Oct 14

Today’s News 14th October 2017

  • Retired Green Beret Fears North Korea Is On "Death Ground" – No Recourse But To Fight Or Die

    Authored by Jeremiah Johnson (nom de plume of a retired Green Beret of the United States Army Special Forces) via SHTFplan.com,

    Fox News reported this on October 11, 2017, in the article North Korea says Trump ‘Lit the Wick of War,’ vows a hail of fire:

    “On Wednesday, the U.S. and South Korea flew two strategic bombers over the Korean peninsula in a joint military exercise — another show of force against Pyongyang amid the mounting tensions. The bombers also conducted firing exercises over the East Sea and Yellow Sea, according to the BBC. Japan’s air force also joined the drill.  This is the second time since Trump’s fiery U.N. General Assembly speech that North Korea vocally accused the U.S. of declaring war on its country. Trump lambasted “little rocket man” Kim Jong Un for going on a “suicide mission for himself and his regime” in the speech last month. He vowed to “totally destroy” the country if it did not halt its nuclear program.”

    Additionally, this information was released in the article North Korea Hackers Reportedly Stole US, South Korea War Plans, by Fox News on October 10, 2017:

    “A plan to assassinate Kim Jong Un and preparations for a potential nuclear showdown with North Korea were among the trove of South Korean military documents reportedly stolen by Hermit Kingdom hackers.  South Korea’s Defense Ministry did not comment on the alleged hack, which reportedly occurred in September 2016 but was only revealed Tuesday. Rhee Cheol-hee, a lawmaker in South Korea, confirmed the data breach to the BBC. The hack consisted of 235 gigabytes of military documents and about 80 percent of what was stolen hasn’t been identified.

     

    Pentagon spokesman Army Col. Rob Manning told reporters on Tuesday: “I can assure you that we are confident in the security of our operations plans and our ability to deal with any threat from North Korea.”  Manning would not confirm the hack.  Pyongyang is suspected of having expert hackers attack South Korean government websites and facilities for years. North Korea has accused its neighbor of “fabricating” the claims, the BBC reported.”

    There was also an incident pursuant to the UN sanctions (initiated by the US) on North Korea, as reported by Reuters on October 11:

    “The United Nations Security Council has banned four ships from ports globally for carrying coal from North Korea, including one vessel that also had ammunition, but the United States postponed a bid to blacklist four others pending further investigation.  The vessels are the first to be designated under stepped-up sanctions imposed on North Korea by the 15-member council in August and September over Pyongyang’s sixth and largest nuclear test and two long-range ballistic missile launches.  The Security Council North Korea sanctions committee, which operates by consensus, agreed at the request of the United States, to blacklist the ships on Oct. 3 for “transporting prohibited items from the DPRK” (North Korea), according to documents seen by Reuters on Tuesday.”

    As mentioned in the articles, the U.S. just flew (and has been flying) bomber missions…ostensibly for “combat readiness,” but realistically to torment North Korea.  Along with the hacked into battle plans, it has been reported that an assassination plan against Kim Jong Un was also among the plans.  Now the UN (at the request of the U.S.) is interfering with North Korea’s ability to ship materials abroad.

    The U.S. is rapidly approaching the point of placing North Korea on the “Death Ground,” characterized in Sun Tzu’s “Art of War.”  This “Death Ground” is an untenable position where an enemy has no recourse but to fight or die, as honorable withdrawal is not permitted.

    We have a president who is not acting in the manner of a statesman with the name-calling and insults…actions that are unbecoming for a man who is the Commander-in-Chief and leader of the United States of America.  Diplomatic channels are not being properly pursued.  China and Russia have each stated that North Korea will not back down, and that diplomacy needs to be placed in clearer focus and sought after.

    The United States is deliberately trying to goad North Korea into taking an action (not necessarily an attack) that will justify a response in force.  Un knows what happened to Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Muhammar Khaddaffi…two nations that did not have nuclear weapons.  The North Koreans know that to disarm is to capitulate.  They also know that the U.S. will not strike first without irradiating South Korea, China, or Russia, and such will elicit repercussions from China and Russia.

    North Korea does have the capability to strike the United States, and the United States is backing it into a corner with provocative actions militarily and unstatesmanlike banter that does not befit or dignify representatives of the country.  North Korea has been backing up into a corner for some time.  There will come a point when it can back up no longer, and will be forced to come out swinging.  It is undoubtedly all part of a larger plan.  The cost, however, will not be borne by the politicians, but by the civilian populations.  The price remains to be seen.

    The next world war will be initiated by an EMP device detonated over the continental United States, followed by a nuclear exchange and fighting with conventional forces.

  • Wave Of Eruptions Along Pacific 'Ring Of Fire' Leave 10,000s Displaced

    The Pacific “Ring of Fire” is living up to its name.

    The 450 or so volcanoes that make up the ring outline have been unusually active this year, sparking evacuations on the Indonesian island of Bali and on the tiny island nation of Vanuatu. Parts of southwestern Japan, meanwhile, have been shaken by a series of earthquakes, unsettling the local population, in an area where the massive Pacific Plate grinds against other plates that form the Earth’s crust, creating a 25,000-mile zone where earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are unusually common.

    Three volcanos have either erupted, or are showing signs of an imminent eruption, across the region, according to a roundup published by the Associated Press.

    Japan:

    The Shinmoedake volcano in southwestern Japan started erupting Wednesday for the first time in about six years. An ash plume rose 1,700 meters (5,580 feet) from the crater Thursday and ash fell on cities and towns in Miyazaki prefecture. Japanese broadcaster TBS showed students wearing helmets and masks on their way to school at the foot of Shinmoedake. The Japan Meteorological Agency is warning that hot ash and gas clouds known as pyroclastic flows could reach 2 kilometers (1 mile) from the crater, and ash and volcanic rocks are a risk over a wider area depending on wind and elevation. It raised the volcanic alert level from 2 to 3 on a scale of 5. Level 3 warns people to not approach the volcano.

