Oct 22

Today’s News 22nd October 2018

  • Putin Announces New Hypersonic Weapon Will Be Deployed In "Months"

    Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that Moscow would deploy new Avangard hypersonic glider warheads in the “coming months,” adding that Russia’s hypersonic program is the most advanced in the world, according to a new report from the Financial Times. 

    “We are improving our attack systems in response to the construction of a missile defense system by the United States. Some of them are already in service, and some will be supplied in the near future,” said Putin, who was speaking at the Valdai Discussion Club in the Black Sea resort of Sochi Thursday, adding that Moscow’s hypersonic weapons program was well ahead of China and the US.

    “The Avangard system [will be deployed] in the next few months.” 

    Video of Putin at the Valdai Club in Sochi: 

    “It is a fact of life that we are ahead of all our partners and competitors in this sphere of high precision, hypersonic weapons,” he said.

    “No one else has that . . . In that sense, we feel very comfortable, very safe.” 

    This latest revelation comes seven months after Putin shocked Russia’s political elite at the annual Russian state of the union address in March by claiming Moscow had developed new nuclear weapons that cannot be shot down by US anti-ballistic missile defenses. The missiles, Putin said, are capable of striking almost any point on Earth while traveling at hypersonic speeds.   

    In what sounded like an implicit threat to the West, Putin also said back in March that Russia had repeatedly warned Washington not to go ahead with anti-missile systems that Moscow fears could erode its nuclear deterrent. However “nobody listened to us. Listen Now,” he said, to a loud ovation from the crowd of legislators, officials, and dignitaries. 

    A hypersonic glider is a projectile that can fly at speeds of over Mach 5 (+3,800 mph). The glider is extremely maneuverable, which makes its ballistic trajectory unpredictable, thus rendering most Western missile defense shields useless. 

    Still, according to CNBC of the six weapons Putin debuted in March, only two of them will be ready for war by 2020. 

    * * *

    Below is a list of recent developments in advanced Russian defense systems with the latest newly released videos by the Russian Defense Ministry, which Russia hopes will change “the configuration of threats and military power in general”:

    Kinzhal hypersonic missile

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    Russian MiG-31K fighters and Tu-22M3 long-range bombers are seen air launching the hypersonic missile. The Kinzhal is air-launched by the aircraft, which rockets it up to Mach 10 (7,600 mph). The missile has a range of 1,240 miles once launched and has struck fear in NATO officials.

    Avangard hypersonic missile system

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    The hypersonic missile with intercontinental range and the ability to fly Mach 20, more than 15,000 miles per hour, will be entering the battlefield in the near term, according to a Tass report. Earlier this year, serial production of the missile’s warheads had begun, according to a report.

    Sarmat (ICBM)

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    While combat deployments for the Sarmat ICMB system are not expected until 2021, a TASS report Thursday said “pop-up tests,” the ability to propel the missile out of its underground silo had been successful. TASS noted flight trials are next.

    Poseidon underwater drone

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    Trials of the underwater nuclear drone could be next. The video shows the manufacturing facility of the alleged Poseidon drone, which can carry a nuclear warhead to an enemy port or wipe out an entire carrier battle group.

    Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missile

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    Russia’s Defense Ministry says this nuclear propulsion system for the cruise missile, dubbed ‘Burevestnik’ has been successfully tested. The missile, which is designed to have “unlimited range and unlimited ability to maneuver,” will undergo more ground tests in the near term.

    Combat laser system 

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    The “combat laser system” Putin announced back in March is the most mysterious of them all. Little information has been provided on the system. However, the video features a military unit, operating with several Peresvet systems, accompanied by support vehicles.

    * * * 

    Glancing at the current position in the 53.5 Year War Cycle, it seems the “Mid-90s Peace Dividend” has transitioned into the chaotic world of today: Cold War 2.0, but this time — conflict is more likely. 

  • Britain's Grooming Gangs: Part 1

    Authored by Denis MacEoin via The Gatestone Institute,

    On July 24, 2018, Britain’s Home Secretary, conservative MP Sajid Javid, issued orders for research into the ethnic origins of the country’s many sexual grooming gangs that had involved large numbers of loosely-termed “Asian men”, who, over many years, had taken vulnerable young white British girls to use or pass on for sexual purposes. Most of the men have, Javid has stated been of Pakistani extraction, which makes the Home Secretary’s intervention significant. Javid’s father came, as did many other Pakistani immigrants, from Punjab, and with only £1 to his name. He became a bus driver, then a clothing store owner. Yet his five sons have all become fully integrated Britons, with successful careers in business, politics and the public sector. They are all models of second-generation immigrant achievement, miles away from the men in the gangs. Reporting on the Javid family, The Times wrote:

    “Javid’s appointment as the first non-white person — and the first with a Muslim background — to hold one of Britain’s great offices of state is the culmination of a six-decade family journey.”

    Given the great potential for controversy over identifying ethnicity as a factor in serious crimes, Javid showed courage in taking this move only months after his appointment in April to lead the Home Office. Criticism came quickly from the Labour Party. “Jeremy Corbyn denied there was any ‘problem’ with Pakistani men and abuse, saying: ‘The problem is the crime that’s committed against women from any community.” His combined political and ethnic experience will have shown Javid, based on previous Home Office bans and academic reports, that any such investigation might be used by the far right to attack Pakistanis and Muslims.

    Crossing party lines, Javid made his commitment to investigate the ethnic origins in a letter to Sarah Champion, the Labour Member of Parliament for Rotherham, the first city to experience grooming gangs on a large scale, and the site of the UK’s largest ever child sexual abuse scandal. Just under a year before, Champion had come under fire for daring to draw public attention to the problem of the preponderance of Pakistanis in the gangs.

