- UK-US Row Over Iran Intel Unleashes Storm Of Behind The Scenes Infighting
A new report in Britain’s The Times says the UK’s Ministry of Defense (MoD) is standing by its senior officer in the US-led coalition in Iraq and Syria, who earlier this week publicly contracted the Pentagon and US administration by appearing to dismiss US intelligence claims over the heightened Iran threat.
The awkward public exchange unfolded between the US military and its closest allied military coalition force during a Pentagon press conference on Tuesday wherein a top British commander in charge of anti-ISIS coalition forces rebuked White House claims on the heightened Iran threat.
“No – there’s been no increased threat from Iranian-backed forces in Iraq and Syria,” British Army Maj. Gen. Christopher Ghika, a deputy head of the US-led coalition, asserted confidently in a video link briefing from Baghdad to the Pentagon in response to a CNN question.
Essentially this meant the powerful number two commander of “Operation Inherent Resolve” Combined Joint Task Force was questioning the entire basis on which the “imminent threats” and “high level of alert” shift in mission readiness decision was made. But now Britain’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office is said to be fuming over the handling of the situation.
The public disagreement, quickly picked up in world headlines, and further weakening the White House’s stance on the “Iran threat”, has unleashed a storm of controversy among allies behind the scenes.
The Times report includes the following bombshell details:
Officials from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office are understood to be angry at the MoD’s handling of the situation. The row raises questions about the extent of intelligence that the US has shared with Britain about the alleged threat from Iran. Israeli media reported that the warnings were passed on by Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency. The US State Department has ordered non-emergency employees to leave Iraq.
The report further quoted a former head of the British Army, who said it was “unfortunate that there should be publicly expressed divergent views” on the issue by allies.
“No. There’s been no increased threats from … etc”
British general Combined Joint Task Force #OIR May 14#Iraq #Iran #Syria Christopher Ghika pic.twitter.com/5sg4AFfsMO— M27 (@M27Unchained) May 14, 2019
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The source, identified as General Lord Dannatt, said: “It’s pretty unusual. The UK was accused by the US from time to time of slightly going our [own] way in southern Iraq and southern Afghanistan, but that was respected as operational divergences of opinion, which is something different from straight contradiction.”
Following Tuesday’s Pentagon press briefing a rare and swift rebuke was issued from the US side hours later, when US Central Command (CENTCOM) released its own statement slamming Gen. Ghika’s words as inaccurate, insisting coalition troops in Iraq and Syria were an a “high level of alert” due to the “Iran threat”.
“Recent comments from OIR’s [Operation Inherent Resolve] deputy commander run counter to the identified credible threats available to intelligence from US and allies regarding Iranian-backed forces in the region,” the CENTCOM statement said.
“US Central Command, in coordination with OIR, has increased the force posture level for all service members assigned to OIR in Iraq and Syria. As a result, OIR is now at a high level of alert as we continue to closely monitor credible and possibly imminent threats to US forces in Iraq.”
Britain’s MoD had also tried to do damage control, saying in written statement following the CENTCOM press release, according to The Times: Captain Urban added that Operation Inherent Resolve, the US-led mission, “is now at a high level of alert as we continue to closely monitor credible and possibly imminent threats to US forces in Iraq”.
US troops in the Middle East, via The Times:
“Major-General Ghika speaks as a military officer in the US-led coalition focused on the fight against Daesh [Isis] in Iraq and Syria,” the MoD statement continued.
“His comments are based on the day-to-day military operations and his sole focus is the enduring defeat of Daesh. He made clear in the Pentagon briefing that ‘there are a range of threats to American and coalition forces in this part of the world. There always have been, that is why we have a very robust range of force protection measures.’ ”
MOD statement following Major General Chris Ghika’s Pentagon press briefing. Full briefing can be watched here: https://t.co/U64v2E9BvU pic.twitter.com/4tZrD9zN1D
— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) May 15, 2019
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The MoD statement added: “The UK has long been clear about our concerns over Iran’s destabilising behaviour in the region.”
One former British diplomat to the Middle East said as quoted in The Times report that, “I cannot remember a precedent and certainly not one that is so public”.
- "A World Aching For Peace & Stability Can No Longer Afford NATO"
Authored by Jon Wight, op-ed via RT.com,
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg calling for an end to the fighting in Libya is like an arsonist calling for the house he’s just burned to the ground to stop emitting smoke…
For this reason it can only be an excess of black humor or wilful amnesia on the part of Mr Stoltenberg that explains his perverse call for this particular conflict to end in this particular country, eight years after it received a prolonged visit from a Western military alliance over which he currently presides.
Along with recent NATO exercises in Estonia, involving 9,000 troops operating just 15km from Russia’s border, Jens Stoltenberg’s call for a peaceful resolution to the ongoing crisis in Libya suggests that the pride of place above the entrance to NATO headquarters in Brussels should be inscribed in bold letters with the Orwellian mantra of ‘War is peace. Freedom is slavery’.