    Bali:

    More than 140,000 people fled Mount Agung on the Indonesian resort island of Bali after its alert status was raised to the highest level on Sept. 22. Hundreds of tremors daily from the mountain indicate magma is rising inside it, prompting authorities to warn a powerful eruption is possible. The volcano spewed lava and deadly fast-moving clouds of boiling hot ash, gas and rocks when it last erupted in 1963, killing more than 1,100 people. A new eruption is likely to kill fewer people because officials have imposed a large no-go zone around the crater but it could paralyze tourism, which many Balinese rely on for their livelihoods. Indonesia has more than one tenth of the world’s active volcanoes and another two are currently erupting. Sinabung in northern Sumatra is shooting plumes of ash high into the atmosphere nearly daily, and Dukono in the Maluku island chain is also periodically erupting.

    Vanuatu:

    The entire population of a Pacific island was evacuated in the space of a few days in late September and early October to escape the belching Manaro volcano. The 11,000 residents of Ambae island were moved by every boat available to other islands in Vanuatu, a Pacific archipelago nation, where they’re living in schools, churches and tents. Officials have since downgraded the volcano’s danger level but say the population must wait at least two more weeks to return. The island’s water supply and crops have been affected by volcanic ash and acid rain but most villages were spared major damage. Previous eruptions of the volcano have lasted a month to six weeks.

    As if the Ring of Fire wasn’t doing enough to inspire febrile visions of an apocalyptic calamity, scientists are warning that supervolcanos in Italy and the US could be headed for eruptions that would register as by far the most destructive in modern human history.

    Earlier this week, scientists from Arizona State University presented research showing that when the Yellowstone caldera super volcano last erupted more than 600,000 years ago, it took barely a decade for magma flowing into the volcano’s chamber to reach a critical mass.

    Volcanos, hurricanes, wildfires, earthquakes – natural disasters are seemingly happening everywhere at once.  

    Perhaps the ultimate irony is that while the Trump administration is focusing its energy on foreign enemies like Iran and North Korea, the greatest threat to the American population lies within a cherished domestic landmark and symbol of national pride.

  • The Less We Believe Them About Las Vegas, The More They Want Our Guns

    Authored by James George Jatras via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    Once again, there has been a mass shooting in the United States and the usual script is in play.

    America’s ‘gun culture’ is to blame!

      Before the blood was dry gun control advocates had trotted out their standard list of remedial measures, none of which would have prevented what had just taken place.

    Since the Las Vegas massacre we have been regaled about evil guns by factually ignorant buffoons like Bill Maher, Colin Jost, Michael Che, Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, Trevor Noah, and John Oliver – the last two not even Americans. Anyone who disagrees is just wrong and callous about the loss of innocent life. We now import foreigners to insult us and our institutions and pay them outrageous salaries to do it.

    Las Vegas was a bit different from previous mass shooting in at least two glaring respects.

    First, the inability of law enforcement to discover a motive remains the biggest mystery. Admittedly, these same authorities in the US – and even worse in Europe – typically find themselves scratching their collective head in puzzlement after a murderer shouting “Allahu Akbar” kills a bunch of people. (What did he mean by that? Maybe that’s Arabic for “Merry Christmas”! We’re still trying to figure out why he did it, but we’re sure it had nothing to do with Islam. And anyone who says it did is a racist.) At this point, the actions of the person identified as the Las Vegas killer (whose name will not be mentioned here to deny whatever immortality he may have sought) are attributed to mental instability. That’s not good enough. Subjectively, even maniacs think they are doing something. Even a total lunatic who believes he is, say, fighting Martians or chopping potatoes, intends that outcome. But here, supposedly, someone stockpiles weapons for months, meticulously plans a murderous onslaught – and maybe had contingencies for attacks elsewhere – and there’s not a hint of what he thought he was up to. That’s simply not plausible. (Repeated claims by Daesh that the Las Vegas killer was one of their “soldiers” have not yet been substantiated but authorities were lightning-quick to dismiss the possibility. Meanwhile, despite a total lack of evidence, multiple “RussiaGate” investigations of the Trump Administration roll on and on. Let’s not be hasty, some connection to the Kremlin might eventually turn up . . . )

     

    Second, there’s the money. The individual in question, as confirmed by his girlfriend as well as by his brother and other family members, was quite rich. Supposedly his initial wealth was made via savvy real estate deals (possible) but later was sustained by being really, really good at video poker at Las Vegas casinos, where he was a welcome regular “comped” by the House with food, drinks, hotel rooms, and other goodies. That’s not just implausible, it’s virtually impossible. As Ann Coulter points out, the fact that he was “was treated like royalty by the casinos . . . means he was losing… Anyone who plays video poker over an extended period of time will absolutely, 100 percent, by basic logic, end up a net loser.” If anyone would know this, it’s police in Los Vegas, where casino operators are pillars of the community and gambling is the major industry. It’s clear to anyone with half a brain that the killer was laundering money – from somewhere yet to be disclosed. In our age of digital financial surveillance, casinos are among the last places someone can anonymously churn large amounts of unsourced cash, no questions asked. Maybe the police and FBI haven’t figured out where the money was coming from, or maybe they have and are protecting someone.

    In any case, the inability to get a straight answer to the questions, or even to ascertain simple facts like whether a hotel security guard was shot before or after the mass killing began, or when the first call was made to police, feeds public distrust and speculation as to what the hell is really is going on. That is turn prompts establishment gatekeepers like Snopes to denounce as “conspiracy theorists” (mainly of the “far right” variety, because the existence of a far left is itself a conspiracy theory) folks trying to make sense of the nonsense we’re being force-fed.