    First elected to parliament in 2012, Champion, in 2015, served as the Shadow Minister for Preventing Abuse. She was awarded the post in recognition of her work on child sexual exploitation, notably by chairing a cross-party inquiry into child sexual exploitation. The inquiry was done in conjunction with the children’s charity Barnardo’s, which published a report in April 2014. Unfortunately, Champion had to resign briefly in 2016, when a number of MPs stood down in an attempt to remove Jeremy Corbyn. She was appointed Shadow Secretary of State for Women and Equalities in October 2016, a role for which she was well suited. In November, she launched a National Action Plan (Dare2Care) to prevent child abuse and violence in teenage relationships.

    Then things went wrong. She remains an MP, but was forced to resign her shadow cabinet post nearly a year later, on August 16, 2017, after a major controversy. During an interview with BBC Radio 4, on August 10, she said, about a major grooming gang which had just been convicted in Newcastle upon Tyne:

    All the towns where these cases have gone on, the majority of the perpetrators have been British Pakistanis…. One of the things that, for example, on the news last night, there was a picture of eighteen of the people who were convicted, that seventeen of those were clearly Asian men. And it just pains me that this is going on time and time and time again, and the government aren’t researching – you know – what is going on. Are these cultural issues, some sort of message going out inside the [Pakistani] community? We have got now hundreds of men, Pakistani men, who have been convicted of this crime. Why are we not commissioning research on what’s going on, and how we need to check and how we need to change what’s going on?

    On the same day, the less respectable tabloid newspaper, The Sun, published an article by Champion saying much the same. Entitled, “British Pakistani men ARE raping and exploiting white girls and it’s time we faced up to it”, the article argued in part:

    For too long we have ignored the race of these abusers and, worse, tried to cover it up.

    No more. These people are predators and the common denominator is their ethnic heritage.

    We have to have grown-up conversations, however unpalatable, or in six months’ time we will be having this same scenario all over again.

    The irony of all of this is that, by not dealing with the ethnicity of the abusers as a fact, political correctness has actually made the situation about race.

    Although Champion subsequently tried to distance herself from the article, it had done her no favours in the Labour Party, which has stressed its opposition to racism — except against Jews. A cross-party group of MPs wrote to The Sun, condemning the article. Even though Champion had courageously stated that, “The perpetrators are criminals and we need to deal with them as such, not shy away from doing the right thing by fearing being called a racist”, she was forced to resign on August 16.

    Ironically, another Labour MP, Naz Shah, herself of Pakistani origin, tried to deflect Champion’s comments by stating, no doubt correctly, that nearly 90% of child abusers (presumably in the UK) are white men. She added, “What I won’t accept, or tolerate, is a narrative that demonizes every Pakistani man as a rapist.” But, of course, Champion had not been talking about child abuse in general in a mainly white country, only about the specifics of the grooming gang situation, previously unheard of in Britain; nor had she claimed for a moment that all Pakistani men were rapists. Not surprisingly, Shah herself (who had just been suspended in an antisemitism dispute, but then reinstated) was appointed in July this year to be the Shadow Secretary of State for Women and Equalities, the very post Champion had held.

    Champion, meanwhile, after death threats, had to be given increased security by the counter-terrorism police. So-called human rights activists, evidently caring nothing for the rights of little girls and teenagers in the North of England or presumably elsewhere, accused her of “industrial-scale racism.”

    Champion, incidentally, was not the first to draw attention to the crimes and the perpetrators. Another MP, Ann Cryer, had revealed details about grooming gangs in her Yorkshire constituency, Keighly, as far back as 2003. When she did so, she was “ridiculed, branded a racist, a liar and a fantasist [and] forced to install a panic button in her own home.”

    Champion’s reputation was saved at an early stage by other MPs. Barry Sheerman, Labour MP for Huddersfield, a town where twenty-eight men of mostly Pakistani origin had been tried and sentenced only months earlier for the same offenses, declared that it was a “shameful and disgusting campaign against a courageous and remarkable woman”. Most importantly, it was Sajid Javid, not yet Home Secretary, who spoke out in her defence. He tweeted, “Corbyn wrong to sack Sarah Champion. We need an honest open debate on child sexual exploitation, including racial motivation”. It was an intention he fulfilled virtually as soon as he headed the Home Office.

    Although the sexual abuse of children and young teenagers occurs around the world, the grooming gang crisis in the UK, certainly in its wide extent, appears to be unique in the West. As far back as 2013, Britain’s Attorney General, Lord Morris of Aberavon, stated in the House of Lords that 27 police forces were then investigating no fewer than 54 alleged gangs involved in child sexual grooming. He asked:

    “Is it collective amnesia that has blinded us to the underlying circumstances, whereby at least 27 police forces are investigating 54 alleged child grooming gangs?

    “Why has investigating and prosecuting in so many different parts of the country taken so much time?

    “Is it the fear of racialism, or is it the fact that many of these vulnerable girls come from care homes?”

    Four years later, in August 2017, the Daily Express presented a map showing eight towns and cities where gangs had been active. An inquiry in April had, in fact, already brought 29 men from Huddersfield to court, prior to a January 2018 trial in which all were convicted, thereby making the total nine cities.

    On September 15, 2018, what was described as “the most serious example of sex grooming yet to emerge in this country” was made public, following a speech in the House of Lords by Baroness Caroline Cox, a staunch defender of women’s rights within Britain’s Muslim communities. 

    The case involved a girl, Sarah, who was abducted by a Muslim gang when 15, held in captivity for twelve years, forced twice into marriage, repeatedly raped, beaten, and made to endure eight abortions. As in other cases, her family’s pleas for help were ignored by the police to whom they had turned. “I know Sarah and her family,” said Baroness Cox. “Every sex grooming case is terrible. But the length and cruelty of her abduction make it the worst I have known.”