Because ever since the demise of the Soviet Union, NATO has been engaged in a perennial quest for meaning and relevance, which means to say for opportunities to unleash its democracy missiles and drop its democracy bombs. It is a quest that has and continues to involve ideologues in the media, neocon think tanks, and governments going out of their way to convince people across Europe and the US that without NATO manning the ramparts of Western civilization, the barbarians located to the North, South, East and West of them will come and destroy everything they hold dear.
Stripped of obfuscation, what we have here is a tawdry and base exercise in scaremongering; its aim to inculcate the belief that Russia, Iran, China, North Korea, Venezuela (you can take your pick) is their enemy and a threat to their security. Thus it is that the extent to which people living in the West refuse to internalise the propaganda of their own ruling class and its functionaries is determined by their ability to see the world as it truly is, rather than continue to exist in the darkened room of Western exceptionalism.
One man who understood this was Karl Marx, who put it thus:
“To call upon people to give their illusions about their condition, is to call on them to give a condition that requires illusions.”
And when people do give up a condition that requires illusions, and more importantly do so on a collective basis, a dynamic of social change is unleashed – a dynamic such as the Yellow Vest movement in France, for example. I suspect you would find it hard to convince any member of this mass protest movement, who’ve been determinedly protesting Macron and his neoliberal centrist works for the past six months across France, that what they need right now is NATO to protect them from Russia.
On the contrary, the violence that has and continues to be visited on thousands of protesters on the streets of Paris and elsewhere by Macron’s security services, makes a strong case for NATO intervention there. This, after all, was the premise upon which the Libyan intervention in 2011 rested, was it not: to protect civilians from the government against which they’d risen up in protest?
Well then NATO, what are you waiting for?
While we wait for those NATO fighter bombers to appear over Paris, let us return for a moment to Estonia to remind ourselves that the moral swamp of fascism has not yet been drained in Europe, not when today we have the glorification of Estonians who fought under the banner of Waffen SS during WWII.
That it is here, today, where NATO troops are engaged in military exercises on the border not just of any country, but the country whose people did more than any other to crush Hitler’s genocidal project in Europe seven decades ago, stands as a diabolical disgrace. There is no flag big enough to cover the shame involved in such a squalid turn of events, and no amount of historical revisionism can ever justify it.
And neither can ever be justified the murder of Libya eight years ago with the full participation of the same military alliance Jens Stoltenberg and his ilk want us to believe is the last best hope for peace and security in the world. Though the organization’s current secretary general may wish to elide NATO’s role in this crime, refusing to provide him with the satisfaction of doing so is a non-negotiable condition of the historical memory from which intellectual and ethical integrity flows.
A country that in 2010 could boast of a UN High Development Index coterminous with that of first world countries in child mortality, life expectancy, education, women’s rights, etc, is today a place where death and discord reign – and whereslave markets, yes slave markets, are alive and kicking.
In the last analysis, NATO’s legacy of provocation, intimidation and aggression contradicts its otherworldly and fatuous claim of being a military alliance that is dedicated to, according to the organization’s ownwebsite, democratic values and the peaceful resolution of conflicts.
There is nothing democratic about slave markets, and neither is there anything peaceful about conducting military exercises on Russia’s border; legitimising thereby the historical anti-Russian animus and fascist proclivities that exist within states that have been reduced to cat’s paws of Western hegemony.
The only possible conclusion to be drawn, after we draw up the necessary historical balance sheet, is that NATO’s continuous existence is an impediment to peace, justice, global stability and, with it, human progress. It is a relic of the first Cold War which has done much to bring about the New Cold War, calling to mind the cogent analysis of Roman imperialism provided by political economist Joseph Schumpeter in the second decade of the 20th century:
“There was no corner of the known world where some interest was not alleged to be in danger or under actual attack. If the interests were not Roman, they were those of Rome’s allies; and if Rome had no allies, then allies would be invented. When it was utterly impossible to contrive such an interest—why, then it was the national honor that had been insulted. The fight was always invested with an aura of legality. Rome was always being attacked by evil-minded neighbors, always fighting for a breathing space. The whole world was pervaded by a host of enemies, and it was manifestly Rome’s duty to guard against their indubitably aggressive designs. They were enemies who only waited to fall on the Roman people.”
- What Putin And Pompeo Did Not Talk About
Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,
Russia is uneasy over the destabilization of Tehran, and on other hotspots the powers’ positions are clear…
Even veiled by thick layers of diplomatic fog, the overlapping meetings in Sochi between US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and President Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov still offer tantalizing geopolitical nuggets.
Russian presidential aide Yury Ushakov did his best to smooth the utterly intractable, admitting there was “no breakthrough yet” during the talks but at least the US “demonstrated a constructive approach.”
Putin told Pompeo that after his 90-minute phone call with Trump, initiated by the White House, and described by Ushakov as “very good,” the Russian president “got the impression that the [US] president was inclined to re-establish Russian-American relations and contacts to resolve together the issues that are of mutual interest to us.”
