Mar 11

Today’s News 11th March 2018

  • Trump: "You Would Be So Bored" If I Acted "Presidential"; Unveils 2020 Slogan

    President Trump slammed critics, talked up tariffs, unveiled his 2020 slogan, brought up executing drug dealers (again) and noted how “bored” people would be if he acted like a regular old president at a Saturday night rally for Republican Rick Saccone in Moon Township, PA.

    “Remember I used to say how easy it is to be presidential?” Trump reminded the audience. “But you would all be out of here right now. You would be so bored. I’m very presidential.”

    Trump then gave a mock-campaign speech where he robotically delivered “boring” presidential remarks.

    “See, that’s easy. That’s much easier than doing what I have to do,” said Trump. “But this is much more effective. This got us elected. If I came like a stiff you guys wouldn’t be here tonight.”

    Trump also slammed “sleeping son of a bitch” Chuck Todd, and “very low IQ” Maxine Waters and Nancy Pelosi.

    “It was 1999. I was on “Meet the Press” a show now headed by sleepy-eyes Chuck Todd. He’s a sleeping son of a bitch. I tell you.”

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    “We have to defeat Nancy Pelosi and Maxine Waters, a low IQ individual,” Trump then said – going back into another impression, this time of Waters: 

    “Do you ever see her? We will impeach him!” President Trump said mockingly.

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    New slogan

    Trump also rolled out his 2020 slogan during the rally; “Keep America Great!” 

    “But we can only do that if we elect people who are going to back our agenda and fight for our values,” he added.

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    More highlights from Saturday night:

    • Trump warned voters “We need Republicans. We need the vote,” warning that Democrats would take away “your Second Amendment Rights” to bear firearms, among other things.
    • There should be a national discussion about executing major drug dealers because each one is responsible for thousands of deaths. “I don’t know if that’s popular. I don’t know if that’s unpopular,” Trump told the crowd. 
    • Trump says his new economic are paying off, saying that his 25% tariffs on steel imports would boost Pennsylvania’s economy. “Your steel is coming back. It’s all coming back,” Trump said. 
    • Trump vowed to resist retaliatory trade measures by – as an example, slapping imported European cars with taxes. 
    • Oprah Winfrey better watch out if she runs for president in 2020. “I’d love to beat Oprah. I know her weakness,” said the President, who added that the upcoming presidential race “would be a painful experience for her.“
    • Trump singled out his wife Melania amid an ongoing scandal involving an alleged affair with porn star Stormy Daniels – who CNN recently stalked at a live strip club performance, and says she’s “more in demand” due to the recent controversy. “You think her life is so easy folks? Not so easy,” Trump said of the First Lady. 

     

  • Watch: Colonel Says Israel Is Dragging The United States Into World War III

    Authored by Darius Shahtahmasebi via TheAntiMedia.org,

    Israel is in the process of plunging America into a war with Iran that could destroy what’s left of the Middle East and ignite a third world war, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, warned in Washington approximately a week ago.

    Wilkerson, a retired army colonel who now teaches at Washington-area universities, didn’t hold back in his critique of where the status quo is leading the United States via its client state, Israel.

    At the annual Israel lobby conference at the National Press Club, sponsored by the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs and Institute for Research: Middle East Policy, Wilkerson explained that Israel is headed toward “a massive confrontation with the various powers arrayed against it, a confrontation that will suck America in and perhaps terminate the experiment that is Israel and do irreparable damage to the empire that America has become.”

    One of the principal antagonists begging for a war with Iran that Wilkerson identified was none other than Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s Russian-born Defense Minister. Wilkerson stated:

    “Lieberman will speak in April in New York City at the annual conference of the Jerusalem Post. The title is, ‘The New War with Iran.’ It is clear that he’s [at] the forefront of promoting this war.

    “And nowhere does my concern about such a war focus more acutely at the moment than Syria. As [the] president of France Emmanuel Macron described it recently, ‘The current rhetoric of the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and Israel is pushing the region toward conflict with Iran.’”

    Despite Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s incessant denigrations of Iran, including claiming the greatest danger facing the Jewish state is the Islamic republic — a country he accuses of fanning the flames of anti-Semitism — Wilkerson blew these accusations out of the park using simple logic. He said:

    “This antisemitism bit, of course, as we’ve heard today, is almost always a weapon of choice for Israeli politicians under stress hurled, in this case, at the country whose Jewish population — by the way, the largest in the Middle East outside of Turkey and Israel — lives in Iran in reasonable peace.”