    Sarah is a single victim, but it is likely that the gang involved will have dealt with more young women taken from the same streets.

    In 2017, the English Defence League, which some disparage as racist — to which the EDL responds, “The truth cannot be racist” — published online a list of “Muslim grooming gangs and other rape jihad convictions”. It provides a long, alphabetical list of “170 known completed trials with convictions for rape jihad offences at 68 main locations”. The list may be of intrinsic interest, in that it provides links to news reports about these trials, but it is in reality, highly misleading.[1] First of all, there is no evidence that any of the men involved (most often one or two) had the least notion of conducting “rape jihad”, a concept seemingly made up by the EDL.

    The behaviour of the grooming gangs differs greatly from the rapes and sexual harassments — often of people above the age of 16, by men in general in Britain and in other countries — in its clannish and organized nature. Pakistanis seem almost unique in combining efforts to engage in this harassment. That is why Javid’s inquiry must proceed even if it does upset parts of the Pakistani and wider communities — given that large numbers of those community members are themselves keen to see the matter cleared up and their reputations restored. These include other prominent British Muslims such as Yasmin Alibhai Brown, Mohammed Shafiq, and Nazir Afzal.

    Although Javid’s inquiry will focus on the question of why it is Pakistani men who organize and dominate these gangs, it is important that this not be interpreted as a racist endeavour, as some have claimed it to be — for example, when Sarah Champion was accused of “industrial scale racism”. No one is claiming that the racial characteristics of the rapists are remotely a factor in their crimes, and no one should criticize the inquiry on such grounds.

    The problem, then, seems to stem not from race but from culture. Many people, trapped by the inquiry’s emphasis on multiculturalism, appear to deem it “racist”to comment negatively on any culture except for Western (including Israeli) culture. For some, it is even racist to borrow from another culture’s dress, food, religion, architecture, art or music – which they term “cultural appropriation” or “cultural voyeurism” — instead of what it might well be: admiration and respect.

    The men in the grooming gangs are not proper representatives of many regular aspects of Pakistani culture and Muslim ethics. According to Ben Sixsmith:

    “Quite apart from being abusively adulterous, these criminals drank, did drugs, and made their victims have abortions. These were not, in other words, devout Muslim men.”

    Speaking on the BBC’s leading political debate show, Newsnight, Muhbeen Hussain, the founder of British Muslim Youth went so far as to deny that the men convicted were real Muslims:

    These grooming gangs were individuals that were using alcohol, using drugs and actually having ‘sessions’ exploiting these young girls. I don’t know what’s Islamic about drinking alcohol, drugs and exploiting young girls.

    Despite rising secularism in some cities, Pakistan remains a deeply religious society in which outward expressions of piety are ubiquitous, and blasphemy and heterodox allegiance are major social issues. So, the question comes to be: to what extent might some Pakistani values influence men like these?

    A partial answer is that, despite tight regulations concerning the behaviour of women in Pakistan and restrictions on male-female relationships there, the country, like some other Muslim countries, has a reputation for a high level of sexual harassment, even if this harassment does not take the form of grooming underage girls. Pakistani social activist Muhammad Usman Awan, for instance, has written at length about various forms of harassment in Pakistan. In one 2016 article, he writes:

    According to a research conducted by UNISON in 2008, more than 50% working women face sexual harassment in Pakistan. An increasing number of violence cases are filed every day and there is an even bigger number of incidents which go unreported. A total of 24119 of violence against women cases were reported during 2008-10 among which only 520 workplace harassment cases were filed…

    7,733 cases of violence against women were reported in the media in 2013. 1,516 were murdered while 472 were killed for reasons of ‘honor’. The country has notoriously failed to curb the flow of harassment cases.

    Clearly, there is a predominance of physical violence here, but there are other forms of harassment, including the sexual harassment of women when they use public transport:

    The condition of public transport in Pakistan is not even close to a satisfactory level. Daily commute for an average Pakistani woman is through public transport buses. But commuting through these public buses has become considerably difficult because of the unwanted attention and indecent remarks.

    Harassment is especially experienced, it seems, in the workplace, as Pakistani journalist Nosheen Abbas has described in some detail. The bill on the harassment of women in the workplace that she writes about became an Act of Parliament in 2010, but has yet to make much of an impact. In a lengthy and detailed article in Dawn, published in May 2018, Nazish Brohi writes that things have improved since the 2010 law was passed, but that severe problems remain, particularly for women making complaints of harassment.

    Last year, Shahid Javed Burki, a former Pakistani finance minister and vice-president of the World Bank, spoke out about the treatment of women in his country, arguing that the low status given to women has had serious social, demographic, educational, and financial effects. He compares it to neighbouring Bangladesh, which, he said, has improved women’s lot considerably, especially through their engagement in the workforce:

    “The main factor accounting for women’s higher social status in Bangladeshi society is the rate of female participation in the labour force which, at 43.1 per cent, is almost double of Pakistan’s 24.3 per cent.”

    This problem is, in some measure, reflected in the UK, where Muslim women (mainly of Pakistani origin) face limitations on their participation in the workplace, in higher education, and even knowledge of the English language — matters examined by Dame Louise Casey in her 2016 government review into opportunity and integration. Bringing Pakistani attitudes into the UK, often within segregated communities, only serves to perpetuate the belief that women are intrinsically the inferiors of men in all respects. Once women as such are demeaned to this extent, some men may come to regard sexual mistreatment of non-Muslim women as their God-given right. It is important to note that all of the women treated in this way are Muslims.

    One justification used for the UK grooming cases is that the girls involved are non-Muslims who may, as supposed inferiors, be attacked with impunity. Many victims of foreign rapists report that they have kept repeating that rape is permitted in the Quran.

    In addition, a female professor from al-Azhar, has claimed that Allah allows “Muslims to rape non-Muslim women to ‘humiliate’ them.”

