Dec 26

Today’s News 26th December 2017

  • Paul Craig Roberts' Christmas Column 2017: The Greatest Gift Of All

    Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

    Dear Donors, thank you for your support in 2017. Although you have kept me working yet another year, I find it encouraging that there are some Americans who can think independently and who want to know. As Margaret Mead said, it only takes a few determined people to change the world. Perhaps some of you will be those people.

     

    My traditional Christmas column goes back to sometime in the 1990s when I was a newspaper columnist. It has been widely reprinted at home and abroad. Every year two or three readers write to educate me that religion is the source of wars and persecutions. These readers confuse religion with mankind’s abuse of institutions, religious or otherwise. The United States has democratic institutions and legal institutions to protect civil liberties. Nevertheless, we now have a police state. Shall I argue that democracy and civil liberty are the causes of police states?

    Some readers also are confused about hypocrisy. There is a vast difference between proclaiming moral principles that one might fail to live up to and proclaiming immoral principles that are all too easy to keep.

     

    Liberty is a human achievement. We have it, or had it, because those who believed in it fought to achieve it. As I explain in my Christmas column, people were able to fight for liberty because Christianity empowered the individual.

     

    The other cornerstone of our culture is the Constitution. Indeed, the United States is the Constitution. Without the Constitution, the United States is a different country, and Americans a different people. This is why assaults on the Constitution by the regimes in Washington are assaults on America that are far worse than any assaults by terrorists. There is not much that we can do about these assaults, but we should not through ignorance enable the assaults or believe the government’s claim that safety requires the curtailment of civil liberty.

     

    In a spirit of goodwill, I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a successful New Year.

     

    Paul Craig Roberts

    The Greatest Gift For All

    Christmas is a time of traditions. If you have found time in the rush before Christmas to decorate a tree, you are sharing in a relatively new tradition. Although the Christmas tree has ancient roots, at the beginning of the 20th century only 1 in 5 American families put up a tree. It was 1920 before the Christmas tree became the hallmark of the season. Calvin Coolidge was the first President to light a national Christmas tree on the White House lawn.

    Gifts are another shared custom. This tradition comes from the wise men or three kings who brought gifts to baby Jesus. When I was a kid, gifts were more modest than they are now, but even then people were complaining about the commercialization of Christmas. We have grown accustomed to the commercialization. Christmas sales are the backbone of many businesses. Gift giving causes us to remember others and to take time from our harried lives to give them thought.

    The decorations and gifts of Christmas are one of our connections to a Christian culture that has held Western civilization together for 2,000 years.

    In our culture the individual counts. This permits an individual person to put his or her foot down, to take a stand on principle, to become a reformer and to take on injustice.

    This empowerment of the individual is unique to Western civilization. It has made the individual a citizen equal in rights to all other citizens, protected from tyrannical government by the rule of law and free speech. These achievements are the products of centuries of struggle, but they all flow from the teaching that God so values the individual’s soul that he sent his son to die so we might live. By so elevating the individual, Christianity gave him a voice.

    Formerly only those with power had a voice. But in Western civilization people with integrity have a voice. So do people with a sense of justice, of honor, of duty, of fair play. Reformers can reform, investors can invest, and entrepreneurs can create commercial enterprises, new products and new occupations.

    The result was a land of opportunity. The United States attracted immigrants who shared our values and reflected them in their own lives. Our culture was absorbed by a diverse people who became one.

    In recent decades we have lost sight of the historic achievement that empowered the individual. The religious, legal and political roots of this great achievement are no longer reverently taught in high schools, colleges and universities or respected by our government. The voices that reach us through the millennia and connect us to our culture are being silenced by “Identity Politics,” “political correctness” and “the war on terror.” Prayer has been driven from schools and Christian religious symbols from public life. Constitutional protections have been diminished by hegemonic political ambitions. Indefinite detention, torture, and murder are now acknowledged practices of the United States government. The historic achievement of due process has been rolled back. Tyranny has re-emerged.

    Diversity at home and hegemony abroad are consuming values and are dismantling the culture and the rule of law. There is plenty of room for cultural diversity in the world, but not within a single country. A Tower of Babel has no culture. A person cannot be a Christian one day, a pagan the next and a Muslim the day after. A hodgepodge of cultural and religious values provides no basis for law – except the raw power of the pre-Christian past.

    All Americans have a huge stake in Christianity. Whether or not we are individually believers in Christ, we are beneficiaries of the moral doctrine that has curbed power and protected the weak.

    Power is the horse ridden by evil. In the 20th century the horse was ridden hard, and the 21st century shows an increase in pace. Millions of people were exterminated in the 20th century by National Socialists in Germany and by Soviet and Chinese communists simply because they were members of a race or class that had been demonized by intellectuals and political authority. In the beginning years of the 21st century, hundreds of thousands of Muslims in seven countries have been murdered and millions displaced in order to extend Washington’s hegemony.

    Power that is secularized and cut free of civilizing traditions is not limited by moral and religious scruples. V.I. Lenin made this clear when he defined the meaning of his dictatorship as “unlimited power, resting directly on force, not limited by anything.” Washington’s drive for hegemony over US citizens and the rest of the world is based entirely on the exercise of force and is resurrecting unaccountable power.

    Christianity’s emphasis on the worth of the individual makes such power as Lenin claimed, and Washington now claims, unthinkable. Be we religious or be we not, our celebration of Christ’s birthday celebrates a religion that made us masters of our souls and of our political life on Earth. Such a religion as this is worth holding on to even by atheists.

    As we enter into 2018, Western civilization, the product of thousands of years of striving, is in decline. Degeneracy is everywhere before our eyes. As the West sinks into tyranny, will Western peoples defend their liberty and their souls, or will they sink into the tyranny, which again has raised its ugly and all devouring head?

  • Is Amazon Killing NYC Retailers Or Is The 'Rent Just Too Damn High?'

    A few weeks ago, the office of Council Member Helen Rosenthal of New York’s 6th District published the results of a business survey conducted on the Upper West Side that showed, among other things, that some 12% of retail store fronts lay vacant. 

