Aug 28

Today’s News 28th August 2018

  • Ireland's Dwindling Catholic Masses

    Over the weekend, Pope Francis visited Ireland, the country’s first papal visit since John Paul II’s memorable trip in 1979.

    The Ireland Francis visited is a very different place compared to 1979 with the Irish Catholic church rocked by scandals including sexual abuse, illegal adoptions, cover-ups and the exploitation of women in mother-and-baby homes.

    The 36-hour trip ended with the Argentine Pope begging for forgiveness for the church’s crimes across the country.

    Pope Francis in 2018

    That was in stark contrast to the papal visit in 1979 when Pope John Paul II uttered the famous words “young people of Ireland, I love you”, to rapturous applause.

    Pope John Paull II in 1979

    His mass in the Phoenix Park in Dublin is estimated to have been the largest gathering of Irish people in history with an estimated 1.25 million attending the event, nearly a third of the country’s population.

    Infographic: Ireland's Dwindling Catholic Masses | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    In the “new Ireland”, an estimated 130,000 attended Pope Francis’ mass in the same spot, illustrating the extent of the Catholic church’s decline in Ireland over the past four decades.

    Less than half the people holding tickets turned up at the event, with weather, travel restrictions and acts of protest all thought to have caused the low turnout.

  • How Macedonia Could Push NATO Into A War

    Authored by R=Ted Galen Carpenter via The National Interest,

    Macedonia’s tenuous relationships with its neighbor states make it a liability for the alliance.

    When Fox News host Tucker Carlson asked Donald Trump last month why he should send his son to die defending Montenegro, NATO’s newest member, the president seemed to repudiate his own administration’s policy. He indicated that Americans shouldn’t be willing to sacrifice their lives for such a trivial ally. Furthermore, he warned that Montenegro “has very aggressive people. They may get aggressive, and congratulations, you’re in World War III.” As Cato Institute senior fellow Doug Bandow pointed out, Trump’s comment was odd on two counts.

    First, the Senate approved the admission of Montenegro on his watch in March 2017. If he thought that latest episode of adding a useless microstate to the Alliance was unwise, he could have withdrawn the treaty from consideration before the Senate vote.

    Second, as Bandow notes archly, that while “it is theoretically possible that the vast, aggressive, powerful Montenegrin legions might launch themselves towards Moscow,” it isn’t too likely, because Montenegrin leaders “do not appear to have entirely lost their minds.”

    Indeed, the scenario that a small Balkan NATO partner might trigger a war that entangles the United States is unlikely to entail a direct provocation of Russia. That reality has made it easy for Trump’s critics, here and abroad, to mock his comment about Montenegro triggering a world war.

    A far greater risk is that the tripwire would be a conflict in which an alliance member became embroiled with one of its regional neighbors. Montenegro actually is less of a danger in that respect than NATO’s latest invitee, Macedonia. Montenegro seems on relatively good terms with neighboring states, although it has been involved in an extended border dispute with Kosovo that was resolved just recently when the Kosovo parliament passed bitterly resisted legislation approving a settlement of the controversy.

    Macedonia is on much worse terms with Kosovo and that country’s ethnic brethren in Albania. Officials and the populations of both countries have long pursued a “Greater Albania” agenda that lays claim to swaths of territory in Serbia, Montenegro, and especially Macedonia. The NATO-assisted severing of Kosovo from Serbia in 1999 was the first major triumph for that agenda, and Greater Albanian expansionists wasted no time in trying to follow up on their victory. Within months, portions of Macedonia in which ethnic Albanians constituted a majority (or in some cases, just a plurality) of the population sought to destabilize that country, demanding extensive autonomy for those provinces. Both the United States and its NATO allies put intense pressure on Macedonia’s government to grant the demanded concessions, and Skopje reluctantly complied.

    Tensions then subsided for a while, but Albanian separatist sentiments continued to fester and grow. In the past few years, a new crisis has emerged, with Albanian activistsleading large anti-government demonstrations. Skopje’s relations with both Albania and Kosovo are deteriorating markedly. In April 2017, Macedonia’s foreign ministry formally accused Albania of interfering in the country’s internal political affairs. A month earlier Macedonia’s president charged that the demands of the Albanian minority was the biggest threat to his nation’s sovereignty and unity.

