Jun 13

Today’s News 13th June 2018

  • Macron Snaps At Italy Over Stranded Migrant Ship, Rome Hits Back At "Hypocritical" France

    French President Emmanuel Macron says that Italy “playing politics” with a boat full of shipwrecked Libyan refugees denied entry to Italy, and the Italian government has displayed “cynicism and irresponsibility” for closing its ports. 

    Mr Macron’s spokesman Benjamin Griveaux said the French president recalled that “in cases of distress, those with the nearest coastline have a responsibility to respond“.

    “There is a degree of cynicism and irresponsibility in the Italian government’s behaviour,” he quoted President Macron as saying.

    Most migrants who survive the perilous voyages from North Africa end up in overcrowded Italian camps, and Italy says its EU partners must ease the burden. –BBC

    The French scolding comes after Italy’s new Interior Minister of less than two weeks, Matteo Salvini, made good on his warning last weekend that “the good times for illegals are over” after years of unchecked migration primarily from North Africa.

    In response to Macron’s comments, Italian Prime Minister Guiseppe Conte hit back – accusing Paris of being hypocritical, cynical and rigid. 

    “The statements around the Aquarius affair that come from France are surprising and show a serious lack of knowledge about what is really happening. Italy can not accept hypocritical lessons from countries that have always preferred to turn their backs when it comes to immigration,” Conte’s office said.

    After Malta refused to accept the 629 shipwrecked migrants over the weekend, Spain agreed to take in the refugees – a group which includes 123 unaccompanied minors, 11 other children (though we’re guessing nobody is checking birth certificates) and seven pregnant women. 

    As we reported earlier Tuesday, the refugees will be escorted to Valencia, Spain after SOS Mediterranee said that they had run out of food and would not be able to make it on their own.  

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    Non-governmental organization (NGO) ship MV Aquarius, run by the group SOS Mediterranee, picked up 629 shipwrecked sub-Saharan Africans who were stranded in inflatable boats last weekend with the intention of bringing them to Sicily. The group includes 123 unaccompanied minors, 11 other children and seven pregnant women. 

     

    The minors are aged between 13 and 17 and come from Eritrea, Ghana, Nigeria and Sudan, according to Anelise Borges – a journalist on the ship. 

    French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said that France is ready to help Spain receive the migrants – though apparently sending a naval vessel to provide the transport currently being footed by Italian taxpayers isn’t something France is doing. 

    This isn’t the first time Italy and France have traded barbs over how to handle Sub-Saharan migrants. Nearly one year ago, Italy slammed France for excluding them from negotiations with Libyan leaders on a political power-sharing deal to reunite the fractured North African country. 

    “There are too many open formats in Libya, too many mediators, too many initiatives,” Italy’s foreign minister, Angelino Alfano, told the Italian newspaper La Stampa.

    As VoA noted last year, Macron’s Libya diplomacy is just one irritant in increasingly tension-filled Franco-Italian relations, in which Macron has been also accused of duplicity and hypocrisy in his diplomatic conduct with Italy. In May, after meeting Gentiloni in Paris, Macron announced: “we have not listened enough to Italy’s cry for help on the migration crisis.” But Macron’s position since hasn’t changed much from Francois Hollande, his predecessor in the Elysee Palace, to the Italian government’s rising anger.

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  • As The G-7 Implodes, SCO Meeting Confirms The New Century of Multipolarity

    Authored by Federico Pieraccini via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    The historical changes we are witnessing have never been so evident as in the last few days. The G7 summit highlighted the limits of the Atlantic alliance, while the SCO meeting opens up unprecedented possibilities for Eurasian integration.

    At the G7 meeting in Canada in recent days, we witnessed unprecedented clashes between Trump and G7 leaders over the imposition of tariffs on trade. We must now conclude that the event has been relegated to irrelevance, as the G7 has heretofore derived its clout from speaking as one voice. Trump even went further, refusing to sign the final draft of the organization’s joint statement after Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau lashed out at Trump’s trade decisions. Trump showed how little he cares for his allies, leaving the summit a day early to arrive early for the meeting with Kim Jong-un in Singapore to make preparations for the long-awaited encounter between the two leaders.

    In terms of geopolitical contrasts, it is easy to highlight the differences that have been seen between the G7 meeting and the meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), held in China and, for the first time, including India and Pakistan as new members. While Putin and Xi met and exchanged praises and medals to celebrate the Sino-Russian strategic relationship as well as their personal friendship, Merkel and the various leaders of the G7 were in animated discussion with Trump over his “America first” policies hurting EU member states economically.

    Returning for a moment to Trump’s escape from the G7 (also to avoid further clashes with his “allies”), it should be remembered that in this shifting puzzle of international relations, Assad was poised to meet with Kim Jong-un right on the eve of the US-DPRK summit. Whether or not the meeting between the leaders of Syria and the DPRK will go ahead, it nevertheless confirms the alliance between Pyongyang and Damascus, underlining how adversaries of the US still try to coordinate and manage between themselves their approaches to Washington’s policies of chaos.

    Clearly both Putin and Xi have every interest in seeing Trump and Kim Jong-un reach an agreement. But at the same time, they are well aware of the situation in the Middle East and Iran that risks plunging the whole region into unprecedented chaos. Putin and Xi are clearly trying to manage the chaos emerging from Washington, as are Assad and Kim in their own own way. In this sense, the repeated aid of Russia and Iran to Qatar is part of a Sino-Russo-Iranian strategy to contain the chaos created by Washington, which has even extended to the Gulf states with the Saudi-led blockade of Qatar. In this regard, even Berlin is beginning to be enticed by the opportunities for the European Union beckoning from the east, this temptation made stronger by the reality that the Atlanticist relationship is hurting Europe through the tariffs and penalties imposed on American geopolitical opponents like Iran.

