Dec 25

Today’s News 25th December 2017

  • Liberals Behind "The Young Turks" And Vice Apologize For Blatant Sexism

    The founders of two liberal news outlets found themselves apologizing over sexist remarks and a “boy’s club” environment filled with sexual harassment. Cenk Uygur, creator and host of popular liberal news show, The Young Turks (TYT), apologized last week for a series of now-deleted blog and social media posts from the early 2000s, published by The Wrap. 


    Cenk Uygur

    In one entry from 2000 entitled “Rules of Dating,” Uygur says of third dates: “If I haven’t felt your tits by then, things are not about to last much longer. In fact, if you don’t get back on track by the fourth date, you’re done.” Uygur’s “Rule 2” of dating: “There must be orgasm by the fifth date,” and “Rule 3” states “There must be sex by the second month of dating.”

    There are a lot of allowable exceptions to this rule, but they all involve orgasms.  I’ll let you slide if for unseen circumstances we haven’t gotten to see each other much, and you have been providing me with some excellent orgasms in the meanwhile.

     

    But there are no foreseeable reasons why anyone would slip into the fourth month of dating without sex.  But since you do provide a certain level of sexual satisfaction, I will give a requisite talking to you to see “what’s wrong.”  If you don’t give it up the date after “the talk,” you’re done. –Cenk Uygur

    In another post, after an apparent lack of sex, Uygur declared that “the genes of women are flawed” because they “do not want to have sex nearly as often as needed for the human race to get along peaceably and fruitfully.” 

    There’s quite a bit more on Uygur’s past statements which have been compiled by journalist Cassandra Fairbanks.

    Uygur’s defense to his old posts was to claim he was a was a different back then; “I had not yet matured and I was still a conservative who thought that stuff was politically incorrect and edgy. When you read it now, it looks really, honestly, ugly.” This post from January, 2000, however – in which Uygur slams conservative Pat Buchanan, suggests his ugliness was coming from the left.   

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

    In this week’s second exposé, the New York Times ousts left-leaning media outlet VICE for its “boy’s club” environment – from which allegations of sexual harassment and revenge were levied by over two dozen women who say they experienced or witnessed sexual misconduct at the company. 


    VICE co-founders Shane Smith and Suroosh Alvi (Reuters/Mike Segar)

    VICE settled with four other women for sexual harassment or defamation as well. 

    An investigation by The New York Times has found four settlements involving allegations of sexual harassment or defamation against Vice employees, including its current president. –NYT

    In a statement to The Times, CEO Shane Smith and co-founder Suroosh Alvi said “from the top down, we have failed as a company to create a safe and inclusive workplace where everyone, especially women, can feel respected and thrive,” adding that a “boys club” culture at Vice had “fostered inappropriate behavior that permeated throughout the company.” 

    In 2016, Vice’s president, Andrew Creighton paid $135,000 to a former employee who was fired after she wouldn’t sleep with him, while earlier this year, VICE settled with former employee Martina Veltroni, who claimed that her supervisor retaliated against her after they had a sexual relationship. The supervisor, Jason Mojica – the former head of Vice News, was fired last month. 


    Joanna Fuertes-Knight

    The $6 billion media company also reached a $24,000 settlement with a London journalist, Joanna Fuertes-Knight, who said she had been sexually harassed, and suffered racial and gender discrimination along with bullying. She claims that a Vice producer, Rhys James, made sexist statements to her – including asking whether or not she slept with black men, as well as the color of her nipples. 

    Vice started out in 1994 as a punk magazine in Montreal, Canada, before growing to a multi-billion dollar multimedia company catering to millennials. Walt Disney owns an 18% stake, while private equity firm TPG invested $450 million in June, valuing the company at around $5.7 billion. 

  • "Chrislam" – Europe Folds To The Islamization Of Christmas

    Authored by Soeren Kern via The Gatestone Institute,

    The re-theologizing of Christmas is based on the false premise that the Jesus of the Bible is the Jesus (Isa) of the Koran. This religious fusion, sometimes referred to as "Chrislam," is gaining ground in a West that has become biblically illiterate.

    • A school in Lüneburg postponed a Christmas party after a Muslim student complained that the singing of Christmas carols during school was incompatible with Islam. Alexander Gauland, the leader of the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD), said the school's action was "an unbearable, involuntary submission to Islam" and amounted to a "cowardly injustice" toward non-Muslim children.
    • "The word 'Christmas,' a symbol of our faith and our culture, does not discriminate against anyone. Striking the emblems of Christmas does not guarantee anyone's respect, does not produce a welcoming and inclusive school and society, but fosters intolerance towards our culture, our customs, our laws and our traditions. We firmly believe that our traditions must be respected." — Milan politician Samuele Piscina.

    This year's Christmas season has been marked by Islam-related controversies in nearly every European country. Most of the conflicts have been generated by Europe's multicultural political and religious elites, who are bending over backwards to secularize Christmas, ostensibly to ensure that Muslims will not be offended by the Christian festival.

    Many traditional Christmas markets have been renamed — Amsterdam Winter Parade, Brussels Winter Pleasures, Kreuzberger Wintermarkt, London Winterville, Munich Winter Festival — to project a multicultural veneer of secular tolerance.

    More troubling are the growing efforts to Islamize Christmas. The re-theologizing of Christmas is based on the false premise that the Jesus of the Bible is the Jesus (Isa) of the Koran. This religious fusion, sometimes referred to as "Chrislam," is gaining ground in a West that has become biblically illiterate.

    In Britain, for instance, the All Saints Church in Kingston upon Thames recently held a joint birthday celebration for Jesus and Mohammed. The "Milad, Advent and Christmas Celebration" on December 3 was aimed at "marking the birthday of Prophet Mohammed and looking forward to the birthday of Jesus." The hour-long service included time for Islamic prayer and was followed by the cutting of a birthday cake.

    The prominent Christian blog "Archbishop Cranmer" rebuked the church for its lack of discernment:

    "Note how this event is 'Marking the birthday of Prophet Mohammed,' but not looking forward to the birthday of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Mohammed gets his prophethood, while Jesus gets neither his prophethood nor his priesthood; neither his kingship nor his messiahship. It's the exalted Prophet Mohammed along with plain old Jesus, because to have added any of his claims to divinity would, of course, have alienated many Muslims (if they hadn't already been alienated by the haram [forbidden by Islam] celebration), which wouldn't have been very interfaith or sensitively missional, would it?"

    The blog added that exalting Mohammed in churches effectively proclaims that Mohammed is greater than Jesus:

    "Every time a church accords Mohammed the epithet 'Prophet,' they are rejecting the crucifixion, denying the resurrection of Christ, and refuting that the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, for Mohammed denied all of these foundational tenets of the Christian faith."

    Previously, a passage from the Koran denying that Jesus is the Son of God was read during a service at a Scottish Episcopal Church in Glasgow on Epiphany, a festival commemorating the incarnation of God in the person of Jesus Christ. One of the Queen's chaplains, Gavin Ashenden, referred to the Koran reading as "blasphemy." He added that "there are other and considerably better ways to build 'bridges of understanding'" with Muslims.

    In London, the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims, a parliamentary group composed of members of both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, issued a report, "A Very Merry Muslim Christmas," aimed at drawing attention to the "humanity" of Muslims during Christmas. The report states:

    "Too often, Muslim charities come to our attention because of negative media coverage… What we hear even less about is the 'Muslim Merry Christmas.' The soup kitchens, the food banks, the Christmas dinners, the New Year clean-up — work Muslim charities will be busy doing during the Christmas period."

    In Scotland, the regional government was accused of "undermining" Britain's Christian heritage by promoting "winter festivals" for ethnic minorities while ignoring Christmas. Scotland's International Development Minister, Alasdair Allan, pledged nearly £400,000 ($535,000) to fund 23 events during the winter months. He described them as "key dates in our national calendar" and said the "exciting and diverse" program would help Scots "celebrate everything great about our wonderful country during the winter months." None of the events, however, has any connection to Christmas. A spokesman for the Catholic Church in Scotland said:

    "It is deeply disappointing that the Scottish Government has chosen not to recognize the religious reality of Christmas in its Winter Festival events. Over half of the population stated their religion as Christian in the last census. Catholics, and other Christians, may quite rightly wonder why this publicly-funded Festival does not include any events designed to help Scots celebrate the birth of Christ which is undoubtedly the most significant celebration in the winter months."

    Gordon Macdonald, of Christian charity CARE, added:

    "It is part of the general secularization that has been taking place within the Scottish Government for a number of years where our Christian heritage and value system has been undermined as a direct result of government policy."

