- US, Turkey Said To Reach Deal For Withdrawal Of Kurdish Forces From Key Syrian Town
Turkey has announced a new agreement with the US which will involve the pullout of all Kurdish forces from the contested northern Syrian city of Manbij — something which the US State Department disputed as recently as Tuesday.
The newly built US forces base in Manbij, Syria. Image source: TRT World via Reuters But Reuters now reports, based on Turkey’s state-run Anadolu agency:
Turkey and the United States have reached an agreement on a plan for the withdrawal of the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia from Syria’s Manbij, Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency said on Wednesday.
Under the terms of the three-step plan, which will become finalized during a visit by Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu to Washington on June 4, the YPG will withdraw from Manbij 30 days after the deal is signed, Anadolu said.
Turkish and US military forces will start joint supervision in Manbij 45 days after the agreement is signed and a local administration will be formed 60 days after June 4, Anadolu said.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu previously indicated, “A roadmap for the Syrian city of Manbij may be implemented before the end of this summer if a deal is reached between Turkey and the US”, according to statements reported by Middle East based Al Masdar News. “Taking over the city will last until a new administration is formed as per an agreement with the United States,” he commented.
However, as of Tuesday the State Department denied reaching an agreement with Turkey on the issue, indicating that talks were still ongoing.
When asked about Turkish press claims of the deal from earlier this week, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert responded, “[the US doesn’t] have any agreements yet with the Government of Turkey. We announced previously that the United States and the Turkish working group met in… Ankara on [May 25]. We’re continuing to have ongoing conversations regarding Syria and other issues of mutual concern.”
“The two sides then had outlined the contours of a road-map for further cooperation, and that includes on Manbij. I know that the Secretary looks forward to hosting Foreign Minister Cavusoglu on June 4th here in Washington for those conversations to continue,” she added.
Syrian Kurdish media groups, most notably the Manbij Military Council, have disparaged claims of a US-Turkish deal for the withdrawal of the YPG (or Kurdish “People’s Protection Units”) as ‘fake’, denying any Kurdish withdrawal. The US-backed and largely Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces captured the city from ISIS in August 2016 after hard fought 2-month battle and with heavy support from US coalition aircraft.
Sharfan Darwish, spokesman for the Manbij Military Council, called Wednesday’s reports of the US-Turkish deal “premature” and that news of the deal “lacks credibility,” and said further, “The Turkish statements are a way of exerting pressure and creating confusion in Manbij, impacting its stability.”
The Manbij Military Council is an extension of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), and US advisers have long been present in the Syrian Kurdish dominated town, with new images emerging in early May depicting ongoing construction on a US forward operating base.
NATO member Turkey has twice threatened to attack US-occupied Manbij following Turkey’s annexation of Syria’s Kurdish dominated town of Afrin early this year. Turkey has long accused Washington of effectively aiding the outlawed “terrorist” Kurdish PKK due to its policies in Syria.
Meanwhile Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu is set to travel to Washington D.C. where he will meet with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on June 4th. The two are expected to tackle the thorny issue of US support for Syrian Kurdish groups which Ankara sees as identical with the PKK, but which the US sees as a distinct Syrian ally against both ISIS and Assad.
- British Judge Says Kitchen Knives Are Too Sharp: Filing Them Down Will Stop Stabbing Epidemic
Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,
This is a look into the future of the United States. Although the anti-gun nuts in the US are focusing on ‘assault weapons’ those in the United Kingdom want to curb knife violence in their anti-gun utopia by ‘filing down’ the knives that are too sharp.
A judge in the UK has proposed a nationwide program to file down the points of kitchen knives as a solution to the country’s soaring knife crime epidemic. Because filing down the knives people use to cut their vegetables will stop criminals from stabbing others with those now duller knives.
According to The Telegraph UK, in his valedictory address last week, retiring Luton Crown Court Judge Nic Madge spoke of his concern that carrying a knife had become routine in some circles and called on the government to ban the sale of large pointed kitchen knives. In the gun free zone that is the United Kingdom, the latest figures show stabbing deaths among teenagers and young adults have reached the highest level for eight years, and knife crime overall rose 22 percent in 2017. If you’ve ever wondered just how tyrannical things have gotten across the pond.
