Jun 27

Today’s News 27th June 2017

  • Italy's Newest Bank Bailout Cost As Much As Its Annual Defense Budget

    Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

    Two more Italian banks failed over the weekend– Banco Popolare di Vicenza and Veneto Banca.

    (In other news, the sky is blue.)

    The Italian Prime Minister himself stated that depositors’ funds were at risk, so the government stepped in with a bailout and guarantee package that could cost taxpayers as much as 17 billion euros.

    That’s a lot of money in Italy – around 1% of GDP. In fact it’s basically as much as the 17.1 billion euros they spent on national defense last year (according to an estimate by Italian think tank IAI).

    You don’t have to have a PhD in economics to figure out that NO government can afford to spend its entire defense budget every time a couple of medium-sized banks need a bailout.

    That goes especially for Italy, whose public debt level is already 132% of GDP… and rising. They simply don’t have the money.

    Moreover, the European Union actually has a series of new rules collectively known as the “Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive” which is supposed to prevent failing banks from being bailed out with taxpayer funds.

    Here’s the thing– Italy has LOTS of banks that are on the ropes.

    So with taxpayer resources exhausted (and technically prohibited), who’s going to be on the hook next time a bank goes under?

    Easy. By process of elimination, the only other party left to fleece is the depositor.

    Here’s how it works:

    Let’s say a bank takes in $1 billion in deposits.

    Naturally the bank doesn’t just keep $1 billion in cash sitting in its vault. They invest the money. They make loans. They buy assets.

    So the bank’s balance sheet shows $1 billion worth of assets, and $1 billion worth of deposits that they owe to their customers.

    But sometimes banks screw up when they invest their customers’ funds. Loans go bad. Borrowers default.

    For example, if a bank invested $200 million in Greek government bonds, and then the government of Greece defaults, the bank would only have $800 million in assets remaining.

    But they’d still owe their depositors the full $1 billion.

    How can a bank with only $800 million in assets possibly honor the $1 billion worth of deposits they owe to their customers?

    They can’t. And there’s a word for this: insolvency.

    This is the problem with so many banks across Italy (and many other countries around the world). They owe their depositors more than their assets are worth.

    Again, the taxpayers are ultimately on the hook from this weekend’s bailouts, along with some subordinated bondholders who got wiped out.

    But Italy’s banking problems go far beyond two little banks. This is a systemic issue across the country’s ENTIRE banking sector. And the solution goes far beyond what the taxpayers can afford.

    So next time around it could very well be the depositors who end up losing money.

    Even if not, it hardly seems worth taking the chance.

    By the way, I’m not just talking about Italy here.

    You know how they say “time heals all wounds?” Well, not in banking. Some wounds never heal.

    And there are countless banks and banking systems around the world that never fully recovered from the 2008 crisis.

    This raises the question– why hold money at a shaky bank in a country where the government is in debt up to its eyeballs? Especially when there are so many better options.

    Most people never think twice about where they hold their savings, typically opening accounts based on some irrelevant anachronism like geography.

    It’s 2017. Why trust all of your savings to a financial institution simply because it’s across the street?

    If you run a website, you wouldn’t necessarily choose a web hosting company because it’s located in your home town. You’d find the best company with the best service and best uptime.

    If you want to buy a new mobile phone, you wouldn’t just go to a local retailer. You’d probably shop online and find the best deal, even if it’s from a company across the planet.

    Why should money be any different?

    The world is a big place with LOTS of options and opportunities.

    And there are plenty of places where the banks might have MUCH stronger fundamentals, located in jurisdictions with minimal debt.

    But if this is too exotic, you could also consider physical cash.

    With an at-home safe, you effectively become your own banker, eliminating the middle man and eliminating the risk to your savings.

    This is all part of a great Plan B.

    Clearly there are risks in a number of banking systems, including most of the West where the majority of governments are themselves insolvent.

    Perhaps those risks are never realized.

    But it’s hard to imagine you’ll be worse off for holding a little bit of physical cash… or to consider the option of holding a portion of your savings in a bank that’s conservative, well-capitalized, and located in a country with zero debt.

    Even if nothing bad ever happens, there’s no downside in having taken these steps.

    But if these risks do pan out, your Plan B will end up being the best insurance policy you’ve ever had.

    Do you have a Plan B?

  • "You Will Be Held Accountable Trump" ISIS Hackers Deface Government Website With Threatening Message

    The websites of Ohio Governor John Kasich and other state government agencies were hacked on Sunday with a pro-ISIS post warning that President Donald Trump would be “held accountable” for deaths in Muslim countries, according to Bloomberg.

    Ten state websites and two servers that were affected have been taken off line for an investigation with law enforcement into how the hackers were able to deface them, said Tom Hoyt, a spokesman for the Ohio Department of Administrative Services.

    The Ohio governor’s website wasn’t loading on Sunday afternoon, and a cached version showed the message “hacked by Team System Dz.’’ The message, pictured below, read: “You will be held accountable Trump, you and all your people for every drop of blood flowing in Muslim countries’’ adding, “I love the Islamic State.”