    In Denmark, a primary school in Graested cancelled a traditional church service marking the beginning of Christmas in order not to offend Muslim pupils. Some parents accused the school of having double-standards: it recently held an event called "Syria Week" in which children immersed themselves in Middle Eastern culture. Ignoring parents, the school board sided with the school:

    "The board backs the school's decision to create new traditions [emphasis added] that involve children and young people."

    Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen, who attended the school as a child, said the decision should be reversed. Health Minister Ellen Trane Norby added:

    "Danish primary schools have a duty to spread education — and teaching the cultural values and knowledge connected to Christmas is an essential part of that."

    In France, the annual Christmas market in the Croix-Rousse district of Lyon was cancelled because of exorbitant security costs associated with protecting the event from Islamic terror. The city's annual festival of lights did go ahead this year. The military governor of Lyon, General Pierre Chavancy, said that, because of the "sensitivity" of the event, 1,500 soldiers and police, backed up by dogs, river brigades and mine-clearers, would be deployed to provide security.

    In neighboring Belgium, the head of the Red Cross in Liège, André Rouffart, ordered all 28 offices in the city to remove crucifixes to affirm the organization's secular identity. Critics said the decision was part of a broader effort to "modify certain terminologies" and to "break with our traditions and our roots" in order to appease Muslims. "We once said Christmas holidays, now we say winter holidays," said a local Red Cross volunteer. "The Christmas market in Brussels has been renamed 'Winter Pleasures.' Let things remain as they are."

    In Germany, a school in Lüneburg postponed a Christmas party after a Muslim student complained that the singing of Christmas carols during school was incompatible with Islam. The school's decision to reschedule the event as a non-compulsory after-school activity generated "a flood of hate mail and even threats against school management and school board," according to Focus. In an effort to appease angry parents, Headmaster Friedrich Suhr said that "non-Christian" Christmas songs such as "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" would not be banned. Alexander Gauland, the leader of the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD), said the school's action was "an unbearable, involuntary submission to Islam" and amounted to a "cowardly injustice" toward non-Muslim children.

    In Munich, ads for a multicultural "winter market" depicted a snowman covered in a burqa. The chairman of the AfD in Bavaria, Petr Bystron, noted the irony: "A burqa snowman as a tolerance symbol?" In Halle, the Christmas market was renamed "Wintermarket."

    In Berlin, the traditional Christmas market was protected by walls of concrete barriers to prevent a repeat of last year's jihadist attack in which 12 people were killed and more than 50 injured. In Stuttgart, a 53-year-old man was arrested at the Christmas market after he claimed to carrying a bomb in his backpack. In Potsdam, the Christmas market was closed after a nearby pharmacy received a letter bomb. In Bonn, the Christmas market was evacuated due to a bomb threat.

    In Italy, a school in Milan removed references to Christmas at a party and renamed the holiday as "The Great Festival of Happy Holidays." Writing on Facebook, local politician Samuele Piscina accused the school of implementing "a politically correct leftist policy" that deprives Italian children the joy of Christmas:

    "After the nativity scenes and the crucifixes, now even Christmas parties are hindered in schools. The word 'Christmas,' a symbol of our faith and our culture, does not discriminate against anyone. Striking the emblems of Christmas does not guarantee anyone's respect, does not produce a welcoming and inclusive school and society, but fosters intolerance towards our culture, our customs, our laws and our traditions. We firmly believe that our traditions must be respected."

    In Bolzano, a cardboard Christmas tree was ordered to be removed from the town hall because "it could have offended the sensibilities" of Muslims. A local politician, Alessandro Urzì, expressed outrage at the decision: "The bureaucratic rigor with which the tree was removed to avoid the risk of annoying someone reflects the barbarization of the cultural climate."

    In Norway, a primary school in Skien announced that its Christmas festivities this year would include not only the usual reading by pupils of verses from the Bible but also two verses from the Koran which refer to Jesus. The inimitable Bruce Bawer explained the implications:

    "Stigeråsen School's Christmas plans provide yet another example of dhimmitude: craven European submission to Islam. This year, there might be a couple of Koran verses in a Christmas show; next year, a yuletide event at which both religions are celebrated on an even footing; and not too many years after that, perhaps, a children's celebration at which there is no cross and no Christmas tree, only prayer rugs, benedictions in Arabic, and hijabs for the girls."

    In Spain, the Madrid City Council replaced Christmas festivities in the capital with a neo-Pagan "International Fair of the Cultures." According to Madrid Mayor Manuela Carmena, a former member of Spain's Communist Party, the express purpose of the month-long event is to de-Christianize Christmas to make it more inclusive:

    "We all know that Christmas is a festival of religious origin, but it is also a celebration of humanity, solidarity. Therefore, the Madrid City Council wants to do everything possible so that everyone who is in this city, from wherever they may be, can enjoy Christmas."

    Breaking with tradition, the Madrid city hall also refused to place a nativity scene at the Puerta de Alcalá, one of the city's most iconic monuments. Local politician José Luis Martínez-Almeida accused Carmena of "enthusiastically collaborating in the celebration of Ramadan" but "trying to hide all the Christian symbols of Christmas." He added: "We want to reclaim our cultural and religious roots."

     

  • Ben Garrison's 12 Days Of Trumpmas

    Authored by Ben Garrison via GrrrrGraphics.com,

    ‘Twas the night before Christmas, and in the White House
    Trump’s words were stirring; Obama felt like a mouse.

    A populist president with a broom that swept clean,
    Trump accomplished much in 2017.

    Yet out past the lawn there arose such a clatter,
    Pussy Hatters were yelling along with Black Lives Matter.

    The Deep State pushed back—the Swamp became bitter,
    They always get triggered when Trump is on Twitter.

    Fake News Media compared Trump with Nixon,
    “Impeach him!” said Maddow, Mika and Wolf Blitzen.

    Rich kneelers were kneeling and sitting on hands,
    Stadiums were emptied, they angered their fans.

    Rocket Man’s missiles were threatening Seoul,
    Kim Jong-Un’s stocking was soon stuffed with coal.

    Respect, fame and fortune many women were hoping,
    Instead they were molested–the gropers were groping!

    Crooked Hillary lied about Trump’s Russian collusion,
    The evidence showed it was just an illusion.

    The Ass Clowns were angry and showing no poise,
    They were loud and obnoxious–empty barrels of noise.

    Trump’s eyes twinkled with MAGA delight. He yelled,
    “MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL, AND TO ALL A GOOD NIGHT!”

    –Merry Christmas from Ben and Tina Garrison

  • Was The Steele Dossier The FBI's "Insurance Policy"?

    Authored by Andrew McCarthy via National Review,

    Clinton campaign propaganda appears to have triggered Obama administration spying on Trump’s campaign…

    The FBI’s deputy director Andrew McCabe testified Tuesday at a marathon seven-hour closed-door hearing of the House Intelligence Committee.

    According to the now-infamous text message sent by FBI agent Peter Strzok to his paramour, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, it was in McCabe’s office that top FBI counterintelligence officials discussed what they saw as the frightening possibility of a Trump presidency.

    That was during the stretch run of the 2016 campaign, no more than a couple of weeks after they started receiving the Steele dossier — the Clinton campaign’s opposition-research reports, written by former British spy Christopher Steele, about Trump’s purportedly conspiratorial relationship with Vladimir Putin’s regime in Russia.

    Was it the Steele dossier that so frightened the FBI? I think so.

    There is a great deal of information to follow. But let’s cut to the chase: The Obama-era FBI and Justice Department had great faith in Steele because he had previously collaborated with the bureau on a big case. Plus, Steele was working on the Trump-Russia project with the wife of a top Obama Justice Department official, who was personally briefed by Steele. The upper ranks of the FBI and DOJ strongly preferred Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton, to the point of overlooking significant evidence of her felony misconduct, even as they turned up the heat on Trump. In sum, the FBI and DOJ were predisposed to believe the allegations in Steele’s dossier. Because of their confidence in Steele, because they were predisposed to believe his scandalous claims about Donald Trump, they made grossly inadequate efforts to verify his claims. Contrary to what I hoped would be the case, I’ve come to believe Steele’s claims were used to obtain FISA surveillance authority for an investigation of Trump.

    There were layers of insulation between the Clinton campaign and Steele — the campaign and the Democratic party retained a law firm, which contracted with Fusion GPS, which in turn hired the former spy. At some point, though, perhaps early on, the FBI and DOJ learned that the dossier was actually a partisan opposition-research product. By then, they were dug in. No one, after all, would be any the wiser: Hillary would coast to victory, so Democrats would continue running the government; FISA materials are highly classified, so they’d be kept under wraps. Just as it had been with the Obama-era’s Fast and Furious and IRS scandals, any malfeasance would remain hidden.

    The best laid schemes . . . gang aft agley.

