- Norway Unexpectedly Pulls $400 Million From Sovereign Wealth Fund
Norway Unexpectedly Pulls $400 Million From Sovereign Wealth Fund
While analysts focus on rumors that Germany might be heading toward fiscal stimulus, another Northern European economic powerhouse might already be preparing for a government spending spree.
According to Bloomberg, which cited data from the Norwegian Treasury, the biggest oil and gas producer in Western Europe unexpectedly withdrew 3.6 billion kroner ($395 million) from its $1 trillion sovereign wealth fund, one of the biggest piles of capital in the world.
This marked the first time money has ever been withdrawn from the fund, which was set up in 2016 to manage Norway’s oil wealth. After oil prices crashed, the fund’s size stagnated. But Norway was able to start depositing money again in June 2018, and, until August, had deposited at least some oil proceeds every month since.
Then again, the fund’s decisions often take the broader investing community by surprise.
In an attempt to diversify away from energy, the fund dumped shares of “pure-play exploration companies” (a sizable chunk of its energy-related holdings) earlier this year. The fund also sold EM bonds to make more room for equities, another smart move that has paid off this year.
Similarly, the decision to withdraw money from the fund last month was particularly unexpected because the Norwegian government said in its latest revised budget that it expected to deposit a total of 34 billion kroner ($3.7 billion) into the fund during 2019. As of August, the fund has seen net inflows of 19.9 billion kroner ($2.2 billion), putting the government slightly behind its goal for the year.
Although the government refused to comment on the circumstances behind the withdrawal. But one possible motive can be found in the global oil market: Prices tumbled in August, sticking the Norwegian government with a hole in its budget. Benchmark Brent crude hit a seven-month low of about $56 a barrel in early August amid global growth concerns.
That’s well below the government’s oil-price forecasts from its revised budget. The Norwegian government had forecast prices between $67 and $70 a barrel between August and the rest of the year.
So, there’s one possible reason.
Then again, maybe Norway didn’t decide to pull money out simply to pump back into government services. Perhaps there’s some insight to be gleaned from the fact that the perennially bullish sovereign wealth fund has decided to take some profits?
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/02/2019 – 02:45 - Brexit Isn't David Cameron's Legacy… Libya Is!
Brexit Isn’t David Cameron’s Legacy… Libya Is!
Authored by Kit Knightly via Off-Guardian.org,
The MSM’s total disregard for the apocalyptic destruction of the most developed nation in Africa is a crime…
“The strong man with the dagger is followed by the weak man with the sponge.”
– Lord Acton
David Cameron has a book out. You’ve probably heard. There’s a lot of press coverage. The BBC did a retrospective documentary about him to coincide with it, The Guardian had a review of the book, a review of the documentary, and an interview with the man himself.
Oh, and then another article about how it’s selling less well than Blair’s biography.
This is obviously just about journalists reporting the news, you understand.
It is absolutely not at all a mass marketing strategy camouflaged as “current events”.
Shame on you for thinking otherwise.
Naturally, as is always the case when ex-Prime Ministers make appearances or churn out autobiographies, there is plenty of talk about “legacy”.
Well…what is David Cameron’s legacy?
The media are pretty clear: Brexit.
The BBC documentary is entitled The Cameron Years. It’s in two parts, somehow bloated out to two whole hours in runtime, and is only concerned with the Brexit vote. The first part is entirely dedicated to it, that’s literally all it’s about, with the second half being more general, but still very Brexit-centric.
The reviews of the book are no better. In fact they are worse.
The Telegraph liked it, as did the Times. The Guardian and Independent didn’t, as much, but still praised its “honesty”. They all talk almost entirely about Brexit. Bloomberg headline “David Cameron Wants You to Remember Him for More Than Just Brexit”, pointing out: “The former prime minister’s new memoir, For the Record, spends just 50 of 700 pages on the disastrous referendum”…before going on to review just those fifty pages.
In fact, I’ve read over half-a-dozen reviews of this book, and none of them talks about anything but Brexit.
There is not a single use of the word “Libya” in any of them. Not anywhere. Not in even in passing.
Not. One. Single. Use.
For those of you foggy on the details, Libya was a place that used to look like this:
…and now looks like this:
You would think that the total and complete destruction of the most developed nation on the African continent would warrant at least brief discussion in the “legacy” of the Prime Minister responsible but, apparently, you would be wrong.
