- Spanish Frigate Peels Off From US Carrier Group Over Iran Conflict Fears
With things fast heating up in the Persian Gulf, including a recent US military build-up and the hasty blaming of Iran for a mysterious “sabotage” attack on oil tankers near the Strait of Hormuz, will international powers begin drawing a line in the sand? Famously, France condemned Bush’s rush to war in 2003, and along with Germany refused to send military support to the coalition invasion.
And now Spain has ordered its military frigate, the Méndez Núñez, which has 215 sailors on board, out of a US coalition naval group en route to the Persian Gulf, citing “it will not enter into any other type of mission” in the Persian Gulf region, according to the Spanish Minister of Defense.
Minister of Defense Margarita Robles ordered the “temporary measure of withdrawal of the frigate Méndez Núñez (F-104) from the combat group of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln while it is in the Middle East,” sources from her office told the digital edition of El País.
Spanish frigate ‘Méndez Núñez’ (front) and ‘USS Abraham Lincoln, via El Pais/Spanish Navy “The frigate is on a mission of circumnavigation and will not enter into any other type of mission,” sources revealed, cited by the El Mundo news website.
The statements came in the context of the USS Abraham Lincoln strike group deployment to the area, along with a B-52 bomber group monitoring the air from Qatar, and new Patriot missile batteries. Washington and Tehran have recently exchanged threats of direct conflict while jostling to assert control over the vital Strait of Hormuz narrow oil shipping passage, which has further left global oil markets on edge and rattled.
Interestingly the decision to remove the frigate was made in Brussels during a meeting of European Union defense ministers on Monday, which could suggest other European powers may start divesting their military assets from US support roles in the Middle East.
“The United States government has embarked on a mission that wasn’t scheduled when the agreement was signed,” Robles told reporters during her trip to Brussels. The move could trigger a diplomatic crisis with the US given the White House is likely to see Spain as backing out of its commitments.
According to El Pais:
Spain wants to avoid being involuntarily dragged into any kind of conflict with Iran amid rising tensions between Washington and Tehran. The fleet has already crossed the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, which joins the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, and is headed to the Strait of Hormuz where it will enter the Persian Gulf. It will be doing so, however, without the Spanish vessel.
The defense minister further insisted that Spain is a “serious and reliable partner,” however, noted it is only bound by EU and NATO commitments.
The question remains, should the White House begin beefing up troop presence posturing against Iran – and with plans for this already under review – could more US allies decide to pull their ships and embedded forces from US coalition operations?
- Britain's Brexit Armageddon
Authored by Matthew Jamison via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
It has been an appalling period in British politics and government. Unlike any period experienced in living memory. The British State, once high and mighty, lording it over other nations with typical English condescension and patronising arrogance, has well and truly come crashing down to Earth with a very heavy bump thanks to Brexit. It will never be the same again. The defenestration of the British Government and wider British State machine including its intelligence and security services has been a spectacular sight to behold. The credibility of the British State and its democracy has been ripped to shreds. For three years now the British ‘nation’, Parliament, Government, Civil Service, media and economy has been consumed by one issue and one issue alone, whether or not the UK will depart the European Union after the 2016 Referendum.
I say whether or not because after having almost three years to prepare for the UK exit from the EU as voted on by over 17 million British people in the largest and longest democratic exercise in the history of modern British democracy, the ‘fixed’ departure date of March 29th 2019 came and went, despite the British Prime Minister Theresa May stating over 108 times that the UK would definitely be leaving the EU on March 29th 2019. Who will ever be able to take seriously the word of a future British Prime Minister or a future British Government after this utter farce, but deadly serious debacle, on a major national and international scale. The behaviour in its half democratic Parliament has been deeply disturbing and has shown the world that the British are totally irrational and have gone absolutely bonkers.
The debates in the House of Commons have illustrated to the international community that the British are an animalistic, stupid, pedantic and deranged people not fit to run their own affairs, let alone lecture far superior and greater nations on their internal sovereign matters. The Speaker of the House of Commons grows more and more mad by the day while its MPs grow more and more angry, childish, uncivilised and corrupt. The British are the most inefficient people in Europe, perhaps on the planet. They have a genetic disposition and cultural habit of wasting time, especially other peoples time, but this missed date and the ensuing delay is quite something, even for a people who are used to chronic delays in their train system for example, long waiting times in their Government funded and Government run National Health Service, or open ended State Inquiries. The classic English tactic of kicking the can further down the road and into the long grass has been utilised to the extreme regarding Brexit and it has done and is doing tremendous damage to Britain. Yet, the British have only themselves to blame for this mess. This is a British self induced crisis and not the fault of any other country.