    Kasich spokeswoman Emmalee Kalmbach said in a statement that “as soon as we were notified of the situation, we immediately began to correct it, and will continue to monitor until fully resolved.”

    Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2018, posted on Facebook that the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction website had been hacked and said, “Wake up freedom-loving Americans. Radical Islam infiltrating the heartland.’’

    The same pro-Islamic State message, accompanied by music, was also shown on Sunday on the website of Brookhaven, a town on New York’s Long Island about 50 miles from Manhattan, according to the New York Post.

    The hacks come as Muslims around the world mark the end of the Ramadan, a month of fasting, and celebrate the Eid al-Fitr holiday, which began Saturday, and ends on Tuesday.

  • CNN Exposed In Undercover Sting – Producer Admits Russia Story Fake News Pushed For Ratings

    Content originally published at iBankCoin.com

    The investigative journalists at Project Veritas has done it again! Known for their undercover sting operations, such as the one which exposed the DNC’s highly organized network of professional agitators sent to disrupt Trump rallies, voter fraud, or the undercover operation which led to the arrests of Antifa thugs planning to disrupt an the inauguration “deploraball” event.

    This time, the organization led by James O’Keefe has infiltrated CNN…

    A PV journalist covertly filmed a candid discussion with CNN [health] producer John Bonifield, where the “Very Fake News” network employee admitted that the whole Russia story against President Trump is nothing more than a ratings grab by CNN’s CEO Jeff Zucker – based on the fact that most of CNN’s liberal audience wants to see the President go down in flames.

    Bonifield also admitted that he hasn’t seen any evidence of President Trump committing a crime.

    PV Journalist: So you believe the Russia thing is a little crazy, right?

     

    John Bonifield: Even if Russia was trying to swing an election, we try to swing their elections, our CIA is doing shit all the time, we’re out there trying to manipulate governments.

    I haven’t seen any good enough evidence to show that the President committed a crime.


    I know a lot of people don’t like him and they’d like to see him get kicked out of office…. but that’s a lot different than he actually did something that can get him kicked out of office.

    Russia is for ratings!

    PV Journalist: Why is CNN constantly like “Russia this, Russia that?”

     

    Bonifield: Because it’s ratings. Our ratings are incredible right now.

     

    My boss, I shouldn’t say this, my boss yesterday we were having a discussion about this dental shoot and he was like I just want you to know what we’re up against here. Just to give you some context, President Trump pulled out of the climate accords. For a day and a half we covered the climate accords. And the CEO of CNN [Jeff Zucker] said in our internal meeting, he said good job everybody covering the climate accords, but we’re done with it. Let’s get back to Russia.


    But all the nice cutesy little ethics that used to get talked about in journalism school, you’re just like, that’s adorable. That’s adorable. This is a business.

    True feelings about Russia…

    John Bonifield was asked directly what he thinks about Russia… and responded with what many on the right have been saying for months; If it was something really good, it would have already leaked:

    PV Journalist: But honestly, you think the whole Russia shit is just bullshit?

     

    Bonifield: Could be bullshit. I mean, it’s mostly bullshit right now. Like, we don’t have any giant proof. Then they say, “well there’s still an investigation going on.” I don’t know, if they were finding something we would know about it. They way these leaks happen, they would leak it. They’d leak. If it was something really good, it’d leak.

    I just feel like they don’t really have it but they want to keep digging. And so I think the President is probably right to say, like “look, you are witch hunting me. You have no smoking gun, you have no real proof.”

    Watch:

      
     (Full video here):
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  • The Age Of No Privacy: The Surveillance State Shifts Into High Gear

    Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

    “We are rapidly entering the age of no privacy, where everyone is open to surveillance at all times; where there are no secrets from government.” ? William O. Douglas, Supreme Court Justice (1966)

    The government has become an expert in finding ways to sidestep what it considers “inconvenient laws” aimed at ensuring accountability and thereby bringing about government transparency and protecting citizen privacy.

    Indeed, it has mastered the art of stealth maneuvers and end-runs around the Constitution.

    It knows all too well how to hide its nefarious, covert, clandestine activities behind the classified language of national security and terrorism. And when that doesn’t suffice, it obfuscates, complicates, stymies or just plain bamboozles the public into remaining in the dark.

    Case in point: the National Security Agency (NSA) has been diverting “internet traffic, normally safeguarded by constitutional protections, overseas in order to conduct unrestrained data collection on Americans.”

    It’s extraordinary rendition all over again, only this time it’s surveillance instead of torture being outsourced.

    In much the same way that the government moved its torture programs overseas in order to bypass legal prohibitions against doing so on American soil, it is doing the same thing for its surveillance programs.

    By shifting its data storage, collection and surveillance activities outside of the country—a tactic referred to as “traffic shaping” —the government is able to bypass constitutional protections against unwarranted searches of Americans’ emails, documents, social networking data, and other cloud-stored data.

    The government, however, doesn’t even need to move its programs overseas. It just has to push the data over the border in order to “[circumvent] constitutional and statutory safeguards seeking to protect the privacy of Americans.”

