Aug 13

Today’s News 13th August 2019

  • Dear Democrats – This Is What Happens When You Nationalize Healthcare

    Day after day, hour after hour, Americans are spoon-fed some utopian vision of a future of Medicare-for-all (anyone really who can make it across the border) as the solution to all that ails the health system across all states.

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    However, for anyone who has actually lived under nationalized healthcare, reality is far uglier.

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    As Statista’s Martin Armstrong notes, a new survey of 901 GPs in England by industry publication Pulse has revealed average waiting times for routine appointments to have risen over two weeks for the first time. As our infographic shows, the average wait in 2016 was 12.8 days and has risen since then to 14.8 days in 2019.

    Infographic: GP waiting times now exceed 2 weeks | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    The research also revealed that 22 percent of GPs said their patients had to wait for more than three weeks. As Pulse reports, the demand for GPs has been rising in recent years, while the number of GPs has fallen.

    One GP who recorded a four to five week waiting list said:

    “Our list size continues to grow because there are so many housing developments. We are poorly remunerated under the GMS contract for the hard work that we do. Patient demand continues to soar with higher expectations despite dreadful government funding. MPs have a lot to answer for.”

    Professor Helen Stokes-Lampard, chair of the Royal College of GPs, said:

    “The College has long been raising the alarm about escalating resource and workforce pressures in general practice, and the negative impact this is having on our patients. GPs and our teams are making more consultations than ever before – more than a million a day across the UK – but as our population grows and more people present with multiple conditions, we desperately need more GPs and more time to give our patients the care they deserve.”

    Dear Democrat, how long did you have to wait – just to see the doctor – the last time you fell ill?

  • Can Salvini Beat The Italian Troika?

    Authored by Tom Luongo,

    Italian leader Matteo Salvini is in the headlines again, now openly threatening divorce with his coalition partner, Five Star Movement (M5S).

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    Salvini unleashed another round of rhetorical bombs at M5S to get on them board with his part of the agenda. But that seems to have failed and he is now prepared to go to Parliament and withdraw his party, Lega, from the coalition government which will lead to new elections.

    He had put off any kind of talk of new elections in the past because the opinion polling wasn’t strong enough to grant Lega the kind of majority it needed to govern without strings.

    The coalition is dead but it may not matter.

    The biggest problem Salvini faced, however, wasn’t M5S’s internal strife and contradictions. His biggest obstacle lies in the Troika of Technocrats that hold all the real power in Italy as it pertains to the European Union.

    That Troika is President Sergei Mattarella, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and Finance Minister Giovanni Tria and they are the problem, as I wrote back in June.

    Prime Minister Giuseppe Conti and Economy Minister Giovanni Tria are in open revolt against the coalition leaders over the upcoming budget fight with the EU.

    Reuters is reporting this morning that these two are working together to undermine the internal reforms Salvini is proposing to spur economic growth from the ground up by instituting a flat tax and spending a whopping $3 billion more than Brussels wants them to on rebuilding crumbling Italian infrastructure.

    Conte and Tria were essentially hand-picked by Mattarella to slow the current government’s roll and make nice with Brussels if they painted outside the lines. It was Mattarella who nixed Paolo Savona as the coalition’s pick for Finance Minister and it nearly saw him impeached for overstepping his authority.

    Savona was deeply anti-euro.

    Conte was also a compromise pick to get the coalition formed and deal with the fallout later. The latest threats by Salvini to take down the government is something he has been goaded into doing in the past when the polls were less definitive.

    But today his threat is a much bigger one. When Lega was polling 32-34% there was no election calculus that would allow them to take control and still not be saddled with an albatross; either a spiteful M5S or a coalition of minor parties with deep state Italian ties, like Forza Italia.

    Today, however, the calculus is different. Lega is polling at 38-40%,

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    And that puts them in a much different position. Remember that the Italian Deep State pushed forward under former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi the new election law that allocates one-third of parliamentary seats by marjoritarian, or first-past-the-post, voting. The remaining two-thirds are allocated proportionally.

    Now, this was done to blunt the rise of Euroskeptic parties like M5S and create over-representation for establishment parties. But that only works if the establishment parties’ support doesn’t collapse.

    Oops.

    Look at what just happened in Ukraine, with a similar system. Volodymyr Zelensky’s Servant of the People took less than a majority of the votes but won more than 55% of the seats. Now, Ukraine’s internal politics are such that controlling the Verkovna Rada doesn’t that much, but it’s a good start that Zelensky won’t have to govern with a coalition partner.

    I don’t have any idea of the internal, regional numbers for Italy but if Lega pulls more than 40% in a general election it is likely they will have enough seats to form a majority government without partners. That’s what Salvini is banking on. And he should be confident given he trends in polling and the frustration with M5S, who were the recipients of support out of pure protest.

    Now that there is competition for that protest vote and a leader with a clear path for Italy, it’s no surprise that they have fallen and Lega risen.

    The worst-case scenario I can see for Salvini would be having to coalition with the ideologically aligned Brothers of Italy (FdL).

    Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia (FI) is failing quickly, as is M5S, whose support has halved since last March’s election.