    Washington and other Western capitals continue to press the Macedonian government to make concessions to the country’s Albanian minority beyond those granted under outside pressure during the 2001 crisis. That pressure is creating major splits within the Macedonian ethnic majority. An especially ugly confrontation between Macedonian nationalists and more accommodating elements erupted in the spring of 2017. Pieter Feith, a former European Union envoy to Skopje, warned the nationalists that they were “playing with fire” if they continued to resist relinquishing power to a moderate successor government. Soon thereafter, the nationalists gave way.

    Divisive issues continue to roil the country, however. The demands of the Albanian faction for ever-greater autonomy keep escalating, and that has caused the president and other officials to balk at making further concessions. President Gjorge Ivanov has dug in his heels on one key issue, repeatedly refusing to sign a language law that would formally recognize Albanian as the primary language in certain regions of the country. He and his supporters fear that such a new concession would simply whet the appetite of Albanian secessionists

    The drive for a Greater Albania is gaining new momentum, and that creates major problems for a prospective NATO member. The parallels to events leading up to Kosovo’s secessionist war against Serbia in the 1990s and NATO’s military intervention are more than a little unsettling. What happens once Macedonia joins NATO, if the Albanian secessionist drive does not ease but accelerates and Skopje takes action against Albania and/or Kosovo to prevent outside assistance to the rebellion, claiming that those countries have committed aggression? It is hardly a remote possibility that the United States as NATO’s leader could be drawn into such a nasty conflict.

    That possibility underscores the folly of America pushing to add strategically and economically irrelevant microstates to the alliance. They are not strategic assets in any reasonable definition of the term. Instead, they are strategic liabilities and potential snares. Granted, members like Macedonia and Montenegro are not likely to involve the United States in a world war—unlike the three Baltic republics, which could certainly do so, given their frosty relations with Russia. The situation in the Balkans is not akin to the one that existed on the eve of World War I and plunged Europe (and ultimately America) into that catastrophe. But a needless entanglement even in a petty, limited armed conflict is one entanglement too many. President Trump should act on the instincts he displayed during his interview with Tucker Carlson and make it clear that the United States will not approve NATO membership for Macedonia or any other applicant.

  • Libya Erupting Into New Civil War As Rival Factions Battle On Streets Of Tripoli

    Long forgotten in Western mainstream media, Libya has suddenly come back into headlines as a small civil war is erupting within areas under control of the UN-recognized Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli. 

    Scores of people have been killed and wounded amidst intensifying clashes in the Libyan capital as rival factions vie for control of the city.

    Notably, the clashes have involved the shelling of residential areas in southern sections of Tripoli, street-to-street fighting, and tanks in the streets, reminiscent of the 2011 war which eventually led to a NATO air campaign and forcible removal and assassination of Libya’s longtime leader Muammar Gaddafi.

    Social media photo of the clashes Monday via Libyan Express

    Al-Jazeera reports Monday’s escalating violence which began over the weekend, and which has resulted in a declared state of emergency being throughout the capital: 

    At least four people have been killed and seven others wounded in clashes that broke out between rival armed groups in Libya’s capital, Tripoli, as they attempt to take control of the city.

    The health ministry declared a state of emergency on Monday, according to local media, after the Sunday evening clashes continued to escalate.

    The fighting erupted between local militias and al-Kani tribal fighters from Tarhouna, southeast of Tripoli, who are sending reinforcements to the country’s north. 

    Local and international reports confirm that both sides of the fighting are loyal to the UN and internationally backed GNA. 

    Tanks are in the streets of the Libyan capital, via Alwasat Cairo news

    By the end of the day, the Associated Press reported at least 27 people wounded, according the Libyan Health Ministry.

    And further according to the AP: The United Nations Support Mission in Libya has voiced concerns over “the use of indiscriminate fire and heavy weapons in densely populated residential areas.”

    Footage of ongoing clashes in Tripoli published by The Libyan Observer on Monday:

    The English language UK-based Libyan Express described the scene of Monday’s fighting based on eyewitnesses: 

    Heavy weapons, including artillery, have been used in the fighting, according to witnesses. Residential areas have been hit by what seems to be random shelling and several families have had to evacuate their homes.

