- 'Fake' Saudi Prince Busted After Being Caught Eating Pork
A confidence man who defrauded victims of millions of dollars while posing as a Saudi Prince was exposed after a Miami hotelier witnessed the imposter royal – supposedly a devout Muslim – eating pork during their meetings, according to RT.
The man was, in fact, Anthony Gignac, a Colombian scam artist known for targeting wealthy real estate developers while working under the alias ‘Sultan Bin Khalid Al-Saud’ as he finagled gifts worth around $50,000 from Jeffrey Soffer, the owner of the iconic Fontainebleau resort hotel on Miami Beach.
Soffer was reportedly negotiating with the fictional prince and several co-conspirators about a deal in which the prince would purchase a 30% stake in his hotel in return for a $440 million investment. During their negotiations, which went on for months, the 47-year-old Gignac stayed in the hotel. He was known for driving expensive cars bearing diplomatic plates, which he had apparently purchased on eBay.
Gignac reportedly flew Soffer to Aspen on a private jet in August to discuss the deal. Once there, Soffer gave the fraudster a gift of a Cartier bracelet worth tens of thousands of dollars. But Soffer said he only handed over the gift because it had been demanded by one of Gignac’s associates because “the honor of the Sultan had been questioned.”
Gignac was found out after Gignac was spotted eating pork during a meal – which should be against the religion of a devout Muslim. Soffer reported Gignac to the FBI, which opened an investigation. Gignac was arrested in November after being caught traveling from London to New York using a passport under a different name.
It’s believed that the hotelier was one of 24 victims of Gignac’s scam, which he operated over 20 years. His scam even involved a fake instagram account, which featured photos of luxury goods and hotel rooms.
The accused con man is being held in Miami and facing charges of impersonating a foreign official, identity theft and fraud.
- European Powers Prepare To Ditch Dollar In Trade With Iran
Authored by Elliot Gabriel via MintPressNews.com,
While the White House’s frenzied anti-Iran campaign has entailed unprecedented attempts to twist the arms of the United States’ traditional European allies, the pressure may be backfiring – a reality made all the more clear by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s claims that Europe’s three major powers plan to continue trade ties with Iran without the use of the U.S. dollar.
The move would be a clear sign that the foremost European hegemons – France, Germany, and the United Kingdom – plan to protect the interests of companies hoping to do business with Iran, a significant regional power with a market of around 80 million people.
Lavrov’s statement came as Trump insisted that European companies would “absolutely” face sanctions in the aftermath of Washington’s widely-derided sabotage of the six-party Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). On May 8, the former host of NBC’s “The Apprentice” blasted the agreement and said that the U.S. would reinstate nuclear sanctions on Iran and “the highest level” of economic bans on the Islamic Republic.
Speaking in Vienna at the ministerial meeting of the JCPOA, Lavrov blasted the U.S. move as “a major violation of the agreed-upon terms which actually made it possible to significantly alleviate tensions from the point of view of the military and political situation in the region and upholding the non-proliferation regime.” He added that “Iran was meticulously fulfilling its obligations” at the time that Trump destroyed the U.S.’ end of the agreement.
Continuing, Lavrov explained:
The Joint Commission… will be constantly reviewing options which will make it possible, regardless of the US decision, to continue to adhere to all commitments undertaken within the JCPOA framework and provide methods for conducting trade and economic relations with Iran which will not depend on Washington’s whims.
What they can do is to elaborate collectively and individually such forms of trade and settlements with Iran that will not depend on the dollar and will be accepted by those companies that see trade with Iran more profitable than with the US. Such companies certainly exist – small, medium and large.”
Lavrov noted that the move wasn’t so much meant to “stand up for Iran” but to ensure the economic interests and political credibility of the European signatories to the accord. The Russian top diplomat added that large firms such as Total, Peugeot and Renault have already departed the country, having analyzed the situation and decided that the U.S. market is of far more vital importance.
France, Germany and the U.K. have pleaded with the “America First” president to exempt EU companies, writing a letter to U.S. Secretary-Treasurer Steve Mnuchin and right-wing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that the nuclear accord remains the “best means” to prevent Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear deterrent given the lack of any credible alternative. Given the hard-line stances of Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton, the pleas were likely greeted with bemusement.
The opening salvo or “snap-back” of sanctions hitting Iran’s automotive sector, gold trade, and other industries will hit the country on August 4, while further sanctions will hit the country’s oil industry and central bank on November 6.
Signaling the likelihood of major clashes to come, Lavrov noted:
Everyone agrees that [stepped-up U.S. sanctions on Iran] is an absolutely illegitimate practice. It cannot be accepted as appropriate, but it is a policy that can hardly be changed. Severe clashes are expected in the trade, economic and political spheres.”
Patience reaches its limits on all sides
A blistering recent speech by German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas signaled the European exasperation with Trump’s go-it-alone policies, which have largely seen the U.S. break from its transatlantic partners while pursuing what he called an “egoistic policy of ‘America First’” in relation to the Paris Climate Agreements, Iran nuclear deal, and introduction of tariffs and other protectionist measures.
The May 12, 2018 cover of the German weekly, Der Spiegel.
Maas further questioned the continued viability of the transatlantic partnership:
Old pillars of reliability are crumbling under the weight of new crises and alliances dating back decades are being challenged in the time it takes to write a tweet … the Atlantic has become wider under President Trump and his policy of isolationism has left a giant vacuum around the world.”
