Jul 25

Today’s News 25th July 2018

  • The Danes Are Europe's Biggest Wasters

    Data released by Eurostat shows that across Europe, levels of municipal waste generation vary considerably between countries.

    Infographic: The Europeans Generating The Most Waste | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    Broken down by kilograms per capita, municipal waste generation is highest in Denmark at 777 kg in 2016.

    Romania was at the opposite end of the scale with just 261 kg in 2016.

  • Sweden's Turbulent Election Year

    Authored by Fjordman via The Gatestone Institute,

    Sweden’s general election on September 9 looks set to become the most interesting the country has had in years. Concerns over mass immigration and rampant crime are redefining the political landscape.

    For the first time in more than a hundred years, the Social Democrats may be dethroned as the country’s largest political party. By Swedish standards, this constitutes a political earthquake.

    Concerns in Europe over crime and mass immigration have been changing the political atmosphere, from Italy to Germany. Now, these developments may finally have caught up with Sweden as well.

    The Social Democrats in Sweden are not just any political party. They have shaped Swedish political and cultural life for generations. At the peak of their power, they dominated Swedish society to such an extent that the country almost resembled a one-party state. They have been the largest party in all national elections for more than a century. From the 1930s until the early 1990s, they received more than 40% of the vote. Several times during this period, they got more than 50% of the votes and held an overall majority of the seats in the Swedish Parliament (Riksdag). They received 45.2 % of the votes as late as in 1994, and 39.9 % in 2002.

    In most opinion polls from mid-2018, the Social Democrats received between 22% and 28% support. If they get 24% of the votes in the 2018 general elections, this will still make them a major party – but it would also be the worst election result the Swedish Social Democratic Party has had since 1912.

    The main challenger is the nationally-oriented party known as the Sweden Democrats (SD). The SD entered the Swedish Parliament for the first time in 2010. In 2014, they received 12.9% of votes and became the third largest party, after the Social Democrats and the Moderate Party.

    The Moderates have promoted mass immigration just as much as the Social Democrats have when they held power. Disaffection with immigration has thus affected the two largest establishment parties.

    Jimmie Åkesson, who has served as the leader of the SD since 2005, stated in an interview from July 2018 that he is certain the Sweden Democrats will become the largest political party in Sweden. Perhaps in 2018; if not, later. The Sweden Democrats have clearly become a force to be reckoned with.

    His optimism is not without merit. Several polls have shown the SD to surpass the Moderates to become the second largest party. A couple of opinion polls from 2018 have even suggested that the SD could surpass the Social Democrats and becomethe largest party in Sweden with up to 28.5 % support.

    Stefan Löfven, who led the Social Democratic Party since 2012, has been Prime Minister of Sweden since 2014, heading a minority coalition government consisting of the Social Democrats and the Green Party. Löfven is widely perceived as not being a particularly strong leader. It caused concern among the Social Democrats when Löfven was openly laughed at by the audience during a TV debate with other party leaders in May 2018.

    Sweden’s Prime Minister Stefan Löfven is widely perceived as not being a particularly strong leader. It caused concern among the Social Democrats when Löfven was openly laughed at by the audience during a TV debate in May 2018. Pictured: Löfven at a European Union summit on December 14, 2017. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

    The election could leave an unpredictable political situation in Sweden. One possibility is that the Social Democrats and the Moderates, the two traditionally largest parties, could team up and form a coalition government together.

    This would be comparable to how the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) have been in power together in Germany since 2013. The major establishment parties largely agree on major issues concerning the EU, mass immigration, Islam and Multiculturalism. It may make sense for them to team up together to prevent dissenting voices from gaining power.

    The decline of the Social Democrats in Sweden mirrors the decline of their sister parties in other European countries, such as Germany and the Netherlands. This wider trend cannot be attributed to one person alone, and has also opened up room for movements to the right of the SD.

    This year, a new party called Alternative for Sweden (Alternativ för Sverige, AfS) entered the election campaign. Its name is clearly inspired by the Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland, AfD), which, during the elections in 2017, became the third-largest party in Germany.

    Several former members of the Sweden Democrats, such as the writer Jan Milld, have defected to the AfS, as have several former SD Members of Parliament. Even the party leader of Alternative for Sweden, Gustav Kasselstrand, has a background in the Sweden Democrats.

    During an interview with Voice of Europe last month, Kasselstrand stated:

    “What you read about Sweden on alternative news platforms is true. We are facing problems more severe than ever before in our history, where Swedes face a situation of being a minority within 20 years if nothing is done to stop the replacement of our people. I would describe the problems in Sweden as a kind of low-intensity civil war (with gradually increasing intensity each day). What makes the situation even more difficult is, of course, the extreme political correctness that has haunted Sweden for decades, but which is now finally breaking up.”

