Today’s News 27th August 2018

• "Not Commercially Viable" – British Airways, Air France, KLM Axe Flights To Iran

  British Airways announced Thursday it plans to stop service to Tehran after its last scheduled flight on September 22. 

  A British Airways (BA) spokesperson announced the move, which comes after the latest round US sanctions went into effect against Iran this month: “We are suspending our London to Tehran service as the operation is currently not commercially viable.”

  

  “We are sorry for any disruption this may cause to our customers’ travel plans and we are in discussions with our partner airlines to offer customers rebooking options,” the airline said further. “Alternatively, they will be offered a full refund or the opportunity to bring their flights forward,” the BA representative said. 

  BA London to Tehran service was re-launched in September 2016 after a four-year absence due to worsening British-Iran relations, and now with the return of tensions over Washington’s pullout of the Iran nuclear deal last May, it appears the airline’s forward bookings have taken a significant hit. 

  Earlier this month the US warned Britain that it must back the Trump White House’s tough stance on Iran or “face serious trade consequences”. 

  

  Meanwhile Air France and KLM have also announced the cancellation all flights to Tehran, with the last Air France flight on Sept. 18. Air France had already drastically cut its operations to Iran as it transferred all connections to its low-cost airline Joon this summer, and was down to one flight per week from the prior usual of three. 

  And Dutch airline KLM had previously announced last month the suspension of all flights from Amsterdam, set to also take place in September. 

  They join a growing list of other major firms that have recently curbed or halted business in Iran include French energy giant Total, Germany’s Siemens, French and German automotive manufacturers PSA and Daimler, the world’s largest shipping firm Maersk, French aircraft manufacturer Airbus, Germany’s engineering and rail consortium Deutsche Bank, as well as the German insurer Allianz..

  * * *

  On August 7 the US imposed Phase 1 of a series of sanctions against Iran.

  At a glance, these cover:

  • Auto industry: Carmakers who also operate in the US market must pull out of Iran, currently the world’s 12th-largest car market.

  • Gold and precious metals: Ban on selling these substances to Iran, which will cause difficulty for the country’s investors looking to safeguard their wealth against the falling rial.

  • US banknotes: Stepping up pressure on Iran’s central bank as it attempts to stabilise its currency.

  • Aviation: Cancellation of US sales of civil aviation planes and parts to upgrade Iran’s ageing commercial fleet.

  • Other key industries: Ban on US imports of Iranian carpets, pistachios and farmed caviar.

  And on November 7th phase 2 takes effect, mainly targeting Iran’s oil exports, which could prove the final death blow to Iran’s already downward spiraling economy.

  

• Russian Grand Strategy Revisited

  Authored by Andrei Martyanov via Unz.com,

  We live in the world of models, all kinds of them. Some models are simple, others – very complex. The main task of those models is to predict how things, those models describe, will behave depending on the circumstances. Some of those models work brilliantly, others fail miserably. Worst models in terms of reliability are those dealing with geopolitics. A record of dismal failures of Western in general, and American in particular, geopolitical models to predict anything right is widely available for everyone to see. Time after time those models and predictions turned out to be wrong. In terms of “predicting” anything in regards to Russia, those predictions were not only wrong, they were downright dangerous.

  No better demonstration exists of a complete breakdown in the process of predicting anything than evolution of Russian military and economic power. As late as 2016, claims that Russia remained nothing more than, in the words of John McCain, a gas station masquerading as a country continued to pour in by all kinds of “experts”, who, despite a huge collection of facts to the contrary, continued to believe that these are only Russia’s nuclear forces which keep Russia as some secondary factor in the international relations. There are even some Russian experts who shared this point of view. Their models and predictions turned out to be wrong. They lacked the most important predictor of them all.

  

  Fast forward to March 1 this year to Putin’s speech to Federal Assembly – the loud echo from this speech is still being heard today, half-a-year later. It is still loud. In fact, the volume increases. It was the day majority of models of international relations and balance of power, all those matrices, differential equations, arrays of information became completely irrelevant, because military power and full ability to wage both nuclear and, what is most important, conventional war, and win in it, not some abstract financial or cooked military “rankings” data, is what defines geopolitical status of the nation. Any serious military analyst knew already in 2014 that neither US, nor NATO as a whole, could defeat Russia in conventional war near Russia’s borders.

  On March 1 it became clear that Russia can strike any targets, including within the US, conventionally with US not being able to do anything about it. Today Russia can also sink any NATO navy, or combination thereof, without nuclear weapons and the list of what is possible is long. In what seemed to a layman as one day (in reality it was 10 years in the making) Russia not only obtained a full right to speak at the formation of the new world order, Russia became a main driver behind this new order of things globally. Cutting edge military power translates into geopolitical benefits extremely well. Real military power, assessed within proper strategic, operational and technological framework, was and is this predictor. In other words—only world-class, superpower, economies are capable of producing the state-of-the-art weaponry or, in general, military power. Russia fits this definition today perfectly. I will quote myself:

  Military power in humanity’s conflict-ridden history mattered, matters and will continue to matter as one of the main, if not themain, pillars on which national power rests. It remains the case that, in the modern world, first rate military power is a function of a first rate nation-state which possesses the wherewithal to have such military power. Great military power by definition is a continuation of a greatly developed, economically strong nation-state.

  Fast forward to today. Next state of Russia’s existence, yet again lost in all those modelling and prognosticating methodologies. Russian GosKomStat (main statistics agency) reports that industry, specifically manufacturing and processing, grew in 7 months of 2018 an impressive 4.1%, the consumption of energy—one of the main indicators of real economy growth—grew 1.9%. These are stunning numbers for the country which lives under sanctions non-stop since 2014, in reality much longer than that. One is forced to ask the question—how is this growth even possible, despite some undeniable Russia’s structural economic problems?

  The answer is in Russia’s grand strategy which was formulated more than hundred years ago by a man, who played one of the crucial roles in unleashing revolutionary processes in Russia, namely Tsar Nicholas II former prime-minister of Russia Pyotr Stolypin.