    Of the 1,332 storefronts that we surveyed, we identified 1,170 active businesses — 88%.

     

    Twelve percent of storefronts (161) were unoccupied. Please note that “unoccupied” includes recently closed businesses, as well as new spaces that were not yet leased.

     

    Of the major commercial streets, Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue had the highest percentage of empty storefronts. Broadway had the largest number of empty storefronts (57), followed by Amsterdam Avenue (44) and Columbus Avenue (32).

    What’s worse, the survey results revealed that retail vacancies in certain areas of the Upper West Side have nearly doubled over the past 10 years.

    Of course, the fact that bricks-and-mortar retailers are struggling is hardly a new phenomenon…here are just a couple of our recent posts on the topic:

    The question is whether New York City retailers, who have direct access to the wealthiest, and most densely populated, shoppers in the world, are simply succumbing to the ‘Amazon Effect’ like the rest of the country or whether Manhattan landlords are contributing to their own demise by continuously hiking rents while ignoring softening demand in hopes that it goes away?  According to Rosenthal’s office, the ‘blissful ignorance of landlords’ theory should not be underestimated.

    There are many reasons why businesses open and close in our community — major rent increases being a central one. A recent report from the office of State Senator Brad Hoylman cites two separate studies, one estimating that the average commercial rent in Manhattan increased by 34% from 2004 to 2014; and another showing that rents jumped by 42% in Manhattan from 2012 to 2015.

     

    Our office is also aware of instances where building owners have plans to re-develop their properties and are not interested in renting to commercial tenants in the short term.

     

    An added challenge throughout our city is the fact that a significant number of family-owned businesses do not have a successor ready to take over when the owner is ready to retire. Earlier this year, the New York City Public Advocate released a policy brief which reported that an estimated 3,700 businesses across the state close each year due to an owner’s retirement –leading to the loss of over 13,000 jobs annually.

     

    Commercial vacancies are an issue throughout Manhattan. The New York limes reported this summer that sections of Broadway in SoHo had vacancy rates as high as 20%.

    Retail

    But, as The Guardian points out, the key to understanding New York’s soaring retail vacancies might lie in the changing make-up of the city’s landlords.  Unlike prior decades in which more buildings were owned by mom-and-pop operations, today’s Manhattan landlords are more likely to be large institutional investors and/or hedge funds that are unwilling to drop rents to match retail conditions and are more eager to get a markup on their portfolio by leasing to a large, recognizable, luxury tenant.

    “It’s not Amazon, it’s rent,” says Jeremiah Moss, author of the website and book Vanishing New York. “Over the decades, small businesses weathered the New York of the 70s with it near-bankruptcy and high crime. Businesses could survive the internet, but they need a reasonable rent to do that.”

     

    “They are running small businesses out of the city and replacing them with chain stores and temporary luxury businesses,” says Moss.

     

    In Vanishing New York, Moss writes of the toll the evisceration of distinct neighborhoods through real estate over-pricing has on the city. “It’s homogenizing and changing the character of the city,” he says. Even where landlords are offering competitive leases, they are often for two or five years, not the customary 10.

     

    “We’re seeing more stores front emptying, and we’re seeing a lot of turnover where you see spaces fill temporarily and then empty. And it’s continuing to get worse,” he says.

    New York retail property agent Robin Zendell also says it’s just too simple to blame Amazon. “When you see [that] every corner has a bank or a pharmacy, and there is a gym on the second floor, there’s a simple reason for that: people can’t afford the rent. Why did restaurants go to Brooklyn? Because it’s cool? No, because it was cheap, and [because] restaurateurs were sick of giving investors’ money away so they could pay thir rent.”

    Of course, while ‘greedy’ NY landlords are always a convenient scapegoat, we’re going to go out on a limb and suggest that a tripling of online sales as a percent of overall retail over the past 10 years may have something to do with Manhattan’s increasingly vacant store fronts…

  • Assange's Twitter Account Mysteriously Deleted, Reappears Hours Later Under Strange Circumstances

    Update 2: in another odd twist, on Monday morning, the US Navy’s official Twitter account posted just these words in quotes “Julian Assange” which it then quickly deleted. Wikileaks captured a screenshot of the tweet as shown below:

    Shortly after, when the tweet was publicized, the account then tweeted shortly after, around noon that “an inadvertent keystroke by an authorized user of the U.S. Navy Office of Information’s Digitial Media Engagement Team caused the trending term “Julian Assange” to be tweeted from the Navy’s official Twitter account” and in a follow up tweet added that “the inadvertent tweet was briefly posted for a few second before it was quickly deleted by the same authorized user. The inadvertent tweet was sent during routine monitoring of trending topics.“

    Adding to the mystery, in an official statement, WikiLeaks pointed out some “oddities” from Twitter and the US Navy, but noted that apart from increased surveillance at the Ecuadorian embassy, the 46-year-old Australian was fine. “Despite some oddities from the US Navy and Twitter today and increased physical surveillance @JulianAssange’s physical situation at the embassy remains unaltered–confined without charge in violation of two UN rulings requiring the UK to set him free,” the statement read.

    Without clarification from either Twitter or Assange, it’s still unclear what exactly happened to Assange’s Twitter account, and it’s absence prompted some to speculate that he was being silenced by the social media platform. Others have said it was as a promo stunt. Another account purporting to be Assange’s alternate handle claimed his page was deleted by Twitter ahead of publishing a huge new story, but there was no evidence Assange authored that message himself and the account was subsequently deleted.

    * * *

    Update: as of 9:30am ET, the @JulianAssange accounts has returned, although it appears to be a truncated or restored one, which shortly after its reappearance shows just over 1,000 followers.

    A “returned” Assange tweeted the following cartoon.

    Although as Lee Camp pointed out, “the first pic is the account that we were prevented from seeing for over 10 hours. The second is what’s “back.” The bio has changed and the new account is following 24 people …”

     

    * * *

    Julian Assange’s Twitter account was mysteriously deleted on Christmas Eve, leaving perhaps the most important witness in the Trump-Russia investigation cut off from the rest of the world while he sits in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. 