(I know we’re only Britain, and we only do what America tells us, but “Only following orders” didn’t work for Goering and probably shouldn’t work for anybody else. Cameron included).
The press silence on Libya is on another level.
They grudgingly discuss Iraq as a “mistake” or “blunder”, they carry on their insane propaganda-war on Syria with fresh gusto every few months (or whenever they need a distraction), but Libya…Libya is the country that must not be named.
Take Jonathan Freedland. He was ALL OVER Libya back in 2011. He campaigned for NATO to do something, preaching about the West’s “responsibility to protect”. Does he mention Libya once in his review of this book? Nope.
He even has the gall to open the piece with this:
Just as the 700 pages of Tony Blair’s autobiography could not escape the shadow of Iraq, so the 700 pages of David Cameron’s memoir are destined to be read through a single lens: Brexit.
As if his decision to totally disregard a war crime he not only apologised for, but cheerfully encouraged, was somehow just fate and totally beyond his control.
That’s probably got something to do with the organ trafficking and open-air slave markets.
This was no accident, you understand, Libya is exactly what NATO set-out to make it – a failed state where absolutely everything is for sale. A true capitalist paradise. But discussing that would make it harder to sell “R2P” in the future.
Better to just endlessly rant on about Brexit instead.
Now, obviously, Brexit is (potentially) an important decision for the fate of the country. You can’t deny that.
BUT – let’s be real here – Even IF we leave the EU (and right now that is far from guaranteed), and even IF our leaving is as bad as the worst doom-sayers are predicting, London isn’t going to end up like this…
….or this:
….or this:
And at the end of the day, THAT is Cameron’s legacy.
Just as it’s the legacy of the all slimy apologists who cheered him on, and the narrow-minded, self-centred xenophobes who clean up after him.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/02/2019 – 02:00 - Guns-For-Hire: No, The Government Shouldn't Be Using The Military To Police The Globe
Guns-For-Hire: No, The Government Shouldn’t Be Using The Military To Police The Globe
Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes… known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.… No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” — James Madison
Eventually, all military empires fall and fail by spreading themselves too thin and spending themselves to death.
It’s happening again.
At the height of its power, even the mighty Roman Empire could not stare down a collapsing economy and a burgeoning military. Prolonged periods of war and false economic prosperity largely led to its demise. As historian Chalmers Johnson predicts:
The fate of previous democratic empires suggests that such a conflict is unsustainable and will be resolved in one of two ways. Rome attempted to keep its empire and lost its democracy. Britain chose to remain democratic and in the process let go its empire. Intentionally or not, the people of the United States already are well embarked upon the course of non-democratic empire.
The American Empire—with its endless wars waged by U.S. military servicepeople who have been reduced to little more than guns for hire: outsourced, stretched too thin, and deployed to far-flung places to police the globe—is approaching a breaking point.
War has become a huge money-making venture, and America, with its vast military empire and its incestuous relationship with a host of international defense contractors, is one of its best buyers and sellers. In fact, as Reuters reports, “[President] Trump has gone further than any of his predecessors to act as a salesman for the U.S. defense industry.”
Under Trump’s leadership, the U.S. military is dropping a bomb every 12 minutes.
This follows on the heels of President Obama, the so-called antiwar candidate and Nobel Peace Prize winner who waged war longer than any American president and whose targeted-drone killings resulted in at least 1.3 million lives lost to the U.S.-led war on terror.
Most recently, the Trump Administration signaled its willingness to put the lives of American troops on the line in order to guard Saudi Arabia’s oil resources. Roughly 200 American troops will join the 500 troops already stationed in Saudi Arabia. That’s in addition to the 60,000 U.S. troops that have been deployed throughout the Middle East for decades.
As The Washington Post points out, “The United States is now the world’s largest producer — and its reliance on Saudi imports has dropped dramatically, including by 50 percent in the past two years alone.”
So if we’re not protecting the oil for ourselves, whose interests are we protecting?
The military industrial complex is calling the shots, of course, and profit is its primary objective.
The military-industrial complex is also the world’s largest employer.
America has long had a penchant for endless wars that empty our national coffers while fattening those of the military industrial complex.
Aided and abetted by the U.S government, the American military-industrial complex has erected an empire unsurpassed in history in its breadth and scope, one dedicated to conducting perpetual warfare throughout the earth.