    The second part of this article will examine the roles played by an absence of integration combined with conservative or radical religious attitudes, as well as the Arab practice of taharrush jama’i (mass harassment), both of which may well be keys to why this abuse is happening in the first place.

  • Only 4% Of Americans Consider Saudi Arabia An Ally

    Saudi Arabia is still at the center of an international storm of condemnation following the now confirmed murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

    Even though President Trump has continued to defend the Washington’s most important Arab partner, a new YouGov poll has found that only 4 percent of the U.S. public consider Saudi Arabia an ally…

    Infographic: Only 4% Of Americans Consider Saudi Arabia An Ally | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    As Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes, views are similarly grim along party lines with 3 percent of Democrats and 5 percent of Republicans considering the Saudis an ally.

    When it comes to whether Saudi Arabia is friendly to the U.S., the share agreeing rises to 23 percent. Despite the fact that the U.S. government has sold billions of dollars of sophisticated weaponry to Saudi Arabia, 27 percent of the U.S. public consider Riyadh unfriendly while 15 percent would go as far as saying the Saudis are America’s enemy.

    Of course, the less politically-palatable title for this post is “96% Of Americans Know Saudis Did 9/11 And Got Away With It”

  • The United States Of Empire: "We're Getting Close To The End Now"

    Authored by Jonathan via LesTraveledRoad.com,

    We’re getting close to the end now. Can you feel it?  I do.  It’s in the news, on the streets, and in your face every day. You can’t tune it out anymore, even if you wanted to.

    Where once there was civil debate in the court of public opinion, we now have censorship, monopoly, screaming, insults, demonization, and, finally, the use of force to silence the opposition. There is no turning back now. The political extremes are going to war, and you will be dragged into it even if you consider yourself apolitical.

    There are great pivot points in history, and we’ve arrived at one. The United States, ruptured by a thousand grievance groups, torn by shadowy agencies drunk on a gross excess of power, robbed blind by oligarchs and their treasonous henchmen and decimated by frivolous wars of choice, has finally come to a point where the end begins in earnest. The center isn’t holding… indeed, finding a center is no longer even conceivable. We are the schizophrenic nation, bound by no societal norms, constrained by no religion, with no shared sense of history, myth, language, art, philosophy, music, or culture, rushing toward an uncertain future fueled by nothing more than easy money, hubris, and sheer momentum.

    There comes a time when hard choices must be made…when it is no longer possible to remain aloof or amused, because the barbarians have arrived at the gate. Indeed, they are here now, and they often look a whole lot like deracinated, conflicted, yet bellicose fellow Americans, certain of only one thing, and that is that they possess “rights”, even though they could scarcely form an intelligible sentence explaining exactly what those rights secure or how they came into being. But that isn’t necessary, from their point of view, you see. All they need is a “voice” and membership in an approved victim class to enrich themselves at someone else’s expense. If you are thinking to yourself right now that this does not describe you, then guess what? The joke’s on you, and you are going to be expected to pay the bill…that “someone else” is you.

    In reality, though, who can blame the minions, when the elites have their hand in the till as well? In fact, they are even more hostile to reasoned discourse than Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street, or Antifa. Witness the complete meltdown of the privileged classes when President Trump mildly suggested that perhaps our “intelligence community” isn’t to be trusted, which is after all a fairly sober assessment when one considers the track record of the CIA, FBI, NSA, BATF, and the other assorted Stasi agencies. Burning cop cars or bum-rushing the odd Trump supporter seems kind of tame in comparison to the weeping and gnashing of teeth when that hoary old MIC “intelligence” vampire was dragged screaming into the light. Yet Trump did not drive a stake into its heart, nor at this point likely can anyone… and that is exactly the point. We are now Thelma and Louise writ large. We are on cruise control, happily speeding towards the cliff, and few seem to notice that our not so distant future involves bankruptcy, totalitarianism, and/or nuclear annihilation. Even though most of us couldn’t identify the band, we nonetheless surely live the lyrics of the Grass Roots: “Live for today, and don’t worry about tomorrow.”

    The “Defense” Department, “Homeland” Security, big pharma, big oil, big education, civil rights groups, blacks, Indians, Jews, the Deep State, government workers, labor unions, Neocons, Populists, fundamentalist Christians, atheists, pro life and pro death advocates, environmentalists, lawyers, homosexuals, women, Millenials, Baby Boomers, blue collar/white collar, illegal aliens… the list goes on and on, but the point is that the conflicting agendas of these disparate groups have been irreconcilable for some time. The difference today is that we are de facto at war with each other, and whether it is a war of words or of actual combat doesn’t matter at the moment. What matters is that we no longer communicate, and when that happens it is easy to demonize the other side. Violence is never far behind ignorance.

    I am writing this from the bar at the Intercontinental Hotel in Vienna, Austria. I have seen with my own eyes the inundation of Europe with an influx of hostile aliens bent on the destruction of Old Christendom, yet I have some hope for the eastern European countries because they have finally recognized the threat and are working to neutralize it. Foreign malcontents can never be successfully integrated into a civilized society because they don’t even intend to try; they intend to conquer their host instead. Yet even though our own discontents are domestic for the most part, we have a much harder row to hoe than Old Europe because our own “invaders” are well entrenched and have been for decades, all the way up to the highest levels of government. That there are signs Austria is finally waking up is a good thing, but it serves to illustrate the folly of expecting the hostile cultures within our own country to get along with each other without rupturing the republic. Indeed, that republic died long ago, and it has been replaced by a metastasizing mass of amorphous humanity called the American Empire, and it is at war with itself and consuming itself from within.