    European companies have suffered major economic losses as a result of Trump’s suspension of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), with European companies facing US sanctions should they continue to do business with Iran. This is only the latest example of undue pressure being placed on the energy strategy of sovereign countries that are theoretically allied to the US. In the same way, the sanctions placed on the Nord Stream 2 project are further widening the cracks in the Atlantic alliance.

    To understand the level of disorder within Europe, the North Atlantic and the Middle East, it is enough to consider the attack on Mohammed bin Salman almost two months ago, with Israel on the one hand boasting about agreements with Iran for a mutual abstention in the Daraa affaire and Trump finding nothing better to do than to break every alliance in sight through his commencement of a trade war.

    It is clear that the old unipolar order no longer exists and that we now find ourselves in a multipolar situation, courtesy of the isolationist direction of the United States. This enables the further smoothening of existing divergence between nations in Asia, the Middle East and part of Europe.

    Europe has the opportunity to use Trump’s “America First” policy as a pivot to expand its network of relationships and convergence of interests with more countries outside of the EU or NATO. For once, the EU could use the weapon of its union of many moderately powerful countries to increase its negotiating power with the United States.

    But the reality is very different at the moment, with Europe being in the middle of an internal struggle that has been ongoing for some time now. The wave of new “populist” parties, both of the right and left, has served as a repository for an inevitable transfer of votes following the disasters of the unipolar period (1989-2014). This has also upset the previous balance of power within the European elites.

    The root causes of this “populist” political change lie in the new multipolar world order that has had a ripple effect on the policies of individual European countries.

    The neoliberal ideology, broadly acquiesced to by the “left”, has remained anchored to the diktat of the “old” unipolar world order, which saw Washington as the only hegemonic force.

    What remains in the European political landscape seems to be divided into two streams. On the one side, there is a minority clearly eyeing a sort of neoconservatism 2.0, a sort of rehash of Reaganism. On the other side, there is a complete rejection of any of the faces currently participating in the political system.

    For Europe it is a question of seeing what this new political phase will produce with regard to international issues like the sanctions against Russia and Iran. The behavior of European governments will give an idea of the extent to which they intend to obtain some sort of independence in conducting multipolar relations that are not necessarily linked to Washington.

    In a sense, Berlin, London, Paris and Rome are now at the center of the concept of multipolar relationships. It is interesting to look at how strategists and newspaper editorialists in China and Russia look at what is going on in Europe, particular in Italy. While there is trust, there is also the awareness that there is still a European reluctance to favor development towards the East at the expense of relations with the US.

    The take-home message that Trump seems to be giving Europeans is that it is pointless for them to remain as butlers who wait on Washington. We are living in a defining moment that will shape the the near-term future of vast areas of the world. There are many situations that are moving forward, bringing us closer to the moment where the West will either find common ground or splinter. Factors hitherto appearing unrelated are now serving to have different countries coalesce into a common destiny.

    The summit between Trump and Kim Jong-un will lay the groundwork that will reveal whether Washington really wants to start talking or is only buying for time. Given the recent behavior and attitude of Trump and the political figures around him, the summit, like the foreign policy of Trump’s administration in general, becomes unpredictable and difficult to decipher. If there is one thing that unites the leaders of the G7, the SCO and Kim Jong-un, it is precisely the difficulty of relating to a declining world power and a leader who has no strategic vision; the common suffering stemming from an internal struggle within the United States to impose upon the world its antiquated and declining strategic vision.

  • Israeli Commando Trains White South African Farmers In "Krav Maga" As Violent Attacks Soar

    South Africa has been freed from the death grip of former President Jacob Zuma, whose tenure at the head of the government was marred by years of corruption scandals and allegations of abuse of power. But the country’s wealthy landowners might soon find themselves wishing for a return to the bad old days as Cyril Ramaphosa, the country’s new president, moves ahead with his plan to heal “the original sin” from South Africa’s colonial past by redistributing land (without compensation) from wealthy white farmers to poorer black farmers.

    What’s worse, the country’s economic malaise has been exacerbated by a severe drought that until recently had left Cape Town, the country’s largest city, only months away from “Day Zero” – the point at which the government would need to seriously intensify its water-rationing efforts as the city struggles with its worst drought in a century (fortunately, early rationing efforts have managed to push the crisis point back until 2019, though that could easily change).

    Amid threats from government politicians that “the time for reconciliation is over”, there were 74 farm murders and 638 attacks primarily on white farmers last year, according to minority rights group AfriForum.

    “Current murder tendencies indicate that we will lose more people on farms than in the past three years,” AfriForum’s Ian Cameron recently wrote.

    So with South Africa coming ever closer to resembling the dystopian hellscape from the popular sci-fi movie series “Mad Max”, white South African farmers are faced with two unpalatable choices:

    1) Give everything up and seek asylum in Australia

    After those threats from Malema and Ramaphosa – and on the back of Australia’s offer, RT reports this week that more than 200 farmers from South Africa have applied for humanitarian visas in Australia after allegedly suffering attacks for being white, according to the Australian Home Affairs Ministry.

    “The type of criteria they of course have to meet – or the key one – is evidence of persecution, so that’s exactly what we will be looking at,” Home Affairs Deputy Secretary Malisa Golightly said.

    Home Affairs said 89 refugee visa applications relating to 213 people had been received, although they did not specify their ethnicity or any other details.

    or

    2) Stand and Fight!