Although the U.S. constitutes only 5% of the world’s population, America boasts almost 50% of the world’s total military expenditure, spending more on the military than the next 19 biggest spending nations combined. Indeed, the Pentagon spends more on war than all 50 states combined spend on health, education, welfare, and safety.
Unfortunately, this level of war-mongering doesn’t come cheap to the taxpayers who are forced to foot the bill.
Having been co-opted by greedy defense contractors, corrupt politicians and incompetent government officials, America’s expanding military empire is bleeding the country dry at a rate of more than $32 million per hour.
In fact, the U.S. government has spent more money every five seconds in Iraq than the average American earns in a year.
With more than 800 U.S. military bases in 80 countries, the U.S. is now operating in 40 percent of the world’s nations at a cost of $160 to $200 billion annually.
Despite the fact that Congress has only officially declared war eleven times in the nation’s short history, the last time being during World War II, the United States has been at war for all but 21 of the past 243 years.
It’s cost the American taxpayer more than $4.7 trillion since 2001 to fight the government’s so-called “war on terrorism.” That’s in addition to “$127 billion in the last 17 years to train police, military and border patrol agents in many countries and to develop antiterrorism education programs, among other activities.” That does not include the cost of maintaining and staffing the 800-plus U.S. military bases spread around the globe.
The cost of perpetuating those endless wars and military exercises around the globe is expected to push the total bill upwards of $12 trillion by 2053.
The U.S. government is spending money it doesn’t have on a military empire it can’t afford.
As investigative journalist Uri Friedman puts it, for more than 15 years now, the United States has been fighting terrorism with a credit card, “essentially bankrolling the wars with debt, in the form of purchases of U.S. Treasury bonds by U.S.-based entities like pension funds and state and local governments, and by countries like China and Japan.”
War is not cheap, but it becomes outrageously costly when you factor in government incompetence, fraud, and greedy contractors.
For example, a leading accounting firm concluded that one of the Pentagon’s largest agencies “can’t account for hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of spending.”
Unfortunately, the outlook isn’t much better for the spending that can be tracked.
Consider that the government lost more than $160 billion to waste and fraud by the military and defense contractors. With paid contractors often outnumbering enlisted combat troops, the American war effort dubbed as the “coalition of the willing” has quickly evolved into the “coalition of the billing,” with American taxpayers forced to cough up billions of dollars for cash bribes, luxury bases, a highway to nowhere, faulty equipment, salaries for so-called “ghost soldiers,” and overpriced anything and everything associated with the war effort, including a $640 toilet seat and a $7600 coffee pot.
A government audit found that defense contractor Boeing has been massively overcharging taxpayers for mundane parts, resulting in tens of millions of dollars in overspending. As the report noted, the American taxpayer paid:
$71 for a metal pin that should cost just 4 cents; $644.75 for a small gear smaller than a dime that sells for $12.51: more than a 5,100 percent increase in price. $1,678.61 for another tiny part, also smaller than a dime, that could have been bought within DoD for $7.71: a 21,000 percent increase. $71.01 for a straight, thin metal pin that DoD had on hand, unused by the tens of thousands, for 4 cents: an increase of over 177,000 percent.
That price gouging has become an accepted form of corruption within the American military empire is a sad statement on how little control “we the people” have over our runaway government.
There’s a good reason why “bloated,” “corrupt” and “inefficient” are among the words most commonly applied to the government, especially the Department of Defense and its contractors. Price gouging has become an accepted form of corruption within the American military empire.
It’s not just the American economy that is being gouged, unfortunately.
Driven by a greedy defense sector, the American homeland has been transformed into a battlefield with militarized police and weapons better suited to a war zone. Trump, no different from his predecessors, has continued to expand America’s military empire abroad and domestically, calling on Congress to approve billions more to hire cops, build more prisons and wage more profit-driven war-on-drugs/war-on-terrorism/war-on-crime programs that pander to the powerful money interests (military, corporate and security) that run the Deep State and hold the government in its clutches.
Mind you, this isn’t just corrupt behavior. It’s deadly, downright immoral behavior.
Essentially, in order to fund this burgeoning military empire that polices the globe, the U.S. government is prepared to bankrupt the nation, jeopardize our servicemen and women, increase the chances of terrorism and blowback domestically, and push the nation that much closer to eventual collapse.