On top of the time wasted on a monumental scale there has also been the vast amount of money wasted by the British Government including taxpayer funds on preparing for a departure from the EU that never happened and private businesses which were told to engage in contingency planning in the event of a No Deal Brexit. Hundreds of millions of pounds have been wasted both in the public and private sector. But again, this is nothing new. The British Government are incapable of sound fiscal management and discipline though find plenty of money for phantom work, privileged perks, stupid ideas and corrupt schemes. The British are not only diseased when it comes to wasting their own public and private money but also other countries money as well.
The British Government itself is in complete collapse with the Cabinet in melt down unable to adhere to the principle of collective responsibility, the governing Conservative Party engaged in a ferocious civil war for the whole country and world to see and beholden to one of the most backwards and ridiculous of provincial fringe parties in the form of the Democratic Unionist Party. Corruption is endemic not just throughout the British Government and Parliament but British institutions as well. Meanwhile the ultimate body of British national security has been compromised in the form of the UK National Security Council and the disgusting behaviour of its pathetic former Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson. While this Brexit saga rolls on, the UK as a whole grows more and more unequal. The domestic agenda of British Government policy has completely ground to a halt. There will not even be a further Queen’s Speech for sometime which had already not occurred since 2017. The quality of life and standard of living in the UK continues to plummet compared to other nations as does social mobility and social cohesion.
One matter is very clear throughout this Brexit ordeal. This is a combined collective failure of the United Kingdom as a whole. The British Government and State have failed. British MPs have failed their constituents. British civil servants have failed. The British media have failed. There is no unity, no meaning, no purpose, no discipline and no sense of comradeship in the UK – if there ever truly was. Perhaps it is a society incapable of it and perhaps that is why it deserves to falter and fail with the United Kingdom disintegrating and disappearing for good. Ergo, perhaps it is high time, once and for all for the British State to quit its bad habit of interfering in other nations affairs, far greater nations, while it attempts to put its Brexit house in order.
- Huawei Offers To Sign 'No-Spy' Pacts With Governments As UK Embarks On 5G
Chinese smartphone and telecommunications equipment giant Huawei is willing to sign ‘no-spy’ agreements with governments which adopt their technology, including Britain, according to chairman Liang Hua.
The Trump administration has warned allies not to use Huawei’s technology to implement 5G networks over concerns that they would allow Chinese intelligence services to spy on whoever uses it.
Moreover, Huawei and its CFO, Meng Wanzhou, are facing criminal charges in the United States over the alleged theft of trade secrets and sanctions violations in Iran.
As Reuters reports, Britain is still deciding on how much they will rely on Huawei – the world’s largest supplier of telecom equipment – for their 5G networks.
“The security and resilience of the UK’s telecoms networks is of paramount importance, and we have strict controls for how Huawei equipment is currently deployed in the UK,” said a spokesman for the British government on Tuesday, adding that the results of a supply chain review would be announced soon.
Prime Minister Theresa May sacked her defense minister, Gavin Williamson, this month over leaked claims that Huawei would have a role in the 5G network, putting Britain at odds with its biggest intelligence ally, the United States.
Williamson has denied he leaked from the confidential talks.
Liang, speaking on the sidelines of a meeting with Huawei’s British technology partners, said the company never intended to be in the eye of a political storm. –Reuters
“The cyber security issue is not exclusive to just one single supplier or one single company, it is a common challenge facing the entire industry and the entire world,” said Liang, adding that Huawei had long cooperated with the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre’s technology oversight efforts, while improving its software engineering capabilities.
Liang also said that Huawei does not take direction or act on behalf of the Chinese government in any international market.
“Despite the fact Huawei has its headquarters in China, we are actually a globally operating company,” he said, adding “Where we are operating globally we are committed to be compliant with the locally applicable laws and regulations in that country.”
“There are no Chinese laws requiring companies to collect intelligence from a foreign government or implant back doors for the government.”
Last month, Ars Technica reported the discovery of a backdoor-like vulnerability in Huawei’s Matebook laptop series which could have allowed remote hackers to gain access to the system. Microsoft confirmed the security flaws were discovered by Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) kernel sensors, which traced the vulnerability back to a Huawei driver.
Huawei responded to Tom’s Hardware’s inquiry about the Matebook security flaw. They reiterated that the security flaw was not a backdoor attempt to spy on customers. Huawei also suggested it may take legal action against media over “misleading reports” about this issue.
UK minister Jeremy Wright will announce the findings of the government’s telco supply-chain review soon, and has said that the benefits of cheap Chinese equipment would not take precedence over security concerns.
Liang pushed back, suggesting that economic factors should be a top consideration, saying “I believe the decision should be based on risk assessment and supply-chain assessment, and should also reflect the requirements the UK has in terms of economic development when they choose suppliers,” and adding “Cyber security is indeed a very important factor to consider (…) but at the same time it should be a balanced decision between cyber security and economic prosperity.”
Huawei has inked over 40 5G contracts; 25 in Europe, 10 in the Middle East and six in Asia.
As Reuters notes, Germany says they’ve seen no indication that the company was offering a “no-spy” agreement.