    Sky News is reporting that White South African farmers – who are facing the brunt of the president’s “land redistribution” efforts amid a surge in violent attacks against them – are employing an Israeli self-defense expert to teach them survival techniques.

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    The training is being led by Idan Abolnik, a former Israeli special forces commando, who is teaching farmers hand-to-hand combat and weapons handling.

    South

    Abolnik’s program costs about 20,000 rand (roughly $1,500) per person for an intensive two-week training course. During the course, Abolnik teaches the farmers Krav Maga, a self-defense system developed by the Israeli Defense Force that has become increasingly popular abroad.

    “It’s open to everyone and anyone who wants a specially designed system for farmers. We train them to deal with a variety of different attacks,” Abolnik said during an interview with South Africa’s News24 TV channel.

    Despite being a minority in South Africa, white farmers own upwards of 70% of the country’s farmland. Simmering resentments over the country’s Apartheid past have inspired the new government, led by President Cyril Ramaphosa, to announce a plan to redistribute land to more black farmers – a plan that bears a disturbing resemblance to neighboring Zimbabwe’s actions in the late 1990s that plunged that country’s economy into chaos.

  • Caitlin Johnstone: 12 Tips For Making Sense Of The World

    Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

    In an environment that is saturated with mass media propaganda, it can be hard to figure out which way’s up, let alone get an accurate read on what’s going on in the world. Here are a few tips I’ve learned which have given me a lot of clarity in seeing through the haze of spin and confusion.

    Taken separately they don’t tell you a lot, but taken together they paint a very useful picture of the world and why it is the way it is.

    1. It’s always ultimately about acquiring power.

    In the quest to understand why governments move in such irrational ways, why expensive, senseless wars are fought while homeless people die of exposure on the streets, why millionaires and billionaires get richer and richer while everyone else struggles to pay rent, why we destroy the ecosystem we depend on for our survival, why one elected official tends to advance more or less the same harmful policies and agendas as his or her predecessor, people often come up with explanations which don’t really hold water.

    The most common of these is probably the notion that all of these problems are due to the malignant influence of one of two mainstream political parties, and if the other party could just get in control of the situation all the problems would go away. Other explanations include the belief that humans are just intrinsically awful, blaming minorities like Jews or immigrants, blaming racism and white supremacy, or going all the way down wild and twisted rabbit holes into theories about reptilian secret societies and baby-eating pedophile cabals. But really all of mankind’s irrational behavior can be explained by the basic human impulse to amass power and influence over one’s fellow humans, combined with the fact that sociopaths tend to rise to positions of power.

    Our evolutionary ancestors were pack animals, and the ability to rise in social standing in one’s pack determined crucial matters like whether one got first or last dibs on food or got to reproduce. This impulse to rise in our pack is hardwired deeply into our evolutionary heritage, but when left unchecked due to a lack of empathy, and when expanded into the globe-spanning 7.6 billion human pack we now find ourselves in due to ease of transportation and communication, it can lead to individuals who will keep amassing more and more power until they wield immense influence over entire clusters of nations.

    2. Money rewards sociopathy.

    The willingness to do anything to get ahead, to claw your way to the top, to betray whomever you need to, to throw anyone under the bus, to step on anyone to pass them in the rat race, will be rewarded in our current system. Being willing to underpay employees, cheat the legal system, and influence legislators will be rewarded exponentially more. People with a sense of empathy are often unwilling to do such things, whereas sociopaths and psychopaths are.

    About four percent of the population are sociopaths, and about one percent are psychopaths, with some five to fifteen percent falling somewhere along the borderline. The less empathy you have, the further you are willing to go, and the further up the ladder you can climb.

    3. Wealth kills empathy.

    If that weren’t bad enough, studies have shown that controlling large amounts of wealth actually destroys one’s sense of compassion for one’s fellow man. When you are able to use wealth to obtain everything from security to loyalty to personal relationships, you no longer have to be tuned in to the brain’s empathy center the rest of humanity depends on to get an accurate reading on what’s going on with the people we’re surrounded by. Most people need to be constantly feeling around their families, coworkers, employers, friends and acquaintances in order to ensure their own safety, social standing and security, whereas a wealthy person can simply purchase those things. Being born into wealth or having it for a long time can prevent that sense of empathy from being as strong as it is in the rest of the population.

    4. Money is power.

    A 2014 Princeton study showed that ordinary Americans have essentially zero influence over their nation’s policy and behavior regardless of how they vote, while wealthy Americans have a great deal of influence. This is because the ability to use corporate lobbying and campaign donations effectively amounts to the legalized bribery of elected officials, which means that money translates directly into political power. This creates a ruling class which is naturally incentivized to use their influence to increase their own wealth while decreasing everyone else’s, because since power is relative, the less money everyone else has the more power the ruling class has.

    This is why billionaires keep hoarding more and more wealth while using legalized bribery to stifle economic justice legislation. It isn’t because they want to be able to buy thousands of luxury cars or dozens of private jets; they can only use one at a time the same as everyone else. They hoard wealth to keep the rest of the population from having it. Because money equals power, spreading wealth around would be tantamount to making everyone king, and because power is relative, making everyone king would mean that no one is king.

    Rulers, historically, do not give up power easily, and this elite wealthy class is no exception. Hence all their aggressive attempts to suppress any movement against the status quo from the unwashed masses.

