- Oust Trump, War With Russia
Authored by Finian Cunningham via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
Behind the sensational Western media coverage now linking the US president’s son to alleged Russian collusion in the American election, the real euphoria stems from relief that, at last, some «evidence» has been found.
For more than seven months now, the US corporate media have been running unrelenting claims that somehow Donald J Trump colluded with Russian state-sponsored hackers to get elected over his Democrat rival Hillary Clinton.
The media campaign has been dismissed as a witch hunt by Trump. Perhaps more sinisterly, US-Russia relations have also become deeply toxic due to the allegations. Not even a friendly meeting between Trump and Putin at last weekend’s G20 summit in Germany seems able to lift the poisonous cloud over bilateral relations.
However, the never-ending «Russia-gate» story was, to be frank, at risk of boring people to death from the sheer lack of evidence to shore up the conjecture of Trump being a Russian stooge. Despite the fact that three separate government probes have been working on the issue, they have nothing to show for it.
Then this week the «Russia-gate» story-tellers got a lifeline with reports that the president’s eldest son, Donald Jr, held a meeting with a Russian lawyer over a year ago at Trump Tower in New York City. The disclosure came from emails sent by Trump’s son to a mediator who promised «dirt on Clinton» that would damage her election campaign.
Democrats, Republicans, supporters of Clinton and the anti-Trump media are now cock-a-hoop that they have a «smoking gun» to prove the narrative of Trump-Russia collusion. Trump Jr is being accused of betraying his country by consorting with a foreign enemy, Russia.
A Washington Post comment noted: «Donald Trump Jr’s emails are the clearest indication yet that Trump campaign officials and family members were willing to deal with a foreign adversary in their mutual goal of taking down Hillary Clinton, and their revelation is dramatic proof that the Russia investigation is alive with no end in sight».
Meanwhile, the New York Times reported: «Rancor at White House as Russia Story Refuses to Let the Page Turn». It goes on to comment with a tone of satisfaction: «Every time the president tries to put the furor behind him, more disclosures thrust it back to the fore, and people close to him are anonymously blaming one another».
What the media outlets decline to say is that the Russia-gate story has not gone away precisely because the media have dutifully amplified leaks and anonymous intelligence claims – more accurately, innuendo – pillorying Trump as a Russian patsy.
The Deep State rulers of the US, comprising the military-intelligence apparatus, never wanted businessman Trump to become president. Unlike Clinton, Trump was insufficiently hawkish towards Russia. Ever since his shock election last November, the Deep State and its media machine have been full throttle to oust the «wrong president». The «Russian collusion» claims are the spearhead of this attack, an attack could qualify as a «soft coup» against the elected president.
With Trump’s son now admitting that he met with a Russian lawyer last summer as the head of his father’s election campaign, the anti-Trump campaign senses a mortal wound and are going full pelt to exploit it.
But the drama has the hallmarks of yet more media-driven sensation that is out of all proportion to the facts. Trump Jr’s lawyer dismissed the latest claims as «much ado about nothing».
The Russian government, which has consistently rejected any claims of interfering in the US election, said that the speculation about Trump and the «Kremlin-connected attorney» is «making a mountain out of a molehill».
As Trump Jr told Fox News this week, he held the meeting simply because he was interested in hearing «opposition research» on Hillary Clinton. As it turned out, no such information was forthcoming and the meeting ended inconclusively after only 20 minutes. That was the end of it. Apparently, Trump Sr wasn’t even told about the brief interview, so insignificant was it at the time.
It seems a fair and plausible observation that Trump Jr was simply doing what any political campaigner would do. Get dirt on opponents.
The US media are thus guilty of «protesting too much» about what is a rather prosaic matter. Apart from the obvious axe they want to grind against President Trump, the other reason for the media hysteria over the latest twist in the Russia-gate affair is that the Deep State and their media machine have, at last, something resembling hard evidence. This is why they are grandstanding. It is from relief that they have found something approximating a story to justify all the months of shrill speculation.
The hypocrisy of the pious media, pundits and politicians over Trump Jr’s betrayal is quickly revealed when one considers that Hillary Clinton’s campaign actively worked with the CIA-backed Kiev regime to dig up dirt on Trump during the election, as reported by Cristina Laila. «Where is the call for Hillary Clinton and her aides to be interviewed by the Senate intelligence panel», she asks.
According to US media interviews given by Nataliya Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer at the center of the Trump brouhaha, she is adamant that she was not acting for the Kremlin. The Kremlin also denies knowing her. She maintains that she not did approach the Trump campaign to provide «dirt» on Clinton, but rather to lobby against US sanctions imposed on her Russian business clients.
The claim that Veselnitskaya was «acting on Russian government information to help Donald Trump» apparently stems solely from the assertion made by the former British tabloid journalist Rob Goldstone, who wrote to Donald Jr to set up the meeting. It was Goldstone who described the meeting with Veselnitskaya as conveying «Russian government information to help your father’s campaign».
In other words that is not «proof» of Russian government involvement. It is simply hearsay from a tabloid hack with self-serving reasons.