    This election calculus creates a much more stable situation that what shook out of 2018’s election. And it is the reason why Salvini looks ready to take the fight to the Italian Troika.

    The key here is President Mattarella whose job it is to keep in place people loyal to Europe and defeat Salvini in any real reforms. So, color me shocked that there’s a hit piece on Bloomberg attacking his lack of accomplishmentswhile over-stating his promises.

    Most importantly, Salvini appears more interested in his popularity than in policy. He revels in tweeting on pretty much anything – from the beer he is drinking to celebrating the birthday of the Virgin Mary – and in DJ-ing shirtless in a beach club on Italy’s coast. But when one looks at how much of the League’s program he has actually implemented, voters have little to celebrate.

    Take economic policy. The League has failed to deliver on its pledge to bring in a “flat tax” to lower Italy’s notoriously high rates. Instead, the tax burden has increased in the first three months of this year to 38% of gross domestic product from 37.7% in the same period of 2018, according to Italy’s statistics office. Salvini has also failed to deliver on a law which would give greater autonomy to Italy’s northern regions – the League’s electoral base – because of opposition from Five Star, which fears losing support in the South.

    Yes, Salvini has failed to deliver on his promises as the junior member of a coalition government run by inept leftists and sabotaged by his own Prime Minister, Finance Minister and President.

    The writer, Ferdinando Giugliano, then states that Salvini promised to get Italy out of the euro, which he explicitly did not campaign on nor has he talked about openly since being in power. That Salvini wants to get Italy out of the euro without concessions and changes to the EU’s finance rules is well known. But it’s not something he’s agitating for.

    Laying the plans for leaving the euro through the mini-BOT? Of course.

    Is that a bargaining chip to use in negotiations with Brussels? Absolutely.

    If you look at what Giugliano is saying it’s clear that his opening statement is the most accurate in the entire piece. “Matteo Salvini… likes to play the long game.”

    Which is exactly what he should be doing, as I’ve pointed out consistently for nearly two years now (here, here, here). At every turn Salvini must cast others as the problem if he wants to win politically, which isn’t hard because it’s the truth.

    And the more he does this the higher in the polls Lega rises.

    With numbers where they are Salvini is looking at the opportunity to force the Troika to back down. This was why the rumors of forcing a cabinet reshuffle sound plausible. Now that he’s calling for a new election they could all be out of jobs.

    The best outcome was for Brussels to keep Salvini saddled to M5S, retaining the status quo for as long as possible. Oops.

    But Salvini, in constant contact with his fellow Euroskeptic leaders like Viktor Orban in Hungary, Nigel Farage in the U.K., Marine Le Pen in France, knows that timing in politics is everything. Poking this snake now, going for a consolidation of power the people seem to want of him, while Brussels is up to its neck in Brexit, new divisions within the EU parliament, and financial markets becoming more unmoored from reality every day is the right move.

    If he pulls this off he could change the face of Italian politics for a generation and the face of Europe for a century.

  • 'Fall Armyworm' Invades China; Wreaks Havoc On Agriculture Lands

    China’s agriculture ministry warned in June that it found fall armyworms in 21 provinces, across 333,000 hectares of crops.

    Fall armyworms (Spodoptera frugiperda) are a destructive garden pest that can destroy a variety of crops as well as grasses.

    Chinese officials are worried about prevention and control measures of the pest might be failing, which could lead to crop losses this year.

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    Beijing warned fall armyworms could damage hundreds, if not thousands of hectares of crops, leading to possible food security issues for the country.

    To counter the pest, China has requested farmers in the 21 provinces to use government-approved pesticides.

    The “heart-devouring worm” – as locals call it – has spread almost 1,900 miles north since migrating from neighboring Myanmar earlier this year, now threatens 21 provinces and regions in China and could heavily impact the country’s grain output.

    In Yunnan, a province in southwestern China, the pest has already destroyed 86,000 hectares of corn, sugarcane, sorghum, and ginger crops.

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    Fall armyworm started to spread through Africa and Asia in 2016, these pests, which are moths, fly 60 miles per night, is very challenging for farmers and governments to exterminate.

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    The pests have strained small farmers, who produce at least 90% of the country’s crop.

    In hard-hit Yunnan, the local government has installed 3,500 monitoring sites at farms to observe the pests and agriculture conditions, the provincial agriculture bureau wrote to Reuters via email.

    Sugarcane farmer Yan in Mengkang village said the only answer to the fall armyworm disaster is to spray crops with pesticide.

    “You have to keep spraying chemicals. If you don’t kill the worm, you will end up penniless,” he said.

    Some farmers have had a slow response to act, thus jeopardizing their crop yields during harvest time.

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    Hu Gao, a professor of insect ecology at Nanjing Agricultural University, said the pests have ruined crops in the country’s south, but the outlook for corn production in the north wasn’t affected as much.

    As the destructive pest spread to agriculture provinces, this could lead Beijing to purchase even more grains from Latin American countries, like Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay.