Making matters worse, taxpayers are being forced to pay $1.4 million per hour to provide U.S. weapons to countries that can’t afford them. As Mother Jones reports, the Pentagon’s Foreign Military Finance program “opens the way for the US government to pay for weapons for other countries—only to ‘promote world peace,’ of course—using your tax dollars, which are then recycled into the hands of military-industrial-complex corporations.”
Clearly, our national priorities are in desperate need of an overhauling.
As Los Angeles Times reporter Steve Lopez rightly asks:
Why throw money at defense when everything is falling down around us? Do we need to spend more money on our military (about $600 billion this year) than the next seven countries combined? Do we need 1.4 million active military personnel and 850,000 reserves when the enemy at the moment — ISIS — numbers in the low tens of thousands? If so, it seems there’s something radically wrong with our strategy. Should 55% of the federal government’s discretionary spending go to the military and only 3% to transportation when the toll in American lives is far greater from failing infrastructure than from terrorism? Does California need nearly as many active military bases (31, according to militarybases.com) as it has UC and state university campuses (33)? And does the state need more active duty military personnel (168,000, according to Governing magazine) than public elementary school teachers (139,000)?
The illicit merger of the global armaments industry and the Pentagon that President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us against more than 50 years ago has come to represent perhaps the greatest threat to the nation’s fragile infrastructure today.
The government is destabilizing the economy, destroying the national infrastructure through neglect and a lack of resources, and turning taxpayer dollars into blood money with its endless wars, drone strikes and mounting death tolls.
This is exactly the scenario Eisenhower warned against when he cautioned the citizenry not to let the profit-driven war machine endanger our liberties or democratic processes:
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”
We failed to heed Eisenhower’s warning.
The illicit merger of the armaments industry and the government that Eisenhower warned against has come to represent perhaps the greatest threat to the nation today.
What we have is a confluence of factors and influences that go beyond mere comparisons to Rome. It is a union of Orwell’s 1984 with its shadowy, totalitarian government—i.e., fascism, the union of government and corporate powers—and a total surveillance state with a military empire extended throughout the world.
This is how tyranny rises and freedom falls.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the growth of and reliance on militarism as the solution for our problems both domestically and abroad bodes ill for the constitutional principles which form the basis of the American experiment in freedom.
After all, a military empire ruled by martial law does not rely on principles of equality and justice for its authority but on the power of the sword. As author Aldous Huxley warned: “Liberty cannot flourish in a country that is permanently on a war footing, or even a near-war footing. Permanent crisis justifies permanent control of everybody and everything by the agencies of the central government.”
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/02/2019 – 00:05 - The U.S. Cities With The Most Homeless People
The U.S. Cities With The Most Homeless People
Over half a million Americans are facing the prospect of being homeless this holiday season.
As Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes, after a period of progress and decline, the U.S. homeless population has increased slightly for the second year in succession according to a report from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. It now stands at 553,000 with 65 percent of that total living in sheltered accommodation. 17 out of every 10,000 people in the U.S. has now experienced homelessness on a single night in 2018.
Half of all homeless people are in one of five states – California (129,972), New York (91,897), Florida (31,030), Texas (25,310) and Washington (22,304). It is primarily an urban issue and more than half of the homeless population are scattered across the country’s 50 biggest cities. Nearly a quarter of them live in just two cities – New York and Los Angeles. Despite its considerable homeless population, New York can at least claim that 65 percent of its rough sleepers are given sheltered accommodation. The same cannot be said of Los Angeles where 75 percent are out on the street.
The following infographic shows the top-10 worst cities for homelessness across the U.S. with New York in first place with 78,676.
You will find more infographics at Statista
It’s important to mention that in this comparison, the data is broken down by CoC – those are Continuums of Care that are local planning bodies coordinating responses to the issue. Los Angeles is in second place with nearly 50,000 while Seattle/King County comes third with 12,112.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 10/01/2019 – 23:45 - 5 Unanswered Questions That Remain 2 Years After The Vegas Shooting
5 Unanswered Questions That Remain 2 Years After The Vegas Shooting
Authored by Matt Agorist via The Free Thought Project,
It has been exactly two years since Stephen Paddock allegedly busted out the windows of his suite on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Casino Hotel and opened fire on concert goers below. In total, 58 people would be slaughtered and hundreds of others injured. Sadly, in all the time and all the police state tactics and technology at their fingertips, investigators are still unable to even come close as to why Paddock did what he did. With questions unanswered and families and victims still seeking information, the FBI officially closed their investigation earlier this year.
