be a Coca-Cola advert of inclusivity, just plain old getting along, in the way that our governments have promised us we all would.
- The Slippery Slope To A Constitution-Free America
Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
The ease with which Americans are prepared to welcome boots on the ground, regional lockdowns, routine invasions of their privacy, and the dismantling of every constitutional right intended to serve as a bulwark against government abuses is beyond unnerving.
I am referring at this particular moment in time to President Trump’s decision to deploy military forces to the border in a supposed bid to protect the country from invading bands of illegal immigrants.
This latest attempt to bamboozle the citizenry into relinquishing even more of their rights is commonly referred to as letting the wolves guard the henhouse.
We are long past the stage where the government—at any level—abides by restrictions on its powers.
What we are dealing with is a run-away government hyped up on its own power, whose policies are dictated more by paranoia than need.
It works the same in every country.
Time and again, we keep sacrificing our liberties for phantom promises of safety.
The lesson is this: once a free people allows the government to make inroads into their freedoms or uses those same freedoms as bargaining chips for security, it quickly becomes a slippery slope to outright tyranny.
This is fast becoming a government that has no respect for the freedom or lives of its citizenry.
Yet there are warning signs we cannot afford to ignore.
First off, there is no such thing as a “border” in the eyes of these military patrols. The entire United States of America has become a Constitution-free zone.
According to journalist Todd Miller, the “once thin borderline of the American past” is “an ever-thickening band, now extending 100 miles inland around the United States—along the 2,000-mile southern border, the 4,000-mile northern border and both coasts… This ‘border’ region now covers places where two-thirds of the US population (197.4 million people) live… The ‘border’ has by now devoured the full states of Maine and Florida and much of Michigan.”
The U.S. government has also declared that ever-expanding border region a Constitution-free zone.
Second, this de facto standing army that has been imposed on the American people is in clear violation of the spirit—if not the letter of the law—of the Posse Comitatus Act, which restricts the government’s ability to use the U.S. military as a police force.
America’s police forces—which look like, dress like, and act like the military—have undeniably become a “standing” or permanent army, one composed of full-time professional soldiers who do not disband, which is exactly what the Founders feared.
Third, there’s the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency, an arm of the Department of Homeland Security made up of more than 60,000 Customs and Border Protection employees, and supplemented by the National Guard and the U.S. military.
A national police force imbued with all the brutality, ineptitude and corruption such a role implies, the DHS—aptly described as a “wasteful, growing, fear-mongering beast”—has been ruthlessly efficient when it comes to establishing what the Founders feared most: a standing army on American soil.
Finally, there’s this whole question of martial law.
Technically, a good case can be made that the Constitution-free border regions within the United States are already under martial law carried out by a standing army comprised of militarized police and the U.S. military.
Then again, for all intents and perhaps, the American police state is already governed by martial law, is it not? Battlefield tactics. Militarized police. Riot and camouflage gear. Armored vehicles. Mass arrests. Pepper spray. Tear gas. Batons. Strip searches. Drones. Less-than-lethal weapons unleashed with deadly force. Rubber bullets. Water cannons. Concussion grenades. Intimidation tactics. Brute force. Laws conveniently discarded when it suits the government’s purpose.
This is what martial law looks like, when a government disregards constitutional freedoms and imposes its will through military force, only this is martial law without any government body having to declare it. This is martial law packaged as law and order and sold to the public as necessary for keeping the peace.
It doesn’t matter whether the so-called threats to national security posed by terrorists, extremists or immigrant armies ever became a reality. Once the government acquires—and uses—additional powers, it does not voluntarily relinquish them.
The damage has been done.
Face it: we are sliding fast down a slippery slope to a Constitution-free America.
We’ve been heading in this direction for some time now, but this downward trajectory has picked up speed since Donald Trump became president.
All of the government’s ongoing assaults on the constitutional framework of the nation have been sold to the public as necessary for national security.
Remember when George W. Bush claimed the country was being invaded by terrorists post-9/11 and insisted the only way to keep America safe was to give the government and its gun-toting agents greater powers to spy, search, detain and arrest?