    As of last week, China halted all agriculture purchases with the US and continued ramping up agriculture imports from Latin America and the rest of the world. The halt in purchases come in response to the Trump administration’s announcement 10% tariff on an additional $300 billion of Chines imports earlier this month.

    China is also dealing with an unprecedented outbreak of African swine fever called “pig Ebola,” is ravaging the country’s pig industry through 2H19.

    About a quarter of the country’s pig herd has been wiped out because of the disease.

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    Due to trade war disputes, China slapped American pork with 62% tariffs.

    China’s agriculture complex is being hit with several disasters,  that if it wasn’t for the trade war, American farmers would be taking full advantage of. But you never know, China could get so desperate, because the last thing they need with Hong Kong spiraling out of control is food inflation.

  • Red Flag Laws (Or How To Repeal The Second Amendment Soviet-Style Without A Pesky Vote)

    Authored by John Wilder via WilderWealthyWise.com,

    “Now, you see all these red flags?  Trouble spots.  Southeastern Asia.  The Caribbean.  The Congo.  I’ll give you one guess as to who’s responsible.” – Doctor Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine

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    I look much better after I’ve had a cup of coffee.  And after I’ve found my axe.

    I know that you, gentle reader, have thoughts about guns that are probably pretty similar to mine, so I’d like to take you on a short walk through history, specifically the history of politics and psychiatry.  I promise, it will make more sense than the lyrics to the Manfred Mann song Blinded by the Light.  What the hell is a go-cart Mozart, and why is he checking out the weather chart, anyway?

    (Related:  Civil War Weather Reports – Civil War II Weather Report: Spicy Time Coming, Civil War Weather Report #2, Censorship, Stalin, and a Bunch of Links, and Civil War Weather Report #3: Violence, China, and Lots of Links)

    The history of psychiatry is tied directly to the political.

    I have seen a person suffering from schizophrenia to such a degree that they were sure that MTV® video stars were stealing songs directly from their brain and that they were also a surgeon who regularly performed operations on world leaders and stored their organs in the freezer for safe keeping.

    If no one has ever told you that there are human organs belonging to world leaders in their fridge in a completely matter-of-fact “would you like a glass of water” voice, well, all I can tell you is that my first thought was one of complete disbelief that I had heard them right.  Yes, I asked for them to repeat that statement.  Twice.

    I walked over and checked their freezer.   Thankfully the only things in it were some frozen pizzas and ancient ice cubes.  I assure you I was talking to their shrink that afternoon and they were involuntarily committed by 5PM.  They were helped, and after being put on some appropriately industrial levels of anti-psychotic medication, did okay enough to be released back into the wild.  As long as they stayed on their meds.

    I know that there are actually crazy people that really need help.

    But I also know this:  psychiatry is still the most politically abused medical profession.

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    Okay, if Depp isn’t crazy, why does he keep starring in movies like this? 

    Examples of political abuse of psychiatry?  There are many.  When I mentioned this topic to The Mrs., she immediately said, “the Soviet Union.”  And that’s the example I thought of first, too.  The Soviets systematically used diagnosis of psychological disorders such as “philosophical intoxication” and “sluggish schizophrenia” to put people who didn’t like Marxism into mental institutions.  And, no, those diagnoses aren’t lame jokes – those were really Soviet-era diagnoses.

    How many were caught up in the psychological gulags?

    We really don’t know since those records are still secret, but in 1978 at least 4.5 million Soviet citizens were listed as having mental health problems.  In 1988, perhaps thinking that they might face their own version of Soviet Nuremburg Trials for Crimes Against Humanity, Soviet leaders had over 800,000 thousand patients removed from the list of the mentally ill.  Paperwork error, surely?

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    Okay, with all those red flags, how did they not see the collapse of communism coming?

    Did the Soviets condemn thousands with false diagnosis?  Nearly certainly.  Hundreds of thousands?  Very likely.

    Millions?

    Probably.  Think of it, millions of people falsely diagnosed with a mental illness due to political beliefs and sent to asylums and work camps.  Certainly some were executed.

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    The Soviets allowed ownership of smoothbore weapons for hunting.  Except when they didn’t.  Which was most of the time.  Oh, and the definition of sweet summer child is:  a person who doesn’t know the hardships of winter, often used when someone has no experience with a particular (stressful) thing, which may describe a generation that rhymes with perennial.

    Okay, it was just the Soviet Union, right?

    No.  Cuba did the same thing.  There is evidence that China is still doing it, and likely on scale similar to that of the Soviet Union.  Thankfully the World Psychiatric Association took the lead in investigations.  Oh, they didn’t?  The World Psychiatric Association pretty much ignored it and said that people associated with Falun Gong are nuts and that putting them in asylums run by the state security apparatus (not the medical directorate) was perfectly normal?

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    One flew east, one flew west, one flew over the cuckoo’s nest . . . and if you haven’t see the movie, you should, it’s a lighthearted comedy and perfect for a first date.

    Okay, that’s just China.  Thankfully this would never happen in the United States.

    Oh, it did?

    Sure.  In the 1920’s dissidents (like one who protested the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti) were put into asylums.  In the 1960’s members of the American Psychological Association smeared presidential candidate Barry Goldwater in the press by diagnosing him.  But that wasn’t political, right?

