Jul 01

Today’s News 1st July 2017

  • Paul Craig Roberts Asks "Why Has Washington Been At War For 16 Years?"

    Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

    For sixteen years the US has been at war in the Middle East and North Africa, running up trillions of dollars in expenses, committing untold war crimes, and sending millions of war refugees to burden Europe, while simultaneously claiming that Washington cannot afford its Social Security and Medicare obligations or to fund a national health service like every civilized country has.

    Considering the enormous social needs that cannot be met because of the massive cost of these orchestrated wars, one would think that the American people would be asking questions about the purpose of these wars. What is being achieved at such enormous costs? Domestic needs are neglected so that the military/security complex can grow fat on war profits.

    The lack of curiousity on the part of the American people, the media, and Congress about the purpose of these wars, which have been proven to be based entirely on lies, is extraordinary. What explains this conspiracy of silence, this amazing disinterest in the squandering of money and lives?

    Most Americans seem to vaguely accept these orchestrated wars as the government’s response to 9/11. This adds to the mystery as it is a fact that Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, and Iran (Iran not yet attacked except with threats and sanctions) had nothing to do with 9/11. But these countries have Muslim populations, and the Bush regime and presstitute media succeeded in associating 9/11 with Muslims in general.

    Perhaps if Americans and their “representatives” in Congress understood what the wars are about, they would rouse themselves to make objections. So, I will tell you what Washington’s war on Syria and Washington’s intended war on Iran are about. Ready?

    There are three reasons for Washington’s war, not America’s war as Washington is not America, on Syria.

    The first reason has to do with the profits of the military/security complex. The military/security complex is a combination of powerful private and governmental interests that need a threat to justify an annual budget that exceeds the GDP of many countries. War gives this combination of private and governmental interests a justification for its massive budget, a budget whose burden falls on American taxpayers whose real median family income has not risen for a couple of decades while their debt burden to support their living standard has risen.

     

    The second reason has to do with the Neoconservative ideology of American world hegemony. According to the Neoconservatives, who most certainly are not conservative of any description, the collapse of communism and socialism means that History has chosen “Democratic Capitalism,” which is neither democratic nor capitalist, as the World’s Socio-Economic-Political system and it is Washington’s responsibility to impose Americanism on the entire world. Countries such as Russia, China, Syria, and Iran, who reject American hegemony must be destabilized and desroyed as they stand in the way of American unilateralism.

     

    The Third reason has to do with Israel’s need for the water resources of Southern Lebanon. Twice Israel has sent the vaunted Israeli Army to occupy Southern Lebanon, and twice the vaunted Israeli Army was driven out by Hezbollah, a militia supported by Syria and Iran. To be frank, Israel is using America to eliminate the Syrian and Iranian governments that provide military and economic support to Hezbollah. If Hezbollah’s suppliers can be eliminated by the Americans, Israel’s army can steal Southern Lebanon, just as it has stolen Palestine and parts of Syria.

    Here are the facts: For 16 years the insouciant American population has permitted a corrupt government in Washington to squander trillions of dollars needed domestically but instead allocated to the profits of the military/security complex, to the service of the Neoconservative ideology of US world hegemony, and to the service of Israel.

    Clearly, Amerian democracy is a fraud. It serves everyone but Americans.

    What is the likely consequence of the US government serving non-American interests?

    The best positive outcome is poverty for the 99 percent. The worst outcome is nuclear armageddon.

    Washington’s service to the military/security complex, to the Neoconservative ideology, and to Israel completely neglects over-powering facts.

    Israel’s interest to overthrow Syria and Iran is totally inconsistant with Russia’s interest to prevent the import of jihadism into the Russian Federation and Central Asia. Therefore, Israel has put the US into direct military conflict with Russia.

    The US military/security complex’s financial interests to surround Russia with missile sites is inconsistent with Russian sovereignty as is the Neoconservatives’ emphasis on US world hegemony.

    President Trump does not control Washington. Washington is controlled by the military/security complex (watch on youtube President Eisenhower’s description of the military/security complex as a threat to American democracy), by the Israel Lobby, and by the Neoconservatives. These three organized interest groups have pre-empted the Amercan people, who are powerless and are uninvolved in the decisions about their future.