    Kasselstrand and the Alternative for Sweden argue that the policies of the Sweden Democrats are no longer sufficient to deal with Sweden’s problems with violent crime and public gang shootings. The AfS want to end immigration completely and to start repatriating hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, criminal aliens and immigrants who burden Swedish society in one way or another.

    Meanwhile, some established parties such as the Green Party feel that Swedish immigration policies are too restrictive. They want even more immigration than today. However, this view no longer seems to be popular with the voters. The Green Party is currently struggling to maintain their seats in Parliament.

    Mass immigration has created an atmosphere of extreme polarization in Swedish society. These tensions will not go away regardless of the election results in September. Political change finally seems to be coming to Sweden.

  • Army Selects Firms To Design Next High-Tech Assault Rifle For "Decades Of Hybrid Wars"

    The United States Army is preparing for decades of hybrid wars across multiple domains – space, cyberspace, air, land, and, maritime. Back in October, we examined the Army’s latest Training and Doctrine Command report, which highlights how the next round of hybrid wars could begin somewhere around 2025 and last through 2040.

    Currently, the Army is in a transitional period [quiet period] before the next round of wars start. President Trump has infused the Pentagon with more than $700 billion this fiscal year, in the attempt to plug significant gaps and expand emerging technologies. For instance, the Army has made it clear that it will replace its three decades old M249 light machine gun and the Colt M4 Modular Weapon System Carbine, with a lightweight and higher chamber pressure assault rifle.

    Back in March, we documented how the Army selected the Textron/AAI Corp. LSAT (Lightweight Small Arms Technologies) Cased Telescoped Machine Gun, a new high-tech assault rifle that can release a high rate of specialty designed bullets with as much chamber pressure as an M1A2 Abrams tank to pierce through the world’s most advanced body armor, into the Next Generation Squad Automatic Rifle (NGSAR) program.

    AAI Corp. and Textron have been developing some of the world’s most advanced assault rifles for a dozen or more years, in hopes to be the defense contractor that replaces the Army’s M249.

    Now it seems Textron is not alone. According to the Prototype Opportunity Notice (PON) for NGSAR, the U.S. Army Contracting Command-New Jersey (ACC-NJ), on behalf of Project Manager Soldier Weapons, awarded six (6) separate Fixed Priced, Full and Open Competition (F&OC), Prototype OTA’s to:

    • AAI Corporation Textron Systems – Hunt Valley, MD; OTA W15QKN-18-9-1017

    • FN America LLC. – Columbia, SC; OTA’s W15QKN-18-9-1018 & W15QKN-18-9-1019

    • General Dynamics-OTS Inc. – Williston, VT; OTA W15QKN-18-9-1020

    • PCP Tactical, LLC – Vero Beach, FL; OTA W15QKN-18-9-1021

    • Sig Sauer Inc. – Newington, NH; OTA W15QKN-18-9-1022

    “These Prototype OTA’s will be for the manufacture and development of a Next Generation Squad Automatic Rifle (NGSAR) system demonstrator representative of a Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 6 and Manufacturing Readiness Level (MRL) 6. The expected Prototype OTA duration is twelve months after award. The Prototype OTA’s were awarded on 25 June 2018,” stated the PON. Following each manufactures submission of their prototype weapons, there will be an open competition, where each gun manufacture hopes their weapon outperforms the rest and ultimately replaces the M249.

    In a Textron press release, the company states the prototype will be based on their cased-telescoped weapons and ammunition portfolio.

    Wayne Prender, vice president of Applied Technologies & Advanced Programs at Textron Systems, spoke with Military.comabout his firm’s prototype weapon and the NGSAR program.

    “We are leveraging and building upon our lineage of lightweight squad weapon technologies that we have been working on over the last 14 years,” he said.

    Prender said his firm was notified in late June of the contract award to deliver “one prototype weapon, one fire control system and 2,000 rounds of ammunition within 12 months.”

    The NGSAR program also wants gun manufacturers to decrease the weight of the ammunition by at least 20 percent. According to Military.com, Textron has invested large sums of money into its case-telescoped ammunition technology.

    “The futuristic cartridges – featuring a plastic case rather than a brass one to hold the propellant and the projectile, like a conventional shotgun shell – offer significant weight reductions compared to conventional ammo,” said Military.com.

    Despite Textron’s vast experience in defense, Prender reveals it could be quite challenging to deliver what the Army wants.

    “They have some pretty aggressive goals with respect to lethality and weight and size and some other performance characteristics,” he said. “All of those things individually may be relatively easy but, when you start stacking them all together, that is really where it becomes complex and you need a new design.”

    Pender was not at liberty to discuss the specifics about the prototype Textron is submitting but said: “we are taking lessons from all of our case-telescoped projects to include the 5.56mm, 7.62mm, and the intermediate caliber — all that information is informing this new design.”