Questions that the US media should be asking are: Was Goldstone hamming up his Russian government claims in order to sell Trump a mediation service and a scoop? Also, how did private emails between Goldstone and Trump end up in the possession of the New York Times? Did Goldstone flog them to the newspaper in order to cash in on the brewing Russia-gate scandal?
The lawyer for the family of Emin Agalarov, the Russian singer who asked Goldstone to set up the meeting between Trump Jr and Veselnitskaya, has now come out to rubbish the claims made by Goldstone.
«The vast majority of what Rob Goldstone said in email exchange with Donald Trump Jr is not accurate», Agalarov’s family attorney, Scott Balber, told RT. «The only thing that’s true is that Emin asked the meeting to be arranged. The rest of it is not true, it’s false».
As with so much else in the Russia-gate affair, the latest twist seems to be another concoction to turn wild speculation into the semblance of fact. It is as if the US media conceived the headline «Trump colluded with Russia» a long time ago, and have ever since been chasing to find a «story» to fit the headline.
There are too many holes in the whole Russia-gate affair for it to stand up. It is only the servile US media operating on the agenda of the powerful anti-Trump Deep State that make this non-story appear to stand up.
So desperate is the Deep State to oust Trump from office, it is willing to damage US-Russia relations beyond repair, to the point of risking all-out war.
- London Transport Employees Instructed to Not Use Phrase "Ladies and Gentlemen" Anymore
Content originally published at iBankCoin.com
The London Mayor, Sadiq Khan, in conjunction with the gay rights group, Stonewall, scored a major victory today by banning the phrase “ladies and gentlemen” from the vernacular used by London Transport employees. It’s simply not in touch with the times, as genders defined by the DNA helix are old hat, worn, and not the reality that is supported by the far left — which is filled with hermaphrodites who can literally copulate with themselves.
More on this important, groundbreaking, civil rights victory for the gay class.
The phrase “ladies and gentleman” is to be scrapped from announcements on the Tube in a bid to make them gender-neutral.
London Underground staff have been told to instead use greetings such as “good morning everyone” to ensure that all passengers feel “welcome”.
All new pre-recorded announcements will also be changed to use the new phrases, Transport for London (TfL) said.
Campaigners had said the phrase “ladies and gentleman” – which is commonly used by drivers – was “outdated”, adding that it is“polite, but really belonging to yesterday”.
Stonewall, the LGBT campaign group, welcomed the decision, which comes after months of campaigning and was supported by London mayor Sadiq Khan.
The change of phrases follows similar moves in other companies, universities and schools across the country to use gender-neutral language.
“We want everyone to feel welcome on our transport network,” said Mark Evers, director of customer strategy at TfL.
“We have reviewed the language that we use in announcements and elsewhere and will make sure that it is fully inclusive, reflecting the great diversity of London.”
Mr Khan said he was “keen” that TfL speak in a “more neutral way”.
He added: “TfL serves a vibrant, diverse and multicultural city, and provision of an inclusive transport service is at the heart of TfL’s purpose.
“I am aware however, that some customers may not relate to or feel comfortable with the way that certain station announcements are made.”
TfL said it had told staff about the use of the new phrases, but that “from time-to-time, well-meaning staff may still use the term ‘ladies and gentlemen”.
“If this happens frequently, we will issue reminders to staff,” it added.
Stonewall said in a statement: “Language is extremely important to the lesbian, gay, bi and trans community, and the way we use it can help ensure all people feel included.“We welcome gender neutral announcements to be rolled out across TfL as it will ensure that everyone – no matter who they identify as – feels accounted for.”
When I say ‘they’ are trying to control language, indoctrinate your children through the schools, and through pop culture, I mean it. The very best thing you can do, providing you have a little money, is to send your children to good private schools and explain to them that policies like this are wrong and there is nothing improper with being polite and addressing people as ‘ladies’ or ‘gentlemen.’ Take it from me, a parent who has sent his children to both public and private schools — it’s not even comparable. Two different worlds.
This is a key pillar in the establishment’s plot to destroy the nuclear family, neuter the male gender, and corral the lower classes into group think slave camps of thought, and then have them become loyal serfs — broken spiritually and physically.
Society is more augmented than you know.
- Tacos Vs Burritos Index: The Great Divide In Mexican-American Cuisine
Americans love the genre of cuisine generally known as "Mexican food". The cuisine of our southern neighbor has been ingrained in our culture since the early 20th century. In many respects, it has evolved beyond its origins to become something uniquely American (think Tex-Mex and giant breakfast burritos).
You can find it anywhere, from just across the border to the farthest corners of our northern states. This presents a great opportunity to explore which parts of the country offer the most for Mexican food aficionados. Which city has the most Mexican restaurants? Do some regions of the United States exhibit any preferences for tacos versus burritos?
We analyzed restaurant menu data from Priceonomics customer Datafiniti to see who serves Mexican food and what kind of food that actually is. With the ability to filter for cuisine as well as restaurants with available menu data, we easily found several thousand records to start our investigation. From this initial dataset, we extracted over 100,000 menu items and searched for specific instances of tacos or burritos. Finally, by grouping this data geographically, we were able to compare cities.