    Every US Representative and US Senator who stood up to Israel was defeated by Israel in their re-election campaign. This is the reason that when Israel wants something it passes both houses of Congress unanimously. As Admiral Tom Moorer, Chief of Naval Operations and Chariman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said publicly, “No American President can stand up to Israel.” Israel gets what it wants no matter what the consequences are for America.

    Adm. Moorer was right. The US gives Israel every year enough money to purchase our government. And Israel does purchase our government. The US government is far more accountable to Israel than to the American people. The votes of the House and Senate prove this.

    Unable to stand up to tiny Israel, Washington thinks it can buffalo Russia and China. For Washington to continue to provoke Russia and China is a sign of insantity. In the place of intelligence we see hubris and arrogance, the hallmarks of fools.

    What Planet Earth, and the creatures thereon, need more than anything is leaders in the West who are intelligent, who have a moral conscience, who respect truth, and who are are capable of understanding the limits to their power.

    But the Western World has no such people.

  • America's Fertility Rate Falls To Record Low

    The US isn't yet grappling with the economic disaster that is a shrinking popuation – unlike Japan. Though it's starting to look like a not-too-distant possibility. US birthrates fell to yet another historic low in 2016 as a whirlwind of economic and cultural factors inspire more women to delay, or forgo, having children. According to provisional data for the fourth quarter provided by the CDC, the US birthrate has declined to 62 births per 1000 women – its lowest level on record, and down from 62.5 in 2015.

    This is especially troubling because demographers worry that a dwindling birth rate will hurt economic growth and tax revenues needed to fund transfer payments to a growing elderly population, as more members of the baby boomer generation age into retire.

    The CDC did not say why the birth rate is declining. But according to Axios, research and surveys have shown several reasons, including wider availability of birth control, personal economic instability from student loans or other debt, women focused on launching a career before starting a family, and a growing acceptance that not everyone wants to have children.

    If the Trump administration achieves higher economic growth, it’s unlikely to do so fast enough to support the mandated 9% increase in entitlement spending for older Americans without more deficit spending. Trump says he intends to preserve Social Security and Medicare spending levels.

    The highest birthrates are now seen among women aged 30-34. Previously, the highest rate had been for women aged 25-29, which fell to 101.9 in 2016.

    Chart courtesy of Axios

    Furthermore, as Statista notes, teenage pregnancy is in continual decline in the United States. As preliminary data released in a newreport by the National Centre for Health Statistics on Friday reveals, the birth rate of mothers in the 15-19 age group dropped to a record low of 20.3, amounting to 209,480 births in 2016. Compared to 2015, this is a decrease of almost 9% and even 62% when compared to 1996.

    Conversely, birth rates of women aged 40-44 are on the rise: While it stood at 6.8 in 1996, the provisional birth rate for this age group is 11.4 births per 1,000 women in 2016, which accounts for an increase of 4% compared to the previous year.

    Infographic: Teen Birth Rate at Its Lowest Level in Twenty Years | Statista

    You will find more statistics at Statista

    Here are a few other interesting data points from the CDC, courtesy of Axios:

    • The CDC estimates the fertility rate in 1960 was about 118 births per 1,000 women, or almost double what it is today.
    • Despite the record low birth rate, more than 3.94 million babies were born in 2016, which was about 37,000 fewer than 2015.
    • The highest birth rate is now among women aged 30-34 at 102.6 births per 1,000 women. Previously, the highest rate had been for women aged 25-29, which fell to 101.9 in 2016.
    • U.S. births by race origin of the mother: 52% white, 23% Hispanic, 14% black, 6% Asian, 1% Native American/native of Alaska, Hawaii or Pacific Islands.

    * * *

    Economists worry that if birthrates continue to decline, America’s economy will enter a period of stagnant growth like that experienced by Japan over the past two decades. As we reported last year, the problem of falling fertility in Japan, which at 1.4 births per woman, has one of the lowest fertility rate in the developed world, is so severe, that Japan's lawmakers have decided to take action.  Late last year, Japan’ cabinet approved a record $830 billion spending budget for fiscal 2017, which includes child-rearing support. However, the birth rate in the US remains positive, while Japan's population is shrinking.