That would imply a Russiagate closure. Putin told Pompeo, in no uncertain terms, that Moscow never interfered in the US elections, and that the Mueller report proved that there was no connection between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign.
This adds to the fact Russiagate has been consistently debunked by the best independent American investigators such as the VIPS group.
‘Interesting’ talk on Iran
Let’s briefly review what became public of the discussions on multiple (hot and cold) conflict fronts – Venezuela, North Korea, Afghanistan, Iran.
Venezuela – Ushakov reiterated the Kremlin’s position: “Any steps that may provoke a civil war in the country are inadmissible.” The future of President Maduro was apparently not part of the discussion.
That brings to mind the recent Arctic Council summit. Both Lavrov and Pompeo were there. Here’s a significant exchange:
Lavrov: I believe you don’t represent the South American region, do you?
Pompeo: We represent the entire hemisphere.
Lavrov: Oh, the hemisphere. Then what’s the US doing in the Eastern Hemisphere, in Ukraine, for instance?
There was no response from Pompeo.
North Korea – Even acknowledging that the Trump administration is “generally ready to continue working [with Pyongyang] despite the stalemate at the last meeting, Ushakov again reiterated the Kremlin’s position: Pyongyang will not give in to “any type of pressure,” and North Korea wants “a respectful approach” and international security guarantees.
Afghanistan – Ushakov noted Moscow is very much aware that the Taliban are getting stronger. So the only way out is to find a “balance of power.” There was a crucial trilateral in Moscow on April 25 featuring Russia, China and the US, where they all called on the Taliban to start talking with Kabul as soon as possible.
Iran – Ushakov said the JCPOA, or Iran nuclear deal, was “briefly discussed.”.He would only say the discussion was “interesting.”
Talk about a larger than life euphemism. Moscow is extremely uneasy over the possibility of a destabilization of Iran that allows a free transit of jihadis from the Caspian to the Caucasus.
Which brings us to the heart of the matter. Diplomatic sources – from Russia and Iran – confirm, off the record, there have been secret talks among the three pillars of Eurasian integration – Russia, China and Iran – about Chinese and Russian guarantees in the event the Trump administration’s drive to strangle Tehran to death takes an ominous turn.
This is being discussed at the highest levels in Moscow and Beijing. The bottom line: Russia-China won’t allow Iran to be destroyed.
But it’s quite understandable that Ushakov wouldn’t let that information slip through a mere press briefing.
Wang Yi and other deals
On multiple fronts, what was not disclosed by Ushakov is way more fascinating than what’s now on the record. There’s absolutely no way Russian hypersonic weapons were not also discussed, as well as China’s intermediate-range missiles capable of reaching any US military base encircling or containing China.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, third right, meets Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, center left, in Sochi on 14 May 2019. Photo: AFP / Russian Foreign Ministry Press Service / Anadolu
The real deal was, in fact, not Putin-Pompeo or Pompeo-Lavrov in Sochi. It was actually Lavrov-Wang Yi (the Chinese Foreign Minister), the day before in Moscow.
A US investment banker doing business in Russia told me:
“Note how Pompeo ran like mad to Sochi. We are frightened and overstretched.”
Diplomats later remarked: “Pompeo looked solemn afterwards. Lavrov sounded very diplomatic and calm.” It’s no secret in Moscow’s top diplomatic circles that the Chinese Politburo overruled President Xi Jinping’s effort to find an accommodation to Trump’s tariff offensive. The tension was visible in Pompeo’s demeanor.
In terms of substance, it’s remarkable how Lavrov and Wang Yi talked about, literally, everything: Syria, Iran, Venezuela, the Caspian, the Caucasus, New Silk Roads (BRI), Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU), Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), missiles, nuclear proliferation.
Or as Lavrov diplomatically put it:
“In general, Russia-China cooperation is one of the key factors in maintaining the international security and stability, establishing a multipolar world order. . . . Our states cooperate closely in various multilateral organizations, including the UN, G20, SCO, BRICS and RIC [Russia, India, China trilateral forum], we are working on aligning the integration potential of the EAEU and the Belt and Road Initiative, with potentially establishing [a] larger Eurasian partnership.”
The strategic partnership is in sync on Venezuela, Syria, Iran, Afghanistan – they want a solution brokered by the SCO. And on North Korea, the message could not have been more forceful.
After talking to Wang Yi, Lavrov stressed that contacts between Washington and North Korea “proceeded in conformity with the road map that we had drafted together with China, from confidence restoration measures to further direct contacts.”
This is a frank admission that Pyongyang gets top advice from the Russia-China strategic partnership. And there’s more:
“We hope that at a certain point a comprehensive agreement will be achieved on the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and on the creation of a system of peace and security in general in Northeast Asia, including concrete firm guarantees of North Korea’s security.”
Translation: Russia and China won’t back down on guaranteeing North Korea’s security. Lavrov said:
“Such guarantees will be not easy to provide, but this is an absolutely mandatory part of a future agreement. Russia and China are prepared to work on such guarantees.”
Reset, maybe?
