Jun 28

Today’s News 28th June 2018

  • Watch: Missile Accident On German Navy Frigate Causes Massive Explosion

    According to Joseph Dempsey, a defense analyst for the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), footage has emerged of a severe missile accident involving the frigate SACHSEN (F219) of the German Navy.

    The accident occurred on June 21 off the Norwegian coast. A Standard Missile-2 was launched unsuccessfully during a naval war drill when it experienced a cataphoric failure — exploding on the vessel’s deck.

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    Dempsey noted that there were no injuries to the crew. However, the missile launcher, decking, and the bridge were severely damaged by intense fire and heat. According to the report by the German Navy, there was nothing during the pre-launch check that would indicate the missile would lead to a catastrophic failure.

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    “Fortunately only two crew sustained minor injuries, this could have been a lot worse,” noted Dempsey.

    The Sachsen-class frigate (F219), also called Sachsen, is Germany’s latest class of highly advanced air-defense frigates. The vessel was built at the Blohm and Voss shipyard in Hamburg, which was commissioned in November 2004.

    According to Defence Blog, the frigate is equipped with Raytheon-built SM-2 Block IIIA surface-to-air missiles. It is an all-weather, supersonic, ship-launched, medium to long-range rocket providing defense for an entire fleet area.

    The Geniusstrand website has photographed several images allegedly showing the frigate SACHSEN (F219) returning to its home port in Vilhelmshafen harbor, in Northwestern Germany.

    Watch Full Video: German Navy Frigate SACHSEN SM2 Missile Accident

  • European Terrorism: The 'Batman Syndrome'

    Authored by Giulio Meotti via The Gatestone Institute,

    The European Union lost €180 billion (USD $210 billion) in GDP due to terrorism between 2004 and 2016. The United Kingdom (€43.7 billion) and France (€43 billion) suffered the highest losses, followed by Spain (€40.8 billion) and Germany (€19.2 billion), according to a Rand Corporation study.

    “Beyond those who have been directly physically affected by terrorist attacks, the extensive coverage of terrorist attacks through multiple media and social media channels has substantially increased the amount of people and companies that could be psychologically affected. This subsequently affects their economic behaviour”.

    New statistics have also come from the Britain’s anti-terrorism office. 441 peoplehave been arrested in the UK for terrorism in the last year alone, and 4,182 since the attacks of September 11, 2001. The threat of terrorism is exhausting Europe.

    According to the Spanish “black book” of terrorism, 658 Europeans have been murdered in terror attacks on European soil, while 1,029 Europeans have been killed by them abroad. Half of the French army has been deployed within the French Republic to protect the civilian targets, such as schools, monuments, and religious sites.

    Europe’s armies are exhausted from patrolling the streets, to the point that NATO planners now fear that, over time, European armies “may get better at guarding railway stations and airports than fighting wars”. An officer who recently returned from Afghanistan for guard duty in Belgium said: “We are standing around like flowers pots, just waiting to be smashed”. Germany also sent troops into the streets for the first time since the Second World War.

    A soldier stands guard in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France. (Photo by Franck Prevel/Getty Images)

    One has to ask: Is Europe really serious about its war on terror? The French magazine Causeur just called it “the Batman Syndrome“:

    “How can we respect a society that is too cowardly to fight those who threaten its citizens, and that demonstrates its weakness by systematically seeking appeasement at the price of the most unreasonable accommodations? It is the ‘Batman syndrome’: the hero refuses to kill, he systematically saves his enemy who escapes and kills new victims until the hero catches up with him, and so on.“

    France is now close to freeing at least 50 terrorists from prison. The UK is also due to free 80 Islamic fundamentalists from prison. According to a new French report, nearly 10% of the 512 prisoners incarcerated for terrorism are likely to be released by the end of 2018. Their release may well pose a major threat. Khamzat Azimov, a terrorist who stabbed a man to death and injured four other people with a knife in central Paris, was known to counter-terrorism forces. Belgium released from prison a terrorist who had gone on a “bloody rampage” in the city of Liege two days before he killed two policewomen and a passerby.

    Unless it gets serious about arresting not only the terrorists but also their deadly ideology, Europe will not see the end of the jihadist siege. A few days after the attacks in Liege, France thwarted another jihadist plot “with either explosives or ricin, this very powerful poison”. After that, there was another terror attempt to strike the French gay community.

    “France is the priority target of the terrorism unleashed in Europe by conquering Islam” wrote Ivan Rioufol in Le Figaro.