In the past two months, he said, there have been 77 knife-related incidents in Bedfordshire, including three killings. So a ban on guns turned violent homicidal maniacs into knife-wielding, stab-hungry sociopaths. On top of the increased bans and laws on knives, the UK is actually punishing its own people for having the nerve to defend themselves or their property from grave bodily harm.
Judge Madge told the assembled judges, barristers, and court staff:
“These offenses often seem motiveless – one boy was stabbed because he had an argument a couple of years before at his junior school.”
He also said the laws which were designed to reduce the availability of weapons to young would-be offenders had had “almost no effect” on stabbing violence since the vast majority of had merely taken the knives from a cutlery drawer.
“A few of the blades carried by youths are so-called ‘Rambo knives’ or samurai swords. They though are a very small minority. The reason why these measures have little effect is that the vast majority of knives carried by youths are ordinary kitchen knives. Every kitchen contains lethal knives which are potential murder weapons.”
Even better, the judge used the same argument we get from anti-gun activists in the United States. “Why do you need that?” Judge Madge said: “Accordingly, it is very easy for any youth who wants to obtain a knife to take it from the kitchen drawer in his home or in the home of one of his friends.” As a result, according to the judge, the most common knife a youth will take out is eight to ten inches, long and pointed, from his mother’s cutlery tray.
“But why we do need eight-inch or ten-inch kitchen knives with points? Butchers and fishmongers do, but how often, if at all, does a domestic chef use the point of an eight-inch or ten-inch knife? Rarely, if at all.”
Sound familiar?
- After Years Of US-Led "Nation-Building", Afghanistan Faces A Human Rights Disaster
Authored by Brian Cloughley via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
After over sixteen years of foreign military occupation, Afghanistan, the fourth most corrupt country in the world, continues to be battered and blasted by war. Its citizens are victims of suicide attacks by insane savages and, according to the magazine Stars and Stripes, the number of US bombs dropped on Afghanistan in March 2018 “was the highest for that month in five years. While ISIS is being pushed underground in Iraq and Syria, the number of fighters pledging loyalty to the group appears to be growing in Afghanistan.”
But it isn’t only the ravages of war that are destroying the country. The social fabric is being terminally torn asunder by human rights violations that are either ignored or condoned by both the government and the US-NATO military alliance amongst whose “key functions” is “Supporting the adherence to the principles of rule of law and good governance.”
The US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), Mr John Sopko, has for eight years carried out his duties in an exemplary fashion, being responsible for “independent and objective oversight of the $117.26 billion the US has provided to implement reconstruction programs in Afghanistan,” but has been frequently deflected and misled by the US Department of Defence and the Afghan government.
SIGAR’s Report of July 2017 recorded that “Afghan officials remain complicit… in the sexual exploitation of children by Afghan security forces,” but as noted by the Washington Post, “the Pentagon tried to block an independent assessment of child sex abuse crimes committed by Afghan soldiers and police, instead insisting on the creation of its own report offering a far less authoritative review of human rights violations perpetrated by US allies.”
It is now public knowledge that there is a culture of sodomy in Afghanistan and that Afghan men in positions of power at all levels enjoy immunity from prosecution for abusing young boys. The practice of bacha bazi, or “boy play” is revolting, and the word “play” is entirely inappropriate. Foreign Policy magazine states that “Demeaning and damaging, the widespread subculture of paedophilia in Afghanistan constitutes one of the most egregious ongoing violations of human rights in the world. The adolescent boys who are groomed for sexual relationships with older men are bought — or, in some instances, kidnapped — from their families and thrust into a world which strips them of their masculine identity. These boys are often made to dress as females, wear makeup, and dance for parties of men. They are expected to engage in sexual acts with much older suitors, often remaining a man’s or group’s sexual underling for a protracted period.”