“It wasn’t about MGM, Mandalay Bay or a specific casino or venue,” said Aaron Rouse, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Las Vegas office when the FBI closed the case in January.
“It was all about doing the maximum amount of damage and him obtaining some form of infamy.”
Paddock, according to the FBI’s official story, acted alone and murdered dozens to simply go down in history.
Before the FBI closed their investigation, Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo declared the case closed as well and vowed never to speak Paddock’s name in public again. Like the FBI, the LVMPD closed their investigation without ever finding a motive and leaving countless questions unanswered.
The Vegas massacre, which is now referred to as 1 October, has only gotten stranger as things progress. Following the tragedy, law enforcement engaged in a series of narrative changes, deliberate blocking of information, and appeared to be working directly with the casino to make sure Americans never know the entire truth.
For months after the shooting, the LVMPD refused to release any information. Only after they fought the release all the way to the state supreme court, and were handed down a ruling forcing them to release information, did they ever budge.
However, after the court forced them to release information on the October 1 massacre, the Las Vegas police department—in an insultingly futile attempt at transparency—randomly began dumping information related to the shooting. In what appeared to be a deliberate attempt to muddy the waters, much of the video released by the department had no time stamps and was provided without context.
Luckily, outlets like the Las Vegas Review-Journal were persistent in scrubbing the details of this case. However, because the mainstream media no longer reports on this information, it was essentially buried upon its release. The Free Thought Project has compiled a list of five major questions — all of which were swept under the rug by the MSM — that still remain in regards to what actually took place on 1 October.
1. Report suggests Paddock’s girlfriend worked for the FBI
In August 2018, a report surfaced suggesting that Stephan Paddock’s girlfriend, Marilou Danley could’ve been an FBI asset. According to a credit application, as reported by True Pundit, Danley listed the FBI as an employer.
According to the publicly available intelligence obtained from a consumer credit reporting bureau, Danley claimed she previously worked at the FBI. While anyone can certainly claim anyone else as an employer, according to True Pundit, they contacted the FBI who said their “bosses are concerned” over this revelation.
When contacted, one FBI source said the Bureau “might have made payments to Danley but it is above my level,” the source said referring to access to the FBI’s confidential informant participant and payment records. The source said “bosses are concerned” with the new revelations about Danley’s financial relationship with the FBI.
In FBI speak, Danley could have been a paid asset. And ‘concerned’ means folks are getting ready to cover their own butts if payments were made to Danley either before or after the massacre.
Perhaps FBI Director Christopher Wray can shed light on the matter.
Or Danley. If you can find her. It took the FBI days to locate her and interview her after the Mandalay Bay massacre.
Danley is an Australian national. She is not a U.S. citizen.
Of course this bombshell Intel is coming from FBI sources in the beltway, not the corrupt Las Vegas FBI field office headed by Aaron Rouse. The same FBI field office that has not been able to pinpoint a motive for the Oct. 1, 2017 massacre that killed 57 people.
Little wonder why the narrative doesn’t fit the crime if the person whose fingerprints are on the ammunition also happens to be on your FBI payroll.
Why did the mainstream media never report this? In a case that has been shrouded in mystery and narrative changes, the idea that the person closest to the suspect in the deadliest mass shooting in modern history, could possibly be an asset to the FBI, is chilling.
2. Officers seen on body camera footage cowering in fear as Paddock murdered people one floor above them
When Nikolas Cruz opened fire on students in a Parkland, Florida high school, it would later be revealed that the school resource officer cowered in fear instead of trying to stop the massacre. When this was discovered, news media across the country reported on it and the officer subsequently became known as the “Coward of Broward.”
However, when similar footage showed Vegas police officers cowering in fear as Paddock mowed down concert goers, this barely registered as blip in the media.
The damning video puts officer Cordell Hendrex on location and only one floor below Paddock during the shooting. Hendrex and his rookie partner are seen on camera walking down the hall of the 31st floor as Paddock murders people on the ground below.
“Holy f**k,” Hendrex says when he hears the sound of shots above him. Hendrex could’ve run to the stairs, gone up a single floor and engaged Paddock and saved countless lives. Instead, he called everyone back and cowered in fear. Where were the calls for Hendrex to be fired? Where were the reports in the mainstream about him standing down?