The terrorist invasion never really happened, but the government kept its newly acquired police powers made possible by the USA Patriot Act.
Remember when Barack Obama claimed the country was being invaded by domestic terrorists and insisted the only way to keep America safe was to give the military the power to strip Americans of their constitutional rights, label them extremists, and detain them indefinitely without trial?
The invasion never really happened, but the government kept its newly acquired detention powers made possible by the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
Now you have Donald Trump claiming the country is being invaded by immigrants and insisting that the only way to keep America safe is to empower the military to “assist” with border control.
Mind you, Trump is not the first president to deploy military forces to the border.
Nevertheless, you can rest assured that this latest call for boots on the ground (whether those boots belong to the National Guard or the armed forces is mere semantics) to police the American border is yet another Trojan Horse that will inflict all manner of nasty police state surprises on an unsuspecting populace.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the menace of a national police force—a.k.a. a standing army—vested with the power to completely disregard the Constitution, cannot be overstated, nor can its danger be ignored.
- Massive Geomagnetic Storm Set To Hit Earth This Week
Over the weekend, a middle latitude coronal hole (88) started to face earth. This is the same coronal hole that was responsible for a moderate (G2) geomagnetic storm last month. Now it seems like the same coronal hole is at it again, spewing high-speed solar wind – headed towards Earth this week.
According to Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), a minor (G1) geomagnetic storm watch is now in effect for Tuesday and Wednesday. The storm watch was issued “due to the arrival of a negative polarity coronal hole high-speed stream,” SWPC detailed on its website.
C. Alex Young, associate director for science in the heliophysics science division at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, published in a report Monday that “three substantial coronal holes” arrived on his radar last week. Young describes coronal holes as an “open magnetic field from which high-speed solar wind rushes out into space.” If the high-speed solar wind is earth facing, then “it interacts with Earth’s magnetosphere” and lead to all sorts of problems.
“For much of this week the sun featured three substantial coronal holes (Apr. 3-6, 2018). Coronal holes appear as large dark areas which are identified with arrows in the still image. These are areas of open magnetic field from which high speed solar wind rushes out into space. This wind, if it interacts with Earth’s magnetosphere, can cause aurora to appear near the poles. They are not at all uncommon. Credit: Solar Dynamics Observatory, NASA.”
This week’s SDO gallery entry https://t.co/MFxDFjeNAS pic.twitter.com/MeXnmJqELQ
— C. Alex Young (@TheSunToday) April 9, 2018
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As of Tuesday morning, there are radio blacks across the world. During moderate geomagnetic storms, “intense ionization within the D-layer propagation region is observed on the sunlit side of Earth, and affects a wide range of frequencies within the HF Spectrum (3 – 30 MHz),” said Solarham. In other words, solar storms can degrade HF radio communications (radio blackouts).
Real-Time Solar Wind (RTSW) data shows an uptick in solar wind activity hitting Earth’s shields starting on Monday and increasing into Tuesday.
The Estimated Planetary K index (Kp) charts below are “one of the most common indices used to indicate the severity of the global magnetic disturbances in near-Earth space,” said Solarham. A Kp index of five or more shows a geomagnetic storm is in progress.
K-indices of five or greater indicates storm-level geomagnetic activity around the Earth.
Below is a one-week K-indices view from four magnetometer reporting stations.
Below is a one week A-indices view from four magnetometer reporting stations.
We have stated before, U.S. power grid failures are possible due to strong geomagnetic storms; in today’s case, it looks like a G1 (Minor) geomagnetic storm could produce auroras for much of Canada, over the next few nights.
AURORAMAX ALERT • Observers across YT NT NU AB SK MB and northern BC ON QC NL (areas in green) be on alert for active #auroras April 10-11, 2018. pic.twitter.com/nrmrBYcd2a
— AuroraMAX (@AuroraMAX) April 10, 2018
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The Daily Star quotes Brian Gaensler, an astrophysicist at the University of Toronto, who gave a speech earlier this month — warning of the “carnage solar flares can cause.”