    Long ago, we once knew that as American citizens each of us had a great responsibility. We were expected to work hard, play fair, do unto others as we would have them do unto us, and serve our country when called upon to do so. Today, we don’t speak of duty, except in so much as a slogan to promote war, but we certainly do speak of benefits for ourselves and our “group” of entitled peeps. We will fail because of our greed and avarice. The United States of Empire has become quite simply too big, too diverse, and too “exceptional” to survive.

  • Facebook's New Troll-Crushing "War Room" Confirms Surveillance By Corporation Is The New America

    Facebook on Wednesday briefed journalists on its latest attempt to stop fake news during the election season, offering an exclusive tour of a windowless conference room at its California headquarters, packed with millennials monitoring Facebook user behavior trends around the clock, said The Verge. 

    This is Facebook’s first ever “war room,” designed to bring leaders from 20 teams, representing 20,000 global employees working on safety and security, in one room to lead a crusade against conservatives misinformation on the platform as political campaigning shifts into hyperdrive in the final weeks leading up to November’s US midterm elections. The team includes threat intelligence, data science engineering, research, legal, operations, policy, communications, and representatives from Facebook and Facebook-owned WhatsApp and Instagram. 

    “We know when it comes to an election, every moment counts,” said Samidh Chakrabarti, head of civic engagement at Facebook, who oversees operations in the war room.

    “So if there are late-breaking issues we see on the platform, we need to be able to detect and respond to them in real time, as quickly as possible.” 

    This public demonstration of Facebook’s internal efforts comes after a series of security breaches and user hacks, dating back to the 2016 presidential elections. Since the announcement of the Cambridge Analytics privacy scandal in March, Facebook shares have plunged -14.5% It seems the war room is nothing more than a public relations stunt, which the company is desperately trying to regain control of the narrative and avoid more negative headlines. 

    The war room is staffed with millennials from 4 am until midnight, and starting on Oct. 22, social media workers will be monitoring trends 24/7 leading up to the elections. Leaders from 20 teams will be present in the room. Workers will use machine learning and artificial intelligence programs to monitor the platform for trends, hate speech, sophisticated trolls, fake news, and of course, Russian, Chinese, and Iranian interference. 

    Nathan Gleicher, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity, told CNBC the company wants fair elections, and that “debate around the election be authentic. … The biggest concern is any type of effort to manipulate that.” 

    In the first round of presidential elections in Brazil, Facebook’s war room identified an effort to suppress voter turnout: 

    “Content that was telling people that due to protest, that the election would be delayed a day,” said Chakrabarti. “This was not true, completely false. So we were able to detect that using AI and machine learning. The war room was alerted to it. Our data scientist looked into what was behind it and then they passed it to our engineers and operations specialist to be able to remove this at scale from our platform before it could go viral.” 

    The war room has been focused on the US and Brazilian elections because it says misinformation in elections is a global problem that never ends. Gleicher warns that Facebook is observing an increased effort to manipulate the public debate ahead of US midterms. 

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    “Part of the reason we have this war room up and running, is so that as these threats develop, not only do we respond to them quickly, but we continue to speed up our response, and make our response more effective and efficient.” Gleicher adds that it is not just foreign interference but also domestic “bad actors” who are hiding their identity, using fake accounts to spread misinformation. 

    “This is always going to be an arms race, so the adversaries that we’re facing who seek to meddle in elections, they are sophisticated and well-funded,” said Chakrabarti.

    “That is the reason we’ve made huge investments both in people and technology to stay ahead and secure our platforms.”

    Big Brother is watching you: surveillance by corporations is the new America.

  • Johnstone: An Embarrassing End May Soon Be Near For Russia-Gaters

    Via CaitlinJohnstone.com,

    After more than two years of mania about Russia stealing the 2016 election for Trump and demonization of anyone who questioned it, an embarrassing end may soon be near for the Russia-gaters…

    In a new article titled “Mueller report PSA: Prepare for disappointment“, Politico cites information provided by defense attorneys and “more than 15 former government officials with investigation experience spanning Watergate to the 2016 election case” to warn everyone who’s been lighting candles at their Saint Mueller altars that their hopes of Trump being removed from office are about to be dashed to the floor.

    “While [Mueller is] under no deadline to complete his work, several sources tracking the investigation say the special counsel and his team appear eager to wrap up,” Politico reports.

    “The public, they say, shouldn’t expect a comprehensive and presidency-wrecking account of Kremlin meddling and alleged obstruction of justice by Trump – not to mention an explanation of the myriad subplots that have bedeviled lawmakers, journalists and amateur Mueller sleuths,” the report also says, adding that details of the investigation may never even see the light of day.

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    So that’s it then.

    An obscene amount of noise and focus, a few indictments and process crime convictions which have nothing to do with Russian collusion, and this three-ring circus of propaganda and delusion is ready to call it a day.

    This is by far the clearest indication yet that the Mueller investigation will end with Trump still in office and zero proof of collusion with the Russian government, which has been obvious since the beginning to everyone who isn’t a complete fucking moron. For two years the idiotic, fact-free, xenophobic Russiagate conspiracy theory has been ripping through mainstream American consciousness with shrieking manic hysteria, sucking all oxygen out of the room for legitimate criticisms of the actual awful things that the US president is doing in real life. Those of us who have been courageous and clear-headed enough to stand against the groupthink have been shouted down, censored, slandered and smeared as assets of the Kremlin on a daily basis by unthinking consumers of mass media propaganda, despite our holding the philosophically unassailable position of demanding the normal amount of proof that would be required in a post-Iraq invasion world.

    As I predicted long ago, “Mueller isn’t going to find anything in 2017 that these vast, sprawling networks wouldn’t have found in 2016. He’s not going to find anything by ‘following the money’ that couldn’t be found infinitely more efficaciously via Orwellian espionage. The factions within the intelligence community that were working to sabotage the incoming administration last year would have leaked proof of collusion if they’d had it. They did not have it then, and they do not have it now. Mueller will continue finding evidence of corruption throughout his investigation, since corruption is to DC insiders as water is to fish, but he will not find evidence of collusion to win the 2016 election that will lead to Trump’s impeachment. It will not happen.” This has remained as true in 2018 as it did in 2017, and it will remain true forever.