  

  His strategic dictum was simple to grasp:

  “Give Russia 20 years of internal and external peace and quiet and it will change beyond recognition.” Vladimir Putin and his team follow this dictum to the letter.

  Obviously, many in Western world immediately tried to assign to Putin, who quoted Stolypin not for once, all features of a “liberal” without, as always, paying any attention to a gigantic difference of Stolypin’s and Putin’s Russia. Stolypin wanted to change Russia’s peasantry and its centuries’ old commune by means of his namesake reforms, and through it, Russia herself. He tried to do so in most brutal manner. He was assassinated. Putin needs to stop “liberal” economic experimentation in Russia and, unlike Stolypin 100 years before him, he has an overwhelming support of his nation to do so. He has still massive industrial, technological and scientific heritage left from the Soviet Union. He is also doing this in evolutionary manner.

  This combined Putin (by this I mean him and people who support him in the top echelons of political power) is trying to achieve precisely Stolypin’s goal of 20 or even more years of internal and external peace and quiet but he knows that the only way to provide these conditions are through strength and in Russian geopolitical, cultural, historic conditions this means a completely new quality of strength. This is the quality which requires rejection of the liberal economic dogma. And it is being done.

  As influential Russian economist and journalist Alexander Rogers states in his latest piece (in Russian) titled The State Will Get Everything Back the second, since 2014, wave of re-nationalization of Russia’s strategic assets and Rogers is spot on in his analysis. Apart from returning Russian State where overwhelming majority of Russians want it to be, in charge of Russia’s real national treasure and wealth—national resources and strategic industries—this transformation also requires new professional elites. Those are being prepared as I type this. But why such a long introduction?

  The answer to this introduction is really very simple: to explain to very many real and fake Western (I will omit here Russian ones) supporters of Russia WHY Russia doesn’t act in a kneejerk manner each time combined West does something ultimately stupid and self-defeating against her. Russia plays a very long game whose main objective is to provide Russia with those Stolypin’s, now Putin’s, 20 or more, years of peaceful development. Under these conditions, Russia, as our very own Anon from Tennessee, succinctly observed in one of the discussion threads, will “negotiate with the devil himself if need be”. This is what Russia is doing while continuing to demonstrate her increasing military and economic clout. Russia is playing for time, for a relatively peaceful time that is, because today in Russia time means growth.

  The correctness of this approach has been proven today by the overwhelming empirical evidence of mounting achievements in many spheres among which real economy, not some virtual financial markets, is most important. Today, when one reviews industrial projects Russia is implementing domestically and abroad, one cannot fail to be struck by a massive scale of those, be that development in Arctic, aerospace, radio-electronics, shipbuilding or transport infrastructure. Russia is building her own independent internet through massive Sfera (Sphere) Project, which in itself is a massive space exploration project. In parallel, increasingly fast de-dollarization is taking place.

  Thus the warranted, in fact irresistible, question must be asked – would Russia of August 2018 be possible should Russia of March 2014 have followed all kneejerk advices on part of all those “supporters”, “patriots” and “experts” (many of whom are not experts at all, nor are real patriots) who every day, since the return of Crimea home, never relented on, in their opinion for a good reason, accusing Russia of being weak, cowardly, not tough enough, timid, not hitting back… you can easily add to this list. Yet, here we are in August 2018 with Russia not only not collapsing but every single day she defies grim, doom spelling forecasts. There are still many of those around.

  It is obvious today that should have Russia involved herself in Ukraine in 2014 by means of full blown invasion, everything positive what today increasingly manifests itself would have failed to materialize because Russia, no matter how good it would have made some of her so called “patriots” (and ignorant “experts”) feel for a moment, would have lost time–the most important strategic asset, which Russia used for the last 5 years impressively well to prepare the country for a breakthrough the beginning of which we all observe today, some with joy, others with hateful desperation. The list of Russia’s accomplishments in the last 5 years is, indeed, for the lack of better word, stunning.

  Most important of those achievements is Russia’s increasing independence from the West in some of the most crucial scientific and technological fields and, of course, her military-technological transformation which changed the balance of power globally. And here is the main point for those who still think that Russia should launch an all out war on the combined West which continues to insult, attack and accuse Russia of most despicable things–they desperately want Russia to respond emotionally and, hopefully for them, irrationally. Truly powerful and confident nations do not behave themselves in a kneejerk, instant gratification manner.

  Russia will not do that precisely for the reasons of Russia being militarily, and increasingly economically, secure. So who is really a weak party in this setup? Certainly, not Russia but hysterical and self-defeating West which sees its geopolitical designs collapse in front of its very own eyes. The fact that West, or at least some very influential people here, begin to understand this dynamics made even US mainstream media news when on July 3 Republican Senator from Alabama, a chair of an immensely powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, Richard Shelby was explicit in summarizing new 2018 geopolitical reality in his impromptu interview to the media on the stairs of Russia’s Foreign Ministry building:

  “US Must View Russia as Superpower”

  This is the place where those proverbial “experts” should start reacting as the devil would react to a spray of a holy water. This, or maybe spend some time learning about Russia, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. But for those who want to really learn – you want to know what the real economic might and geopolitical weight of the nation are, look no further than what its military can do realistically, not in CGI animation. This is the most reliable predictor of them all in the last 100 years. Always was, always will be and that is why dogs always bark but caravan passes on.

  

• Paul Craig Roberts: Watching America Collapse

  Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

  In the 1950s and 1960s the United States was a vibrant society. Upward mobility was strong, and the middle class expanded. During the 1970s the internal contradiction in Keynesian demand management resulted in stagflation. Reagan’s supply-side economic policy cured that. With a sound economy under him, Reagan was able to pressure the Soviet government, which was unable to solve its economic problem, to negotiate the end of the cold war.

  

  This happy development was not welcomed by powerful forces, both in the US and Soviet Union.

  In the US the powerful military/security complex was unhappy about losing the Soviet Threat, under the auspices of which its budget and power had soared. Right-wing superpatriot conservatives accused Reagan of selling out America by trusting the Soviets. The American rightwing portrayed President Reagan as the grade-two movie actor dupe of “cunning communists.”