    Thankfully it isn’t happening now.

    Oh, in 2012 a whistleblower with the NYPD was railroaded on mental health?  Ouch.  But New York is corrupt.

    It would never happen based on political motives, right?

    Dinesh D’Souza, author and filmmaker on the Right was convicted of a crime based on giving too much money to a political campaign.  He admitted he was wrong.  The Federal Judge involved in the case sentenced D’Souza not only to prison, he sentenced D’Souza to years of mental health counselling despite a licensed psychologist saying that D’Souza was just fine mentally.

    So, yes.  Psychiatry is a political weapon.  It’s not like the Left has sentenced political opponents to chemotherapy, but I hear that they’re working on it.

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    Yes, this is a common sense way to use psychiatry!

    This corrupt branch of medicine is the background of the Red Flag Laws.

    The idea is that we’ll create laws to remove rights from people without due process, with the presumption that individuals should lose a right guaranteed by the Constitution®.  A single accuser, with no evidence can result in gun confiscation to a law-abiding citizen.  Sadly this already happens – people with contested domestic restraining orders (a standard tactic in divorces nowadays) lose their rights, although I’ve heard of people fighting these orders and winning – at least there is a pretense at due process.

    The claim that the ability to strip people of rights won’t be abused is laughable.  In every country that’s been infected by psychiatry, it has been twisted to meet political ends.  Yes, there are crazy people.  I’ve seen one as I related above.  And, if you did a brain scan, there is a physical basis for schizophrenia.  It’s real.  It is a medical condition.  But remember, these are the same psychiatrists that would diagnose me as nuts if I believed I was be five years older than I really am, but are perfectly fine with children younger than the age of five claiming they are a different sex than their genetics have made them.

    Furthermore, the medical profession as a whole is maybe a bit, well, mental*.  In one study it was claimed that 50% of female doctors could be diagnosed with a mental disease.  I wonder again why my ex didn’t take up medicine?  (*Aesop LINK excluded, unless pimp-slapping in the comments section is classified as a mental disorder.)

    Oh, and psychologists have nearly the highest rates of suicide of any profession.  Yes, any profession, including the people who make balloon animals in Mauschwitz Disneyland® for chubby children with hands sticky from chocolate ice cream.  Perfectly stable.  And this is also the same profession whose international governing body (WPA) was just fine with political repression in the name of psychiatry.

    Besides being oppressive, the Red Flag laws would not have helped in latest shootings – these people lawfully and legally got their rifles. 

    But they will form the basis for taking away guns for…

    • Conspiracy Theories – Believing anything other than the Official Narrative® will become a basis for exclusion of lawful firearms ownership, despite the fact that throughout history, many conspiracy theories have been proven true. Google® MKULTRA.    That happened.  But the FBI® is now warning that you are a danger if you don’t believe the Official Narrative©.

    • Antisocial Behavior – Ever not want to hang around people? You’re antisocial, and that’s dangerous, citizen.  No AR for you!

    • Websites Visited – Going to unapproved sites? Thinking unapproved thoughts?  Glockblock™!

    • Comments Made When You Were 16 – Wow, did you really say that maybe the Crusades weren’t all bad? No pew-pew for you, hater.

    • Not Believing in the Easter Bunny Socialism – Well, I think I covered that above.

    The irony is this will have the impact of keeping people away from mental health professionals.  This will keep people from seeking help when they’re a little depressed, because the consequences of having a “health record” might prevent them from future opportunity – the only safe way to live life would be to stay away from health professionals – and not answer certain questions your M.D. might have for you with a polite BFYTW when asked why you’re not answering.  Oh, but that probably puts you on the antisocial list.

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    Texas may or may not be your cup of tea, but they certainly got some things right once upon a time.

    Psychiatry is on pretty iffy ground in many cases already.  As an experiment, a group of doctors sent people to a psychiatrist with one symptom – they heard a voice.  No other symptom.  They were perfectly normal, mentally healthy people.  In one case, the person was committed to a mental health facility (as I recall) for several weeks with zero symptoms.  I tried to look it up, but, surprise, most Google® searches right now link commitment to . . . violence.  Even that’s not a comfortable thought.

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    Soviet mental health nurse.  Not shown:  tenth guard, who is now an inmate.

    The single scariest thing to me is watching a human mind erode – what was once a rational human disappears.  It’s what makes (to me) zombies scary.  They look like humans.  They used to be a normal human.  But that rational human being is now gone, replaced by someone who has no real tie to reality while the external form remains.

    I realize that there is a time and a place for psychiatric care.

    But psychiatrists are already owned by the Left.  The Left sees you as crazy already.  The Left views your dissent from their agenda as a mental disorder, one punishable by death, if need be.

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    I’ll leave the last word to Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who is really pictured above while in the gulag:  “I’ll take Solzhenitsyn on Gun Control for $1000, Alex.  Oh, look – the Daily Double®!”