    Why It Matters

    Strzok’s text about the meeting in McCabe’s office is dated August 16, 2016. As we’ll see, the date is important. According to Agent Strzok, with Election Day less than three months away, Page, the bureau lawyer, weighed in on Trump’s bid: “There’s no way he gets elected.” Strzok, however, believed that even if a Trump victory was the longest of long shots, the FBI “can’t take that risk.” He insisted that the bureau had no choice but to proceed with a plan to undermine Trump’s candidacy: “It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.”

    The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that, “according to people familiar with his account,” Strzok meant that it was imperative that the FBI “aggressively investigate allegations of collusion between Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia.” In laughable strawman fashion, the “people familiar with his account” assure the Journal that Strzok “didn’t intend to suggest a secret plan to harm the candidate.” Of course, no sensible person suspects that the FBI was plotting Trump’s assassination; the suspicion is that, motivated by partisanship and spurred by shoddy information that it failed to verify, the FBI exploited its counterintelligence powers in hopes of derailing Trump’s presidential run.

    But what were these “allegations of collusion between Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia” that the FBI decided to “aggressively investigate”? The Journal doesn’t say. Were they the allegations in the Steele dossier? That is a question I asked in last weekend’s column. It is a question that was pressed by Chairman Devin Nunes (R., Calif.) and Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee at Tuesday’s sealed hearing. As I explained in the column, the question is critical for three reasons:

    (1) The Steele dossier was a Clinton campaign product. If it was used by the FBI and the Obama Justice Department to obtain a FISA warrant, that would mean law-enforcement agencies controlled by a Democratic president fed the FISA court political campaign material produced by the Democratic candidate whom the president had endorsed to succeed him. Partisan claims of egregious scheming with an adversarial foreign power would have been presented to the court with the FBI’s imprimatur, as if they were drawn from refined U.S. intelligence reporting. The objective would have been to spy on the opposition Republican campaign.

     

    (2) In June of this year, former FBI director James Comey testified that the dossier was “salacious and unverified.” While still director, Comey had described the dossier the same way when he briefed President-elect Trump on it in January 2017. If the dossier was still unverified as late as mid 2017, its allegations could not possibly have been verified months earlier, in the late summer or early autumn of 2016, when it appears that the FBI and DOJ used them in an application to the FISA court.

     

    (3) The dossier appears to contain misinformation. Knowing he was a spy-for-hire trusted by Americans, Steele’s Russian-regime sources had reason to believe that misinformation could be passed into the stream of U.S. intelligence and that it would be acted on — and leaked — as if it were true, to America’s detriment. This would sow discord in our political system. If the FBI and DOJ relied on the dossier, it likely means they were played by the Putin regime.

    How Could Something Like This Happen?

    We do not have public confirmation that the dossier was, in fact, used by the bureau and the Justice Department to obtain the FISA warrant. Publicly, FBI and DOJ officials have thwarted the Congress with twaddle about protecting both intelligence sources and an internal inspector-general probe. Of course, Congress, which established and funds the DOJ and FBI, has the necessary security clearances to review classified information, has jurisdiction over the secret FISA court, and has independent constitutional authority to examine the activities of legislatively created executive agencies.

    In any event, important reporting by Fox News’ James Rosen regarding Tuesday’s hearing indicates that the FBI did, in fact, credit the contents of the dossier. It appears, however, that the bureau corroborated few of Steele’s claims, and at an absurdly high level of generality — along the lines of: You tell me person A went to place X and committed a crime; I corroborate only that A went to X and blithely assume that because you were right about the travel, you must be right about the crime.

    Here, the FBI was able to verify Steele’s claim that Carter Page, a very loosely connected Trump-campaign adviser, had gone to Russia. This was not exactly meticulous gumshoe corroboration: Page told many people he was going to Russia, saw many people while there, and gave a speech at a prominent Moscow venue. Having verified only the travel information, the FBI appears to have credited the claims of Steele’s anonymous Russian sources that Page carried out nigh-treasonous activities while in Russia.

    How could something like this happen? Well, the FBI and DOJ liked and trusted Steele, for what seem to be good reasons. As the Washington Post has reported, the former MI-6 agent’s private intelligence firm, Orbis, was retained by England’s main soccer federation to investigate corruption at FIFA, the international soccer organization that had snubbed British bids to host the World Cup. In 2010, Steele delivered key information to the FBI’s organized-crime liaison in Europe. This helped the bureau build the Obama Justice Department’s most celebrated racketeering prosecution: the indictment of numerous FIFA officials and other corporate executives. Announcing the first wave of charges in May 2015, Attorney General Loretta Lynch made a point of thanking the investigators’ “international partners” for their “outstanding assistance.”

    At the time, Bruce Ohr was the Obama Justice Department’s point man for “Transnational Organized Crime and International Affairs,” having been DOJ’s long-serving chief of the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section. He also wore a second, top-echelon DOJ hat: associate deputy attorney general. That made him a key adviser to the deputy attorney general, Sally Yates (who later, as acting attorney general, was fired for insubordinately refusing to enforce President Trump’s so-called travel ban). In the chain of command, the FBI reports to the DAG’s office.

    To do the Trump-Russia research, Steele had been retained by the research firm Fusion GPS (which, to repeat, had been hired by lawyers for the Clinton campaign and the DNC). Fusion GPS was run by its founder, former Wall Street Journal investigative journalist Glenn Simpson. Bruce Ohr’s wife, Nellie, a Russia scholar, worked for Simpson at Fusion. The Ohrs and Simpson appear to be longtime acquaintances, dating back to when Simpson was a senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center. In 2010, all three participated in a two-day conference on international organized crime, sponsored by the National Institute of Justice (see conference schedule and participant list, pp. 27–30). In connection with the Clinton campaign’s Trump-Russia project, Fusion’s Nellie Ohr collaborated with Steele and Simpson, and DOJ’s Bruce Ohr met personally with Steele and Simpson.

    Manifestly, the DOJ and FBI were favorably disposed toward Steele and Fusion GPS. I suspect that these good, productive prior relationships with the dossier’s source led the investigators to be less exacting about corroborating the dossier’s claims.

    But that is just the beginning of the bias story.

    At a high level, the DOJ and FBI were in the tank for Hillary Clinton. In July 2016, shortly before Steele’s reports started floating in, the FBI and DOJ announced that no charges would be brought against Mrs. Clinton despite damning evidence that she mishandled classified information, destroyed government files, obstructed congressional investigations, and lied to investigators. The irregularities in the Clinton-emails investigation are legion: President Obama making it clear in public statements that he did not want Clinton charged; the FBI, shortly afterwards, drafting an exoneration of Clinton months before the investigation ended and central witnesses, including Clinton herself, were interviewed; investigators failing to use the grand jury to compel the production of key evidence; the DOJ restricting FBI agents in their lines of inquiry and examination of evidence; the granting of immunity to suspects who in any other case would be pressured to plead guilty and cooperate against more-culpable suspects; the distorting of criminal statutes to avoid applying them to Clinton; the sulfurous tarmac meeting between Attorney General Lynch and former President Clinton shortly before Mrs. Clinton was given a peremptory interview — right before then–FBI director Comey announced that she would not be charged.

    The blatant preference for Clinton over Trump smacked of politics and self-interest. Deputy FBI director McCabe’s wife had run for the Virginia state legislature as a Democrat, and her (unsuccessful) campaign was lavishly funded by groups tied to Clinton insider Terry McAuliffe. Agent Strzok told FBI lawyer Page that Trump was an “idiot” and that “Hillary should win 100 million to 0.” Page agreed that Trump was “a loathsome human.” A Clinton win would likely mean Lynch — originally raised to prominence when President Bill Clinton appointed her to a coveted U.S. attorney slot — would remain attorney general. Yates would be waiting in the wings.

    The prior relationships of trust with the source; the investment in Clinton; the certitude that Clinton would win and deserved to win, signified by the mulish determination that she not be charged in the emails investigation; the sheer contempt for Trump. This concatenation led the FBI and DOJ to believe Steele — to want to believe his melodramatic account of Trump-Russia corruption. For the faithful, it was a story too good to check.

    The DOJ and FBI, having dropped a criminal investigation that undeniably established Hillary Clinton’s national-security recklessness, managed simultaneously to convince themselves that Donald Trump was too much of a national-security risk to be president.

    The Timeline

    As I noted in last weekend’s column, reports are that the FBI and DOJ obtained a FISA warrant targeting Carter Page (no relation to Lisa Page). For a time, Page was tangentially tied to the Trump campaign as a foreign-policy adviser — he barely knew Trump. The warrant was reportedly obtained after the Trump campaign and Page had largely severed ties in early August 2016. We do not know exactly when the FISA warrant was granted, but the New York Times and the Washington Post have reported, citing U.S. government sources, that this occurred in September 2016 (see here, here, and here). Further, the DOJ and FBI reportedly persuaded the FISA court to extend the surveillance after the first warrant’s 90-day period lapsed — meaning the spying continued into Trump’s presidency.