    No wonder the NSA appeared so unfazed about the USA Freedom Act, which was supposed to put an end to the NSA’s controversial collection of metadata from Americans’ phone calls. The NSA had already figured out a way to accomplish the same results (illegally spying on Americans’ communications) without being shackled by the legislative or judicial branches of the government.

    Mind you, this metadata collection now being carried out overseas is just a small piece of the surveillance pie.

    The government and its corporate partners have a veritable arsenal of surveillance programs that will continue to operate largely in secret, carrying out warrantless mass surveillance on hundreds of millions of Americans’ phone calls, emails, text messages and the like, beyond the scrutiny of most of Congress and the taxpayers who are forced to fund its multi-billion dollar secret black ops budget.

    In other words, the surveillance state is alive and well and kicking privacy to shreds in America.

    On any given day, the average American going about his daily business is monitored, surveilled, spied on and tracked in more than 20 different ways by both government and corporate eyes and ears.

    Whether you’re walking through a store, driving your car, checking email, or talking to friends and family on the phone, you can be sure that some government agency, whether the NSA or some other entity, is listening in and tracking your behavior. This doesn’t even begin to touch on the corporate trackers that monitor your purchases, web browsing, Facebook posts and other activities taking place in the cyber sphere.

    We have now moved into a full-blown police state that is rapidly shifting into high-gear under the auspices of the surveillance state.

    Not content to merely transform local police into extensions of the military, the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department and the FBI are working to turn the nation’s police officers into techno-warriors, complete with iris scanners, body scanners, thermal imaging Doppler radar devices, facial recognition programs, license plate readers, cell phone Stingray devices and so much more.

    Add in the fusion centers, city-wide surveillance networks, data clouds conveniently hosted overseas by Amazon and Microsoft, drones equipped with thermal imaging cameras, and biometric databases, and you’ve got the makings of a world in which “privacy” is reserved exclusively for government agencies.

    Thus, the NSA’s “technotyranny”  is the least of our worries.

    Just about every branch of the government—from the Postal Service to the Treasury Department and every agency in between—now has its own surveillance sector, authorized to spy on the American people.

    And of course that doesn’t even begin to touch on the complicity of the corporate sector, which buys and sells us from cradle to grave, until we have no more data left to mine. Indeed, Facebook, Amazon and Google are among the government’s closest competitors when it comes to carrying out surveillance on Americans, monitoring the content of your emails, tracking your purchases, exploiting your social media posts and turning that information over to the government.

    It’s not just what we say, where we go and what we buy that is being tracked.

    We’re being surveilled right down to our genes, thanks to a potent combination of hardware, software and data collection that scans our biometrics—our faces, irises, voices, genetics, even our gait—runs them through computer programs that can break the data down into unique “identifiers,” and then offers them up to the government and its corporate allies for their respective uses.

    All of those internet-connected gadgets we just have to have (Forbes refers to them as “(data) pipelines to our intimate bodily processes”) are setting us up for a brave new world where there is nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

    Incredibly, there are still individuals who insist that they have nothing to fear from the police state and nothing to hide from the surveillance state, because they have done nothing wrong.

    To those sanctimonious few, secure in their delusions, let this be a warning.

    There is no safe place and no watertight alibi.

    The danger posed by the American police/surveillance state applies equally to all of us.

    As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, in an age of too many laws, too many prisons, too many government spies, and too many corporations eager to make a fast buck at the expense of the American taxpayer, we are all guilty of some transgression or other.

    Eventually, we will all be made to suffer the same consequences in the electronic concentration camp that surrounds us.

  • Prada Is Selling A $185 Paper Clip

    We finally have some good news for the distressed US retail industry.

    In light of recent deteriorating spending trends within the luxury segment, with Bank of America internal card data showing a relentless decline in retail spending among the wealthiest segment…

    … one would perhaps think that the conspicuous consumption excesses that marked the peak of the last bubble were long behind us.

    One would be wrong: first there was Balenciaga selling a $2,145 handbag that was a spitting image of an IKEA tote sold for $1 at the iconic store, and now, there is the $185 Prada paper clip.

    According to Business Insider, the Italian-made clip sold by Barneys New York, is 6.25 centimeters in length and 2.25 centimeters wide, is made from silver and has the Prada logo embossed on its side. It’s supposed to be used as a money clip, although one wonders why nouveau riche Millennials would use a Prada paper clip to hold their money (especially if much of it is in cryptocurrencies) when a, well, money clip should suffice perfectly. Then again, we can only assume Prada did their market research, and this is what it came up with:

    Of course, one can buy roughly 300 similar-looking paper clips on Amazon for around $5.50, which comes out to around $0.02 per paper clip, but hey, they are not silver Prada paperclips. 

    The social media response, as noted by Mashable, suggests that the new product may not be the smash hit that Prada envisioned:

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    On the odd chance that $185 is out of your budget, and if you can live without the Prada logo on your silver paper clip, Barneys sells a similar product for only $150.