Ultimately we found that most major cities (e.g. NYC), as well as cities in the Southwest and California, had the most Mexican restaurants to offer. Cities in Texas, Colorado, and California reign supreme for the most restaurants per capita. In the taco vs. burrito debate, the overall skew of menu items was 56% tacos and 44% burritos nationally. Most notably, cities in Texas offered mostly taco options, while cities in the middle of the country and Northwest offered more burrito options.
***
To start our analysis, we need to determine which cities have the most Mexican restaurants. Below, we’ve charted the top 25 cities.
Data source: Datafiniti
As we can see, the largest cities in the country dominate this list. Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles hold the top three positions. Cities on the list are from all over the country, though there is an abundance of cities from the Southwest (especially Texas).
This list is a bit disingenuous though, and I’ll explain why. As we said at the beginning, we are looking for the cities with the most Mexican food – when I hear that, I think of independently owned restaurants or smaller chains. This list above includes many fast food and fast casual chains that many taco/burrito enthusiasts would not consider authentic, for example, Taco Bell.
We’ve plotted which restaurants have the most locations in our dataset to illustrate that point.
Data source: Datafiniti
Taco Bell makes up nearly 20% of the listings, and in total, the top ten (which includes other popular chains like Chipotle) make up 28% of listings. As we continue our analysis of Mexican restaurants, we will want to remove these kinds of places. With the help of additional secondary research, we’ve identified 20+ restaurants that would be considered fast food chains and ultimately will exclude from the analysis. In total, these make up about 33% of our initial records. To clarify, we’ll still include smaller local chains in the dataset.
Now that we’re only looking at authentic restaurants, we’ll determine the restaurant most listings by city.
Data source: Datafiniti
The rankings are very similar to our previous analysis, but we can see that some cities have jumped up in our rankings. Houston moved up to third while San Francisco, Tucson, and Washington D.C. also jumped up several positions. Cities such as Portland and Phoenix dropped.
Now we want to investigate the ratio between tacos and burritos for each of these cities. We will show which cities you should visit if you’re a fan of either option. We’ve arranged our results from most taco percentage to least. Across the country, the average breakdown is 56% tacos to 44% burritos, and we’ve added highlighting to show when a city skews towards a particular entree.
Data source: Datafiniti
San Antonio and Dallas, have the greatest percentage of tacos at 84%. Indianapolis has the greatest percentage of burritos at 62%. In general, more cities on our list lean towards tacos. Another interesting trend is that all cities in Southwest, from Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, are taco cities. Burrito cities are mostly from the Midwest and West. California has cities in both categories. It appears that SoCal prefers tacos (LA and San Diego), while NorCal prefers burritos (San Francisco, Sacramento, San Jose).
Our previous lists were made up of cities with large populations, which would naturally have a greater number restaurants of all kinds. By accounting for population and calculating the number of Mexican restaurants per person, we can highlight some smaller cities with a lot of Mexican cuisine to offer.
Data source: Datafiniti
Similar to our first analysis, we will list the 25 cities with the most Mexican restaurants, but this time we will look at restaurants per 10,000 residents. You should also note that we are still excluding the fast food and fast casual restaurants that we removed earlier.
Humble, TX has a staggering 7.2 restaurants per 10,000 residents. That is almost about 1.5 times that of the second place city, Littleton, CO with 4.8. In this analysis, we see a lot more small cities from the Southwest and California. Larger cities including Tucson, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Denver still made the cut though.
Now how will these cities compare when looking at their offerings for tacos and burritos? Again we will look at the ratio of taco and burrito options, ordering our list from most taco percentage to least.
Data source: Datafiniti
These cities seem to lean more towards a particular dish than the larger cities. McAllen, TX is clearly a taco town with 93% tacos. Berkeley, CA is king of the burritos with 68% burritos. Overall, we see that there are a lot more places that skew towards burritos than our previous list. Colorado, in particular, appears to have several smaller cities that have many burrito options. It also appears the trend for cities in Texas to prefer tacos holds true.
***
Ultimately, we found that if you love Mexican food, you can really find a lot of options anywhere in the country, especially in bigger cities that can provide you with plenty of options. If you’re looking for tacos, head to Texas, southern California, or other Southwestern states. Burrito enthusiasts can find what they are looking for in the rest of the country, especially northern California and Colorado.
- The Striking Reason Why The US Just Spent A Record $429 Billion In One Month
On Thursday morning the CBO released a surprisingly upbeat assessment of Donald Trump’s proposed budget, calculating that it would cut the cumulative US deficit by 30% over the next decade, preventing the US debt from spiraling out of control (even further).
That however. may be an overly optimistic assessment, especially following the release of the latest monthly budget data, which showed that not only did the US deficit surge to $90 billion, far above the $38 billion consensus estimate, and a “NM” compared to the $6.3 billion budget surplus in June of last year, but the US also saw the biggest one month outlay on record, at $429 billion, 33% higher than the $323 billion in outlays one years ago.