- Washington Heats Up Its Cold War In The Arctic
Authored by Brian Cloughley via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
US Secretary of State Pompeo continues to travel the world, creating alarm, resentment and irritation almost everywhere. He maintained his lamentable reputation for crass rudeness by cancelling a meeting with Germany’s Chancellor Merkel on May 8 in order to go to Iraq, apparently to try to justify Washington’s despatch of nuclear-capable B-52H bombers and an aircraft carrier battle group to menace Iran.
As observed by Norbert Röttgen, head of Germany’s foreign affairs committee, “Even if there were unavoidable reasons for the cancellation, it unfortunately fits into the current climate in the relationship of the two governments.”
There were no “unavoidable reasons” for Pompeo’s boorish discourtesy, which was regarded internationally as yet another example of the arrogance that so critically influences US foreign policy. And before he insulted Mrs Merkel and the German people he managed to offend several other nations at the Arctic Council meeting in Finland on 6-7 May.
The Arctic Council is “the leading intergovernmental forum promoting cooperation, coordination and interaction among the Arctic States, Arctic indigenous communities and other Arctic inhabitants on common Arctic issues, in particular on issues of sustainable development and environmental protection in the Arctic.” Up until now it has been a shining and all-too-rare example of international cooperation which has resulted in production of valuable environmental, ecological and social assessments.
The Arctic Institute describes the Council as “a model for global governance. It is inclusive of Indigenous perspectives, committed to evidence based decision-making, and a champion of regional peace and stability.” Of great importance is the fact that its mandate, as laid down in the Ottawa Declaration of 1996, explicitly excludes military matters.
But Washington intends to change all that. Instead of contributing to the Council’s aims of championing peace and stability, it has adopted its only too familiar stance of confrontation and patronising criticism.
A most pressing concern of most members of the Council is climate change, and as reported by Reuters the 2019 meeting of the eight Arctic nations “was supposed to frame a two-year agenda to balance the challenge of global warming with sustainable development of mineral wealth.” This was an eminently sensible approach, and not in the least controversial or divisive — unless you are an adherent of Trump, who denies there is any such thing as a climate crisis. In March 2019 he tweeted “Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace: ‘The whole climate crisis is not only Fake News, it’s Fake Science. There is no climate crisis, there’s weather and climate all around the world, and in fact carbon dioxide is the main building block of all life.’ Wow!”
Moore was not a co-founder of Greenpeace, and is, as Greenpeace states, a paid spokesman for a number of polluting industries who “often misrepresents himself in the media as an environmental ‘expert’ or even an ‘environmentalist,’ while offering anti-environmental opinions on a wide range of issues and taking a distinctly anti-environmental stance.”
But very few people in the US are concerned about disproof of Trump’s bogus pronouncements, in spite of evidence supplied by the Washington Post that he “has made 9,014 false or misleading claims over 773 days.”
So far as the US Military-Industrial complex is concerned, there is no climate crisis in the Arctic or anywhere else. Trump, Pompeo and the rest ignore their own government department, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which states that “Arctic sea ice reaches its minimum each September. September Arctic sea ice is now declining at a rate of 12.8 percent per decade, relative to the 1981 to 2010 average.”
In spite of this, Pompeo refused to sign an Arctic Council Agreement that acknowledged climate change as a severe threat to the region. His other achievement was that this was the first time a declaration has been cancelled since the Council was formed in 1996. Americans must be proud.
Finland’s foreign minister stated later that “A majority of us regard climate change as a fundamental challenge facing the Arctic and acknowledge the urgent need to take mitigation and adaptation actions and to strengthen resilience.” He told reporters “I don’t want to name and blame anyone,” which is polite — but regrettable because it’s about time Pompeo, Trump and Bolton were named and blamed for their campaigns of spiteful aggression.
Pompeo tried to justify Washington’s moves to militarise the region by declaring “We’re concerned about Russia’s claim over the international waters of the Northern Sea Route, including its newly announced plans to connect it with China’s Maritime Silk Road.”
He ignores the fact that Russia has not made any claim involving international waters. In accordance with the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea which Russia ratified in 1997 (and is accepted by 157 signatories, but not the US which refuses ratification) it has submitted a request to extend its continental shelf.
The application does not involve the slightest intrusion into the sectors of any other Arctic state. When it was put forward in 2016 the New York Times reported that “a nation may claim an exclusive economic zone over the continental shelf abutting its shores. If the geological shelf extends far out to sea, the nation can claim mineral resources in the seabed beyond that zone . . . If the United Nations committee accepts Russia’s claim, the seabed under the North Pole would be subject to Moscow’s oversight for activities like oil drilling, though Russia will not have sovereignty over the water or the ice.”
The fact that Russia has submitted its Arctic case to the UN does not cut any ice with Pompeo, who is intent on painting the worst possible picture of the situation, and — inevitably — brought in China to illustrate what he considers to be the grave threat posed by development of the trade route, the Maritime Silk Road (MSR).