    Roads were blocked, while tanks and armoured vehicles were seen at several places across the city.

    Since the NATO-backed overthrow of Gaddafi in 2011, Libya has remained split between rival parliaments and governments in the east and west, with militias and tribes lining up behind each, resulting in fierce periodic clashes. 

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    Perhaps the most significant of these warring militias is Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army, which controls much of eastern Libya.

    Haftar is reportedly poised to make a move on Libya’s vital “oil crescent region” while bolstering his forces with Chadian mercenaries, according to local reports.

    ISIS also maintains a scattered presence in various parts of the country, claiming responsibility for a deadly attack on a security checkpoint as recently as this weekend in the western part of the country. Six soldiers loyal to the GNA were reportedly killed in that attack. 

    Meanwhile the GNA is trying to bring its own factions to heel after days of violence increasingly impacting densely populated residential areas, yet seems helpless to act. 

    “We warn these gangs and outlawed groups that have terrorised civilians and residents; there is no space for such lawlessness and chaos,” the GNA’s Presidential Council said in a statement. “We have given orders to the interior ministry to counter these attacks,” the statement said. 

    Though the recently “liberated” Libya has remained conflict-prone after NATO and US forces promised an “Arab Spring”-style “blossoming of democracy” — things have clearly only gone from worse to worse as the capital now inches toward full blown civil war.

    Welcome to the “new” Libya… where the US and UN recognized government is at war with itself. 

  • Meadows: "We've Learned NEW Information" Suggesting FBI/DOJ Leaked To Press, Used Articles To Obtain FISA Warrants

    Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-NC) dropped a late-night bombshell on Monday suggesting there’s evidence that the FBI and DOJ rigged their own FISA spy warrants by leaking information to the press, then using the resultant articles to obtain court authorization to surveil targets. 

    “We’ve learned NEW information suggesting our suspicions are true: FBI/DOJ have previously leaked info to the press, and then used those same press stories as a separate source to justify FISA’s,” tweeted Meadows. 

    Until now, we’ve known that the creator of the so-called Steele Dossier, former UK spy Christopher Steele, leaked information directly to Yahoo! News journalist Michael Isikoff – whose article became a supporting piece of evidence in the FBI’s FISA warrant application and subsequent renewals for Trump adviser Carter Page. 

    So while we’ve known that Steele seeded Isikoff with information from his dubious dossier, and that the FBI then used both Steele’s dossier and Isikoff’s Steele-inspired article to game the FISA system, Rep. Mark Meadows now says that the FBI/DOJ directly leaked information to the press, which they then used for the same type of FISA scheme.

    Strong evidence was discovered in January suggesting that former FBI employee Lisa Page leaked privileged information to Devlin Barrett, formerly of the Wall Street Journal and now with the Washington Post. Whether any of Barrett’s reporting was subsequently used to obtain a FISA warrant is unknown. 

    Meanwhile, Rep. Meadows’s Monday night tweet comes hours before twice-demoted DOJ employee Bruce Ohr is set to give closed-door testimony to the House Oversight Committee. Ohr was caught lying about his involvement with opposition research firm Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson – who employed Steele. Ohr’s CIA-linked wife, Nellie, was also  employed by Fusion as part of the firm’s anti-Trump efforts, and had ongoing communications with the ex-UK spy, Christopher Steele as well. 

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    Based on new emails recently turned over to Congressional investigators, Ohr was revealed to have been feeding information to the FBI from Steele, long after the FBI had officially cut Steele off for inappropriate leaks to the press. 

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    Ohr’s role as a conduit between Steele and the FBI continued for months and resulted in 12 separate FBI interviews, including several after Trump’s inauguration. According to Ohr’s then-supervisor, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, Ohr worked on the Russia probe without his permission and without his knowledge. –The Federalist

    House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy vowed that Tuesday’s Ohr testimony would “get to the bottom of what he did, why he did it, who he did it in concert with, whether he had the permission of the supervisors at the Department of Justice.” 