     

    However, at this rate, the local population may not need the free money in the not too distant future. The only hope, as in the case of many European nations, is that a surge in immigration will offset the natural decline of the domestic population, whose average age has never been higher…

  • Joseph Tainter: The Collapse Of Complex Societies

    Authord by Adam Taggart via PeakProsperity.com,

    By popular demand, we welcome Joseph Tainter, USU professor and author of The Collapse Of Complex Societies (free book download here).

    Dr. Tainter sees many of the same unsustainable risks the PeakProsperity.com audience focuses on — an overleveraged economy, declining net energy per capita, and depleting key resources.

    He argues that the sustainability or collapse of a society follows from the success or failure of its problem-solving institutions. His work shows that societies collapse when their investments in social complexity and their energy subsidies reach a point of diminishing marginal returns. From Tainter's perspective, we are likely already past the tipping point towards collapse but just don’t know it yet:

    Sustainability requires that people have the ability and the inclination to think broadly in terms of time and space. In other words, to think broadly in a geographical sense about the world around them, as well as the state of the world as a whole. And also, to think broadly in time in terms of the near and distant future and what resources will be available to our children and our grandchildren and our great grandchildren.

     

    One of the major problems in sustainability and in this whole question of resources and collapse is that we did not evolve as a species to have this ability to think broadly in time and space. Instead, our ancestors who lived as hunter-gatherers never confronted any challenges that required them to think beyond their locality and the near term(…)

     

    We have developed the most complex society humanity has ever known. And we have maintained it up to this point. I have argued that technological innovation and other kinds of innovation evolve like any other aspect of complexity. The investments in research and development grow increasingly complex and reach diminishing returns. We cannot forever continue to spend more and more on technological innovation when we’ve reached the point of diminishing returns, which I argue we have reached.

     

    Our system of innovation is going to change very significantly over the next twenty to thirty to fifty years or so. By the end of the century, our system of innovation will not be anything like what we know today. It will have to be very different. And it’s likely that innovation is not going to be able to solve our problems as readily as it has done to this point.

     

    The technological optimists have assumed that the productivity of innovation is either constant or increasing. And in fact, what I think my colleagues and I can show is that the productivity of innovation is actually decreasing. What that means is that we will not forever be able to solve resource problems through innovation(…)

     

    And so individuals need to take responsibility for their own ignorance. As I said, our species did not evolve to think broadly in terms of time and space and if we’re going to maintain our way of life, people have to learn to do so. People have to take responsibility for knowing and understanding the predicament that we’re facing. I have argued over the last few years that we need to start teaching early school age children in K to 12 to think differently, to think broadly in terms of time and space – to think historically, to think long-term about the future, to think broadly about what’s going on in the world around us instead of the narrow way – the narrow, local way – that most people live and think. So I put responsibility on individuals to broaden their knowledge.

    Click the play button below to listen to Chris' interview with Joseph Tainter (42m:44s).

  • "We Don't Know What Happened" St. Louis Officials Clueless As Downtown Sinkhole Swallows Car

    In a development that should send a chill down the spine of every citizen of St. Louis  – especially considering the city’s efforts to revitalize its violence-plagued downtown – a sinkhole spontaneously appeared in the city's downtown, swallowing a car that had been parked street side.

    And even more concering, city officials say they have no idea how it happened.

    Vincent Foggie, of the city's water division, said the hole was missing mounds of dirt that normally support the road's asphalt-topped concrete. He called such voids large enough to swallow a vehicle a rarity in the city.

     

    "We don't know what happened," Foggie said. "I have no idea where the dirt went."

    St Louis resident Jordan Westerberg parked his car on sixth street downtown near the railway exchange building on Thursday morning as he and his fiancée headed to an early morning workout at a gym nearby.

    When he returned shortly before 7 a.m. local time, his Toyota Camry was nowhere to be found. Westerberg and his fiancée said they figured it had been towed.