The indomitable Maria Zakharova, Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman, may have summed it all up. A US-Russia reset may even, eventually, happen. Certainly, it won’t be of the Hillary Clinton kind, especially when current CIA director Gina Haspel is shifting most of the agency’s resources towards Iran and Russia.
Top Russian military analyst Andrei Martyanov was way more scathing. Russia won’t break with China, because the US “doesn’t have any more a geopolitical currency to ‘buy’ Russia – she is out of [the] price range for the US.”
That left Ushakov with his brave face, confirming there may be a Trump-Putin meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Osaka next month.
“We can organize a meeting ‘on the go’ with President Trump. Alternatively, we can sit down for a more comprehensive discussion.”
Under the current geopolitical incandescence, that’s the best rational minds can hope for.
- Cryptos Just Flash-Crashed
Shortly before 11pmET, cryptos suddenly jerked lower with Bitcoin flash-crashing over 15% before bouncing back…
Bitcoin was hit the hardest…
Bitcoin collapsed over $1500 before quickly ramping back higher…
Bitcoin retraced Fib61.8% of the latest surge before bouncing back above $7000…
Notably the flash-crash in Bitcoin took it down to the early April lows that started the epic Bitcoin ramp relative to the rest of cryptos…
No immediate catalyst for the moves in crypto but we note that China’s offshore yuan started to accelerate lower at the same time…
As did US equity futures…
After commentaries run by Chinese state media outlets on Friday suggest the nation has little no interest in continuing trade negotiations with the U.S. for now.
- "We're Done With Asking Nicely": British Columbia Launches Probe After Report Finds $7.4 Billion Laundered In 2018
Better late than never, eh?
On the heels of a stunning report revealing over $7 billion in laundered money through British Columbia in 2018 (mostly in the form of Chinese oligarchs buying Vancouver real estate and using it to park money offshore), the province will finally hold a public inquiry into money laundering, according to CBC. The decision was announced by BC Premier John Horgan and Attorney General David Eby on Wednesday morning. They were joined by Finance Minister Carole James.
At the announcement, Horgan said: “It became abundantly clear to us that the depth and the magnitude of money laundering in British Columbia was far worse than we imagined when we were first sworn in, and that’s why we established the public inquiry today.”
Heading up the inquiry will be B.C. Supreme Court Justice Austin F. Cullen, who will be looking into real estate, gaming, financial institutions and the corporate and professional sectors. Eby claimed that the recent report formed the basis for the inquiry, while also noting that some individuals had refused to participate in voluntary reviews. Cullen has been given “significant” powers to compel witnesses, testimony, gather evidence and search and seize records with a warrant.
Eby also said that Organized Crime Reduction Minister Bill Blair assured him that the government would cooperate with the inquiry. Eby said: “We are done with asking nicely. Today, our government has given Justice Cullen the authority to do more than ask for voluntary participation.”
“If there is testimony that the commissioner needs to get to the bottom of this, he will compel that testimony. We’re not constraining the commissioner in any way,” Horgan said.
Earlier this week we discussed a report detailing the extent of money laundering in the Canadian province, which included more than $5.3 billion being laundered through the real estate market. The independent report released just days ago concluded that an astounding $7.4 billion was laundered in British Columbia in 2018, out of a total of $46.7 billion laundered across Canada throughout the same period. The report was published by an expert panel led by former B.C. deputy attorney general Maureen Maloney.
The reports come after the government commissioned them to try and shed light on laundering by organized crime in BC’s real estate market. This follows last June’s report on dirty money in casinos, which we also wrote about just days ago.
RCMP commissioner Peter German was commissioned to write the report on real estate, and he concluded that illicit money is what led to “a frenzy of buying” that caused housing prices to spike around Metro Vancouver. The report concluded that there are thousands of properties worth billions at high risk for money laundering.
An international anti-money laundering agency said last year that organized criminals were laundering about $1 billion per year in the province.
Green Leader Andrew Weaver had already called for a public inquiry: “Namely, that it would improve public awareness, play a crucial role in fault finding, and would help to develop full recommendations,” he said last week. In sum, the report made 29 recommendations, including for the entire province to launch a financial investigations unit.
Finance Minister Carole James said last week: “…all the recommendations look critical, but the government wants to ensure it’s prioritizing the most important ones, while also noting that action already underway in the legislature on some solutions.”
In late April, we highlighted measures that Vancouver casinos were taking against money laundering, noting that they were resulting in casinos taking a brutal hit to their bottom lines.
The final public inquiry report is expected to be delivered by May 2021 and an interim report is expected within the next 18 months.
- Meet The Man Who Mastered "Jeopardy!" By Ignoring Conventional Wisdom
Submitted by Bill Rice Jr., a freelance writer in Troy, Alabama. He can be reached at wjricejunior@gmail.com. A version of this story originally appeared in The American Conservative.
For all practical purposes, the manner in which contestants have played “Jeopardy!” has not changed since Art Fleming provided the game show’s first “answer” 55 years ago. That is, until James Holzhauer took his place behind the podium earlier this year.