    He continued:

    “And don’t forget that these words were uttered by the man who, as we’ve heard today, is doing everything he can to expel dark-skinned African refugees largely from Eritrea and Sudan from Israel, where most have come as legitimate refugees.”

    Wilkerson highlighted the hypocrisy of Netanyahu and his cohorts in more ways than one. For example, Wilkerson referred to Netanyahu’s grandiose speech at the Munich Security Conference in which he directly challenged Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohammad Javad Zarif while holding remnants of a drone allegedly downed over Israeli airspace. Israel claimed the drone was Iranian-manufactured. Wilkerson noted that in response, Iran found itself being rescued by Lebanon’s Defense Minister, who said he had an Israeli drone over his head virtually 24 hours a day.

    Further, the mainstream media and the governments that benefit from their narratives pay close to zero attention to the fact that Israel routinely violates Lebanese airspace with its sophisticated aircraft. Rather, Iran is constantly painted as the major threat and violator of international law.

    “Of late of course,” Wilkerson continued, “Tel Aviv is increasingly using Iran’s presence in Syria, its support for Bashar al-Assad, and its alleged drive– and I love this one, and my military comrades love it, too– for a Shia corridor from Tehran to Aden, as the hoary beast that must not be at any cost, including of course America’s treasure and lives, as his probable cause and existential prompt for action.”

    But why is there a danger that the U.S. will be dragged into this war, and why does Israel need America’s help? As Wilkerson explains:

    “I believe the answer is fairly clear once you push aside the cobwebs that surround it. The legitimacy of great power is what I call it. And that is precisely what Netanyahu and Lieberman desire.

    “It’s also what Riyadh desires, especially with the new boy king Mohammed bin Salman, now an erstwhile ally of Israel.

    “In short, the IDF could defend Israel but it could not attack Iran. Not successfully, anyway. And were it to do so, it would be damned internationally and thus isolated even more than it already is today, perhaps devastatingly so.”

    Last year, a top Israeli general tasked with writing his country’s defense policy admitted that Israel cannot take on Iran’s military alone if the day should come that the regional powers face off in a direct military confrontation, saying they would need to rely on the U.S. for assistance

    According to a Politico report, during the Obama years, Israel drew up a military strike option but never really used it. Deep down, Israel knew its effectiveness lied in its ability to pressure the U.S. government into taking further action of its own lest it be dragged into a catastrophic war with Iran that it may or may not be prepared to fight. From the Politico report:

    “They [the Israelis] ordered the Israel Defense Forces and the intelligence arms to prepare for a huge operation: an all-out air attack in the heart of Iran. Some $2 billion was spent on preparations for the attack and for what the Israelis believed would take place the day after – a counterattack either by Iranian warplanes and missiles or by its proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah. The latter could use either the 50,000 missiles it had stockpiled (by 2018, Israeli intelligence estimated the number had increased to 100,000), or it could activate its terror cells abroad, with the assistance of Iranian intelligence, to strike at Israeli or Jewish targets. This is what it did in 1992 and 1994 when it responded to Israeli attacks in Lebanon by blowing up the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires and the Jewish community center AMIA in that city, with a massive number of casualties in both attacks.”

    The strike plan never took place, of course, but according to Politico, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continued to use it to put pressure on the U.S. government to achieve its anti-Iranian objectives. Every day, the likelihood that a war might erupt between Israel and Iran, in turn involving the United States, which has sworn to come to Israel’s defense if attacked by Iran, continues to inch that much closer to reality.

  • Pentagon Official: China's Hypersonic Missiles Could Threaten US Navy's "Entire Surface Fleet"

    As we have discussed previously, “hypersonic aircraft and missiles are being developed and tested by the United States, Russia, and China at an accelerating pace. While the race for hypersonic technologies has certainly flourished among global superpowers, who realize that the first to possess these technologies will not just revolutionize their civilian and military programs, but will also dictate the future path for civilizations on planet earth.”

    According to the Washington Examiner, Undersecretary of Defense for Research Michael Griffin presented last week at the McAleese-Credit Suisse Defense Conference in which he warned, “when the Chinese can deploy tactical or regional hypersonic systems, they hold at risk our carrier battle groups. They hold our entire surface fleet at risk. They hold at risk our forward deployed land-based forces.”

    Griffin emphasized that Beijing has administered “20 times as many of hypersonic weapons tests as has the United States over the last decade.” He stated Beijing is spending billions to develop and test non-nuclear versions of hypersonic weapons that could render the United States Navy’s nuclear-powered aircraft carriers unprotected against a hypersonic strike.