    The FBI and DOJ would have submitted the FISA application to the court shortly before the warrant was issued. In the days-to-weeks prior to petitioning the court, the FISA application would have been subjected to internal review at the FBI — raising the possibility that FBI lawyer Page was in the loop reviewing the investigative work of Agent Strzok, with whom she was having an extramarital affair. There would also have been review at the Justice Department — federal law requires that the attorney general approve every application to the FISA court.

    Presumably, these internal reviews would have occurred in mid-to-late August — around the time of the meeting in McCabe’s office referred to in Strzok’s text. Thus, we need to understand the relevant events before and after mid-to-late August. Here is a timeline.

    June 2016

    In June 2016, Steele began to generate the reports that collectively are known as the “dossier.”

    In the initial report, dated June 20, 2016, Steele alleged that Putin’s regime had been “cultivating, supporting and assisting TRUMP for at least 5 years.” (Steele’s reports conform to the FBI and intelligence-agency reporting practice of rendering names of interest in capital letters.) The Kremlin was said to have significant blackmail material that could be used against Trump.

    In mid-to-late June 2016, according to Politico, Carter Page asked J. D. Gordon, his supervisor on the Trump campaign’s National Security Advisory Committee, for permission to go on a trip to Russia in early July. Gordon advised against it. Page then sent an email to Corey Lewandowski, who was Trump’s campaign manager until June 20, and Hope Hicks, the Trump campaign spokeswoman, seeking permission to go on the trip. Word came back to Page by email that he could go, but only in his private capacity, not as a representative of the Trump campaign. Lewandowski says he has never met Carter Page.

    July 2016

    Page, a top-of-the-class graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy with various other academic distinctions, traveled to Moscow for a three-day trip, the centerpiece of which was a July 7 commencement address at the New Economic School (the same institution at which President Obama gave a commencement address on July 7, 2009). The New York Times has reported, based on leaks from “current and former law enforcement and intelligence officials,” that Page’s July trip to Moscow “was a catalyst for the F.B.I. investigation into connections between Russia and President Trump’s campaign.” The Times does not say what information the FBI had received that made the Moscow trip such a “catalyst.”

    Was it the Steele dossier?

    Well, on July 19, Steele reported that, while in Moscow, Page had held secret meetings with two top Putin confederates, Igor Sechin and Igor Diveykin. Steele claimed to have been informed by “a Russian source close to” Sechin, the president of Russia’s energy conglomerate Rosneft, that Sechin had floated to Page the possibility of “US-Russia energy co-operation” in exchange for the “lifting of western sanctions against Russia over Ukraine.” Page was said to have reacted “positively” but in a manner that was “non-committal.”

    Another source, apparently Russian, told Steele that “an official close to” Putin chief of staff Sergei Ivanov had confided to “a compatriot” that Igor Diveykin (of the “Internal Political Department” of Putin’s Presidential Administration) had also met with Page in Moscow. (Note the dizzying multiple-hearsay basis of this information.) Diveykin is said to have told Page that the regime had “a dossier of ‘kompromat’” — compromising information — on Hillary Clinton that it would consider releasing to Trump’s “campaign team.” Diveykin further “hinted (or indicated more strongly) that the Russian leadership also had ‘kompromat’ on TRUMP which the latter should bear in mind in his dealings with them.”

    The hacked DNC emails were first released on July 22, shortly before the Democratic National Convention, which ran from July 25 through 28.

    In “late July 2016,” Steele claimed to have been told by an “ethnic Russian close associate of . . . TRUMP” that there was a “well-developed conspiracy of co-operation” between “them” (apparently meaning Trump’s inner circle) and “the Russian leadership.” The conspiracy was said to be “managed on the TRUMP side by the Republican candidate’s campaign manager, Paul MANAFORT, who was using foreign policy adviser, Carter PAGE, and others as intermediaries.”

    The same source claimed that the Russian regime had been behind the leak of DNC emails “to the WikiLeaks platform,” an operation the source maintained “had been conducted with the full knowledge and support of TRUMP and senior members of his campaign team.” As a quid pro quo, “the TRUMP team” was said to have agreed (a) “to sideline Russian intervention in Ukraine as a campaign issue,” and (b) to raise the failure of NATO nations to meet their defense commitments as a distraction from Russian aggression in Ukraine, “a priority for PUTIN who needed to cauterise the subject.”

    Late July to Early August 2016

    The Washington Post has reported that Steele’s reports were first transmitted “by an intermediary” to the FBI and other U.S. intelligence officials after the Democratic National Convention (which, to repeat, ended on July 28). The intermediary is not identified. We do not know if it was Fusion, though that seems likely given that Fusion shared its work with government and non-government entities. Steele himself is also said to have contacted “a friend in the FBI” about his research after the Democratic convention. As we’ve seen, Steele made bureau friends during the FIFA investigation.

    August 2016

    On August 11, as recounted in the aforementioned Wall Street Journal report, FBI agent Strzok texted the following message to FBI lawyer Page: “OMG I CANNOT BELIEVE WE ARE SERIOUSLY LOOKING AT THESE ALLEGATIONS AND THE PERVASIVE CONNECTIONS.” The Journal does not elaborate on what “allegations” Strzok was referring to, or the source of those allegations.

    On August 15, Strzok texted Page about the meeting in deputy FBI director McCabe’s office at which it was discussed that the bureau “can’t take that risk” of a Trump presidency and needed something akin to an “insurance policy” even though Trump’s election was thought highly unlikely.

    September 2016

    Reporting indicates that sometime in September 2016, the DOJ and FBI applied to the FISA court for a warrant to surveil Carter Page, and that the warrant was granted.

    Interestingly, on September 23, 2016, Yahoo’s Michael Isikoff reported on leaks he had received that the U.S. government was conducting an intelligence investigation to determine whether Carter Page, as a Trump adviser, had opened up a private communications channel with such “senior Russian officials” as Igor Sechin and Igor Diveykin to discuss lifting economic sanctions if Trump became president.

    It is now known that Isikoff’s main source for the story was Fusion’s Glenn Simpson. Isikoff’s report is rife with allegations found in the dossier, although the dossier is not referred to as such; it is described as “intelligence reports” that “U.S. officials” were actively investigating — i.e., Steele’s reports were described in a way that would lead readers to assume they were official U.S. intelligence reports. But there clearly was official American government involvement: Isikoff’s story asserts that U.S. officials were briefing members of Congress about these allegations that Page was meeting with Kremlin officials on Trump’s behalf. The story elaborated that “questions about Page come amid mounting concerns within the U.S. intelligence community about Russian cyberattacks on the Democratic National Committee.” Those would be the cyberattacks alleged — in the dossier on which Congress was being briefed — to be the result of a Trump-Russia conspiracy in which Page was complicit.

    Isikoff obviously checked with his government sources to verify what Simpson had told him about the ongoing investigation that was based on these “intelligence reports.” His story recounts that “a senior U.S. law enforcement official” confirmed that Page’s alleged contacts with Russian officials were “on our radar screen. . . . It’s being looked at.”

    Final Points to Consider

    After his naval career, Page worked in investing, including several years at Merrill Lynch in Moscow. As my column last weekend detailed, he has been an apologist for the Russian regime, championing appeasement for the sake of better U.S.–Russia relations. Page has acknowledged that, during his brief trip to Moscow in July 2016, he ran into some Russian government officials, among many old Russian friends and acquaintances. Yet he vehemently denies meeting with Sechin and Diveykin. (While Sechin’s name is well known to investors in the Russian energy sector, Page says that he has never met him and that he had never even heard Diveykin’s name until the Steele dossier was publicized in early 2017.) Furthermore, Page denies even knowing Paul Manafort, much less being used by Manafort as an intermediary between the Trump campaign and Russia. Page has filed a federal defamation lawsuit against the press outlets that published the dossier, has denied the dossier allegations in FBI interviews, and has reportedly testified before the grand jury in Robert Mueller’s special-counsel investigation.

    Even though the FISA warrant targeting Page is classified and the FBI and DOJ have resisted informing Congress about it, some of its contents were illegally and selectively leaked to the Washington Post in April 2017 by sources described as “law enforcement and other U.S. officials.” According to the Post:

    The government’s application for the surveillance order targeting Page included a lengthy declaration that laid out investigators’ basis for believing that Page was an agent of the Russian government and knowingly engaged in clandestine intelligence activities on behalf of Moscow, officials said.

     

    Among other things, the application cited contacts that he had with a Russian intelligence operative in New York City in 2013, officials said. Those contacts had earlier surfaced in a federal espionage case brought by the Justice Department against the intelligence operative and two other Russian agents. In addition, the application said Page had other contacts with Russian operatives that have not been publicly disclosed, officials said.