As put succinctly by the US Center for Strategic & International Studies, the MSR is intended to “boost infrastructure connectivity throughout Southeast Asia, Oceania, the Indian Ocean, and East Africa. The MSR is the maritime complement to the Silk Road Economic Belt, which focuses on infrastructure development across Central Asia.”
But Washington objects violently to any project that is likely to contribute to the economies of Russia and China.
Associated Press reported that at the Plenary meeting of the Arctic Council on April 9 President Putin “said that Russia plans to expand the ports on both sides of the Arctic shipping route… and invited foreign companies to invest in the reconstruction project.” AP noted that the leaders of Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden “who spoke at the forum underlined the need for all countries in the Arctic region to focus on areas of mutual interest despite differences.”
But enter Pompeo, and exit mutual interest, dialogue and cooperation. In his Council speech Pompeo poured scorn on China and accused Russia of “provocative actions”, including, absurdly, “leaving snow prints in the form of army boots”.
The man would be a joke, were it not that he wields power in Washington and is intent on ramping up tension with Moscow and Beijing.
Washington’s policy of truculence in the Arctic has resulted in alienation of badly-needed allies and the firming of resolve by Russia and China to continue development of the Northern Sea shipping route. Pompeo and the other war hawks appear determined to heat up their cold war in the North, but if they intensify their confrontation there could well be conflict.
- Mortality Algorithm Can Predict Heart Attack, Death With 90% Accuracy
An algorithm which can predict whether a person will have a heart attack or die with 90% accuracy has been developed by researchers at Finland’s Turku PET Centre.
Utilizing similar machine learning functions as those employed by Netflix and Spotify to personalize content, a team led by Dr. Luis Eduardo Juarez-Orozco programmed the LogitBoost algorithm to use 85 variables to calculate the risk to the health of 950 test subjects who were subject to a host of scans and tests prior to being treated via traditional methods.
After patients complained of chest pain, their data was collected and used to ‘train’ the algorithm, which ‘learned’ the risks over a six-year period, during which it achieved 90% success at predicting 24 heart attacks and 49 deaths from any cause.
“These advances are far beyond what has been done in medicine, where we need to be cautious about how we evaluate risk and outcomes,” said Juarez-Orozco, adding “We have the data but we are not using it to its full potential yet.”
Doctors typically use risk scores to make treatment decisions, according to the Daily Mail, however these scores utilize just a ‘handful’ of variables in patients.
“Humans have a very hard time thinking further than three dimensions or four dimensions,” said Juarez-Orozco. “The moment we jump into the fifth dimension we’re lost.”
“Our study shows that very high dimensional patterns are more useful than single dimensional patterns to predict outcomes in individuals and for that we need machine learning.”
The study enrolled 950 patients with chest pain who underwent the centre’s usual protocol to look for coronary artery disease.
A coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA) scan gathered 58 pieces of data on potential risks of a heart attack.
These included the presence of coronary plaque, vessel narrowing, and calcification.
Those with scans suggestive of disease underwent a positron emission tomography (PET) scan which produced 17 variables on blood flow.
Ten clinical variables were obtained from medical records including sex, age, smoking and diabetes.
The 85 variables were entered into LogitBoost, which analysed them repeatedly until it found the best structure to predict who had a heart attack or died. –Daily Mail
“The algorithm progressively learns from the data and after numerous rounds of analyses, it figures out the high dimensional patterns that should be used to efficiently identify patients who have the event – the result is a score of individual risk,” added Juarez-Orozco. “Doctors already collect a lot of information about patients – for example, those with chest pain.”
“We found that machine learning can integrate these data and accurately predict individual risk … This should allow us to personalise treatment and ultimately lead to better outcomes for patients.”
The study was showcased at The International Conference on Nuclear Cardiology and Cardiac CT.
- Drivers Beware: The Deadly Perils Of Traffic Stops In The American Police State
Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“The Fourth Amendment was designed to stand between us and arbitrary governmental authority. For all practical purposes, that shield has been shattered, leaving our liberty and personal integrity subject to the whim of every cop on the beat, trooper on the highway and jail official. The framers would be appalled.
– Herman Schwartz, The Nation
We’ve all been there before.
You’re driving along and you see a pair of flashing blue lights in your rearview mirror. Whether or not you’ve done anything wrong, you get a sinking feeling in your stomach.
You’ve read enough news stories, seen enough headlines, and lived in the American police state long enough to be anxious about any encounter with a cop that takes place on the side of the road.
For better or worse, from the moment you’re pulled over, you’re at the mercy of law enforcement officers who have almost absolute discretion to decide who is a threat, what constitutes resistance, and how harshly they can deal with the citizens they were appointed to “serve and protect.”
This is what I call “blank check policing,” in which the police get to call all of the shots.