    Then, they saw a gathering of street workers near their parking space, tipping them off that something wasn’t right. That's when Westerberg, 25, found the vehicle in the gaping hole – about 20 feet (6 meters) deep and 8 to 10 feet (2.5 to 3 meters) across – that took up the entire southbound lane of the street, next to a vacant building expected to feature apartments, office space and retail, according to the Associated Press.

    No injuries were reported.

    "It's pretty crazy," said Westerberg, who lives in a loft downtown. "We could've been in the car. It's a compact car. It's not like it's heavy."

    The city said it wasn’t immediately clear what caused the sinkhole, though an 8-inch, below-ground water main at the site appeared to have been broken for some time, given the amount of erosion.

    Now for the real question: How does a water main break in a major city’s downtown without city officials being alerted somehow?

    Hopefully the city will refund Westerberg's parking costs, at the very least.

    Here’s a video courtesy of local AM radio station KMOX.

     

  • Connecticut Gov. Signs Exec. Order Taking Over Spending After State Fails To Pass Budget

    With Maine looking like it will be the first state to shut down heading into the new fiscal year on Saturday morning and perhaps beating Illinois to the punch, moments ago Connecticut, as previewed last night, will also enter the new fiscal year without a budget, inviting rating agencies to downgrade it to Illinois' "barely junk" rating or perhaps making CT the first US junk-rated state.

    Lawmakers and the governor had been unable to reach an agreement on a two-year budget that will cover a projected $5 billion deficit for months, and not even the threat of the new year prompted them to move as we expected.

    Meanwhile, Governor Malloy signed an executive order taking over the state's spending authority which will cut most services but at least keeps the government open. From Reuters:

    • CONNECTICUT GOVERNOR SIGNS EXECUTIVE ORDER TO TAKE CONTROL OF STATE SPENDING AFTER FAILURE TO PASS FY 2018/19 BIENNIAL BUDGET
    • CONNECTICUT EMERGENCY SPENDING PLAN KEEPS STATE GOVERNMENT OPEN BUT CUTS SERVICES

    As a result of the failure to pass a budget, AP reports that nonprofit social service agencies that rely on state funds are preparing for deep cuts. Democratic Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, who wanted the General Assembly to at least pass a proposed three-month mini-budget, is expected to reluctantly sign an executive order that maintains only essential state services.

    Connecticut’s General Assembly failed to pass a version of the state budget on Friday, forcing Democratic Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, who wanted the General Assembly to at least pass a proposed three-month mini-budget, to sign an executive order to take control of state spending, according to the Associated Press.

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    Gian-Carl Casa, president and CEO of Connecticut Community Nonprofit Alliance, says agencies that help people struggling with mental illness to domestic violence are planning to lay-off staff and close programs.

    The failure is the latest blemish on Malloy's record. The two-term governor has said he will not seek a third term when is current one is up at the end of 2018.

  • Picturing An 'America First' Korea Policy

    Authored by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

    “The North Korean regime is causing tremendous problems and is something that has to be dealt with, and probably dealt with rapidly.”

    So President Trump told reporters in the Rose Garden this week.

    But how this is to be done “rapidly” is not so easy to see.

    North Korea has just returned to us Otto Warmbier, a student sentenced to 15 years hard labor for stealing a propaganda poster. Otto came home comatose, and died within days.

    Trump’s conundrum: How to keep such a regime from acquiring an ICBM with a nuclear warhead, which Kim Jong Un is determined to do.

    Having seen us attack Iraq and Libya, which had no nukes, Kim believes that only nuclear weapons that can hit America can deter America. He appears willing to risk war to achieve his goal.

    Trump’s options as he meets South Korean President Moon Jae-in?

    First, the decapitation of the Kim dynasty. But the U.S. has been unable to accomplish regime change for the 64 years following the Korean War. And killing Kim could ignite a war.

    Then there is a U.S. pre-emptive strike on North Korea’s nuclear sites and missile arsenals. But this would surely mean a war in which Americans on the DMZ would be among the first to die, as thousands of North Korean artillery and mortar tubes fired into the suburbs and city of Seoul, which is as close as Dulles Airport is to the White House.