    I’ve emphasized that last portion because it strongly implies that the FISA application included information from the Steele dossier. That is, when the Post speaks of Page’s purported “other contacts with Russian operatives that have not been publicly disclosed,” this is very likely a reference to the meetings with Sechin and Diveykin that Page denies having had — the meetings described in the dossier. Do not be confused by the fact that, by the time of this Post report, the Steele-dossier allegations had already been disclosed to the public by BuzzFeed (in January 2017). The Post story is talking about what the DOJ and FBI put in the FISA application back in September 2016. At that time, the meetings alleged in the dossier had not been publicly disclosed.

    Two final points.

    First: The FISA application’s reliance on 2013 events as a basis for suspicion in 2016 that Page was a foreign agent of Russia is curious. The 2013 investigation involved Russian intelligence operatives who were trying to recruit business people, such as Page, as sources — i.e., Page was being approached by Russia, not acting on Russia’s behalf. In the 2013 investigation, Page met with a Russian agent, whom he apparently did not realize was an agent. They met at an energy symposium in New York and Page did networking-type things: exchanging contact information and providing his jejune assessment of the energy sector’s prospects. The Russian agent described Page as an “idiot” in a recorded conversation. According to Page, he cooperated with the FBI and helped prosecutors in the case against one of the suspects — claims that the government could easily disprove if he is lying.

    Second: In reporting on the FISA warrant that targeted Page, the Washington Post asserted that “an application for electronic surveillance under [FISA] need not show evidence of a crime.” That is not accurate.

    Under federal surveillance law (sec. 1801 of Title 50, U.S. Code), the probable-cause showing the government must make to prove that a person is an agent of a foreign power is different for Americans than for aliens. If the alleged agent is an alien, section 1801(b)(1) applies, and this means that no crime need be established; the government need only show that the target is acting on behalf of a foreign power in the sense of abetting its clandestine anti-American activities.

    By contrast, if the alleged agent is an American citizen, such as Page, section 1801(b)(2) applies: The government must show not only that the person is engaged in clandestine activities on behalf of a foreign power but also that these activities (1) “involve or may involve a violation of the criminal statutes of the United States”; (2) involve the preparation for or commission of sabotage or international terrorism; (3) involve using a false identity to enter or operate in the United States on behalf of a foreign power; or (4) involve conspiring with or aiding and abetting another person in the commission of these criminal activities. All of these involve evidence of a crime.

    The only known suspicions about Page that have potential criminal implications are the allegations in the dossier, which potentially include hacking, bribery, fraud, and racketeering — if Russia were formally considered an enemy of the United States, they would include treason. The FBI always has information we do not know about. But given that Page has not been accused of a crime, and that the DOJ and FBI would have to have alleged some potential criminal activity to justify a FISA warrant targeting the former U.S. naval intelligence officer, it certainly seems likely that the Steele dossier was the source of this allegation.

    In conclusion, while there is a dearth of evidence to date that the Trump campaign colluded in Russia’s cyberespionage attack on the 2016 election, there is abundant evidence that the Obama administration colluded with the Clinton campaign to use the Steele dossier as a vehicle for court-authorized monitoring of the Trump campaign — and to fuel a pre-election media narrative that U.S. intelligence agencies believed Trump was scheming with Russia to lift sanctions if he were elected president. Congress should continue pressing for answers, and President Trump should order the Justice Department and FBI to cooperate rather than — what’s the word? — resist.

     

  • Visualizing The Global Rush To Build Skyscrapers

    As the creator of today’s visualization, Alberto Lucas López, points out, “the world’s tallest buildings have acted as barometers”.

    Another way of putting it? Our biggest architectural accomplishments are highly visible symbols of what society values most, and those values have changed over time.

    Today, the paramount belief system in many parts of the world is in capitalism, and there is no more potent marker of the economic might than fantastically tall commercial skyscrapers.

    Today’s visualization is an effective way to take in the mind-bending scale of the newest generation of megatall buildings. It’s headlined by Jeddah Tower, a skyscraper currently under construction in Saudi Arabia that will smash the one kilometer mark when it’s completed in 2019.

    Courtesy of: Visual Capitalist

    CITIES ARE GROWING UP

    In general, only very large cities have the resources to build and support extremely tall buildings.

    With the explosion of urbanization around the world and developing economies asserting themselves in high profile ways, the stage is set for a global skyscraper boom.

    In the last two years, 39 skyscrapers taller than 300m have been constructed, with five of the them eclipsing the height of the Empire State Building.

    Global skyscraper construction has increased a whopping 402% since 2000.

    HIGH-RISE HOT SPOTS

    China

    Nearly every sizeable Chinese city has skyscrapers under construction, and the numbers are staggering. Since 2012, China has added 38 skyscrapers over 300m (~1,000 ft) in height, and there are another 16 skyscrapers on the way in 2018.

    In particular, the Pearl River Delta megaregion, which is anchored by Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou, has seen an astonishing commercial construction boom. Today, 20 of the 100 tallest buildings on earth are located in just this one urban megaregion of China.

    China’s Top 10 Tallest Buildings

    In total, 46 of the world’s 100 tallest skyscrapers are now located in China, and that number is sure to increase in coming years.

    United Arab Emirates

    Construction has been relentless in UAE for decades, and much of that development has been vertically-oriented. Today, Dubai is home to nearly 1,000 high-rise buildings, and there are 13 projects currently under construction that will hit or exceed the 300m mark.

    UAE’s Top 10 Tallest Buildings

    Russia

    While the skylines of many European cities are conspicuously low-rise, an exception to that rule is in Moscow’s International Business Centre, where four 300m+ towers have been completed since 2012.

    Russia’s Top 10 Tallest Buildings

    WHAT ABOUT THE UNITED STATES?

    In the early 20th century, the United States was the undisputed champion of skyscraper construction, but that has tapered off dramatically. In fact, only six commercial towers over 300m have been constructed in the last 20 years.

    The exception may be the city that started it all: New York. There are currently 30 skyscrapers under construction in NYC, fueled in part by a red-hot luxury real estate market.

    America’s Top 10 Tallest Buildings (Under Construction)

    Philadelphia and San Francisco will soon have new additions to their skylines as Comcast and Saleforce complete their flagship construction projects. If current construction numbers are any indication, America’s love affair with the skyscraper may be reignited in urban centers across the country.

  • No Peace In Our Times: The Inevitability Of War

    Via GEFIRA,

    “While people are saying, peace and safety, destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.”

    Are you, man or woman of Christian and European heritage, aware of this prophecy or do you prefer to live in a fancy world of happy-clappy wishful thinking that the brotherhood of men is about to put an end to human conflict once and for all? Though Christmastide is a time of merrymaking, it may also be a period of reflection. The Birth that we celebrate on Christmas Day was perceived by some as such a threat as to justify the Massacre of the Innocents. Peace and good will were closely intertwined with discord and hostility. Do you think we are living in better times? Do you think we are living in Fukuyama’s end of history?

    War has persisted throughout history ever since the dawn of mankind. That’s probably the best indicator that it will persist for all eternity. Why should it cease? War for the purposes of this text is not merely the outright hostilities, the firing guns and resounding battle cries. It is a constant strife that is being played out on a day-to-day basis which now and again erupts into its dramatic form of the opposing armies acting on the theatre of war. Why do we broaden the definition of war? If only because casualties – and we mean loss of lives – are not necessarily the highest during the time of the roaring guns. Those sustained during the periods of peace may be just as high or even higher. Case in point: the Yeltsin era in Russia lasting for roughly ten years. Within that decade, life expectancy plummeted from 70 down to 60, which means that the country’s loss of lives amounted to the magnitude comparable to that during any war, which is millions. This loss of life was brought about by social and economic reforms i.e. steps taken supposedly to make the living standards better and these were demanded or suggested or advised by the powers outside Russia. The result? Closed down factories, laid off employees, poverty and the attendant disease and demise of many. Were these not regular hostilities?

    War has persisted throughout history in one form or another, though we are only made aware of it acutely when we can smell gunpowder, see ruined buildings and maimed bodies. Yet war is the pith and core of existence. We live by it, we draw from it, and, on a more positive note, it tests our character. The Iliad, Beowulf, Chanson de Roland, Das Nibelungenlied, Jerusalem Delivered, El Cid, the Battle of Kosovo epic circle, and, and, and, to mention only European literary monuments, they are all about adversity, combat, heroic deeds or cowardly misconduct. Why haven’t our poets and bards composed works of goodness, peace and harmony? Being ones of us, they knew the human psyche and they knew that we wouldn’t feel attracted to stories of goodness and love and charity; they knew that if we had paradise on earth, peaceful coexistence and tolerance of everything, we would have nothing to write about or, to put it in modern terms, nothing to make films about.