3. Paddock Reportedly Warned His Brain was ‘Hacked’ and He Was Under Gov’t Control
Last year, shocking information surfaced that went largely ignored by the mainstream media. The report entails testimony from one of Paddock’s high-priced escorts who blew the whistle on how a prostitute who met with the deranged shooter just before the massacre went missing and noted how Paddock thought he was under the control of the government.
The escort was reported missing by her boyfriend just after the shooting and a former escort who once dated Paddock spoke out about the sheer insanity involved in this case.
“She was telling girls after work that she was scared something would happen to her,” claimed former escort Mikaela, whose full name was withheld to protect her identity according to Radar Online. “She was booked the day before or the day of the shooting before she disappeared.”
According to her testimony, Paddock claimed to be a government experiment.
“There’s messages where Stephen is telling her he’s a government experiment and that they are listening to everything he says and does, and they can hack into his brain and take over,” Mikaela said.
This information was simply ignored by the media and still is to this day, why is that?
4. Information suggesting Paddock was an arms dealer completely ignored by MSM
In August 2018, the arms dealer who admitted to selling Paddock his ammunition for the massacre was indicted. Douglas Haig was charged with a single count of “engaging in the business of manufacturing ammunition without a license.”
What makes his arrest so noteworthy is the fact that emails released by the FBI suggest Paddock may have been an arms dealer as well.
As The Free Thought Project reported in 2017, a series of unsealed court documents gave insight into Paddocks communications in the months leading up to the shooting, and revealed that he apparently referred to himself as some kind of arms dealer:
In the first message, Paddock claimed that the recipient would have the opportunity to try out the weapons before they purchased them. He then wrote “We have huge selection,” indicating that he was not working alone, and he said he was located “in the Las Vegas area.”
***
the email exchanges released by the FBI indicate that Paddock was presenting himself as some sort of arms dealer, sending an email that said, “for a thrill try out bumpfire ar’s with a 100 round magazine.”
Again, although the original emails made it into the mainstream briefly, the question remains as to who Paddock was selling arms to, and is that why he had so much ammunition in his hotel room?
5. Vegas police seen on video being instructed to turn off their body cameras
In June of last year, in part of the random dumping of information by the LVMPD, video footage was discovered which showed officers being told to turn off their body cameras.
According to the chatter captured on the video, the strike team was prepping to enter the hotel.
“Officers are waiting. They’re waiting,” says a male voice off screen. “Officers are waiting to get in there.”
As police stand in line waiting to enter the hotel, multiple body cameras show a female officer walking down the rows, instructing the officers to turn off their cameras.
“Cameras are off? Cameras off? Cameras are off?” she says.
An officer repeats “Camera is off,” and each video ends.
The disabling of body cameras is against the LVMPD’s own regulations which is news enough. However, this was done on the night of the deadliest mass shooting in recent history and it was completely ignored. How can that be?
The more information that comes out on the horrific events of that fateful night, the more questions the public has. The uncooperative behavior by the Las Vegas Metropolitan police department was a kick in the teeth to the victims and their families. Sadly, now that all the authorities investigating the tragedy have ended their investigations, we may never know all the details that led to shooting.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 10/01/2019 – 23:25 - How Military Spending Has Changed Since 2009
How Military Spending Has Changed Since 2009
China has celebrated 70 years of Communist Party rule by holding a massive military parade in Tiananmen Square in front of past and present leaders. Even though the event has been somewhat overshadowed by protests in Hong Kong, it still allowed China to showcase its technological achievements and newfound military prowess. 15,000 soldiers marched in the parade, accompanied by tanks, artillery pieces and nuclear-capable ballistic missiles, as well as a military flyover.
China has increased investment in its military in recent years, seeking to replace its outdated Soviet equipment and turn the PLA into a state-of-the-art force by 2049.
As Statista’s Nialll McCarthy notes, the push for modernization occurred at the same time the United States was mired in two bloody conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even though no country comes close to matching U.S. military expenditure which came to $649 billion last year (China was second with $250 billion), Beijing had the highest increase of any country by far between 2009 and 2018, according to Sipri.
You will find more infographics at Statista
During that timeframe, China upped its expenditure by 83 percent and the results of that could be seen on the streets of Beijing during the parade. Even Saudi Arabia, which has been splurging on military equipment for years, “only” increased its military spending by 28 percent during the same period. Russia is also in the midst of a modernization drive and its spending increased 29 percent since 2009.