    5. This same ruling class controls the media.

    It’s common knowledge that most media is controlled by plutocrats, whether it’s the old money plutocrats who control the legacy media or the new money Silicon Valley plutocrats who control much of the new media. Media control is an essential component of rule; this has always been the case, since the days when kings would order dissident books burned and bishops would torture dissident orators to death. This is why the first thing a new plutocrat does as soon as rising to a certain level of wealth is start buying up media influence, like Jeff Bezos did when he bought the Washington Post in 2013. Bezos bought WaPo not because he is a stupid businessman who thought newspapers were about to make a lucrative resurgence, but because he is a brilliant businessman who knows that the status quo he is building his empire upon requires a propaganda firm that the public will trust and believe.

    6. People are always manipulating each other.

    Cultivating an acute awareness of when you are being manipulated, and considering whether someone might have a motive to do so, is an essential component to making sense of the world.

    It is very rare to encounter someone who won’t try to manipulate you in any way. Generally people you’ll encounter in your life will try to influence the way you perceive them and your relationship to them, they’ll try to pull you in in some ways and push you out in others, try to hook you up to their personal agendas and goals and shape you in a way that fits with their shape. There’s nothing inherently malevolent in such behavior, it’s just what people do and what they always have done. Again, humans are social creatures, and we do what we can to increase our standing within our social circles.

    The big problem is when skillful manipulators find their way into positions of large-scale influence like government or media. Unfortunately, these are the types who tend to get elevated into such positions, because they can manipulate their way in, and generally they do so for reasons of personal ambition rather than altruism. These skillful manipulators form an essential echelon of the ruling class’ loyal servants, and are the minds behind the pro-establishment narratives you’ll suddenly see circulated from think tanks to media platforms to the establishment lackeys on Capitol Hill.

    7. Society is made of narrative.

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    Most of human experience is filtered through our mental stories about it, from our sense of self, to our ideas about who we are, to our beliefs about how we’re supposed to behave in society, to what money is and how it works, to where power exists and who we’re supposed to obey. All of these things are purely conceptual constructs which only exist in the realm of thought; a “dollar” exists to the extent that we’ve all agreed to pretend it’s a real thing and that it has a certain amount of purchasing power. At any time we could collectively decide to change the rules about how power functions or what money is and how it operates, and then instantly the rule of the elite class would be over without anyone firing a shot. It really would be that simple.

    That’s how powerful a force narrative is, which is why the ruling plutocrats fight so hard to keep us from seizing control of it. This is why whistleblowers and outlets like WikiLeaks are aggressively and constantly smeared and demonized in the corporate media; if they can create suspicion of truth-tellers then they can keep them from being trusted, and thus keep them from being believed. This tool has been used to minimize the impact of everything from on the ground reports of what’s happening in Syria to leak drops from Edward Snowden; if you can create enough suspicion of someone it doesn’t matter if they’re speaking 100 percent truth; nobody will believe them, and thus the dominant narrative will remain the same.

    Maintaining an awareness that there is always an unending battle to control the narrative and manipulate it to advance plutocratic interests is an essential part of understanding the world.

    8. The lines between nations are imaginary.

    Those lines drawn on the map between countries are pure narrative as well; they’re only as real as the collective public agrees to pretend they are. The ruling elites know this and exploit this. They don’t think in terms of nations and governments, they think in terms of individuals and groups of individuals.

    Key strategic region in the Middle East? No need to take over the whole country, just flood it with extremist groups who are loyal to your agendas and control its oil fields. Primo naval real estate in the southern hemisphere? No need to annex it and plant your country’s flag there, just secure enough influence over the important moving parts using corporate contracts, trade agreements, military/intelligence treaties and secret deals and you can use it however you want.

    This is why I am dismissive of arguments that “Israel controls America” or “America controls Europe”. There is no “Israel” or “America”; they’re made-up ideas which rulers once upon a time treated as real, but in the modern days of nationless plutocracy they no longer do. There are individuals, there are corporations, there are government agencies, there are factions and groups, and these are what the ruling elites deal with. Governmental structures are only tools which are used by the ruling elites for the purpose of manipulation, control, and military violence, and they only do so insofar as it is useful. The idea of real nations and governments is a cutesy fairy tale sold to the masses so they won’t see the manipulations.

    9. Powerful forces are naturally incentivized to collaborate with each other toward mutual interests.

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    You can be a low-grade millionaire and still live like a relatively normal civilian, but once you start obtaining giant amounts of wealth control you need to start collaborating with existing power structures or they’ll snuff you out to prevent you from rocking their boat, because again, money equals power. This is why Jeff Bezos contracts with the CIA and sits on a Pentagon advisory board, and it’s why Facebook and Google collaborate extensively with government agencies; they never would have been allowed to grow to their size if they had not. Plutocratic dynasties which have been in place since long before Amazon, Facebook and Google figured this out many generations ago, and have agreed to push forward in a direction of mutual interest that doesn’t upset the status quo that their wealth is built upon.

    This is extremely true of the west, where an effective empire has been created by a complex transnational alliance of mostly western plutocrats, but it is true outside of that empire as well; there are power alliances to be found everywhere that there is power.

    10. There is an immense amount of wealth that can be grabbed in the chaos of war and conflict.

    In the same way that existing power structures are naturally incentivized to quash any emerging power which would upset their status quo, alliances of power structures push to crush non-aligned power structures the world over. Whenever you see the tight western alliances and their media propaganda arms attacking the interests of Russia, China, Syria, Iran, Venezuela etc., you are seeing an alliance of power structures working to disrupt the interests of another alliance of power structures in order to absorb their assets.

    The chaotic, Wild West environments that these conflicts create allow for an amount of underhanded looting and pillaging that you could never get away with in your own country, in the exact same way the colonialists and conquistadors of old could never have gotten away with brazenly grabbing gold, land and slaves from their fellow Europeans in Madrid or Rome but were given no legal trouble in the new world. The colonialists and conquistadors pushed into the Americas, Africa and Asia on the pretense of spreading Christianity and civilization; modern day conquerers push into non-aligned power structures on the pretense of spreading freedom and democracy in precisely the same way.