    Attempting to access Assange’s Twitter account results in the following message:

    This page only appears when an account has been deleted, not suspended – by either Twitter or the account owner. 

    It wasn’t clear whether the account was suspended or deleted by Twitter or Assange himself — or why or for how long. Twitter wasn’t commenting

    This tweet by the WikiLeaks Task Force – an official WikiLeaks handle, suggested that people shouldn’t jump to conclusions, as “haters and conspiracy theorists rush to post the usual attention seeking rubbish,” before wishing everyone a Merry Christmas.  

    The official Wikileaks Twitter account was still live but wasn’t mentioning the Assange account.

    According to CBS, an account purporting to be an alternative Assange account was claiming Twitter had deleted his official one ahead of a blockbuster story he’s preparing to break. There was no confirmation that Assange was authoring that alternative account — and that account has now been suspended by Twitter.

    Meanwhile, Journalist Charles Johnson – who traveled with Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) to London to meet with Assange in August, posted the following on Facebook after Assange’s Twitter account went down: 

    Moreover, on December 1, WikiLeaks’ official account tweeted “Merry Christmas from @WikiLeaks” with an embedded video referencing perpetual war, and the hashtags #Yemen #Libya #Iraq #Syria #Pakistan #Afghanistan #Somalia #Ukraine

    Some have suggested that the events are part of some Christmas-linked plan, although so far there has been no confirmation. 

    The account deletion comes on the heels of a break-in last Monday at the Madrid office of WikiLeaks lawyer Baltasar Garzon’s, in what police described as a “very professional” operation. Garzon told El Periodico and Ser magazine “They had not taken what they have been looking for,” and client security “has not been affected,” however police are analyzing his computer equipment to determine whether any files were taken or copied. 

    Hours after the break-in, Julian Assange published a tweet calling a Jimmy Dore video “Brilliant” – prominently featuring Assange’s interview with a Dutch television host in which the WikiLeaks founder strongly implies that slain DNC IT staffer Seth Rich was the source of emails published by WikiLeaks during the 2016 election.  (Assange clip at 21:30)

    During the clip, Assange can be seen nodding his head in response to a question about Rich:

    In August, Congressman Dana Rohrabacher travelled to London with journalist Charles Johnson for a meeting with Assange, where Rohrabacher said the WikiLeaks founder offered “firsthand” information proving that the Trump campaign did not collude with Russia, and which would refute the Russian hacking theory.

    Rohrabacher brought that message back to Trump’s Chief of Staff, John Kelly, to propose a deal. In exchange for a presidential pardon, Assange would share evidence that would refute the Russian hacking theory by proving they weren’t the source of the emails, according to the WSJ. 

    “The possible “deal”—a term used by Mr. Rohrabacher during the Wednesday phone call—would involve a pardon of Mr. Assange or “something like that,” Mr. Rohrabacher said. In exchange, Mr. Assange would probably present a computer drive or other data-storage device that Mr. Rohrabacher said would exonerate Russia in the long-running controversy about who was the source of hacked and stolen material aimed at embarrassing the Democratic Party during the 2016 election.”

     

    ‘He would get nothing, obviously, if what he gave us was not proof,’ Mr. Rohrabacher said.

    When Trump was asked in late September about the Assange proposal, he responded that he’d “never heard” of it, causing Rohrabacher to unleash on John Kelly, who he blamed for blocking the proposal from reaching the President, Rohrabacher told the Daily Caller: 

    “I think the president’s answer indicates that there is a wall around him that is being created by people who do not want to expose this fraud that there was collusion between our intelligence community and the leaders of the Democratic Party,” Rohrabacher told The Daily Caller Tuesday in a phone interview.

     

    “This would have to be a cooperative effort between his own staff and the leadership in the intelligence communities to try to prevent the president from making the decision as to whether or not he wants to take the steps necessary to expose this horrendous lie that was shoved down the American people’s throats so incredibly earlier this year,” Rohrabacher said.

    Contributing to the notion of deep-state interference, CIA director Mike Pompeo referred to WikiLeaks as a “hostile intelligence service” in April, calling Julian Assange “a fraud, a coward hiding behind a screen” for exposing information about democratic governments rather than authoritarian regimes. This quite the ironic statement, considering Pompeo used leaked emails from WikiLeaks as proof “the fix was in” against President Trump. 

     Let’s also not forget Donald Trump proclaiming “I Love Wikileaks!” less than a month before the 2016 election.

    So Julian Assange – ostensibly the most important witness in the Russia hacking investigation, offered to prove that Russia was not the source of the leaked emails in exchange for a pardon. This proposition was conveyed through Rep. Dana Rohrabacher to White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, who Rohrabacher says never allowed the deal to reach Trump for consideration.  Months later, WikiLeaks attorney Baltasar Garzon’s office was raided in a “very professional” operation which is being labeled an attempted robbery. Hours after the break-in, Julian Assange tweets a Jimmy Dore video containing his own strong implication that Seth Rich was the source of the leaked emails, and six days later his Twitter account is gone. 

    That said, tweets directly from the WikiLeaks urge not to jump to conclusions.

    Assange’s account deletion also comes on the heels of several new Twitter rules rolled out on December 18, which many feared was the beginning of a “purge” of conservative accounts over user behavior both on and off the platform. The rules are aimed at people who associate with hate groups that “use or promote violence against civilians to further their causes” – however nothing Assange has done comes close to fitting that description.

    So did Julian Assange delete his Twitter account – and if so, why? Was this yet another rogue Twitter employee lashing out on their last day, as was the case with President Trump’s temporary account deletion in early November? Or did Twitter delete the account of one of the most important figures in the 2016 election. 

  • Jesus Was Born In A Police State

    Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

    The Christmas narrative of a baby born in a manger is a familiar one.

    The Roman Empire, a police state in its own right, had ordered that a census be conducted. Joseph and his pregnant wife Mary traveled to the little town of Bethlehem so that they could be counted. There being no room for the couple at any of the inns, they stayed in a stable, where Mary gave birth to a baby boy, Jesus.