    “And how we burned in the camps later, thinking:  what would things have been like if every security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family?  Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?  [They] would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!  If . . . if . . . we didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation . . . .  We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

  • Iraq Accuses Pentagon Of "Extremely Exaggerating" Numbers Of ISIS Fighters

    The US Department of Defense Inspector General released a formal report last week which claimed ISIS retains between 14,000 and 18,000 members in Iraq and Syria, which Pentagon officials used to argue for a continuing US troops presence in Syria. They touted the report as “verification” that a US draw down in Syria had enabled a a resurgent ISIS.

    The Iraqi military, however, which partners with US forces, has rejected the report, calling it “extremely exaggerated”. 

    “The figure announced by the Pentagon is extremely exaggerated,” the spokesman for the Joint Operations Command, Brig. Gen. Yahya Rasool, said in a press statement, as quoted by Iraqi news agency Malouma and regional outlet Kurdistan24.

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    Shiite Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq near the border with Syria. Image source: Reuters

    The general added that Iraqi national forces are in their third and final phase of an operation meant to clean out final pockets of Islamic State sleeper cells. 

    Last Tuesday’s Pentagon report presented to Congress asserted that ISIS terrorists are “growing again in power” in Syria and Iraq, and painted a general picture that to the extent American troops leave the region, the Islamic State will correspondingly reestablish itself. 

    “Despite losing its territorial ‘caliphate,’ the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) solidified its insurgent capabilities in Iraq and was resurging in Syria this quarter,” the report says.

    It should be remembered that it’s precisely the same argument Syria hawks have repeatedly used to stymie previous plans voiced by President Trump to “bring the troops home”. Baghdad officials themselves have also increasingly seen little need for the unpopular US troops presence on Iraqi soil. 

    Like Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda in the post-9/11 years, the constantly inflated “ISIS threat” is the new bogeyman that keeps on giving: neocons and hawks will cling to it so long as in enables expanding American presence in the Middle East. 

  • Overstock CEO Turned Over Docs To DOJ "In Greatest Political Scandal In US History"

    Via SaraACarter.com,

    Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne delivered to the Department of Justice a number of documents, including emails and text messages, in April, regarding both the origins of the Russian investigation, and an FBI operation into Hillary Clinton with which he was personally involved during the first months of 2016, according to a U.S. official who spoke SaraACarter.com.

    Byrne has also confirmed the account.

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    Byrne claims the documents, which have not been made public and are currently under investigation by the DOJ, are allegedly communications he had with the FBI concerning both the Clinton investigation and the origins of the Russian investigation. SaraACarter.comdid not review the documents, which are now under review by law enforcement.

    He approached the DOJ and met with lawyers on April 5th and 30th. The first meeting was without counsel in Washington D.C. A source directly familiar with the interviews confirmed Byrne’s account of the meetings.

    DOJ officials said they could not comment on Byrne’s allegations.

    “I gave to the DOJ documents concerning both the origin of the Russian probe and the probe into Hillary Clinton, both of which I was involved in, and both of which turned out to be less about law enforcement than they were about political espionage,” Byrne told SaraACarter.com Monday.

    He noted that the communications will prove that the FBI also had an operation into Clinton Foundation that he was directly involved in.

    “This is going to become the greatest political scandal in US history,” he said.

    “If we survive it, and if Rule of Law returns to America, it will be due to one man: Bill Barr.”

    Several weeks ago, FBI officials told SaraACarter.com that they declined to comment on Byrne’s allegations.

    Byrne said the investigation into Clinton was one of the main reasons he came forward. This reporter first published Byrne’s story about his relationship with now convicted Russian gun right’s activist Maria Butina. She pleaded guilty in 2018 for failing to register as a foreign agent in the U.S. and is now serving out her sentence, which ends in October.

    Byrne’s claims regarding the Clinton Foundation investigation are not without parallel. According to numerous officials the FBI had an ongoing investigation. Whistleblower and former government informant William Campbell was interviewed in 2018, by bureau agents from the Little Rock, Arkansa’s field office. According to Campbell, who first spoke to this reporter in 2017, he was asked by FBI agents whether donations to the Clintons charitable organization from Russia were used to influence U.S. nuclear policy during the Obama Administration. Specifically, he was asked about the sale of 20 percent of Uranium One.

    As also reported in 2018, by John Solomon with The Hill, the “agents questioned him extensively about claims the Russians made to him that they had routed millions of dollars to an American lobbying firm in 2010 and 2011 with the expectation it would be used to help President Clinton’s charitable global initiative while major uranium decisions were pending before Hillary Clinton’s State Department.”

    Byrne, told SaraACarter.com that the FBI was also investigating Clinton’s charitable organizations in the first half of 2016, and that he was directly involved in one of the operations being conducted by the FBI. He did not give details regarding the operation saying but said it directly dealt with Clinton and whether or not there was pay for play.

    On Monday, Byrne appeared on Fox Business Network with David Asman, revealing his claims about the Clinton investigation.

    “I ended up in the center of the Russian and the Clinton investigations,” said Byrne.