    “Since 2015, 247 people have been killed in France in attacks by Islamists. The ‘knife intifada’ is no longer reserved just for Israel. In Magnanville, a couple of policemen, Jean-Baptiste Salvaing and Jessica Schneider, were stabbed in front of their three-year-old child. Father Jacques Hamel was slaughtered in his church. In Marseille, Laura and Maurane had their throats slashed. These crimes will continue so long as the Republic leaves the enemy in peace”.

    The level of threat in France remains alarmingly high. “9,157 people were subjected to at least one surveillance measure by the intelligence services in 2017 in the name of the prevention of terrorism”, an official French report recently revealed. In 2017, 20 major terror attacks in France were foiled.

    Regarding the West’s current “war on terror,” American historian Victor Davis Hanson wrote:

    “The result is the present age of serial Punic conflict, perhaps intolerable to the psyche, but in amoral terms tolerable as long as casualties are kept to a minimum and defeat is redefined as acceptable strategic wisdom. In the past, such periods of enervating war have gone on for a century and more. Ultimately, they too end — and with consequences.”

    In the end, there might be still a region called “Europe”, but it may no longer enfold European culture.

  • These Cities Have Minted The Most Real-Estate Millionaires

    Since 2001, cities across the US have endured a property boom that has minted hundreds of millionaires who simply bought a home in a hot emerging neighborhood at the right time, then sat on it. To be sure, most people view their homes as a place to live – not as an investment. But in cities like San Francisco and New York City – where turn-of-the-century gentrification booms sent property values soaring – dozens of homeowners became millionaires thanks solely to the appreciation on their property, according to Property Shark.

    Property Shark’s analysis showcases the top 25 cities for homeowners to become millionaires just by buying a home sometime before 2001 for less than $1 million, and then selling it after 2001 for $1 million or more.

    The city in first place is – unsurprisingly – San Francisco, which minted 381 million real-estate millionaires, more than Manhattan’s 335 million despite being half Manhattan’s size.

    Key Takeaways:

    • After 2001, 381 people became millionaires just by selling their homes in San Francisco
    • Although home to twice the population of SF, Manhattan came in second, adding 335 millionaires
    • It’s almost a tie between L.A. (280) and Brooklyn (281), with Brooklyn squeezing in an extra millionaire
    • Silicon Valley cities in our list added a total of 332 millionaires
    • 4 small cities on the outskirts of Washington, D.C., added 461 millionaires since ’01

    Millionaires

    All told, seven of the top 25 “millionaire” cities were situated in Silicon Valley, with San Jose, Redwood City and San Mateo ranking high on the list, which is available in full below:

    List

  • EU Globalists And Chinese Communists Team Up To Protect New World Order

    This article was written by Christian Gomez and originally published at The New American

    On Monday, European Union leaders announced that officials from the EU and China were coming together to strengthen and protect their international trade relations from Trump’s “America First” agenda.

    Jyrki Katainen (shown, left), the vice-president of the EU’s ruling and unelected European Commission, said during an interview aired on CNBC Monday morning, “I feel really we are making progress…. Both China and the EU believes in multilateralism and a rules-based world order.”

    Katainen’s “rules-based world order” is a soft-sounding label given by globalists to the new world order.

    Katainen is no stranger to the globalist community of insiders, as he is one of them. In addition to serving as vice president of the EU Commission, Katainen previously served as the Minister of Finance and former Prime Minister of Finland. He also attended the 2007 and 2009 Bilderberg Meetings.

    Katainen is also a member of Finland’s National Coalition Party, which shares the same international affiliation as the Republican Party of the United States — the International Democratic Union. A stalwart advocate of sovereignty-killing “free trade” agreements and strengthening regional and global governance regimes such as the EU and the United Nations, Katainen’s politics are akin to those of Republicans such as Henry Kissinger, John Kasich, Richard Nixon, and the Bush family.

    And like many establishment and internationalist Republicans here in the United States, Finland and the EU’s Katainen also love investments from Communist China.

    “I was very satisfied for the way the host Vice Premier Liu He organized the meeting. The main outcome, of putting everything in a nutshell, is that we decided in a couple weeks’ time, EU and China will exchange market access offers on investment agreement,” Katainen told CNBC, adding that it was “the first big step forward.”

    In addition to being the vice premier of China, Liu He (shown, right) is also a member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of China, which oversees the CPC.

    Like the Chinese Communists, Katainen advocates for a multilateral world order in which both the EU and Communist China are leaders, making the rules and overseeing their world order.