    Think about it. All literary and religious stuff is about conflict, serious and bitter conflict. Our play and entertainment are all about conflict. Look at the popularity of computer war games, at the popularity of sports which are but epitomes of battles and rivalries; look at the popularity of crime stories, at the popularity of – mind you – Star Wars movie series, as if world wars did not fully satisfy our militant fantasizing! We are hardwired for experiencing conflict in one way or another, much though nowadays we are trying to convince ourselves that the opposite is true. Medieval Christian chroniclers, who most often were Christian priests, i.e. preachers of love and charity, rebuked princes for idly staying at home rather than leading their warriors and knights on conquests. Islam was no better in this respect. The first two or so centuries from its inception were characterized by militant conquests: there were no apostles of Good News but rather mounted warriors wielding curved swords. It is only now that we are squeamish about armed conflicts and frown upon crusades or the conquest of the Americas. And yet we do it in a hypocritical way: we have removed words like war, military campaign or intervention from our polite vocabulary and we call these phenomena spreading or saving democracy, preventing humanitarian disasters, defending prosecuted minorities and what not. Nonetheless, by whatever name a rose is known, it is still a rose.

    War runs in our blood. We are biologically designed for conflict, for struggle, for overcoming adversity. No globalization, no unification of nations, no removal of class, religious, racial, economic differences will ever do away with war. Conflict in general and war in particular is a result of (i) biology which manifests itself in (ii) economy and (iii) ideology.

    (i) The otherwise scientifically-minded Western Man knows it very well as he firmly believes in the evolutionary mechanism i.e. the differentiation of species and struggle for existence. The animal world – and we are part of it, just an extension – is all about fight for survival, competing for females, guarding one’s breeding and hunting grounds. Genetically related individuals (individuals related by blood, as men of old would have said) form in-groups (families, clans, tribes, nations), where loyalty to its members has a top survival value. Heroic literature exploits the motif of loyalty and its moral counterpart, which is treason, to the full. That is how the biological mechanism of in-group loyalty and out-group exclusion has sublimated into ideas, and these have found reflection in works of art and, broadly, ideology, and in all this which is generally referred to as culture. Nations are a biological phenomenon. Ethnicity, not only race, can be determined by looking into genes! No wonder then that ethnic differences are the main fault lines along which conflicts arise. True, different human groups may from time to time exist as neighbours, never really merging with each other, but inevitably their coexistence must end in an eruption of hostilities.

    A note here. Some say humans behave according to the dictates of the culture they live in or are born into, hence a change of cultural surroundings will result in the change of the individual’s behaviour, as if man were a piece of malleable stuff to be shaped at will. Wrong. Culture in its broadest sense is the sublimation of biology, not the other way round. Man creates culture; culture does not create man. Islam practised by white Europeans would look entirely different than Islam practised by Arabs and, similarly, Christianity practised by Arabs would not resemble that practised by Europeans.

    (ii) In their daily struggle for survival human groups compete for the scarcity of resources and land. This economic competition is yet another powerful source of conflict and, eventually, war. Economy, i.e. the struggle to survive on a daily basis, brings into conflict also the interests of the members of the in-group. Some are employers, others are employees: some make a living from capital, others from labour. There arises a clash between the haves and the have-nots, ending up in violent revolutions. The dispossessed or simply less affluent members of society attempt to rid the well-to-do of their property, the latter defend themselves. A dream of a peaceful coexistence dictated creating a classless society where everybody’s income had to be levelled. That led to civil wars and ultimate impoverishment of whole nations, from Cuba to North Korea. The French revolutionaries, once they launched guillotining people, including their co-revolutionists, just could not stop doing it. Much the same was true of the Russian Bolsheviks: on one hand they started murdering themselves (Comrade Stalin had Comrade Trotsky killed in the far-flung Mexico where the latter had spent years in exile) and purging the party ranks, on the other they starved their own people, peasants and workers, on whose behalf they began the revolution in the first place. The “achievements” of the medieval notorious inquisition pale in comparison to the millions butchered, tortured and imprisoned in concentration camps in Soviet Russia. Think of it: all that was done for the happiness of future generations of a classless and nationless society.

    (iii) Ideology, as said above, is the expression of biological instincts. If it takes the form of a religion, it becomes a weapon by means of which a nation’s dominance, conquest, or privileged position is most powerfully explained by the will of a god or gods. To a believer this religious reality is stronger than the physical one. Consider Muslim suicidal attacks or Christian executions of physicians in front of American abortionist clinics. The survival value of a religion may raise one race above others to the status of a chosen people with all attendant consequences; it may create social strata like a caste system in India which, as it has a blessing from a godhead, it is unthinkable to change; it can fossilize the relationship of dominance and subservience. The Western Man tends to disregard religions as superstition so much that he does not accept the facts that believers of whatever faith are ready to sacrifice their life for a cause.

    Some of the systems have been advanced for the sole purpose of blessing the whole of humanity with a pretense of introducing an age of eternal peace and brotherhood. Recall the French and Bolshevik revolutions, globalism or economic and political unions of all types. They are all doomed to fail as they run counter to biological reality, which is constant differentiation and the resulting strife. A new ideology (religion) must first overcome the resistance of the followers of the old one(s), and then or even while ousting the old beliefs, it itself splits into new sub-movements of the first original one. Consider Christianity with its many denominations and the socialist or communist movements, Christianity’s archenemy, which ended up with as many heresies. The movement of whatever kind begins with conflict with ideological out-groups and ends up as a house divided against itself. And then, again, the biologically-conditioned in-group loyalty and out-group exclusion prevail: Catholic, Muslim or communist nations are very often bitter enemies. The shared faith or ideology lose to blood ties.

    Is there a solution to wars? Everlasting peace? None, really.

    Consider uniting the peoples of the earth in one “nation” (globalization) in the hope of achieving everlasting peace. Quite apart from the feasibility of such an idea and the fact that there will be resistance to it, one nation is no guarantee of a life without conflicts. After all, all homogeneous nations have experienced civil wars. Just one example. The English people were torn by the War of the Roses, then the Cromwellian revolution, then a part of the nation settled down in North America and rebelled against their brothers on the old continent only to wage a fratricidal war of secession among themselves. Much the same story can be told about all other nations around the globe. So, if a nation’s life is rife with conflict, how much more the life of an artificial one, like the Soviet or European Union?

    Consider uniting the peoples of the earth by imposing on them one religion, ideology, or a universal lack thereof or indifference (which nowadays goes by the name of tolerance) to all beliefs. Again, we know from history such an attempt is doomed to fail. Remember the initially universal Christianity: one did not have to wait long till it produced Arianism and other heresies, then it split into Orthodox and Western branches; the Western branch gave rise to a number of heresies and split into Catholics and Protestants, who in turn gave rise to numerous denominations thereof. Much the same held good for political ideologies (a form of lay religion) where the socialist or communist movement kept dividing itself into opposing and hostile factions, like national or international socialism, communism, Marxism, Leninism, Trotskyism, Maoism, Eurocommunism (Gramscians), liberation theology (social Christianity)… Russian Communists used military intervention to quell the aspirations of Czechoslovak communists; Comrade Tito was hated by Stalinists, and Chairman Mao was insulted by Stalin for a purpose. Any global ideology with all-encompassing tolerance is sure to follow that way. No doubt about it.

    Man thought that religion would overcome national sentiment. Man thought lay ideologies would overcome national sentiment. Both failed miserably. Supposedly suppressed or eradicated national feelings all of a sudden revive as was the case at the outset of the First World War, when socialist parties previously renouncing nationalism turned out to be patriotic; when international soviet communism adopted national colouring during the Great Patriotic War and so on.

    Consider uniting the peoples of the earth economically. That, too, will inevitably lead to differentiation in the level of affluence and the resulting tensions between the top and the bottom dogs, sparking social unrest, violent clashes and then revolutions. And we should not forget that also here we may have a hard time deciding whether we develop our global economy according to free market ideas of Austrian school, Keynesian economics, socialist welfare and, and, and…

    Eternal peace is not only impossible but also undesirable. Eternal peace and brotherhood of men would mean stagnation, lack of development, death. Yes, there is life because there is death.

    All these factors – biological, ideological and economic – are prime movers behind conflict and war. Nations or social classes, ideologies or economic interests, they all exist, keep splitting and competing with each other. When present-day democracies come to blows with regimes as they call them, they only prove that war is inevitable and do not even see that those ‘regimes’ fight against democracies with precisely the same amount of conviction of waging the righteous, if not holy, war.