  In the Soviet government Gorbachev faced a larger problem. With trust established between the two nuclear powers, Gorbachev released the Soviet hold on Eastern Europe. Hardline elements in the Soviet Communist Party saw too much change too rapidly and concluded that Gorbachev had sold out the Soviet Union to Washington. This conclusion resulted in Gorbachev’s arrest, and the consequence of his arrest was the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Communist Party.

  With communism departed, the Russians forgot all of Marx’s lessons about capitalism and naively concluded that we were all now friends. The Yeltsin government opened to American advice and, by naively accepting American advice, Russia was looted and reduced to penury. Russia under Yeltsin became an American puppet state, and the Russian people paid for it with a great reduction in their living standard.

  The collapse of the Soviet Union is usually attributed to Reagan and represented as one of his victories. This is a fabrication. I was in Reagan’s government, both as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury and afterward as a member of a secret Presidential Committee with subpeona power over the CIA. Reagan told us many times that his purpose was not to win the Cold War but to end it.

  He told everyone involved that all respect had to be shown to the Soviets as the purpose was to end the threat of nuclear war, not to have an insulting triumphal victory.

  Unfortunately, the trust Reagan established with the Russians was betrayed by the corrupt and criminal Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama regimes. Because of these utterly corrupt regimes, today the distrust between the US and Russia is far higher than ever existed during the long decades of the Cold War. What the criminal Clinton, Bush, and Obama regimes did was to resurrect the possibility of nuclear war that Reagan and Gorbachev had terminated.

  As I have explained at length and as all available evidence supports, the attack on Trump rests on an orchestration called “Russiagate,” for which no evidence exists. It is an orchestration concocted by John Brennan, James Comey, Clapper, Rod Rosenstein, Mueller, and the Democratic National Committee. The transparent lies on which “Russiagate” is based are repeated continually by the presstitute media in an effort to create in the public mind a case for the removal of Trump from the Oval Office.

  Mueller is part of the plot against Trump as is Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general who appointed Mueller special prosecutor. Both are guilty of sedition as they are active participants in an organized coup to overthrow the President of the United States. But Trump is too powerless to have them arrested and put on trial for the conspiracy against democracy that they are conducting. President Trump is making a terminable mistake in trusting to facts and truth, neither of which is respected in the scant remains of Western Civilization.

  Once there was hope that information available on the Internet would serve as a countervailing power to the lies told by the Western print, TV, and NPR presstitutes. But this was a vain hope. There are some good and reliable websites, increasingly being closed down by the ruling elite. The ruling elites have most of the money and can finance most of the online voices, all of which are employed for the purpose of contradicting truth.

  I received today an email from RootsAction urging me to donate money to speed Trump’s impeachment. The website has even prepared the Articles of Impeachment and proclaims that “Trump’s Fixer Says the President Engaged in a Criminal Conspiracy to Sway the 2016 Election.”

  This accusation comes from one of Trump’s former lawyers, Michael Cohen. They are allegations that most defense attorneys understand is Michael Cohen’s effort to gain a light sentence for his income tax evasion by “composing,” to use the term of Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, evidence against the man Mueller really wants—President Trump.

  I will be unequivocal. RootsAction, as is the NY Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, NPR and the rest of the media whores, is lying. To pay off two women, who might have been paid by the military/security complex, or Hillary & Bill Clinton, or the Democratic National Committee, to bring such charges or who simply saw an opportunity to collect a bunch of dollars from Donald Trump, is most certainly, most definitely not, as RootsAction claims, “the high crime and misdemeanor of attempting to fraudulently influence the outcome of a US presidential election. This is an impeahable offense warranting removal from office.”

  Whoever advises RootsAction is a totally incompetent attorney. Moreover, to show the utter stupidity of RootsAction’s ignorant assertion, a “misdemeanor” cannot be a “high crime.” A “high crime” is a “felony.”

  I have posted on my website statements from legal experts that there is nothing unlawful about paying off claimants. Corporations do it continually. It is much cheaper to pay off a false claim than to finance a court case to refute it. There is no reason whatsoever for a political candidate competing for a party’s nomination for the presidency to be distracted by fighting court cases brought to extort money from him.

  Moreover, considering the dire straits in which the American population between the two coasts has been left by decades of jobs offshoring, the government’s inability to provide assistance to those millions of Americans whose living standard is dissolving because the military/security complex appropriates $1,000 billion annually from America’s resources, and the Trump public’s awareness that provoking Russia into war is in no one’s interest, RootsAction and the rest of the imbeciles have to be crazy beyond all belief to think that that anyone who voted for Trump cared if he had sexual encounters with two women. Considering the dire straits of Americans, the last thing they would do is to vote against their champion because he had sex with two women, assuming that he did.

  Yet, an unsubstantiated claim by a lawyer who did not pay his income tax, a claim made for the purpose of a light sentence in exchange for providing false evidence against the President of the United States, is now, according to RootsAction, the New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, CNN, MSNBC, etc., and so on, grounds for impeaching the President of the United States who hopes to defuse the extremely dangerous tensions between Washington and Russia.

  The military/security complex wants to impeach Trump because he wants peace with Russia, thus taking away the essential enemy that justifies their budget and power.

  Are Americans too stupid to notice that there is not a shred of evidence of the “Russiagate” accusations? What we have in their place is income tax evasion charges, not against Trump, but against an attorney and a Republian campaign manager. More convincing charges could be brought against Democrats, but have not. The Hillary crowd of criminals has proven immune to prosecution.

  No one has to approve of Trump in order to have the intelligence to see that Trump’s intention to normalize relations with Russia is the world’s main hope of continued existence. Once nuclear weapons go off, global warming will take on new meaning.

  After three eight-year terms of US presidents, relations between the US and Russia stand at a far more dangerous level than ever existed during the Cold War. I know this for a fact, as I was directly involved in the Cold War.