But the Pentagon doesn’t want us to know anything about this, and has in the past actually punished US soldiers for taking action against bullying perverts. The New York Times reported in 2015 that after special forces Captain Dan Quinn “beat up an American-backed militia commander for keeping a boy chained to his bed as a sex slave” he was relieved of his command. He said later that “We were putting people into power who would do things that were worse than the Taliban did,” which is absolutely correct, because even the barbaric Taliban did not permit such criminal obscenity to go unpunished.
Sexual abuse of boys in Afghanistan continues unchecked in spite of the SIGAR’s criticisms and regardless of the international “Convention on the Rights of the Child” which requires nations who ratify the agreement to “undertake to protect children from all forms of sexual exploitation and sexual abuse.”
The United States, however, has not ratified the Convention, which means that it is not legally bound by any of its requirements. As The Economist observes, the US lawmakers who oppose the treaty “say it would usurp American sovereignty, a long-standing fear about the UN among some conservative Republicans. There is a fear that the social and economic rights established by the treaty could provoke lawsuits demanding that the government pay for these things.” It is not surprising that the Pentagon has done nothing at all to oppose gross abuse of children in Afghanistan.
Then there is the scandalous treatment of women in that corrupt and shattered country, where in 2009 a law was passed permitting men to starve their wives to death if they deny them sex. In 2014, after another five years of US-NATO support of “adherence to the principles of rule of law and good governance” the Kabul parliament approved a law which allows men “to attack their wives, children and sisters without fear of judicial punishment, undoing years of slow progress in tackling violence in a country blighted by so-called ‘honour’ killings, forced marriage and vicious domestic abuse.”
Amnesty International’s 2017-2018 Report informs us that “In the first half of [2017] the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission reported thousands of cases of violence against women and girls across the country, including beatings, killings and acid attacks. Against the backdrop of impunity for such crimes and a failure to investigate, cases of violence against women remained grossly under-reported due to traditional practices, stigmatization and fear of the consequences for the victims.”
There is no sign whatever that women in Afghanistan are being treated better than before the US invaded in late 2001. In all its years of operations and “Supporting the adherence to the principles of rule of law and good governance” in Afghanistan the US-NATO military alliance has not made the slightest difference to the appalling way in which Afghan males conduct themselves towards females.
Since 1979 there has been an international ‘Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women,’ which has been ratified by 187 of the UN’s 194 nations (including Afghanistan). It specifies that “States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women in all matters relating to marriage and family relations” and the countries refusing to agree to its enforcement are Iran, Palau, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Tonga — and the United States of America.
Afghanistan’s Law on Elimination of Violence Against Women (EVAW) was passed by presidential decree in 2009. It laid down “criminal penalties for various abuses including rape, child marriage, forced marriage, domestic violence, sale of women and girls, and baad, the giving of girls to resolve disputes between families,” and seemed to be a major step forward in attempts to improve the way in which women are treated.
Human Rights Watch notes that in March 2017 a revised penal code was adopted by presidential decree. “It incorporated all the provisions of the EVAW law, while strengthening the definition of rape. However, because a number of conservative members of parliament have opposed the EVAW law, some activists campaigned to preserve the law in its stand-alone form decreed in 2009. In response to their efforts, in August President Ghani ordered the Ministry of Justice to remove the EVAW chapter from the new penal code. The controversial reversal has left the status of the law in limbo.” In other words, women in Afghanistan are back where they started: without rights, without protection, without hope.
The Afghan government and the US-NATO military alliance disregard or even condone some of the most horrendous human rights’ violations in the world. The people of Afghanistan are suffering from a combination of the civil war’s devastation and the mediaeval mindset of many of its primitive legislators and officials. Yet foreign money continues to pour in, while the suicide detonations are echoed by B-52 bombs all over the country.
The human rights calamity in Afghanistan will not be alleviated while the US-NATO “adviser” nations continue their present policy.
They shouldn’t have been in Afghanistan in the first place, but it is now time that the foreigners who have contributed to the catastrophe in Afghanistan brought pressure to bear on the Kabul government to pass and enforce legislature that enforces penalties for abuse of human rights, especially those of women and children. That would be one modest step towards bring the place into the 21st Century.