What prompted this massive surge in outlays?
The biggest reason for the outlier print is that according to Stone McCarthy, outlays increased by roughly $60 billion in “other” items relative to baseline because the Treasury revised up its estimates of the subsidy cost of student loans, and to a lesser extent housing, it guarantees.
Here is the CBO explanation:
Outlays for the Department of Education rose by $31 billion (or 51 percent), because the department revised upward, by roughly $39 billion, the estimated net subsidy costs of loans and loan guarantees issued in prior years—a change much larger than last year’s $7 billion upward revision. If the effects of those revisions were excluded, outlays for the department for the first nine months of fiscal year 2017 would have fallen by $2 billion (or 3 percent).
Outlays for the Department of Housing and Urban Development rose by $29 billion, primarily because the department made upward revisions in June 2017, but downward revisions in April 2016, to the estimated net subsidy costs of loans and loan guarantees issued in prior years.
The cost of those loans is treated in the budget on a present value basis, not a cash basis and the Treasury periodically revises these costs. (It should be noted that the associated increase in outlays doesn’t impact Treasury borrowing or debt under the debt limit.) If not for these special factors, Treasury would have reported another small surplus for June… however it did not.
On the revenue side, things were just as bad with the US Treasury collecting only $338.7BN, just 9% higher than the $330BN in June of 2016.
What makes the surge in the deficit especially surprising is that June is often a surplus month, as the Treasury receives large corporate and non-withheld individual tax payments in that month.
One theory explaining the shortfall in revenues reflects taxpayers delaying the recognition of income in 2016, anticipating tax cuts this year. That revenue should eventually be recovered. About a third of the revision was on the outlay size, with a large chunk due to changes in the estimated subsidy costs described above. Based on the CBO revisions, it appears that the deficit for the fiscal year, which has three months left, will be in the $650 billion to $700 billion range, if not even higher, mostly due to the surge in “subsidy costs of housing and student loans” guaranteed by the Treasury.
Combining these two means that YTD, the deficit jumped to $523.1BN vs $399.2BN last year.
While many analysts had a deficit base case for fiscal 2017 at roughly
$575BN (the year ends on Sept 30), the CBO recently revised its
projection for the fiscal 2017 up by $134 billion to $693 billion. Most of the CBO revision reflects weaker than expected revenues, which means it will be even more surprised when it finds out what is going on with outlays.
To summarize: what the unexpected surge in government spending means is that quietly and mostly behind the scenes, the student debt bubble has begun to burst, and the Treasury is “provisioning” for it in real time, with all US taxpayers once again on the hook.
Finally, since the $1.4 trillion and rising student debt bubble is expected to end up with discharges of 35% if not higher, it means that over the next several years, the budget deficit will be incrementally boosted by approximately $500 billion as America’s taxpayers are once again taken to the cleaners, this time to bail out millions of liberal arts majors who for one reason or another just can’t pay back their student loans.
h/t @SMRA
- China Says Trade With North Korea Grew Only 10.5% In First 6 Months Of 2017
New data released by the Chinese government suggests trade with its restive neighbor, North Korea, has only increased by a modest degree since the beginning of the year, rebutting criticisms from President Donald Trump and UN ambassador Nikki Haley that the world's second-largest economy is undermining US efforts to curb trade with the North.
A Chinese official said Thursday that China's trade with isolated North Korea rose more than 10 percent in the January-June period from a year earlier, according to Reuters. The data show a sharp decline in trade in April, May and June after data released by China Customs in April showed a 37.4 percent increase in trade with North Korea in the first quarter of 2017. However, data released a week ago by China's Ministry of Commerce show trade between the two countries grew by 13.7 percent from January to May, suggesting a significant dip since April, according to CNBC.
Trump has leaned on China to curb trade that might help support North Korea’s nuclear program – even coaxing the Communist Party to verbally commit its support for "complete, verifiable and irreversible" denuclearize of the Korean Peninsula. But Chinese reluctance to act against their longtime ally forced the US’s hand last month, when it introduced sanctions against 10 Chinese entities suspected of helping support the North’s nuclear program.
The data appear to support China’s claims that it is fully enforcing United Nations sanctions on nuclear-armed North Korea and there is nothing wrong with what it terms "normal" trade with Pyongyang, referring to areas not covered by sanctions.
“Chinese customs spokesman Huang Songping told a briefing on China's overall trade figures that total trade with North Korea expanded by 10.5 percent to $2.55 billion in the first six months of the year. While China's imports from North Korea dropped 13.2 percent to $880 million in the period from January to June, exports to North Korea rose 29.1 percent to $1.67 billion, he said.
The exports were largely driven by textile products and other traditional labor-intensive goods not included on the United Nations embargo list, Huang added.
'As neighbors, China and North Korea maintain normal business and trade exchanges,' he said, adding that goods for ordinary people and those used for humanitarian reasons are not subject to sanctions."
Reuters said that overall trade with North Korea declined in June, compared with previous second-quarter months, while trade in dollar terms with North Korea rose about 12% from the previous month to $499 million. In May, trade with North Korea gained 14.5 percent from April to $443.5 million, previously released customs data show.