He added:
The urgency with which we must pool Europe’s strength in the world is greater than ever before … our common response to ‘America First’ today must be ‘Europe United!’”
Highlighting how “the Trump administration’s conduct is posing completely new challenges to Europe,” the German foreign minister noted that the White House now “overtly calls [European] values and interests into question,” requiring a more robust and assertive stance – and “the first test of this approach will be the nuclear agreement with Iran.”
While such talk surely signals major tensions between the allies, Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization director Ali Akbar Salehi offered caustic words stressing Iran’s doubt in Europe’s ability to follow through with its independent foreign policy, stating:
Iran understands that Europe and the United States are strategic partners, but they are not lovers who share the same bed … European independence vis-a-vis the US is under threat. In the eyes of the whole world, Europe has become the U.S.’ lackey.
We are faced with an American administration whose decisions have left the world in shock.
Mr. Trump is punishing foreign companies that do business with us and threatening countries that buy our petrol. He’s after fast results. But the EU, Russia and China didn’t expect to be put under so much pressure.
The EU is still under shock. The bloc is like a boxer that has been hit with an uppercut. It needs time to pull itself together.”
Despite Trump’s self-reported success at the two-day summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Iranians and Europeans alike are hoping that EU leaders can finally put their money where their mouth is and unshackle themselves from the U.S.-imposed hegemonic bondage constraining them since the end of the Second World War.
- Majority Of Russians Believe Shadowy Global Government Exists
An overwhelming majority of Russians believe that a shadowy one-world government exists – and that it’s hostile to the Russian nation, RT reported. State-run Russian public opinion research agency VTSIOM released the results of a poll in which 67% of Russian citizens said they believe there is a secret world government, while 21% said they don’t believe in the idea of a one-world government. the rest were undecided.
That marks a significant increase from two years ago, when only 45% of Russians said they believed in the existence of a global shadow government, while over 30% rejected the idea. The survey also showed that the percentage of people who believe in the one-world government is higher among older adults (over 70% said they believed in it) but even among people aged 18-34, more than half (55%) believed in it. About one-third of believers said they didn’t have any evidence to support the existence of a one-world government. Those who did cite evidence mostly pointed to the existence of supranational organizations like the UN and NATO – or referenced TV shows or popular culture.
Remarkably, around 74% of those who believe said they think the one-world government is hostile toward Russia, while only 10% said it acts in Russia’s best interest. Asked about who they believe to be a part of the one-world government, 23% of believers cited the heads of major banks and other oligarchs. Eight percent said the government is led by senior politicians. Only 2% said they believe Vladimir Putin is a member. And less than 1% said they believe Donald Trump is a member.
Another poll conducted by VTSIOM in April showed that 49 percent of Russians consider their country to be a great world power, down from 57 percent a year ago. However, about one-third told researchers that they expect Russia to become a leading world nation over the next 10 to 15 years. When asked what makes Russia strong and respected, 26% said the military, 22% said “the strong spirit and will of the Russian people,” and 17% attributed Russia’s success to the “good and powerful president” Vladimir Putin.
- Paul Craig Roberts: The View Of Russia From The West
Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,
The upcoming Trump/Putin summit is hampered by the crazed portrait of Russia painted by presstitutes.
Jonathan Chait, Amy Knight, Max Bergmann, Yaroslav Trofimov, Roger Cohen, and the rest of the conscious or de facto CIA assets that comprise the Western presstitute media have turned Putin into a superhuman who controls election outcomes throughout the West, murders people without rhyme or reason, and has President Trump under his thumb doing Putin’s bidding. Who could imagine a more extreme conspiracy theory?
Jonathan Chait in New York magazine writes that “the dark crevices of the Russia scandal run deep,” so deep that “it would be dangerous not to consider the possibility that the summit is less a negotiation between two heads of state than a meeting between a Russian-intelligence asset and his handler.”
So here is Chait, who brands truth-tellers “conspiracy theorists” coming up with the greatest conspiracy theory of our time that President Trump has been a Kremlim asset since 1987. Chait provides a ”crazy quilt of connections” to illustrate his absurd conspiracy theory that
“it’s not necessary to believe that Putin always knew he might install Trump in the Oval Office to find the following situation highly plausible: Sometime in 2015, the Russian president recognized that he had, in one of his unknown number of intelligence files, an inroad into American presidential politics.”
Chait believes that Russia is also behind the UK’s exit from the European Union.
“Driving Britain out of the European Union advanced the decades-long Russian goal of splitting Western nations apart, and Russia found willing allies on the British far right.”
Chait gets even more conspiratorial. He admits that Paul Manafort’s indictments for alleged white collar crimes are not related to Trump’s election, having occurred years previously in Ukraine. Nevertheless, Chait is certain that Manafort is shielding Trump even though according to Chait Manafort is facing many years in prison. Why would Manafort shield Trump? Chait’s answer:
“One way to make sense of his behavior is the possibility that Manafort is keeping his mouth shut because he’s afraid of being killed. That speculation might sound hyperbolic, but there is plenty of evidence to support it. In February, a video appeared on YouTube showing Manafort’s patron Deripaska on his yacht with a Belarusian escort named Anastasia Vashukevich.”