    “There is not an easy button here. Certainly, we think our case-telescoped solution is an ideal one to meet these requirements … but there is development that is necessary over and above what we have done to date,” he added.

    In case you are wondering what the next high-tech assault rifle could look like, well, watch this video: 

  • "Making Shit Up" – The US Intelligence Community As 'Collapse Driver'

    Authored by Dmitry Orlov via Club Orlov blog,

    In today’s United States, the term “espionage” doesn’t get too much use outside of some specific contexts. There is still sporadic talk of industrial espionage, but with regard to Americans’ own efforts to understand the world beyond their borders, they prefer the term “intelligence.” This may be an intelligent choice, or not, depending on how you look at things.

    First of all, US “intelligence” is only vaguely related to the game of espionage as it has been traditionally played, and as it is still being played by countries such as Russia and China. Espionage involves collecting and validating strategically vital information and conveying it to just the pertinent decision-makers on your side while keeping the fact that you are collecting and validating it hidden from everyone else.

    In eras past, a spy, if discovered, would try to bite down on a cyanide capsule; these days torture is considered ungentlemanly, and spies that get caught patiently wait to be exchanged in a spy swap. An unwritten, commonsense rule about spy swaps is that they are done quietly and that those released are never interfered with again because doing so would complicate negotiating future spy swaps. In recent years, the US intelligence agencies have decided that torturing prisoners is a good idea, but they have mostly been torturing innocent bystanders, not professional spies, sometimes forcing them to invent things, such as “Al Qaeda.” There was no such thing before US intelligence popularized it as a brand among Islamic terrorists.

    Most recently, British “special services,” which are a sort of Mini-Me to the to the Dr. Evil that is the US intelligence apparatus, saw it fit to interfere with one of their own spies, Sergei Skripal, a double agent whom they sprung from a Russian jail in a spy swap. They poisoned him using an exotic chemical and then tried to pin the blame on Russia based on no evidence. There are unlikely to be any more British spy swaps with Russia, and British spies working in Russia should probably be issued good old-fashioned cyanide capsules (since that supposedly super-powerful Novichok stuff the British keep at their “secret” lab in Porton Down doesn’t work right and is only fatal 20% of the time).

    There is another unwritten, commonsense rule about spying in general: whatever happens, it needs to be kept out of the courts, because the discovery process of any trial would force the prosecution to divulge sources and methods, making them part of the public record. An alternative is to hold secret tribunals, but since these cannot be independently verified to be following due process and rules of evidence, they don’t add much value.

    A different standard applies to traitors; here, sending them through the courts is acceptable and serves a high moral purpose, since here the source is the person on trial and the method—treason—can be divulged without harm. But this logic does not apply to proper, professional spies who are simply doing their jobs, even if they turn out to be double agents. In fact, when counterintelligence discovers a spy, the professional thing to do is to try to recruit him as a double agent or, failing that, to try to use the spy as a channel for injecting disinformation.

    Americans have been doing their best to break this rule. Recently, special counsel Robert Mueller indicted a dozen Russian operatives working in Russia for hacking into the DNC mail server and sending the emails to Wikileaks. Meanwhile, said server is nowhere to be found (it’s been misplaced) while the time stamps on the files that were published on Wikileaks show that they were obtained by copying to a thumb drive rather than sending them over the internet. Thus, this was a leak, not a hack, and couldn’t have been done by anyone working remotely from Russia.

    Furthermore, it is an exercise in futility for a US official to indict Russian citizens in Russia. They will never stand trial in a US court because of the following clause in the Russian Constitution: “61.1 A citizen of the Russian Federation may not be deported out of Russia or extradited to another state.” Mueller may summon a panel of constitutional scholars to interpret this sentence, or he can just read it and weep. Yes, the Americans are doing their best to break the unwritten rule against dragging spies through the courts, but their best is nowhere near good enough.

    That said, there is no reason to believe that the Russian spies couldn’t have hacked into the DNC mail server. It was probably running Microsoft Windows, and that operating system has more holes in it than a building in downtown Raqqa, Syria after the Americans got done bombing that city to rubble, lots of civilians included. When questioned about this alleged hacking by Fox News, Putin (who had worked as a spy in his previous career) had trouble keeping a straight face and clearly enjoyed the moment. He pointed out that the hacked/leaked emails showed a clear pattern of wrongdoing: DNC officials conspired to steal the electoral victory in the Democratic Primary from Bernie Sanders, and after this information had been leaked they were forced to resign. If the Russian hack did happen, then it was the Russians working to save American democracy from itself. So, where’s the gratitude? Where’s the love? Oh, and why are the DNC perps not in jail?