    For decades, The John Birch Society — the parent organization of this publication — has warned that the goal of elite globalist insiders was to converge the freedom-loving, market-based republics of the Western world with the captive, totalitarian communist-bloc nations.

    While ostensibly opposed to one another during the Cold War — with the United States leading the free world and the then-Soviet Union ruling the enslaved communist world behind the Iron Curtain — leaders in the highest echelons of both societies (from politics, business, media, labor, Wall Street, and tax-exempt foundations) shared the common goal of “converging,” or merging, both societies under a single unified global economy and international regime often referred to by its architects as the “New World Order.”

    A great resource to learn more about the history behind how Wall Street “capitalists” financed the Bolshevik Revolution and built up the Soviet economy, which helped spearhead the rise of communism around the world, including in mainland China, is the appropriately titled book Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution: The Remarkable True Story of the American Capitalists Who Financed the Russian Communists by Anthony C. Sutton.

    During his interview, Katainen went on to say how the EU “concentrated on [a] multilateral trading system for obvious reasons and we agreed to start reforming the WTO,” Katainen said.

    In the year 2000, the U.S. Senate overwhelmingly voted 83 to 15 for Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) with Communist China, paving the way for its formal entry in the World Trade Organization by the end of the following year.

    Now the EU is warming up to that same Marxist-Leninist China as part of the current globalist strategy to protect their globalist trade order from President Trump’s “America First” agenda. And the key to America’s greatness and exceptionalism is its national sovereignty, specifically heeding George Washington’s timeless advice to “steer clear of permanent alliance with any portion of the foreign world.”

    *  *  *

    Alt-Market’s Brandon Smith had an interesting and all too relevant take on this:

    Isn’t it interesting that the trade war seems to be drawing the world (except the US) together into the exact NWO framework the banking elites have been planning for decades? 

    How long before foreign creditors dump the dollar completely in retaliation while helping the globalists introduce their one world currency system? 

    And all while Trump and the US get the blame for any negative consequences that result. 

    If you don’t see the trade war for what it is (kabuki theater by the globalists), then you will be truly lost…

  • "This Is What It Feels Like To Be Offset": China To Achieve "First Strike" Capabilities Using AI, US Officials Warn

    In comments made at a recent defense technology forum hosted by the hawkish Center for a New American Security, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as well as a former deputy secretary of defense warned that the United States will lose its military technological superiority to China in two years if it doesn’t immediately move deeper into fields such as artificial intelligence (A.I.), robotics, hypersonics, and big data.

    Former Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work painted a dire picture while calling for the US to put its $700 billion defense budget into “areas that really matter” in order to keep up with China, which he said is quickly becoming the world’s leader in A.I., robotics, and machine learning — all of which the Chinese will harness toward “first strike” capabilities against US military networks. 

    “As I watch the ongoing military technical competition in the Western Pacific, in between our two great power rivals – especially China – I find myself saying: This is what it feels like to be offset,” Work said. “And I got to tell you – it doesn’t feel very good.”

    Work said the West should be alarmed as Chinese President Xi Jinping has as his stated military goal that his armed forces should be able to invade Taiwan by 2020, with the next major goal of becoming the uncontested world leader in artificial intelligence by 2030.

    “We should be prepared to be surprised” in any future conflict with China as it’s drastically modernized its forces in a short time while investing heavily in next-generation military technology, Work explained, especially as China “wants to be a first mover” in A.I. and weaponized robotics, and “that will be how they will get ahead of the United States.”

    “They have a goal to try to be a world leader in AI by 2030,” Work said of Chinese ambitions, and explained further while hypothetically speaking from Beijing’s perspective: “Now they say AI will allow us to bound over the Americans. Artificial Intelligence is going to lead to a new military technical revolution… we want to be the aggressive first mover [in A.I.] and leave the United States in the dust.”

    “The whole theory of Chinese victory is what they call system destruction warfare – they say look I’m not really worried about sinking 30 ships or shooting down 500 airplanes. If I can break apart the US battle network, then I will win” he said.

    And this is why, according to Work, A.I. has become their chief priority: “They think about taking down our network everyday – that is their theory of victory, and I just don’t think we take that threat seriously enough.” 

    Last March, China announced that it is boosting defense spending for 2018 for “war preparedness” – as Reuters reported at the time: 

    China unveiled its largest rise in defense spending in three years, setting a target of 8.1 percent growth over last year.

    The 2018 defense budget will be 1.11 trillion yuan ($175 billion), according to a report issued at the opening of China’s annual meeting of parliament.

    The defense spending figure is closely watched around the world for clues to China’s strategic intentions as it develops new military capabilities, including stealth fighters, aircraft carriers and anti-satellite missiles.