    Last week, President Trump called for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to fire Ohr after his and Nellie’s relationship with Simpson emerged. Trump tweeted: “Will Bruce Ohr, whose family received big money for helping to create the phony, dirty and discredited Dossier, ever be fired from the Jeff Sessions  ‘Justice’ Department? A total joke!”

    Earlier in August, Trump called Ohr a “disgrace,” and warned that he may be pulling his security clearance “very quickly.” 

    Trump’s threat came one day after two tweets about Ohr, noting a connection to former FBI agent Peter Strzok, as well as a text sent by Ohr after former FBI Director James Comey was fired in which Ohr says “afraid they will be exposed.” 

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    More Ohr questions remain. For example, why did Nellie Ohr obtain a Ham Radio license right in May, 2016? As Ham enthusiast George Parry wondered in The Federalist in March, was it to avoid detection while working on the anti-Trump effort? 

    So, was Nellie Ohr’s late-in-life foray into ham radio an effort to evade the Rogers-led NSA detecting her participation in compiling the Russian-sourced Steele dossier? Just as her husband’s omissions on his DOJ ethics forms raise an inference of improper motive, any competent prosecutor could use the circumstantial evidence of her taking up ham radio while digging for dirt on Trump to prove her consciousness of guilt and intention to conceal illegal activities. –The Federalist

    And since none of this apparently justifies the appointment of a second special counsel by the DOJ, perhaps Bruce can offer up some answers during Tuesday’s session? Of course, we’ll never know what he said unless someone leaks.

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  • Why US Imperialism Loves Afghan Quagmire

    Authored by Finian Cunningham via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    It may seem paradoxical that any American interest would seek to deliberately prolong the Afghan quagmire. Costing trillions of dollars to the national debt, one would think that US planners are anxious to wind down the war and cut their immense losses. Not so, it seems.

    Like the classic 1960s satire film, Dr Strangelove, and how he came to “love the A-bomb”, there are present-day elements in the US military-security apparatus that seem to be just fine about being wedded to the mayhem in Afghanistan.

    That war is officially the longest-ever war fought by US forces overseas, outlasting the Vietnam war (1964-75) by six years – and still counting.

    After GW Bush launched the operation in October 2001, the war is now under the purview of its third consecutive president. What’s more, the 17-year campaign to date is unlikely to end for several more years to come, after President Donald Trump last year gave the Pentagon control over its conduct.

    This week saw two developments which show that powerful elements within the US state have very different calculations concerning the Afghan war compared with most ordinary citizens.

    First there was the rejection by Washington of an offer extended by Russia to join a peace summit scheduled for next month. The purpose of the Moscow conference is to bring together participants in the war, including the US-backed Afghan government of President Ashraf Ghani, as well as the Taliban militants who have been fighting against American military occupation.

    Washington and its Afghan surrogate administration in Kabul said they would not be participating because, in their view, such a dialogue would be futile.

    The US refusal to attend the Moscow event, after previously showing an apparent interest, drew an angry response from Russia. Russia’s foreign ministry said the “refusal to attend the Moscow meeting on Afghanistan shows Washington has no interest in launching a peace process.”

    One suspects that US reluctance is partly due to not wanting to give Moscow any additional international standing since Russia’s successful military intervention in Syria and its leading role in mediating for peace there.

    It also seems incongruous that only last week the US-backed Ghani administration offered to call a ceasefire with the Taliban to mark the Muslim religious festivities of Eid al-Arafat. If President Ghani can see fit to call a truce with the militants, then what is so objectionable about sitting down with them in Moscow?

    Another, more sinister, development was the disclosure this week by the Russian foreign ministry that it had tracked large-scale weapons supplies to militant groups in Afghanistan’s northern region. The foreign ministry said the weapons were dropped off by unidentified military helicopters.

    What’s more, the helicopters were apparently given flight clearance by the US military forces and their Afghan national army charges. There can be only one conclusion: the Pentagon or the CIA are complicit in arming insurgents whom they are supposed to be trying to defeat. This is not the first time that such clandestine trafficking of weapons by US forces in Afghanistan has been reported by the Russian foreign ministry.

    Similar skulduggery involving US military with terror groups in Syria has also been documented.