    Since there exists an agreement between the US and Russia to cooperate on criminal investigations, Putin offered to question the spies indicted by Mueller. He even offered to have Mueller sit in on the proceedings. But in return he wanted to question US officials who may have aided and abetted a convicted felon by the name of William Browder, who is due to begin serving a nine-year sentence in Russia any time now and who, by the way, donated copious amounts of his ill-gotten money to the Hillary Clinton election campaign. In response, the US Senate passed a resolution to forbid Russians from questioning US officials. And instead of issuing a valid request to have the twelve Russian spies interviewed, at least one US official made the startlingly inane request to have them come to the US instead. Again, which part of 61.1 don’t they understand?

    The logic of US officials may be hard to follow, but only if we adhere to the traditional definitions of espionage and counterespionage—“intelligence” in US parlance—which is to provide validated information for the purpose of making informed decisions on best ways of defending the country. But it all makes perfect sense if we disabuse ourselves of such quaint notions and accept the reality of what we can actually observe: the purpose of US “intelligence” is not to come up with or to work with facts but to simply “make shit up.”

    The “intelligence” the US intelligence agencies provide can be anything but; in fact, the stupider it is the better, because its purpose is allow unintelligent people to make unintelligent decisions. In fact, they consider facts harmful—be they about Syrian chemical weapons, or conspiring to steal the primary from Bernie Sanders, or Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, or the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden—because facts require accuracy and rigor while they prefer to dwell in the realm of pure fantasy and whimsy. In this, their actual objective is easily discernible.

    Their objective of US intelligence is to suck all remaining wealth out of the US and its allies and pocket as much of it as possible while pretending to defend it from phantom aggressors by squandering nonexistent (borrowed) financial resources on ineffective and overpriced military operations and weapons systems. Where the aggressors are not phantom, they are specially organized for the purpose of having someone to fight: “moderate” terrorists and so on. One major advancement in their state of the art has been in moving from real false flag operations, à la 9/11, to fake false flag operations, à la fake East Gouta chemical attack in Syria (since fully discredited). The Russian election meddling story is perhaps the final step in this evolution: no New York skyscrapers or Syrian children were harmed in the process of concocting this fake narrative, and it can be kept alive seemingly forever purely through the furious effort of numerous flapping lips. It is now a pure confidence scam. If you are less then impressed with their invented narratives, then you are a conspiracy theorist or, in the latest revision, a traitor.

    Trump was recently questioned as to whether he trusted US intelligence. He waffled.

    A light-hearted answer would have been:

    “What sort of idiot are you to ask me such a stupid question? Of course they are lying! They were caught lying more than once, and therefore they can never be trusted again. In order to claim that they are not currently lying, you have to determine when it was that they stopped lying, and that they haven’t lied since. And that, based on the information that is available, is an impossible task.”

    A more serious, matter-of-fact answer would have been:

    “The US intelligence agencies made an outrageous claim: that I colluded with Russia to rig the outcome of the 2017 presidential election. The burden of proof is on them. They are yet to prove their case in a court of law, which is the only place where the matter can legitimately be settled, if it can be settled at all. Until that happens, we must treat their claim as conspiracy theory, not as fact.”

    And a hardcore, deadpan answer would have been:

    “The US intelligence services swore an oath to uphold the US Constitution, according to which I am their Commander in Chief. They report to me, not I to them. They must be loyal to me, not I to them. If they are disloyal to me, then that is sufficient reason for their dismissal.”

    But no such reality-based, down-to-earth dialogue seems possible. All that we hear are fake answers to fake questions, and the outcome is a series of faulty decisions. Based on fake intelligence, the US has spent almost all of this century embroiled in very expensive and ultimately futile conflicts. Thanks to their efforts, Iran, Iraq and Syria have now formed a continuous crescent of religiously and geopolitically aligned states friendly toward Russia while in Afghanistan the Taliban is resurgent and battling ISIS—an organization that came together thanks to American efforts in Iraq and Syria.

    The total cost of wars so far this century for the US is reported to be $4,575,610,429,593. Divided by the 138,313,155 Americans who file tax returns (whether they actually pay any tax is too subtle a question), it works out to just over $33,000 per taxpayer. If you pay taxes in the US, that’s your bill so far for the various US intelligence “oopsies.”

    The 16 US intelligence agencies have a combined budget of $66.8 billion, and that seems like a lot until you realize how supremely efficient they are: their “mistakes” have cost the country close to 70 times their budget. At a staffing level of over 200,000 employees, each of them has cost the US taxpayer close to $23 million, on average. That number is totally out of the ballpark! The energy sector has the highest earnings per employee, at around $1.8 million per. Valero Energy stands out at $7.6 million per. At $23 million per, the US intelligence community has been doing three times better than Valero. Hats off! This makes the US intelligence community by far the best, most efficient collapse driver imaginable.

    There are two possible hypotheses for why this is so.