    This chaos doesn’t require direct military conflict to be profitable; the uncritical enmity against Russia that the western plutocratic alliance has manufactured with its media control has allowed them to be blamed for everything from incriminating WikiLeaks documents to a corporate raid by Ukrainian oligarchs without any questions asked. Anyone who has ever had to deal personally with a sociopath knows how much they love to exploit the gray areas that chaotic situations give them, and geopolitical conflicts create those situations in spades.

    11. The neocons are always wrong.

    This one’s really easy. If you ever want to be on the right side of history for a foreign policy debate, look at what Bush-era PNAC neocons like John Bolton and Bill Kristol are saying about it, and take the opposite position. Neocon thought leaders have been loudly and catastrophically wrong about everything since the turn of the century, from Afghanistan to Iraq to Libya to Syria, and they’re not about to start being right now.

    12. The push towards truth always starts with yourself.

    You can’t out-manipulate seasoned manipulators. The main error most people make when trying to deal with a sociopath is to try and manipulate them back. Don’t even try. They have years of experience on you because they literally have done nothing else. While you were laughing and crying and worrying and connecting and relating to people, they were working out how to play humans like Garry Kasparov worked out how to play chess. And when you have literal teams of sociopaths collaborating together to amass power, you my dear child, do not have a chance. Don’t play their game. You will lose.

    The only way to win this is to set your compass resolutely to “true.” Always be honest with yourself. Find all the different ways that you are manipulating others and see them and acknowledge them. Find your tribal allegiances and your desire to be right, and tip your hat to their existence. The more self-aware we are, the less levers we have to be manipulated by. If you are blindly partisan or loyal to a particular faction, that makes you gullible to propaganda because your wishful thinking and your desire to be right come into play. Get honest with yourself about who you are and what you want, and you will start to become an un-playable piece on the board.

    If we can’t beat these bastards with truth, we don’t deserve to win.

    * * *

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  • De Niro Expands Nobu Empire With Sushi-Condo-Hotel Scheme, Expects Revenues To Top $1 Billion

    Sushi restaurant and luxury hotel chain, Nobu Hospitality LLC, expects to top $1 billion in revenue within five years as it expands into the real estate market. Partners Robert De Niro, Meir Teper and chef Nobu Matsuhisa unveiled 550 condos and 36 luxury-hotel suites above a Toronto Nobu restaurant. 

    Nobu, founded in 1994 with one sushi restaurant in New York, has swelled to over 40 locations, including Las Vegas and London, according to Nobu Hospitality CEO Trevor Horwell. 

    “It’s quite a rapid growth,” Horwell said, breaking ground at the Toronto project on Mercer Street, in the city’s entertainment district, Monday. “Normally in our restaurants we can have over 100,000 customers a year. All we’ve got to do is convert 10 to 15 percent of those customers to fill our hotels. So that’s why we went into hotels.” –Bloomberg

    The project was announced last year and sold out in three months, while Nobu plans to complete the $231 million two-tower Toronto project in two-and-a-half years. 

    Hotel rooms will cost up to $600 per night, and condo units – most of which have been pre-sold to local residents, will average $650,000, according to Josh Zagdanski, VP for high rise at Toronto-based Madison Group.

    “I’ve done movies here, a festival here and it’s a logical place for us to open,” said De Niro, who also attended the groundbreaking, complete with gold shovels and Japanese drummers. –Bloomberg

    Nobu has also committed to two more mixed-use developments in Los Cabos, Mexico and Sao Paulo, Brazil – and is looking to expand into Taipei, Hong Kong, Jakarta for at least 10 such projects over the next decade, while adding five hotels and restaurants per year. 

    New York is also on their radar, however an earlier mixed-use project fell through due to zoning issues, according to Horwell. “We want to do New York without a doubt, but it has to be special,” he said. “If we did a mixed-use, it’d have to be the best, because there’s some great developments there.”

    De Niro says he’s hoping to see a Nobu resort in the coming years, and has his eye on Bermuda. “There’s quite a few things in the works,” he said.

    One thing we’re sure of – Donald Trump won’t be allowed into any of them. 

  • "Do You like It, Senator, When The Deep State Works Against You?"

    Authored by Jeremiah Johnson (Nom de plume of  retired Green Beret of the US Army Special Forces ) via SHTFplan.com,

    There’s an old expression: “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.” In this case, another old expression is even better: “Turnabout is fair play.” We are all still reeling from the Obama years of “transparency,” and “change you can believe in,” that both equated to Doublethink and Doublespeak. Under Obama, everything was hidden from the American people: Benghazi, Fast and Furious, Ukraine/McCain/Nuland, and the Arab Spring. Nancy Pelosi (on the several thousand-paged Obamacare legislation): “We’ll just have to read it after its finished to know what’s in it.”

    Democrats or Republicans, they are merely far-left Marxists or center-Marxists; nevertheless, they picked up a taste of their own medicine last week. An article was released on 6/7/18, entitled “Conspiracy Theory Proven Fact as Cops Remove Senator from Wal-Mart Converted Into Detention Center.”

    The incident this article describes is very, very important: please read on.