“The concern here is that if the radiation from a solar flare hits the earth, it can knock out satellites, disrupt mobile phones, and other forms of communication,” he said.
The effects of a solar storm could last months – or even years – as authorities would have to repair all the damaged infrastructure.
Specialist insurance firm Lloyd’s of London estimates the repair bill could cost up to £1.8 trillion.
Experts have warned it is just a matter of time before we suffer another direct hit.
Pete Riley, senior scientist at Predictive Science in San Diego, California, previously predicted there was a 12% chance that Earth will be hit by a storm by 2020.
He said: “Even if it’s off by a factor of two, that’s a much larger number than I thought.
“Initially, I was quite surprised that the odds were so high, but the statistics appear to be correct.
“It is a sobering figure.”
In 2015, the British Government published a report into the risks to the UK of severe space weather.
It said an event such as a coronal mass ejection could wreak havoc across the world.
Video: Geomagnetic Unrest, Storms, Predictions | S0 News Apr.10.2018
- On The Threshold Of War – Paul Craig Roberts
Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,
UPDATE: There is no longer any doubt that the criminally insane government in Washington is driving the world to the last war.
https://www.rt.com/news/423634-unsc-security-threats-syria-chemical/
https://www.rt.com/news/423627-russian-military-checks-chemical-douma/
UPDATE: As Americans we must face the possibility that we have a criminally insane government in Washington that is leading the world to destruction.
A Russian Government Press Release:
False information is being planted about the alleged use of chlorine and other toxic agents by the Syrian government forces. The latest fake news about a chemical attack on Douma was reported yesterday. These reports are again referenced to the notorious White Helmets, which have been proved more than once to be working hand in glove with the terrorists, as well as to other pseudo-humanitarian organisations headquartered in the UK and the US.
We recently warned of the possibility of such dangerous provocations. The goal of these absolutely unsubstantiated lies is to protect the terrorists and the irreconcilable radical opposition that has rejected a political settlement, as well as to justify the possible use of force by external actors.
We have to say once again that military interference in Syria, where Russian forces have been deployed at the request of the legitimate government, under contrived and false pretexts is absolutely unacceptable and can lead to very grave consequences.
This is John Helmer’s interpretation of the warning:
“WHEN THE RULE OF LAW WAS DESTROYED IN SALISBURY, LONDON AND THE HAGUE, AND THE RULE OF FRAUD DECLARED IN WASHINGTON, THAT LEAVES ONLY THE RULE OF FORCE IN THE WORLD. THE STAVKA [the high command of the Russian armed forces] MET IN MOSCOW ON GOOD FRIDAY AND IS READY. THE FOREIGN MINISTRY ANNOUNCED ON SUNDAY “THE GRAVEST CONSEQUENCES”.
THIS MEANS ONE AMERICAN SHOT AT A RUSSIAN SOLDIER, THEN WE ARE AT WAR. NOT INFOWAR, NOT CYBERWAR, NOT ECONOMIC WAR, NOT PROXY WAR. WORLD WAR.”
I hope that the situation is not this severe.
On The Threshold of War
“The Russian view is simple: the West is ruled by a gang of thugs supported by an infinitely lying and hypocritical media while the general public in the West has been hopelessly zombified.” — The Saker
“The US generals, unlike the US politicians and media and US administration, are risk-averse if the outcome may be catastrophic.” — Gilbert Doctorow
Above are two of the three most intelligent and reliable Russian experts. The third is Professor Stephen Cohen, who worries, as I do, that an arrogant Washington drowning in hubris is provoking Russia to war.
The Saker has concluded that the Russians have concluded that it has been a mistake to put up with Washington’s lies, insults, and orchestrated events and have decided that if the dumbshit Americans attack Syria, Russia is going to take out the US forces involved.
Doctorow has concluded that as dumbshit as Washington is, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff have more sense and will not go along with an attack on a Russian ally.