    Asked by Congressman Tim Ryan why we don’t launch a war to end this threat, Defense Secretary James Mattis replied that, while we might “win … at great cost,” such a war would “involve the massive shelling of an ally’s capital … one of the most densely packed cities on earth.”

    Seoul has a metro-area population of 25 million.

    We are thus approaching a point where we accept North Korea having a nuclear weapon that can reach Seattle, or we attack its strategic arsenal and bring on a war in which millions could die.

    What about sanctions?

    The only nation that could impose sufficient hardships on North Korea to imperil the regime is China. But China refuses to impose the Draconian sanctions that might destabilize the regime, and might bring Korean refugees flooding into China. And Beijing has no desire to see Kim fall and Korea united under a regime aligned with the United States.

    What FDR said of one Caribbean dictator, the Chinese are probably saying of Kim Jong Un, “He may be an SOB, but he’s our SOB.”

    Early in his presidency, Trump gave the franchise for dealing with the North Korean threat to Beijing. But his friend Xi Jinping has either failed Trump or declined to deliver.

    As for President Moon, he wants to negotiate, to engage the North economically, to invite its athletes to join South Koreans on joint teams for the Winter Olympics in 2018. Moreover, Moon is said to be willing to cut back on joint military exercises with the U.S. and regards the THAAD missile defense we introduced into South Korea as a negotiable item.

    China, whose missile launches can be detected by THAAD radar, wants it removed and has so informed South Korea.

    Where does this leave us?

    We are committed to go to war to defend the South and have 28,000 troops there. But South Korea wants to negotiate with North Korea and is prepared to make concessions to buy peace.

    As the nation that would suffer most in any second Korean War, South Korea has the sovereign right to play the hand. But what Seoul considers best for South Korea is not necessarily best for us.

    What would be an America First Korean policy?

    The U.S. would give Seoul notice that we will, by a date certain, be dissolving our mutual security treaty and restoring our full freedom to decide whether or not to fight in a new Korean War. Given the present risk of war, possibly involving nuclear weapons, it is absurd that we should be obligated to fight what Mattis says would be a “catastrophic” war, because of a treaty negotiated six decades ago by Eisenhower and Dulles.

    “The commonest error in politics,” Lord Salisbury reminded us, “is sticking to the carcass of dead policies.”

    But we should also tell South Korea that if she desires a nuclear deterrent against an attack by the North, she should build it. Americans should not risk a nuclear war, 8,000 miles away, to defend a South Korea that has 40 times the economy of the North and twice the population.

    No vital U.S. interest requires us, in perpetuity, to be willing to go to war to defend South Korea, especially if that war entails the risk of a nuclear attack on U.S. troops or the American homeland.

    If the United States did not have a mutual security pact that obligates us to defend South Korea against a nuclear-armed North, would President Trump be seeking to negotiate such a treaty?

    The question answers itself.

  • New York Times Forced To Retract Longstanding '17 Intel Agencies' Lie About Russian Hacking

    Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

    “Seventeen intelligence agencies”? – ?if you’ve been following the maniacal #TrumpRussia coverage to any extent, you’ve heard this phrase used uncritically, time and again, regardless of your ideological loyalties. Pundits, papers and rank-and-file establishment loyalists have been unquestioningly regurgitating the nonsensical line that 17 intelligence agencies confirmed Russian interference in the US elections ever since Hillary Clinton made that baseless assertion in a debate back in October.

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    The innate absurdity of the claim was immediately attacked by WikiLeaks and anti-establishment outlets who pointed out that this would necessarily need to involve full investigations from agencies like the Coast Guard, the DEA and the Energy Department in order to be true. Nevertheless, many high-profile pro-establishment outlets like Politifact and USA Today found Clinton’s claims to be 100 percent true on the grounds that James Clapper, then-Director of National Intelligence and notorious Russophobic racist, “speaks on behalf of” all 17 intelligence agencies. To this day Politifact stands by its false claim on the basis of that same spurious assertion.