    However, China’s investment in A.I. is still catching up when compared to previous years’ American spending on A.I. research:

    Figures compiled in 2017. Source: via South China Morning Post

    According to Work a significant chunk of Chinese defense spending will continue to focus on how to “duel” American battle networks with the aim to “cripple an enemy’s operational systems [and the] internal links” that could launch a concerted, concentrated attack or response.

    Perhaps most interestingly, Work advised his audience to watch an HBO-Vice documentary series which investigates China’s use of facial recognition technology and A.I. for ‘social credit scoring’ and population control, as an example how advanced Chinese systems are becoming. 

    Speaking alongside Work, Air Force General Paul Selva, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, added that the Chinese “haven’t mass deployed hypersonics or long-range [tactical] ballistic missiles” yet, but in terms of current technological capability they are able “to deploy those capabilities at a large scale.” 

    Selva said the Chinese have long employed a strategy of “learning, buying and stealing” from American and foreign companies, which saves on research costs in order to divert the money elsewhere. The desired end-goal “is outright technological superiority” across the board, said Selva.

    Both national security officials acknowledged that Russia is also heavily investing in non-conventional technologies aimed at disrupting US networks. “This race is one we have to win,” Work said of US competition with both China and Russia.

    However, for most average citizens in either America or China, news that there is in fact a “race” on to build SkyNet probably doesn’t sound like such a good idea, no matter fears that the other side might be gaining an edge. 

  • Lynn: "There Will Be A Financial Crash… And Trump Will Be Blamed"

    Authored by Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheTollOnline.com,

    In these sentiments, sir, I agree to this Constitution, with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a General Government necessary for us, and there is no form of government, but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered; and believe further, that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other.

    – Benjamin Franklin

    Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

    – John Adams

    I’m of the opinion that many today are throwing the “baby out with the bathwater” when they claim the conservative versus liberal (right vs. left) construct is phony, or bogus.

    Conservatives have lost political ground because they have accepted the moral premises of the Political Left. However, liberals use deception to hide their real motives while, simultaneously, blackmailing conservatives by means of conservative values.

    How typical was the mainstream media’s “poor immigrant children” narrative that played the emotional heartstrings of dummies everywhere, like violins.

    In the immigration debate, as in the gun control polemic, liberals don’t actually care for the children; at least not in the ways they profess.  They instead callously use the “children” as a means to consolidate their political power.

    This explains why liberals never rejoiced for the offspring of lawless invaders when Trump signed the executive order to keep illegal immigrant families together. Instead, they claimed Trump “caved” before the [manufactured] “humanitarian and political crisis”. It’s also why children still attend schools in gun-free zones, while anti-gun protester David Hogg is protected by armed guards; because he’s more important than the other children now.

    The Political Left consistently weaponizes the morality of conservatives against said conservatives; and whenever those on the right of the political spectrum accept the moral premises of the deceptive left, the progressive agenda moves “forward”.

    Nevertheless, the value systems of conservatives and liberals are separate. This is why words like “freedom” and “rights” hold different meanings for each group.

    In the example of the former, freedom and rights manifest as an outgrowth of natural law as defined in the whispers of John Locke. In the latter, these are processed according to the [Machiavellian] totalitarian’s interpretation of Nietzsche’s Will to Power.

    The commonality of globalists, neocons, corrupt government officials, and tyrannical collectivists is demonstrated when they profess the moral superiority of their ideological positions and, simultaneously, abrogate timeless moral principles for their own benefit while telling us it’s for ours.

    This is the heart of the matter.  It is why decent Americans voted for Trump, flaws and all.  He was elected in protest.

    I had a friend text me the following rant that he saw on Facebook:

    I still haven’t figured out why Hillary lost. Was it the Russian uranium deal? Was it Wikileaks? Was it Podesta? Was it her sexual predator husband? Was it her staff’s husband’s immoral pictures? Was it her subpoena violation? Was it the corrupt foundation? Was it the congressional lies? Was it the Benghazi scandal? Was it the pay for play? Was it the Travel Gate scandal? Was it the Haiti scandal? Was it the Whitewater scandal? Was it the Cattle Gate scandal? Was it the $15 million for Chelsea’s apartment bought with foundation money? Was it Comey’s investigation? Was it her husband’s interference with Loretta Lynch and the investigation? Was it stealing debate questions? Was it forensically deleting 33,000 emails? Was it the secret server in her house? Was it the Seth Rich murder? Was it calling half of the USA population deplorable? Was it the underhanded treatment of Bernie Sanders? Was it the Vince Foster murder? Was it the Jennifer Flowers assault? Was it the $800,000 Paula Jones settlement? Was it the lie about taking on sniper fire in Bosnia? Was it her husband’s impeachment for lying under oath? Was it the 6 billion $ she “lost” when in charge of the state department? Was it the 10 million she took for the pardon of Marc Rich? Or was it because she was the worst presidential candidate our country has ever had to choose from?