So if you’re nervous about traffic stops, you have every reason to be.
Trying to predict the outcome of any encounter with the police is a bit like playing Russian roulette: most of the time you will emerge relatively unscathed, although decidedly poorer and less secure about your rights, but there’s always the chance that an encounter will turn deadly.
Try to assert your right to merely ask a question during a traffic stop and see how far it gets you.
Zachary Noel was tasered by police and charged with resisting arrest after he questioned why he was being ordered out of his truck during a traffic stop. “Because I’m telling you to,” the officer replied before repeating his order for Noel to get out of the vehicle and then, without warning, shooting him with a taser through the open window.
Unfortunately, as Gregory Tucker learned the hard way, there are no longer any fail-safe rules of engagement for interacting with the police.
It was in the early morning hours of Dec. 1, 2016, when Tucker, a young African-American man, was pulled over by Louisiana police for a broken taillight. Because he did not feel safe stopping immediately, Tucker drove calmly and slowly to a safe, well-lit area a few minutes away before stopping in front of his cousin’s house.
That’s when what should have been a routine traffic stop became yet another example of police brutality in America and another reason why Americans are justified in their fear of cops.
According to the lawsuit that was filed in federal court by The Rutherford Institute, police ordered Tucker out of his vehicle, and after he had stepped out, immediately placed him under arrest for “resisting” (in this case, not immediately stopping) and searched his person and his vehicle. Tucker was then ordered to move to the front of the police vehicle and place his hands on its hood.
Two more police officers arrived on the scene, walked up behind Tucker, and grabbed his arms to restrain and handcuffed him.
Then the fourth police officer arrived on the scene. According to police dash cam footage, Tucker was thrown to the ground and punched numerous times in the head and body. The police also yelled repeatedly at Tucker to “quit resisting.” Tucker, bleeding with injuries to his face, head and arm, was then placed into the back of a police vehicle and EMTs were called to treat him. He was eventually taken to the hospital for severe injuries to his face and arm.
Mind you, this young man complied with police. He just didn’t do it fast enough to suit their purposes.
This young man submitted to police. He didn’t challenge police authority when they frisked him, searched his car, handcuffed him, and beat him to a pulp.
If this young man is “guilty” of anything, he’s guilty of ticking off the cops by being cautious, concerned for his safety, and all too aware of the dangers faced by young black men during encounters with the police.
Frankly, you don’t even have to be young or black or a man to fear for your life during an encounter with the police.
Just consider the growing numbers of unarmed people are who being shot and killed just for standing a certain way, or moving a certain way, or holding something—anything—that police could misinterpret to be a gun, or igniting some trigger-centric fear in a police officer’s mind that has nothing to do with an actual threat to their safety.
At a time when police can do no wrong—at least in the eyes of the courts, police unions and politicians dependent on their votes—and a “fear” for officer safety is used to justify all manner of police misconduct, “we the people” are at a severe disadvantage.
Add a traffic stop to the mix, and that disadvantage increases dramatically.
According to the Justice Department, the most common reason for a citizen to come into contact with the police is being a driver in a traffic stop.
On average, one in 10 Americans gets pulled over by police.
Black drivers are 31 percent more likely to be pulled over than white drivers, or about 23 percent more likely than Hispanic drivers. As the Washington Post concludes, “‘Driving while black’ is, indeed, a measurable phenomenon.”
Indeed, police officers have been given free range to pull anyone over for a variety of reasons.
This free-handed approach to traffic stops has resulted in drivers being stopped for windows that are too heavily tinted, for driving too fast, driving too slow, failing to maintain speed, following too closely, improper lane changes, distracted driving, screeching a car’s tires, and leaving a parked car door open for too long.
Motorists can also be stopped by police for driving near a bar or on a road that has large amounts of drunk driving, driving a certain make of car (Mercedes, Grand Prix and Hummers are among the most ticketed vehicles), having anything dangling from the rearview mirror (air fresheners, handicap parking permits, troll transponders or rosaries), and displaying pro-police bumper stickers.
Incredibly, a federal appeals court actually ruled unanimously in 2014 that acne scars and driving with a stiff upright posture are reasonable grounds for being pulled over. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that driving a vehicle that has a couple air fresheners, rosaries and pro-police bumper stickers at 2 MPH over the speed limit is suspicious, meriting a traffic stop.
Equally appalling, in Heien v. North Carolina, the U.S. Supreme Court—which has largely paved the way for the police and other government agents to probe, poke, pinch, taser, search, seize, strip and generally manhandle anyone they see fit in almost any circumstance—allowed police officers to stop drivers who appear nervous, provided they provide a palatable pretext for doing so.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor was the lone objector in the case. Dissenting in Heien, Sotomayor warned, “Giving officers license to effect seizures so long as they can attach to their reasonable view of the facts some reasonable legal interpretation (or misinterpretation) that suggests a law has been violated significantly expands this authority… One wonders how a citizen seeking to be law-abiding and to structure his or her behavior to avoid these invasive, frightening, and humiliating encounters could do so.”