    “I have all the answers. I have been sitting on them waiting for America to get there. Last summer I figured out… what they all are is all about political espionage. It had nothing to do with law enforcement, it was all political espionage. Here’s the bottom line. There is a deep state like a submarine lurking just beneath the waves of the periscope depth watching our shipping lanes. And a nuclear ice breaker called the USS Bill Barr has snuck up on them and is about to ram midship.”

    “That’s about to happen and I think we’re about to see the biggest scandal in American history as a result. But it was all political. Everything you think you know about Russia and Clinton investigations is a lie,” Byrne told Atman.

    “It’s all a cover-up. It was all political espionage.”

    Connecticut attorney John Durham, who has been appointed by Justice Department investigator Attorney General William Barr is probing the FBI’s handling of the investigation into Russia probe, and according to several sources is investigating the full extent of Byrne’s claims and the documentation he provided in April.

  • Morgan Stanley: The Bear Market Started In January 2018 And Is About To Get Worse

    One month after Morgan Stanley cut its allocation to stocks to the lowest on record, and less than two weeks after the bank’s chief equity strategist Michael Wilson laid out graphically why he thought stocks were about to crash just as the S&P was hitting new all time highs…

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    … Wilson was happy to take his victory lap and in a report this morning in which he declared that not only is “the bear alive and kicking”, with the S&P reversing perfectly off Morgan Stanley’s previous resistance level, and sliding more than half way to the current support of 2,700…

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    … but went on to say that the bear market actually started all the way back in late 2017 when the bull market for global equities ended, and has been drifting even lower since.

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    And while many market strategists have been fixated on the S&P 500 (the highest quality and most defensive equity market in the world) making new all-time highs this year, Wilson would point out that almost 80 percent of all major indices we track have not made new highs and are more than 10 percent below those highs. This, to the Morgan Stanley strategist, is a very different picture than what was observed in January 2018 when virtually every major equity index around the world was at an all-time high and overbought and why the bank made its call for a cyclical bear market to begin during 2018. Indeed, the chart above shows a striking difference between the 2016-17 period (a bull market) and then 2018-19, which to Wilson, “looks like an incomplete cyclical bear.” And no, the S&P 500 does not look much different, having gone nowhere since January 2018.

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    Other indicators seem to suggest that every burst of enthusiasm is nothing more than a squeeze in a sweeping bear. One is Morgan Stanley’s Equity Risk Indicator (ERI), a gauge of US equity market sentiment and positioning, which has not reached “exuberance” territory for 18 months.

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    As Wilson explains, “this trend is consistent with the persistently negative sentiment seen during the bear markets of 2008-2009 and 2015-2016 and helps to reinforce our view that we have been in a rolling bear market since early 2018.” A key difference between today’s environment and those periods is that the market has made multiple new highs since January 2018 while sentiment has been depressed. This reinforces the notion that, below the benchmark level, there has been little confidence, and returns have been difficult to generate. And as MS further notes, “the pessimistic sentiment/positioning environment we have been in is a reflection of the challenging asset allocation backdrop that has persisted since early 2018.”

    Wilson also finds it interesting that individual investor sentiment – as measured by the AAII Survey Bull vs. Bear Spread – has meaningfully diverged from consumer sentiment. Despite the fact that the market is still near all-time highs and consumer sentiment has remained elevated, individual investors have expressed a more pessimistic tone. This is in line with what MS has been pounding the table on in recent months, as the bank believes that “late 2017/early 2018 was the euphoric top for this cycle and do not expect… individual investor sentiment to return to euphoric levels for a sustained period of time before the end of this cycle.“

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    Curiously, it may have been none other than the Fed that vindicated the Morgan Stanley bearish call. As Wilson writes, explaining why he thought recently the S&P would fail to break out – as has been now confirmed – whereas many commentators have either blamed the Fed’s poor communication or the re-escalation of trade tensions, Morgan Stanley thinks it is more about the market simply focusing back on fundamentals and risks that were always there. And as noted on many prior occasions, a Fed pause is always bullish for stocks but once the Fed actually starts cutting rates, it typically spells trouble because cuts usually accompany the end of the cycle, not a mid cycle pause. All one has to do is look back at the last two cycles to see that once the Fed cut it did not bode well for equity markets.

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    That’s precisely what appears to be happening this time around…. but don’t blame the Fed: according to MS, Powell simply reversed his position over the past 9 months because the outlook for the economy, both here and abroad, deteriorated significantly, and as a result, Wilson believes that many investors are too complacent about the risks to the US economy from the ongoing corporate profits recession.

    While trade tensions are weighing on corporate confidence and the various Purchasing Manager Indices (PMIs), we think the deterioration in corporate profits and margins is the bigger driver.

    Indeed, after the Morgan Stanley Business Conditions Index plunged back in May, the outlook for corporate confidence and PMIs has failed to improve As the most recent Morgan Stanley Business Conditions Index (MSBCI) published last week revealed, after a snap back in June, it moved sharply lower again to the second-lowest reading since the last recession.