    Gee, I just can’t quite put my finger on it, but it seems to be right in front of me.

    Here was my reply:

    That’s a great rant.  But the reason we are likely doomed is this: After all that, she still won the popular vote.

    We live in a land populated by the People of Walmart sustained by a steady diet of fake news, processed foods, electronic fairy tales, and antidepressants.

    The trends (i. e. transitional revelations) are pointing towards war and global depopulation; exactly what the Technocratic Elite desire and right on schedule. Any attempt to divert from those outcomes would be akin to a flea trying to steer a dog like a horse.

    – The D.C. chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America shared a video on Facebook of activists booing and yelling at Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen at Mexican restaurant and calling on her to “abolish” U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

    –  A year after the congressional baseball shooting that almost took the life of Rep. Steve Scalise and former Hill staffer Matt Mika, members of Congress expressed concerns for their safety as threats against them have skyrocketed.

     – A plan to split California into three separate states earned a spot on the November ballot there.

     – Because she works for President Trump, Press Secretary Sarah Sanders and 7 of her family members were kicked out of a Virginia restaurant.

    –  Screaming “God is on our side”, California Congresswoman, Maxine Waters, implored her supporters to harass Trump administration officials in public spaces.

     – Because “there are simply not enough police in D.C. or Virginia or Maryland to protect all Trump officials at their homes and when they go out to restaurants”, the president of the “influential” Crime Prevention Research Center urged officials in the Trump administration to arm themselves.

    The mainstream media has engaged in an effort to turn Trump supporters into “Public Enemy # 1”; and now, even the politicians are warning of the forthcoming civil war.

    Have you ever cautioned someone over inevitable consequences only to have them blaze ahead anyway? Then when you were proven right, your anger at their stupidity was righteous, was it not?  Especially if any of the consequences affected you.

    The Political Left today has extreme anger at those in America who voted for Donald Trump.  It is because they believe Trump to be the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler who is currently in the process of destroying the Obama-nation.

    Now imagine, if you will, how their anger will be magnified when Trump’s trade wars and tax cuts are blamed for the Next Great Depression.

    Today, the Congressional Budget Office announced that growing U.S. budget deficits have pushed public debt to 78% of the nation’s gross domestic product.  This, even as investors grow increasingly anxious over rising interest rates and bank stocks surpass their record “longest losing streak ever”.

    Of course, the doubling of the national debt under Obama, or the Federal Reserve’s six (6) rate hikes since Trump’s election, will not be blamed.

    Make no mistake:  There WILL be a financial crash and Trump WILL be blamed.  You can take that to the bank (pun intended).  It’s only a matter of time.

    After the crash, the support for Trump from the political right will fade like the light of day after sunset; while the vitriol of the left will rise and crash over the land like blue tsunamis under the full moon after an ocean quake.

    All they have is hatred for Trump and his supporters now.  It will only grow worse.  And they are everywhere.

    When The Office of the First Lady contacted the Secret Service after the actor Peter Fonda called for President Trump’s son, Barron, to be kidnapped and caged with pedophiles, I was reminded of a 1980’s movie, starring Tom Hanks, called “The Burbs”.  The satirically comedic story told of a group of neighbors in the suburbs awakening to the actuality of satanic murderers living next door.

    In “The Burbs” a clip was shown of the 1975 film, “Racing With the Devil” which, ironically, starred Peter Fonda as a vacationer who came across a secret society of Luciferian’s deeply entrenched over what appeared to be the entire state of Texas.  My friends and I were underage when we snuck in through the back door of the movie theater to watch that film.  Needless to say, it was a long walk home that night in the dark.

    Indeed.  The enemy is everywhere; and there can be no escape.

    Therefore, the more I contemplate the concepts of morality and the future, the more I reconsider the old philosophical constructs.

    Could the approaching “civil war” actually be spiritual in nature?  Like a holy war?

    The ancient prophet Jeremiah, by way of King James, phrased it thusly:

    …Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, ‘We will not walk therein’.

    – Jeremiah 6:16

    There is no longer a dividing wall between hope and realism; liberty and chaos.