    Unfortunately, Jesus was born into a police state not unlike the growing menace of the American police state. And when he grew up, Jesus did not shy away from speaking truth to power. Indeed, his teachings undermined the political and religious establishment of his day. He was eventually crucified as a warning to others not to challenge the powers-that-be.

    Yet what if, instead of being born into the Roman police state, Jesus had been born and raised in the American police state?

    Rather than traveling to Bethlehem for a census, Jesus’ parents would have been mailed a 28-page American Community Survey, a mandatory government questionnaire documenting their habits, household inhabitants, work schedule, etc.

    Instead of being born in a manger, Jesus might have been born at home. Rather than wise men and shepherds bringing gifts, however, the baby’s parents might have been forced to ward off visits from state social workers intent on prosecuting them for the home birth. One couple in Washington had all three of their children removed after social services objected to the two youngest being birthed in an unassisted home delivery.

    Had Jesus’ parents been undocumented immigrants, they and the newborn baby might have been shuffled to a profit-driven, private prison for illegals where they would have been turned into cheap, forced laborers for corporations such as Starbucks, Microsoft, Walmart, and Victoria’s Secret.

    From the time he was old enough to attend school, Jesus would have been drilled in lessons of compliance and obedience to government authorities, while learning little about his own rights. Had he dared to step out of line while in school, he might have found himself tasered or beaten by a school resource officer, or at the very least suspended under a school zero tolerance policy that punishes minor infractions as harshly as more serious offenses.

    Had Jesus disappeared for a few hours let alone days as a 12-year-old, his parents would have been handcuffed, arrested and jailed for parental negligence.

    From the moment Jesus made contact with an “extremist” such as John the Baptist, he would have been flagged for surveillance because of his association with a prominent activist, peaceful or otherwise. Since 9/11, the FBI has actively carried out surveillance and intelligence-gathering operations on a broad range of activist groups.

    Jesus’ anti-government views would certainly have resulted in him being labeled a domestic extremist. Law enforcement agencies are being trained to recognize signs of anti-government extremism during interactions with potential extremists who share a “belief in the approaching collapse of government and the economy.”

    While traveling from community to community, Jesus might have been reported to government officials as “suspicious” under the Department of Homeland Security’s “See Something, Say Something” programs.

    Rather than being permitted to live as an itinerant preacher, Jesus might have found himself threatened with arrest for daring to live off the grid or sleeping outside. In fact, the number of cities that have resorted to criminalizing homelessness by enacting bans on camping, sleeping in vehicles, loitering and begging in public has doubled.

    Viewed by the government as a dissident and potential threat to its power, Jesus might have had government spies planted among his followers to monitor his activities, report on his movements, and entrap him into breaking the law. Such Judases today—called informants—often receive hefty paychecks from the government for their treachery.

    Had Jesus used the internet to spread his radical message of peace and love, he might have found his blog posts infiltrated by government spies attempting to undermine his integrity, discredit him or plant incriminating information online about him. At the very least, he would have had his website hacked and his email monitored.

    Had Jesus attempted to feed large crowds of people, he would have been threatened with arrest for violating various ordinances prohibiting the distribution of food without a permit. Florida officials arrested a 90-year-old man for feeding the homeless on a public beach.

    Had Jesus spoken publicly about his 40 days in the desert and his conversations with the devil, he might have been labeled mentally ill and detained in a psych ward with no access to family or friends.

    Without a doubt, had Jesus attempted to overturn tables in a Jewish temple and rage against the materialism of religious institutions, he would have been charged with a hate crime. Currently, 45 states and the federal government have hate crime laws on the books.

    Rather than having armed guards capture Jesus in a public place, government officials would have ordered that a SWAT team carry out a raid on Jesus and his followers, complete with flash-bang grenades and military equipment. There are upwards of 80,000 such SWAT team raids carried out every year.

    Had anyone reported Jesus to the police as being potentially dangerous, he might have found himself confronted—and killed—by police officers for whom any perceived act of non-compliance (a twitch, a question, a frown) can result in them shooting first and asking questions later.

    Charged with treason and labeled a domestic terrorist, Jesus might have been sentenced to a life-term in a private prison where he would have been forced to provide slave labor for corporations or put to death by way of the electric chair or a lethal mixture of drugs.

    Either way, as I show in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, whether Jesus had been born in our modern age or his own, he still would have died at the hands of a police state.

    Remember, what happened on that starry night in Bethlehem is only part of the story. That baby in the manger grew up to be a man who did not turn away from evil but instead spoke out against it, and we must do no less.

  • NSA Whistleblower Snowden Launches Mobile App For Paranoid People

    Famed NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden has just launched Haven, an app for people to transform any Android smartphone into a high-tech security system for detecting intrusions.

    Snowden, while currently on the run from the CIA, hiding somewhere in Moscow until 2020, has found enough time to launch his new mobile security app last Friday for the sufficiently paranoid person (e.g. activists, dissidents, journalists, & etc).

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

    Haven is designed to be installed on any Android smartphone, particularly inexpensive and older devices. It operates like a home surveillance system, leveraging on-device sensors to provide surveillance of physical areas. Sensors within the Android phone monitor motion, sound, vibration and light, watching for unwanted guests to notify a user. Combining Haven with an array of sensors in any smartphone, coupled with the most secure communications technologies like Signal and Tor, the app is providing Snowden and other activists around the world with a mobile security system.

    The app was developed by Freedom of the Press Foundation, Guardian Project, and Snowden. According to the Guardian Project, the app’s prototype funding was provided by FoPF, and donations to support continuing work can be contributed through their site: https://freedom.press/donate-support-haven-open-source-project/.

    According to the Guardian Project, this is how the app works,

    Haven only saves images and sound when triggered by motion or volume, and stores everything locally on the device. You can position the device’s camera to capture visible motion, or set your phone somewhere discreet to just listen for noises. Get secure notifications of intrusion events instantly and access the logs remotely or anytime later.