    At least Las Vegas has shined a light on one deception that has long been standard in the American media: the notion – no doubt believed by many outside the US – that Americans routinely run around with machine guns shooting each other. This impression is fed by false claims of gun-control advocates that “assault rifles” – semiautomatic guns (where one trigger-pull equals one round fired) – are “weapons of war.” What makes them not like contemporary weapons of war is that they are not fully automatic (hold the trigger down for multiple, rapid rounds), which is why gun control advocates abuse the trick designation “military style” – they look scarier than semiautomatic hunting rifles because of cosmetic features like pistol grips and folding stocks. Fully automatic weapons (i.e., machine guns) have been virtually impossible acquire legally in the US for decades. The evident use in Las Vegas of a so-called “bump stock” to allow a semiautomatic to fire in a manner similar to a machine gun has forced even our fake news outlets to note the distinction. It’s a rare breakout of actual facts.

    Ironically, when the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, which protects Americans’ fundamental right to keep and bear arms, was adopted, ordinary civilian guns really were equal to weapons of war. In fact, they were sometimes better. Think of how the standard British “Brown Bess” smoothbore was outclassed by the far more accurate Pennsylvania Rifle – perfect for picking off Redcoat officers at long range.

    Advocates in gun control in America are always saying they just want “common-sense gun control” laws, like “closing the gun show loophole,” having stricter background checks, limiting the size of magazines, restricting the number of weapons or amount of ammunition someone can buy, and other seemingly innocuous measures. Each is a fraud.

    For example, closing the so-called gun show loophole would be basically a ban on private transfers from one citizen to another – such as a man selling, or giving, a pistol or rifle to his cousin – without all the reporting and red tape federally licensed arms dealers must deal with. This is despite the fact that none the notable killings that supposedly justify more controls was carried out with a weapon from such a sale or would have been prevented if the demanded reform had been in place.

    Meanwhile, the real American slaughter continues in cities where gun laws are as strict as those in any country in Europe, and it is virtually impossible for an honest citizen to acquire and carry a legal weapon.

    For example, last month Chicago reached its 500th homicide so far this year, and by New Year’s Day 2018 is on track to rack up a total exceeding ten times that of the Las Vegas massacre.

    What’s the solution? Evidently to infringe on the constitutional rights of honest, peaceful, law-abiding citizens who are armed and increasingly distrustful of what they are being told by their supposed betters.

     

  • Pay-TV Companies Tank As Subscriber Losses Surge To Record Highs In 2017

    As the broader markets casually melt-up to new record highs with each passing day, one small corner of the equity market is in full on meltdown mode: cable and satellite pay-tv providers.  Down anywhere from 3-10% on the week, investors in this space seem to be finally admitting that record subscriber losses, quarter after quarter, just may end up being a bad thing.

    As Bloomberg points out this morning, pay-tv subscriber losses are expected to set a new record in 2017, surpassing the 1.7mm homes that “cut the cord” in 2016, as industry analyst Craig Moffet warns “it is becoming increasingly clear that the wheels are falling off…”

    Barring a major fourth-quarter comeback, 2017 is on course to be the worst year for conventional pay-TV subscriber losses in history, surpassing last year’s 1.7 million, according to Bloomberg Intelligence. That figure doesn’t include online services like DirecTV Now. Even including those digital plans, the five biggest TV providers are projected to have lost 469,000 customers in the third quarter.

     

    AT&T sank 6.1 percent, the biggest one-day loss since November 2008. Dish, which also provides satellite service, declined 5.1 percent. Viacom dropped 2.5 percent while AMC Networks Inc. fell 6.8 percent after Guggenheim Securities LLC downgraded the two stocks to neutral from buy.

     

    Dallas-based AT&T is pushing headlong into TV programming by acquiring HBO and CNN owner Time Warner Inc. in an $85.4 billion deal. Chief Executive Officer Randall Stephenson has argued that the acquisition will let AT&T create compelling video packages for mobile subscribers and provide valuable targeting information for advertisers.

     

    “It is becoming increasingly clear that the wheels are falling off of satellite TV,” said Craig Moffett, an analyst at MoffettNathanson LLC, in a research note.

    AT&T set off the selling panic earlier this week when they announced they would lose 390,000 pay-tv customers in 3Q 2017 alone.  As a reminder, AT&T purchased DirectTV for $48.5 billion just 3 years ago…something tells us shareholders might like a ‘do-over’ on that colossal misallocation of capital.

    AT&T, whose ownership of the DirecTV satellite service makes it the biggest U.S. pay-television provider, said late Wednesday it will report a third-quarter loss of 390,000 satellite and cable customers, echoing a similar warning weeks earlier from Comcast Corp. The same night, Viacom cautioned that its distribution deal with Charter Communications Inc., the second-biggest cable U.S. company, may lead to a blackout, potentially testing whether millions of viewers are willing to go without MTV and Nickelodeon.

     

    Shares of both companies retreated Thursday, contributing to a broader selloff in the sector. The S&P 500 Media Index, which includes Comcast and ESPN owner Walt Disney Co., slid 2.3 percent to the lowest level since December.

    Meanwhile, the bigger question that remains to be answered is whether cable providers will finally use this customer backlash to push back on content providers who have managed to force ridiculous annual price increases down the throats of American consumers for decades…Citi analyst Jason Bazinet seems to think so…

    After decades of steadily increasing bills and ever-bigger packages of channels, the pay-TV ecosystem is in full-blown crisis mode. AT&T, Dish Network Inc. and others are offering cheaper, online-only versions of cable to lure customers back, but that means having to accept thinner profit margins.

     

    “Those salad days of fat bundles, automatic carriage renewals and customary affiliate steps ups are long gone,” Citigroup Inc. analyst Jason Bazinet wrote in a note this week. “Today, every media and cable firm is jockeying for self-preservation. And we suspect the next chapter in this new era means Charter will drop — or significantly curtail — distribution of Viacom’s content.”