    Recall too an interview given at the end of last year by former Afghan President Hamid Karzai who said categorically that US military commanders were responsible for cultivating Islamic State (IS, ISIS or Daesh) terrorist networks in his country. These groups seem to be separate in intent from the Taliban factions.

    Ironically, US commanders have recently accused Russia of supplying weapons to Taliban fighters. Moscow and the Taliban have both separately denied any such link.

    Such claims by Washington seem more plausibly an attempt by the Pentagon to muddy the waters of their own complicity in arming illegal militant groups in Afghanistan.

    The question is: why would US forces want to aid and abet militants and prolong a war that has cost the American taxpayer trillions of dollars? Why would Washington spurn an opportunity to participate in the Moscow-convened summit scheduled for September 4, which is aimed at finding a peaceful settlement to the conflict?

    In short, what US interests are there in prolonging this appalling war?

    While the occupation of Afghanistan by US troops is a deadweight for the American national economy and citizen-taxpayers – adding up to $5 trillion to the country’s total debt load of $21 trillion – we have to bear in mind that for weapons manufacturers and suppliers, the war is a boon. It keeps the military-industrial complex humming with super profitable business. Companies like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, which are among the top lobbyists to Congress, using a coldly rational logic would not want this war to stop. Ever. Their corporate interests are starkly divergent from ordinary US citizens and foot-soldiers on the ground. So what if the nation is $21 trillion in debt when mega profits are being scooped up by executives and shareholders of the weapons companies?

    It is also well-documented that the CIA depends on lawlessness in Afghanistan to run its trillion-dollar opium drugs racket. As with the notorious Golden Triangle in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam war, the CIA uses global drugs trafficking as a way to fund its “black operations” in others parts of the world, finances that are kept hidden from political oversight by Congressional lawmakers.

    A third incentive for American imperial planners to keep Afghanistan in turmoil is that it allows the US to mobilize and weaponize proxy armies for the purpose of harrying Russia and Iran. Afghanistan has a border with Iran to its west and it is a spearhead into Russia’s southern flank. For the US, having a base for militants with which to penetrate and destabilize either Iran or Russia is a strategic asset, not at all a strategic loss. Especially now given that Iran and Russia have succeeded in routing the US-backed jihadist bases in Syria.

    Indeed, Russia has already explicitly expressed the concern that a lawless Afghanistan presents a direct security threat to its national interests.

    So, yes, by any normal reckoning, Afghanistan has been a catastrophe for US citizens, as well as of course for millions of Afghanis who have lost loved ones, homes, jobs, and livelihoods only to eke a subsistence in grinding poverty.

    But in a more sinister reckoning, there are powerful American interests which view the suffering and calamity of Afghanistan as a lucrative, strategic venture that must be kept going.

    Afghanistan may be a seething swamp of suffering. But it’s a swamp that is at the same time spawning immense advantages for a select few overseeing US imperialist interests. That makes the tragedy of the country more poignant. Heinously, crucial incentives are not to stop the war, but to keep it going.

  • Visualizing U.S. Millionaires By State Of Residence

    There are literally millions of millionaires in the United States.

    In fact, as VisualCapitalist’s Jeff Desjardins notes, there are 7.1 million households in the country that have investible assets of $1 million or more.

    Impressively, this gives the U.S. a higher total population of millionaires than any other country in the world, even though China’s rapidly rising wealth is also quite notable.

    MILLIONAIRES BY STATE

    Today’s visualization comes to us from HowMuch.net, and it breaks down U.S. millionaires by state.

    Source: HowMuch.net

    Here are the states with the highest millionaire populations, in absolute terms:

    Not surprisingly, states like California, Texas, New York, and Florida dominate this list. They all have high millionaire populations, but they are also the four most populous states in general.

    MILLIONAIRE CONCENTRATION

    When looking at millionaires per capita, aforementioned states like New York, Texas, and Florida all fall off the Top 10 list altogether.

    The state of California, however, remains clinging on to the #10 spot:

    As you can see, the states surrounding hubs like New York City and D.C. shoot up the rankings when looking at the data this way.