    The modern Western man may laugh at the medieval methods of suppressing dissent or at the fatwas issued by ayatollahs, thinking himself above such measures, but he is none wiser. He moves in the same biological treadmill of eternal – internal, ethnic, sectarian, political, religious, social and even marital! – strife. The enemy is called names – heretic, fascist, racist, imperialist, colonizer, dictator – is burnt at the stake, excluded from polite society, judged by a court or becomes anathema. His right to free speech is denied by the Index Librorum Prohibitorum or political correctness or you name it. War rather than brotherhood. To feel good we all need the bad guys somewhere around. To combat the bad guys gives us a purpose in life. To think of it, only very few of us realise that we ourselves are the bad guys (kafirs, infidels, aggressors) for those whom we regard as bad guys. In a noble attempt to impose our righteous ways on others we meet with resistance. Resistance means conflict and conflict ultimately results in war. That’s the eternal circle of life and death described in The Iliad, Beowulf, Chanson de Roland, Das Nibelungenlied, Jerusalem Delivered, El Cid, the Battle of Kosovo epic circle. We have not been born for a life in liberty, equality and brotherhood. These words only reflect sentimental fantasizing enshrined in the wishful thinking of human rights, but have nothing to do with reality.

    To forestall Christian believers’ opposition to the observations described above, let us remind them of Christ’s words, which read: “You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen.” If they are true believers, they had better repeat after the psalmist: “Praise be to the Lord, my Rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle.” The realist atheists and agnostics as scientifically-minded people should not stand in need of being convinced that war is part and parcel of our earthly existence.

  • "My Eyes Popped Out Of My Head": Ohio Woman Receives $284 Billion Electric Bill

    The ‘Nightmare Before Christmas’ has nothing on this.

    Due to a processing error made by her local power company, one Ohio woman discovered earlier this month – to her abject horror – that she owed Penelec, her power provider, $284 billion, a figure that’s larger than the combined national debts of Hungary and South Africa.

    According to The Eerie Times News, Mary Horomanski discovered the error while she was checking her bill online. Initially, she wondered if the hefty charge was due to her Christmas decorations.

    “My eyes just about popped out of my head,” said Horomanski, 58. “We had put up Christmas lights and I wondered if we had put them up wrong."

    There was, of course, one small silver lining: According to her bill, Horomanski didn’t have to pay the entire $284,460,000 sum until November 2018. Her minimum payment for December was a relatively paltry $28,156. And Penelec hadn’t turned off her electricity – yet.

    Fortunately for Horomanski, the issue was quickly resolved when she texted her son, who contacted the power company and told them about the bill. They confirmed that the sum was an error, and that Horomanski owed much, much less. Her online statement was quickly fixed to the correct amount: $284.46.

    A spokesman for the power company said he doesn’t know how the error occurred but that it was obviously the result of somebody accidentally moving a decimal point nine digits to the right.

    “I can’t recall ever seeing a bill for billions of dollars,” Durbin said. “We appreciate the customer’s willingness to reach out to us about the mistake."

    The incident, Horomanski said, prompted her to ask for a different gift from her son this year.

    “I told him I want a heart monitor,” she said.

    And with that, the Horomanski’s Christmas was saved.  
     

  • Riding The Blockchain Train: These Companies Changed Their Name, And Their Stock Price Soared

    Many others had done it, but nobody quite as blatantly as beverage maker Long Island Iced Tea Corp, which on Thursday became the latest to jump on the cryptocurrency bandwagon, bizarrely but profitably changing its name to Long Blockchain Corp, which sent its shares soaring by 500%.

    In an ironic twist, we previewed LTEA’s hilarious “pivot” just one day earlier when – discussing a similar surge in microcap stock Net Element – we said:

    Now that it is abundantly clear that for a stock to explode higher, all that is necessary – and sufficient – is a press release mentioning the company’s name and throwing in the word “blockchain” in the same sentence (see Riot Blockchain and LongFin Corp), other public microcaps have decided that if that’s all it takes, then by all means they will gladly take investors’ money.

    Indeed, as the value of Bitcoin has skyrocketed in recent months, companies previously focused on making fitness apparel, bras, cigars and beverages (and many other unrelated things) have rebranded themselves as virtual currency or blockchain companies of one sort or another. In this light, what Long Island Ice Tea Blockchain did was the culmination of what to many is clear mania beahvior, as many obscure companies have pivoted operations or simply changed their names to cash-in on the cryptocurrency wave, a trend reminiscent of the dotcom boom. As profiled previously, a barrage of companies have seen their shares sky-rocket, largely on words such as “crypto” or “blockchain” in their names.

    And investors have cheered them on, pushing their stock prices up, forcing countless microcaps to ride the “Blockchain train”

    Artist’s impression of The blockchain train

    Courtesy of the NYT, below is a list of companies that have moved into crypto or blockchain businesses, or changed their names. The list also captures the surge in market value since the close on Oct. 11, a day before bitcoin crossed the $5,000 mark.

    * * *

    BEFORE: Long Island Iced Tea Corp.
    AFTER: Long Blockchain Corp.

    Long Island Iced Tea made iced teas in flavors including peach and lemon, as well as lemonades. On Thursday, the company, based in Farmingdale, N.Y., said it was shifting its corporate focus to the blockchain.

    In the company’s own words:“We view advances in blockchain technology as a once-in-a-generation opportunity, and have made the decision to pivot our business strategy in order to pursue opportunities in this evolving industry.” (December 21)   

    * * *

    BEFORE: Vapetek Inc.
    AFTER: Nodechain Inc.

    Vapetek made batteries and liquid for electronic cigarettes. In September, it rolled out a candy flavored e-liquid called Rock Kandi. This month, the Nevada-based company renamed itself and said it would shift to mining virtual currencies.

    In the company’s words: “We are confident that cryptocurrency mining and blockchain technology has a large market opportunity in the coming years and we look forward to growing the company and creating shareholder value, while helping to innovate the future of global currency.”  (December 20)       

    * * *

    BEFORE: Bioptix Inc.
    AFTER: Riot Blockchain Inc. 

    Bioptix was a pharmaceutical company until this year. In October, the Colorado company said it was changing its name, making an investment in a Canadian virtual currency exchange and creating operations to mine Bitcoin and other virtual currencies. 

    The company said that alongside its virtual currency business, it will continue to pursue “products for cattle, equine and swine for the assistance and facilitation of reproduction.” (October 4)   

    * * *

    BEFORE: On-line PLC
    AFTER: On-line Blockchain PLC

    On-Line was a small British company that previously incubated internet businesses. This fall, the company said it was renaming itself and shifting to focus on virtual currency technology.

    The company said: “Blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies are a new and exciting area we have been working on for some time to provide systems to support the roll out of these technologies across a range of applications.” (October 26)

    * * *

    BEFORE: Croe Inc.
    AFTER: The Crypto Company

    To become a public company, The Crypto Company acquired a small existing public company, Croe, which previously developed women’s fitness clothing.

    The company said this summer that its “core services include consulting and advising companies regarding investment and trading in the digital asset market and investing in a manner that diversifies exposure to the growing class of digital assets.” (June 9)

    After the change, the Securities and Exchange Commission, concerned by the company’s actions, suspended trading of its stock. More such companies are sure to follow.

    * * *

    BEFORE: Rich Cigars Inc.
    AFTER: Intercontinental Technology Inc. 

    Rich Cigars previously produced cigars. But the Florida company said this month that it was changing its name, getting out of the cigar business, moving to Colorado and creating  subsidiaries to mine for virtual currencies.

    The company said it will be pursuing “the development of a unique cryptocurrency mining business for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies which will operate on a 24/7 basis.” (December 14)

    * * *

    BEFORE: SkyPeople Fruit Juice Inc
    AFTER: Future FinTech Group Inc

    Formerly SkyPeople Fruit Juice was “engaged in developing agricultural plantations and produces and markets fruit juice concentrates, fruit beverages, and other fruit related products in China and overseas markets.

    The company changed its name “to reflect commitment to e-commerce and agricultural commodities trading”.

    * * *

    BEFORE: 360 Capital Financial
    AFTER: 360 Blockchain Inc.

    360 Capital Financial provided financial services to companies. In October, the Canadian company announced it would change its name and ticker symbol and begin investing exclusively in blockchain-based companies.

    The company said: “We are taking an all-round view to the 360 Blockchain Inc. business plan; with a mission to empower blockchain technologies with capital and experience to create exponential value.” (October 4)

    * * *

    BEFORE: Leeta Gold Corp.
    AFTER: Hive Blockchain Technologies

    Leeta Gold was focused on mineral exploration in Canada, though with little apparent success. This summer, the company said it was acquiring a Bitcoin mining company, Genesis, with facilities in Iceland and renaming itself.