    Of course, some of these content owners are making the decision to drop the cable bundle much easier all on their own…

    ESPN

  • Tech Vs. Trump: The Great Battle Of Our Time Has Begun

    Authored by Niall Ferguson via The Spectator,

    Social media helped Donald Trump take the White House. Silicon Valley won’t let it happen again…

    In the 1962 Japanese sci-fi classic King Kong vs Godzilla, the two giant monsters fight to a stalemate atop Mount Fuji. I have been wondering for some time when the two giants of American social media would square up for what promises to be a comparably brutal battle. Finally, it began last month – and where else but on Twitter?

    ‘Facebook was always anti-Trump,’ tweeted the President of the United States on 27 September.

    Mark Zuckerberg shot back hours later (on Facebook, of course): ‘Trump says Facebook is against him. Liberals say we helped Trump. Both sides are upset about ideas and content they don’t like. That’s what running a platform for all ideas looks like.’

    A platform for all ideas? Well, maybe. Others see Facebook differently. As Zuckerberg’s response to Trump acknowledged, the President is not alone in criticising him. The various inquiries into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election are turning up much that is awkward, notably that Russia bought around 3,000 Facebook ads designed to spread politically divisive posts to Americans before and after the election, as well as to promote inflammatory political protests on issues such as Muslim immigration.

    It may be too big a stretch to claim that Russian Facebook ads swung the election in Trump’s favour. But it seems plausible that his campaign’s use of social media, particularly Facebook, gave it a vital edge that compensated for its financial disadvantage relative to Hillary Clinton’s campaign. On that, if on nothing else, I suspect Steve Bannon and Clinton would agree. ‘Facebook is now the largest news platform in the world,’ Clinton writes in her election postmortem. ‘With that awesome power comes great responsibility.’

    Awesome power, yes. At the end of June, the number of active Facebook users (people who visit the site at least once a month) passed the two billion mark. WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram — all owned by Facebook — have three billion users altogether, though no doubt there is much overlap. Two- thirds of American adults are on Facebook and 45 per cent get their news from it. More than half the UK population access Facebook at least once a month. The average user is on the site for 1/16 of every day.

    But great responsibility? In the wake of the Las Vegas massacre, Facebook briefly featured a bogus story that the shooter had ‘Trump-hating’ views. A fake page claimed responsibility for the attack on behalf of the far-left Antifa movement, saying the goal had been to kill ‘Trump-supporting fascist dogs’.

    Last month, the non-profit investigative news site ProPublica revealed that Facebook’s online ad tools had helped advertisers to target self-described ‘Jew haters’ or people who had used phrases such as ‘how to burn Jews’. In the words of Facebook’s chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg: ‘The fact that hateful terms were even offered as options was totally inappropriate and a fail on our part.’ Facebook ‘never intended or anticipated this functionality being used this way’.

    What Facebook intended and how Facebook is used turn out to be very different. The company’s motto used to be: ‘Make the world more open and connected.’ It’s no longer quite so simple.

    ‘For most of the existence of the company, this idea of connecting the world has not been a controversial thing,’ Zuckerberg recently said. ‘Something changed.’

    What has changed is that the world has belatedly woken up to realities about social networks that were already obvious to anyone familiar with history and network science.

    For most of history, it is true, hierarchies have tended to dominate distributed networks. However, there are historical precedents for technological change leading to enhanced connectedness that empowers social networks and weakens hierarchies.

    The first began exactly 500 years ago, when Martin Luther launched his campaign for reform of the Roman Catholic church. Had it not been for the printing press, Luther would have been just another obscure heretic and might well have ended his life in the flames of the stake. But Gutenberg’s innovation enabled Luther’s message to ‘go viral’ — as we would now say — and it spread with remarkable speed throughout Germany and then across north-western Europe.

    Luther was as much of a utopian as the pioneers of Silicon Valley in our own time. In his mind, the Reformation would create a powerful new network of pious Christians, all enabled to read the Bible in the vernacular and to establish more direct relationships with God than the indirect ones mediated by a corrupt ecclesiastical hierarchy. The vision of St Peter of a ‘priesthood of all believers’ would finally be realised.

    But the true upshot of the Reformation was not harmony but polarisation and conflict. Not everyone was inspired by Luther’s message. Some sought to go further than him. Others reacted violently against the proposed reforms. The Counter-Reformation adopted the Protestants’ novel techniques of propagation and deployed them against the heretics.

    Yet it proved impossible to destroy Protestant networks, even with mass executions and hideously cruel torture. If anything, persecution promoted radicalisation. Meanwhile, the constantly growing network of printed words proved itself as ready to spread madness as holiness. The witch craze of the 17th century was a classic example of a monster meme, claiming innocent lives from Scotland to Salem, Massachusetts.

    There are three big differences between now and then.

    First, today’s social networks are vastly bigger, faster and more widespread than those of the early modern era.

     

    Secondly, whereas the printing press was a truly decentralised technology — Johannes Gutenberg was no Bill Gates — the ownership of today’s IT infrastructure is concentrated in remarkably few hands.

     

    Finally, our networked age began by disrupting markets and later politics; only one religion, Islam, has been significantly affected.

    But the similarities are nevertheless striking. Now, as then, newly empowered networks have led to polarisation, not harmony. Now, as then, the networks have acted as a transmission mechanism for all kinds of manias and panics as well as truth and beauty. And now, as then, the networks have eroded territorial sovereignty, weakening the established structures of political authority.

    The US government sought to harness the power of social networks when the National Security Agency co-opted the big technology companies into its PRISM programme of mass domestic and foreign surveillance. But the new networks did not easily integrate into old power structures. Globally disseminated leaks, courtesy of Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, exposed PRISM, while a new kind of populist politics flourished on social media.