- The Journalists Killed In Russia (Before & After Putin)
Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko was reported to have been killed in the Ukrainian capital Kiev on Tuesday.
Just a day later, on Wednesday, he held a news conference.
Apparently, the Ukrainian security services had feigned his death to get hold of those who had really wanted to kill Babchenko. The Journalist had immigrated to Ukraine after multiple threats against him and his family.
In Russia itself, 58 journalists were killed since 1993, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. 38 were targeted for murder and in 33 cases the murderers went unpunished.
You will find more infographics at Statista
But who can forget Fox’s O’Reilly pressing Trump on his statement in Feb 2017, saying,
“But he’s a killer though. Putin’s a killer.”
Trump shrugged the comment off, saying:
“There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What, do you think our country is so innocent?”
Well from the chart above we can see that in the years since Putin was elected. 28 journalists have been killed – an average of 1.5 per year; but in the six years before he was elected 30 journalists were killed – an average of 5 per year.
The chart above only counts journalists killed in Russia itself, not Russian journalists killed in other countries.
- Fine-Tuning The Surveillance State
We have been watching the shift of society and all of its components to collectivist thought and action in preparation for the step into a full-blown totalitarian state.
Already the Constitution and our rights enumerated within it have been relegated to impotency and practically abrogated.
The key to this has not been the use of force, but the molding of thought and behavior over the decades within the schools, within the fostered predictive programming of pop culture and television, and within the lying, Marxist, mainstream media.
Currently there are 22 states that have made a crime of what is referred to as “disturbing the school,” and this has led to thousands of arrests of students for such things as interrupting a teacher, or even belching in class.
Schools have an increased police presence; however, as we have seen with the school shootings this year, they certainly aren’t there to protect the students.
Police are in schools to enforce conformity and submissive behavior: they’re managing the “troupe” of juveniles, driving the herd.
Collective, community thought is the mantra. Advertisements on the radio for high-school sports list all of the acceptable skills that sports convey: leadership, teamwork, cooperation, etc. Gone is personal development, let alone “fun,” the latter being archaic and non-utilitarian. In the past 3 to 4 decades, this collective “consciousness” has become the norm. Creative thought is discouraged unless it is directed… directed by authorities or “approved” controllers/managers. Such thought is supplemented by the actions of those authorities, mislabeled as “government” when the appropriate term is rule.
An article ran out of News 4, posted on NBC Washington on 5/17/18 entitled Potential Spy Devices Which Track Cellphones, Intercept Calls Found All Over D.C., Md., Va. It is worth reading, as it details the Stingray technology (carried in a briefcase) that capture cellular telephones by tricking them into believing the devices are cell phone towers. This means the phones are tracked, and the government is taking information on them surreptitiously.
Joe Pinkstone wrote another article for Daily Mail entitled Google’s disturbing vision of TOTAL data collection, released on 5/18/18. The article is very informative, and it presents all of the information (in list form) collected both by Google and Facebook for their data files.
China has recently rolled out a new camera facial recognition system that can sift through a billion people in a matter of seconds. As written in previous articles, Bill Gates and other corporate investors plan to place 500 satellites into orbit and provide total global coverage in real-time with high-resolution cameras. Cameras and devices have been incorporated into appliances within people’s homes, with links to both law enforcement and private sector corporate monitors with ties to the government.
One of the greatest problems with all of this is the fostered dependency on these electronic gadgets where many (if not most) people believe they cannot do without them: cell phones, computers, and social media outlets. Every week a new report or story surfaces that shows just how far the government and the corporate interests are pushing this electronic dependency, while the schools are shaping the consciousness of the public and making it ever more malleable. Toward what end? Toward the one that recurs throughout history. We have been warned by Orwell, by Solzhenitsyn, and many others.
Whether we will heed those warnings and take preventative measures remains to be seen. The definition of tyranny can be measured and defined within the words of the Declaration of Independence.