After winning 22 consecutive games by an astounding average margin of $64,913, one question must be asked: Had every one of these contestants been playing this game the wrong way?
If this is indeed the case,“a professional sports gambler from Nevada” may have shown the world what’s possible when a template – never challenged or questioned over half a century – is blown up and replaced by another strategy that produces vastly superior results.
By now millions of Americans are familiar with James’s unorthodox “Jeopardy!” strategy. Unlike 99.9 percent of the game’s previous contestants, he starts at the bottom of the board and goes sideways.
“It seems pretty simple to me: If you want more money, start with the bigger-money clues,” Holzhauer explained in an interview with Vulture magazine. He told NPR “What I do that’s different than anyone who came before me is I will try to build the pot first” before seeking out the game’s Daily Doubles. He then “leverages” his winnings with “strategically aggressive” wagers (read: wagers far larger than any contestant before him was willing to make).
This strategy – along with the fact he’s answering 96.7 percent of the clues correctly – has allowed James to build insurmountable leads heading into Final Jeopardy. He can then be ultra-aggressive with his Final Jeopardy wagers, including one of $60,013. It was this wager that allowed James to establish his current single-game record of $131,016. (James now holds the Top 12 all-time records for one-game winnings).
In 22 episodes, James has earned $1.69 million. Given that each show takes about 24 minutes to play, James is averaging $192,045/hour.
How could a strategy that really is “pretty simple” – one that on a per-hour basis generates more income than any job in America – have been eschewed by approximately 25,000 previous contestants?
There are several possible answers to this question, none of which speaks particularly well of America, or Americans.
One is that most people are afraid to challenge “conventional wisdom.” If something’s been done the same way for decades by everyone, no one thinks that it can be done differently. And/or people have observed that those who do challenge the Status Quo (“Who is Galileo?”) aren’t always celebrated, at least in their own times.
Holzhauer’s contrarian approach to “Jeopardy!” has clearly rubbed many Americans the wrong way.
Washington Post columnist Charles Lane labeled Holzhauer a “menace” who is guilty of violating the “unwritten rules of the game,” a view endorsed by CNN host Michael Smerconish.
Other pundits accused Holzhauer of using tactics that are “unfair” or “bad for the game.” He’s been called divisive, polarizing and controversial, someone who has “destroyed the quaintness of the game” and given America “deadly dull television.” Some speculate he’s “gaming the system,” perhaps even cheating. Many message board posters have pledged to boycott the show until the “robotic” Holzhauer is defeated.
The opposite view – thankfully held by more Americans if message board posts are a gauge – is that James is a sensation whose accomplishments should be celebrated. According to one story, he’s the “man who solved ‘Jeopardy!’“
Another depressing possibility is that the overwhelming percentage of Jeopardy contestants (and, symbolically, the population writ large) is incapable of performing contrarian analysis, or of approaching a project or puzzle in a unique way. Americans have either known for decades that “Jeopardy!” was being played the wrong way but were too chicken to play it correctly, or James Holzhauer is the only American who figured the game out.
It’s too soon to tell if future contestants will emulate James’s strategy. For what it’s worth, over the past two weeks, 16 contestants have competed in Jeopardy’s “Teacher Tournament” and every contestant reverted to the game’s normal style of play. Such is the enduring power of conformity, of not challenging conventional wisdom.
But what if conventional wisdom is wrong? And how often is it wrong?
According to Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson, the answer is “almost always.”
Indeed, Samuelson wrote an important if largely overlooked book on this very subject in 2001. The book’s title: Untruth: How The Conventional Wisdom Is (Almost Always) Wrong.
Samuelson’s thesis is that people or organizations with an “agenda” often create problems or a “crisis” that are exaggerated or not problems at all. The “solutions” policy makers give us typically make things worse.
One can take his premise and run with it … and it holds. A few conventional wisdom examples:
- To protect our freedoms and save lives, America must invade, occupy or attack nation after nation, countries which pose great threats to our country and/or our freedoms.
- Man-made climate change is the greatest threat to our planet and its inhabitants and can and must be reversed at all costs.
- Donald Trump will never be elected president of the United States.
- Donald Trump will drain the swamp.
- Russia “hacked” an election.
- There’s only one way to play “Jeopardy!”
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Or, if not all wrong, at least not all sacrosanct.
Examples where conventional wisdom is often wrong could also be easily identified in the fields of science, health, economics and education. The point: if conventional wisdom really is “almost always wrong,” someone (or a lot of someones) need to expose this.
In the grand scheme of things, disproving the postulate that there’s only one way to play “Jeopardy!” might not seem like a big deal. It could be, however, if a rare “eureka!” moment opened the floodgates of independent thought among more Americans, a development that might qualify as a tectonic shift in any quest to shatter a sub-optimal Status Quo.
As I was researching James, I learned the fascinating identify of one of his sources of inspiration.
“Do you follow hot-dog eating?”
This out-of-left-field question came after a reporter with Vulture asked James to respond to the charge he had “broken” Jeopardy.