    First, we might venture to guess that these 200,000 people are grossly incompetent and that the fiascos they precipitate are accidental. But it is hard to imagine a situation where grossly incompetent people nevertheless manage to funnel $23 million apiece, on average, toward an assortment of futile undertakings of their choosing. It is even harder to imagine that such incompetents would be allowed to blunder along decade after decade without being called out for their mistakes.

    Another hypothesis, and a far more plausible one, is that the US intelligence community has been doing a wonderful job of bankrupting the country and driving it toward financial, economic and political collapse by forcing it to engage in an endless series of expensive and futile conflicts—the largest single continuous act of grand larceny the world has ever known.

    How that can possibly be an intelligent thing to do to your own country, for any conceivable definition of “intelligence,” I will leave for you to work out for yourself. While you are at it, you might also want to come up with an improved definition of “treason”: something better than “a skeptical attitude toward preposterous, unproven claims made by those known to be perpetual liars.”

  • 5.4 Million Americans Will Cut The Cord In 2018, New Report Warns

    Cg42, a boutique consulting firm, has published its latest “2018 Cord Cutter & Cord Never Study,” which builds on several reports by providing an in-depth analysis of both US consumers who opted out of subscription-based Paid-TV service in the last several years (i.e., Cord Cutters) as well as US consumers who have never subscribed to paid-TV service (i.e., Cord Nevers).

    This installment, the first of three reports, forecasts that 5.4 million consumers will cut the cord in 2018, a shocking move that could cost the Pay-TV industry $5.5 billion in lost subscription revenue. This is undoubtedly an acceleration of the trend, compared to 4.8 million in 2017, 3.8 million in 2016, and 3.0 million in 2015.

    “As the process of finding alternative paths to content gets easier and easier, people are acting on the frustrations they have with traditional providers and leaving,” the study’s lead researcher and cg42 managing partner Stephen Beck told MarketWatch.

    MarketWatch said Beck’s consulting firm conducted the online survey in September 2017 of 3,385 U.S. consumers — asking them a series of questions about viewing habits. Thirty percent of respondents said they had opted out of a pay-TV service in the past two years and 18 percent had never subscribed to one.

    Cg42 discovered that Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu Plus were among some of the most popular streaming services that Cord Cutters and Cord Nevers used.

    The report was published on Monday right before Netflix’s stock crashed, as subscriber growth slowed; its cash burn soared, and financial outlook slashed.

    • At the end of 2015, for example, Netflix had 75 million subscribers. But its Free Cash Flow was NEGATIVE $920 million.

    • The following year, Netflix had grown its subscriber base to 93 million. Yet its Free Cash Flow had sunk even further to negative $1.65 billion.

    • By the end of 2017, Netflix subscribers totaled 117 million. But the company burned through $2.02 billion

    Nevertheless, Netflix has managed to attract millions of Americans through its massive debt-fueled binge on premium content. In short, the streaming company had been nominated for a whopping 112 Emmy awards, more than any other network. However, it lost more than $17 million for each of its awards, making it an unstable company.

    It seems like Netflix and other premium streaming services are intentionally destroying the existing ecosystem. This is most evident in the collapse of subscribers for pay-TV companies:

    “Comcast may lose 7.2 percent of its subscriber base, or around 1.5 million customers this year, costing the company $1.6 billion in revenue, cg42 found. AT&T/DirecTV is expected to lose 4.8 percent of its customers, or more than 1.1 million subscribers for a potential $1.2 billion hit. Cox could lose 7.9 percent of its subscribers, or around 317,000 people, costing the company $324 million,” said MarketWatch.

    The report specified that the Millennial and Gen X cohorts are the leading influencer in the cord-cutting phenomenon. A large part of millennials (between 22-37 years of age) identified as Cord Nevers, or people who had never subscribed to pay TV. Hidden prices, excessive channels, limited premium content, outlandish prices, commercials, and hidden charges were some of the top frustration among the younger generations.

    If Cg42 is correct, 5.4 million Americans who are most likely stuck in the gig-economy and do not even realize their standard of living is collapsing — could soon be Cord Cutters by the end of the year. Hell, if these broke Americans can save some money before the next recession, then why not?

  • The "Petroyuan" Might Save Nigeria And Avert Another Migrant Crisis

    Authored by Andrew Korybko via Oriental Review,

    China has expressed a readiness to increase its investments in Nigeria’s oil industry.

    The China National Offshore Oil Corporation has plans to pump another $3 billion into this sphere on top of the $14 billion in assets that it already has in the West African state, which is a huge move that indicates its intent to challenge the US and India for influence in Africa’s most populous country.

    Washington is Abuja’s top military partner, albeit a conditional one that can’t always be counted on for help, while New Delhi is its largest energy partner, but what China’s seeking to do is leverage its interconnected oil and financial policies in order to ultimately become Nigeria’s most important developmental one.