  • Democratic-Party-Aligned Firm Behind Debunked "Russia Dossier" Stonewalls Senate Investigators

    A Democratic Party-aligned opposition research firm is stonewalling Congressional investigators who are trying to ascertain exactly who financed the now-debunked “Russia dossier” – remember? The one that claimed germaphobe Trump enjoyed getting urinated on by Russian hookers?

    The New York Post’s Paul Sperry is out with another report about Fusion GPS, a “research and strategic intelligence firm” founded by “three former Wall Street Journal investigative reporters.” But congressional sources say it’s actually an opposition-research group for Democrats, and the founders, who are more political activists than journalists, have a pro-Hillary, anti-Trump agenda."

    Fusion has refused to answer Senate investigators’ questions or provide records of communications that might help the panel identify who financed the error-ridden dossier. Now, because of the firm's intransigence, it looks like the investigators might soon make good on their threats.

    “These weren’t mercenaries or hired guns,” a congressional source familiar with the dossier probe said.

     

    “These guys had a vested personal and ideological interest in smearing Trump and boosting Hillary’s chances of winning the White House.”

    The firm was founded by Glenn Simpson, Thomas Catan and Peter Fritsch. Two of whom, Fritsch and Catan, have ties to Mexico — with Fritsch, a former Journal bureau chief in Mexico City, married to a Mexican woman who worked for Grupo Dina — a beneficiary of NAFTA. Catan, formerly from Britain, once edited a Mexican business magazine.

    Simpson, pictured below, is reported to have shared dark views of both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Trump. Before joining Fusion GPS, Simpson did opposition research for a former Clinton White House operative.

    Clearly, the research in the dossier – which was used to help justify the launch of Congressional and DOJ probes into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russian entities – has had tremendous consequences for the new administration, forcing Trump to beat back baseless claims and insinuations fed to the media by the DOJ and intelligence agencies. Still, after months of this treatment, no evidence of collusion has emerged.

    But the question remains: Who, exactly, provided the funding for the organization’s controversial and research? Money that allowed the firm to hire former MI6 agent Christopher Steele, allegedly the source of the dossier’s controversial claims.

    The Post has an idea of the profile, if not exactly the identity, of the individual or individuals responsible.

    “Fusion GPS was on the payroll of an unidentified Democratic ally of Clinton when it hired a long-retired British spy to dig up dirt on Trump. In 2012, Democrats hired Fusion GPS to uncover dirt on GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney. And in 2015, Democrat ally Planned Parenthood retained Fusion GPS to investigate pro-life activists protesting the abortion group.”

    The FBI is also resisting Senate investigators who are zeroing in on the alleged misconduct by former deputy director Andrew McCabe, who’s failure to recuse himself from the investigation into the Trump campaign despite financial and political connections to Clinton through his Democrat activist wife has attracted suspicion.

    And unsurprisingly, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch – now the subject of another probe organized by the Senate Judiciary Committee – is somehow involved.

    "Senate investigators are demanding to see records of communications between Fusion GPS and the FBI and the Justice Department, including any contacts with former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, now under congressional investigation for possibly obstructing the Hillary Clinton email probe, and deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe, who is under investigation by the Senate and the Justice inspector general for failing to recuse himself despite financial and political connections to the Clinton campaign through his Democrat activist wife.:

    The bureau’s attempts to verify the content in the dossier should alarm anybody in a report that should who’s been following along these past few months, after receiving a copy of the dossier in August, the bureau offered to pay its controversial source to corroborate the information.

    “The FBI received a copy of the Democrat-funded dossier in August, during the heat of the campaign, and is said to have contracted in October to pay Steele $50,000 to help corroborate the dirt on Trump — a relationship that “raises substantial questions about the independence” of the bureau in investigating Trump, warned Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.”

    As the Post reminds us, Steele has been cited as the source for nearly the entire collusion narrative, from the pro-Trump hackers were working at the direction of Russian President Vladimir Putin, the theory that the Russian government might have compromising information about Trump, and the idea that a Trump confidant held a clandestine meeting in Moscow.

    All of these allegations, as the Post notes, are 100% bullshit. Steele hasn't traveled to Moscow since the 1990s, and it appears his main source for most of his material was Google. 

    “Steele’s most sensational allegations remain unconfirmed. For instance, his claim that Trump lawyer Michael Cohen held a “clandestine meeting” on the alleged hacking scheme in Prague with “Kremlin officials” in August 2016 unraveled when Cohen denied ever visiting Prague, his passport showed no stamps showing he left or entered the US at the time, witnesses accounted for his presence here, and Czech authorities found no evidence Cohen went to Prague.

     

    Steele hadn’t worked in Moscow since the 1990s and didn’t actually travel there to gather intelligence on Trump firsthand. He relied on third-hand “friend of friend” sourcing. In fact, most of his claimed Russian sources spoke not directly to him but “in confidence to a trusted compatriot” who, in turn, spoke to Steele — and always anonymously.

     

    But his main source may have been Google. Most of the information branded as “intelligence” was merely rehashed from news headlines or cut and pasted — replete with errors — from Wikipedia.”