    In December 2017, Reuters reported that Griffin was nominated by President Donald Trump to be Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. The U.S. Senate confirmed his nomination on February 15, 2018, which means he has been on the job for less than two weeks and has already declared — developing hypersonic weapons is his “highest technical priority.”

    Griffin stressed that Beijing is transforming into a global superpower and America’s worst enemy, while President Xi Jinping modernizes the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) with railguns, hypersonics, and stealth fighter jets. Detailed in the beginning paragraph, the American empire could unquestionably be dethroned if countries like Russia and China field hypersonics before Washington.

    “Without our ability to defend and without at least an equal response capability on the offensive side, then what we’ve done is we have allowed a situation to exist where our deployed forces are held at risk. We cannot do the same for them,” Griffin said.

    “And so our only response is either to let them have their way or to go nuclear. Well, that should be an unacceptable situation for the United States,” he added.

    Here is a crash course on what does it mean to fly at hypersonic speeds:

    Defense News details the Pentagon’s budget for hypersonic development:

    The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency budget for hypersonic weapons has increased steadily over the last two years, but more funding would inevitably be welcomed by supporters of the technology. In FY17, Congress appropriated $85.5 million for hypersonics. That went up to $108.6 million in the FY18 request, a 27 percent increase. And for the recently released FY19 request, the figure shoots up to $256.7 million — a whopping 136 percent increase, but still a fairly low figure by Pentagon standards.

    Griffin further stated, “the advantage of hypersonic systems is broadly speaking, irrespective of their range, that they underfly missile defense and they overfly air defense. That’s a niche we haven’t spent much time in recently, and if I had to pick my highest technical priority responding that that, both offensively and defensively, that would be my highest technical priority. If our response is either let them win or go nuclear, that’s a bad place to be. It invites bad behavior on the part of adversaries.”

    When it comes to hypersonic development, Griffin has critical players deep inside the Pentagon’s swamp…

    Lt. Gen. Samuel Greaves, the Director at Missile Defense Agency, said the speed at which Russia and China are “researching, developing, testing, delivering weapons systems” requires his agency to take the hypersonic threat seriously.

    Also, Gen. Paul J. Selva, the 10th Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned on Janurary 30, “we [U.S.] have lost our technical advantage in hypersonics,” but “we haven’t lost the hypersonics fight.”

    It is startling to observe how Pentagon officials are now openly admitting that foreign hypersonic threats could be a major headache to the American empire in the not too distant future. Nevertheless, the reality of a decaying American empire is starting to set in, as officials understanding the Pentagon’s hypersonic program(s) are way behind the eight ball.

    The one question we ask: Could hypersonic weapons make the US Navy’s nuclear-powered aircraft carriers obsolete? 

    *** 

    Perhaps, the Pentagon’s maintenance of the 800 military bases around the world, and endless hybrid military conflicts has diverted much-needed resources to fund critical technologies [hypersonics] that would keep America in the running as a superpower. Falling behind in the supersonics race is a symptom of an over-extended empire… We’ve seen this before —- Rome is burning.

  • Sierra Leone Holds World's First "Free And Fair" Blockchain-Backed Election

    Cryptocurrency investors have endured a difficult week as reports that Japanese regulators are cracking down on local exchanges following a massive heist at CoinCheck – an unregistered local exchange – and the SEC is demanding that US-based cryptocurrency exchanges register with the agency, sent virtual currency prices reeling, eventually pushing bitcoin to a multiweek low on Friday below $9,000.

    Bitcoin

    But in the world of blockchain technology, where even crypto skeptics like Jamie Dimon (who now regrets calling BTC a fraud) and Ray Dalio see a promising future, it was truly the best of times. Earlier this week, the town of South Burlington, Vermont became the first town in the US to record a real estate transaction by registering the deed transfer on a blockchain-based system.

    SierraLeone

    And in another triumph, the first national election to be tracked and verified using blockchain technology unfolded in Sierra Leone this week. The votes are still being tallied, but blockchain voting startup Agora is supervising the first beta test of its vote-monitoring blockchain tech, as Coindesk reported.

    As voters lined up to cast votes in what had been a heated campaign between 16 candidates, unbeknownst to them, blockchain voting startup Agora was helping keep track of it all, and through its proprietary distributed ledger, providing unprecedented insight into the process.

    In what, by all accounts, appears to be a world’s first for the emerging technology, Agora used a private, permissioned blockchain – one inspired by the technology that backs bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies – to oversee the results of a national election in real time. It then relayed the data to individuals entrusted to oversee and verify the nation’s democratic process.