    None of the investigations arising from the Russiagate conspiracy theory have turned up a single shred of evidence that Donald Trump colluded with the Russian government to rig the 2016 election, or to do anything else for that matter. All that the shrill, demented screeching about Russia has accomplished is manufacturing support for steadily escalating internet censorship, a massively bloated military budget, a hysterical McCarthyite atmosphere wherein anyone who expresses political dissent is painted as an agent of the Kremlin and any dissenting opinions labeled “Russian talking points”, a complete lack of accountability for the Democratic Party’s brazen election rigging, a total marginalization of real problems and progressive agendas, and an overall diminishment in the intelligence of political discourse. The Russiagaters were wrong, and they have done tremendous damage already.

    In a just world, everyone who helped promote this toxic narrative would apologize profusely and spend the rest of their lives being mocked and marginalized. In a world wherein pundits and politicians can sell the public a war which results in the slaughter of a million Iraqis and suffer no consequences of any kind, however, we all know that that isn’t going to happen. Russiagate will end not with a bang, but with a series of carefully crafted diversions. The goalposts will be moved, the news churn will shuffle on, the herd will be guided into supporting the next depraved oligarchic agenda, and almost nobody will have the intellectual honesty and courage to say “Hey! Weren’t these assholes promising us we’ll see Trump dragged off in chains a while back? Whatever happened to that? And why are we all talking about China now?”

    But whether they grasp it or not, mainstream liberals have been completely discredited. The mass media outlets which inflicted this obscene psyop upon their audiences deserve to be driven out of business. The establishment which would inflict such intrusive psychological brutalization upon its populace just to advance a few preexisting agendas has proven that it deserves to be opposed on every front and rejected at every turn.

    And those of us who have been standing firm and saying this all along deserve to be listened to. We were right. You were wrong. Time to sit down, shut up, stop babbling about Russian bots for ten seconds, and let those who see clearly get a word in edgewise.

    *  *  *

    Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My articles are entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, checking out my podcast, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal,buying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone, or my previous book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers.

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  • McConnell And Wife Berated In Packed Restaurant; Diners Side With Mitch

    A group of protesters confronted Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his wife on Friday night at a Louisville, KY restaurant – however the crowd wasn’t having it. 

    A woman who recorded the incident said that the protester “slammed his fists on McConnell’s table and threw food out of the restaurant after accusing McConnell of killing people with his views,” according to Fox News. 

    Video obtained by TMZ shows at least one diner berating McConnell on issues such as Social Security at a restaurant in Louisville. The video starts with him yelling at McConnell and arguing with Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao — to whom McConnell is married. The outlet reported that four men first confronted McConnell.

    “Oh yeh, why don’t you get out of here? Why don’t you leave our entire country,” the protester tells the couple.

    As Chao argues with the protester, McConnell appears unperturbed and sips on a drink. But other diners begin yelling at the protester, telling him to “leave him alone” and making shoo-ing gestures. –Fox News

    Following the incident, McConnell reportedly thanked some of the supporters, shaking their hands before leaving. 

    “The Leader and Sec. Chao enjoyed their meal in Louisville last night and they appreciate those who spoke up against incivility,” McConnell spokesman David Popp said in a statement via Fox News. “They hope other patrons weren’t too inconvenienced by left-wing tantrums. As the Leader often says, the Senate will not be intimidated by the antics of far-left protestors.”

    Mitch the magnet

    Friday’s incident marks the third time McConnell has been heckled by protesters. In June, several protesters at Georgetown University ambushed Chao and McConnell as they left a dinner, which resulted in Chao shouting at them: “Why don’t you leave my husband alone?”

    The man who recorded the video identified as “Roberto,” interned at the Soros-funded “open borders” group, United We Dream. 

    And in July, McConnell was confronted by protesters after leaving a Louisville, KY restaurant.  

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jshttps://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Instead of retracting into his shell, McConnell tweeted: “I see what they did here. They waited until Elaine wasn’t around. -MM”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  • Visualizing The 8 Major Forces Shaping The Future Of The Global Economy

    Authored by Jeff Desjardins via VisualCapitalist.com,

    “I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.”

    – Jimmy Dean

    The world is changing faster than ever before.

    With billions of people hyper-connected to each other in an unprecedented global network, it allows for an almost instantaneous and frictionless spread of new ideas and innovations.

    Combine this connectedness with rapidly changing demographics, shifting values and attitudes, growing political uncertainty, and exponential advances in technology, and it’s clear the next decade is setting up to be one of historic transformation.

    But where do all of these big picture trends intersect, and how can we make sense of a world engulfed in complexity and nuance? Furthermore, how do we set our sails to take advantage of the opportunities presented by this sea of change?

    THE INTERSECTION OF DATA AND POWERFUL VISUALS

    Interpreting massive amounts of data on how the world is changing can be taxing for even the most brilliant thinkers.

    For this reason, our entire team at Visual Capitalist is focused on using the power of visual storytelling to make the world’s information more accessible. Our team of information designers works daily to transform complex data into graphics that are both intuitive and insightful, allowing you to see big picture trends from a new perspective.

    After all, science says that 65% of people are visual learners – so why not put data in a language they can understand?

    While we regularly publish our visuals in an online format, our most recent endeavor has been to compile our best charts, infographics, and data visualizations into one place: our new book Visualizing Change: A Data-Driven Snapshot of Our World, a 256-page hardcover coffee-table book on the forces shaping business, wealth, technology, and the economy.