“No. Can’t say I do,” the interviewer responded.
James: “About a decade ago, nobody ever thought someone could eat more than, like, 25 hot dogs in ten minutes. But this guy named Takeru Kobayashi came along and he shattered the record by so much that people realized there was a new blueprint to do this.”
Here I was looking (in vain) for sports analogies to compare James’s paradigm-shifting strategy and it’s James himself who (of course) had the answer.
It wasn’t Secretariat winning by 31 lengths, or Bob Beamon breaking the long-jump record by almost 22 inches, or Wilt Chamberlain scoring 100 points in an NBA game who transcended what everyone thought was possible. These athletes were simply doing the same things they’d always done, just far better, at least on one occasion.
The example that caught James’s attention – and gave me my perfect analogy – was the story of a 130-pound Japanese man with the goal of eating a mind-boggling number of hot dogs.
Freakonomics Radio – an outfit that appreciates what’s possible when a puzzle is looked at in novel ways – did a podcast on the great Kobayashi.
Through intense study and trial-and-error experimentation, Kobayashi discovered that if he ripped the hot dog in two, squeezed each piece into a ball, dipped the balls in water (thereby breaking down the starch), squeezed out the excess water and tossed each ball into his mouth his stomach could tolerate many more dogs. These simple innovations helped Kobayashi double the existing record his first time out.
But here’s the kicker, one that offers hope for the world. Once Kobayashi smashed the record, his fellow competitors didn’t quit. They didn’t demand the rules be changed. They simply adapted their techniques and raised the level of their game. Today, an American once again holds the hot-dog-eating record – 72 wieners in 10 minutes!
The lesson is as obvious as Kobayashi’s bulging abdomen. When someone does think outside the box, when someone proves that performances once thought impossible are in fact easily obtainable, new levels of excellence become possible.
Back to James: “… So I’d be interested to see if there was a new paradigm in (‘Jeopardy!’). If someone comes along and breaks my record, and attributed it to my style, that would be really great,” he told Vulture.
When someone finally cures cancer, my wager is it will be someone like James Holzhauer, or Takeru Kobayashi. It will be someone who looks at all the work that’s come before him and says, “This doesn’t make sense. There’s a better way to approach this.”
Over the last two months James Holzhauer has been trying to teach Americans that eye-opening accomplishments are possible if one ignores or rejects conventional wisdom that is, in fact, wrong. The more Americans who absorb this lesson the better. But really it might take just one future James Holzhauer to improve our world. Let’s hope he or she’s been watching.
- Secret Satellite Photos Of Iranian Missiles In Persian Gulf Behind Intensifying Crisis
As the international hand-wringing continues over whether there is an actual heightened “Iran threat” with American troops in the cross hairs, and as some US allies – notably Spain, Germany, and The Netherlands – actually withdraw their forces from US operations support in the region, we must ask at this point, what do we actually know in terms of Bolton’s original intelligence cited earlier this month which sparked the ongoing crisis?
Aside from knowing much or all of the intelligence was reportedly provided to the administration by Israeli Mossad, we have the piecemeal explanations of both top admin officials and regional allies. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Iraqi officials during his unplanned stopover in Baghdad last week that “U.S. intelligence showed Iran-backed militias moved missiles near bases housing American forces,” according to Fox.
Iranian weaponry and military equipment exhibition in Tehran on February 2, 2019. Image source: AFP According to that report, a senior Iraqi source relayed of the US message: “They said if the U.S. were attacked on Iraqi soil, it would take action to defend itself without coordinating with Baghdad.” So the crisis appears focused on potential Iranian proxy actions in Iraq – apparently enough to take the very rare step of evacuating all non-emergency US personnel from the US embassy in Baghdad (a move that hadn’t even been done at the height of ISIS’ offensive across western and northern Iraqi).
However, US allies even disagree on this point. For starters, the deputy head of the US-led coalition, British Army Maj. Gen. Christopher Ghika, caused an almost unheard of row among allies when earlier this week he flatly stated: “No – there’s been no increased threat from Iranian-backed forces in Iraq and Syria,” in a videolink briefing at a Pentagon press conference.
Furthermore, Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi said on Tuesday that the Iraqis had no information showing “movements that constitute a threat to any side,” but added that his government “is doing its duty to protect all parties.”
So is the new “threat” which warranted the latest US military build-up, which has caused Iran’s military to warn “We are on the cusp of a full scale confrontation with the enemy” — all based on either Iran or Iran-backed “popular mobilization units” in Iraq moving around a few missiles? If so, it would be nothing new.
All the way back in August of last year we reported, based on Reuters, “Iran Stuns Enemies By Moving Ballistic Missiles To Iraq – Within Easy Striking Distance of Tel Aviv.” It was known at that time that Iran had transferred short-range ballistic missiles to Shia proxy forces in Iraq for “months” prior, according to Western and Iraqi intelligence sources. This is why a number of prominent Middle East watchers and military analysts have shrugged, “nothing new… nothing to see here” in response to the “new” vaunted White House intelligence. This also appears to be the attitude of Britain’s chain of command within the joint “Operation Inherent Resolve” coalition.