    It is what it is. Nothing more, nothing less.

    Prepare and, for those so inclined, pray.

    Who said life was fair? And who was it again that promised you that rose garden?

  • Inequality Crisis: UN Warns 40 Million In Poverty, US Most 'Unequal' Developed Nation

    A new report by the U.N. Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights in the United States finds about 40 million live in poverty, 18.5 million in extreme poverty, and 5.3 million live in Third World conditions.

    The 20-page report by Philip Alston, U.N. Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty, warned the U.S. has one of the highest rates of income inequality among Western nations.

    He criticized the Trump administration for the $1.5 trillion in debt-fueled tax cuts in December 2017 overwhelmingly benefited the wealthy and worsened inequality among the middle class and poor.

    Alston could be right because companies are expected to spend $2.5 trillion this year for financialization purposes, including stock buybacks, dividends, and M&A deals, according to UBS, which does not entirely benefit the real economy.

    Alston called the U.S. the most unequal society in the developed world. He said U.S. policies had benefited the rich by hollowing out the middle class.

    The Stanford Center on Inequality and Poverty ranks the U.S. 18th out of 21 wealthy countries regarding labor markets, poverty rates, safety nets, wealth inequality and economic mobility.

    For more than four-decades, economic policies in the U.S. have  neglected the middle class. However, the report said policies enacted during the Trump administration seem “deliberately designed to remove basic protections from the poorest, punish those who are not in employment and make even basic health care into a privilege to be earned rather than a right of citizenship.”

    According to the report, the visit of the Special Rapporteur coincided with the dramatic shift of the nation’s policies under the current adminstration. Some of the important shifts include:

    • Provide unprecedentedly high tax breaks and financial windfalls to the very wealthy and the largest corporations;

    • Pay for these partly by reducing welfare benefits for the poor;

    • Undertake a radical programme of financial, environmental, health and safety deregulation that eliminates protections mainly benefiting the middle classes and the poor;

    • Seek to add over 20 million poor and middle-class persons to the ranks of those without health insurance;

    • Restrict eligibility for many welfare benefits while increasing the obstacles required to be overcome by those eligible;

    • Dramatically increase spending on defence, while rejecting requested improvements in key veterans’ benefits;

    • Do not provide adequate additional funding to address an opioid crisis that is decimating parts of the country; and

    • Make no effort to tackle the structural racism that keeps a large percentage of non-Whites in poverty and near poverty.

    Alston further referenced the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) 2017 report emphasizing the economy “is delivering better living standards for only the few”, and that “household incomes are stagnating for a large share of the population, job opportunities are deteriorating, prospects for upward mobility are waning, and economic gains are increasingly accruing to those that are already wealthy.”

    As shown below, the wealth of the top .01 percent of the population has exploded since 1980, thanks to the financialization of corporate America. Meanwhile, the bottom 90 percent or the middle class and the poor, have been systematically hollowed out.

    Alston said debt-fueled tax reform “will worsen this situation and ensure that the United States remains the most unequal society in the developed world.”

    This situation does not look good for the bottom 90 percent of Americans, but for society as a whole, with high poverty levels “creating disparities in the education system, hampering human capital formation and eating into future productivity,” said Alston.

    There are also global consequences. The debt-fueled tax cuts will reduce the revenues needed by Governments to ensure basic social protection and meet their human rights obligations.

    The U.S. withdrew last week from the U.N. Human Rights Council, describing it as a “cesspool of political bias.” It marked the first time that any country has exited the council since its inception in 2006.

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    U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley called the council a “hypocritical and self-serving” group. She also criticized the U.N. report and said the council should focus on impoverished countries like Burundi and the Congo Republic.

    Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. called upon the Trump administration to provide Congress with a plan to tackle the wealth inequality crisis stated in the U.N. report.

    “It is patently ridiculous for the United Nations to examine poverty in America,” Haley said in a letter to Sanders last Thursday.

    However, Haley in her response to Sanders slammed the report as “misleading and politically motivated.”

    “The report categorically misstated the progress the United States has made in addressing poverty and purposely used misleading facts and figures in its biased reporting,” Haley wrote.

    “There is no question that poverty in America remains a serious concern, but it does no one any good to inaccurately describe its prevalence or its causes.”

    Sanders responded to Haley, saying he believes “it is totally appropriate” for the U.N. to publish a report on poverty in America.

    “I hope you will agree that in a nation in which the top three people own more wealth than the bottom half, we can and must do much better than that,” Sanders wrote in his reply.