Chait’s article is long and heavily weighted with innuendo. Chait, or whoever wrote the article, possibly the person who wrote the Steele Dossier, collects every disparaging fact and fantasy about Trump and assembles them in a way to paint a portrait of a person who must also, without much doubt, be a Russian agent. If the public can be convinced of this, the military/security complex can assassinate Trump and blame Putin for getting rid of an asset who was exposed by the Russiagate investigation, no longer useful, and perhaps prepared to spill the beans.
Another conspiracy theorist, Amy Knight, writes that “The real question is where does the Russian criminal state end and the criminal underworld begin, and how do they work together in what amounts to a new murder incorporated?”
Yaroslav Trofimov tells us in the Wall Street Journal (July 7) that:
“Putin maps out his own empire” to replace the lost Soviet one.
In the Washington Post Max Bergmann tells us that Trump is going to sell out NATO in Helsinki.
This line leads to the supposition that Putin is using Trump to unleash the Russian military on Europe.
Many conspiracy theorists have come together on the view that first the Baltic States will be invaded and then Putin will move on to Germany and the rest of Europe.
The New York Times’ Roger Cohen even pulls Marine Le Pen into the plot which widens to include ethnically cleansing the West of the refugees from Washington’s wars.
This is the level of absurdity that the American media delivers to the public’s understanding of foreign affairs.
- "These Problems Aren't Going Away" – States Are Woefully Unprepared For The Next Recession
It’s no secret that the finances of most US states are in shambles. For many, overly generous pension benefits have led to severe underfunding that threatens to drain state coffers, like in Illinois, where pension liabilities ballooned by a cumulative 1,067% between 1987 and 2016 while revenues for the state’s general fund rose just 236% during that time.
While regular readers are no doubt acquainted with our musings on the looming pension crisis (a problem that is increasingly global in scope), the Wall Street Journal has apparently only just stumbled on to the story, writing in a story entitled “Many States Are Likely Unprepared for Next Downturn” that “many US states have been slow to improve their finances nine years into the economic expansion. That raises a risk they won’t be prepared when another downturn hits, making them susceptible to big spending cuts that make the next recession worse.”
The problem for most states is that aging populations mean that more money is being spent on medicaid and pensions while revenues have largely been stagnant. And while a booming economy might temporarily boost revenues, “some of these longer-term pressures are definitely not going away,” said Gabriel Petek, managing director at S&P Global Ratings.
An aging population is also putting pressure on state Medicaid budgets and pension funds. State pension contributions were 78% higher in 2017 than in 2010, according to census data. And state Medicaid payments were 59% higher in 2016 than in 2010, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Many US states have depleted or nearly depleted emergency funds. With some states like Oklahoma having only 1.6% of expenditures in their rainy day funds.
Measured as a share of spending, 21 states had smaller rainy day funds in 2017 than they did in 2008, according to data from the National Association of State Budget Officers compiled by the Tax Policy Center.
[…]
North Dakota had only 1.5% of its expenditures in a rainy-day fund in the 2017 fiscal year, down from 16.6% in 2008. Oklahoma’s rainy day fund had 1.6%, down from 9.3%. New Jersey emptied its rainy day fund in 2009 and has yet to begin refilling it.
Many states also have lower credit ratings now than they did during the crisis, which will raise the cost of borrowing during a recession.
Many states governments have seen their bond ratings downgraded during this expansion for not taking the appropriate measures to get their fiscal houses in order. Eleven states have lower bond ratings than they did in 2010 while only five have higher ratings, according to Moody’s Investors Service. Fitch Ratings lists seven states with worse ratings and six with better ones since the recession. And analysts at S&P Global rate 12 states lower than in 2010 and 10 states higher.
“It’s very important in our view that during the good times the states should be building up their fiscal resilience and that really stands out as an area that’s been lacking throughout this recovery,” said Gabriel Petek, managing director at S&P Global Ratings.
At stake are widely used public services like roads, police and schools. A recent Supreme Court ruling requiring online retailers to pay state sales tax could help boost revenues while a Trump’s tax plan will help raise taxable income in some states. But with President Trump’s trade war threatening to hammer agricultural states (which could seriously impact nationwide GDP figures), states are finding themselves in a tough spot. Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren explains, US states are simply referring to do what needs to be done to prepare for the next recession. “There are levers that all the states could think about in terms of preparing for the next economic downturn,” Rosengren said. “It doesn’t seem like there is that much movement in that direction right now in many states.”
- China Has Been Preparing For A Trade War For Over A Decade
Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,
The crash of 2008 brought with it a host of strange economic paradigms rarely if ever seen in history; paradigms which have turned normal fiscal analysis on its head. While some core fundamentals remain the same no matter what occurs, the reporting of this data has been deliberately skewed to hide the truth.
But what is the truth? Well, at bottom, the truth is that most economies around the world are far weaker than the picture governments and central banks have painted. This is especially true for the United States.
That said, one country has been pursuing an opposite strategy for many years now — meaning, it has been hiding its economic preparedness more than its weaknesses. I am of course speaking of China.
When we mention China in the world of alternative analysis, several issues always arise: China’s expanding debt burden, government spending on seemingly useless infrastructure programs like “ghost cities,” China’s central bank and its corporate subset misreporting financial figures regularly, etc. All of these things fuel the notion that when a global fiscal disaster inevitably takes place, it will emanate first from China. They also give the American public the false impression that a trade war against China will be easily won and that China will immediately falter under the weight of its own veiled instabilities.