And enter the New York Times, which in a report published late Wednesday citing three defense officials, found that: “The intelligence that caused the White House to escalate its warnings about a threat from Iran came from photographs of missiles on small boats in the Persian Gulf that were put on board by Iranian paramilitary forces.”
Secret satellite photos of Iranian missiles in Persian Gulf ignites heated debate among White House, Congress, allies and the public over new threats from Iran https://t.co/F1i3G39Jt0
— Eric Schmitt (@EricSchmittNYT) May 16, 2019
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
And further, the report stated:
Overhead imagery showed fully assembled missiles, stoking fears that the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps would fire them at United States naval ships. Additional pieces of intelligence picked up threats against commercial shipping and potential attacks by Arab militias with Iran ties on American troops in Iraq.
The NYT also noted that some top lawmakers are seeking to ensure that Congress is consulted before taking any military action against Iran. Speaker Nancy Pelosi reportedly “criticized the administration’s lack of transparency on the intelligence” in a closed-door meeting involving House Democrats.
Pompeo’s latest statements presented in the earlier Fox report seems to confirm the new NYT report. US allies in the region have also reportedly dismissed the “satellite evidence” of the Iranians moving missiles as mere usual defensive posturing.
And then there’s the possibility that all of this bluster and heated war rhetoric and build-up could have merely originated from Iran’s moving or assembling missiles on their own soil or in their own territorial waters in the Persian Gulf.
- Is China's "Mandate Of Heaven" In Jeopardy?
Authored by James Rickards via The Daily Reckoning,
U.S. policy through the Bush and Obama administrations was to soft-pedal questionable Chinese trade practices, pirating technology and theft of intellectual property in return for cheap manufactured goods and China’s willingness to finance trillions of dollars of U.S. government debt.
Now Trump has changed the rules of the game. He’s said lost jobs in the U.S. are not worth the cheap goods and cheap financing. He bet that China had no alternative but to keep producing those goods and keep buying our debt, even if the U.S. imposes tariffs to help create manufacturing jobs here.
President Trump and President Xi had been on a collision course involving issues of trade, tariffs, and currency manipulation, which are coming to a head.
It’s important to understand that China’s economy is not just about providing jobs, goods and services. It is about regime survival for a Chinese Communist Party that faces an existential crisis if it fails to deliver. It is an illegitimate regime that will remain in power only so long as it provides jobs and a rising living standard for the Chinese people. The overriding imperative of the Chinese leadership is to avoid societal unrest.
Once the Chinese job machine stalls out, popular unrest could emerge on a scale much greater than the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. This is an existential threat to Communist power.
If China encounters a financial crisis, Xi could quickly lose what the Chinese call, “The Mandate of Heaven.” That’s a term that describes the intangible goodwill and popular support needed by emperors to rule China for the past 3,000 years.
If The Mandate of Heaven is lost, a ruler can fall quickly.
China has serious structural economic problems and its internal contradictions are catching up with it. Economies can grow through consumption, investment, government spending and net exports. The “Chinese miracle” has been mostly a matter of investment and net exports, with minimal spending by consumers.
The investment component was thinly disguised government spending — many of the companies conducting investment in large infrastructure projects were backed directly or indirectly by the government through the banks.
This investment was debt-financed. China is so heavily indebted that it is now at the point where more debt does not produce growth. Adding additional debt today slows the economy and calls into question China’s ability to service its existing debt.
China is now confronting an insolvent banking system, a real estate bubble, and a $1 trillion wealth management product Ponzi scheme that is starting to fall apart.
Up to half of China’s investment is a complete waste. It does produce jobs and utilize inputs like cement, steel, copper and glass. But the finished product, whether a city, train station or sports arena, is often a white elephant that will remain unused.
Chinese growth has been reported in recent years as 6.5–10% but is actually closer to 5% or lower once an adjustment is made for the waste. The Chinese landscape is littered with “ghost cities” that have resulted from China’s wasted investment and flawed development model.
What’s worse is that these white elephants are being financed with debt that can never be repaid. And no allowance has been made for the maintenance that will be needed to keep these white elephants in usable form if demand does rise in the future, which is doubtful.
Essentially, China is on the horns of a dilemma with no good way out. On the one hand, China has driven growth for the past eight years with excessive credit, wasted infrastructure investment and Ponzi schemes.
The Chinese leadership knows this, but they had to keep the growth machine in high gear to create jobs for millions of migrants coming from the countryside to the city and to maintain jobs for the millions more already in the cities.
The two ways to get rid of debt are deflation (which results in write-offs, bankruptcies and unemployment) or inflation (which results in theft of purchasing power, similar to a tax increase).
Both alternatives are unacceptable to the Communists because they lack the political legitimacy to endure either unemployment or inflation. Either policy would cause social unrest and unleash revolutionary potential.