    At the same time, the U.S. economic expansion has become the nation’s second-longest on record, as the Central Bank-fueled bubble enters the late stage of the credit cycle. While equity markets have faded from all-time highs, President Trump is peddling propaganda on Twitter calling “this is the great economy in the history of America and the best time ever to look for a job”!

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    When you start hearing government advertising that sunny days are here, well, you should run.

  • Michael Pento: When The Yield Curve Inverts Soon, The Next Recession Will Start

    Authored by Adam Taggart via PeakProsperity.com,

    Collectively, the world’s major central banks have pumped $1.1 trillion into the markets over the past year.

    The result of all this money printing is now well known: massively inflated real estate, stock and bond asset price bubbles, as well as extraordinary wealth and income gaps across society.

    Some day all of this insanity will end. But how? Will it unwind in an orderly and polite way, as the world’s central planners hope? Or will be disorderly, resulting in painful portfolio losses and mass layoffs?

    Michael Pento, fund manager and author of The Coming Bond Bubble Collapse returns to the podcast this week to offer his prediction that events will most likely take the latter route. In fact, he sees the developing inversion of the yield curve as a dependable precursor to the US economy entering recession as soon as this Fall:

    The Fed is now raising rates. They raised rates from 0% up to 2%. They’re supposed to do it again in September/October. And again in December. That will be four hikes this year. 

    They are also selling assets, aka ‘draining their balance sheet’. I say ‘selling’ because that’s exactly what they have to do. Let’s say the Fed is holding a 10-year note that’s due: if they want to destroy that money, they say “OK, Treasury, give me the principal”. The Treasury doesn’t have any money so it has to go the public and raise money. Well, the Treasury will have to do that to the tune of $50 billion per month come October. Right now it’s $30, it has to go in July to $40 billion a month then it goes to $50 billion. That’s $600 billion a year added to the public supply of Treasurys they have to actually finance at a market rate. That’s on top of the $1.2 trillion debt we’re going to have in fiscal 2019.

    So the Fed is tightening. But here’s the problem: the spread between long-term rates and short-term rates is about as narrow as it can be without being inverted.

    Right now, as we record this interview the spread between the 2 and 10-year Treasury note is just 34 basis points. That means when the Fed tightens rates in September, which they’ve pretty much promised to do, assuming the 2 and 10-year note stays at that same spread above the Fed funds rate, we’re going to have a yield curve that is almost completely flat. And will be inverted when they go again in December.

    Why is that so important? Well, when the yield curve inverts it almost always brings about a recession. In fact, I can say pretty distinctly that in modern times, in this fiat currency regime, given the conditions today, it will definitely cause a recession. The reason is because the fuel for asset bubbles is monetary creation, a boosting booming money supply which we don’t have any more. And the reason why the money supply gets shut off when the yield curve inverts is because banks’ loans are earning less than their liabilities, which are deposits. So when your assets are earning less than your liabilities, you don’t make any more loans. You don’t want any more assets. That’s a great way to make your bank insolvent.

    So what happens is that the money supply gets completely shut off. You’re not going to make a loan against a deposit — you don’t even want these deposits anymore. By the way, when there’s a recession and there’s a withdrawal of asset prices, a contraction in those prices usually results in a run on the bank as well. So asset prices get stumped because there’s a run on the bank and these deposits get withdrawn. That is what usually causes causes a recession. And that’s exactly where we are going to be come the fall, and even closer towards the end of this year.

    Click the play button below to listen to Chris’ interview with Michael Pento (35m:59s).

  • Inside The Foiled Coup Attempt That Nearly Toppled Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro

    Foreign observers of the worsening economic crisis in Venezuela will likely remember one year ago when a police officer stole a helicopter and single-handedly staged a “coup” by “attacking” a Venezuelan government building. While that coup attempt was quickly exposed as a headline-grabbing hoax (and the perpetrator was later “accidentally” killed in a raid), in a lengthy feature published Wednesday, Bloomberg revealed details about a genuine plot involving senior Venezuelan army officials who had been hoping to dislodge deeply unpopular President Nicolas Maduro.

    Maduro has presided over an unprecedented collapse in Venezuela that has stoked massive hyperinflation and deadly shortages of food, medicine and other vital supplies. Despite his massive unpopularity, the coup – which was foiled when its leaders were rounded up by the military, jailed and tortured – was perhaps the most credible attempt to topple Maduro since he ascended to the presidency in 2013 following the death of his political mentor, former Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez. 