    A defining feature of social networks (as in the Reformation) is their tendency to divide rather than unite. Recent research on American blogs and Twitter reveals a similar pattern: the emergence of two self-segregated ideological communities, one liberal, the other conservative. Just as birds of a feather flock together (network geeks call it ‘homophily’) so Twitter users retweet within their political clusters. One study found that with tweets on hot-button political topics (such as gun control, same-sex marriage and climate change), the use of emotional words increases their diffusion by a factor of 20 per cent for each additional word. Ever wondered why tweets are full of expletives? Now you know.

    The presidential election of 2016 was a tale of many networks. By going viral through a largely self-organised network, Trump beat Clinton’s old-school, hierarchically structured campaign, which poured money into antiquated channels like local television. Isis contributed to the febrile atmosphere with its worst attack in North America (in Orlando in June last year), prompting Trump’s populist (and popular) promise of a ‘Muslim ban’. But the Trump network had itself been penetrated by the Russian intelligence network. Trump’s campaign and, to a much smaller extent, the Russians both used Facebook and Twitter as tools to discredit his opponent and discourage potential Democratic voters.

    Make no mistake: 2016 will never happen again. Silicon Valley hates Trump for too many reasons to count. The most important are his stance on immigration (on which the Valley depends for its supply of skilled software engineers) and Big Tech’s need to ‘virtue-signal’ to its most valued user demographic: the young and affluent. They lean left. So does the otherwise capitalist Valley.

    The political consequences were not immediately obvious, unless you were paying close attention, but after the Charlottesville clashes between white supremacists, neo-Nazis and their various left-wing opponents, they were there for all to see. Matthew Prince, CEO of the internet service provider Cloudflare, described what happened: ‘Literally, I woke up in a bad mood and decided someone shouldn’t be allowed on the internet.’ On the basis that ‘the people behind the Daily Stormer are assholes’, he denied their fascistic website access to the worldwide web. As Prince himself rightly observed: ‘No one should have that power. We need to have a discussion around this with clear rules and clear frameworks. My whims and those of Jeff [Bezos] and Larry [Page] and Satya [Nadella] and Mark [Zuckerberg] shouldn’t be what determines what should be online.’ Yet that discussion has barely begun. And until it happens, it will indeed be they who decide who is allowed on the internet.

    This goes to the heart of the matter. According to Zuckerberg, Facebook is ‘a tech company, not a media company… We build the tools; we do not produce any content’. Yet in practice, according to a recent Reuters investigation, ‘an elite group of at least five senior executives regularly directs content policy and makes editorial judgment calls.’ In the words of Espen Egil Hansen, the editor-in-chief of the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten, Zuckerberg is now ‘the world’s most powerful editor’.

    It is not only neo-Nazi sites that find themselves on the online equivalent of the newsroom spike. Twitter has recently rejected paid-for tweets from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) on the grounds of ‘Hate’. These tweets were hardly excerpts from Mein Kampf: for example: ‘The fiscal cost created by illegal immigrants of $746.3bn compares to a total cost of deportation of $124.1bn.’ In the words of CIS director Mark Krikorian, ‘The internet is now a utility more important than phones or cable TV. If people can be denied access to it based on the content of their ideas and speech (rather than specific illegal acts), why not make phone service contingent on your political views? Or mail delivery?’

    Google recently revealed that it is using machine learning to document ‘hate crimes and events’ in America. Among their partners in this effort is the notorious Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which maintains a list of ‘anti-Muslim extremists’ — including my wife, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and the British liberal Muslim Maajid Nawaz — but no list whatsoever of Muslim extremists.

    ‘YouTube doesn’t allow hate speech or content that promotes or incites violence,’ declared a recent message to YouTube content creators. But who decides what is ‘hate speech’? The phrase has become the 21st-century equivalent of ‘heresy’. It’s what you call something before you proscribe it.

    Silicon Valley insists it is home to neutral network platforms. This is no longer credible. Facebook alone has, without quite meaning to, evolved into the most powerful publisher in the history of the world. Zuckerberg is William Randolph Hearst to the power of ten.

    So what to do? Left-leaning Democrats have an answer: revive the progressive interpretation of anti-trust policy and break up the internet monopolies. Superficially, they have a case. Amazon controls 65 per cent of all online new book sales. Google’s market share of online search is 87 per cent in the US. In mobile social networking, Facebook and its subsidiaries control 75 per cent of the American market.

    Yet who seriously cares what the hipster anti-trust types say? Silicon Valley is a huge donor to the Democrats. Why would they make life difficult for Big Tech when it so openly leans left? The real question is when Republicans (and not just the President) are going to wake up to the threat they now face.

    Two big battles are looming: one on the question of net neutrality (the principle that all bits of data should be treated alike, regardless of their content or value), the other on the 1996 Communications and Decency Act, which allows tech firms exemption from liability for content that appears on their platforms. A group of senators led by Rob Portman has started the ball rolling by seeking to impose liability on companies that knowingly facilitate sex trafficking on their platforms. The initial response of the Internet Association, a trade group that is essentially a mouthpiece for the Valley, was revealing: ‘The entire internet industry wants to end human trafficking,’ it said. ‘But there are ways to do this without amending a law foundational to legitimate internet services.’ Last month, however, the IA conceded the need for ‘targeted amendments’.

    This battle is only just beginning, but its outcome could be decisive in both the 2018 midterm elections to Congress and the 2020 presidential race. The regulatory status quo is not only highly favourable to Silicon Valley. It could also prove highly unfavourable to Republican candidates — though (so far as I could tell on a recent visit to Washington) the penny has not yet dropped with lawmakers who are accustomed to talking only about deregulation, not regulation.

    In many ways, what we are about to witness will be a classic struggle between new networks and established hierarchies. Like King Kong’s epic slugfest with Godzilla, however, it’s far from easy to predict which side will prevail – or how much collateral damage they will both inflict on American democracy. In the old Godzilla movies, after all, the one predictable thing is that Tokyo always gets destroyed.