Meanwhile, U.S. military spending has fallen 17 percent over the past decade, a downward trend President Trump is keen to halt amid the push for modernization and expansion in both Beijing and Moscow.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 10/01/2019 – 23:05 - 1,015,736,491,184 Reasons To Have A Plan B
1,015,736,491,184 Reasons To Have A Plan B
Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,
Precisely one year ago today, the US federal government opened Fiscal Year 2019 with a total debt level of $21.6 trillion:
Specifically, the US federal debt on October 1st last year was $21,606,948,183,180.23
Today is the start of the government’s 2020 Fiscal Year. And the total debt is now $22,622,684,674,364.43
That means they accumulated more than $1 TRILLION in new debt over the course of the 2019 Fiscal Year.
Think about that for a moment:
FY2019 was, literally, the BEST year EVER measured by short-term US financial performance.
The stock market reached an all-time high.
Real estate prices reached an all-time high.
Corporate profits are at record highs.
Personal income is at a record high.
Unemployment is hovering near an all-time low.
And all of these factors drove US government tax revenue to an all-time high; Uncle Sam has never had more income in its entire history.
Plus, there were no major foreign wars or natural disasters.
No banking crises or economic panics.
No massive bailouts.
And if you recall, the US government was shut down for most of the month of January due to a budget conflict, so federal spending was at a minimum for a good chunk of the year.
Yet despite this bonanza of good news, the national debt STILL increased by more than a trillion dollars!
HOW IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE??
Here’s an even more startling way of looking at it:
-
In Fiscal Year 2012, the government spent $359 billion paying interest on its debt.
-
In Fiscal Year 2015 they spent $402 billion.
-
In FY2017, $458 billion.
-
In the Fiscal Year 2019 that just closed yesterday, they spent more than $540 billion just paying INTEREST on the debt.
Do you see the pattern?
This problem becomes substantially worse every year. And FY2019 was a GOOD year!
What’s going to happen when the economic sun isn’t shining so brightly?
It would be foolish to expect every year to look like Fiscal Year 2019. Honestly, the combination of so much good news and so little bad news in FY19 was pretty rare.
There absolutely WILL be problems in the future. Recessions, panics, downturns, bear markets, natural disasters, trade wars, military conflicts, debt crises, pension crises, etc.
Many of these risks are already on the horizon.
Then you have to think about how quickly the Bolsheviks are storming to power.
These people want to dump trillions of dollars on the Green New Deal, Medicare for All, Universal Basic Income, free university education, and pretty much everything else that Karl Marx wrote about in the Communist Manifesto.
How much additional debt are they going to pile up in the process?
The US government’s mountain of debt already exceeds 100% of GDP, and that number gets worse each year.
How much longer will everyone keep pretending that the world’s biggest debtor is simultaneously the world’s biggest superpower?
How much longer will financial markets and foreign governments continue loaning money to the US government at trivial interest rates?
5 years? 10 years? 13 months until the next election?
No one knows for sure. But you don’t need a PhD in economics to realize that this might not have a happy ending… or that you might want to think about a Plan B.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 10/01/2019 – 22:45 -
- Iowa Town Refuses Federal Request To Remove 'Inclusive' Rainbow Crosswalks
Iowa Town Refuses Federal Request To Remove ‘Inclusive’ Rainbow Crosswalks
The city council in Ames, Iowa has chosen to disregard a sharply-worded request from federal officials to remove its rainbow, ‘inclusion-themed’ crosswalks at a downtown intersection, according to the Ames Tribune.
“My only question is, do we need to do anything?” said council member Chris Nelson in response to the letter from the US Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration. “Can we just accept the letter and say thank you?”
City Attorney Mark Lambert said that since the request did not ask for a response, written or verbal from the city, council could ignore it.
“As I said in my memo, (FHWA) couldn’t explain to me how they had jurisdiction over city streets, they were unaware of any penalties, and said they were still research that,” Lambert said. “Frankly, I think that according to the manual itself, there’s a good argument we’re not violating the manual, since there’s no prohibition on colors.” –Ames Tribune
The crosswalks on Douglas Avenue feature various colors meant to be inclusive of minority groups; rainbows for LGBT, and brown and black for people of color.
According to Forbes, the crosswalk to the east of Fifth Street “features gender non-binary pride colors of purple, black, yellow and white, and the crosswalk to the west features transgender pride colors of blue, white and pink.”