  The security that insouciant Americans find in the belief that only the US is a superpower is ignorant beyond all belief. A new book by Andrei Martyanov published by Clarity Press proves that, at best, the US is a second rate military power that can be utterly destroyed at will by Russia along with the entirety of the stupid NATO countries, every one of which is militarily impotent. In the present correlation of forces, nothing whatsoever can be done to save a square inch of the Western world if Russia ever has enough of the absurd accusations, absurd threats, absurd postering of a totally inferior military power drunk on its own ignorant hubris.

  Americans are too insouciant to know it, but they are living day by day only at the mercy of Russia.

  

• US Inmates Demand 'Living Wage' Amid Largest Prison Strike In History

  On Tuesday, inmates across the United States began a 19-day campaign to protest the dehumanizing conditions of the American prison system, one of the potentially largest prison strikes in American history.

  

  As Statista’s Sarah Feldman notes, the organized dissent is planned to take the form of hunger strikes, sit-ins, boycotts of prison payment streams like collect calls, along with slow to no labor by the 2.3 million people currently serving time in the United States.

  The prisoners have a series of demands: improve prison conditions, end to life without parole and solitary confinement, increase funding for rehabilitation services, and grant voting rights for people convicted of a felony.

  One of the biggest demands for the strikers is an immediate end to compulsory and imposed labor for little to no pay.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  Able bodied imprisoned people are put to work in correctional facilities doing cooking, cleaning, and grounds keeping along with possible labor outside of prisons, which is often dangerous, like in the case of prisoners fighting wildfires in California.

  Currently around 800,000 prisoners work daily for meager wages that are often docked for court-assessed fines, family support, and discharge money.

  States like Arkansas, Georgia, and Texas offer no compensation for work performed while in prison. Even for the highest paying states, the low end of compensation only outperforms states like Texas by around two quarters and a dime.

  

• Raul Ilargi Meijer: Forget McCain; It's About The Children, Stupid!

  Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,

  Bathwater

  Let’s try a different angle. How about the world through the eyes of children’s? I don’t want to dwell on John McCain, too many people already do today, but I would suggest that your thoughts and prayers are with the souls of the hundreds of thousands of children that died because McCain advocated bombing them. Or, indeed, 50-odd years ago, were bombed by him personally. I wanted to leave him be altogether, don’t kick a man when he’s down, but I can’t get the image out of my head of him singing “Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran”.

  

  To remember that, perhaps the most vile and infamous thing he’s ever done (it’s in the top ten), and then see someone like Ocasio-Cortez say he was an “unparalleled example of human decency”, it’s almost comedy.

  But not as funny as when in the 2008 campaign the woman in the red dress asked him if Obama was an Arab, and he responded:

  “No, ma’am. No, ma’am. He’s a decent, family man, citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues and that’s what this campaign is all about”.

  That is full-blown hilarious. And hardly a soul caught it, which makes it many times worse. It made him a decent man in the eyes of Americans to defend Obama by declaring that Arabs are per definition neither decent nor family men. Yeah, well, you might as well bomb them all then.

  But enough about McCain: it’s about the children, and their souls, not his.

  The Pope is visiting Ireland this weekend.

  There is really just one subject on people’s minds, even though the ‘leaders’ say this is one of Ireland’s biggest events in 40 years. What’s on their minds is -child- sex abuse by Catholic clergy. And it’s been -and probably still is- rampant in the country. Like it’s been everywhere the Catholic church is an important force. Which is in many countries, there are 1.2 billion Catholics worldwide. The man claimed he was begging for God’s forgiveness. Not sure that will do it, there, Francis.

  The Roman Catholic religion, and the Church, are fronts for the world’s biggest business empire, a multinational at least 1500 years older than the next one, Holland’s VOC -which existed maybe 100 years-. It has played power politics for longer than anyone else, all over the world. Its real estate portfolio alone is worth more than many a country. For that matter, it effectively owns many a country.

  There would have to be a huge outcry over the child abuse before there could ever be an investigation. Multiple popes have promised exactly such investigations, and nothing has happened. It would upset the business model too much. And most faithful still believe their priests are decent men, anyway. Yes, there’s that word again, ‘decent’.

  If a priest can no longer be maintained in a specific church because he’s been too obvious, too perverted and too greedy, he simply gets transferred to another parish. They’ve been doing this for 1,500 years, they got it down. And when things heat up, they beg god for forgiveness. While the Church gets ever richer.

  At a 2% annual growth rate, wealth doubles every 34-35 years. The Catholic Church has been at it for 1,500. Do your math. Or look at it this way: real estate prices have been surging over the past few decades. And that’s the Vatican’s main industry. Anyone want to venture a guess at how much money they have made?

  The Vatican is a facade hiding behind a facade hiding behind… Francis Ford Coppola tried tackling the topic in The Godfather III, but he was only mildly successful and not many people believed his portrayal. But, again, this is not about the Pope playing Kabuki theater like all his predecessors, it’s about the children.

  In the US, some 500 children are still separated from their parents, if they’re still in the country.

  Haven’t heard much from Judge Dana Sabraw, according to whose ruling they should have been reunited weeks ago. Where is the Judge? Where are the children?

  At the same time, we learn that about 52% of Americans under 18 -i.e. children, some 40 million of them- live in households that depend on some form of welfare. And Americans want to chide European nations for being ‘socialist’. That’s humor too.

  But again, it’s about the children. How can they ever reach their potential if there’s a constant cloud of financial worry hanging over their heads, if many of them still don’t enough to eat, if much of what they eat is junk food, which is full of glyphosate to boot, and if it takes $100,000 or so in debt just to get a degree?

  And that’s just the kids at home. Abroad, Americans treat children even a lot worse than they do their own. With the shining example of John McCain in mind, they have supplied the Saudi’s with much of the weaponry needed to murder many thousands more children in Yemen. 1.2 million human beings are estimated to have died in Iraq alone. Thanks John. That’s what, half a million children there alone?

  In Greece, numbers came out this week that said the number of refugees on the islands is presently 16,000, vs 10,000 a year ago. And yes, many of them are children.