    A U.S. Senator, Jeff Merkley (D-OR), attempted to enter a “shuttered/closed” Wal-Mart on 6/1/18, for the purpose of ascertaining whether the children of illegal aliens were being held there. The Wal-Mart is located in Brownsville, Texas. Here’s an excerpt of that article:

    All the windows and doors to the facility – which is a shuttered Walmart – have been blacked out with window tinting.  [Senator] Merkley arrived and was immediately asked to leave by a female government worker. One of the country’s most powerful lawmakers then demanded to speak with a supervisor. Instead of complying with his wishes in the name of transparency, the shadowy government workers called Brownsville police on the U.S. Senator. After 10 minutes of waiting and being confronted by local police, he was denied entry and forced to leave.

    Later, in a Facebook live video, Merkley remarked: “When an organization has something to hide, not allowing members of Congress to see it, in a democracy, is completely unacceptable…What’s going on is an effort to prevent the press from being able to report to the American people what is happening.  And that’s simply unacceptable.”

    Subsequent to all this, it was learned that Southwest Key Programs runs the detention facility. They released this statement three days after Merkley’s statement, on 6/6/18 that ties in to the big picture. Take note of the government agency behind it all, their name emboldened, and their cover story bottom-line, also emboldened for you:

    “We regret having to turn away Senator Merkley at our Casa Padre shelter.  The U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) prohibits any facility from allowing visits that have not been approved by them, even if it is a U.S. Senator. With ORR approval, Southwest Key shelters have welcomed elected and other public officials at our facilities in the past, and will continue to do so, because we are proud of the caring environment we provide these children. We have reached out to the Senator and connected with his staff because we would like to see this happen.”

    Can’t you just imagine Neil Diamond’s “Coming to America” playing in the back of your mind? Or the old Coca-Cola ad in the early ‘70’s with everyone holding hands and singing, “I’d like to teach the world to sing, in perfect harmony…” Can’t you hear it now?

    The “welcoming shelter,” that welcomed Senator Merkley by calling the Brownsville Police on him and denying his entrance. The “caring environment” just couldn’t bear, perhaps, to disturb the children?

    Senator Merkley has visited another facility at the McAllen Border station where he pointed out that he saw hundreds of children kept in chain-link fenced-off areas (basically, cages). The White House released a statement that claimed the Senator was “spreading blatant lies.” Of course the actions had to be politicized by both sides.

    But let’s go a little bit further, and bring the punch line of the comedy (or tragedy) in focus. Another statement came out, as well. Here it is:

    At 2 pm on a Friday, the Senator asked to visit a secure DHS facility over the weekend where children are present and we worked with him [the Senator] to provide him access. This presented obvious and serious privacy concerns – not to mention disrupting operations. He was able to visit the facility on Sunday.

    So, we learn that Southwest Key Programs runs the facility for the DHS. That falls in line perfectly, as DHS has subcontracted out the management of the place to them. Such actions place a layer of insulation between them and the facility. By “corporatizing” the facility instead of having it run by DHS outright, it removes it from direct government oversight by placing it in the hands of a private corporation. Simultaneously, the DHS still controls it by maintaining federal bureaucratic oversight.

    Isn’t it amazing? If a U.S. citizen were to carry out such a “slicky” maneuver, they would be charged with forming a shell corporation for the purposes of concealing another venture and perhaps thrown into a cell…indefinitely…never being charged with anything because that isn’t necessary anymore. Charges are unnecessary, because with indefinite detention being authorized by Congress, what is necessary?

    The only thing that’s necessary is that you be placed under investigation; investigation is the key word, now.

    Interestingly enough, Senator Merkley was never permitted to visit, nor did he visit that facility on Sunday, 6/3/18, or any other time. Guess who made that statement?

    DHS Press Secretary Tyler Houlton, the same man who just a few months ago informed us that the new DHS policy would be to gather up the names of journalists, reporters, writers, bloggers, radio show hosts, and anyone in the Independent News Media that mentioned or wrote about the DHS. He referred to Independent Media reporters as “tinfoil hat-wearing conspiracy theorists.”

    In truth, there’s a lot more to this entire scenario than meets the eye. Let’s summarize it.

    1. The ORR as mentioned previously was formed long before President Trump took office. This shows a continuation of Deep State policies that run without being interrupted by a change in administrations.

    2. There is no transparency in government, even when such transparency is demanded by a government official (in this case, a United States Senator) who has been elected to represent the people.

    3. The three-party system of checks and balances is nothing but a desiccated husk, the shell of a cicada clinging to the bark of a tree.

    4. The irony: politicians do not like it when they are subjected to censorship and denied access to the truth…exactly the same way they have denied American citizens from the truth with endless legislation and bureaucracy, closed-door sessions and meetings, and other tactics employed by the rulers on the ruled.

    5. This is just one little facility. Just one. Think it ends there? Think again: this is just the tip of the iceberg.

    6. If the administration knows about such things as these “happy welcoming centers,” then it is either powerless to stop them, or it supports them.

    7. Senator Merkley said that it is “unacceptable” for a “democracy” to prevent a member of congress from investigating something…or to keep “the press” from reporting it to the people.

    This last item, #7, is the crux of the problem: too many middlemen between the event and the American people, to include elected officials and bureaucrats, and the press. Where is the news? Where has the news been? Why, all mainstream media (MSM) is Associated Press approved, and every paper marches in lock step…it is canned, controlled, and censored content. It is deliberately crafted to mold the public consciousness into the “social conscience” of groupthink…tearing down all normative and traditional beliefs and supplanting them with malleable groupthink.

    It is all form and no substance. The MSM is a 70 year-old prostitute with a made-up, plastic face: a mannequin without a soul, living in a $10 million dollar mansion and claiming to be an average citizen, reporting on “grass roots” issues. Those issues are mere tabloids: bread and circuses provided to the masses to obfuscate and divert focus away from the theft, the ever-increasing surveillance, and the never-ending wars of expansion and global dominance. These tabloid issues exploit the deterioration of society. Even all our crumbling infrastructure is nothing more than a true picture of how we have become a potholed, banana-republic with run-down highways and broken bridges and highwaymen with badges robbing us for ad valorem at will, or worse.