In other words, drivers beware.
Traffic stops aren’t just dangerous. They can be downright deadly.
Remember Walter L. Scott? Reportedly pulled over for a broken taillight, Scott—unarmed—ran away from the police officer, who pursued and shot him from behind, first with a Taser, then with a gun. Scott was struck five times, “three times in the back, once in the upper buttocks and once in the ear — with at least one bullet entering his heart.”
Samuel Dubose, also unarmed, was pulled over for a missing front license plate. He was reportedly shot in the head after a brief struggle in which his car began rolling forward.
Levar Jones was stopped for a seatbelt offense, just as he was getting out of his car to enter a convenience store. Directed to show his license, Jones leaned into his car to get his wallet, only to be shot four times by the “fearful” officer. Jones was also unarmed.
Bobby Canipe was pulled over for having an expired registration. When the 70-year-old reached into the back of his truck for his walking cane, the officer fired several shots at him, hitting him once in the abdomen.
Dontrell Stevens was stopped “for not bicycling properly.” The officer pursuing him “thought the way Stephens rode his bike was suspicious. He thought the way Stephens got off his bike was suspicious.” Four seconds later, sheriff’s deputy Adams Lin shot Stephens four times as he pulled out a black object from his waistband. The object was his cell phone. Stephens was unarmed.
Sandra Bland, pulled over for allegedly failing to use her turn signal, was arrested after refusing to comply with the police officer’s order to extinguish her cigarette and exit her vehicle. The encounter escalated, with the officer threatening to “light” Bland up with his taser. Three days later, Bland was found dead in her jail cell. “You’re doing all of this for a failure to signal?” Bland asked as she got out of her car, after having been yelled at and threatened repeatedly.
Keep in mind, from the moment those lights start flashing and that siren goes off, we’re all in the same boat. However, it’s what happens after you’ve been pulled over that’s critical.
Survival is key.
Technically, you have the right to remain silent (beyond the basic requirement to identify yourself and show your registration). You have the right to refuse to have your vehicle searched. You have the right to film your interaction with police. You have the right to ask to leave. You also have the right to resist an unlawful order such as a police officer directing you to extinguish your cigarette, put away your phone or stop recording them.
However, there is a price for asserting one’s rights. That price grows more costly with every passing day.
If you ask cops and their enablers what Americans should do to stay alive during encounters with police, they will tell you to comply, cooperate, obey, not resist, not argue, not make threatening gestures or statements, avoid sudden movements, and submit to a search of their person and belongings.
The problem, of course, is what to do when compliance is not enough.
After all, every day we hear about situations in which unarmed Americans complied and still died during an encounter with police simply because they appeared to be standing in a “shooting stance” or held a cell phone or a garden hose or carried around a baseball bat or answered the front door or held a spoon in a threatening manner or ran in an aggressive manner holding a tree branch or wandered around naked or hunched over in a defensive posture or made the mistake of wearing the same clothes as a carjacking suspect (dark pants and a basketball jersey) or dared to leave an area at the same time that a police officer showed up or had a car break down by the side of the road or were deaf or homeless or old.
Now you can make all kinds of excuses to justify these shootings, and in fact that’s exactly what you’ll hear from politicians, police unions, law enforcement officials and individuals who are more than happy to march in lockstep with the police.
However, to suggest that a good citizen is a compliant citizen and that obedience will save us from the police state is not only recklessly irresponsible, but it is also deluded and out of touch with reality.
To begin with, and most importantly, Americans need to know their rights when it comes to interactions with the police, bearing in mind that many law enforcement officials are largely ignorant of the law themselves.
In a nutshell, the following are your basic rights when it comes to interactions with the police as outlined in the Bill of Rights:
You have the right under the First Amendment to ask questions and express yourself. You have the right under the Fourth Amendment to not have your person or your property searched by police or any government agent unless they have a search warrant authorizing them to do so. You have the right under the Fifth Amendment to remain silent, to not incriminate yourself and to request an attorney. Depending on which state you live in and whether your encounter with police is consensual as opposed to your being temporarily detained or arrested, you may have the right to refuse to identify yourself. Presently, 26 states do not require citizens to show their ID to an officer (drivers in all states must do so, however).
Knowing your rights is only part of the battle, unfortunately.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the hard part comes in when you have to exercise those rights in order to hold government officials accountable to respecting those rights.
As a rule of thumb, you should always be sure to clarify in any police encounter whether or not you are being detained, i.e., whether you have the right to walk away. That holds true whether it’s a casual “show your ID” request on a boardwalk, a stop-and-frisk search on a city street, or a traffic stop for speeding or just to check your insurance. If you feel like you can’t walk away from a police encounter of your own volition—and more often than not you can’t, especially when you’re being confronted by someone armed to the hilt with all manner of militarized weaponry and gear—then for all intents and purposes, you’re essentially under arrest from the moment a cop stops you. Still, it doesn’t hurt to clarify that distinction.