  • "Enough To Kill 5 Million People": Authorities Make One Of Biggest Fentanyl Busts In History

    The Acting United States Attorney for the District of Nebraska announced earlier this morning that a joint force involving both the Drug Enforcement Administration and Nebraska State Patrol made one of the largest fentanyl busts in the history of the country.  According to authorities, 27 year old Edgar Navarro-Aguirre of California was arrested at an Amtrak station in Omaha carrying 15 kilos (33 pounds) of the deadly opioid.  Here is more from a local NBC affiliate:

    Navarro-Aguirre was traveling on the Amtrak train and waiting at the station when a Drug Enforcement Administration agent was doing a routine surveillance there and noticed a suspicious person with a bag.

     

    “We have officers that are trained to pick out people that are different than the normal traveling public,” Nebraska State Patrol Lt. Jason Scott said.

     

    According to an affidavit, Navarro-Aguirre said it was his friend’s bag, and he denied that anything illegal was inside.

     

    Inside Navarro-Aguirre’s luggage was 15 vacuum-sealed bundles of what forensic chemists determined was pure or nearly pure fentanyl.

     

    “This fentanyl seizure is the largest ever in Nebraska and one of the largest in the nation,” a news released from the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

    Fent

    For those who may not be familiar with this deadly epidemic, fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is 40-50 times more potent than herion and has resulted in a wave of overdoses across the country, and particularly in the midwest.  Experts say it only takes a small amount, about 3 milligrams, for the drug to be fatal.

    “This is playing Russian Roulette knowing every cylinder has a bullet in it,” DEA Associate Special Agent in Charge Matt Barden said.

     

    With that in mind, the amount seized by authorities in its pure form would be enough to kill approximately 4.9 million people, or nearly the entire populations of Iowa and Nebraska.

     

    “I think it was literally one mishap away from something extremely tragic for Nebraska,” Lt. Scott said, “dropping a suitcase or it being cut open, this is in a public venue, this was not in a private room.”

    As the New York Times pointed out last month, fentanyl is estimated to have killed over 20,000 people in the U.S. in 2016, a 5x increase over just a couple of years.

    Drug overdoses killed roughly 64,000 people in the United States last year, according to the first governmental account of nationwide drug deaths to cover all of 2016. It’s a staggering rise of more than 22 percent over the 52,404 drug deaths recorded the previous year — and even higher than The New York Times’s estimate in June, which was based on earlier preliminary data.

     

    Drug overdoses are expected to remain the leading cause of death for Americans under 50, as synthetic opioids — primarily fentanyl and its analogues — continue to push the death count higher. Drug deaths involving fentanyl more than doubled from 2015 to 2016, accompanied by an upturn in deaths involving cocaine and methamphetamine. Together they add up to an epidemic of drug overdoses that is killing people at a faster rate than the H.I.V. epidemic at its peak.

     

    The explosion in fentanyl deaths and the persistence of widespread opioid addiction have swamped local and state resources. Communities say their budgets are being strained by the additional needs — for increased police and medical care, for widespread naloxone distribution and for a stronger foster care system that can handle the swelling number of neglected or orphaned children.

    Fent

    Navarro-Aguirre is facing a charge of possession with intent to distribute 400 grams or more of a mixture or substance containing fentanyl. The penalty carries a minimum of 10 years with a maximum of life in prison.  The 27-year-old will appear in federal court Friday afternoon.

  • Rickards Warns "Prepare For A Chinese Maxi-Devaluation"

    Authored by James Rickards via The Daily Reckoning,

    China is a relatively open economy; therefore it is subject to the impossible trinity.

    China has also been attempting to do the impossible in recent years with predictable results.

    Beginning in 2008 China pegged its exchange rate to the U.S. dollar. China also had an open capital account to allow the free exchange of yuan for dollars, and China preferred an independent monetary policy.

    The problem is that the Impossible Trinity says you can’t have all three. This model has been validated several times since 2008 as China has stumbled through a series of currency and monetary reversals.

    For example, China’s attempted the impossible beginning in 2008 with a peg to the dollar around 6.80. This ended abruptly in June 2010 when China broke the currency peg and allowed it to rise from 6.82 to 6.05 by January 2014 — a 10% appreciation.

    This exchange rate revaluation was partly in response to bitter complaints by U.S. Treasury Secretary Geithner about China’s “currency manipulation” through an artificially low peg to the dollar in the 2008 – 2010 period.

    After 2013, China reversed course and pursued a steady devaluation of the yuan from 6.05 in January 2014 to 6.95 by December 2016. At the end of 2016, the Chinese yuan was back where it was when the U.S. was screaming “currency manipulation.”

    Only now there was a new figure to point the finger at China. The new American critic was no longer the quiet Tim Geithner, but the bombastic Donald Trump.

    Trump had threatened to label China a currency manipulator throughout his campaign from June 2015 to Election Day on November 8, 2016. Once Trump was elected, China engaged in a policy of currency war appeasement.

    China actually propped up its currency with a soft peg. The trading range was especially tight in the first half of 2017, right around 6.85.

    In contrast to the 2008 – 2010 peg, China avoided the impossible trinity this time by partially closing the capital account and by raising rates alongside the Fed, thereby abandoning its independent monetary policy.

    This was also in contrast to China’s behavior when it first faced the failure of its efforts to beat impossible trinity. In 2015, China dodged the impossible trinity not by closing the capital account, but by breaking the currency peg.

    In August 2015, China engineered a sudden shock devaluation of the yuan. The dollar gained 3% against the yuan in two days as China devalued.

    The results were disastrous.

    U.S. stocks fell 11% in a few weeks. There was a real threat of global financial contagion and a full-blown liquidity crisis. A crisis was averted by Fed jawboning, and a decision to put off the “liftoff” in U.S. interest rates from September 2015 to the following December.

    China conducted another devaluation from November to December 2015. This time China did not execute a sneak attack, but did the devaluation in baby steps. This was stealth devaluation.