    The politicians are even more heinous than the press, especially since they control the press, equating “freedom to fawn” with license to write. Politicians lie in the campaign and then enter office to do exactly the opposite of what they promised. They cannot be held accountable. It is a business: the business of politics. It is a cycle, where the red clown faces off against the blue clown, and the winning clown sprouts fangs of Stephen King’s “It” as soon as the swearing in is completed. Government is no longer in the hands of the people: the people are necessary for labor and to keep the machine running, but we are ruled, not governed.

    Last week a U.S. Senator received the same spoonful of Castor oil that Congress has been giving to the American people for decades. More than that occurred, however, as another example emerged of lack of balanced accountability and the control of the Shadow government. Working through and aided by bureaucracies…obscure ones created under executive order but without Congressional oversight or expiration date…this Shadow government is one step away from seizing power and smothering out the last sparks of freedom in this country forever.

    It is dangerous to write this article. It is dangerous to write these words, and this comes straight out of the mouths of bureaucrats and government officials. Others will also smear the words: anonymous or masked expletive-laden vitriol spouted by the trolls. They are lackeys, either paid for or indirectly supporting the stance of that Shadow government. The open government and the Shadow government have vested interests in one another, for now. Make no mistake: they mutually support one another.

    There is a written document much greater than mine, however, that has been smeared and denounced over time.  The document’s greatest detractors, ironically, are not the ones who openly denounce and revile it. The true detractors are the complacent ones…the ones who do not exercise the very God-given rights affirmed and championed by this written document: the Constitution of the United States of America.

    It is in this vein that I claim those rights given to me before birth, and affirmed within the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States: the right to freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Someone may need these words: someone who is struggling whether or not to take a stand within their heart and maybe in their family, workplace, or community. Maybe it will make a difference for at least one, and one is more than none. The First Amendment needs to be exercised if we’re ever to have a government by “We the People” ever again.

  • US Senate Accelerates Hypersonic Defenses Citing "Fierce Competition" By China And Russia

    The U.S. lawmakers have introduced bipartisan legislation that aims to improve missile defense capabilities of the United States. The U.S. Senators Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) and Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) introduced S. 2980 – Integrated Missile Defense Act of 2018 on May 24, which was read twice and referred to the Committee on Armed Services. The bill directs new efforts to further accelerate hypersonic missile defenses and space-based sensors, as the cold war for emerging technologies, including hy­per­son­ics be well underway against China and Russia.

    “Last year, Congress – working closely with the Trump administration – undertook much-needed efforts to dramatically bolster and advance our country’s missile defense,” said Senator Sullivan.

    “This year, continuing to work in a bipartisan fashion, our bill finally authorizes the full development and deployment of a space-based sensor layer. This important measure further helps to ready our missile defenses and make them increasingly interoperable and effective against an ever-evolving missile threat.

    Additionally, this bill seeks to better align our missile defenses with the 2018 National Defense Strategy including more quickly fielding advanced capabilities to address future threats, better integrating our missile defense systems, and seeking to collaborate more with allies and partners on missile defense technologies, Senator Sullivan added.

    “When it comes to North Korea, we can hope for the best while still planning for the worst,” Senator Schatz said.

    “I strongly support diplomacy, but in the meantime, this bill beefs up our missile defense system and protects Hawaii, Alaska, and the U.S. mainland from rogue missile threats. It also speeds up our efforts to protect U.S. forces and allies in the region by improving our ability to detect, track, discriminate, and intercept increasingly sophisticated future missile threats,” Schatz added.

    S. 2980 is co-sponsored by Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX), Gary Peters (D-MI) and Tom Cotton (R-AR). Here is the overview of the bill:

    • Develops and Deploys Space-based Sensors: Mandates the development deployment of space-based sensors as soon as practicable.

    • Readies Our Defenses: Mandates an analysis of accelerating the development and deployment of the Redesigned Kill Vehicle (RKV) to Missile Field 4 at Fort Greely.

    • Promotes a More Integrated Missile Defense: Directs a study on an integrated air-and-missile defense architecture to protect against evolving threats outlined in the 2018 National Defense Strategy.

    • Accelerates Our Defenses Against Hypersonic Threats: Directs the acceleration of our hypersonic missile defenses and links them to the deployment of space-based sensors.

    • Focuses of Allies: Expresses that the U.S. should work with allies and trusted partners to share missile defense capabilities.

    • More Rigorous Testing: Seeks to discourage a risk adverse culture of missile defense testing and promotes a more rigorous testing regime to deliver capabilities at the “speed of relevance.”

    Senators Schatz and Sullivan stated that the Secretary of Defense “shall submit to the congressional defense committees a report” detailing how the department plans on accelerating its hypersonic missile defense program, within the next three months.

    The Senators also quoted a variety of high-ranking military officials, who warn about China and Russia acquiring emerging technologies, including hy­per­son­ic missiles that could fundamentally change the landscape of war against the West.

    • General Joe Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated, “The United States military is in a fierce competition to harness the benefits of emerging technologies, including hy­per­son­ics … as these developments will fundamentally change the character of war.”.

    • General John Hyten, Commander of United States Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) stated, “China is swiftly developing and testing a hy­per­son­ic-glide vehicle capability, a technology used to defeat ballistic missile defenses.”