We are seeing such a state metastasizing by the day, as the surveillance state is fine-tuned for the final act…a performance that has not happened but is entirely predictable by any who examine the course of history and our past.
- Mystery Booms Heard Across Pennsylvania Continue To Baffle FBI, Local Authorities
Authorities in Pennsylvania along with the FBI have been scratching their heads over multiple reports of loud booming sounds in the middle of the night by residents of Bucks and Lehigh Counties.
Following a joint investigation with the FBI, the best authorities have been able to come up with for the ominous booms which began on April 2 is that they were caused by an individual setting off “explosions.”
A statement from local authorities reads:
Since April 2, 2018 over twenty (20) explosions have occurred in the early morning hours (between hours of 0100-0430) in the Upper Bucks County area. Our local, state, and federal Law Enforcement agencies all take these events very seriously and are working dilligently to protect the citizens of our community. Keeping everyone safe is our shared number one priority. Fortunately to date no one has been injured; however, we are attempting to prevent someone from accidentally getting injured by these explosions, including the individual responsible.
THOSE STRANGE BOOMS in Bucks and Lehigh Counties, appear to have been the result of 20 some explosions. That’s what State Police are concluding. But they need help to further unravel this mystery. @CBSPhilly pic.twitter.com/bekUpars9U
— Joe Holden (@JoeHoldenCBS3) May 29, 2018
Case closed, pack it up Sherlock.
One resident’s account of what happened seems to back up the explosions theory after a boom was heard in Nockamixon Township by resident Nick Zangly, who told the Bucks County Herald “it was one hell of an explosion,” who lives down the street from a 4-foot wide by 1-foot deep cavity, which he alleges opened up after the blast.
Zangli said there was “nothing in the hole, which was filled with water because of heavy rain over the weekend.” Law enforcement came out Monday to investigate the sinkhole but did not respond to any media requests.
Residents have described the noises as something falling out of the sky or an earthquake.
“I thought that somebody was making a tunnel or space junk fell out of the sky,” said Susan Crompton, who lives in Haycock Township.
“From poachers, gunfire, to explosions to a sonic boom,” said Jerry Hertz of the mysterious sound.
KYW-TV said there had been no shortage of theories among residents, but still, no clear answer of the cause.
“It’s a rumble, it actually like rumbles the ground like an earthquake would happen but with a loud like boom,” Crompton added.
“I’ve been in the military, I’ve got experience with explosives, I was a Navy diver and was definitely not a gunshot,” Hertz said.
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Meanwhile, Mysterious booms are not just limited to Pennsylvania, as there have been local reports from across the country of booms rocking towns from coast to coast. Likewise, officials have zero answers to provide their citizens, it is hard to prepare for an event if it is not yet identifiable.
- CIA Undermines North Korea Summit By Leaking Report To Media Asset
Authored by Elizabeth Lea Vos via Disobedient Media,
Just as it was reported that the summit between the United States and North Korea was back on and that Kim Young Chol, the Vice Chairman of North Korea was on his way to New York to meet with officials in preparation for the June 12 summit, the CIA leaked an intelligence assessment concluding that “North Korea does not intend to give up its nuclear weapons any time soon.” The timing of this leak is striking, as it seems to be an effort to undermine negotiations between the two nations and comes just days after ranking members of the Democratic Party and Republican hardliners attacked President Donald Trump over his efforts to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
The identity of the reporter who helped break the story also raises serious questions about whether or not a faction within the CIA deliberately attempted to undermine diplomatic efforts to ease tensions on the Korean Peninsula. According to NBC News, the report was leaked to none other than NBC national security reporter Ken Dilanian, known as “The CIA’s Mop-Up Man.”
In 2014, The Intercept reported on Ken Dilanian’s correspondence and relationship with the CIA while Dilanian was a reporter for the Los Angeles Times.
According to The Intercept, “Email exchanges between CIA public affairs officers and Ken Dilanian, now an Associated Press intelligence reporter who previously covered the CIA for the Times, show that Dilanian enjoyed a close collaborative relationship with the agency, explicitly promising positive news coverage and sometimes sending the press office entire story drafts for review prior to publication. In at least one instance, the CIA’s reaction appears to have led to significant changes in the story that was eventually published in the Times.”