    Maduro
    Nicolas Maduro

    The plot, code-named “Operation Constitution”, was intended to remove Maduro before his “reelection” vote in May (a vote that was boycotted by the country’s political opposition). But before they could move ahead, the alleged conspirators were reportedly rounded up and imprisoned by Venezuelan military and intelligence forces.

    The plot, code-named Operation Constitution, involved scores of captains, colonels, and generals from all four branches of Venezuela’s armed forces. The goal was straightforward and seismic—to capture President Nicolás Maduro and put him on trial. The plotters, wearing blue armbands marked OC, were supposed to storm the presidential palace and main military base and stop the May 20 presidential election. Some of the planning took place in Bogotá, but Colombian and U.S. officials, who allegedly knew about the plot and winked from the sidelines, declined to provide active support.

    Then something went wrong. In mid-May, several dozen servicemen, including one woman, as well as a couple of civilians, were secretly arrested—some have been accused of treason—and imprisoned by a military court. Many say they’ve been tortured. The plotters believe they were betrayed, possibly by a double agent. This reconstruction of the conspiracy is based on interviews with one plot coordinator who escaped arrest, two who attended planning sessions, and lawyers and relatives of the accused. All spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing for their safety. Bloomberg also viewed a military court report laying out the government’s version of events; it corroborated many of the plotters’ accounts.

    While ordinary Venezuelans have come to despise him, Maduro remains broadly popular with the Venezuelan military and other institutions of Venezuela’s constitutionally socialist government – which is likely why he was able to foil the coup attempt. However, cracks in this alliance are beginning to form. As Bloomberg points out, some in the military have arrived at the conclusion that Maduro’s ouster is the country’s only hope for a near-term return to normalcy. Exhibiting a sensitivity to growing discontent in the military, Maduro bragged during a military parade over the weekend that “it’s time to close ranks and dig in against treason! We need a united military loyal to the glorious country of Venezuela and its legitimate commander-in-chief!”

    A report released by a Venezuelan military tribunal included some details about the May coup attempt. But Bloomberg pointed out that the report also included some fictitious details, like allegations that the Colombian and US governments had provided financial backing for a separate plot known as “Operation Armageddon.”

    The U.S. has “no intent to destabilize or overthrow the Venezuelan government,” says a State Department spokesperson, but wants “a return to a stable, prosperous, and democratic Venezuela.” Speaking in Texas in February, as coup preparations were coming to a head, then U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson noted that militaries in Latin America frequently step in during crises. “If the kitchen gets a little too hot for [Maduro], I am sure that he’s got some friends over in Cuba that could give him a nice hacienda on the beach,” he said. Both Colombia and Venezuela declined to comment.

    Maria Corina Machado, a Venezuelan prosecutor and one of Maduro’s most persistent domestic opponents, was swept up in the crackdown on the coup plotters, despite claiming that evidence of her involvement in the plot was “a fiction”.

    “I have no connection to these plots. They want to silence my voice, because I have labeled them a narco-dictatorship. I want to be clear: I want Nicolás Maduro out of power immediately. But I want him out alive so he can face the justice that his regime has denied to Venezuelans.”

    Initially, the coup was first planned for April 2017 with the hope of preventing Maduro from expanding his power over Venezuela’s legislature. But the plot was postponed after an unrelated and smaller military uprising. Planning for the plot continued in 2018, with meetings held in homes in upscale neighborhoods in Caracas (and at one point, one conspirator snuck across the Colombian border wearing a fake mustache and using a fake ID – though it’s immediately clear why). The largest batch of arrests took place right around the time of Maduro’s (widely criticized) reelection vote in May.

    Maduro has hung on despite months of deadly street protests last summer. Hundreds of thousands of middle-class Venezuelans – who were once citizens of one of the wealthiest countries in Latin America – have fled the country (including engineers for Venezuela’s state-owned oil industry, which helped hasten the collapse in oil production). With the prospect of a coup hanging over his head, Maduro has continued with purges of the Venezuelan officers’ corp. Meanwhile, successive rounds of US sanctions have cut the country off from the global financial system. But despite all of this, Rocío San Miguel, president of watchdog group Control Ciudadano, said the idea that Maduro is hanging on by a thread is a red herring.

    “Maduro has developed a state policy of persecution and monitoring within the armed forces. He’s paranoid. The government is creating a firewall.”

    As a leader, Maduro has become adept at maintaining control through fear, intimidation, and a close alliance with the country’s armed forces.

    And unless President Trump follows through with his idle threat to send in the tanks, don’t expect Maduro to relinquish his grip on power any time soon…. Even as the country’s 12-month inflation rate has soared to more than 8,900%.

    VZ

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