    On-device sensors monitor for disturbance, and then logs the data:

    • Accelerometer: phone’s motion and vibration
    • Camera: motion in the phone’s visible surroundings from front or back camera
    • Microphone: noises in the environment
    • Light: change in light from ambient light sensor
    • Power: detect device being unplugged or power loss

    Further, the group explains why Haven is well suited for Android devices and does make the claim, a version for the iPhone is on the horizon.

    While we hope to support a version of Haven that runs directly on iOS devices in the future, iPhone users can still benefit from Haven today. You can purchase an inexpensive Android phone for less than $100, and use that as your “Haven Device”, that you leave behind, while you keep your iPhone with you. If you run Signal on your iPhone, you can configure Haven on Android to send encrypted notifications, with photos and audio, directly to you. If you enable the “Tor Onion Service” feature in Haven (requires installing “Orbot” app as well), you can remotely access all Haven log data from your iPhone, using the Onion Browser app. So, no, iPhone users we didn’t forget about you, and hope you’ll pick up an Android burner today for a few bucks!

    If one of the sensors was triggered, a notification would be sent to one of the following platforms:

    • SMS: a message is sent to the number specified when monitoring started
    • Signal: if configured, can send end-to-end encryption notifications via Signal

     

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    As for Snowden, he remains in an asylum somewhere in Moscow until 2020 when his residence permit expires.

    With the launch of Haven, it seems as Snowden is attempting to change the calculus of risk for when US authorities come hunting for him once more.

    If all else fails, Snowden might have just invented a baby monitor for the broke millennial. 

  • Man Arrested For Punching Wells Fargo ATM: "It Gave Him Too Much Money"

    Call it the holiday’s token bizarro incident: according to Florida Today, a 23-year-old man who told police he punched a Wells Fargo ATM because it gave him too much cash, was arrested after bank officials said the attack caused at least $5,000 in damages, which elevated the inexplicable and idiotic temper tantrum into a felony crime.

    Michael Oleksik, 23, 5’11”, 155lbs, of Rockledge, FL; charges: Criminal mischief >$1000.

    Cocoa police charged Michael Joseph Oleksik, of Merritt Island, on Friday with criminal mischief nearly a month into the investigation of a disturbance at the Wells Fargo bank branch at 834 N. Cocoa Boulevard, in Cocoa. According to authorities, Oleksik could be seen on surveillance video standing at the ATM, pummeling the electronic teller’s touch screen on Nov. 29.

    A short time later, an apologetic Oleksik called the bank and told a manager that he punched the ATM because he was “angry the ATM was giving him too much money and he did not know what to do,” Florida Today reported. Oleksik then explained that he was in a hurry for work and apologized for the damage to the bank’s ATM.

    While Oleksik’s behavior may appear irrational at first glance, a quick look at his arrest record, which reveals not only domestic violence charges, but also disorderly drug intoxication and resisting and intimidating a police officer, and suddenly his vendetta with the ATM makes sense.

    Wells Fargo – clearly distraught at the treatment one of its ATM machines was subjected to – contacted the Cocoa Police Department and asked to press charges. Oleksik was arrested Friday and booked into the Brevard County Jail Complex in Sharpes.

  • Is Christmas Inefficient?

    Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Mises Institute,

    After hundreds of years of attacks on Christmas, economists have finally gotten into the act.

    Yale University’s Joel Waldfogel, writing in the American Economic Review, condemns what he calls “The Deadweight Loss of Christmas.” Once you cut through the calculus and graphs, his conclusion is clear: though Christmas generates a $50 billion gift-giving industry, a tenth to a third of that is sheer loss. Why? Because the recipient doesn’t always get what he wants. Given the chance, the recipient would have purchased something else.

    All of this follows directly from his underlying theory. In neoclassical economics, the consumer is best off when he chooses, within his means, the highest-rank good or service on his “utility” scale. If he can afford a steak, and he has to settle for a hot dog because the restaurant is out of t-bone, he experiences dead-weight loss. It’s even worse if he has to pay the price of steak and gets a wiener instead.

    So it is with gifts. They generate a net loss, this theory says, unless the recipient would have otherwise purchased, with his own cash, precisely what he unwraps. Of course, this is rarely the case. To provide empirical meat to his theory, Professor Waldfogel interviewed students. The students received an average of $438 in gifts, for which these kids reported they would have paid only $313 if they had done the shopping themselves. The gap narrows when the gift is from a friend, and widens when it’s from the family.

    Imagine Mr. Waldfogel attending your next Christmas gathering. Aunt Janie gives her nephews soap-on-a-rope, and they all praise her for her generosity and thoughtfulness. The economist then prods the youngsters to ‘fess up that soap-on-a-rope isn’t so great after all, and with the $9.95, they would have bought the newest Spice Girls tape. He declares the gathering a waste and encourages the party to break up in the interest of everyone’s economic welfare.

    Professor Waldfogel proposes that we could eliminate these losses, which could be as high as $13 billion per year, by giving money instead of gifts, and letting the recipient spend it as he chooses. But then why not take matters one step further? What is the point of all this shuffling around of cash in the first place? According to neoclassical theory, it would be far better if everyone just clung to his own bank account and spent his own money as he saw fit. Indeed, we’d all be better off economically if Christmas were merely abolished—heck, maybe the Congress should do it—until such time as we all have perfect knowledge of each other’s preferences and are willing to act on them.

    Far from being one man’s opinion, this thesis is becoming a classic “extra credit” question on microeconomics tests. Waldfogel is only distinguished for having formalized the model and tested it against his own students’ experience. The conclusion allows economists to presume they are smarter than the mass of the buying public, which persists in the irrational habit of buying things for each other instead of sending money or, even better, just spending it on themselves.

    So, what’s wrong with the theory? Plenty. It equates personal utility with dollars spent, the classic conflation of value and price. In fact, a gift is a special kind of good with its own value. For example, we value the soap from the Aunt precisely because of its tie-in with familial affection. Even if the recipient would never have bought it, his personal utility is enhanced by the knowledge that his extended family is thinking about him and cares enough to give.