As a Chinese government spokesman noted, China has complied with UN Security Council sanctions on North Korea – though, in its role as a permanent member of the security council, the North’s only major ally has worked persistently to soften international sanctions against the hermit kingdom and its officials. It is also responsible for 90% of trade with North Korea.
“Numbers showing an increase are not evidence that China is failing to enforce UN resolutions, with imports from North Korea falling every month since March, Huang added. China suspended imports of North Korean coal in February, while imports of iron ore accord with relevant U.N. resolutions, he said.
'China customs have all along fully, accurately, conscientiously and strictly enforced relevant Security Council resolutions.'"
Relations between China and the US have cooled in recent weeks – a development highlighted by the North’s July 4 test of its first genuine ICBM. Late last month, the US antagonized the Chinese by finalizing a $1.4 billion arms sale to Taiwan in defiance of its longstanding "one China" policy.
While China has been angered by North Korea's repeated nuclear and missile tests, it also blames the US and South Korea for worsening tensions with their military exercises, while not doing enough to open talks with the North Koreans, as Beijing has proposed. China's Foreign Ministry this week urged a halt to what it called the "China responsibility theory" on North Korea, saying all parties needed to pull their weight, according to Reuters.
Trade between China and North Korea has declined in both 2015 and 2016, a senior government-backed academic said in a front-page comment in the overseas edition of the official People's Daily on Wednesday.
In this particularly trying time for US-China relations, US officials would do well to remain well alert – particularly after Guo Wengui, a billionaire investor who fled China and moved to New York after becoming a major critic of the Chinese regime, revealed that Chinese intelligence might have more than 25,000 deep-cover operatives in the US. Their primary mission is to steal military technologies. But they’re also here to “buy” high level government officials, as well as political and corporate elites who can give China favorable business deals.
- IMF Rings The Alarm On Canada's Economy
Shortly after yesterday’s rate hike by the Bank of Canada, its first since 2010, we warned that as rates in Canada begin to rise, the local economy which has seen a striking decline in hourly earnings in the past year, which remains greatly reliant on a vibrant construction sector, and where households are the most levered on record, if there is anything that can burst the local housing bubble, it is tighter monetary conditions. And a bubble it is, as the chart below clearly demonstrates… one just waiting for the pin, which as we suggested yesterday in “”Canada Is In Serious Trouble” Again, And This Time It’s For Real“, may have finally been provided thanks to the Bank of Canada itself.
Now, one day after our warning, the IMF has doubled down and on Thursday issued its latest consultation report, in which it said that while Canada’s economy has regained some momentum, it warned that business investment remains weak, non-energy exports have underperformed, housing imbalances have increased and uncertainty surrounding trade negotiations with the United States could hurt the recovery.
The report – which concerningly was written even before the BOC hiked rates by 0.25% – also said the Bank of Canada’s current monetary policy stance is appropriate, and it cautioned against tightening.
“While the output gap has started to close, monetary policy should stay accommodative until signs of durable growth and higher inflation emerge,” the IMF said, adding that rate hikes should be “approached cautiously”.
Directors noted that Canada’s financial sector is well capitalized and
has strong profitability, but that there are rising vulnerabilities in
the housing sector… Directors agreed that monetary policy should stay
accommodative and be gradually tightened as signs of durable growth and
inflation pressures emerge. They recognized that monetary easing could
complement fiscal stimulus, and may need to be considered along with
unconventional measures if economic activity contracts significantly,
although there is a risk that it could exacerbate housing imbalances.While one can accuse the IMF of being traditionally dovish: recall Christine Lagarde – who famously said the IMF would be out of business if there were no world crises – has been screaming at central banks for hiking rates (in retrospect she will be proven right, just not yet), in this case she may be right: the recent sudden surge in Canadian interest rates especially on the long end will have a severe impact on loan demand, not to mention mortgage rates and, of course, housing demand.
Furthermore, in a statement following its annual policy review with Canada, the IMF
cautioned that “risks to Canada’s outlook are significant” particularly
– drumroll – “the danger of a sharp correction in the housing market, a further
decline in oil prices, or U.S. protectionism.”Risks to the outlook are significant. On the upside, stronger-than-expected growth in the U.S. could boost export and investment in the near term. On the downside, risks stem from several potential factors—including the risk of a sharp correction in the housing market, high uncertainty surrounding U.S. policies, or a further decline in oil prices—that can be mutually reinforcing. Policy choices will therefore be crucial in shaping the outlook and reducing risks.
The monetary fund also said that financial stability risks could emerge if the housing correction is accompanied by a recession, but there was good news: the IMF noted that recent stress tests have shown Canadian banks could withstand a “significant loss” on their uninsured residential mortgage portfolio, in part because of high capital position.
Well, we are about to find out.
Meanwhile, house prices in Toronto and Vancouver have more than doubled since 2009 and the boom has fueled record household debt, a vulnerability that has also been noted by the Bank of Canada. As Reuters adds, some economists believe the rate hike this week was at least partly aimed at reducing financial system imbalances, which is admirable… the only problem is that the first casualty of a correction in imbalances will be the blue line in the chart at the top.