The September 5 letter received by the city from FHWA assistant division administrator Mark Johnson informed the council that their new crosswalks posed a danger to pedestrians, suggesting they “take the necessary steps to remove the non-compliant crosswalk art as soon as it is feasible.”
“The white crosswalk markings allowed are tested and proven to be recognized as a legally marked crossing location for pedestrians,” wrote Johnson. “Crosswalk art diminishes the contrast between the white lines and the pavement, potentially decreasing the effectiveness of the crosswalk markings and the safety of pedestrian traffic.”
City Attorney Mark Lambert, however, told the Des Moines Register that Fifth Street and Douglas Avenue aren’t federal roads – so they can pound sand.
“In terms of jurisdiction, we don’t believe the highway administration has any,” said Lambert, adding “With the system of federalism in the United States, the federal government does not have jurisdiction over everything.”
“I note that the FHWA’s letter included a ‘request’ — not a demand — for the city to remove the colored crosswalk markings. This is not a lawful order or demand by a federal agency, it is merely a request.”
Tyler Durden
Tue, 10/01/2019 – 22:25 - We're About To Find Life On Mars But The World Is "Not Prepared", NASA Scientist Warns
We’re About To Find Life On Mars But The World Is “Not Prepared”, NASA Scientist Warns
Authored by Elias Marat via TheMindUnleashed.com,
As we humble earthlings begin to learn more about the universe and potentially stand on the cusp of great discoveries about the planet Mars, we may not be prepared for what’s in store of us, warns the chief scientist of U.S. space agency NASA.
Dr. Jim Green believes that as two rovers from NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) prepare to embark for Mars next summer, humanity could be overwhelmed by the implications of studies to come.
Speaking to the Telegraph, the director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division compared the potential discoveries to Rennaissance-era astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus’ theory that postulated that the Earth revolves around the Sun, rather than vice-versa.
The Copernican model, which is credited with revolutionizing science during the 16th century, earned him the condemnation of the Roman Catholic Church due to the model’s impact on the Church’s doctrines relating to astronomy.
“It will start a whole new line of thinking. I don’t think we’re prepared for the results.
I’ve been worried about that because I think we’re close to finding it and making some announcements.”
The ESA’s ExoMars Rover and NASA’s Mars 2020 are set to drill 6.5 feet into the Red Planet’s core to take samples in hopes of finding evidence of life on. The samples will be processed and examined in a mobile laboratory that will look for any traces of organic matter.
The ESA #ExoMars #RosalindFranklin rover is assembled for testing before heading to #Mars in 2020! The bogies we designed + built are shown in a stowed configuration – meaning the legs & wheels on the bogies of the #rover are folded pretty compactly for launch/transit to Mars! pic.twitter.com/6xOa3P1JJS
— Natalie Panek (@nmpanek) September 28, 2019
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Green said that if scientists find biosignatures of life in Mars’ crust, a new era of astrobiology could begin.
“What happens next is a whole new set of scientific questions.
Is that life like us? How are we related?
Can life move from planet-to-planet or do we have a spark and just the right environment and that spark generates life – like us or not like us – based on the chemical environment that it is in?”
NASA’s Mars 2020 rover is set to launch next July before making the 140-million mile trek to Mars and landing on its Jezero Crater in February 2021.
With two high-definition cameras and a detachable helicopter drone, the rover is set to collect an unprecedented batch of visual data and images of the cavernous and cliffy terrain of Mars.
Good question! We’re trying to find out. I found evidence of an ancient stream on Mars that once flowed with water—something needed for life as we know it.
The #Mars2020 rover, launching in July, will take samples & search for more clues: https://t.co/C966SCxQgR #AstronautSnoopy pic.twitter.com/5mGPFUa55a
— Curiosity Rover (@MarsCuriosity) September 30, 2019
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However, the primary mission of the rover is to find signs of life. Habitable environments and biosignatures left in rock are being sought so that samples can be studied back on earth.
The latest research has shown that many planets believed to have always been uninhabitable may have once enjoyed conditions suitable for sustaining life. Earlier this year, NASA’s InSight rover found evidence of a potentially vast global reservoir of water on Mars.
Dr. Green notes that research also suggests the existence of civilizations on other planets. He commented:
“There is no reason to think that there isn’t civilization elsewhere, because we are finding exoplanets [planets lying beyond the solar system] all over the place.”
Tyler Durden
Tue, 10/01/2019 – 22:05
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