However, if one actually studies China’s behavior and activities the past decade, they would see a method to the apparent madness.
In fact, some of China’s actions seem to suggest that the nation has been preparing for years for the exact geopolitical conditions we see today. It’s as if someone warned them ahead of time…
In terms of prepping for a trade war with the U.S., China has implemented several important steps. For example, for at least the past 10 years the country has been shifting away from a pure export economy and reducing its reliance on sales of goods to the U.S. In 2018, Chinese consumer purchases of goods are expected to surpass that of American consumers. For the past five years, domestic consumption in China accounted for between 55% to 65% of economic growth, and private consumption was the primary driver of the Chinese economy — NOT exports.
The argument that China is somehow dependent on U.S. markets and consumers in order to keep its economy alive is simply a lie. China is now just as enticing a retail market as the U.S., and its domestic market can pick up some of the slack in the event that U.S. markets are suddenly closed to Chinese exports.
The problem of swiftly growing Chinese debt is presented often as the key argument against the nation surviving a global economic reset or trade war, with its “shadow banking” system threatening to unleash a long hidden credit crisis and stock market plunge. But this is not the complete story.
The exact amount of fiat printing that China’s central bank undertook after the 2008 crash is not known. Some estimates calculate China’s debt to now sit at around 250% of its gross domestic product. By normal standards this would suggest a credit crisis is imminent. But was China’s sudden interest in debt expansion a reactionary matter, or was it part of a bigger plan?
Just after 2008, a common argument against China’s resilience was the notion that China was dependent on holding U.S. dollar reserves in order to keep its own currency weak. Meaning, Chinese companies had to sell goods to the U.S. in exchange for dollars, which they then exchanged to the central bank for Yuan. China’s central bank then held those trillions of dollars in reserve as a means to keep the dollar artificially stronger on the global market, and the Yuan weaker, thus supporting and perpetuating the old export model.
Obviously this argument is no longer applicable, or outright absurd.
China’s own debt expansion and Treasury bond issuance actually started way back in 2005 under the “Panda Bond” program. At the time it was treated like a novelty or a joke by the mainstream economic community. Today, it is a powerhouse as Yuan denominated assets are spreading around the world.
China no longer needs to hold dollars or dollar denominated assets in order to keep its currency weaker for export markets. It can simply inflate and monetize its own debt, just like the U.S. does. But why would China bother to do this at all? Why jump into the same debt game that has caused so much trouble for western nations?
Perhaps because they know something we don’t. During the initial phase of the derivatives crisis, the possibility of China joining the International Monetary Fund’s Special Drawing Rights basket leaped to the forefront. With the Yuan as an SDR basket member, its potential to become a financial center for global trade rather than just an export and import hub would be assured. But the IMF set certain requirements before China could join. One of these requirements was far greater currency liquidity and a more “freely usable” Yuan market. In other words, for China to join the SDR basket they would first need to go into considerable debt.
This is exactly what they did; not to prop up their banking system (though this made for a valid excuse) or to necessarily prop up their stock markets. Rather, China wanted a seat at the table of the “new world order,” and they bought that seat through massive debt expansion. China was officially included in the SDR basket in 2016.
China has been a very vocal proponent of the SDR basket system, and it becomes clear why if you understand what the globalists intend for the future of the world’s monetary framework. This plan was first outlined in the globalist controlled Economist magazine in 1988 in an article calling for the beginnings of a global currency in 2018. The article states that the U.S. economy and the role of the dollar as world reserve would have to be diminished, and that the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights basket could be used as a bridge to set up a single currency for all the world’s economies.
This currency would of course be administered and controlled by the banking elites at the IMF.
Since 2009, China’s central bank has called for the SDR to become a “super-sovereign reserve currency,” in other words, a global currency system. In 2017, the vice governor of China’s central bank stated that central banks should increase their use of the SDR as a unit of account and that greater SDR liquidity should be encouraged. In 2015, China’s central bank suggested that the SDR system should “go digital,” creating a digital version of the reserve so that it could spread quickly.
It should come as no surprise that the IMF is in full agreement with this plan and has even suggested in recent articles on its website that cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology are the future evolution of the monetary system.
Notorious globalist George Soros revealed a few darker details of what the IMF calls the “global economic reset” in an interview in 2009; these details included a diminished American economy, a diminished dollar and for China to become a new economic engine for the world.
Finally, China has clearly been prepping for a considerable crisis in the dollar or in the world’s economic stability as shown in its sudden and aggressive stockpiling of gold reserves the past decade. Only recently surpassed by Russia in purchases, China is one of the most aggressive national buyers of gold. An expanding gold stockpile would be an effective hedge against a collapsing dollar market. If the dollar loses its world reserve status, nations like China and Russia are placed well to mitigate the damages. Considering the fact that the IMF officially holds around 3,000 tons of gold, the globalists are also well placed for a dollar crash.
It would appear that China has been included at many levels in the plan for the global reset. All of the previously mentioned actions suggest foreknowledge of a dramatic shift in the dollar model. The trade war itself provides perfect cover for the economic reset, as I have been warning in my latest articles. China would play an important role in the reset, as they have the ability to dump U.S. Treasuries and the dollar as world reserve, causing a chain reaction through global markets as their trading partners follow along in a domino chain.