“The main risk on the domestic side is a sharp correction in the housing market that impairs bank balance sheets, triggers negative feedback loops in the economy, and increases contingent claims on the government,” the IMF warned, sounding the loudest alarm yet on Canada’s economy even if it was reiterating previous warnings about Canada’s long housing boom.
There was another danger: Trump. The Fund also warned U.S. trade protectionism could hurt Canada’s economy, and laid out a scenario for an increase in tariffs that could come with the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement. The IMF was also kind enough to quantify just how little it would take to send the local economy into a tailspin: the IMF said if the United States raises the average tariff on imports from Canada by 2.1 percentage points and there is no retaliation from Canada, there would be a short-term negative impact on real GDP of about 0.4%. Naturally, if tariff increases were higher, an outright recession was virtually guaranteed.
- Is This Why The UN Human Rights Council Is Silent As Venezuelans Die Oppressed Under Socialism?
Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,
The United Nations Human Rights Council has been silent on the death of Venezuelans at the hands of their democratic socialist government. The UN has sided with death, but that isn’t surprising, considering the horrific plans they have laid out for most humans.
The Miami Herald is calling the UN’s lack of response to blood in the streets in Venezuela a “travesty.” Despite Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s bloody repression of opposition protests that have resulted in more than 100 dead, thousands of wounded and hundreds of political prisoners over the past three months, the United Nations Human Rights Council, UNHRC, has not uttered a single word about Venezuela’s human rights crisis.
But there’s a reason for the silence, and all one has to do to figure it out, is lightly scratch the surface. The UN doesn’t care about human rights. It’s a front for their ability to massively depopulate the earth for the advancement of Agenda 21.
In 1992, at a Venezuela conference, the United Nations passed something called “Agenda 21,” for which the elder US President, George Bush, publicly gave his support. It referred to something called “Sustainable Development,” but what this plan laid out very clearly was a one world government. This idea of One World Rule is not new to the Bush clan, or even to the modern day Illuminati. It has been around at least since the times of the Roman Empire, and before. –The Daily Sheeple
Could this be the reason the UN doesn’t care about a few hundred Venezuelans and their oppressed deaths? Possibly, but don’t expect the mainstream media to report on the horrors of socialism. Human beings who seek freedom are the biggest threat to the political structures which are planning to destroy most of mankind, which is why governments are using brainwashing techniques and propaganda on the weak masses. Humans will always gravitate toward their freedom unless brainwashed to accept their own oppression. This is the reason we have so many people across the globe cannot see taxation as the theft that it is. But the explanation for the UN’s silence gets even more disturbing.
Some have an even more sinister reason for the UN’s silence on the oppression of the Venezuelan people.
There is a reason for that inaction, of course. About half of the council’s 47 member countries are dictatorships — including Cuba, China, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Venezuela — who defend one another against charges of human-rights violations. In fact, the UNHRC is a mutual protection society for the world’s worst dictatorships. –Miami Herald
That isn’t exactly comforting. Dictatorships, which the US is headed quickly towards becoming, are in control of “human rights,” so expect the eventual announcement that there is no such thing by those claiming ownership over others. Neither the United States nor any other socialist democracies represented at the council have presented any motions to the council condemning Venezuela’s human rights abuses. That’s because death is a necessary outcome to those who seek infinite power over the lives of others.
As the United States stumbles toward tyranny and becomes more socialist, the changes of our streets looking like those of Venezuela increase. The hypocrisy of instituting the very same socialist policies which caused Venezuela to collapse would appear too obvious for those attempting to brainwash the public in the United States.
Hope seems all but lost against a world takeover, but those on the bottom forget that they are many while the elites are few.
- Janet Yellen's Bitcoin Troll Gets $15,000 In Donations
In what was perhaps the most amusing act of protest to occur during testimony by one of the world’s most powerful central bankers since ECB President Mario Draghi was glitter-bombed by far-left activist Josephine Witt two years ago, an anonymous bitcoiner trolled Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen by holding up a hand-made sign that read “Buy Bitcoin” during Yellen’s testimony before the House financial Services Committee on Wednesday.
Though the attendee and a friend who accompanied him were ultimately asked to leave by a staffer, the moment quickly went viral on twitter, sparking a community-wide hunt to uncover the brazen bitcoiner’s identity and bitcoin wallet ID so they could send him donations as a sign of solidarity.
The community’s response to the still unnamed man's act of defiance yielded dozens of tweets, memes and, to date, more than $15,000 in donations to a bitcoin wallet purportedly belonging to the young troublemaker.
My list of heroes 1 Jesus 2 my dad 3 #BitcoinSignGuy ???? AKA #thenewbitcoinjesus
— briansBTCbrain (@BrianChillenman) July 13, 2017
Bitcoiner @cryptoethan, an 18-year-old trader who claims to be a close friend of “bitcoin sign guy” satisfied the community’s demands by posting a photo of sign guy holding another sign that advertised a bitcoin wallet address where donations could be sent. As of press time, the wallet has received more than six-and-a-half coins – equal to more than $15,000 at the current bitcoin price of about $2,340 per coin. Readers can check out the wallet in real time on blockchain.info.