    But that didn’t stop both Democrats and, before them, anti-Trump Republicans, from accepting Steele’s allegations without scrutiny – and paying him handsomely for his efforts.

    “Steele contracted with Fusion GPS to investigate Trump’s ties to Russia starting in June 2016, whereupon he outlandishly claimed that Hillary campaign hackers were “paid by both Trump’s team and the Kremlin” and that the operation was run out of Putin’s office. He also fed Fusion GPS and its Hillary-allied clients incredulous gossip about Trump hating the Obamas so much that he hired hookers to urinate on a bed they slept in at the Moscow Ritz-Carlton, and that Russian intelligence recorded the pee party in case they needed to blackmail Trump.

     

    Never mind that none of the rumors were backed by evidence or even credible sourcing (don’t bother trying to confirm his bed-wetting yarn, Steele advised, as “all direct witnesses have been silenced”). Steele reinforced his paying customers’ worst fears about Trump, and they rewarded him for it with a whopping $250,000 in payments.”

    Steele, pictured below, also played a role in maligning former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn by suggesting there was something “untoward” about Flynn’s attending of a dinner to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Russia Today – an event that was also attended by former Green Party candidate Jill Stein.

    “In the same August report, for example, Steele connected a Moscow trip taken by then-Trump campaign adviser Michael Flynn to “the Russian operation” to hack the election. But there was nothing secret about the trip, which had taken place months earlier and had been widely reported.

     

    And there was nothing untoward about it. It was a dinner celebrating the 10th birthday of Russian TV network RT, and Flynn sat at the same table with Putin as US Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein.”

    Meanwhile, it appears the founders of Fusion GPS have profited handsomely from their misinformation campaign:

    “Property records show that in June 2016, as Clinton allies bankrolled Fusion GPS, Fritsch bought a six-bedroom, five-bathroom home in Bethesda, Md., for $2.3 million.”

    Could this be the thread that finally unravels the Trump investigation? We think so. Stay tuned for more information once the inevitable subpoena is served…

  • "Tick, Tick, Tick" Comey Ally Scrambles To Explain Why "Next Trump Bombshell" Didn't Arrive Today

    As we noted late last week, Benjamin Wittes, the Brookings Institution senior fellow and noted ally of former FBI Director James Comey, took to twitter to claim that another “bombshell” story, presumably related to the multiple investigations into whether the Trump camp colluded with the Russians, was in the works. However, unlike previous warnings from Wittes, this one contained a caveat: the “fuse” on the story is of an uncertain length, and that the next salvo could arrive as soon as Monday.

    But with no major bombshell forthcoming, Wittes returned to Twitter Monday to offer a few clarifications.

     

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    Not only did Wittes reiterate that the timing of the next bombshell story remains uncertain, he also offered a few more clues: The, he says, isn’t necessarily related to Comey, who was spotted walking into the New York Times office in Times Square last week.

    He also noted that there’s “an interesting preemptive defense of collusion happening," likely referring to comments made on Fox News by Washington DC Managing Editor Brit Hume and a host of other characters.

    “Can anybody identify the crime?” Hume asked.

    While Wittes messages might appear to be the half-crazed ravings of a defeated liberal, as the Daily Caller pointed out, they should be taken seriously. His previous warnings – tweets of “TICK TICK TICK” – have in the recent past preceded major NYT bombshells, including the May 16 report about the Comey memo and its contents. He tweeted a similar message two days later, before the NYT published a report about Comey wanting to keep his distance from Trump.

     

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    Wittes did it again shortly before the Times published a story alleging Comey asked Attorney General Jeff Sessions not to leave him in the room alone with Trump on June 6. Wittes says he has reviewed Comey-related stories before, and was an on-the-record source for the May 18 piece reported by the NYT’s Michael Schmidt, where he recounted to the NYT reporter that Comey had told him at a lunch meeting that he sought to distance himself from Trump. Comey felt that Trump was attempting to cozy up to Comey in hopes of quashing the ongoing Russia probe.

    As for his point about the story not involving Comey, perhaps the Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his team of prosecutorial Democrats have unearthed a new baseless narrative with which to badger the president. Let’s see: We’ve already seen collusion and obstruction – and can only imagine what might be next.

    Maybe Trump really did shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue. Only way to find out is to stay tuned…

  • Seymour Hersh: US Lied About Syrian Chemical Attack Then Bombed Them Anyway

    Liberty Blitzkrieg's Mike Krieger notes that part of Trump’s appeal to many of his voters was, at least ostensibly, the idea that he would employ a less hawkish/neocon foreign policy than his opponent Hillary “We Came, We Saw, He Died” Clinton.

    While it’s still too early to decisively say that Trump will usher in yet another foreign policy disaster for these United States and the world, it’s certainly not looking good.

     

    The lobbing of tomahawk missiles into Syrian based on the fairytale that Assad launched a chemical weapons attack was the first sign that Trump is easily manipulated and impulsive. In fact, the episode bothered me so much I wrote a post detailing the dire ramifications titled, Prepare for Impact – This is the Beginning of the End for U.S. Empire.  I suggest taking a read if you missed it the first time, it’s my most popular post of the year.