    Of course, the technology is still very rudimentary, and required Agora employees to physically verify paper ballots before accurately entering their content into the company’s blockchain database.

    The company’s tech – which it calls “skipchain” – is what’s known as a “permissioned” blockchain – where only some of the data being entered into the database is visible to the public (in this case, the names and personal information of the voters will remain hidden, while the results of the vote and all non-personal associated metadata should be available for all to see).

    As this article was being completed, Agora, a Switzerland-based foundation, was in the process of manually counting the votes and logging them on a blockchain.

    “Voters complete their votes on paper ballots and then our team with impartial observers register them on the blockchain,” explained Lukasiewicz, who formally joined the company in January after first joining as an advisor.

    Stepping back, though, not only is this the first time blockchain has been implemented in a national election, it’s also the first live implementation for Agora’s stack of blockchain services – what the company calls “skipchain” technology, designed to reach consensus with each node only seeing part of the blockchain.

    In some respects, Sierra Leone had a number of advantages that made Agora’s beta testing feasible. For instance, since the end of its civil war in 2002, the country has conducted a number of largely “free and fair” elections. But this year’s vote was also fraught with complications that are still being worked out. Several episodes of political violence preceded the ballot, and already, before the official vote tally has even been released, two opposition parties are expressing “grave concerns” about the fairness of this year’s vote, per Africa News. The Coalition for Change and National Grand Coalition told AN  that their agents were evicted from some polling stations when the counting of votes started…

    But in its preliminary report, the Economic Community of West African States, or ECOWAS, noted that while the election was largely peaceful, free and fair, there were some issues, including the heavy presence of security at polling stations that reportedly intimidated some reporters.

    In summary, the blockchain-backed vote is a first and important step toward deploying a seamless system of balloting on the blockchain that would allow voters to record their choices directly onto Agora’s blockchain, without the paper intermediary. And with a handful of other African states interested in working with Agora for future elections, that day might arrive sooner than some skeptics expect.

    For those who are still unfamiliar with how the technology works, this two-minute explanation could offer some insight.

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  • Most Limits Exist Only In Our Minds

    Authored by Adam Taggart via PeakProsperity.com,

    Roger Bannister died last week.

    Even if you don’t recognize his name, you’re aware of his legacy: he was the first human to run a mile in under 4 minutes.

    It was a mind-blowing feat. Ever since the Ancient Greeks set their sights on attaining this “perfect” goal 3,000 years ago, no runner on the planet had been able to run that fast for that long.

    For millennia of sport, breaking the 4-minute barrier was widely regarded as physically impossible.

    But Bannister, a busy medical student at the time with often only 30 minutes available to train per day, had an unorthodox view — one rooted in skepticism of the conventional training techniques and mindset.

    He began with the assumption that the 4-minute mile was possible, and then challenged himself to develop a science-based regimen for attaining it.

    During a brief lull on the otherwise blustery day of May 6, 1954, Roger Bannister made history by completing the mile-run in 3 minutes 59.4 seconds. The impossible had been achieved.

    Photo of Roger Bannister breaking the 4-minute mile

    (Bannister crossing the finish line at the Iffley Road track, Oxford)

    But what ensued next was equally momentous.

    Just a month after Bannister first broke the 4-minute barrier, both he and another runner (John Landry) broke it again. The next year, 3 more runners (all in the same race) followed suit.

    By the end of 1957, a total of 16 runners had achieved sub-4-minute mile times.

    How could so many people suddenly overcome a challenge that had thwarted the best runners in the world for three millennia? The transition was so immediate and abrupt that it can’t be attributed to advancements in technology, training or diet. Yet something changed that enabled this new era for speed.

    What changed was Belief.

    Prior to Bannister’s shocking feat, elite runners just didn’t believe it was possible to run that fast.

    But once freed from that limiting mindset, those very same athletes found that not only could they match Bannister’s record, they could beat it.

    Today, 60 years later, over 1,300 people have run the mile in under 4 minutes. The fastest of them completed it in 3 minutes 43.13 seconds (Hicham El Guerrouj, July 7, 1999)

    More than simply breaking a record, Roger Bannister’s greater legacy was proving to the world that limits are largely set by the mind. When we fail (or more accurately put, fail to try hard enough), it’s often because we believe we can’t succeed.

    Bannister’s example showed us that by changing our mindset — by being open-minded to success — we can change our universe of potential outcomes. The ‘impossible’ becomes possible.