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    This is concerning because as we discussed two months ago, there is a very close relationship between the MSBCI and the PMIs. Worse, there is an even tighter relationship between the MSBCI Composite Index and FY2 earnings revisions – the two have a correlation around 80%. A quick look at the two series suggests downward earnings revisions have yet to bottom and may retest the lows of the 2015/16 global recession, and further deterioration in the MSBCI would suggest even more downside to earnings, which likely does not bode well for stocks in the near term.

    Of course, with both sentiment and earnings now likely to suffer continued downward pressure, it only underscore the Morgan Stanley proposition that a bear market started as long as two years ago.  Indeed, when looking at the US markets alone, the S&P 600 (small caps) and S&P 400 (mid caps) have both failed to make new highs this year and are both more than 10 percent below those levels from last September. The same is true for the even broader Value Line Index.

    Meanwhile, only 5 out of the 11 S&P 500 sectors have made new highs this year, 3 of which are defensive (Utilities, Staples, and REITs). The other 2 are Technology and Consumer Discretionary, and while growth potential for many companies in the Technology sector is clear, the potential for most stocks in Consumer Discretionary is less clear. The sector’s performance has also been skewed by Amazon, which is more a technological disrupter than a good read on the consumer.

    * * *

    But perhaps the most convincing evidence for those who question if we are still in the midst of a cyclical bear market – according to Wilson – is the fact that long-term Treasury bonds have defeated the best equity market in the world over the past 18 months, especially since September. The technical pattern in the chart below looks incomplete, suggesting further downside to come for the S&P 500 versus long-term Treasuries. However, on a longer-term basis, this relationship holding the uptrend supports a somewhat more optimistic view that a long-tailed secular bull is still intact, even if we are still working through a cyclical bear market in that larger context. The question then is whether bonds will outperforming equities to such an extent that the red support line is breached, in which case the support for a secular bull market will slowly fade away as the Albert Edwards “Ice Age” takes its place.

    In any event, as the MS strategist notes, “we suspected this bear market would be an unsatisfying one – to the bears – as it often feels like a bull market even if the sector leadership and breadth doesn’t support the claim we are in a bull market.”

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    So in conclusion to its latest bearish screed, Morgan Stanley repeats that its point is that “the rolling bear is still alive and kicking, leaving the average index and stock still well below its highs from last year.” As a result, it makes sense for investors to have crowded into defensive and growth areas in the presence of rapidly decelerating economic growth. And while Wilson and his colleagues have leaned defensively in their sector recommendations, they remain skeptical that “this rolling bear market is finished and think it will complete much like the first wave did last year – meaning many growth areas may be vulnerable.”

  • Everyone's A Conspiracy Theorist, Whether They Know It Or Not

    Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

    Plutocratic propaganda outlet MSNBC has just run a spin segment on the breaking news that the medical examiner’s determination of the cause of Jeffrey Epstein’s death is “pending further information”.

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    “Our sources are still saying that it looks like suicide, and this is going to set conspiracy theorists abuzz I fear,” said NBC correspondent Ken Dilanian.

    “NBC News has been hearing all day long that there are no indications of foul play, and that this looks like a suicide and that he hung himself in his cell.”

    Dilanian, who stumbled over the phrase “conspiracy theorists” in his haste to get it in the first soundbyte, is a known asset of the Central Intelligence Agency. This is not a conspiracy theory, this is a well-documented fact. A 2014 article in The Intercept titled “The CIA’s Mop-Up Man” reveals email exchanges obtained via Freedom of Information Act request between Dilanian and CIA public affairs officers which “show that Dilanian enjoyed a closely collaborative relationship with the agency, explicitly promising positive news coverage and sometimes sending the press office entire story drafts for review prior to publication.” There is no reason to give Dilanian the benefit of the doubt that this cozy relationship has ended, so anything he puts forward can safely be dismissed as CIA public relations.

    When I mentioned Dilanian’s CIA ties on MSNBC’s Twitter video, MSNBC deleted their tweet and then re-shared it without mentioning Dilanian’s name. Here is a screenshot of the first tweet followed by an embedded link to their current one (which I’ve archived just in case):

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    Up until the news broke that Epstein’s autopsy has been unable to readily confirm suicide, mass media headlines everywhere have been unquestioningly blaring that that was known to have been the cause of the accused sex trafficker’s death. This despite the fact that the FBI’s investigation has been explicitly labeling it an “apparent suicide”, and despite the fact that Epstein is credibly believed to have been involved in an intelligence-tied sexual blackmail operation involving many powerful people, any number of whom stood plenty to gain from his death.

    So things are moving in a very weird way, and people are understandably weirded out. The response to this from mass media narrative managers has, of course, been to berate everyone as “conspiracy theorists”.

    “Jeffrey Epstein: How conspiracy theories spread after financier’s death” reads a BBC headline.

    “Epstein Suicide Conspiracies Show How Our Information System Is Poisoned” reads one from the New York Times.

    “Conspiracy Theories Fly Online in Wake of Epstein Death” warns The Wall Street Journal.

    “Financier Epstein’s Death Disappoints Victims, Launches Conspiracy Theories” reads the headline from US government-funded Voice of America.