Crypto Ethan, for his part, insists that he isn’t sign guy, and that, by posting the wallet address, he was merely helping out a friend.
Only posted Sign Guy's address because some people asked. Don't send it you don't trust me or don't want to.
— Ethan (@CryptoEthan) July 12, 2017
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The moment provided a moment of levity for the bitcoin community, which is facing a day of reckoning that could ultimately split the network in two. On July 21, the bitcoin core development team will release its SegWit2x proposal. The software update would increase the amount of transaction data that the network can process every ten minutes, while also allowing the network to shift some of the transaction data onto side networks. As Bloomberg explains, Segwit2.0 has been made viable by a defection of miners to the bitcoin core camp. Previously, miners, many of whom are based in China, had presented a nearly unified front in opposition to SegWit2x.
Bloomberg goes into more detail about the conflict here:
“Behind the conflict is an ideological split about bitcoin’s rightful identity. The community has bitterly argued whether the cryptocurrency should evolve to appeal to mainstream corporations and become more attractive to traditional capital, or fortify its position as a libertarian beacon; whether it should act more as an asset like gold, or as a payment system.
The seeds of the debate were planted years ago: To protect from cyber attacks, bitcoin by design caps the amount of information on its network, called the blockchain. That puts a ceiling on how many transactions it can process — the so-called block size limit — just as the currency’s growing popularity is boosting activity. As a result, transaction times and processing fees have soared to record levels this year, curtailing bitcoin’s ability to process payments with the same efficiency as services like Visa Inc.
To address this problem, two main schools of thought emerged. On one side are miners, who deploy costly computers to verify transactions and act as the backbone of the blockchain. They’re proposing a straightforward increase to the block size limit.
On the other is Core, a group of developers instrumental in upholding bitcoin’s bug-proof software. They insist that to ease blockchain’s traffic jam, some of its data must be managed outside the main network. They claim that not only would it reduce congestion, but also allow other projects including smart contracts to be built on top of bitcoin.
But moving data off the blockchain effectively diminishes the influence of miners, the majority of whom are based in China and who have invested millions on giant server farms. Not surprisingly, Core’s proposal, called SegWit, has garnered resistance from miners, the most vocal being Wu Jihan, co-founder of the world’s largest mining organization Antpool.
‘SegWit is itself a great technology, but the reason it hasn’t taken off is because its interest doesn’t align with miners,’ Wu said.
Still, after previous counter-proposals championed by Wu fell through, miners last month agreed to compromise and support SegWit, in exchange for increasing the block size. Wu says the plan will alleviate short-to-medium term congestion and give Core enough time to flesh out a long-term solution. That proposal is what is known as SegWit2x, which implements SegWit and doubles the block size limit.”
Chris Coney, host of the Cryptoverse podcast, featured the photobombing as the main topic in his daily podcast. Coney noted a key detail that went unnoticed by much of the media coverage surrounding the incident: The fact that the kid raised the sign just as Florida Rep. Bill Posey was asking Chair Yellen about what the Fed's biggest fears are.
Coney sent the kid about 0.4 bitcoin, equal to about $96, live on air, praising bitcoin sign guy's "creative" ploy to try and entice more people to join the bitcoin community – an act Coney described as "pure gangster": “do yourself a favor, do me a favor, do the bitcoin network a favor, do the bitcoin community a favor and send this kid a tip."
So, what’s Yellen’s biggest fear, anyway?
She responded to the Florida Congressman’s question by saying the growing mismatch between workers’ skills and those needed to succeed in an increasingly tech-oriented workforce iss one of her biggest concerns.
“The kinds of jobs that will be available and the types of skills to use those jobs…to my mind education and training are absolutely central for the new kinds of workers who will fill these types of jobs…”
That's right: It's Jobs, jobs, jobs…
Perhaps the world's under-educated workers can take a page out of bitcoin sign guy’s yellow legal notepad and start committing absurdist acts of protest in the hopes of earning the patronage of hundreds of strangers on the internet… for what it’s worth, it looks to fun – and may end up being lucrative, just avoid getting arrested.
- Tech Billionaires Are Funding A Plan To Break The Human Race Out Of The Matrix
Authored by Jake Anderson via TheAntiMedia.org,
On the southwestern edge of Lake Titicaca, Peru, there is an ancient 23-foot doorway known as the Aramu Muru. Local natives call it the “Puerta de hayu Marca,” the gateway to the lands of the gods and immortal life. Throughout their history, the natives have described people disappearing and appearing at this doorway.
In 1998, purported extraterrestrial contactee Jerry Wills claimed a tall blonde humanoid named Zo taught him how to access Aramu Muru and enter “another universe.” Wills further claimed that Zo illustrated to him how our universe is an experimental simulation within his species’ universe. They built it to understand their own reality, which is itself nested inside a larger universe.