  Still in overcrowded camps, nothing has changed. It’s like the Catholic Church’s promising investigations. Nothing ever happens. Nobody cares. Well, nobody who has the power to make things happen.

  The politicians all think about their careers. If it helps them in the next election to help refugees, children, countries, they will. If not, not. In the case of Greece, people are waking up to what actually happened to this country. Just too late. Matthew Klein wrote in Barron’s:

  There was no political will in 2010 to spend hundreds of billions of euros to bail out Dutch, French, and German banks. To Greece’s eternal misfortune, however, there was enough “solidarity” to launder that Northern European bank bailout through the Greek government.

  What does that have to do with children? Apart from the thousands of refugee children stranded on Greek islands and the mainland, Greek children themselves often no longer have access to sufficient food, healthcare, education, no matter how hard parents and others try. But at least Germany and Holland et al can boast about their growing economies.

  We’re getting this wrong, we’re getting it all upside down.

  Children are not objects to treat and use to further political and corporate agendas. They are the future. Abuse them, maim them, kill them, under-feed them, under-educate them, and you end up with a screwed-up, abusive, underfed and under-educated world.

  In that report about US children living in welfare dependent households there’s an interesting number: while 52.1% of under-18’s live in such a household, only 18.8% of over 75’s do. In other words, wealth is heavily skewed towards baby boomers and older. And that is somewhat defensible, since people need money for retirement, but it’s not if it means condemning others to food stamps.

  This paints the portrait of a broken society, and -predictably- the weakest are the victims. Children. But the most heartbreaking, even if that is a hard point to make when we’ve already seen how many have been bombed, comes from Nauru, Australia’s ‘private’ prison island for refugees. As Australians think about how much their property has surged in price this week, their government(s) are responsible -in their name- for this:

  ‘Begging To Die’: Succession Of Critically Ill Children Moved Off Nauru

  A girl suffering “resignation syndrome” and who is refusing all food and water has been ordered off Nauru by an Australian court, as a succession of critically ill children are brought from the island. At least three children have left the island since Thursday, and reports from island sources say at least three more children, as young as 12, are “on FFR” – food and fluid refusal.

  The current crisis on the island is overwhelming medical staff, who are referring dozens of children for transfer off the island, only to have their decisions rebuffed by Australian Border Force officials on the island or department of home affairs bureaucrats in Canberra. Two children were moved off the island with their families on Thursday.

  Early on Friday morning, a 14-year-old refugee boy suffering a major depressive disorder and severe muscle wastage after not getting out of bed for four months, was flown directly from Nauru to Brisbane with his family. There are concerns, doctors say, he may never be able to walk normally again.

  Later on Friday, in the federal court, Justice Tom Thawley ordered another girl – given the designation EIV18 by the court – to be moved to Australia for urgent medical treatment. Court orders prevent publication of the girl’s age – other than the fact she is a child – her name or country of origin. [..] The girl has been inside the supported accommodation area of the regional processing centre for three weeks, and has been refusing food and water for much of that time.

  Before she, too, fell into acute depression and “resignation syndrome”, and refused to eat or drink anything, she had been one of the brightest and most articulate of the refugee children on Nauru. “Before she got sick, she was the best-performing student,” a source familiar with the girl and her condition told the Guardian. “She had a dream to be a doctor in Australia and to help others. Now, she is on food-and-fluid refusal and begging to die as death is better than Nauru.”

  Can you be a worse human being than John McCain was? It’s not easy. But some people are still trying. Hard to fathom how Australians can be so silent about this. Where are the protests in the streets of Melbourne and Sydney?

  Caring only about your own children while throwing the rest away with the bathwater is neither feasible nor viable. You’re bringing up children destined to fight and hate each other. For no reason that I can see at all. Do you enjoy the world of John McCain, where children were bombed for 50 years in two dozen or so countries? Or do you think that’s not such a good idea?

  McCain could succeed only because his country, and the world around him, failed. Don’t set up your children, and all children, to fail in the same way he did.

  

• NOAA Issues Geomagnetic Storm Warning: "A Crack Opened In Earth's Magnetic Field & Plasma Started Pouring In"

  According to NOAA Space Weather forecasters, a powerful G3-class geomagnetic storm is in progress on August 26th as Earth passes through the wake of a coronal mass ejection (CME) that arrived with little notice approximately 24 hours ago. Strong magnetic fields in the CME’s wake have cracked into Earth’s magnetosphere, allowing solar wind to enter. So far auroras have been sighted in Scandinavia, Canada, and northern-tier US states such as Michigan and New York.

  

  “The geomagnetic field is expected to be at active to G3 (Strong) geomagnetic storm levels on day one (26 Aug) due to continued influence from the 20 Aug CME. Quiet to active conditions, with a slight chance for G1 (Minor) storm conditions, are likely on day two (27 Aug) with quiet to unsettled levels likely on day three (28 Aug) as CME effects gradually wane,” said the U.S. Dept. of Commerce, NOAA, Space Weather Prediction Center.

  Steven Herman, the White House bureau chief of Voice of America (VOA News), reported the strong geomagnetic storm on earlier Sunday morning. He shared a note listing the potential impacts of the storm, which included power systems, spacecraft, satellite communication networks, and even radio disruptions.

  A sunspot has formed as large as the Earth and now an active warning about a geomagnetic storm. https://t.co/AY9BIhLBJF pic.twitter.com/2CDuVmmJP5

  — Steve Herman (@W7VOA) August 26, 2018

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  The K-index, a chart that measures the earth’s magnetic field with an integer in the range 0–9 with 1 being calm and 5 or more indicating a geomagnetic storm, hit the 4 threshold was reached at 21:43 UTC on August 25, followed by K-index of 5 (G1 Minor) at 01:54 UTC on August 26, K-index of 6 (G2 Moderate) at 02:57 and K-index of 7 (G3 Strong) at 05:59 and 07:38 UTC.

  

  G3 Strong geomagnetic storm potential impacts:

  Area of impact primarily poleward of 50 degrees Geomagnetic Latitude.