    The book focuses on eight major themes ranging from shifting human geography to the never-ending evolution of money. And below, we present some of the key visualizations in the book that serve as examples relating to each major theme.

    1. THE TECH INVASION

    For most of the history of business, the world’s leading companies have been industrially-focused.

    Pioneers like Henry Ford and Thomas Edison innovated in the physical realm using atoms – they came up with novel ways to re-organize these atoms to create things like the assembly line and the incandescent lightbulb. Then, companies invested massive amounts of capital to build physical factories, pay thousands of workers, and build these things.

    The majority of the great blue chip companies were built this way: IBM, U.S. Steel, General Electric, Walmart, and Ford are just some examples.

    But today’s business reality is very different. We live in a world of bytes – and for the first time technology and commerce have collided in a way that makes data far more valuable than physical, tangible objects.

    The best place to see this is in how the market values businesses.

    As you can see above, companies like Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft have supplanted traditional blue chip companies that build physical things.

    The tech invasion is leveraging connectivity, network effects, artificial intelligence, and unprecedented scale to create global platforms that are almost impossible to compete with. The tech invasion has already taken over retail and advertising – and now invading forces have their eyes set on healthcare, finance, manufacturing, and education.

    Will atoms ever be more valuable than bytes again?

    Interesting Facts:

    2. THE EVOLUTION OF MONEY

    Money is arguably one of humanity’s most important inventions. From beaver pelts to gold bars, the form and function of money has constantly fluctuated throughout history.

    In the modern world, the definition of money is blurrier than ever. Central banks have opted to create trillions of dollars of currency out of thin air since the financial crisis – and on the flipside, you can actually use blockchain technology to create your own competing cryptocurrency in just a few clicks.

    Regardless of what is money and what is not, people are borrowing record amounts of it.

    The world has now amassed $247 trillion in debt, including $63 trillion borrowed by central governments:

    In today’s unusual monetary circumstances, massive debt loads are just one anomaly.

    Here are other examples that illustrate the evolution of money: Venezuela has hyperinflated away almost all of its currency’s value, the “War on Cash” is raging on around the world, central banks are lending out money at negative interest rates (Sweden, Japan, Switzerland, etc.), and cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are collectively worth over $200 billion.

    How we view money – and how that perception evolves over time – is an underlying factor that influences our future.

    Interesting Facts:

    3. THE WEALTH LANDSCAPE

    Wealth is not stagnant – and so for those looking to make the most out of global opportunities, it’s imperative to get a sense of how the wealth landscape is changing.

    The modern view is either extremely healthy or bubbly, depending on how you look at it: Amazon and Apple are worth over $1 trillion, Jeff Bezos has a $100+ billion fortune, and the current bull market is the longest in modern history at 10 years.

    Will this growth continue, and where will it come from?

    Here’s one look based on projections from the World Bank:

    Despite these estimates, there is a laundry list of items that the ultra-wealthy are concerned about – everything from the expected comeback of inflation to a world where geopolitical black swans seem to be growing more common.

    Here’s why those building and protecting wealth are rightly concerned about such events:

    But the wealth landscape is not all just about billionaires and massive companies – it is changing in other interesting ways as well. For example, the definition of wealth itself is taking on a new meaning, with millennials leading a charge towards sustainable investing rather than being entirely focused on monetary return.

    How will the wealth landscape look a decade from now?

    Interesting Facts:

    4. EASTERN PROMISES

    The economic rise of China has been a compelling story for decades.

    Up until recently, we’ve only been able to get a preview of what the Eastern superpower is capable of – and in the coming years, these promises will come to fruition at a scale that will still be baffling to many.

    Understandably, the scope of China’s population and economy can still be quite difficult to put into perspective.

    The following map may help, as it combines both elements together to show that China has countless cities each with a higher economic productivity than entire countries.

    In fact, China has over 100 cities with more than 1,000,000 inhabitants. These cities, many of which fly below the radar on the global stage, each have impressive economies – whether they are built upon factories, natural resource production, or the information economy.

    As one impressive example, the Yangtze River Delta – a single region which contains Shanghai, Suzhou, Hangzhou, Wuxi, Nantong, Ningbo, Nanjing, and Changzhou – has a GDP (PPP) of $2.6 trillion, which is more than Italy.

    Interesting Facts:

    5. ACCELERATING TECHNOLOGICAL PROGRESS

    As we’ve already seen, there are many facets of change that will impact our shared future.

    But here’s the kicker: when it comes to technological progress, the rate of change itself is actually getting faster and faster. Each year brings more technological advancements than the last, and once the exponential “hockey stick” kicks into overdrive, innovations could happen at a blindsiding pace.

    This could be described as a function of Moore’s Law, and the law of accelerating returns is also something that futurists like Ray Kurzweil have talked about for decades.

    Interestingly, there is another offshoot of accelerating change that applies more to the business and economic world. Not only is the speed of change getting faster, but for various reasons, markets are able to adopt new technologies faster:

    New products can achieve millions of users in just months, and the game Pokémon Go serves as an interesting case study of this potential. The game amassed 50 million users in just 19 days, which is a blink of an eye in comparison to automobiles (62 years), the telephone (50 years), or credit cards (28 years).

    As new technologies are created at a faster and faster pace – and as they are adopted at record speeds by markets – it’s fair to say that future could be coming at a breakneck speed.

    Interesting Facts:

    6. THE GREEN REVOLUTION

    It’s no secret that our civilization is in the middle of a seismic shift to more sustainable energy sources.

    But to fully appreciate the significance of this change, you need to look at the big picture of energy over time. Below is a chart of U.S. energy consumption from 1776 until today, showing that the energy we use to power development is not permanent or static throughout history.

    And with the speed at which technology now moves, expect our energy infrastructure and delivery systems to evolve at an even more blistering pace than we’ve experienced before.