The next year, in 1999, the blockbuster science fiction film The Matrix came out and forever emblazoned into our collective subconscious the idea that our existence is a simulation created by a more advanced race of beings. Incidentally, the film also made long black trench coats, black sunglasses, and my last name all the rage, but I digress…
A few years after the release of The Matrix, philosopher Nick Bostrom published the Simulation Argument, a concise paper entitled “Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?” It presented a trilemma, a mathematical breakdown of why at least one of three provocative scenarios must be true.
“(1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a ‘posthuman’ stage;
(2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof);
(3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. It follows that the belief that there is a significant chance that we will one day become posthumans who run ancestor-simulations is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation.”
The “posthuman civilization” to which Bostrom refers defines a period of time after which humans have merged with technology. This is sometimes referred to as post-Singularity, with the ‘Singularity’ describing futurist Ray Kurzweil’s designation of a society in which humans are post-biological, living synergistically with artificial intelligence.
The Simulation Argument presupposes the development of this posthuman civilization, at which point, Bostrom states, advanced humans or AI might develop simulations of the past in the same way that current scientists create test environments; some of the simulations would likely be for entertainment reasons, as well, in the same way humans currently create video games and movies.
In recent years, a number of high-profile figures have come out to state their belief that we are living in a simulation. Chief among them is tech magnate Elon Musk, who has stated that the video game No Man’s Sky confirmed his belief that someday simulations would approximate reality so comprehensively that they would be indistinguishable from reality. Apparently, he was sitting in a hot tub with friends when he finally converted.
Musk is the CEO and brains behind Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and OpenAI. In recent years, he has expressed bold plans for his companies that he believes will advance the human race: with Tesla, he wants to spearhead a transportation infrastructure that doesn’t rely on burning hydrocarbons; with SpaceX, he wants to assist in humanity’s gradual extraplanetary migration to Mars; and with Neuralink and OpenAI, he wants to facilitate humanity’s merger with advanced computer technology.
When he was asked about whether humans are living inside a computer simulation, Musk made headlines last year by saying he thinks the chances are one in billions that we aren’t.
“The strongest argument for us probably being in a simulation I think is the following: 40 years ago we had Pong – two rectangles and a dot,” Musk stated. “That’s where we were. Now 40 years later we have photorealistic, 3D simulations with millions of people playing simultaneously and it’s getting better every year. And soon we’ll have virtual reality, we’ll have augmented reality. If you assume any rate of improvement at all, then the games will become indistinguishable from reality, just indistinguishable.”
Here Musk is referring to the exponential growth of technology, the lynchpin of the Singularity theory. If in 40 years we’ve gone from the two-dimensional pong to the cusp of augmented and virtual reality, imagine where we’ll be in another forty, or a hundred, or 400. Provided the human race survives, one may assume we will achieve the ability to produce simulations with sentient beings. Already, the Department of Defense has created the Sentient World Simulation, a real-time “synthetic mirror of the real world with automated continuous calibration with respect to current real-world information, such as major events, opinion polls, demographic statistics, economic reports, and shifts in trends,” according to a working paper on the system.
In recent years, other scientists have conducted research and even experimentation in attempts to show actual evidence of the Simulation. Heads turned last year when theoretical physicist S. James Gate announced he had found strange computer code in his String Theory research. Bound inside the equations we use to describe our universe, he says, is peculiar self-dual linear binary error-correcting block code.
A team of German physicists has also set out to show that the numerical constraints we see in our universe are consistent with the kinds of limitations we would see in a simulated universe. These physicists have invoked a non-perturbative approach known as lattice quantum chromodynamics to try to discover whether there is an underlying grid to the space/time continuum.
So far their efforts have recreated a minuscule region of the known universe, a sliver of a corner that is but a few femtometers across. But this corner simulates the hypothetical lattice of the universal grid, and their search for a corresponding physical restraint turned up a theoretical upper limit on high-energy particles known as the Greisen–Zatsepin–Kuzmin, or GZK cut off. In other words, there are aspects of our universe that look and behave as a simulation might.
With news that there are two anonymous tech billionaires working on a secret project to break us out of the Matrix, it’s hard to know whether we should laugh or scream in horror.
Simulation talk is great epistemological fun and metaphysical amusement of the highest order, but it may speak to an underlying anxiety regarding the merging of our reality with machines, or an underlying existential loneliness. It’s even been posited as a solution to the Fermi Paradox. Why haven’t we met aliens? Well, because we live inside a world they built.
Our earth is marooned in a cosmic void so vast it would take our current Deep Space I propulsion system an astonishing 81,000 years to reach the nearest star — in a galaxy of hundreds of billions, which is, itself, just one of hundreds of billions. The thought that it’s all 1s and 0s rendered by a futuristic microprocessor is philosophically sexy but, perhaps, sociologically lazy.
That there is anxiety about reality being manufactured in a society obsessed with simulated pleasure and mediated experience isn’t altogether surprising. It’s the ultimate, though perhaps accidental, expression of resistance to a culture steeped in consumerism and artificial growth.
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