    The announcement that China intends to increase its energy investments in Nigeria by over a fifth follows a $2.4 billion currency swap deal in early May, which while seemingly not a lot in absolute terms, is designed to strengthen the future prospects for the so-called “petroyuan” by tying Africa’s largest oil producer to the petrodollar’s worst enemy.

    This strategy is expected to dovetail with the several rail corridors that China wants to build in Nigeria in order to make the country the most important node along the vast Sahelian-Saharan Silk Road megaproject that it’s gradually constructing, which is envisioned to lift the world’s greatest concentration of extremely impoverished people out of their misery.

    Time is of the essence, however, since Nigeria is a ticking time bomb of Hybrid War unrest beset by multisided problems stemming from its geopolitical origin as the union of two previously separate British colonies. Whether it’s Boko Haram in the arid northeast, so-called “Biafra” militants in the lush Niger Delta, or ethno-religious conflicts between herding and farming communities in the arable “Middle Belt”, Nigeria is quickly becoming overwhelmed with so many security challenges that the only hope for resolving them all is to introduce a sustainable developmental solution in the afflicted regions such as the type that China envisions through its Silk Road strategy there.

    Connecting Nigeria to the emerging Multipolar World Order through China’s interlinked oil, financial, and developmental deals is a step in the right direction, but it’ll nevertheless take more than the “petroyuan” and railroads to save this failing state, but if Beijing is successful, then it might also end up saving Europe from the Migrant Crisis 2.0 that would inevitably be catalyzed if Africa’s most populous country collapsed.

  • Violent Mob Beats Trump Supporter At Oakland Protest Before Chasing Group Down The Street

    A shocking video has gone viral of an alleged member of The Proud Boys being beaten by a mob of angry protesters at an Oakland vigil, following the Sunday night stabbing of 18-year-old Nia Wilson at a BART station. The Proud Boys, a conservative activist group, had previously scheduled a gathering for Monday according to Indybay.  

    Bystanders can be heard shouting “f–k that n–ga, f–k his a– up” while somebody tapes the confrontation. Police sirens are heard blaring in the background as the crowd continues to viciously pummel the alt right member. –Heavy

    The group was then chased down the street before police intervened.

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    Hundreds of protesters gathered at the MacArthur BART station for Wilson’s vigil. The suspect, 27-year-old John Cowell, was arrested on Monday evening and booked into Alameda County’s Santa Rita Jail shortly before midnight.

    Nia’s sister Latifah was also stabbed, however she survived what protesters believe was a racially motivated hate crime. 

    The protesters began their vigil with chants of: “No Justice! No Peace!” and “Justice for Nia!” Meanwhile, speakers called on the protesters to take action, defend and protect Black women, and support the grieving family of the Wilson sisters, according to Indybay.

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  • Moon-Strzok No More, Lisa Page Spills The Beans

    Authored by Ray McGovern via ConsortiumNews.com,

    The meaning of a crucial text message between two FBI officials appears to have been finally explained, and it’s not good news for the Russia-gate faithful…

    Former FBI attorney Lisa Page has reportedly told a joint committee of the House of Representatives that when FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok texted her on May 19, 2017 saying there was “no big there there,” he meant there was no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

    It was clearly a bad-luck day for Strzok, when on Friday the 13th this month Page gave her explanation of the text to the House Judiciary and Oversight/Government Reform Committees and in effect threw her lover, Strzok, under the bus.

    Strzok’s apparent admission to Page about there being “no big there there” was reported on Friday by John Solomon in the Opinion section of The Hill based on multiple sources who he said were present during Page’s closed door interview.

    Strzok’s text did not come out of the blue. For the previous ten months he and his FBI subordinates had been trying every-which-way to ferret out some “there” — preferably a big “there” — but had failed miserably. If Solomon’s sources are accurate, it is appearing more and more likely that there was nothing left for them to do but to make it up out of whole cloth, with the baton then passed to special counsel Robert Mueller.

    The “no there there” text came just two days after former FBI Director James Comey succeeded in getting his friend Mueller appointed to investigate the alleged collusion that Strzok was all but certain wasn’t there. 

    Strzok during his public testimony earlier this month.

    Robert Parry, the late founder and editor of Consortium News whom Solomon described to me last year as his model for journalistic courage and professionalism, was already able to discern as early as March 2017 the outlines of what is now Deep State-gate, and, typically, was the first to dare report on its implications. 

    Parry’s article, written two and a half months before Strzok texted the self-incriminating comment to Page on there being “no big there there,” is a case study in professional journalism. His very first sentence entirely anticipated Strzok’s text: “The hysteria over ‘Russia-gate’ continues to grow … but at its core there may be no there there.”(Emphasis added.) 