  Induced Currents – Power system voltage irregularities possible, false alarms may be triggered on some protection devices.

  Spacecraft – Systems may experience surface charging; increased drag on low Earth-orbit satellites and orientation problems may occur.

  Navigation – Intermittent satellite navigation (GPS) problems, including loss-of-lock and increased range error may occur.

  Radio – HF (high frequency) radio may be intermittent. Aurora – Aurora may be seen as low as Pennsylvania to Iowa to Oregon.

  Dr. Tamitha Skov, a space weather forecaster, warned “this solar storm may have a predictable magnetic field, so for emergency responders to Hurricane Lane, I offer this worst case. We will likely reach solar storm conditions (Kp5-Kp6) for the next 6-8 hours at least. Expect mid-latitude aurora, & poor ham radio!”

  Out on a Limb! This #solarstorm may have predictable magnetic field, so for #emergency responders to #HurricaneLane, I offer this worst case. We will likely reach #solarstorm conditions (Kp5-Kp6) for the next 6-8 hours at least. Expect mid-latitude #aurora, & poor #hamradio! pic.twitter.com/k6ADMadM7M

  — Dr. Tamitha Skov (@TamithaSkov) August 25, 2018

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  What did people around the world see? 

  

  Taken by John McKinnon on August 26, 2018 @ Four Mile Lake, Alberta, Canada (Source/ SpaceWeather.com)

  

  The light from the full moon didn’t stop the aurora from being seen in Southern New Hampshire (the “marshmallow field” in Rollinsford) but those clouds were a real heartbreaker on August 26, 2018  (Source/ @RobWrightImage) 

  

  Full moon G3 Aurora captured over the Range Lighthouse where the #SaugeenRiver meets LakeHuron in Southampton Ontario Canada August 26, 2018 (Source/ @scottrockphoto) 

  

  The aurora was out early this morning over Decker, Montana. A green band was faintly visible for hours despite the smoke and bright moonlight (Source/ @krp234)

  “A Crack Opened In Earth’s Magnetic Field And Plasma Started Pouring in last night,” said Ben Davidson, the founder of Mobile Observatory Project, ObservatoryProject.com.

  He also said, “over the next 24-hours, we are in an elevated cardiac and psychological risk, and will be looking for large disruption into electronics, especially in large-scale power, communications, and transportation industries.”

  *  *  *

  Ben Davidson warned early Sunday about significant power system failures because of the geomagnetic storm. Moments ago, New York metro train number 7 had just lost power (unconfirmed).

  a Power failure on the #7 train in the #tunnel to #Manhattan it’s a normal scene in #NewYork #metro on the weekends sadly! https://t.co/DduqQM7Yvv pic.twitter.com/2S4tWRTxuy

  — Khaled Sayed (@khaledfilms) August 26, 2018

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  While everyone was blaming the Russians last year about US power grid failures, we pointed out that a geomagnetic stormcould have been the reason why power disruption in San Fransisco, New York, and Los Angeles occurred all at once.

  

• How Elon Musk Sabotaged His Own Going Private Transaction

  The soap opera over Tesla’s going private deal may be over, but the autopsy of just what happened, how and why the “deal” collapsed in well under a month from its “funding secured” announcement lingers.  And, as it turns out, Elon Musk has nobody but himself to blame for what may otherwise have been a possible deal, despite the staggering odds.

  Recall that as part of Musk’s “funding secured” assurance, the most widely mentioned name was that of the Saudi sovereign wealth fund (PIF): after all, few other institutions had the capacity – and eccentricity – to pull off such a feat. However, as we discussed several days after Musk’s fateful Aug.7 tweet, Saudi Arabia would likely get cold feet – in similar fashion to its withdrawal of the Aramco IPO – as the world’s attention focused on its strategic planning and its dwindling finances – the fund is currently engaging in a back door funding deal involving Sabic as well as grandiose plans that include a massive new city in the desert – just days after it had already acquired a minority, 5% stake. There was also the issue of SoftBank granting the Saudi fund permission to engage in a transaction of this magnitude. 

  Well, as we now know, after the Tesla CEO abruptly called the deal off just before Midnight Eastern Time on Friday, and just days after Goldman and Morgan Stanley were retained, Musk was “sorely mistaken” – as Bloomberg politely puts it – when he tweeted “funding secured” and later told the world “investor support is confirmed,” based on his belief that Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund was eager to back his venture.

  Two things to note here:

  First, following Musk’s seemingly manipulative, potentially fraudulent tweet, the SEC is now investigating his tweets and blog posts, which triggered the stock gyrations throughout August. It’s always why investors now must brace for another bout of volatility when trading in the stock – which really trades like an option on the credibility of the Musk narrative – opens Monday morning, “while regulators and lawyers autopsy what happened to a deal potentially valued at $82 billion and Tesla’s board is left with a brilliant but exhausted and erratic CEO.”

  Second, and far more important, is the realization that as we suggested two weeks ago, Musk appears to have sabotaged his own deal. Bloomberg explains:

  Musk’s vocal ambitions stirred unease among Saudi officials about the publicity surrounding their potential role, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified. The Saudis were unhappy about Musk detailing his talks with the Kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund in an Aug. 13 blog post, where the CEO justified his earlier tweet about “funding secured” on their interest, the people said. On top of that, there were concerns about potential fallout from shareholder lawsuits and the SEC investigation, the people said.

  Worse, it was Musk’s eagerness to “burn the shorts” without delay, that soured the Saudi interest: as Bloomberg adds, “Musk and the Saudis hadn’t yet reached an agreement on the terms or structure of their participation before he pulled the plug.” That, in addition to the PIF’s interest Tesla competitor, aspiring U.S. electric-car maker, Lucid Motors Inc., is what appears to have crushed any hope of the Saudis becoming an anchor investor in any Tesla going private deal, even though there may well have been some hope before Musk decided to spill the beans on twitter and on the Tesla blog.