They will likely do this quietly (as Russia recently did), in order to pawn off their T-bond holdings before news of a Treasury dump hits the mainstream. The primary beneficiaries of this act will be the globalists, while China has placed itself to survive (not necessarily to thrive) during the chaos. The same cannot necessarily be said for the U.S., which suffers from the Achilles Heel of total dependency on the dollar’s primacy.
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- DARPA's Secretive "Phantom Express" Hypersonic Spaceplane Passes Key Test
DARPA selected the Boeing Company in May 2017 to complete advanced design work for the Agency’s Experimental Spaceplane (XS-1) program, which intends to develop and fly the first of an entirely new class of hypersonic spacecraft that would bolster national security by providing short-notice, low-cost satellite launches into low Earth Orbit (LEO).
“The XS-1 would be neither a traditional airplane nor a conventional launch vehicle but rather a combination of the two, with the goal of lowering launch costs by a factor of ten and replacing today’s frustratingly long wait time with launch on demand,” Jess Sponable, DARPA program manager, said during a press conference in May 2017. “We’re very pleased with Boeing’s progress on the XS-1 through Phase 1 of the program and look forward to continuing our close collaboration in this newly funded progression to Phases 2 and 3—fabrication and flight.”
With XS-1 Phase 1 recently completed, it seems as DARPA has transitioned into XS-1 Phase 2, which includes design, construction, and testing of the technology demonstration vehicle through 2019. It also calls for test firing the vehicle’s engine on the ground ten times in 10 days to demonstrate propulsion readiness for flight tests, which was just completed on July 06 by Aerojet, Boeing, and DARPA.
Aerojet Rocketdyne’s AR-22 rocket engine fires during a test at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. (Source: NASA / DARPA Photo)
Technicians inspect the AR-22 rocket engine after a hot-fire test. (Source: NASA / DARPA Photo)
Aerojet Rocketdyne successfully test-fired its AR-22 rocket engine an unprecedented ten times in 240 hours at NASA Stennis Space Center last week, demonstrating just how quick the launch vehicle, dubbed the Phantom Express, can be reloaded with fuel and relaunched.
Why focus on relaunching spaceplanes at a moments notice? Well, the Pentagon sees a shooting conflict on the horizon, and it is not on land, but instead in LEO.
To combat such a threat, President Trump recently declared the ‘Space Force’ as the sixth branch of the United States Armed Force. Coincidence? Not at all.
XS-1 Phantom Express (Source: NASA / DARPA Photo)
“Aerojet Rocketdyne has continued to refine the reusable engine technology we originally developed for the Space Shuttle program,” said Eileen Drake, Aerojet Rocketdyne CEO and president.
“With the AR-22 we are taking reusability to the next level and have demonstrated that daily, affordable access to space is within reach,” she said.
“Phantom Express is a disruptive, reusable launch system. Successfully completing this highly demanding rocket engine test series validated a new level of booster capability for this transformational launch vehicle,” continued Drake.
“Turning the AR-22 within 24 hours repeatedly over 10 days demonstrates the capability of this engine and the ability to enable rapid, responsive access to space,” she added.
Thanks to the successful test, the Phantom Express program is on track for XS-1 Phase 3, which includes 12 to 15 flight tests, currently scheduled for 2020/21. After multiple shakedown flights to decrease risk, the XS-1 would aim to fly 10 times over ten consecutive days, at first without payloads. If successful, subsequent flights could send the hypersonic spaceplane to Mach 10 and deliver a payload between 900 pounds and 3,000 pounds into LEO.
DARPA TV: Experimental Spaceplane (XS-1) Phase 2/3 Concept Video
Last week, DARPA director Steve Walker visited NASA Stennis Space Center to watch one of the engine tests. He praised the team of researchers on their support of national security, highlighting their frequency of tests was impressive.
The ten test firings took place in a test period conducted between June 26 and July 6.
“Aerojet Rocketdyne is very proud to have such an important role in a program that could literally revolutionize space access with a vehicle capable of launching on a daily basis,” Drake said.
“With the Defense Department and commercial sector anticipating a shift toward constellations of smaller satellites that can be replenished quickly, the Phantom Express is the right program at the right time for the nation,” Drake added.
The Phantom Express is designed to launch vertically and land horizontally to allow the quickest return to home. The spaceplane boosts the Pentagon’s mission of space domination, similar to the White House’s recent communique. The reusable hypersonic spaceplane should be capable of delivering 3,000 pounds of payload to LEO at the cost of less than $5 million a flight. Those performance levels represent a “sweet spot” for the Pentagon as well as commercial applications, said Scott Wierzbanowski, DARPA’s program manager for the Experimental Spaceplane.
Could the Phantom Express hypersonic spaceplane be one of the first aircraft commissioned for space wars under President Trump’s new Space Force?
- America's Addictions – Opioids, Donald Trump, And War
Authored by Tom Engelhardt via TomDispatch.com,
When you think of addiction in America today, one thing comes to mind: the opioid epidemic. And it should. It’s serious. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, almost 64,000 Americans died of opioid overdoses in 2016 (more than died in the Vietnam War), an average of 175 people a day. In that year, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration estimated that 11.5 million Americans “misused” pain medication. (Note that such figures are still on the rise.) Only recently, the surgeon general issued a rare national advisory “urging more Americans to carry naloxone, a drug used to revive people overdosing on opioids.” This crisis of addiction has already cost the country an estimated $1 trillion since 2001 and might, in the next three years alone, cost more than half that much again.