    The source matters. If soap were given by a classmate who complains that you are odoriferously challenged, the “gift” is an insult in disguise. It has negative value. “Rich gifts wax poor when the givers prove unkind,” writes Shakespeare, who seemed to have a more complete view of economics than Professor Waldfogel. Neither is the person who receives a gift purchased under duress likely to be grateful. People on long-term welfare, for example, tend to think of taxpayers as suckers.

    A comment later published in the same journal picked up on this. The authors (one from Harvard, one from the University of Miami) also did an empirical test. They used a different method (asking students about prices of specific gifts, not whole bundles), a larger sample of students (209 instead of 78), and asked more detailed questions. The results were the opposite of Waldfogel’s. The authors showed that more than half valued the gift above its retail price, suggesting that Christmas giving actually represents a gain in social welfare.

    Moreover, these authors found that gifts asked for were less valued than gifts that were not. This fits with experience: we’re pleased to get what we want, but especially appreciative when we like something we had not expected. Indeed, good gift shoppers think about this ahead of time. They buy someone a tie he would never buy for himself. They buy items the receiver might be too modest or frugal to purchase himself, even if he had the resources.

    Some items are just gifts and nothing more: fancy soaps, paisley boxer shorts, blankets with school logos, coffee cups printed with witty slogans, and the like. That’s why there can be such things as “gift shops” as distinguished from regular stores. Gifts have a different value because they are altogether different goods. They embody not only themselves but also their meaning. Imagine if someone came to dinner, and instead of bringing a bottle of wine, gave you $15 and told you to spend it on anything you wanted. It’s just not the same.

    For his part, Waldfogel responds by accusing the authors of biasing their results. The very nature of their survey questions encouraged students to report “sentimental value” instead of pure “material value.” Going back to the drawing board, and correcting for this and other supposed errors, Waldfogel surveyed another group of students—455 this time—and still found a dead-weight loss, less than before, but a substantial one nonetheless. Christmas is inefficient: that’s his story and he’s sticking to it.

    Of course there is no way to decouple one kind of value from another kind of value, since all economic value is ultimately subjective. Surveys can’t reveal what people value; only action in the marketplace does that. What’s deeply odd about this wrangling is that everyone seems to agree that only the value to the recipient should matter. That leaves out the really crucial point of gift giving: that it benefits the giver as well as the receiver.

    People feel good in being generous, especially towards family and friends. Giving is an act of charity and liberality, virtues people practice because they’re good for the soul. And even if they aren’t, economists should follow the rule of “demonstrated preference”: if a person gives a gift, it is because he preferred giving the gift to keeping his own money. The action is “utility enhancing” on its own terms. Why? Because it, as opposed to something else, took place. Value is revealed in the preferences people demonstrate voluntarily. A well-chosen gift also reveals something about ourselves: we care enough to make our affections known in a personal way.

    Again, the problem of the welfare state presents itself. In its form of “charity,” people do not give voluntarily. So resistant are people to dumping billions of dollars on millions of freeloaders, that the government has to threaten them with fines and jail terms (that’s what taxation is) to get them to fork over this “gift.” No one demonstrates a preference for the welfare state (voting doesn’t count since people are not using their own resources to purchase the services for which they vote). This degree of redistribution has to be imposed. Taxation, in contrast to Christmas, is a clear example of a utility-reducing activity.

    But economists of the neoclassical school have rarely bothered with such distinctions. Their theories leave little room for reflection on property rights, individual choice, and the distinction between market exchange and forced redistribution. For them, a mathematically determined standard of efficiency is the only test that matters. Not even an absurd conclusion—for instance, that giving gifts is inefficient—causes them to rethink their core theory.

    Economists are hardly alone in this. Skeptics and opponents of the market economy have long had a beef with the idea of giving and charity, especially as it occurs at Christmas.

    Perhaps the socialists have long understood something about Christmas that others, even advocates of the market, have overlooked. In the institution of the gift, we find a strong rationale for the establishment and protection of private property and the capitalist economy. In order to give, we must first produce, acquire, own.

    G.K. Chesterton, a great defender of Christmas against English Puritans who regarded it as corrupt and pagan, observed that collective ownership would mean the end of voluntary giving. Moreover, he clarified, “giving is not the same as sharing: giving is the opposite of sharing. Sharing is based on the idea that there is no property, or at least no personal property. But giving a thing to another man is as much based on personal property as keeping it to yourself.”

    And contrary to the complaints of materialism at Christmas, meaningful gifts can be as elaborate as gold, frankincense, and myrrh, or as humble as two fish and five loaves.

    It’s no wonder, then, that history’s dreariest socialists have denounced Christmas. The economic core of its gift giving centers on private property, while its ethical core belies the claim that private property institutionalizes greed.

    “There is the greatest pleasure in doing a kindness or service to friends or guests or companions,” wrote Aristotle in The Politics, “which can only be rendered when a man has private property. These advantages are lost by excessive unification of the state…. No one, when men have all things in common, will any longer set an example of liberality or do any liberal action; for liberality consists in the use which is made of property.”

    As for intellectuals—economists no less—who have failed to understand this simple truth, it’s staggering to think of the dead-weight loss their ideas have imposed on society.

  • What's The Greatest Christmas Movie Of All Time?

    The news cycle this year was so hectic – particularly around the holidays – that Americans were apparently too overwhelmed to engage in that perennial holiday pastime: Arguing over which Christmas movie is the best Christmas movie.

    Luckily, Axios teamed up with SurveyMonkey to create this (unscientific) poll of people’s Christmas movie preferences, broken down by gender. A Christmas Story nabbed the top spot for both genders.

    A few bona fide Christmas classics were notably absent from the results: Love Actually, Scrooged, National Lampoon’s Christmas and the Nightmare Before Christmas, to name a few.

     

  • Christmas In Venezuela: What It's Like After Socialism Destroys Your Country

    Authored by Daisy Luther via The Organic Prepper blog,

    The situation in Venezuela is grim and not getting any better.

    A socialist government has destroyed what used to be one of the healthiest economies in the world and turned it into something for which few were prepared. As we get ready for the holidays here in America, with our usual spending frenzies and feasts, Christmas in Venezuela is looking a lot different than it did a mere decade ago. Maybe some of the young people who think socialism is the answer to all our societal woes will read this and realize that this form of government doesn’t work – it destroys all hope.