I hope that Doctorow is correct. However, with that crazed demented warmonger John Bolton sitting in the White House next to Trump, who enjoys the role of tough guy, I am more scared by The Saker’s reading than I am reassured by Doctorow’s.
There are reports, the validity of which I cannot confirm at this time, that the entirety of the Russian military has been put on high alert, not merely the Russian forces in Syria. See here for example.
Nikki Haley’s threats against Russia in the UN do not support Doctorow’s hopes that reason will prevail in Washington. The crazed bitch said that the US will act against the “monster” Assad with or without the UN.
Tough man Trump, sitting next to the crazed warmonger Bolton, declared that the alleged chemical attack in Syria “will be met and it will be met forcefully. We can’t let atrocities like we all witnessed… we can’t let that happen in our world, especially because of the power of the US, we are able to stop it.”
There was NO chemical attack by Syria. I know that for an absolute 100% fact. I would bet my life on it. Yet here is the US president declaring a total non-fact to be something “we all witnessed.” Little wonder that the Russians have concluded that the West is ruled by a gang of thugs supported by an infinitely lying and hypocritical media while the general public in the West has been hopelessly zombified.
If Doctorow is not correct that a sane US Joint Chiefs of Staff will prevail over the crazed President and his National Security Adviser, we are headed for war.
It is a war that the US will not win.
Notice, dear readers, that there is no mention of this pending crisis in the Western media. Instead the media whether CNN or the BBC has as the lead news story the FBI’s raid on Trump’s lawyer.
Insouciant Americans is too mild, isn’t it. Clueless is the correct word.
- Ride-Hailing Apps Surpass Regular Taxis In NYC
It has been six years since Uber drivers started roaming the streets of New York. From that day on, drivers of the notorious yellow cabs, an icon of Manhattan and the rest of the Big Apple for the past century, lived in constant fear of becoming obsolete.
And, as Statista’s Patrick Wagner reports, Uber and other Ride-Hailing apps such as Lyft, Juno or Via are in the fast lane when it comes to the total number of pickups whilst the city’s green and yellow cabs’ share on the streets is steadily declining.
You will find more infographics at Statista
By February 2017 app-based mobility providers outstripped classic cabs in New York and by November of the same year Uber alone managed to pick up more passengers than Taxis.
In the future, the New York landscape might lack the famous yellow cabs coloring its streets.
- Clinton, Comey, Uranium One: Who Is John W. Huber?
Authored by Micah Morrison via Judicial Watch,
Widespread head-scratching has followed Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ recent disclosure that U.S. Attorney John W. Huber is leading an investigation into 2016 election controversies.
In a March 29 letter to Republican committee chairmen, Mr. Sessions said that Mr. Huber, the U. S. Attorney for Utah, had been appointed to “evaluate certain issues” raised by the GOP. He did not say which issues, but there are plenty.
In a July 27, 2017 letter, GOP leaders had called on Mr. Sessions to “appoint a second special counsel to investigate a plethora of matters connected to the 2016 election and its aftermath.” These included actions by Hillary Clinton, James Comey, Loretta Lynch and others, email controversies, mishandling of classified information, Fusion GPS and the Steele Dossier, FISA warrants, wire taps, leaks, grand juries, the Clinton Foundation and the Uranium One deal.
Mr. Sessions instead appointed Mr. Huber, “an experienced federal prosecutor,” and left the door open to a special counsel. Mr. Sessions noted that Mr. Huber “will make recommendations as to whether any matters not currently under investigation should be opened, whether any matters currently under investigation require further resources, or whether any matters merit the appointment of a Special Counsel.”
Translation: Mr. Huber is investigating the investigations, not the underlying allegations.
Mr. Huber was appointed Assistant U.S. Attorney in Utah in 2002. He was named U.S. Attorney in 2015 by Barack Obama. Mr. Huber has an important backer in Utah’s senior senator, Orrin Hatch.
After President Trump requested the resignations of all sitting U.S. Attorneys, Mr. Sessions kept Mr. Huber alive with an interim appointment under the Federal Vacancies Act, until the president could be persuaded to re-nominate him. He was confirmed a second time for the post in August.