    Others, before and after Bannister, have validated this to us time and again. Here are but a few of them:

    • Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay summiting Mount Everest, the world’s tallest mountain, in 1953

    • Billie Jean King defeating Bobby Riggs in The Battle of the Sexes in 1973, proving women can perform at the same level as men

    • Alan Turing cracking the “unbreakable” Nazi Enigma code during WW2 (and developing the first modern computer in the process)

    • Inexperienced novelist and near-penniless single parent J. K. Rowling in the early 1990s, writing a manuscript in various Scottish coffee shops that would become Harry Potter and ultimately make her a billionaire

    Each refused to accept conventionally-defined limits as true. Each started with the belief that success was possible, and that they just needed to find the right path to unlock it.

    A Mindset Needed More Today Than Ever

    Today’s world bombards us with dire headlines and intractable issues that can easily make us feel defeated and powerless. Rather than being retired by the march of progress, in many ways it feels like the limits on our future are multiplying.

    Declining opportunity for the 99%, cartel-style rackets controlling much of industry, and an accelerating wealth gap between the elites and the rest of society define our economic situation.

    Our political system prioritizes fear, divisiveness and war mongering — getting precious little accomplished save a continued chipping away at our civil liberties. Social discord is growing in response.

    Meanwhile, we’re despoiling the natural systems we depend on. The past few decades have seen more mass species die-offs, pollution, climatic shifts, and chronic health epidemics than ever before. Our insatiable exploitation of resources and prioritization of quick profits have become existential threats.

    Given the above, it’s understandable to feel hopeless; that we’re all simply screwed. 

    But as Bannister, Hilary, Turing et al have showed us, we have much more control over our destiny than we realize. Even in the face of nation-wide, even planetary, issues like those listed above, we have agency to change our situation for the better.

    On the individual level, we work hard here at PeakProsperity.com to surface and showcase models we deem worthy of your consideration. Here are several that have helped many of our readers improve their quality of life today, while simultaneously improving their resilience against any challenges tomorrow may bring:

    • Looking to improve your health and longevity? Learn how nutrition, functional exercise, sleep hygene and stress management are key success ingredients.
    • How can humans grow (more) food by regenerating rather than depleting our soils? No-till farming practices are enabling just that.
    • How can you become better valued and more supported by those around you? Here are a number of community-building steps that work.
    • Want to protect and grow your money? Read this.
    • How can you remain positive, and even thrive, in the face of adversity? By using these psychological strategies.

    These are but a few examples of the very real pathways available to each of us to build better futures for ourselves. But to benefit from them, we need to first start with the belief that a better future is indeed possible for us.

    If we do, then it becomes simply a math formula. With enough courage, discipline, and hard work, almost any goal is attainable within time.

    And make no mistake, the world is in dire need of self-directed saviors. Too much of the population is mindlessly marching along to the status quo, blind to its dangers and unsustainability.

    Chris Martenson’s “giant canoe” parable captures our predicament well:

    Our Giant Canoe

    Think of our situation as if humanity were all together in a giant canoe and nearly everybody is paddling as hard as they can.  After all, we’re trying to get somewhere: to improve ourselves, to grow our economy and increase our prosperity. There are goals to be met!

    Along the way we’ve convinced ourselves that this canoe is the best one ever built and it cannot fail us. It is the very pinnacle of achievement.  It looks great, and there are creature comforts and pleasant distractions galore.   Food has never been more abundant or easier to obtain, new gadgets keep showing up, and (in theory, at least) you can determine for yourself where you want to sit in the canoe.

    The people in the front love being there, as they feel powerful and in control. Ironically, though, it’s the few people in the stern who are actually secretly and rather effortlessly steering, but nobody in the rest of the canoe seems to notice or care.

    There’s only one thing wrong with this canoe. It’s headed for a gigantic waterfall, and if it tips over the lip, very few will survive. It will be like going over Niagara Falls without a barrel.

    A few in the canoe have woken up and noticed this. But their protests are limited to either pulling their paddles out of the water and refusing to propel the canoe any faster, or even trying to futilely paddle backwards against the rest of humanity’s combined efforts.

    Neither approach is a solution, mind you. But at least for these ‘awake’ souls, it feels better than paddling mindlessly towards the roaring falls. 

    As it stand today, humanity’s canoe is destined to speed right over the edge. Unless we consciously do something about it. Which we could, if we really wanted to.

    As there’s nothing preventing us from steering the canoe safely to land, I find this one of the most interesting and fascinating times to be alive. We are currently playing the role of our own destroyer, but the savior role is still there for the choosing.