    Interesting Facts:

    7. SHIFTING HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

    Global demographics are always shifting, but the population tidal wave in the coming decades will completely reshape the global economy.

    In Western countries and China, populations will stabilize due to fertility rates and demographic makeups. Meanwhile, on the African continent and across the rest of Asia, booming populations combined with rapid urbanization will translate into the growth of megacities, holding upwards of 50 million people.

    By the end of the 21st century, this animation shows that Africa alone could contain at least 13 megacities that are bigger than New York:

    By this time, it’s projected that North America, Europe, South America, and China will combine to hold zero of the world’s 20 most populous cities. What other game-changing shifts to human geography will occur during this stretch?

    Interesting Facts:

    8. THE TRADE PARADOX

    By definition, a consensual and rational trade between two parties is one that makes both parties better off.

    Based on this microeconomic principle, and also on the consensus by economists that free trade is ultimately beneficial, countries around the world have consistently been working to remove trade barriers since World War II with great success.

    But nothing is ever straightforward, and these long-held truths are now being challenged in both societal and political contexts. We now seem to be trapped in a trade paradox in which politicians give lip service to free trade, but often take action in the opposite direction.

    To get a sense of how important trade can be between two nations, we previously documented the ongoing relationship between the U.S. and Canada, in which each country is the best customer of the other:

    With the recent USMCA agreement, the two countries seem to have sorted their differences for now – but the trade paradox will continue to be an ongoing theme in economics and investing at a global level for many years to come, especially as the trade war against China rages on.

    Points to Consider:

    HOW YOU CAN VISUALIZE CHANGE

    The forces behind change are not always evident to the naked eye, but we believe that by fusing data, art, and storytelling together that we can create powerful context on the trends shaping our future.

    If you enjoyed our summary above, you can explore these ideas further with our book “Visualizing Change”, which offers 256 pages of infographics, data visualizations, and charts on the future direction of the global economy and technology.

    Our book makes a great holiday gift. Get it on Amazon.com or Amazon.ca, or even customize a bulk order with your logo

  • "Largest Ever Ponzi Scheme In Maryland" Rocks Investors, $345 Million Vanishes

    The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced last month the indictment and arrests of three people, including a Baltimore man, involved in the largest-ever Ponzi scheme in Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area. 

    More than 230 people have been taken for a financial rollercoaster as three men ((Kevin B. Merrill (“Merrill”), Jay B. Ledford (“Ledford”), and Cameron Jezierski (“Jezierski”) raised $345 million, more than $90 million was invested by over 200 individual investors (including small business owners, restauranteurs, construction contractors, retirees, doctors, lawyers, accountants, bankers, talent agents, current and former professional athletes, and financial advisors); approximately $52 million by family officers; and nearly $203 million from feeder funds, said the SEC.

    According to an indictment from Federal prosecutors in Baltimore, Merrill and Ledford touted their experience in collecting on and reselling consumer debt to investors, with the promise of significant profits. The pair operated a web of companies they owned and/or controlled, including Defendants Global Credit Recovery, LLC; Delmarva Capital, LLC; Rhino Capital Holdings, LLC; Rhino Capital Group, LLC; DeVille Assets Managment LTD; and Riverwalk Financial Corporation, which they then sold securities to investors. 

    Merrill and Ledford used the corporate entities and 55 bank accounts to shift investor money, deceive investors, and continue their Ponzi scheme that only survived with the influx of greater and greater investor cash inflow. 

    Here is how the Merrill – Ledford scheme worked: 

    Documents show the men used a web lies, forgeries, and fake documents to conduct the fraud since 2013, using investor money for exotic cars, high-end real estate, private jets, private clubs, casinos, and funding their lavish lifestyles. 

    “We allege defendants engaged in a brazen fraud, deceiving investors to perpetuate their wrongdoing and line their pockets with ill-gotten gains,” said Kelly Gibson, the associate regional director of the SEC’s Philadelphia office. 

    The SEC stated approximately $200 million of the money was used to pay prior investors and deceive current investors that their money was generating high returns. 

    Merrill owned five mansions, 25 exotic cars — including Bugattis, Ferraris, and Rolls Royces — private jets, powerboats, and more, according to filings. 

    Merrill’s mansions- 

    Merrill’s cars- 

    • 2014 Ford Explorer 
    • 2014 Lamborghini Aventador Roadster 
    • 2014 Mercedes-AMG S63
    • 2015 BMW S1000R Motorcycle 
    • 2015 Harley-Davidson VRSCDX Night Rod Special Edition Motorcycle
    • 2016 Ferrari 488 GTB
    • 2017 Audi R8 5.2 Plus
    • 2017 Lamborghini Huracan Spyder
    • 2017 Land Rover Range Rover
    • 2017 Land Rover Range Rover Sport
    • 2017 Porsche 911 Turbo S
    • 2017 Rolls-Royce Dawn
    • 2017 Rolls-Royce Wraith
    • 2018 McLaren 720s
    • 2008 Bugatti Veyron
    • 2013 Ferrari California 
    • 2014 BMW M6 Gran Coupe
    • 2014 Ferrari F12 Berlinetta
    • 2014 Pagani Huayra
    • 2015 Mercedes-AMG S63
    • 2017 Cadillac Escalade ESV
    • 2017 Ferrari 488 Spider
    • 2018 Lamborghini Huracan

    Ledford’s cars- 

    • 2016 Ferrari 488 GTB
    • 2016 Tesla Model S
    • 2015 Bentley Flying Spur

    If Merrill, Ledford, and Jezierski are convicted, their assets, will be seized by the U.S. Government. In the latter stages of a credit cycle, fraud schemes are usually not sustainable and go bust — an ominous sign that an economic downturn is nearing. 

     

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