It’s a truism of law enforcement that if you want to pursue high-level political corruption, get yourself a junkyard dog – a strong prosecutor, good in a fight. Hickman Ewing Jr. – the former U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Tennessee and later the Whitewater Deputy Independent Counsel – comes to mind. Mr. Ewing had a long track record of pursuing political corruption before Kenneth Starr tapped him for the Whitewater probe. The Office of U.S. Attorney in Utah, by contrast, has been toothless. Mr. Huber has not been implicated in any wrongdoing, but for the last three years it has been his shop and his responsibility. Before that, it was his training ground.
In November, for example, a federal judge dismissed the last charges against Terry Diehl, a powerful Utah developer and former Utah Transit Authority board member. The government was widely seen as bungling the case. The Salt Lake Tribune noted that Diehl, “a well-known developer with friends in high places — including [Utah] House Speaker Greg Hughes, R-Draper — once stood charged with 14 felony counts that stemmed from allegations that he lied about or hid assets as part of a 2012 bankruptcy. Prosecutors had whittled the case down three times since early October, dropping counts of concealment and tax evasion.” Prosecutors acknowledged “missteps” to the newspaper, including getting wrong the amount of taxes Diehl allegedly did not pay.
Mr. Huber’s office also lost a 2017 case against real-estate mogul Rick Koerber, charged with running a multi-million-dollar Ponzi scheme. The case – the government’s second try – ended in a mistrial. A judge threw out an earlier case. The government will try again in September.
But the Rosetta Stone for understanding Utah’s corruption problems may be the sprawling saga of John Swallow and Mark Shurtleff, two former Utah attorneys general charged with a multitude of corruption charges. The case gripped the state for years. Mr. Huber’s office recused itself in 2013 from the investigations, transferring the case to Colorado. Later, the Justice Department declined to charge either man and Utah state prosecutors took over. Swallow was acquitted on all counts last year and the charges against Shurtleff were dropped in 2016 by Davis County Attorney Troy Rawlings, who bitterly complained about FBI and Justice Department conduct in the case.
That’s how the game is played in Utah, locals say. Power brokers have the state wired. Mr. Huber seems like a decent man, but his tenure at the top of Utah law enforcement has been short and undistinguished. Why appoint him to such a sensitive position in Washington?
One explanation is that Mr. Sessions knows precisely who Mr. Huber is and what he wants from him. Mr. Sessions went to bat for Mr. Huber in his re-appointment as U.S. Attorney and named him vice-chair of the prestigious Attorney General’s Advisory Committee. Mr. Huber, a political survivor, knows precisely who Mr. Sessions is and what the attorney general wants from him.
Another more intriguing explanation is that Mr. Sessions needs someone who knows Utah. One part of Mr. Huber’s mandate, as outlined in the GOP letter, is the “purchase of Uranium One by the company Rosatom, whether the approval of the sale was connected to any donations to the Clinton Foundation, and what role Secretary Clinton played in the approval of the sale.”
Uranium One’s assets included significant holdings in Utah and nearby states.
Prosecutors – and the media, so transfixed by the Mueller probe that they decline to look elsewhere – should follow the Uranium One money in Utah and the rest of the West. And if Mr. Huber does recommend additional investigations or a second special counsel, Mr. Sessions should get himself a junkyard dog.
- China Producer Price Inflation Tumbles As Global Reflation Cycle Ends
It appears, thanks to the collapse in China’s credit impulse, that China’s commodity boom is over…
China’s factory inflation slowed for a fifth month while the consumer price index retreated from a four-year high.
Producer prices rose at their slowest YoY rate since October 2016… with Consumer Durables prices contracting YoY for the 4th straight month.
And Consumer Price inflation slowed notably to +2.1% YoY (versus expectations of a 2.6% gain), dropping 1.1% MoM, with Consumer goods and food seeing the biggest slowdown.