  The WSJ confirms as much in a Sunday night article:

  Musk cited Saudi Arabia’s sovereign-wealth fund as the source of his secured funding: “Obviously, the Saudi sovereign fund has more than enough capital needed to execute on such a transaction.”

  That rankled some senior officials in the kingdom, according to people familiar with the matter. Prince Mohammed bin Salman has big ideas to turn his petrostate into a technology and solar-power hub as part of his plans to develop its economy. And he was interested enough in Tesla to consider being part of a take-private transaction; the Saudis had already bought a near 5% stake in Tesla in the public market. But the Saudis never made a formal proposal. A Saudi government official and an adviser familiar with the talks said the country’s senior leadership was divided.

  Mr. Musk’s tweets and the blog post didn’t help. The government official said his behavior worried some officials about his health as well as the role he would play in the company.

  All of this left Tesla’s advisors including Goldman, Morgan Stanley and Silver Lake scratching their collective heads what was going on:

  … discussions about how a deal might proceed were still at a very early stage when [Musk] decided to call off the plan, according to people familiar with the matter. Banks had at most just a couple of weeks to assess the situation, after being brought in to advise only after Musk’s initial tweet, said the people, who asked not to be identified as the details aren’t public.

  It’s not even clear if Tesla’s retainer to Goldman and MS had cleared: the banks may want to check if the company – whose liquidity remains precarious – didn’t put a stop payment on it now that Musk has grown bored with the whole affair.

  But wait, there’s more, because according to the WSJ, Musk actually did manage to line up the money thanks to his banks, and while we doubt this particular narrative, this is what allegedly happened last week:

  On Monday and Tuesday, advisers from Goldman and Silver Lake plowed ahead on a deal that might work. By Wednesday evening, they had a presentation for Mr. Musk, proposing a roster of deep-pocketed investors, including Volkswagen and Silver Lake itself, that had agreed to contribute as much as $30 billion, people familiar with the matter said.

  However, these weren’t the kind of investors Musk had in mind, who appeared hung up on the Saudi being the anchor investor. He was, in the WSJ’s words, also deeply suspicious of rival car companies, believing they wanted to piggyback on what he called the “Tesla halo.” He also was lamenting a loss of small investors, who had been his most vocal champions.

  Finally, the deal team advised him, the money would likely come with strings attached: The new investors would want a lot of say in the company, and each would likely want to hammer out terms of their own.

  The following day, Thursday, the board meeting convened at the Tesla factory conference room, where Musk had told some board members earlier in the day that he had doubts about the proposal.

  The advisers said they were confident it could be done, and then left.

  Then Mr. Musk spoke. Based on the latest information I have, he said, I’m withdrawing the proposal.

  “Woohoo,” one board member let out.

  What happens next is unclear. Musk’s decision to scrap his plan leaves even more questions open about where he and the electric-car maker go from here. As Bloomberg points out, leaving ownership as is puts the scrutiny back on Musk’s all-consuming work style, the company’s tricky cash position, its ability to meet mass-market production goals, and the independence and oversight of Tesla’s board.

  The next measure of how Tesla bounces back may come in early October, when it will report third-quarter production and deliveries. The company has said it expects to make 50,000 to 55,000 Model 3s in the quarter, which averages to roughly 4,200 vehicles a week at the higher end of the guidance

  This may be a major problem, because as some independent observers have noticed, there suddenly appears to be a “significant production problem at Fremont”, perhaps the true catalyst behind Musk’s catastrophic approach to disclosing his going private intentions.

  There is a significant production problem at Fremont.

  The finished vehicle lot is now unpopulated with low rate of vehicle outflow.

  In the past I’ve reported manufacturing shitdowns. What we’re seeing today is serious. Tho cars are being produced (at a very low rate). pic.twitter.com/s8GGcmjOl0

  — skabooshka (@skabooshka) August 27, 2018

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  Even perpetual Tesla cheerleader Gene Munster appeared concerned: “Eventually this will blow over, but it’s going to take at least six months. This is not a situation where we can just forget about it. It’s created a new layer of questions for investors. And now Tesla needs to get back to basics, which is ramping Model 3 production and profitability.”

  But perhaps the biggest risk factor of all, is also the reason why Tesla’s stock price is as high as it is (if not for much longer): Musk himself:

  The SEC investigation and investor lawsuits related to the whipsawing stock will at minimum continue to divert management’s time from operations, Joel Levington, a senior credit analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence, said in a note Saturday. Musk’s exhaustion, which the CEO described in a New York Times interview, is the “most critical near-term concern.”

  And while Musk’s creative talent and visionary brilliance are widely recognized, the CEO will soon be able to add one more notch to his list of firsts: a Harvard case study of how to spectacularly blow up a going private transaction in less than three weeks, while putting yourself at risk of incarceration.

  

• A Robot Is Making $6 Burgers For Broke Millennials In San Francisco

  Creator, a culinary robotics company designed around a transparent 14-foot-long “culinary instrument” that cooks and assembles burgers to order in under 5 minutes, is set to open in San Francisco’s South of Market (SoMa) neighborhood in September.

  

  San Francisco is the epicenter of start-up culture. It comes as no surprise that technology and food have been blended to create robot-made hamburgers. In the last several years, California has seen an explosion of robots entering the culinary world, as it has become apparent, new advances in tech are attempting to eliminate low skilled workers from the kitchen.

  The robot consists of 20 computers, 350 sensors and 50 actuators that form a robotic assembly line. After the customer places an order with a human, the machine slices buns, tomatoes and onions, grills and grinds meat, adds condiments, sears buns and produces a gourmet hamburger in less than five minutes without any human intervention. The human staff then prepares the order for the customer, adding fries and coleslaw to the plate as they keep an eye on the robot. As shown below, the burger is sent along a conveyor belt, where it gets additional toppings that are all custom ordered.

  

  From start to finish, the entire process takes less than 5 minutes and costs only $6. Maybe this is an attempt to make food affordable to the heavily indebted millennial in California.

  Creator’s founder 33-year-old Alex Vardakostas, said in a city of pricey boba drinks and marked up avocado toast, the company’s mission is to enhance food quality and make it affordable. Burgers are $6. “We want everyone to be able to partake,” he said to NPR.