    But what stops us?  What keeps us paddling furiously ahead even as the sound of the roaring falls gets louder and louder?  The answer is at once both very simple and devilishly hard. 

    It’s our egos.

    To save ourselves from ourselves, we have to begin doing things very, very differently.  Truthfully, the only way we can save ourselves is to shift our consciousness.  

    Chris’ follow-on report, How To Be, reveals the elements of psychology, neuroscience, behavioral economics and human culture that lie at the root of our self-limiting behavior, yet also hold the keys to our salvation. It explains why to start living differently, we first need to start thinking differently.

    There’s an emerging huge body of work here that goes deeply into the ‘Being’ and Emotional Capital areas of our ongoing efforts to help people live with greater resilience.  We’re talking about real inner change here. If you want things to be different on the outside in your life, the only certain way to go about doing that is to change things on the inside first.

    If this line of exploration resonates at all with you, click here to read the ‘How To Be’ report (free executive summary, enrollment required for full access)

  • "Bitcoin Misery Index" Flashes 'Buy' Signal

    Authored by Ana Alexandre via CoinTelegraph.com,

    Wall Street strategist and co-founder of Fundstrat Global Advisors Thomas Lee has developed a ‘contrarian index’ that lets investors know how ‘miserable’ Bitcoin (BTC) holders are based on current prices, CNBC reports.

    The Bitcoin Misery Index says now is the time to buy from CNBC.

    The index is called the Bitcoin Misery Index (BMI) and was designed as a trading tool for investors to take advantage of volatility in BTC exchanges. BMI is calculated on a scale of zero to 100, taking into account factors such as volatility and the number of winning trades out of the total. When the indicator is low, the buying opportunity is at its best, and vice versa.

    “When the bitcoin misery index is at ‘misery’ (below 27), bitcoin sees the best 12-month performance. A signal is generated about every year,” Lee explained to CNBC in a Friday report.

    “When the BMI is at a ‘misery’ level, future returns are very good.”

    At the moment, the Bitcoin index is at 18.8, which is an absolute minimum since Sept. 6, 2011, the report said.

    Lee’s comments follow a significant cryptocurrency market fall in which BTC lost almost 27 percent just after hitting a weekly high of $11,675 on Monday, March 5. A series of negative news resulted in heightened concerns about more regulations on crypto markets.

    On March 7, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a statement saying that all platforms trading securities are required to register with the agency as an exchange. Additionally, Japanese authorities temporarily halted the activities of two cryptocurrency exchanges and issued “punishment notices” to seven more, as reported on March 8.

    Despite Bitcoin currently trading at more than 50 percent of its December 2017 high of over $20,000, Lee has not abandoned his optimistic forecast of $25,000 by the end of 2018.

    Tom Lee is known for his bullish outlooks for BTC and as the “only major Wall Street strategist to issue regular reports and formal price targets on bitcoin”, according to CNBC.

  • Why Is This Microsoft Co-Founder Building The World's Largest Airplane?

    The twin-fuselage Stratolaunch airplane, the world’s largest aircraft, is designed to carry three space rockets up to the ceiling of the Troposphere, and then conduct an air launch of the rockets — blasting a satellite or spacecraft into outer space.

    Paul Allen, the founder of Stratolaunch (as well as co-founder of Microsoft), progressed one step closer to flight last week, when his aircraft practiced taxing down the airstrip, reaching a top speed of 46 mph, according to the Washington Post.

    Paul Allen established the aerospace startup in 2011. More than seven years later from inception, the experimental six 747 jet engine behemoth plane has yet to take flight, which has a wingspan greater than any previous aircraft on record; even more significant than business tycoon Howard Hughes’s famed Spruce Goose from the 1940s. The plane is designed to tether three space rockets to the center wing, then fly up to 35,000 feet to conduct an air launch of the rockets (demonstrated below).

    Back in 2016, Stratolaunch signed an exclusive agreement with Orbital ATK, a Dulles, Virginia-based company, for its aircraft to use Orbital rockets to air-launch satellites into low earth orbit. Under the multi-year production-based partnership, Orbital ATK will provide “multiple” Pegasus XL air-launch missiles for the Stratolaunch aircraft.

    In an exclusive interview last summer, Washington Post’s Christian Davenport sat down with Allen and Jean Floyd, Stratolaunch System’s chief executive, about their future ambitions for the aircraft. The interview was part of Allen’s forthcoming book called The Space Barons.