And as goes Coal, so goes China PPI…
Prices for commodities such as iron ore and coal fell on “global oversupply and government policy to stem overcapacity,” Katrina Ell, an economist at Moody’s Analytics in Sydney, wrote in a recent note.
“The government’s clampdown on financial risks is also slowing credit growth,” she said, which is a drag on investment and demand for industrial inputs.
As Bloomberg notes, moderating factory inflation may offer limited support to the world reflation cycle, amid rising trade tensions that may weigh on the broadest synchronized global growth in years.
- Google's File On You Is 10 Times Bigger Than Facebook's – Here's How To View It
Authored by Jake Anderson via TheAntiMedia.com,
With all the attention paid to Facebook in recent weeks over ‘data breaches’ and privacy violations, even though what happened with Cambridge Analytica is part of their standard business model, it’s easy to forget that there are four other Big Tech corporations collecting just as much – if not more – of our personal info.
Google, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft are all central players in “surveillance capitalism” and prey on our data. New reports actually suggest that Google may actually harvest ten times as much as Facebook.
Curious about just how much of his data Google had, web developer Dylan Curran says he downloaded his Google data file, which is offered by the company in a hub called “My Account.”
This hub was created in 2015, along with a tool called “My Activity.” The report issued is similar to the one Facebook delivers to its users upon request. Whether or not these reports are comprehensive is still up in the air, but Curran says his was 5.5 GB, which is almost ten times larger than the one Facebook offered him. The amount and type of data in his file, Mr. Curran says, suggests Google is not only constantly tracking our online movements but may also be monitoring our physical locations.
Curran’s Google report contained an incredible amount documentation on his web activity, going back over a decade. But perhaps more importantly, Google had also been tracking his real-life movements via his smartphone device or tablet. This included fairly random places he’d frequented, many of the foreign countries and cities he visited, the bars and restaurants he went to while in these countries, the amount of time he spent there, and even the path he took to get there and back.
This, of course, is not new. It has been well-known for some time that Google silently tracks you everywhere you go and creates a map of your physical movements through its Location History feature. You can deactivate it by going to your timeline and adjusting the preferences.
Another Google user downloaded his file and discovered the company had been archiving his data even when he browsed in Incognito mode, a setting that advertises itself as one that does not save browsing history.
Like Facebook, Google gathers your info for sale to 3rd-party advertisers, including your name, email address, telephone number, credit card, specific ways you use Google’s services, your mode of interaction with any website that uses Google technology (such as AdWords), your device, and your search queries. And if you don’t enter your account and make adjustments, pretty much anything you do online while deploying a Google tool is tracked. Google’s policy states:
“If other users already have your email, or other information that identifies you, we may show them your publicly visible Google Profile information, such as your name and photo.”
But much of the location data stems from the use of Google apps like Maps or Now, which broadcast your location. If you want to stop this information from being shared, you have to go into your account settings and make adjustments.
The ostensible purpose of this data-sharing is to fine-tune your user experience, but who is benefitting more is arguable. The same year it released its new activity hub, Google also unveiled a new program that shares your email with high-value advertisers. Called Customer Match, this system streamlines consumer info so that an advertiser’s “brand is right there, with the right message, at the moment your customer is most receptive.”
Google’s policy also lists the three major categories of data collection: Things you do; Things you create; and Things that make you “you.”
But you do have the ability to limit this info from getting out. You can turn off location tracking, voice searches, and other features; you can view and edit your preferences; you can adjust your public profile, and you can download Google’s data hoard to see what they see.
You’re also welcome to go a bit further and delete all of your data from not only Google but also a variety of other online services.
- Go to Deseat.me and sign in with a Gmail address.
- Look down the list of synced accounts and decide which you want to delete and which you want to keep.
- Click the button
Will deleting a select amount of your data from the innards of the Big 5 stop predatory data mining? Certainly not. But while Facebook testifies before Congress, we have an opportunity to draw attention to some of the consequences of a technocracy that privatizes surveillance. As the control grid tightens, our reaction indicates our level of complacency.
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