    Last week, I got an email from a prepper named J.G. Martinez D, or Jose. He offered to send me some on-the-ground articles for as long as the internet is up and running. I thought, given the season, that it would be interesting to follow up the interview with Selco regarding his SHTF Christmas with an interview about Christmas in Venezuela. Jose is one of the few people in Venezuela who was a prepper before this collapse happened so his perspective is quite valuable.

    Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

    I am an upper middle class, professional former worker of the oil state company, in my 40s. A Bachelor’s degree from one of the best national Universities. I have a small 4 members family, plus two cats and a dog. An old but in good shape SUV, a good 150 square meters house in a nice neighborhood, in a small but (formerly) prosperous city with two middle size malls. Everything in the period 2004-2012 was just fine. After that period, the economy started a declining trend that has been increasing faster each week.

    Being a prepper, and having experienced two major similar crisis in my lifetime (civil turmoil 1989, and Caracas coup d’état in 1992), inspired me to find a second (and even a third) income source and some months’ worth of food at home. I started to write for a Forex blog, and earning some extra cash for preppings: a genset, (now used twice weekly because of the power cuts) additional freezers, a CNC machine for a home-based small business, and some professional audio equipment for voice over and podcast broadcasting, another economical activity that I enjoy, after my career in the oil company stopped. A water tank with a concrete base (the power cuts stop the water supply pumping system), and reinforced bars for the windows, enclosing the patio for security, and some other improvements.

    This has allowed my family to deal with most of the terrible situation in Venezuela. I am now outside the country, planning for the exile of my family. I know things are going to get a lot worse before they start to get better, and don´t want them there once the shooting begins.

    Tell me a little bit about the traditions in Venezuela. What was Christmas like before the economic collapse?

    Christmas in Venezuela was one of the most popular times of the year, after school holidays. A lot of people, mostly in the big cities, went to the beach to enjoy those free days. Venezuelans are very family-oriented people. For us, Christmas is a season for being with family even in the entire year we have not been able to visit them. There was an exodus from one side of the country to the other one, people traveling in all directions to gather with their beloved ones, mainly from the big cities to the province states.

    Since December 1st, shops, coffees, restaurants, houses, entire subdivisions and streets, government offices, schools, and all kind of business were decorated and the traditional “Nacimientos” or representations of baby Jesus birth in the crib, with Saint Joseph, virgin Maria, and the three wizard kings. There were contests with the most elaborated Nacimiento would be the winner. And the traditional living Nacimiento.

    The general environment was a happy one, one of hope and confidence in the future. One of our Christmas carols, called “gaita” totally unrelated to the western anglophone ones, are played with drums and all kind of instruments, and for the untrained ears, it could sound something like merengue. It has been a totally pleasant surprise for the foreigners to come to a church for the services and find people dancing and singing traditional songs. Lights and all kind of ornaments hanged from doors, walls, windows and every imaginable place.

    Malls were full with people buying all kind of presents, and temporary employment was a permanent need for the merchants since the first day of December.  All kind of toys and kid’s articles were sold even in the streets, for the baby Jesus birth night.

    Many people piled up their mattresses, pots, and pans in the family car, heading for wonderful vacation destinations like Isla Margarita, with lots of beautiful beaches, or the mountains in Merida, in Los Andes. Another tradition is buying new clothing and or shoes (“estrenos”) for the 24, 25, and 31 December evening, to dress up in dinner while the children played with their new toys, and receiving the new year with the best new clothing to ask for prosperity.

    How have the traditions you described above changed now that there is very little money?

    Without money, and cash scarcity, traveling is very hard. Many people have restricted their family gatherings. Prices of bus tickets are very high for the common person, and airplane tickets are a joke. 75% of the national flights fleet is on hold because of lack of maintenance.

    I have not known of anyone with kids in the last 4 years that could buy a new attire for themselves to use on the 24 and 31 December nights. Most of the available money is for 24/31 December dinner, or kid’s toys, if any.

    Many kids these years have received a very simple toy, instead of those most expensive and fancy ones. And many others have not been able to receive any toy at all. They have seen people looking inside the garbage bags for food, and despite their age they seem to understand what is happening and don’t ask for expensive toys to baby Jesus, leaving the parents to relieve some pressure and get them whatever they can.

    However, the hard part is that many kids were used to going to visit their grandparents, and nowadays this kind of family trips are just not possible. There is no cash, collapsed transportation, no parts for the family cars. You get the picture.

    What was your traditional Christmas dinner before?

    Our family Christmas dinner includes roasted pork leg, with olives and capers; a special loaf of bread (“pan de jamon”) with lots of olives, ham, bacon, and capers inside, and hen salad, with potatoes, carrots, mayonnaise, petit pois, the very unique and traditional “Hallaca”. This is sort of an envelope with banana leaves, filled up with a tasty mixture: beef and pork stew, olives, boiled eggs (recipe varies with the region, East, Center, West, and/or the origin of the family), surrounded by a mass elaborated with the corn flour, the same we use for the arepas. It was common to cook about 150 or 200 hallacas for a 4-person family.

    For bigger families, everyone collaborated with money and the hallacas-making was a team labor, with over 10 people or more, and the result was 1200 or 1500 hallacas. A family of four, like us, with 100 hallacas, a roasted leg, and a huge bowl of hen salad in our extra freezer, we would eat hallacas and Christmas food until middle January!

    Normally, since my childhood, in our table on Christmas Eve, there were grapes, apples, dried fruits, raisins, nuts, and even hazelnuts. Most of these were imported (we only grow grapes in some places), but there were plenty of all this in the middle class tables the Christmas and New Year eve. For dessert, a sweet called “dulce de lechoza”, made with slices of green papaya, boiled with lots of sugar and clove, served with a slice of Christmas cake, a cake with raisins, chocolate, dried fruits and some rum, called “Torta negra” or Black Cake. There is a very traditional punch, mainly for ladies, called “Ponche Crema”, with a secret recipe invented 140 years ago by Eliodoro Gonzalez, a chemist from Caracas.