    “I would love to see us have a fully reusable system and have weekly, if not more often, airport-style, repeatable operations going,” Allen said in an interview in his Seattle office.

    Internally, the company calls the shuttle proposal “Black Ice.” Here is how Davenport describes the proposed shuttle program launched from a Stratolaunch:

    The Black Ice space plane — should it be built — would be about as big as the former space shuttle developed by NASA and capable of staying up for at least three days. It could be launched from virtually anywhere in the world, as long as the runway could accommodate Stratolaunch’s size. And it would be capable of flying to the International Space Station, taking satellites and experiments to orbit, and maybe one day even people — though there are no plans for that in the near-term. Then it would land back on the runway, ready to fly again.

    “You make your rocket a plane,” Floyd said.

    “So, you have an airplane carrying a plane that’s fully reusable. You don’t throw anything away ever. Only fuel,” he added.

    Davenport indicates the company is focused on the maiden flight of Stratolaunch, which could come in the second half of 2018. Once the Stratolaunch conducts a successful test flight, Allen could then initiate the Black Ice program.

    “If you caught the bug back in the Mercury era, of course, it’s in the back of your mind, but I think you’re seeing right now, other than [space station] resupply missions, most spaceflights are about launching satellites. That’s the reality. And they are extremely important for everything from television to data all over the world. You can get data in the Kalahari Desert because there’s a satellite up there,” Allen said in the interview.

    Allen offered limited technical details but did explain that the Black Ice program could produce a shuttle about the seize as NASA’s space shuttle, which has roughly a 24-meter wingspan. Because of the Stratolaunch aircraft’s mobility, the shuttle can launch from any large airport in the world. Further, the system is fully reusable, with the airplane serving as the first stage and the Black Ice shuttle serving as the second stage — blasting spacecraft into outer space.

    Last summer, Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson stopped by to visit the Stratolaunch aircraft, writing on Twitter that she had “the chance to see firsthand how Stratolaunch is developing an air-launch platform to make space more accessible.”

    Last Fall, Vice President Pence visited the plane in its hangar and was absolutely stunned by how many throttles the aircraft had.

    “With the shift from large to small satellites, the smallsat market could reach $30.1B in the next 10 years,” said Straolaunch’s Twitter.

    The one big question: Who will finance the Black Ice project?

    Paul Allen’s net worth is somewhere around $21.7 billion, but perhaps, as shown above, Vice President Pence and Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson have taken huge interest into the giant airplane, which could allude to the taxpayer ultimately footing the bill.

    According to Geek Wire, Stratolaunch was recently a hot topic at a House subcommittee hearing on NASA’s budget. U.S. Rep. Steve Knight, R-Calif., asked NASA’s acting administrator, Robert Lightfoot, whether he saw the prospect of “a good partnership” with companies like Stratolaunch.Lightfoot said NASA’s approach to commercial launch services “really allows new entrants to come in.”“We have a really good on-ramping way for them to demonstrate their capability, and become part of our toolbox to get our missions done,” he said. “So, yeah, absolutely, we see an opportunity for those folks.”

    Stratolaunch could soon offer a low-cost solution for corporations and government entities in launching satellites and or spacecraft into outer space. So far, Elon Musk has yet to respond to this startling development which could derail his SpaceX program.

  • Abolishing ICE Looks Likely To Become 2020 Campaign Issue For Democrats

    Authored by Peter Hasson via The Daily Caller,

    Left-wing pundits and activists are increasing pressure on Democratic politicians to embrace the fringe position of abolishing ICE.

    Once an idea limited to the far-left fringes, abolishing the nation’s immigration enforcement agency now looks likely to become a campaign issue in the Democrats’ 2020 presidential primary.

    Former Hillary Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon came out for abolishing the agency in January. “ICE operates as an unaccountable deportation force,” Fallon argued. “Dems running in 2020 should campaign on ending the agency in its current form.”

    A U.S. Border Patrol agent watches over a group of undocumented immigrants on February 23, 2018 in McAllen, Texas. The agents captured the group of Central American immigrants shortly after they rafted across the border from Mexico into Texas. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

    “Should ICE exist?” MSNBC host Chris Hayes asked Democratic California Sen. Kamala Harris on Thursday. Harris’s answer — “certainly” ICE should exist — sparked a backlash among some liberals.

    Liberal writer Jack Mirkinson on Friday slammed Harris for her answer in an article titled, “Not Good Enough, Kamala Harris.”