    According to the company: “This transaction positions HIVE as a leading cryptocurrency miner in an attractive jurisdiction, Iceland, with low energy costs.” (June 14)

    * * *

    Other companies have been less blatant about their “pivot”, and instead changing their name, they acquired or announced expansion plans involving various “blockchain”-linked buzz words.

    Digital Power Corp

    The power system solutions provider has launched cryptocurrency mining operation.

    • Market cap as of Oct. 11: $10.98 mln
    • Market cap as of Dec. 21: $97.2 mln

    * * *

    Marathon Patent Group

    Shares in the intellectual property licensing and management company have zoomed after announcing a deal to buy cryptocurrencies miner Global Bit Ventures Inc.

    • Market cap as of Oct. 11: $17.8 mln
    • Market cap as of Dec. 21: $54.5 mln

    * * *

    Social Reality

    The internet advertising firm in October said it planned an Initial Coin Offering of Blockchain Identification Graph tokens (BIGtokens). Most recently, the firm said it would offer a cryptocurrency dividend.

    • Market cap as of Oct. 11: $28.4 mln
    • Market cap as of Dec. 21: $52.2 mln

    * * *

    Nova LifeStyle Inc

    The furniture maker launched a blockchain-enabled unit, called “I Design Blockchain Technology Inc” on Wednesday and said it planned to accept bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies on the platform.

    • Market cap as of Dec. 19: $60.8 mln
    • Market cap as of Dec. 21: $78.6 mln

    Source: Reuters, NYT

  • The Dollar's Reign As The Global Reserve Currency Is Running Out – Fast

    The dollar’s hegemony over the global financial system can’t last forever. Like all things, it will eventually come to an end.

    The only question left, as MacroVoices' Erik Townsend puts it, is whether we’re in the second inning and there’s going to be another hundred years of the dollar serving as the world’s global reserve currency? Or whether we’re in the bottom of the ninth and it’s all about to fall apart? Or maybe somewhere in between.

    In an interview with Jeffrey Snider, CIO at Alhambra Partners, Luke Gromen, founder of Forest for the Trees, and Mark Yusko, founder and fund manager for Morgan Creek, Townsend explores the issue in greater detail. For many, the decline of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency is difficult to imagine. But the first blow to the petrodollar system has already been delivered: By refusing to accept oil payments in dollars, Venezuela has demonstrated to the world that an alternative system to the petrodollar is indeed possible. Furthermore, Latin America’s socialist paradise has begun publishing an oil-price index denominated in yuan. We've also highlighted reports that Russia, Venezuela and Iran – three countries that have trouble accumulating dollars because of Treasury Department sanctions – are considering launching a cryptocurrency backed by oil.

    Townsend begins his interview with Gromen, who points out that, counterintuitively, the dollar’s rapid appreciation beginning in Q3 2014 has coincided with a drop in the share of global trade settled in dollars. Gromen predicts that this trend will continue to benefit the dollar – until it doesn’t.

    I would probably say in the later innings. Certainly the last third of the game. Maybe the eighth inning.

     

    The reason I say that is that, given the Eurodollar system as it’s structured, early on, if any nations or major parties wanted to move away from using the dollar for any number of reasons, ironically, what that moving away from the dollar would do would drive significant dollar strength. So, ironically, accelerating moves to dump the dollar in global trade usage, which in the long run is the most bearish development for the dollar, in the near term is the most bullish development for the dollar.

     

    And so when we look back, we think, beginning in 3Q14 was when you started to see a marked acceleration in the dollar’s share loss in global trade. And, in particular, in energy trade centered between China and Russia. And so we think things began to accelerate in 3Q14 and, like we’ve said, the process of moving away from the dollar, or the dollar losing share in trade, is a big positive for the dollar – until it’s not.

    However, Gorman believes an important shift happened in Q3 2016 when the dollar’s share loss in global trade started to accelerate. At that point, the dollar’s climb from 2014 and 2015 had already been unwound to a degree. Furthermore, Gorman posits that the dollar will weaken because it’s in the national security interest of the US for the dollar to weaken.

    And then the “until it’s not” part of this movie began over a year ago now, in 3Q16. The reason we say that is because from 3Q14 until 3Q16 you saw a rising dollar, rising Libor, and a pretty traditional dollar strengthening cycle up to that point.

     

    Where it started to become non-traditional relative to what pretty much any market participant trading in markets today – or even alive today – was when in 3Q16 rising dollar, rising Libor, drove a year-over- year decline in US tax receipts and therefore an increase in the US deficit as a percent of GDP. And it did this before you had a major emerging crisis.

     

    This was the first time the US’s tax receipts declined before a major emerging market crisis, in a dollar-tightening cycle, in the post-Bretton Woods period.

     

    And so, then, when you combine that with what has become effectively a system that requires as infinitum asset price appreciation in order to drive tax receipts for the US government, it sets up – beginning in 3Q16, where we started to get into late innings of this game. Where, not only are foreign creditors looking to move away from the dollar in trade usage for a number of reasons, but it also started to become a matter of national security for the

     

    US government for the dollar to weaken.

    Moving on, Townsend turns next to Jeff Snider, CIO at Alhambra investments. Snider explains how the Eurodollar system harms emerging-market economies and ultimately weakens the global financial system with each cycle of tightening.

    The last tightening cycle, which lasted from 2014 through 2016, was particularly destabilizing, Snider explained, particularly for emerging markets like Brazil, Russia, and China. Many EM countries and corporations based in those countries issue dollar-denominated debt, which becomes more expensive to pay down when the greenback climbs.

    But, for now at least, Snider expects the system to endure – if for no other reason than there’s nothing to take its place.

    My position is that the dollar system, the supply of dollars in the global network of trade, continues to be a problem. But it isn’t a problem in a straight line. It’s not like it’s a straight-line decay from where you can draw a singular line from 2007 to 2013. Instead, it’s more of an intermittent type of thing where we have these alternating periods where things tighten up. Then they loosen up relatively.

     

    But, as we go through each of these periods, the system is worse off for having gone through each one. And so the last tightening episode, starting in 2014 and lasting through 2016, was severe. Especially in emerging markets like Brazil, Russia, and China, the BRICs, because that’s where that part of the dysfunction was focused. More in FX and more into the Asian part of the system, as it has evolved since 2007 in that direction.

     

    So, from my perspective, nothing has really changed except the system continues to get weaker. And I think right now where we are is we’re waiting for the next tightening event to start taking place. That there’s plenty of evidence that the system continues to decay, particularly with China and some of the other emerging markets.

     

    So it doesn’t add up to a bullish position, necessarily. And I think that’s one of the things I want to define, is what exactly is a rising dollar? And it’s not bullish. And I’m certainly not of the position that most dollar bulls take, which is that the dollar goes up because the US is going to strengthen either economically, financially, or otherwise. I think that’s just not the case. So if we couch these in terms of the Eurodollar system and its continued decay, it’s not a bullish thing. But I think the dollar continues to go up, at least for the next little while. Because, frankly, there is nothing there to take its place.

     

    So we’re kind of stuck with it.

    Moving on, while Yusko didn’t feel comfortable attaching an expected expiration date for global dollar hegemony, he did draw some interesting parallels between the dollar and the British pound, the global reserve currency that immediately preceded the dollar.

    You know, the interesting thing about world reserve currency is there have been lots of them over time. And I always joked that Americans are like Notre Dame football fans – they remember a past that never was. Notre Dame football fans think that we win all the time, which, clearly, we don’t. I was down in Miami. That was horrible.

     

    And, you know, Americans think that we’ve always been the world reserve currency, for some reason. And we clearly haven’t. It’s only been since 1944. What’s interesting about that is the transition can last a long time. The sun never set on the British Empire for 70 years. They had the world reserve currency. They had the strongest navy.

     

    And then in 1913 they invaded Mesopotamia, incurred a bunch of debt, the pound sterling collapsed, the dollar ascended. We, 31 years later, became the world reserve currency. And then in 2013, we (coincidentally) invaded Mesopotamia, incurred a bunch of debt, the dollar collapsed, and the Renminbi ascended.

     

    Well, that hasn’t all happened yet. But I think it’s on its way to happening. And when I look around the world, I think it’s supremely clear that China has a plan. And for the last 50 years, their stated goal was a harmonious rise.

     

    Doesn’t that sound poetic? It’s beautiful. It’s non-confrontational.

    Ultimately, Yusko believes the Chinese yuan will replace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency sometime before 2050, the time by which Yusko expects China will become the dominant global power.

    This contrasts with the consensus view, that, after the dollar, there won’t be one dominant currency, but several in separate spheres of influence.

    The conversation is part one of a five-part series from MacroVoices exploring the dollar’s future as the world’s dominant currency.

    Readers can listen to the whole conversation below:

    The podcast targeting pro finance and sophisticated investors, hosted by Hedge Fund Manager Erik Townsend

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