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    It turns out, however, that in addition to Clapper’s office there were only three intelligence agencies involved in that assessment, not 17, and that the conclusions were drawn not by the actual agencies in full, but by a mere two dozen loyalists from those agencies hand-selected by Russophobic eugenicist Clapper himself. The great Robert Parry notes in his Consortium News article about this point, “as any intelligence expert will tell you, if you ‘hand-pick’ the analysts, you are really hand-picking the conclusion. For instance, if the analysts were known to be hard-liners on Russia or supporters of Hillary Clinton, they could be expected to deliver the one-sided report that they did.”

    As reported by Parry, we have known about these facts since they emerged from Clapper’s racist face hole on May 8, and they were confirmed by former CIA Director John Brennan on May 23. And yet at a California technology conference on May 31, Hillary Clinton repeated the same lie she’s been spouting since October:

    “Seventeen agencies, all in agreement, which I know from my experience as a Senator and Secretary of State, is hard to get. They concluded with high confidence that the Russians ran an extensive information war campaign against my campaign, to influence voters in the election. They did it through paid advertising we think; they did it through false news sites; they did it through these thousand agents; they did it through machine learning, which you know, kept spewing out this stuff over and over again. The algorithms that they developed. So that was the conclusion.”

    The “17 intelligence agencies” lie had been completely, thoroughly debunked for weeks, and yet not a soul called Clinton out on her brazen lie within the establishment press. Indeed, establishment pundits like Megyn Kelly continued to repeat the lie, and have continued to do so throughout the month of June.

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    All this changed when CNN was sent reeling by a 1–2–3-punch combination ensuing from its horrendously propagandistic Russia coverage, which has seen three of its journalists lose their jobs and sent the network into international disgrace. All of a sudden we are seeing establishment outlets getting a lot more conscientious about what they choose to publish about the Russian Federation, and today we saw none other than the New York Times posting the very first retraction of this long-debunked lie that we have seen in establishment media.

    Correction: June 29, 2017

     

    A White House Memo article on Monday about President Trump’s deflections and denials about Russia referred incorrectly to the source of an intelligence assessment that said Russia orchestrated hacking attacks during last year’s presidential election.

     

    The assessment was made by four intelligence agencies — the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency. The assessment was not approved by all 17 organizations in the American intelligence community.

    You just know how that went down, too; the retraction tells a complete story with a beginning, middle and end. The article’s author repeated the “17 intelligence agencies” lie without so much as a second thought, because it’s something they’ve been saying for months and getting away with?—?hey, it’s only Russia, right? They’re the Official Bad Guys so we can print whatever we want about them. The Washington Post has been getting away with telling brazen lie after brazen lie about Russia and suffering no consequences for it whatsoever, so we’ve got plenty of wiggle room here. The article passed by the editors for the same reason, but then someone up top received a complaint about the false claim in the article and immediately pulled the author into his office, yelling, “You fool! What’s the matter with you? Are you trying to get us CNNed???”

    As I never get tired of reminding the brainwashed consumers of mainstream media, Russiagate is bullshit, and we fucking told you so. The entire thing was sparked off by two dozen agents hand-selected by a racist man with a racist agenda, and only persists because the US deep state wants regime change in Moscow and Damascus. This moronic conspiracy theory has been permitted to march on for far too long, and in the meantime we’ve been goose stepped to the brink of World War 3 as a result of this administration’s idiotic behavior in Syria. That’s where a real resistance needs to happen; not a McResistance to imaginary threats fed to the masses by the lying corporate media, but a real resistance to a very real and tangible threat from actions by the Trump administration and the unelected power establishment with which he is unquestionably aligned in a nation that the United States has no business involving itself in whatsoever.

    Come on, America. I know you can snap out of the trance they’ve got you in. I know you’ve got it in you. Slam the brakes on the course they’ve got you on. Protest US involvement in Syria. Don’t let them Iraq you again.

  • Oliver Stone Tells Ron Paul: Edward Snowden Is The "Most American Of Patriots"

    Director Oliver Stone, who’s recently released series “The Putin Interviews” stirred up controversy among liberals who accused him of being a Russian propagandist, appeared on the Liberty Report with former Texas Congressman Ron Paul to discuss the documentary, his views about former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, and why the US’s aggressive approach to containing the purported threat posed by Russia has led to a breakdown in relations between the two powers.