    As for “witch-hunts,” Bob and others at Consortiumnews.com, who didn’t succumb to the virulent HWHW (Hillary Would Have Won) virus, and refused to slurp the Kool-Aid offered at the deep Deep State trough, have come close to being burned at the stake — virtually. Typically, Bob stuck to his guns: he ran an organ (now vestigial in most Establishment publications) that sifted through and digested actual evidence and expelled drivel out the other end.

    Those of us following the example set by Bob Parry are still taking a lot of incoming fire — including from folks on formerly serious — even progressive — websites. Nor do we expect a cease-fire now, even with Page’s statement (about which, ten days after her interview, the Establishment media keep a timorous silence). Far too much is at stake.

    As Mark Twain put it, “It is easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” And, as we have seen over the past couple of years, that goes in spades for “Russia-gate.” For many of us who have looked into it objectively and written about it dispassionately, we are aware, that on this issue, we are looked upon as being in sync with President Donald Trump.

    Blind hatred for the man seems to thwart any acknowledgment that he could ever be right about something—anything. This brings considerable awkwardness. Chalk it up to the price of pursuing the truth, no matter what bedfellows you end up with.

    Courage at The Hill 

    Page: Coughs up the meaning of ‘there.’

    Solomon’s article merits a careful read, in toto. Here are the most germane paragraphs:

    “It turns out that what Strzok and Lisa Page were really doing that day [May 19, 2017] was debating whether they should stay with the FBI and try to rise through the ranks to the level of an assistant director (AD) or join Mueller’s special counsel team. [Page has since left the FBI.] 

    “‘Who gives a f*ck, one more AD [Assistant Director] like [redacted] or whoever?’” Strzok wrote, weighing the merits of promotion, before apparently suggesting what would be a more attractive role: ‘An investigation leading to impeachment?’ …

    “A few minutes later Strzok texted his own handicap of the Russia evidence: ‘You and I both know the odds are nothing. If I thought it was likely, I’d be there no question. I hesitate in part because of my gut sense and concern there’s no big there there.’

    “So the FBI agents who helped drive the Russia collusion narrative — as well as Rosenstein’s decision to appoint Mueller — apparently knew all along that the evidence was going to lead to ‘nothing’ and, yet, they proceeded because they thought there was still a possibility of impeachment.”

    Solomon adds: “How concerned you are by this conduct is almost certainly affected by your love or hatred for Trump. But put yourself for a second in the hot seat of an investigation by the same FBI cast of characters: You are under investigation for a crime the agents don’t think occurred, but the investigation still advances because the desired outcome is to get you fired from your job. Is that an FBI you can live with?”

    The Timing

    As noted, Strzok’s text was written two days after Mueller was appointed on May 17, 2017. The day before, on May 16,The New York Times published a story that Comey leaked to it through an intermediary that was expressly designed (as Comey admitted in Congressional testimony three weeks later) to lead to the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Hmmmmm.

    Had Strzok forgotten to tell his boss that after ten months of his best investigative efforts — legal and other—he could find no “there there”?

    Comey’s leak, by the way, was about alleged pressure from Trump on Comey to go easy on Gen. Michael Flynn for lying at an impromptu interrogation led by — you guessed it — the ubiquitous, indispensable Peter Strzok.

    In any event, the operation worked like a charm — at least at first. And — absent revelation of the Strzok-Page texts — it might well have continued to succeed. After Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein named Mueller, one of Comey’s best buddies, to be special counsel, Mueller, in turn, picked Strzok to lead the Russia-gate team, until the summer, when the Department of Justice Inspector General was given the Strzok-Page texts and refused to sit on them.

    A Timeline

    Here’s a timeline, which might be helpful:

    2017

    May 16: Comey leak to NY Times to get a special counsel appointed

    May 17: Special counsel appointed — namely, Robert Mueller.

    May 19: Strzok confides to girlfriend Page, “No big there there.”

    July: Mueller appoints Strzok lead FBI Agent on collusion investigation.

    August: Mueller removes Strzok after learning of his anti-Trump texts to Page.

    Dec. 12: DOJ IG releases some, but by no means all, relevant Strzok-Page texts to Congress and the media, which firstreports on Strzok’s removal in August.

    2018

    June 14: DOJ IG Report Published.

    June 15; Strzok escorted out of FBI Headquarters.

    June 21: Attorney General Jeff Sessions announces Strzok has lost his security clearances.

    July 12: Strzok testifies to House committees. Solomon reports he refused to answer question about the “there there” text.

    July 13: Lisa Page interviewed by same committees. Answers the question.

    Earlier: Bob Parry in Action

    Journalist Robert Parry

    On December 12, 2017, as soon as first news broke of the Strzok-Page texts, Bob Parry and I compared notes by phone. We agreed that this was quite big and that, clearly, Russia-gate had begun to morph into something like FBI-gate. It was rare for Bob to call me before he wrote; in retrospect, it seemed to have been merely a sanity check.