    “Any serious defender of undocumented people in this country would look at ICE and know that it is a cancer that needs to be excised from the U.S. Pretending that the most diseased levers of state power can be molded into something better is a useless fantasy. ICE must be abolished. Anything less is not good enough,” Mirkinson wrote on Splinter, a left-wing website.

    “Kamala Harris is very likely running for president in 2020. It should be a political problem for her that she is not willing to take her criticisms of ICE to their logical conclusion and call for its abolition. She should be asked, over and over again, why exactly she is willing to uphold the legitimacy of such a racist, corrupt, and thuggish organization,” Markinson concluded.

    “Anyone else who decides to run—Bernie Sanders, Kirsten Gillibrand, Elizabeth Warren, Eric Garcetti, you name it—should be asked the same question.”

    Left-wing publication The Nation on Friday pushed out a similar piece, entitled “It’s Time to Abolish ICE.”

    “The idea of defunding ICE has gained traction among immigrant-rights groups horrified by the speed at which, under President Donald Trump, the agency has ramped up an already brutal deportation process,” The Nation’s Sean McElwee claimed.

    Major donor-funded groups on the Left, including Indivisible Project, the Center for Popular Democracy and Brand New Congress, now support abolishing the ICE, McElwee noted.

    “ICE​ is terrorizing American communities right now,” Angel Padilla, policy director of the Indivisible Project, told The Nation.

    “They’re going into schools, entering hospitals, conducting massive raids, and separating children from parents every day. We are funding those activities, and we need to use all the leverage we have to stop it.”

    “This is a growing position on the left, and I imagine 2020 Democratic presidential aspirants will have to grapple with it,” Hayes, the MSNBC host, wrote on Twitter. He linked to McElwee’s article.

    Acting ICE Director Tom Homan said Thursday that Democrats are being misleading about the illegal immigrants that his agency is deporting.

    https://video.insider.foxnews.com/v/embed.js?id=5747581490001&w=466&h=263

    “Nine out of every 10 aliens we arrested [in the last fiscal year] did have a criminal history,” Homan told Fox News.

    “They don’t want to know the facts. They want to keep playing this political game and put smoke and mirrors up about what ICE is actually doing.”

  • Visualizing 35 Years Of American Protectionism In One Chart

    Judging by the ‘end of the world’ rhetoric and ‘catastrophic’ scare-mongering gushing forth from every orifice of the establishment, one might be forgiven for believing that Trump is the first president to ‘dare’ to impose tariffs on unfair trade ‘bad actors’ in recent decades… he is not!

    As BofAML details in the table below, Presidents Obama, Bush, and Reagan have all imposed sizable tariffs on steel in the past…

     

    And here is the performance of the S&P 500 during the Reagan administration’s era of protectionist lashings on the world…

    Notice the rise then drop after each of the times Reagan imposed tariffs on Steel products.

    As GoldMoney’s Alasdair Macleod concludes, the back story appears to be far deeper than some relatively minor tariffs on steel and aluminium would suggest. It comes after a prolonged period of shadow-boxing between America in the blue corner and Russia and China in the red. To pursue the boxing analogy, China and Russia have been soaking up America’s punches on the basis America would simply tire herself out. It has been a replay of Muhammed Ali’s dope-on-a-rope strategy in the rumble-in-the-jungle, with America cast as George Foreman.

    However, in the last few days, China and Russia seem to have lost patience with America. Instead of patiently letting America gently decline through her own errors, the Asian superpowers are accelerating their own agendas regardless.

    We do not know the real reason China and Russia appear to have changed their generally patient approach to American aggression. Perhaps it was inevitable that at some stage the internal politics in President Trump’s administration would lead to this conclusion. Perhaps it’s a twist in the financial war, with China’s oil and commodity suppliers pushing for of greater yuan liquidity in financial markets. China has finally agreed to this by setting a date for the new yuan-denominated oil futures contract to start trading. Anyway, the inevitable has happened: President Trump has finally decided to impose trade restrictions on China, and the Asian powers are accelerating their imperial plans.

    America’s trade wars could have unintended consequences. They could end up with the two economic titans, the US and the EU, imposing destructive tariffs against each other. The effect on both economies will be to simply increase prices for consumers, when other price-inflationary factors are also coming into play.

    Fortunately for the rest of the world, the days when the dollar was tied to gold and trade protectionism by America threw the world into the 1930’s depression no longer apply. The dollar can be expected to decline instead of commodity prices falling, as they did in the depression. The impact of America’s protectionism on the global economy today is therefore likely to be significantly less than following the Smoot-Hawley Act. But from an American standpoint, the principal victim of the trade war that commenced this week will be America herself.

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