     

    While that was bad enough, Trump’s cozying up to the barbaric, terrorist-supporitng leaders of Saudi Arabia has been by far the most concerning aspect of his foreign policy (if you can call it that) so far. This policy has become even more dangerous now that the 30-year old princeling who is leading the Saudis’ increasingly aggressive stance in the region has been named crown prince. It appears Trump is willing to let the Saudis do whatever they want in the region, which is guaranteed to have disastrous implications for America and the Middle East.

    But a new Seymour Hersh article is out showing that the US knew there was no Assad chemical attack in April, but President Trump decided to bomb anyway.

    And the details are shocking… as TheAntiMedia.org's Darius Shahtahmasebi details, never one to accept the U.S. government’s official explanation of events without question, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh has investigated Donald Trump’s decision to strike the al-Shayat Airbase in Syria in April of this year, which the president launched amid widespread allegations that the Syrian government committed a chemical weapons attack.

    In a report entitled “Trump’s Red Line,” published Sunday in the daily German newspaper Die Welt, Hersh asserts that President Donald Trump ignored important intelligence reports when he made the decision to attack Syria after pictures emerged of dying children in the war-torn country.

    For those of us without goldfish memories, Hersh’s recent investigation is reminiscent of his previous examination of the alleged chemical weapons attacks in 2013, detailed in an article entitled “Whose Sarin?” That article was published in the London Review of Books.

    The official White House explanation for the events in April of this year was that Donald Trump was moved by the suffering of “beautiful” Syrian babies – the same Syrian babies he doesn’t want to set foot in the United States – and decided to punish the Syrian government for the attack two days after it allegedly occurred. This punishment came in the form of an airstrike despite the lack of a thorough investigation regarding what took place that fateful day in April and who was ultimately culpable (though the Trump administration insisted they were certain that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was to blame).

    In that context, it should come as no surprise that Trump acted rashly without consideration of the facts on the ground. However, what is most disturbing about Hersh’s account is the fact that, according to his source, Trump was well aware that the U.S. had no solid intelligence linking the Syrian government to a chemical weapons attack — and that’s because, according to Hersh’s article, it’s doubtful a chemical weapons attack occurred at all.

    Hersh reports:

    “The available intelligence made clear that the Syrians had targeted a jihadist meeting site on April 4 using a Russian-supplied guided bomb equipped with conventional explosives. Details of the attack,  including information on its so-called high-value targets, had been provided by the Russians days in advance to American and allied military officials in Doha, whose mission is to coordinate all U.S., allied, Syrian and Russian Air Force operations in the region.”

     

    “None of this makes any sense,” one officer reportedly told colleagues upon learning of the decision to bomb Syria, according to Hersh. “We KNOW that there was no chemical attack … the Russians are furious. Claiming we have the real intel and know the truth … I guess it didn’t matter whether we elected Clinton or Trump.”

    According to Hersh, Trump “could not be swayed” by 48 hours worth of intense briefings and decision-making following the initial reports of the alleged chemical weapons attack. Hersh, who reportedly reviewed transcripts of real-time communications, explains that there is a “total disconnect” between the president and his military advisers and intelligence officials.

    As is the case with Syrian military operations, Russia gave the U.S. details of the carefully planned attack on a meeting in Khan Sheikhoun, according to Hersh’s  admittedly anonymous sources. The Russians had employed a drone to the area days before the attack to develop the intelligence necessary to coordinate it.

    According to Hersh’s sources, the United States and its Russian counterpart routinely share information regarding planned attacks in order to avoid collisions. However, they also permit “coordination,”  a practice that involves giving the other side a “hot tip about a command and control facility,” which then helps the other side carry out their attack.

    Therefore, there was no surprise chemical weapons attack, as the Trump administration alleged. In fact, Russia had actually warned its American counterpart on the off-chance that there were any CIA assets on the ground who should have been forewarned of an impending attack.

    “They [the Russians] were playing the game right,” a senior adviser told Hersh.

    Hersh continues:

    “Russian and Syrian intelligence officials, who coordinate operations closely with the American command posts, made it clear that the planned strike on Khan Sheikhoun was special because of the high-value target. ‘It was a red-hot change. The mission was out of the ordinary – scrub the sked,’ the senior adviser told me. ‘Every operations officer in the region’ – in the Army, Marine Corps, Air Force, CIA and NSA – ‘had to know there was something going on. The Russians gave the Syrian Air Force a guided bomb and that was a rarity. They’re skimpy with their guided bombs and rarely share them with the Syrian Air Force. And the Syrians assigned their best pilot to the mission, with the best wingman.’ The advance intelligence on the target, as supplied by the Russians, was given the highest possible score inside the American community.”

    Hersh confirms Russia’s account of the incident, in which Russian authorities alleged that the Syrian Air Force bombed a “terrorist warehouse,” and that secondary bombings dispersed dangerous chemicals into the atmosphere.