The United States, however, has two other crises that, in the long run, will cost Americans far more. Yet they get remarkably little attention as addiction phenomena. The first is so obvious that no one should have to comment on it. Here’s the strange thing, though: it’s a rare moment when there’s any serious analysis of it or real attention given to it as an addiction.
This country (and above all its media) is addicted to Donald J. Trump in a way that no population, no media, possibly not even the Communist Chinese press in the days of Mao Zedong, ever was to any figure. Since he rode that Trump Tower escalator into the presidential race in June 2015 to the tune of Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World” and took out after Mexican “rapists” and future Great Walls, no one — nothing — has ever been covered or attended to this way, online or off, in daily life or in our increasingly shared, increasingly addictive media life. (Yes, the Internet and social media are undoubtedly addictions of some sort, too, but let’s not head down that road or I’ll never stop writing!)
Not Donald Trump’s 2016 electoral victory, nor his tax “reform” gift to the 1%, nor his chance to appoint a second Supreme Court justice (with more openings likely to come) — none of these or anything else he’s done or is likely to do will qualify as the truest, deepest, most far-reaching of his triumphs. That can only be the unprecedented way he continues to draw attention. It represents a victory of the first order for him of a unique, almost incomprehensible sort, made more so by the inability of those who report on him to take in what’s happened to them or analyze their situation in any serious way.
Addicted to Trump
Donald J. Trump, as candidate and president, has trumped the attention span of this country, possibly of the planet. Eyes have been focused on him, his insults, his tweets, his passing thoughts, his every comment, his acts, major and minor, and the associated acts and reactions of those who circle around him, as never before in history — not for a king, an emperor, or a dictator, and certainly not for a president. His truest triumph has been to make himself into the voluntary drug of choice for most of a country and all of the media in a way we’ve never imagined possible, and for which, it seems, there is no naloxone.
He has, in the deepest sense, turned the media he loves to loathe, thrives on hating, into a genuine mechanism for producing “fake news” — about him. It’s only real news if you think that The Donald should be the focus of essentially everything, if you believe that nothing else on this planet should take place except refracted through him.
When it comes to the media in particular, Donald Trump is the opioid crisis. He’s their drug of choice. He gets them high. They can’t help themselves, nor can they stop. As head of CBS Leslie Moonves put it during election campaign 2016: “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.” And then he added, “The money’s rolling in and this is fun. I’ve never seen anything like this, and this [is] going to be a very good year for us. Sorry. It’s a terrible thing to say. But bring it on, Donald. Keep going.”
And it’s never ended. The president glues eyeballs to papers, to the endlessly talking heads on the cable news networks, to Twitter, to anything that now passes for media, at a time when so many news outfits are in so many other ways coming unglued. More reporters have undoubtedly been assigned to cover him and his acolytes than ever covered anything or anyone else on a day-by-day, week-by-week basis. Every day of Donald Trump’s life is, in coverage terms, something like the equivalent of the Kennedy assassination, which might be thought of as the first 24/7 TV event, or perhaps the 1994 O.J. Simpson white Ford Bronco car chase that was, in some strange way, a preview of this Trumpian media moment.
It really doesn’t matter much what the “story” is when it comes to his presidency. Whatever it is, it’s promptly swarmed by that media without the slightest sense of proportion or any feeling for what actually matters on this planet of ours. In almost every sense, in fact, Donald Trump now regularly blots out the sun.
Take a small incident just over two weeks ago. With a party of family members, Trump Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders stopped off at the Red Hen, a tiny farm-to-table restaurant in Lexington, Virginia. Mid-meal, she was asked to leave by the owner after staff members raised “concerns.” I’m only reminding you of this — a couple of weeks ago you undoubtedly could have told me every detail — because it’s already been consigned to the dust bin of history as other Trump-infused tales — from the resignation of Supreme Court justice Kennedy to prank-calling the president — have swept it aside. Of course, Sanders’s half-eaten dinner also helped sweep aside previous stories of our time like that message on the back of Melania Trump’s coat on her first trip to the U.S.-Mexico border (“I really don’t care. Do U?”).
When Sanders left that restaurant and then tweeted about it, a storm of coverage, as well as a firestorm of tweets, Facebook posts, insults, and praise about the judgment of the restaurant’s owner, arguments over the ideological polarization of the country, and so much else, including the “weaponization” of the restaurant-review website Yelp, flooded over us. Unrelated restaurants with “Red Hen” in their name elsewhere in the country (or even the world) received threats of all sorts and were inundated with insulting messages as were shops and restaurants that happened to be located near the actual Red Hen.
The story became front-page news nationwide and, for instance, led NBC Nightly News(which I happened to watch) on the evening that the stock market swooned over trade-war fears. In my own hometown paper, the New York Times, it was a front-page story and not one but two reporters were assigned to a crucial sideline piece about why President Trump’s Twitter finger was so slow; why, that is, he waited 48 hours — two full days! — before tweeting his support for his press secretary by attacking the Red Hen for having a “filthy” exterior and undoubtedly being “dirty” inside. The Times journalists focused on “the president’s uncharacteristically tepid, delayed response,” wondering whether it was a sign that Sanders was on her way out. (The Washington Post, on the other hand, dissected the president’s response in terms of, as the headline on one of its articles put it, “everything Trump got wrong about Red Hen, in one tweet.”) And so it went.