    Stone said he’s been “interested” in Russia since being raised as a conservative in New York City, claiming that his father instilled a “fear” of Communism and Russians in him at a young age. In the early 1980s, Stone visited the country for the first time as a screenwriter with the idea of interviewing several dissidents. He has returned several times since. In particular, Stone has become interested in the case of Snowden, whom he praised as “the most American of patriots.”

    “I was interested in Russia – I went back into the 2000s. The Snowden story occupied me. And of course, it’s so ironic that he the most American of patriots is living in Moscow because he has to. It’s the only country in the world that would give him asylum –  in other words it’s the only country in the word that can deny the US what it wants which is Snowden.”

     

    “[Putin] explained to me that Russians wanted an extradition treaty with the US for years, but nothing doing, because there are a lot of Russian criminals in America who stole money from Russia. He did nothing wrong in Russian terms so they gave him asylum – now its 3 years 5 years whatever its going to be. I wish Ed well I really do.”

    Stone tried explaining Putin’s point of view regarding the breakdown in relations between the US and Russia that has occurred since the end of the George W Bush presidency, saying the US’s decision to install new ABM defenses have greatly unsettled Russians, who see their installation as an encroachment.

    “We come around now to this period in 2017…for some reason an improving US-Russia relationship deteriorated completely. Mr. Putin in his interview goes into the ABM treaty, he goes into the expansion of NATO and the American support of terrorism in the caucuses while the Russians were helping them in Afghanistan.”

     

    “That’s an important issue for them. Many American lives were saved. I think you talked about those three issues NATO, ABM, the support of terrorism.”

    The ABM installations, in particular, are threatening a policy of “nuclear parity” that has existed since the Soviet Union, Stone said, adding that the notion that Russia is a threat to the US is “insanity,” given Russia's weaker economy and less powerful military.

    “ABM destroys the nuclear parity that existed. When Mr. Bush tore that up in 2001, that was a signal that the US wanted nuclear superiority, or a first strike option.”

    Stone also shared a story about watching the movie “Dr. Strangelove” with Putin, who he said was greatly moved.

    “I showed him the movie Dr. Strangelove…and he watched it very serious about it. He said this movie was very accurate of that time and it’s still accurate today.”

    Circling back to the issue of nuclear deterrents, Stone said he’s worried that rising tensions around the world could trigger a “nuclear confrontation.”

    “I’m saying I have reached that age when I am not really concerned about what happens to me but… it’s not just about the US, but about the whole planet and I feel a nuclear confrontation, an accident, could happen tomorrow. But you put ABMs in Poland and Romania – that’s a gigantic mistake.”

     

    “An ABM can be converted overnight from a defensive missile to an offensive missile. They’re surrounded from the North the East and the West by US missiles and we don’t seem to realize it.”

    Stone says he’s “scared for America,” explaining that many US citizens prefer to blindly accept media spin that’s favorable to the US establishment, without questioning it, or trying to understand Russia’s point of view.

    “It’s a good thing I went through JFK when I was younger…there’s been a lot of controversy around my movies. I’m scared not for myself because I’m at that age, they can’t destroy me anymore, but I’m scared for America, I’m afraid they’ve lost their sense. I’m afraid there’s a lack of foresight and leadership.”

    Stone denied allegations that he provided questions to Putin ahead of time, and said the four-part documentary is a great opportunity for Americans to learn more about Russia’s enigmatic leader.

    “Over four hours you can listen to a man who’s been there 16 years talk about the balance of power. We live in this spin cycle like a laundry every day it’s a crisis and I think that’s the way we like it, it creates more money but this is not a view of the world.”

  • Maine To Begin Shutdown After Gov. LePage Says He Won't Sign Budget Bill

    After Maine Gov. Paul LePage delivered an ultimatum to state lawmakers, promising to provoke a government shutdown should the state's legislature hand him a budget that includes a tax increase, it appears the governor intends to keep his word.