    New Jersey and Connecticut are in two of the top three spots – and of course New York City is home to well over 300,000 millionaires itself.

    Meanwhile, Maryland walks away with the title of most millionaires per capita. It may be surprising, but this is the seventh year in a row that Maryland has ranked number one in the country for this metric.

  • "China's Uber" Murderer Had Loans From 51 Lenders, Borrowed Heavily From P2P

    Submitted by Investing in Chinese Stocks

    China’s Uber, Didi Chuxing, has suspended service after a driver raped and murdered a young woman. The story is hitting many hot button topics in China these days including P2P lending. Investigators have learned the driver had borrowed from at least 51 lending institutions.

    The killing of a 20-year-old passenger who rode in the Didi vehicle on Friday in the eastern city of Wenzhou is the second such incident since May, denting the image of the Beijing-based company, which is the world’s largest ride-hailing firm by number of rides and is expanding globally.

    Police said a 27-year-old driver named Zhong was detained at about 4 a.m. on Saturday and confessed to raping and killing the passenger, who had used the Hitch service to book her trip. Her body was dumped over a guardrail and down a cliff, police said.

    The latest attack triggered severe criticism of Didi on social media and prompted regulators to warn of industry-wide action.

    “If a company is not compliant and self-disciplined, and takes its passengers’ lives as a game, the public will vote with their feet and the government will not just stand by,” the transport ministry said in a commentary on its website.

    Some more details from the local press:

    SCMP: Didi stops hitching service in China after second murder – and admits it was warned about accused driver

    Didi Chuxing, China’s largest taxi hailing service provider, has said it will suspend its hitching service on Monday, after the second murder of a woman passenger in three months – and admitted it failed to investigate an earlier complaint from another woman about the driver accused of the killing.

    ..Its reaction came a day after police in Yueqing, in China’s eastern Zhejiang province, said they had found the body of a 20-year-old woman surnamed Zhao and arrested a Didi driver who had allegedly confessed to her rape and murder on Friday.

    According to the police’s official microblog, Zhao had entered a Didi carpool vehicle at 1pm on Friday, and sent a message asking a friend for help at around 2pm before losing contact.

    Many netizens were left wondering how the driver passed basic screening tests such as a credit check. One site reported he had borrowed from 51 lenders and was overdue on many loans.

    From iFeng: 滴滴杀人疑犯信用调查：曾向51家机构借款 多笔逾期已失信

    According to the latest news from the police, the girl in the murder case of the Yueqing drip rider was forced to transfer more than 9,000 yuan to the driver Zhongmou WeChat before being killed.

    Tim Seng Finance (micro-signal: tsfinance) found in the investigation that Zhong had previously borrowed from 51 institutions and had too many overdue. When Didi is reviewing its eligibility, whether to use its personal credit as an indicator of investigation is a question left to us to think about.

    …The investigation found that Zhong, the driver of the Yueqing Drip and Windmill driver murder case, had borrowed from 51 institutions; he also applied for loans from four platforms within one week before the accident. Specifically, 51 lending institutions include car rental, consumer staging platforms, consumer finance companies, credit cards, microfinance companies, and P2P online lending. From traditional financial institutions to emerging online lending institutions, it can be said that Zhong has borrowed from almost every type of institution that can lend.

    …The main borrowing institution of Zhong is P2P online lending institutions and consumer finance companies. The survey of Tiansheng Finance (micro-signal: tsfinance) found that the general borrowing rate of the P2P online lending industry is as high as 30% per year. There are also low interest rates, but the requirements for borrowers are very high. Generally, they are not required to use real estate mortgages, or they require borrowers to work in government and public institutions . These conditions are not available to Zhong.

    …It is worth mentioning that there have been many overdue loans in the history of Zhong, and there were overdue records on November 13, 2017 and January 13, 2018. In the third-party inquiry system, Zhong’s personal credit evaluation results are displayed as “recommended rejection”.

    …This is not the first time that Zhong has driven for Didi. According to his relatives, two or three years ago Zhong spent tens of thousands of yuan to buy the current car to drive for Didi, and has driven in the town and other places. After the Spring Festival this year, he went to Wenzhou with his parents. .