According to the Huffington Post, while writing for the Los Angeles Times, Dilanian also reported a CIA claim as fact by stating that “there was no collateral murder in a 2012 drone strike on Al Qaeda leader Abu Yahya al-Libi.” Dilanian’s article was directly disputed in an Amnesty International report.
In the aftermath of the revelations about Dilanian’s ties to the CIA, he was disavowed by the Los Angeles Times. The disclosure of Dilanian’s collaboration with the CIA also led his former employer, David Lauter of the Tribune Washington to believe Dilanian could have violated Tribune news policy. Lauter acknowledged that Tribune policy dictates that reporters “not share copies of stories outside the newsroom.” Lauter further stated that he was “disappointed that the emails indicate that Ken may have violated that rule.”
Dilanian has not shied away from pushing articles written by former CIA officials who continue to perpetuate the “Trump-Russia” collusion narrative without any regard to facts, such as Steven Hall’s Washington Post article titled: “I was in the CIA. We wouldn’t trust a country whose leader did what Trump did.”
Wikileaks has also pointed out Dilanian’s agency connection and his pushing of the “Trump-Russia” collusion narrative, tweeting: “CIA’s ‘mop up man’ Ken Dilanian is the NBC ‘reporter’ used to channel claim about president Putin + US election.”
In the aftermath of recent revelations concerning the CIA’s collaboration with foreign intelligence agencies to spy on Donald Trump’s campaign during the 2016 US Presidential Election the fresh leaks continue to show a pattern of rebellion that has long run rampant in the US intelligence community. While the CIA’s apparent violations of ethical considerations concerning surveillance of candidates running for public office was serious enough, their interference drags the reputation of the agency to a new (and in the case of Korean peace negotiations, more dangerous) low amid their conflict with the sitting President of the United States.
However, despite these attacks, preparations between the two countries have continued for the upcoming June 12 summit. President Trump announced earlier today via Twitter that: “We have put a great team together for our talks with North Korea. Meetings are currently taking place concerning Summit, and more. Kim Young Chol, the Vice Chairman of North Korea, heading now to New York. Solid response to my letter, thank you!”
- Tesla Forced To Explain $34,347 Payment To Board Member's Company
As the drumbeat for accountability for Tesla’s Board of Directors continues to get louder, more and more scrutiny is being placed on the details surrounding the Board’s relationship with the company. The latest detail which is under scrutiny, a $34,347 payment to a company founded by Tesla’s lead independent director Antonio Gracias, must have raised enough of a concern for the company to feel that it needed to explain itself.
Bloomberg reported this morning that Tesla paid this money to Valor Management, Gracias’ company, for spending more than 100 days at Tesla’s factory and for “numerous improvements that led to increased Model 3 production rates”.
A private equity firm linked to a Tesla Inc. director spent more than 100 days at the carmaker’s battery factory late last year to help increase Model 3 sedan production, according to a filing vouching for its beleaguered board.
Valor Management Corp., whose founder and chief executive is Tesla’s lead independent director Antonio Gracias, contributed to “numerous improvements that led to increased Model 3 production rates,” Tesla said in the filing Tuesday. The carmaker said it paid Valor $34,347 to reimburse for travel, equipment and “budget lodging” near the Nevada factory.
Tesla had previously said in its proxy statement that this money had been paid for “consulting services related to ‘operational optimization'”. Obviously, with the increased scrutiny on Tesla’s board and people combing through the proxy statement for every last detail, this explanation wasn’t satisfactory enough as written in the initial proxy. This prompted Tesla to file a Form DEF14A, an amendment to the proxy, to offer more detail. Despite Tesla stating it was an arm’s length transaction, the same filing also notes that board member Gracias was “personally involved” in having his companies team help.
The filing elaborates on what was a vague disclosure in Tesla’s proxy statement released April 26, which described the payment to Valor as being for consulting services related to “operational optimization.” Tesla said then that $34,347 was an immaterial cost and that the services were “provided on an arm’s length basis to Tesla.” The board concluded that it didn’t impede Gracias from making independent judgments as a director.