While technology is always going to be a double-edged sword, with the gadgets that are the most useful to us in our daily lives—GPS devices, cell phones, the internet—being the very tools used by the government to track us, monitor our activities, and generally spy on us, cell phones are particularly useful for recording encounters with the police and have proven to be increasingly powerful reminders to police that they are not all powerful.
A good resource is The Rutherford Institute’s “Constitutional Q&A: Rules of Engagement for Interacting with Police.”
Clearly, in the American police state, compliance is no guarantee that you will survive an encounter with the police with your life and liberties intact.
So if you’re starting to feel somewhat overwhelmed, intimidated and fearful for your life and the lives of your loved ones, you should be.
- 62% Of Millennials Are Living Paycheck To Paycheck, Says Study
Almost two-thirds of Millennials are living paycheck to paycheck, and only 38% feel financially secure, according to Charles Schwab’s 2019 Modern Wealth Index Survey.
According to the survey, Millennials (ages 23 to 38) seem troubled when it comes to their financial well being. The study examined the finances of 1,000 Americans from different generations, but for our sake, we’re only concentrating on approximately 380 Millennials surveyed by Schwab.
Millennials conveniently blamed social media platforms for their dire financial straits. The need to spend was a symptom of fear of missing out (FOMO) of their friend’s experiences seen on social media posts, stories, and or feeds.
“The burden to ‘keep up with the Joneses’ has been part of our culture for decades, but it appears that social media and the fear of missing out (FOMO) have increased the pressure to spend,” said Terri Kallsen, executive vice president and head of Schwab Investor Services.
“Spending is not the enemy, but when we allow social pressure or other forces to lure us into spending beyond our means, it can impact long-term financial stability and become a larger problem.”
Logica Research conducted the online study for Schwab during the first two weeks in Feburary.
Facebook and Instagram, recently made it effortless for users to shop on their platforms. Instagram announced last month it added a “checkout” feature on posts.
“Instagram is a place for people to treat themselves with inspiration, not a place to tax themselves with errands. It’s a place to experience the pleasure of shopping versus the chore of buying. We build everything with this in mind,” Instagram said in a statement.
While it’s not just a spending problem, Millennials have more debt than any other generation.
In a recent article, we reported that these young adults’ debt loads have risen by 22% in the last five years.
Many of these youngsters are drowning in debt, but the composition of that debt is not the usual mortgage debt. Most of the debt is tied to student loans, credit cards, and auto loans, keeping this generation in a perpetual state of debt servitude to government and corporations.
Skyrocketing home prices and stagnating wages have unleashed the housing affordability crisis that has driven millennial homeownership levels to record lows, forcing many to continue adding debt through renting.
Even though Millennials are on the cusp of surpassing baby boomers as the largest generational demographic in the US, and the next five years will be the majority of the workforce, they still don’t have $500 in savings ahead of the next recession.
Schwab’s new study suggests Millennials will be devastated when the next recession strikes. Judging by the escalation in the trade war, a recession could arrive as early as 1H20.
- US Press Reaches All-Time Low On Venezuela Coverage
Authored by Daniel Kovalik via Counterpunch.org,
As famed Latin American author Eduardo Galeano once wrote, “every time the US ‘saves’ a country, it converts it into either an insane asylum or a cemetery.” Of course, as we look over the wreckage left by the US in countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Syria, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, we see that this statement is demonstrably true. And yet, now that the US is poised for another intervention, this time in Venezuela, the press is right there again to cheer it along.
Analyzing 76 total press articles of the “elite” press from January 15 to April 15, 2019, Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) could find not one voice that opposed Trump’s regime plans in Venezuela. Meanwhile, 54 percent openly supported these plans. Of course, this should not be all too surprising given the press’s usual complicity in past US war efforts — e.g., by pushing such war lies as the Gulf of Tonkin, the killing of babies in Kuwait, the WMDS of Iraq and the alleged Viagra-fueled rapes in Libya. The current war lies are coming fast and furious from such outlets as CNN which lied about seeing Maduro forces lighting aid containers on fire at the Colombian border (it was in fact opposition forces which did so as the NYT admitted two weeks later), and which claimed that US puppet Juan Guaido actually won the presidential election against Nicolas Maduro when in fact Guaido never even ran for president.
What is quite stunning, however, is the total unanimity of the press in uncritically covering and supporting the ongoing coup in Venezuela. This is baffling because the same press outlets which have been rightly critical of Trump for all of his stupidity, lying and meanness, have suddenly found him brilliant, true and benevolent when it comes to Venezuela. This is particularly remarkable given that his partners in this crime are Neo-Con John Bolton; former CIA Director Mike Pompeo who recently joked that the CIA’s true motto is “We lied, We Cheated, We Stole”; and convicted liar Elliott Abrams. As for Abrams, he is infamous for his role in the illegal funding of the Nicaraguan Contras; his covering up of the El Mazote massacre in El Salvador in which around 1000 civilians, mostly women and children, were killed by US-backed forces; and his aiding and abetting the US-backed genocide in Guatemala.