    Is it true that people like Zhongmou, who are often untrustworthy, are suitable to serve as the Didi driver for the public? Can they be responsible for the safety of passengers? Do you use your personal credit as an indicator when reviewing their qualifications? Leave us thinking about the problem.

    Didi said the suspect had no criminal record, had provided authentic documentation and passed a facial recognition test before starting work. However, it also said it failed to act on a complaint made against the driver on Thursday by a passenger who alleged the driver took her to a remote place and followed her after she got out of the car.

  • "Exuberance Is Back:" Investing In Ferraris Better Bet Than Stocks

    As US stocks hit record highs, a 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO offered by RM Sotheby’s sold in Monterey, California on Saturday for a record $48.4 million – the highest price ever fetched at auction, and 25% higher than the previous record set in 2014 when a 1963 model sold for $38.1 million (a 1963 250 GTO reportedly sold in October 2013 for $52 million in a private transaction, however). 

    The seller, early Microsoft employee Greg Whitten, bought the car in 2000 when similar Ferraris were selling for around $10 million, according to Bloomberg. Whitten made out like a bandit. 

    Photos: Sotheby’s

    And while markets are hitting record highs after a decade of taxpayer-fueled economic recovery, investors with the means and wherewithal to sink their money into Ferraris instead of the S&P 500 did far better, according to the Hagerty Ferrari price index which reveals that the majority of gains occurred between 2013 and 2015. 

    Even with dividends reinvested, Ferraris commanded a faster increase in value than listed U.S. companies since the end of 2009. Gains on the iconic car, though, have largely petered out over the last three years and U.S. stocks have outperformed. –Bloomberg

    Making the case that high-end buyers are still willing to pony up in a frothy market, Bloomberg highlights the December 2017 sale of a Leonardo Da Vinci painting for $450 million (bought by Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, as it turns out), the most ever for a piece of fine art. 

    Their takeaway? Watch out: 

    It all shows market watchers should probably be getting worried, says Shane Oliver, a Sydney-based investment strategist at AMP Capital Investors Ltd., who wrote his PhD thesis on efficiency in markets and asset bubbles. –Bloomberg

    “Exuberance is back in a big way,” Oliver said. “The fact that people are paying record amounts for Ferraris and paintings and share markets are at record highs causes me to be a little bit more cautious” 

    Since most people can’t exactly afford to invest in a $48.4 million Ferrari, much less insure it and god forbid even drive it – here are some more pictures of the recent sale via RM Sotheby’s. 

    And just in case Ferraris aren’t your thing, there’s always a gold lambo!

  • Retired Green Beret: Was Congo's Ebola 'Bungle-In-The-Jungle' A Planned Mishap?

    Authored by Jeremiah Johnson (Nom de plume of a retired Green Beret of the United States Army Special Forces) via SHTFplan.com,

    Malthusian theory holds that depopulation (or zero population growth) is a necessity to control a species (namely humanity) that reproduces and consumes natural resources without limits. This is a “New Age” mantra adopted early on by Communists as far back as Marx and Lenin. The ball has been carried successively by Edward House and Woodrow Wilson, and further exacerbated by such “gems” as Kissinger, Bill Gates, Al Gore, and so forth. Much of the public and almost all of the youth (a recent poll taken showed young people prefer Socialism to Capitalism) have fallen for this mantra.

    The “problem” for them is how to push it along quickly: war is one answer, and disease is another.

    There has been another outbreak of Ebola in the Congo, with WHO (World Health Organization) estimates as many as 1,500 people have been exposed to it. The Daily Mail has a good article on this that was posted on 8/17/18, titled to that effect. It is a good read, as it summarizes with brevity the parameters of the disease itself.

    This is how they’re “setting the stage” for this planned “mishap” tied in to the recent outbreak. Read this excerpt very carefully to see the hidden agenda:

    The World Health Organization said on Friday [8/17/18] that at least 1,500 people had potentially been exposed to the deadly Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s North Kivu region, where fear of local militia is preventing aid workers from reaching some areas. But it is expected more people to become infected and could not be sure that it had identified all chains by which the virus is spreading in the eastern part of the country beset by militia violence. The region is haunted in particular by the Allied Defence Forces, a Ugandan Islamist rebel group blamed for hundreds of civilian deaths over the past four years.