The Tuesday filing said that Gracias supported and was personally involved in having Valor’s senior operations team help Tesla at the gigafactory near Reno, Nevada.
Obviously, not enough operational efficiencies were found to make Tesla hit its production target of 5000 vehicles per week.
While the sum of money is relatively small, this goes to show that the temperature on the Tesla pressure cooker has risen significantly. This detail would have likely been glazed over or outright ignored in proxies of past years – this year, it doesn’t look like anything is going to get past the scrutiny of those challenging Tesla’s existing board.
A couple weeks ago, we reported about CtW waging a proxy fight to oust most of Tesla’s board.
CtW Investment Group, which is working with $250 billion in pension funds, many of which are Tesla investors, has pushed for a long overdue ousting of some of Tesla’s most unqualified and possibly conflicted board members. A Bloomberg article out on Wednesday morning wrote:
An activist firm representing Tesla Inc. shareholders has excoriated the electric-car maker, claiming that it’s veered off the path to profit and urging a major overhaul of the Elon Musk-led board.
CtW Investment Group, working with union pension funds that are Tesla investors managing more than $250 billion, opposes the re-election of three board members who are up for votes during Tesla’s June 5 annual meeting. The firm calls for shareholders to cast ballots against Antonio Gracias, a private-equity investor and Tesla’s lead independent director; Kimbal Musk, Elon’s brother; and James Murdoch, CEO of Twenty-First Century Fox Inc.
Poor accountability and lack of governance at Tesla have been issues raised by us throughout the past year: there was this Harvard Law blog about whether Musk “dominates” his Board, analysts calling for accountability for Musk’s recent statements and promises of no need for capital and cash flow positive that have been looked upon with increasing skepticism. CtW further goes on to point out many “obvious” critiques of the Board that have long since been pointed out by skeptics of the company, including the board potentially being “beholden” to CEO Musk.
“Tesla has failed to hit critical production milestones and has consequently seen its past progress toward profitability sharply reverse,” Dieter Waizenegger, CtW’s executive director, writes in a letter the firm plans to file Wednesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission. “But instead of recognizing the need for independent and effective board leadership, Tesla has re-nominated three directors who exemplify the company’s failure to evolve.”
The letter escalates long-held criticisms of a board that CtW and several investors have faulted for being beholden to Musk, Tesla’s chief executive officer. The company has burned through almost $4 billion during the past year while scaling up operations for the Model 3, intended to be its first mass-manufactured car. The sedan has missed several production targets and stoked concerns about whether the company has enough cash.
Among the critiques remains the odious Solar City acquisition – currently the subject of a lawsuit and Harvard Law Blog that both draw the same conclusion: Elon Musk may have had full control over his Board and his company when Tesla agreed to acquire Solar City.
One thing seems to be for sure. It doesn’t look as though anything that gets tucked into SEC filings is going to get through unnoticed at this point. Where formerly the only people reading the filings with fervor and scrutiny may have been shorts sellers, now CtW and other shareholders who want the Board out have motivation to do the same. The pressure continues to rise on Tesla.
- May You Live In Stupid, Corrupt, And Yet Fascinating Times…
Authored by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
In the old days, America’s top spies would complete their tenures at the CIA or one of the other Washington puzzle palaces and segue to more ordinary pursuits. Some wrote their memoirs. One ran for president. Another died a few months after surrendering his post. But today’s national-security establishment retiree has a different game plan. After so many years of brawling in the shadows, he yearns for a second, lucrative career in the public eye. He takes a crash course in speaking in soundbites, refreshes his wardrobe and signs a TV news contract. Then, several times a week, waits for a network limousine to shuttle him to the broadcast news studios where, after a light dusting of foundation and a spritz of hairspray, he takes a supporting role in the anchors’ nighttime shows.
– Politico: The Spies Who Came in to the TV Studio
May you live in stupid, corrupt and yet fascinating times.