    LePage told reporters at the state capital that he won't sign anything Friday, ensuring that a shutdown will begin at midnight, because the current budget proposalwhich was endorsed late Thursday by a special panel of lawmakers but has not yet been approved by the state legislature, includes a 1.5% lodging tax increase.

    According to the Bangor Daily News, the budget package currently under consideration would raise the lodging tax from 9% to 10.5%. The budget does, however, include a 3% cut to an education surtax on individuals earning more than $200,000. LePage has also taken issue with the size of the $7.1 billion budget.

    To be sure, it’s not entirely certain that the budget will even make it to the governor’s desk before the day is over. That’s because LePage has asked the state’s House Republicans to oppose the deal, which was negotiated by Senate President Mike Thibodeau, R-Winterport, and House Speaker Sara Gideon, D-Freeport.

    LePage has embraced brash rhetoric during the budget fight, accusing lawmakers of “trying to put a gun to the governor’s head."

    “This budget they have has no prayer, and if they’re hell-bent on bringing this budget down, we will shut down at midnight tonight and we will talk to them in 10 days,” LePage said.

    LePage’s comments came hours before the House and Senate were due to vote on the compromise spending plan.

    Gideon, the democratic opposition leader, said lawmakers should focus on ginning up the two-thirds support that a deal would need. The governor can only legally sit on the budget for ten days before either vetoing or signing it. Once it has been vetoed, the legislature could override the governor with a two-thirds majority vote.

    “If we do not do that and if the governor then does not do his job by either signing the budget or returning it to us immediately with his veto then we will be damaging the lives of too many people in this state,” she said.

    Some Democrats have expressed a desire to work with the governor in eliminating the tax hike at issue in the bill.

    “Senate Minority Leader Troy Jackson, D-Allagash, said during a hastily organized news conference after the governor’s comments that he will personally introduce a bill to eliminate the proposed lodging tax increase if that would spur LePage and Republicans to support the budget bill, though Gideon said she wouldn’t support any changes late in the process.

     

    “If the governor has objections to the lodging tax, that’s fine,” Jackson said. “I will personally sponsor any bill he puts in that eliminates the increase in the lodging tax.”

    Under a shutdown, Maine would have no authority to pay workers, meaning the state’s roughly 12,000 employees will either work or stay home without pay, LePage announced Thursday that state law enforcement, state parks, psychiatric hospitals, prisons and ferries will remain operational, but that was only a partial plan. During the state’s last shutdown, in 1991, 2,000 employees were called into work at the beginning of the shutdown.

    The shutdown, though brief, could have a major impact on the state’s economy, according to BDN.

    “Workers represented by the Maine State Employees Association will lose wages generating $2.5 million in daily economic impact, according to an analysis from the liberal Maine Center for Economic Policy, with $944,000 in Kennebec County alone.”

    Uncertainty surrounding whether state workers will be paid next week inspired a wave of protests at the capitol.

    Some of those union members were at the State House on Friday, including Kip Mitchell, 53, a Maine Department of Transportation employee who said he’s the only wage earner in a family of four who said “the uncertainty is scary.”

     

    Jonathan French, 38, of Hallowell, a civil engineer in the same department, said he had worries besides his job, since his young son gets services through the Maine Department of Education’s Child Development Services program.

     

    “We’re citizens, too, so we’re going to be out of work, but we’re also going to experience all the other effects of the shutdown … ,” he said. “So, it’s kind of a double-whammy for us.”

    Two other states, Connecticut and Illinois, are struggling to pass budgets on Friday. Connecticut, which has seen its debt downgraded by all three of the major ratings agencies in recent months, is trying to winnow a $5 billion budget deficit that’s driven largely by overly generous benefits to state employees. Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy signed an executive order Friday afternoon to take control of state spending after the legislature was unable to reach a deal on the bienniel budget.

    Illinois, which has been operating without a budget for two years, could see its debt rating downgraded to junk territory if it fails to pass a budget. As the situation in Illinois appears increasingly uncertain, its house speaker has said he will ask the credit agencies to defer action based on progress being made toward an accord.

    Right. Good luck.

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