    The results were just as disastrous as the prior August. U.S. stocks fell 11% from January 1, 2016 to February 10. 2016. Again, a greater crisis was averted only by a Fed decision to delay planned U.S. interest rate hikes in March and June 2016.

    The impact these two prior devaluations had on the exchange rate is shown in the chart below.

    Major moves in the dollar/yuan cross exchange rate (USD/CNY) have had powerful impacts on global markets. The August 2015 surprise yuan devaluation sent U.S. stocks reeling. Another slower devaluation did the same in early 2016. A stronger yuan in 2017 coincided with the Trump stock rally. A new devaluation is now underway and U.S. stocks may suffer again.

    By mid-2017, the Trump administration was once again complaining about Chinese currency manipulation.

    This was partly in response to China’s failure to assist the United States in dealing with North Korea’s nuclear weapons development and missile testing programs.

    For its part, China did not want a trade or currency war with the U.S. in advance of the National Congress of the Communist Party of China, which begins on October 18.

    President Xi Jinping was playing a delicate internal political game and did not want to rock the boat in international relations. China appeased the U.S. again by allowing the exchange rate to climb from 6.90 to 6.45 in the summer of 2017.

    China escaped the impossible trinity in 2015 by devaluing their currency.

    China escaped the impossible trinity again in 2017 using a hat trick of partially closing the capital account, raising interest rates, and allowing the yuan to appreciate against the dollar thereby breaking the exchange rate peg.

    The problem for China is that these solutions are all non-sustainable.

    China cannot keep the capital account closed without damaging badly needed capital inflows. Who will invest in China if you can’t get your money out?

     

    China also cannot maintain high interest rates because the interest costs will bankrupt insolvent state owned enterprises and lead to an increase in unemployment, which is socially destabilizing.

     

    China cannot maintain a strong yuan because that damages exports, hurts export-related jobs, and causes deflation to be imported through lower import prices. An artificially inflated currency also drains the foreign exchange reserves needed to maintain the peg.

    Since the impossible trinity really is impossible in the long-run, and since China’s current solutions are non-sustainable, what can China do to solve its policy trilemma?

    The most obvious course, and the one likely to be implemented, is a maxi-devaluation of the yuan to around the 7.95 level or lower.

    This would stop capital outflows because those outflows are driven by devaluation fears. Once the devaluation happens, there is no longer any urgency about getting money out of China. In fact, new money should start to flow in to take advantage of much lower local currency prices.

    There are early signs that this policy of devaluation is already being put into place. The yuan has dropped sharply in the past month from 6.45 to 6.62. This resembles the stealth devaluation of late 2015, but is somewhat more aggressive.

    The geopolitical situation is also ripe for a Chinese devaluation policy. Once the National Party Congress is over in late October, President Xi will have secured his political ambitions and will no longer find it necessary to avoid rocking the boat.

    China’s President Xi Jinping awaits appointment to a second term at the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, starting October 18. His reappointment is a foregone conclusion.

    China has clearly failed to have much impact on North Korea’s nuclear weapons ambitions. As war between North Korea and the U.S. draws closer, neither China nor the U.S. will have as much incentive to cooperate with each other on bilateral trade and currency issues.

    Both Trump and Xi are readying a “gloves off” approach to a trade war and renewed currency war. A maxi-devaluation of the yuan is Xi’s most potent weapon.

    Finally, China’s internal contradictions are catching up with it. China has to confront an insolvent banking system, a real estate bubble, and a $1 trillion wealth management product Ponzi scheme that is starting to fall apart.

    A much weaker yuan would give China some policy space in terms of using its reserves to paper over some of these problems.

    Less dramatic devaluations of the yuan led to U.S. stock market crashes. What does a new maxi-devaluation portend for U.S. stocks?

    We might have an answer soon enough.

  • California's Path To Independence Smoother Than Catalonia's, Secessionists Say

    California’s burgeoning secessionist movement has been watching Catalonia’s struggle for independence with an eye toward the future. Proponents of transforming California into an independent republic have pointed out that there are many similarities between Catalonia and America’s largest state. For example, both are relatively wealthy.  

    However, the circumstances of the two states diverge in one notable respect: The US constitution and California’s state constitution would make it easier for California to secede than Catalonia.

    At least, that’s what one leader of California’s largest pro-secessionist group said during an interview with McClatchy.

    Catalonia has approached secession in the best way it could, Marin said. If secession is what Californians want, he says their path to independence will be easier thanks to the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which says any powers not explicitly given to the federal government are retained by the states. The states cannot unilaterally declare independence, but Marin argues that the Constitution provides the federal government and the states a sanctioned path toward that negotiation.

     

    “There are definitely similarities in the fiscal situation – we both give more than we get back,” said Dave Marin, director of research and policy for the California Freedom Coalition. “But there’s more flexibility in the U.S. Constitution for secession than there is in the Spanish one. California has more tools available to it.”

    In a shocking display of police brutality, the government of Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy forcefully tried to shut down a Catalan independence referendum that took place on Oct. 1 despite being declared illegal by a court in Madrid. Most recently, Catalan Leader Carles Puidgdemont symbolically declared independence before suspending it pending talks with the central government. Meanwhile, Rajoy said Wednesday that Catalonia has eight days to comply with the state’s order to drop its independence bid or Madrid will revoke the state’s autonomy and reassert centralized rule, likely accompanied by a violent crackdown as the rest of Europe backs away.

    However, Dave Marin says California can probably find a way to disentangle itself from the US peaceably by employing unconventional tactics.

    The first step for Marin’s group is getting an initiative on the 2018 ballot that would repeal a section of the state’s constitution that says California is an “inseparable” part of the US.

    “Our state government is very experienced at doing things that undermine the federal government without being unconstitutional,” Marin said, citing California’s sanctuary cities as an example.