    Strangely, if Hersh’s reporting is accurate, it is not clear why Russia didn’t give the detailed account at the time — and why the Russians didn’t emphasize that they had shared information with the U.S. military well in advance of the attack, as this would have cast further doubt on the official U.S. narrative. In that context, Russia could have provided proof of any prior communications that took place within the so-called deconfliction channel. It also doesn’t explain why Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, appeared to endorse two competing theories behind the events at Khan Sheikhoun.

    However, Hersh continues:

    “A team from Médecins Sans Frontières, treating victims from Khan Sheikhoun at a clinic 60 miles to the north, reported that ‘eight patients showed symptoms – including constricted pupils, muscle spasms and involuntary defecation – which are consistent with exposure to a neurotoxic agent such as sarin gas or similar compounds.’ MSF also visited other hospitals that had received victims and found that patients there ‘smelled of bleach, suggesting that they had been exposed to chlorine.’ In other words, evidence suggested that there was more than one chemical responsible for the symptoms observed, which would not have been the case if the Syrian Air Force – as opposition activists insisted – had dropped a sarin bomb, which has no percussive or ignition power to trigger secondary explosions. The range of symptoms is, however, consistent with the release of a mixture of chemicals, including chlorine and the organophosphates used in many fertilizers, which can cause neurotoxic effects similar to those of sarin.”

    Hersh is not the first high-profile investigator to cast major doubts on the Trump administration’s official narrative regarding the events at Khan Sheikhoun. MIT professor emeritus Theodore Postol, who previously worked as a former scientific advisor to the U.S. military’s Chief of Naval Operations, poked major holes in the claims that the Syrian government had launched a chemical weapons attack at Khan Sheikhoun, noting the “politicization” of intelligence findings (you can access all of his reports here). Postol argued that there was no possible way U.S. government officials could have been sure Assad was behind the attack before they launched their strike, even though they claimed to be certain. Postol took the conversation even further, asserting that the available evidence pointed to an attack that was executed by individuals on the ground, not from an aircraft. Former weapons inspector Scott Ritter had similar concerns regarding the White House’s conclusions, as did former U.K. ambassador to Syria Peter Ford. The mainstream media paid almost zero attention to these reports, a slight that exposes the media’s complicity in allowing these acts of war to go ahead unquestioned.

    “This was not a chemical weapons strike,” the adviser said. “That’s a fairy tale. If so, everyone involved in transferring, loading and arming the weapon – you’ve got to make it appear like a regular 500-pound conventional bomb – would be wearing Hazmat protective clothing in case of a leak. There would be very little chance of survival without such gear. Military grade sarin includes additives designed to increase toxicity and lethality. Every batch that comes out is maximized for death. That is why it is made. It is odorless and invisible and death can come within a minute. No cloud. Why produce a weapon that people can run away from?”

    According to Hersh’s source, within hours of viewing the footage of the ‘attack’ and its aftermath, Trump ordered his national defense apparatus to plan for retaliation against the Syrian government. Hersh explains that despite the CIA and the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) having no evidence that Syria even had sarin, let alone that they used it on the battlefield, Trump was not easily persuaded once he had made up his mind.

    “Everyone close to him knows his proclivity for acting precipitously when he does not know the facts,” the adviser told Hersh. “He doesn’t read anything and has no real historical knowledge. He wants verbal briefings and photographs. He’s a risk-taker. He can accept the consequences of a bad decision in the business world; he will just lose money. But in our world, lives will be lost and there will be long-term damage to our national security if he guesses wrong. He was told we did not have evidence of Syrian involvement and yet Trump says: ‘Do it.”’ [emphasis added]

    At a meeting on April 6, 2017, at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, Trump spoke with his national security officials regarding the best way to move forward. The meeting was not to decide what to do, Hersh explains, but how best to do it (and how to keep Trump as happy as possible).

    Trump was given four options. The first one was dismissed at the outset because it involved doing nothing. The second one was the one that was decided upon: a minimal show of force (with advance warning to Russia). The third option was the strike package that Obama was unable to implement in 2013 in the face of mounting public opposition and Russia’s threats of intervention. This plan was Hillary Clinton’s ultimate fantasy considering she was encouraging it moments before Trump’s lone strike actually took place. However, this would have involved extensive air strikes on Assad’s airfields and would have drawn in the Russian military to a point of no return. The fourth option involved the direct assassination of the Syrian president by bombing his palaces, as well as his underground bunkers. This was not considered, either.

    As we all witnessed in April, the second option was adopted, and the airbase Trump struck was up and running again in less than 24 hours, making it a very symbolic and empty show of force.

    Hersh’s insight into the way Trump is conducting his foreign policy does not bode well for the future of the Syrian conflict (or anywhere else in the world, for that matter). Trump was not interested in the intelligence or the facts on the ground — if he had been, he would have waited until an investigation had determined culpability before ordering a strike.

    Missing from Hersh’s account, however, is the fact that it was newly appointed national security advisor General H.R. McMaster who laid out the military strike proposals to the president at his resort on April 6. McMaster replaced former national security advisor Michael Flynn after the latter was forced to resign due to leaks from within the intelligence community. Due to Flynn’s alleged ties to Russia, it seems unlikely he would have proposed such a strike on Russia’s close ally to begin with.