China has hit a wall that development economists refer to as the “middle income trap.” Again, this happens to developing economies when they have exhausted the easy growth potential moving from low income to middle income and then face the far more difficult task of moving from middle income to high income.
The move to high-income status requires far more than simple assembly-style jobs staffed by rural dwellers moving to the cities. It requires the creation and adoption of high-value-added products enabled by high technology.
China has not shown much capacity for developing high technology on its own, but it has been quite effective at stealing such technology from trading partners and applying it through its own system of state-owned enterprises and “national champions” such as Huawei in the telecommunications sector.
Unfortunately for China, this growth by theft has run its course. The U.S. and its allies, such as Canada and the EU, are taking strict steps to limit further theft and are holding China to account for its theft so far by imposing punitive tariffs and banning Chinese companies from participation in critical technology rollouts such as 5G mobile phones.
My view is that a crisis in China is inevitable based on China’s growth model, the international financial climate and excessive debt. A countdown to crisis has begun. Geopolitical issues will make the economic issues even harder to resolve.
Yes, headlines are dominated by the trade war. That escalating confrontation is a big deal, but it’s not the only flash point in U.S.-China relations, and not even the most important. China is as much concerned about a military confrontation in the South China Sea as it is about the economic confrontation in the trade wars.
China dredged sand surrounding useless rocks and atolls in the South China Sea and converted them into artificial islands and then built out the islands to include naval ports, air force landing strips, anti-aircraft weapons and other defensive and offensive weapons systems.
Not only are the Chinese militarizing rocks, but they are trampling on competing claims by the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia and other countries surrounding the sea.
The world has developed rules-based platforms for resolving these issues without military force. The U.S. is guaranteeing freedom of passage, freedom of the seas and the territorial rights of allies such as the Philippines.
So far, the U.S.-Chinese confrontation has been about naval vessels passing in close quarters and surveillance aircraft being harassed by fighter jets. The risk of such tactics is an accidental collision, a rogue shot fired or a command misunderstood.
Any such incident could lead to retaliation, and there’s no telling where it might stop. Trump is not someone to back down, and Chinese leadership does not want to appear weak before the U.S.
That’s especially true at a time of great economic uncertainty. China does not want war at this time. But diverting the people’s attention away from domestic problems toward a foreign foe is an old trick leaders use to unite the people in times of uncertainty. Rallying the people around the flag is a tried and true method to garner support.
If China’s leadership decides that the risk of losing legitimacy at home outweighs the risk of conflict with the United States, the likelihood of war rises dramatically.
I’m not predicting it, but wars have started over less. This is a very dangerous time.
Be sure to hold cash, gold, silver, land and other assets that will cushion you against a market crash.
- Radioactive 'Nuclear Coffin' May Be Leaking Into The Pacific
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has sounded the alarm over a giant concrete dome built 40 years ago in the Marshall Islands to contain radioactive waste from Cold War-era atomic tests.
According to Guterres, the dome – which houses approximately 73,000 cubic meters of debris on Runit island, part of the Enewetak Atoll – may be leaking radioactive material into the Pacific Ocean, as the porous ground underneath the 18″ thick dome was never lined as originally planned. It was constructed in the crater formed by the 18-kt Cactus test.
“The Pacific was victimised in the past as we all know,” Guterres told students in the island nation of Figi while on a tour of the South Pacific. “I’ve just been with the President of the Marshall Islands (Hilda Heine), who is very worried because there is a risk of leaking of radioactive materials that are contained in a kind of coffin in the area.”
DoE report, 2013 Residents of the Islands were relocated from their ancestral lands shortly after the United States began what would become 67 nuclear weapons tests from 1946 – 1958 at Bikini and Enewetak atolls. Despite US efforts to move people to safety, thousands of islanders were exposed to radioactive fallout from above-ground tests conducted before a moratorium was enacted in 1958.
The tests included the 15 Megaton Castle Bravo on the Bikini Atoll, which was detonated on March 1, 1954. It was the most powerful ever detonated by the United States – and around 1,000 times bigger than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima just nine years before.
The effort to clean up the region in the 1970s included approximately 4,000 US servicemen in what was known as the Enewetak Radiological Support Project.
Cracks are visible in the dome’s surface, and the sea sometimes washes over its surface during storms, according to ABC.
View from atop of Runit Dome showing the beach configuration on the north end of Runit Island at low tide (Reference Photo, May 2013). “The United States Government has acknowledged that a major typhoon could break it apart and cause all of the radiation in it to disperse,” said Columbia University’s Michael Gerrard.
That said, a 2013 DoE report found that the soil outside of the dome is more contaminated than its contents – as the 1970s cleaning operation only removed an estimated 0.8 percent of the total nuclear waste in Enewetak atoll.
Guterres did not propose a solution, however he said that “a lot needs to be done in relation to the explosions that took place in French Polynesia and the Marshall Islands,” adding “This is in relation to the health consequences, the impact on communities and other aspects.”
And of course, reparations; “there are questions of compensation and mechanisms to allow these impacts to be minimised,” Guterres added.
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