Tell me, then, if this isn’t an addiction, what is it? And what’s the one thing you know about addictions? Whatever high they give you — and let’s not deny that Donald Trump offers us a constant set of highs (whether as rushes of agreement and pleasure or horror and dismay) — if you can’t stop yourself from taking the drug, day after day, night after night, there will be a price to pay. Somebody better have the equivalent of naloxone on hand.
Addicted to War
And then there’s that other twenty-first-century all-American addiction, in some ways far stranger than the Trumpian one and likely to be no less costly in the long run: addiction to war. Almost 17 years after the Global War on Terror was launched, the highs — the invasion of Afghanistan! The taking of Kabul! The smashing of Iraq! The capture of Saddam Hussein! — are long gone. Now exhausted and discouraged, those hooked nonetheless remain unable to stop.
In some ways, addiction may seem like a strange category when applied to this country’s war-making, as for most Americans the very opposite seems to be true. Since a series of historic global antiwar protests faded out with the invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2003, it’s as if most Americans had gone cold turkey on this country’s credit-card wars. Willfully demobilized by the top officials of the Bush administration, who preferred to conduct their military operations without citizen or congressional oversight, they simply turned away and went about their business. Meanwhile, America’s all-volunteer military, increasingly a kind of foreign legion for much of the population, has continued to fight never-endingly and remarkably fruitlessly across a vast swath of the Middle East, Asia, and Africa.
The divorce of most Americans from Washington’s wars and those fighting them may be less than apparent because, according to the polls, the public has a kind of blind trust and soaring “confidence” in the U.S. military, unlike any other part of the government or, for that matter, the society, and because the urge to “thank” the “warriors” is now such a basic part of American life. But all of that is, I suspect, little more than a massive compensation reaction from a public that otherwise could not care less.
When it comes to Washington’s still-spreading war on terror, the media has, if anything, followed suit. Recently, for instance, Reuters correspondent Indrees Ali posted a photo on Twitter of a large, almost empty room filled with chairs, with the caption:
“There are exactly four journalists at the Pentagon briefing on Afghanistan.”
That single image sums up the present situation vividly. Almost 17 years after the invasion of Afghanistan by a military repeatedly hailed as “the finest fighting force the world has ever known,” at a moment when Taliban insurgents are again gaining ground, a Pentagon briefing on developments there is of no interest. Yes, events in such wars are still dutifully reported from time to time, but those reports, often tucked away on the inside pages of papers or deep in the nightly news, don’t hold a candle to Melania’s jacket, the president’s latest tweet, or a Red Hen rebuff.
And yet the photo of that Pentagon briefing is deceptive. It leaves out a key group still in the room: those addicted to an American style of war-making through which, year after year, the still-theoretically dominant power on the planet only seems to induce the spread of terror movements, disorder, destruction, and the displacement of increasingly large populations (contributing to a global refugee crisis that is, in its own way, helping to remake the planet).
Missing from that photo are the characters who have OD’d on U.S. military power and yet can’t stop mainlining it in ways that have become all-too-familiar since 2001. I’m thinking of the generals of the U.S. military, the men who have led an endless set of campaigns as part of what those inside the Pentagon are now grimly referring to as an “infinite war” leading nowhere. And they’re strung out. As Mark Perry reported recently in Foreign Policy, Secretary of Defense James “Mad Dog” Mattis and other American generals, unlike the president’s new civilian counselors, National Security Advisor John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, are not eager for the next potential war, the one with Iran that already looms on the horizon. They understand that they could launch such a conflict successfully, destroying much of Iran’s military (and its nuclear facilities), and still, as with Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, and so on, somehow not get out.
And yet, much as they don’t want a bright, shiny new war (and who could blame them under the circumstances), they can’t imagine leaving the old ones behind either. And that’s America’s war addiction in a nutshell, one that has long had in its grip most of elite Washington and the rest of a national security state set up around a style of infinite-war-making that must always be fed with ever increasing numbers of taxpayer dollars. Thanks to those dollars, we, the taxpayers, could be thought of as so many street-level drug peddlers in this country’s war equivalent of the opioid epidemic. The politicians who feed those dollars into the military maw would be the doctors who prescribe opioids, understanding full-well their ability to hook patients. And the Military-Industrial Complex — the giant weapons companies and the warrior corporations that now go into action in lock-step with that military — would be the drug companies that have profited so off the opioid crisis even as they stoked it.
Returning momentarily to Donald Trump, you can feel the power of that war addiction in his inability to fulfill his promise to fight those conflicts in a winning style and, if necessary, quickly extricate the country from what he termed its “$7 trillion” Greater Middle Eastern disaster. In his own fashion, he, too, has been hooked. And when the increasingly tired and distraught generals he chose to surround himself with proved unpalatable to him, Trump notably picked as replacements civilians guaranteed to keep the ball rolling when it came to America’s wars from hell.
So, addiction? If you don’t think this country has an addiction crisis (other than opioids), think again.
- Watch: Fierce Gun Battle Erupts Between Mexican Troops And Cartel Gunmen Near Texas Border
Laredo Morning Times, a daily newspaper based in Texas, said a series of gun battles erupted earlier this week in west Nuevo Laredo, a city that resides across from Laredo, Texas, and ended near a Wal-Mart shopping center in the Sister City by Avenida Reforma and Bulevar Emiliano Zapata.