    Now this is setting the script: the valiant doctors and aid workers are unable to break the flow and transmission of the disease because of those pesky Islamic rebels… the militia, to be specific. In addition, don’t forget to expect “more people to become infected!” We have had more than a few scares over the past couple of years with elaborate precautions to transport Ebola-infected patients into the U.S. for treatment: a preposterous action considering the potential for a release into this country.

    When those patients were here, do you think that Ft. Detrick, Maryland, where the U.S.’s primary biological weapons research facility is located…do you think they received any blood samples from these patients?

    You bet your bottom dollar they did. Read “The Hot Zone” and “Devil in the Freezer,” works that chronicle events with diseases such as Ebola, and Anthrax respectively regarding accidental releases and protocols of nations regarding biological warfare. A few years ago they resurrected frozen viruses in the Arctic region, amidst the protest of several scientists who (prior to being “muzzled”) argued about the potential lethality of these viruses even if not weaponized. No matter. Smallpox has been eradicated except by governments and their laboratory storage facilities: biological warfare and all of its associated researches, treatments, testing, and drugs (backed by pharmaceutical firms) is big business.

    Regarding Ebola, a documentary was released in 1996 by NOVA, entitled “Ebola: The Plague Fighters.” This graphic but excellently made film shows an outbreak of Ebola in Zaire in May of 1995 and the almost nonexistent medical conditions in the country, coupled with the ineffective actions of foreign doctors and aid-workers. Such squalid, primitive conditions, lack of facilities, and ineffective treatment exist in Congo today virtually unchanged from twenty years ago as shown in the documentary in Zaire.

    If a government is going to release it, the disease (in this case Ebola) is still not as lethal as they need it to be. Rest assured, they’re all working on ironing out these “glitches” in order to follow the plan that originated with Thomas Malthus. We are seeing a controlled laboratory experiment proceeding in China regarding surveillance there: a total surveillance system that will be tested on their citizens and then adopted (and adapted) by other nations for use on their own citizens.

    Conditions are perfect for this type of “lab,” as China is a controlled Communist country and the technology is high enough to be perfected as the society is already compliant and under complete governmental control. This kind of “lab” would not be feasible in African nations where power and running water alone are in short supply and cannot sustain all of the infrastructure needed for the surveillance grid-state in China.

    For testing of biological weaponry, however, African nations (especially those such as Congo and Zaire) are perfect for the release of created viruses and other tailor-made bio weapons. Sound farfetched? Consider the releases of Bacillus subtilis by the U.S. government to “test” the spread of microorganisms in civilian mass-transit facilities such as subways and buses just a few years ago. Consider all of the times the government has tested nuclear and biological weapons on soldiers and civilians.

    Africa is perfect for them to take existing diseases and structure them for even more lethality. When the time is right, quarantines could be ineffective and permit passengers that are infected to board aircraft and spread the disease in the course of travel. Or they could simply transport an infected patient and allow the disease to escape from quarantine and controlled lockdown.

    If you doubt this potential, you have only to read about Bill Gates and his lovely wife’s belief in depopulation as a means of “fixing” the planet. This is the same Bill Gates, by the way, who (with a consortium of investment firms and tech start-ups) plans on placing 500 satellites into orbit to enable real-time monitoring of every inch of the surface of the globe…sometime next summer.

    Ebola is a serious disease, but what is even more deadly and more serious is the group of people and moneyed interests that wish to form a global government. They have the political connections, the money, and the alliances to effectively alter every facet of a nation and even to destroy it militarily. No heinous action is outside of their reach.  Ironically, all of these people…all of them…believe that depopulation is the only way to accomplish this “utopian” global governance effectively.

    These oligarchs and controllers view those not in their company and of their ilk as less than insects to be crushed, and at the most to be their slaves and servants. Depopulation is their goal, and a deadly disease would enable it without culpability. This Ebola outbreak is more likely a “planned mishap” in a laboratory with human beings as the test subjects. The results of these experiments may eventually be used against unsuspecting populations to reach the end-state of global rule, minus a few billion lives or so.

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