    It is unclear whether McMaster proposed the strikes in order to appease Trump or because McMaster ultimately wants Trump to adopt a tougher stance against Syria and Russia; McMaster has a history of pro-interventionism and anti-Russian sentiment.

    Those commentators who can review these startling revelations but still condone Trump’s actions with a lazy ‘Assad is still a bad guy and must be overthrown’ mindset argument are being intellectually dishonest, with themselves and others. As was the case in 2013, there is still very little evidence that Assad has ever used chemical weapons — particularly in the attacks that the U.S. has tried to pin on him — yet this is the standard by which the corporate media and our respective governments have instructed us to judge Assad. Even without this conclusive evidence, shortly after the April events, U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley stated Assad will fall from power.

    Hersh’s investigation bolsters many claims that the U.S. acted rashly without first conducting or ordering an impartial inquiry regarding what happened in April of this year. Hersh’s report also serves as a reminder to the world of the warpath we are continuing down, spearheaded by an impulsive and reckless megalomaniac who has no interest in ascertaining fact from fiction.

    *  *  *

    Liberty Blitzkrieg's Mike Krieger also notes that just as interesting as the information above, is the fact that Hersh had to turn to a German newspaper to publish it. This makes perfect sense, because the one area where U.S. corporate press maintains unassailable consistency is when it comes to cheerleading for an interventionist, imperial foreign policy based on unverified claims and outright lies. Trump’s little fireworks display checked all those boxes, which is why the corporate media drooled all over the bombing, celebrating Trump for the first time of his Presidency. As Hersh notes:

    After the meeting, with the Tomahawks on their way, Trump spoke to the nation from Mar-a-Lago, and accused Assad of using nerve gas to choke out “the lives of helpless men, women and children. It was a slow and brutal death for so many … No child of God should ever suffer such horror.”

     

    The next few days were his most successful as president. America rallied around its commander in chief, as it always does in times of war.

     

    Trump, who had campaigned as someone who advocated making peace with Assad, was bombing Syria 11 weeks after taking office, and was hailed for doing so by Republicans, Democrats and the media alike. One prominent TV anchorman, Brian Williams of MSNBC, used the word “beautiful” to describe the images of the Tomahawks being launched at sea. Speaking on CNN, Fareed Zakaria said: “I think Donald Trump became president of the United States.” 

     

    A review of the top 100 American newspapers showed that 39 of them published editorials supporting the bombing in its aftermath, including the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal.

    Which once again goes to show just how worthless, irresponsible and downright dangerous U.S. corporate media really is.

    Finally, as Ron Paul rages below, Republicans cannot let go of "regime change" for Syria and new Cold War with Russia — even as the Democrats are starting to back away. Will the mainstream media stick with the narrative as well? Or is it all about to come crashing down?

  • McMansions Are Back And They're More Hideous Than Ever

    The McMansion rose to prominence in the early-to-mid-2000s and to this day is the epitome of the excesses created by the biggest mortgage bubble in the history of mankind.  In suburbs all across America, these 3,000 – 5,000 square foot, cookie-cutter monstrosities, with their foam pillars and lots that were just barely larger than the footprint of the houses themselves, were popping up faster than you could say “subprime mortgage.”

    McMansion

     

    Unfortunately, as we’re forced to report frequently here, Americans tend to have very short-term memories and can’t seem but help but constantly repeat the sins of their past.  As such, it’s hardly a surprise that the average size of new homes in the U.S. is once again skyrocketing at an even faster rate than the early part of this century.

     

    Apparently people in the Midwest managed to maintain some level of modesty in the early 2000’s but have since decided ‘modesty’ is massively overrated.

     

    Meanwhile, the return of the McMansion epidemic is also helping to push home prices back to all-time highs.

     

    Meanwhile, if you can’t beat em, as the saying goes, then you might as well mercilessly mock and ridicule them…or something like that.  Luckily, as the Washington Post points out today, that is where “McMansion Hell” comes in.

    Kate Wagner, an architecture critic, wishes America would have learned its lesson about McMansions the first time around. She spends her free time tearing apart their architectural anachronisms on her blog, McMansion Hell.

     

    Wagner describes McMansions as a particular artifact of economic history, one whose physical form was the product of a new American pastime: flipping houses.

     

    And, since Americans will never stop building these hideous dwellings, McMansion Hell should be able to provide us with hours of entertainment for years to come.

    “They were built to sell in the year they were selling, not for future generations,” said Wagner. “These houses are kind of disfigured, because they were built from the inside out, to have the most amenities to sell faster.”

     

    A culture of house flipping helped to quantify certain home improvements, like the addition of colossal marble islands and palatial foyers designed to grab the attention of buyers. That gave these houses even more of a cookie-cutter feel.

     

    “It’s about invoking the symbolism of having a lot of money, but not spending a lot of money on the house,” says Wagner.

     

    Whoever owns the house above must be poor…not a single column.

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