    • General Hyten also stated, “President Putin announced Russia’s development of … a maneuverable hypersonic glide vehicle,” which “only reinforce Russia’s commitment to develop weapons designed to intimidate and coerce the U.S. and its allies.”.

    • Admiral Harry Harris, Commander of USPACOM stated, “China and Russia continue to develop and operationally field advanced counter-intervention technologies which include fielding and testing of highly maneuverable re-entry vehicle/warhead (i.e., hypersonic weapons) capabilities that challenge U.S. strategic, operational, and tactical freedom of movement and maneuver. China and Russia also present other notable challenges in the form of cruise missiles and small-unmanned aircraft systems (s–UAS) which fly different trajectories, making them hard to detect, acquire, track, and intercept.”

    It seems as China and Russia are surpassing the United States in acquiring these emerging technologies that the Pentagon has not just tried to develop for years, but squandered trillions of dollars in failed Middle East wars. The consequence? Well, China and or Russia could soon have the ability to strike the heartland of the United States with a hypersonic missile — rendering all missile shields useless.

    That is precisely why U.S. Senators are rushing to accelerate the hypersonic missile program because they understand China and Russia now have an edge. The slow death of American exceptionalism continues.

  • Ronald Stoeferle: Gold Is Dirt Cheap Right Now

    Authored by Adam Taggart via PeakProsperity,com,

    …and a new bull market for the metal is beginning.

    Fresh from releasing his exhaustive 230-page annual report titled In Gold We Trust, Ronald Stoerferle joins us to summarize his forecast for the yellow metal.

    Stoerferle, an author of several books on Austrian economics and head of strategy and portofolio management at Incrementum AG, concludes that gold is extremely cheap right now in dollar terms. And he sees a new bull market beginning for the precious metal — one likely to quickly build momentum as the next (and long overdue) financial market correction arrives.

    We’re at the beginning of a new stage of a bull market.

    We’ve seen a massive correction with a big drawdown, but we’re now seeing the Commitment of Traders report suggesting that there’s been a washout. We’re seeing that sentiment is really negative. We’re seeing that nobody really cares about gold and mining stocks, and especially about silver. Silver is probably the biggest contrarian investment, though silver mining stocks are probably even more contrarian at the moment.

    We all know that the herd behavior in the sector is getting more extreme. I think it has got to do with career risk in the financial industry, so nobody really wants to make a contrarian call. But once we go above this $1,360-$1,380 resistance, which is also the neckline of a large inverse head & shoulder formation, I think gold will hit $1,500, $1,600 pretty quickly.

    The most important thing is: in comparison to all the monetary printing that we’ve seen in the last couple of years, gold got significantly cheaper. Gold, in monetary terms, is dirt cheap at the moment. We’re basically at the same levels like in 1971 when it comes to the gold backing of the US dollar. So gold is a bargain at this level.

    Of course, we need some sort of catalyst. I think one of the main catalysts will probably be recession fears coming up and the greater volatility in equity markets that’s going to go hand in hand. And we’ll see it sooner or later.

    We should not forget that stocks have been trading at or close to the all-time highs, that real estate has been doing really well, that bond markets have been doing well, that cryptocurrencies have been kind of stealing the show, that people regained trust in the financial system, in banks, and even in politicians. Inflation is not a big concern at the moment. We’re seeing rising rates and so on. Let’s face it: those things are not an extremely positive environment for gold. But still, it’s been doing pretty well.

    If those headwinds become tailwinds, meaning that there will be some volatility kicking in in equity markets, that the bond markets start cracking, that people start losing trust in the system again — early indications of which it looks like we may be seeing here in 2018 — that’s going to be the point in time when gold will pick up momentum big time.

    And the other big thing is that the whole world is increasingly trying to diversify out of the US dollar. We’re coming to a multipolar currency system sooner or later. That’s a long process. This year we’ve seen the introduction of the oil futures in Shanghai — that’s a really big development — volumes are enormous in Shanghai. Nobody would have expected that. And that’s just another nail in the coffin of the US dollar.

    And, of course, all those countries that are trying to avoid the US dollar in their trade, they are big holders of gold. So I think within the course of the next crisis, I think there’s might chance of a revaluation of gold.

    Click the play button below to listen to Chris’ interview with Ronald Stoeferle (49m:22s).

  • Trump Credits Presidential Trash-Talking In Diplomatic Accord: "Without The Rhetoric We Wouldn't Be Here"

    Less than a year ago, President Trump dropped his first MOAB in the war of words with 35-year-old North Korean leader Kim Jong Un – warning him “best not make any more threats to the United States,” or North Korea “will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.”

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    Two days later, Kim threatened a “simultaneous strike” which would rain down “historic enveloping fire at Guam” within weeks. 

    Weeks later, Trump told the U.N. that America would “totally destroy” North Korea and it’s leader, “Rocket Man” Kim Jong Un – a nickname he would continue to use over the ensuing weeks and months. 

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    Hitting back a few days after Trump’s speech, Kim threatened to “tame the mentally deranged U.S. dotard with fire” :

    “I am now thinking hard about what response he could have expected when he allowed such eccentric words to trip off his tongue. Whatever Trump might have expected, he will face results beyond his expectation. I will surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged U. S. dotard with fire.”

    *drops mic* 

    Now, President Trump credits his tough-talk with Kim as a major factor in yesterday’s successful summit – telling Fox News “without the rhetoric we wouldn’t have been here.” 

    “So I think the rhetoric, I hated to do it, sometimes I felt foolish doing it, but we had no choice,” he said.

    In other words, Trump’s war of words with Kim was all part of the Art of the Deal.  

    So instead of this: 

    We now have this:

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