  

  The 2200 sq ft. restaurant looks like an ultra-modern hipster bar with geometric forms in a flowing, open-concept space that emphasizes simplicity and function in the design. Per Selvaag, a lead designer for BMW, was involved with the design of the layout.

  

  Transparency is key and the open kitchen can be viewed from the restaurant with a display glass case highlights every ingredient that goes in or on the burger.

  Checked out the #futureoffood with #Creator #burgers!! #robotics #robots @TechCrunch https://t.co/T5StDOOyvH pic.twitter.com/Pcm2uTAFi7

  — Hayal Koc (@hayaldrm) August 16, 2018

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  When TechCrunch interviewed Vardakostas in June, the topic of discussion was the the coming collision of automation in the kitchen, as it could displace a lot of low wage workers.

  Karen Harris, Managing Director of Bain & Company’s Macro Trends Group, has spent a great deal of time analyzing a range of technologies at or near commercialization, including humanoid service robots, collaborative robots (cobots), drones, artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms.

  

  She warns that the business environment of the 2020s will be more volatile as automation may eliminate as many as 20 percent to 25 percent of current jobs—equivalent to 40 million displaced workers—and depress wage growth for many more workers.

  

  She said benefits of automation would likely flow to about 20 percent of workers—primarily highly compensated, highly skilled workers—as well as to the owners of capital. The growing scarcity of highly skilled workers may push their incomes even higher relative to lesser-skilled workers. As a result, automation has the potential to significantly increase income inequality and, by extension, wealth inequality.

  As for the $6 robot made burgers in SoMa, well, it is great for the broke millennial partaking in the tech bubble but could be devastating for kitchen staff. The collision of automation in the kitchen is here. There will be severe consequences.

  

• More Evidence The Economy Is Deteriorating

  Authored by Dave Kranzler via Investment Research Dynamics,

  “Financial-market and economic prospects remain far shy of the hype and headlines, amidst tanking consumer optimism and negative revisions to recent reporting.” – John Williams, Shadowstats.com

  The economy may seem like it’s doing well if you are part of the upper 10% demographic. Though, in reality, for most of the upper 10%, doing “well” has been a function of having easy access to credit. NASA Federal Credit Union is offering 0% down, 0% mortgage insurance for mortgages up to $2.5 million.

  

  Someone I know suggested the tax cut stimulus had run its course. But the narrative that the tax cuts would stimulate economic activity was pure propaganda. The tax cuts stimulated $1 trillion in expected share buybacks and put more money in the pockets of corporate insiders and billionaires. The average middle class household spent its tax cut money on more expensive gasoline and food. Since the tax cut took effect, auto sales and home sales have declined. Retail sales have been mixed. However, it’s difficult to distinguish between statistical manipulation and inflation. I would argue that, net of real inflation and Census Bureau statistical games, real retail sales have been declining.

  As an example, last week Black Box Intelligence released July restaurant sales. While comparable store sales were up 0.54% over July 2017, comparable restaurant traffic was down 1.8%. On a rolling three months, comp sales are up 0.46% but comparable traffic is down nearly 2%. With traffic declining, especially a faster rate relative to the small increase in sales, it means the sales “growth” is entirely a function of price inflation. If Black Box Intelligence could control it’s data for price increases, it would show that there is no question that real sales are declining. I have been loathe to recommend shorting restaurant stocks because, for some reason, the hedge funds love them.

  On Wednesday last week, the Government reported July retail sales, which were “up” 0.5% vs June. However, June’s 0.5% “gain” was revised sharply lower to 0.2%. Revising the previous month lower to make the headline number for the reported month appear higher is a mathematical gimmick that the Government uses frequently. As an example of the questionable quality of the retail sales report, the Government reports that sales at motor-vehicle and parts dealers rose 0.2% from June to July. But the auto industry itself reported a 4% decline in sales from June to July. I’ll leave it up to you to decide which report is more reliable…

  Housing starts for July, reported last Thursday, showed an 8% decline from June’s number. June’s number was revised lower from the original number reported. No surprise there, at least for me. The report missed the Wall Street brain trust’s expectations by a wide margin for the second month in row. The downward revision to June makes the report even worse. Additionally, housing starts are now down year-over-year for the second month in a row.

  This report followed last Wednesday’s mortgage applications report which showed a decline in purchase applications for the 5th week in a row. The housing starts number continues to throw cold water on the “low inventory” narrative. While there still may some areas of housing market strength in the $500,000 and below price bucket, the mortgage purchase applications data has been mostly negative since April, which reflects deteriorating home sales. This reality is “magnified” by the fact that home sales have declining during what should be the strongest seasonal period of the year for home sales.

  

  Lending Tree, Zillow Group and Redfin are “derivatives” of housing market activity. They reflect web searches, foot traffic and sales associated with mortgages and home sales. Lending Tree stock is down nearly 42% late January. Zillow stock is down 26% since mid-June. Redfin is down 39.5% since the beginning of the year, including an 18.5% plunge two weeks ago. unequivocally, these three stocks reflect the popping of the housing bubble. The Short Seller Journalrecommended shorting all three of these stocks before their big declines.

  

  Normally I’m hesitant to discuss the regional Fed economic surveys because they are skewed by their expectations/outlook (hope/sentiment) components. However, the Philly Fed survey for August was notable because it reinforced my view that the economy and the “hope” for a better economy is fading quickly. The overall index crashed to 11.9 from 25.7 in July. This is lower than just before the Trump election, when “hope” soared. Wall Street was expecting a 22.5 reading on the index. The new orders, work week and employment components plunged. Shipments dropped, inventories rose and prices paid fell. This report reflects the view that economy is much weaker than is conveyed by the political propaganda coming form DC.

  

  I don’t know what it will take to cause a plunge in the Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq but, as we’ve seen with homebuilder stocks, there’s a lot of opportunity to make money on economic reality in the lesser-followed sectors of the stock market.

  

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