    The piece Bob posted early the following morning was typical Bob. Many of those who click on the link will be surprised that, last December, he already had pieced together most of the story. Sadly, it turned out to be Bob’s last substantive piece before he fell seriously ill. Earlier last year he had successfully shot downother Russia-gate-related canards on which he found Establishment media sorely lacking — “Facebook-gate,” for example.

    Remarkably, it has taken another half-year for Congress and the media to address — haltingly — the significance of Deep State-gate — however easy it has become to dissect the plot, and identify the main plotters. With Bob having prepared the way with his Dec.13 article, I followed up a few weeks later with “The FBI Hand Behind Russia-gate,” in the process winning no friends among those still suffering from the highly resistant HWHW virus.

    VIPS

    Parry also deserves credit for his recognition and appreciation of the unique expertise and analytical integrity among Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) and giving us a secure, well respected home at Consortium News.

    It is almost exactly a year since Bob took a whole lot of flak for publishing what quickly became VIPS’ most controversial, and at the same time perhaps most important, Memorandum For the President; namely, “Intelligence Veterans Challenge ‘Russia Hack’ Evidence.”

    Critics have landed no serious blows on the key judgments of that Memorandum, which rely largely on the type of forensic evidence that Comey failed to ensure was done by his FBI because the Bureau never seized the DNC server. Still more forensic evidence has become available over recent months soon to be revealed on Consortium News, confirming our conclusions.

  • Congress Officially Blocks F-35 Shipments To Turkey After Mattis Pleads Not To

    It finally happened, even after Defense Secretary Jim Mattis urged Congress not to bar Turkey from purchasing the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II stealth fighter, arguing in a letter sent to lawmakers as they deliberated the move that such a drastic action would trigger an international “supply chain disruption” that would push costs for the already exorbitant $100 million aircraft higher.

    On Tuesday Congress inserted a ban on planned F-35 Joint Strike Fighter deliveries to Turkey’s military into the final draft of the Pentagon’s budget blueprint for the upcoming fiscal year.

    Over the past year there’s been increased wrangling and noise over the program to equip Turkey with the advanced fighter jet as US-Turkey relations have steadily deteriorated and as Turkish President President Recep Tayyip Erdogan appears to have come into Russia’s geopolitical orbit.

    The key stumbling block to Turkey obtaining the F-35s that it has already paid for is Ankara’s moving forward on acquisition of Russian S-400 air defense systems.

    The House and Senate adopted the legislation after months of State Department warnings to Turkey that “there will be consequences” should its S-400 contract with Russia, said to be worth $2.5 billion, continue moving forward into acquisition phase.

    State Department officials have gone so far as to warn of sanctions in recent months, rare to the point of being unheard of when it comes to NATO allies, specifically over fears that Russia would get access to the extremely advanced Joint Strike Fighter stealth aircraft, enabling Moscow to detect and exploit its vulnerabilities. Thus Russia would ultimately learn how the S-400 could take out an F-35. 

    However, the ban is only temporary, until such time as the Pentagon delivers “an assessment of a significant change in Turkish participation in the F-35 program, including the potential elimination of such participation,” according to the language in the legislation.

    Turkey for its part, has previously warned that should the bill become law “it will absolutely retaliate” in the words of Foreign Minister Prime Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, who explained it was wrong to impose such a restriction on a military ally, alluding to the fact that Turkey has graciously allowed the US to use its Encirlik air base to launch its air strikes against ISIS (as well as against Turkey’s enemy the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad).

    In retrospect, Turkey’s veiled threats fell on deaf ears, reflecting not only US unwillingness to cooperate with any counterparty that does concurrent deals with Russia, but also increasing tension with a NATO ally, in a move that blocked the sale of 100 warplanes worth close to $10bn.

    In addition to the broader geopolitical tensions resulting from the Russian S-400 issue, Congressional Defense lawmakers also demanded the immediate release of U.S. Pastor Andrew Brunson, and as the bill’s language reads, any other “U.S. citizens wrongfully or unlawfully detained in Turkey” and improved human rights under an increasingly authoritarian Turkish state. 

    Pastor Andrew Brunson

    Pastor Brunson, who was detained in 2016, faces charges including espionage and aiding terrorist groups after being accused of cooperating with “Kurdish terrorists” and colluding with the Gulenist Islamic movement; he faces up to 35 years in prison if found guilty.

    American diplomats have previously warned the arrest is part of the Turkish government’s policy of “hostage diplomacy” and further said the issue could trigger unprecedented sanctions. President Trump has also personally called for Brunson’s release in public statements. 

    The defense spending bill will next head to the White House for Trump’s signature.

    In late June, Lockheed Martin and US officials held an ostentatious “roll out” ceremony in Fort Worth to mark the symbolic handover of the first F-35 jet to Turkey; however, clearly the advanced stealth multi-role fighter isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

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