     

    The California Freedom Coalition is collecting signatures to get its ballot initiative in front of voters in 2018. It does not definitively say California will declare independence from the United States; it would repeal a provision in the state constitution that says California is “an inseparable part of the United States.” It also directs the governor to negotiate for greater autonomy from the federal government and establishes an advisory commission on California autonomy and independence.

    Calls for California’s independence pre-date Donald Trump’s presidency, but his election magnified the movement considerably. Still, most Californians see secession as ridiculous, with only 20% seeing it favorably. Meanwhile, 32% saw it favorably.

    “We’re not strictly saying secession right now,” Marin said. “But if that number gets into the high 40s or 50s, it makes sense to consider. And then we have a few more tools to pursue it than Catalonia.”

    Given the intense polarization in America’s values and priorities – not to mention California’s open defiance of the federal government, most recently manifested in the “sanctuary state” declaration as well as the state’s legalization of marijuana, which remains illegally at the federal level, the notion that we one day might see an independent California is looking less preposterous.

    At the very least, as first the UK – and now Catalonia – have demonstrated, it’d be foolish to write off the possibility.
     

  • FBI 'Hand-In-Hand' With Vegas PD, Begin Damage Control: "There Is No Conspiracy… Nobody Is Attempt to Hide Anything"

    Sheriff Joseph Lombardo of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department appeared to be visibly shaken when told reporters Friday that he wasn’t attempting to be “subversive” in previous statements he made surrounding details of the October 1 massacre at the Route 91 Music Festival where 58 people lost their lives.

    As Intellihub details, in the ‘no questions’ conference, which members of the independent media were not allowed to attend, the sheriff said that he’s “well aware” of the timeline dispute released by MGM Management on Thursday which claims that Stephen Paddock fired his weapon into the crowd just seconds after Mandalay Bay security guard Jesus Campos was struck by a bullet in the 32nd-floor hallway outside the shooter’s end suite.

    The sheriff stuck to his guns on Friday when he told reporters that he still ‘stands by’ his latest timeline which lists Campos’s encounter with Paddock at 9:59 p.m., 6 minutes prior Paddock’s first known volley of fully-automatic gunfire.

    The visibly nervous sheriff also made clear that “there is no conspiracy between the FBI, LVMPD, or the MGM” and that “nobody is attempting to hide anything” in reference to the investigation and noted his solidarity with the FBI.

     

    “We are standing hand-in-hand with the FBI in the continuance of this investigation,” the sheriff explained.

     

    “I feel confident that there are no other individuals that are intending to cause harm to our community associated with the 1 October event.”

    Sheriff Lombardo also provided an explanation for changes he recently made to the publicly released timeline surrounding Paddock’s arrival to Vegas and his check-in date at the Mandalay Bay.

    “We have come to learn that the suspect did occupy the room on the 25th and the situation on how the room was compensated or paid for had changed on the 28th to include Marilou Danley,” he explained.

    Additionally, the sheriff told reporters that so far there has only been a “visual inspection” done of Paddock’s brain and said that Paddock’s brain was shipped to a facility that will conduct a “microscopic analysis of the brain” to see if there were any signs of mental illness.

    As of yet, authorities admit that they still have no motive for Paddock’s crimes and maintain that he has no affiliation with any groups.

    At one point a reporter tried to sneak a question in but was quickly swatted down by Lombardo over the podium mic.

    This fiasco comes after earlier chaos surrounding the sudden disappearance of Mandalay Bay security guard Jesus Campos, who was shot in the leg by Stephen Paddock…

    Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

    Over the last few days Las Vegas law enforcement officials have significantly altered the timeline of the mass shooting that left 59 dead and hundreds injured. Adding further intrigue is the fact that the Mandalay Bay Hotel & Casino now says that they have their own timeline of events, which diverge from the official story.

    //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    On top of that, mystery still surrounds Mandalay Bay security guard Jesus Campos, who was shot in the leg when Stephen Paddock opened fire and unleashed some 200 rounds through the door of his hotel room.

    As Fox News reports, the Mandalay Bay security guard shot by Stephen Paddock in the moments leading up to the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history was set to break his silence Thursday night with five television interviews, including one on Fox News, Campos' union president said.

    Except when the cameras were about to roll, and media gathered in the building to talk to him, Campos reportedly bolted, and, as of early Friday morning, it wasn't immediately clear where he was.

     

    “We were in a room and we came out and he was gone,” Campos' union president told reporters, according to ABC News’ Stephanie Wash.

    ampos, who is reportedly not registered to work in the State of Nevada, was also scheduled to do an interview with Sean Hannity Thursday night. But just minutes before the interview was to take place, Campos was said to have abruptly cancelled his appearance:

    //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    In response to the cancellation, alternative media reporter Laura Loomer attempted to reach out to Campos, who has thus far remained shielded behind his union representatives and refused to provide his account of the shooting to the public. According to Loomer, it appears that Campos and his family have been forced to remain silent because of a gag order surrounding the incident.

    She “doorstopped” the Campos family in person when she visited their home in Las Vegas Thursday night.

    //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    According to a video Loomer posted on Periscope, Campos has armed security and it appears that an unmarked law enforcement vehicle is parked outside his home.

    //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Additional videos show Loomer asking members of the Campos family for more information about why he chose to cancel his interviews:

    //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    According to Loomer, Jesus Campos and his family members have been told not to discuss the incident. Further, when Loomer was confronted by an armed security guard outside of Campos’ home she noted that the firm the security guard supposedly works for is not registered to operate in Nevada, to which she asks the guard:

    You said that you worked for OnScene, a security company. We did a background check…. and the business license expired in January 2017 and has a virtual address… so the company that you work for…. is it a real company? Or is it just some type of a shill company that the FBI or DHS is using?

    //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Little is known about Campos, with few pictures to emerge of the security guard and no apparent online footprint surfacing to provide details about one of the central figures in the mass shooting.

Digest powered by RSS Digest