    These outlets generally match Dilanian’s tone in branding anyone who questions the official story about Epstein’s death as a raving lunatic. Meanwhile, normal human beings all across the political spectrum are expressing skepticism on social media about the “suicide” narrative we’re all being force-fed by the establishment narrative managers, many of them prefacing their skepticism with some variation on the phrase “I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but…”

    “I’m not a conspiracy theorist but there are an awful lot of very powerful people who would like to see this Epstein thing go away. Is anyone investigating the guard on duty?” tweeted actor Patricia Heaton.

    “I am not into conspiracy theories. But Epstein had destructive information on an extraordinary number of extraordinarily powerful people. It is not easy to commit suicide in prison. Especially after being placed on suicide watch. Especially after already allegedly trying,” tweeted public defender Scott Hechinger.

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    Journalist Abi Wilkinson summed up the silliness of this widespread preface very nicely, tweeting, “‘“I’m not a conspiracy theorist’ is such a weird assertion when you think about it, the idea there’s a binary between believing all conspiracies and flat out rejecting the very concept of conspiracy in all circumstances.”

    Indeed, I think it’s fair to say that everyone is a conspiracy theorist if they’re really honest with themselves.

    Not everyone believes that the official stories about 9/11 and the JFK assassination are riddled with plot holes or what have you, but I doubt that anyone who really sat down and sincerely grappled with the question “Do powerful people conspire?” would honestly deny it. Some are just more self-aware than others about the self-evident reality that powerful people conspire all the time, and it’s only a question of how and with whom and to what extent.

    The word “conspire” is defined by Merriam-Webster as “to join in a secret agreement to do an unlawful or wrongful act or an act which becomes unlawful as a result of the secret agreement”. No sane person would deny that this is a thing that happens, nor that this is likely a thing that happens to some extent among the powerful in their own nation. This by itself is a theory about conspiracy per definition, and it accurately applies to pretty much everyone. Since it applies to pretty much everyone, the label is essentially meaningless, either as a pejorative or as anything else.

    The meaningless of the term has been clearly illustrated by Russiagate, whose adherents react with sputtering outrage whenever anyone points out that they’re engaged in a conspiracy theory, despite the self-evident fact that that’s exactly what it is: a theory about a band of powerful Russian conspirators conspiring with the highest levels of the US government. Their objection is not due to a belief that they’re not theorizing about a conspiracy, their objection is due to the fact that a highly stigmatized label that they’re accustomed to applying to other people has been applied to them. The label is rejected because its actual definition is ignored to the point of meaninglessness.

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    The problem has never been with the actual term “conspiracy theory”; the problem has been with its deliberate and completely meaningless use as a pejorative. The best way to address this would be a populist move to de-stigmatize the label by taking ownership of it. Last month Cornell University professor Dave Callum tweeted, “I am a ‘conspiracy theorist’. I believe men and women of wealth and power conspire. If you don’t think so, then you are what is called ‘an idiot’. If you believe stuff but fear the label, you are what is called ‘a coward’.” This is what we all must do. The debate must be forcibly moved from the absurd question of whether or not conspiracies are a thing to the important question of which conspiracy theories are valid and to what degree.

    And we should probably hurry. Yahoo News reported earlier this month that the FBI recently published an intelligence bulletin describing “conspiracy theory-driven domestic extremists” as a growing threat, and this was before the recent spate of US shootings got establishment narrative-makers pushing for new domestic terrorism laws.

    This combined with the fact that we can’t even ask questions about extremely suspicious events like Jeffrey Epstein’s death without being tarred with this meaningless pejorative by the mass media thought police means we’re at extreme risk of being shoved into something far more Orwellian in the near future.

    *  *  *

    The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone, or my previous book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish or use any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.

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  • Huge Blast At Pro-Iran Militia Base Rips Through Baghdad Near 'Green Zone'

    Billows of smoke and fire are rising above Baghdad’s skyline after a massive explosion has reportedly engulfed a weapons depot said to be controlled by a pro-Iranian militia in the Iraqi capital. 

    Stunning footage of the explosion’s aftermath in Dora neighborhood is circulating, which is not far from the sprawling US embassy, which has itself over the past months been targeted in sporadic mortar attacks. 

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    According to The Times of Israel, “Local media reports that the weapons storehouse is owned by the Sayyid of Martyrs Battalions, an Iraqi Shiite militia supported by Tehran.”

    Unconfirmed reports suggest the weapons storage facility may have been targeted by ISIS terror cells.

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    Locals are currently evacuating the area as ammunition explodes in the early evening sky, sending rockets and projectiles flying in all directions and into residential homes.

    Sky News Arabia reported that incoming mortar shells set off sirens in the area around the US embassy in Baghdad, known as the Green Zone. — Times of Israel

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    Officials with the Baghdad Operations Command posted a social media statement saying  “explosion occurred because of the piling up of ammunition inside the Saqr military base in southern Baghdad.”

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    Sirens are going off, with further reports that shells have possibly landed at the US diplomatic compound in the city.

    A giant mushroom shaped cloud of black smoke can currently be observed hanging over the southern part of Baghdad. Videos show scenes of what sounds like a war zone.

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    developing…

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