Source: Breitbart Texas / Cartel Chronicles
According to Breitbart News, the violence began Tuesday morning when Mexican military forces conducted a series of raids aimed at capturing the leadership of the Los Zetas faction called Cartel Del Noreste. Cartel gunmen immediately responded, setting off numerous gun battles across the region in the neighborhoods called Nueva Era, Voluntad y Trabajo, and La Fe, which some of these areas are less than one mile away from Texas.
The shootouts caused the entire city to shut down. At the same time, citizen journalists picked up their smartphones armed with a camera of truth and shared their experince on social media of the out-of-control violence.
Mexican authorities have not issued an official statement as to what happened, however, what you are about to see might be shocking.
The shootouts came two days after a group of cartel assassins fatally shot Edgar Humberto Vega Avalos, Nuevo Laredo’s prison director. Avalos was traveling in his American-made truck on Cerro del Cubilete Street in Colonia Enrique González when assassins opened fire on the vehicle he was in Saturday night, according to the Tamaulipas attorney general’s office.
Here is the alleged crime scene where Avalos was executed.
#NuevoLaredo #Tamaulipas
Fue una emboscada por parte del #CártelDelNoreste hacia el director del penal #2 de nuevo laredo.Si gustas ver el video completo
Aqui te dejamos el link 👇https://t.co/qPm4taI98B pic.twitter.com/SGXtrWXquy— LaVozDelPueblo(Oficial) (@Lavozddlpueblo2) July 8, 2018
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On Tuesday, heavy automatic gunfire was heard at the AutoZone/Walmart shopping complex located roughly 1.30 miles away from Texas.
A citizen journalist risked his life to capture this incredible footage.
@cnnbrk @FoxNews @ABC @HLNTV shootout between cartel and Mexican military in Nuevo Laredo Tamaulipas Walmart across from Laredo, Tx pic.twitter.com/sxR44QTw4o
— Moses C (@Mocan_917) July 10, 2018
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The next video shows civilians taking cover outside of a food stand while automatic gunfire was heard a few blocks over.
Retweeted FRONTERA ROJO VIVO (@nuevolaredovivo):#NuevoLaredo #Tamaulipas #Mexico #SDRLaredo Momento de la Balacera aqui en la Plaza La Alameda asi se cubrieron de las balas pic.twitter.com/vY6bcVvWNe
— Martin RT News™ (@MartinGomezCald) July 10, 2018
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As authorities had difficulties containing the shootout, motorists were trapped in the crossfire.
#NuevoLaredo #SDRLaredo Ciudadanos Quedan atrapados en medio de balacera en Ave. Reforma #Tamaulipas #Mexico pic.twitter.com/ES3czukTPZ
— FRONTERA ROJO VIVO (@nuevolaredovivo) July 10, 2018
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Some of the alleged assassins traveling in Ford trucks.
#NuevoLaredo #SDRLaredo Cuazitos del CDN corriendo del TOPON!! colonia Benito Juarez Ave. Loma Real #Tamaulipas #Mexico pic.twitter.com/MXFs0EmHPt
— FRONTERA ROJO VIVO (@nuevolaredovivo) July 10, 2018
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Security cameras inside a Walmart located about 1.30 miles from the Texas border, show the moment when Mexican special forces confronted Mexican cartel members.
#SDRLaredo #NuevoLaredo #Tamaulipas Ayer Elementos del Ejercito en operativo dentro de Paseo Reforma “Walmart” cazando cuazitos pic.twitter.com/H6HrTuryax
— FRONTERA ROJO VIVO (@nuevolaredovivo) July 10, 2018
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More citizens caught in heavy automatic crossfire.
#DenunciaCiudadana Nuevo Laredo Tamaulipas …un poco de adrenalina…. Que experiencia me toco vivir 😮 pic.twitter.com/DqV4YGnLb6
— John Walas (@JohNWalaSS) July 11, 2018
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The U.S. Department of State considers Tamaulipas a “Level 4: Do Not Travel” state due to crime. Authorities said that violent offenses — murder, armed robbery, carjacking, kidnapping, extortion and sexual assault — is common.
Gang activity and gun battles are widespread, according to Mexico’s travel warning.
“Armed criminal groups target public and private passenger buses traveling through Tamaulipas, often taking passengers hostage and demanding ransom payments. Local law enforcement has limited capability to respond to violence in many parts of the state,” the warning states.
As for the Mexican President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador, well, he intends to create a new border-police force to contain the out of control cartel violence in the country, his incoming chief of public security Alfonso Durazo, told Bloomberg in an interview Monday.
The outgoing Mexican President, Enrique Peña Nieto, will transfer power to Obrador on December 1st. Peña Nieto leaves behind a country suffering from record high murders — some of the worst in the world.
Bloomberg notes that Obrador will meet with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday, as both will likely discuss the events that unfolded in Nuevo Laredo.
In another interview with The Associated Press, Durazo was optimistic about the reforms, which he called a “Mexican recipe for peace.” Still, Mexico’s record violence and homicides produced by drug cartels will not be resolved in the near term. The peak of violence has yet to come as the Mexico–United States border braces for more violence.
* * *
Build that wall, Mr. President!
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