And yet, somehow, we are to believe from our “free” press that this band of rogues is going to deliver democracy and human rights to Venezuela. Never mind the fact that Trump himself is President after losing to Hillary Clinton by nearly 3 million votes, and that the US, in the words of former President Jimmy Carter, no longer has a functioning democracy. As for Venezuela, on the other hand, Carter has said that its electoral system is “the best in the world.”
Meanwhile, this same captive press incessantly tells of us of all the deprivations and travails in Venezuela while refusing to explain how, as UN Expert Dr. Alfred de Zayas has concluded, this state of affairs is largely the result of brutal US sanctions. Recently, respected economist Jeffrey Sachs co-authored a report showing that, since August of 2017, over 40,000 Venezuelans have died due to the US sanctions which have deprived Venezuela of food and life-saving medicines. But few would know any of this because the voices of de Zayas and Sachs are never heard in the mainstream press.
Also unheard are any of the 6 million Venezuelans who voted for Nicolas Maduro in May of 2018, many of whom turn out for massive pro-government demonstrations. Instead, the press gives ink and air time only to mostly white, well-off and English-speaking individuals who support the opposition, giving the false impression that Maduro has no support.
Moreover, in Orwellian fashion, the press refuses to call the current push for a military uprising in Venezuela a “coup,” while the same time referring to Maduro invariably as “repressive” and as a “dictator,” and his government as a “regime.”
In short, instead of giving two sides of the story, the press gives us one, ignores crucial facts and tells us how we should be viewing the situation in Venezuela. This is not journalism at all, but naked propaganda, and it is shameful.
The fact that, despite all of the US pressure and threats, and despite all of the lies, the Venezuelan people have not risen up en massein support of Juan Guaido – a man 80 percent of Venezuelans never heard of until he declared himself president with the US’s urging – should tell one that things are not as we are being led to believe. What we are seeing in Venezuela is but another attempted coup made in the USA, and it is the same type as the ones that brought such scoundrels as General Pinochet to power in Chile. But one would never know this from our trusted press which has decided that it is the mouthpiece for the State Department instead of a check on a President and a nation run amok.
* * *
Daniel Kovalik teaches International Human Rights at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, and is author of the forthcoming, The Plot to Overthrow Venezuela, How the US is Orchestrating a Coup for Oil, with a Foreword by Oliver Stone.
- China 'Green Shoots' Are Dead – Retail Sales, Industrial Production, & FAI Slump
And there goes another ‘narrative’…
On the back of one better than expected soft survey PMI print, the world became convinced that as green shoots emerged, China was about to be reborn into magnificent credit-fuelled expansion and would save the world.
Tonight, that narrative died – everything missed expectations:
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Retail sales rose just 7.2% (against +8.7% in March) – lowest since May 2003 (the 7.2% year-on-year rise in retail sales is actually weaker than all the estimates. The lowest was 7.5%, and the median was 8.6%)
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Industrial Production growth slumped from a hope-filled +6.5% YTD YoY in March to 6.2%.
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Fixed Asset Investment slowed to just 6.1% YoY.
Not green shoot-y!
Bloomberg’s Wes Goodman sums things up:
“The China data miss suggests the U.S. tariffs already in place are biting, putting the stocks gain Wednesday at risk. For now China shares are up strongly, even if gains have been pared, while the Aussie dollar is holding above earlier lows.”
Don’t worry though – there’s more stimulus to come everyone:
China’s NBS says it will implement counter-cyclical adjustments to maintain steady, healthy economic development.
Raymond Yeung of ANZ Bank makes the point that China needs to maintain growth above 6.3% or above.
“Today’s numbers are not supportive. We believe the State Council will launch more measures to shore up the market sentiment. More tax cuts and consumer subsidies are in the pipeline.”
Because all the stimulus so far has been working so well until now!
Blooomberg’s Enda Curran notes that numbers these bad will heighten scrutiny of the yuan’s moves. Will Beijing allow it to soften materially from here or will they keep a floor under it? It’s a double-edged sword for them.
The weaker the yuan, the greater the risk of financial market instability and the need for intervention. At the same time though, with exporters facing rising tariffs and slowing growth, the currency will remain center stage.
Does this move the trade deal pendulum back in Trump’s favor, forcing China to make a deal? We suspect that will be the bullish spin by the morning and why you should by any dip…
Finally there is this Orwellian nonsense – China’s economy is increasingly resilient to risks, the stats bureau spokeswoman says despite the weaker-than-expected data.
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