    Of course, most of the people could afford a whisky bottle. Most of the time we had some cider for the New Years Eve toast to receive the incoming year; people who could afford it bought champagne.

    Before, it was common for someone who was shopping or just passing by, to go to wish a merry Christmas to a friend and receive a plastic bag with 6 or 8 hallacas “so you can taste them”, and some “Dulce de lechoza” or Torta Negra.

    What are families eating for Christmas dinner now?

    Nowadays, families are mostly eating beans and lentils, whenever they can be found, and white rice, sometimes hard to find. Middle class made an extra effort for at least one hallaca for each member of the family at the Christmas dinner eve, and mostly bought to people who makes a temporary business by preparing, cooking and selling hallacas. Those who can afford to make hallacas at home are not too many, and people does not give away hallacas to friends and family so often. The most easy meal for Christmas dinner seems to be just the hen salad. There are no wheat flour at fair prices for ham bread or cake, nor olives or other ingredients at affordable prices. Instead of a complete pork leg, some people just buy (if they can find it)some pork meat and roast it in the oven, just for Christmas Eve.

    Fortunately last year we had bought a lot of staples for hallacas and other things for the dinner in August, like a small frozen pork leg and flour, and we were able to deal not just the high prices, but the scarcity as well. Our Christmas dinner was a very normal one, a little bit sad, as you may suppose. A lot of neighbors have left the country, and their houses were empty and silent. The subdivision main street once filled with kids in bicycles, dogs and people with babies, now looks like a ghost town.

    What kind of gifts are people giving this year? How are they acquiring them?

    Pricing of the toys, after 18 years of currency control exchange, makes them extremely hard to afford. Families with many children just don’t buy toys, or new clothing. All the money goes for feeding needs, if some staples can be found somewhere.

    Old toys, in good shape, are sold in garage sales, mainly from struggling middle class people, but that was the last two years…because the middle class is running away from the country. People who can’t afford to buy new toys just trade work hours, or buy used cheaper toys. With a pair of shoes costing several minimum wages, many people is not buying anything else but basic staples. Other people who really wants to give something are using as gifts previously used items. There is not enough money in people’s hands.

    Prepping allowed us to get the toys for our child early, in September, so we are not with the last minute rush.

    How are children dealing with the changes during the holiday season? Is it easier or more difficult for them than the adults?

    Many children are pretty aware of the situation. Middle class kids have noticed the people roaming in the streets and ripping the garbage bags looking for something to eat, and asking for bread, money or something outside bakeries, malls and supermarkets.

    They have come to understand, the hard way, that everyone is having a rough time, and they are lucky to have a good house, that their relatives (mostly) still have a car they can use (many of middle class families cars are awaiting for non-affordable spare parts like tires, batteries or others).

    This said, children know that anything Baby Jesus or Santa could bring along is a plus. It is touching to read that in their letters, they have asked for toys as well for the poor children. They see their parent’s faces arriving at home with a couple of grocery bags, and hear the adults conversations about the crisis. It is has been very hard for many of them. I have known by mouth of a psychologist friend of us that his little patients (he works mainly with children) are having nightmares and night terrors associated to what they see on the streets. Everyone is having a hard time.

    What are some of the creative solutions that people are coming up with to make the holidays special?

    People are trying to deal with the situation by means of making clear to the kids that what is important is being healthy, and that the family is all together, for instance. But the most needy are having a harsh time.

    Some people has risen chickens for Christmas dinner, in whatever space they had available, but with the danger to be robbed. Other people puts together whatever cash they can find, scarce as well, and buy in bakeries all the ham bread and other stuff, to resell in the streets.

    They generate scarcity in the bakeries, and inflate the prices to awesome levels. I have known that in coastal towns like those all around Margarita Island, they are using fish in the Hallacas, instead of beef and pork, for example. And instead of hen salad, sardines salad. My wife is using some sugar substitutes, as a traditional cane juice.

    Are politics/government affecting the holidays in any way? Are they providing any type of relief or treats for families? Are they offering any suggestions to make this time of year more special?

    Sure, they are trying to wash their nasty face with handouts. The relief, or treats was a Christmas bonus for those holding that carnet imposed by the Government to their supposed followers, and it was not even for all of the carnet holders neither.

    They openly offered pork legs, toys and other goodies at low prices for those who vote for the Socialist Party. Of course this was all lies. The goodies are for the NGs, for the riot police, and the military who suffocated the recent demonstrations with over 130 persons killed.

    Do you have any stories you could share of post-collapse Christmas in Venezuela?

    The worst of the collapse has not been seen yet. But it is quite remarkable to notice that in other countries, the rush for electronic appliances sales generate turmoil in the stores, meanwhile in Venezuela it is the access to basic staples.

    My wife was casually in a small supermarket a few days ago, when unexpectedly a couple of employees started nervously to stack powdered milk in the shelves. This is one of the most precious staples in Venezuela, much more than the liquid milk, for reasons known only to Venezuelans, and that I myself can´t explain despite being a Venezuelan. Maybe the low price, and that it can be stashed for a long time.

    So there were some soldiers custodying the supermarket, and ask the people to make a line. Suddenly, a large amount of people invaded the supermarket, and pushed aside the two employees, who fell to the ground under the avalanche of people. My wife took the kid to her side, just on time so the horde would not push him and knock him to the ground and step on him. My wife, terrified with that scene, once she was able to move around to get if she could get a package, stood next to a soldier. My kid look at the soldier and, innocently asked with his little voice if he could get him some milk for his cereal. The soldier look down on the kid, and just patted his little head, with a knot in his throat, looking at my wife with a sense of impotence.

    Would you be prepared?

    The stories of Christmas in Venezuela should be eye-opening to anyone who is trying to get prepared for a long-term event.

    The way that life has changed there is stark, dramatic, and something that could happen in any country in which the government turns to socialism. Would you be prepared for life in a collapse situation? Would you be able to provide special things for those you love to make the holidays a little bit happier?

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