– Me, paraphrasing a Chinese curse
I’ve been away the past couple of weeks taking a break with my family. I paid attention to the news, but from a distance. As usual, there’s plenty to talk about.
In the last 24 hours alone, we’ve seen political chaos erupt in Italy and hordes of pundits simultaneously lose their minds over the murder of a prominent Russian journalist that never happened. Such is the world we live in. Stupid, corrupt, yet fascinating.
Of all the things I could’ve written about, you may be surprised by today’s selection. It’s a clip many of you probably saw where Richard Stengel (who was Time Magazine’s managing editor from 2006-2013) admits he approves of government propagandizing its own citizens during a Council on Foreign Relations forum. Here’s the clip.
At a Council on Foreign Relations forum about “fake news,” former Editor at Time Magazine Richard Stengel directly states that he supports the use of propaganda on American citizens – then shuts the session down when challenged about how propaganda is used against the third world pic.twitter.com/ClAT5POv7G
— William Craddick (@williamcraddick) May 11, 2018
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It remains amusing how mainstream journalists continue to blame the public for not believing them, rather than admitting they themselves created this environment of deep distrust by acting as salespeople for the status quo versus challenging the powerful like they’re supposed to.
The fact someone who spent pretty much his entire career in journalism, including a lengthy period at the top of Time magazine, is a public advocate of government propaganda tells you all you need to know about the debased state of the so-called “trustworthy” media in modern America.
Moreover, Mr. Stengel doesn’t just theoretically believe state propaganda’s a good idea, he’s so completely devoted to the concept he took a job with the U.S. State Department which he admits was nicknamed the “chief propagandist job.” If our nation’s esteemed media properties are being run by men and women with this sort of a mindset (they are), what does it say about the overall state of the press today?
Someone who genuinely accepts and performs the role of speaking truth to power would never want to serve as chief propagandist for the government, nor would a government ever want to hire such a person. The fact Mr. Stengel so seamlessly slithers through the revolving door between government and media says so much about how things work today.
Of course, Stengel’s not the only one. David Frum started out in journalism and later transitioned to government to become primary cheerleader for the Iraq war as George W. Bush’s chief speechwriter. Naturally, being so spectacularly wrong about one of the biggest foreign policy disasters in U.S. history didn’t impede the man’s career one bit. He easily transitioned back to media, currently finding himself senior editor of The Atlantic magazine. Failing your way to the top is a very real thing in this country.
But that’s ancient history. One might assume the press’ embarrassing performance in covering and forecasting the 2016 election would’ve led to introspection from the masters of the media universe, but one would be wrong. In fact, NBC recently went ahead and hired ex-CIA head John Brennan as a “senior national security and intelligence analyst,” while CNN scooped up former NSA and CIA chief Michael Hayden in addition to ex-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Unfortunately, that’s just the tip of the government-media-complex iceberg.
As was noted in a February article by Jack Shafer published in Politico:
Former CIA Director John Brennan (2013-17) is the latest superspook to be reborn as a TV newsie. He just cashed in at NBC News as a “senior national security and intelligence analyst” and served his first expert views on last Sunday’s edition of Meet the Press. The Brennan acquisition seeks to elevate NBC to spook parity with CNN, which employs former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former CIA Director Michael Hayden in a similar capacity. Other, lesser-known national security veterans thrive under TV’s grow lights. Almost too numerous to list, they include Chuck Rosenberg, former acting DEA administrator, chief of staff for FBI Director James B. Comey, and counselor to former FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III; Frank Figliuzzi, former chief of FBI counterintelligence; Juan Zarate, deputy national security adviser under Bush, at NBC; and Fran Townsend, homeland security adviser under Bush, at CBS News. CNN’s bulging roster also includes former FBI agent Asha Rangappa; former FBI agent James Gagliano; Obama’s former deputy national security adviser Tony Blinken; former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers; senior adviser to the National Security Council during the Obama administration Samantha Vinograd; retired CIA operations officer Steven L. Hall; and Philip Mudd, also retired from the CIA.
And CNN is still adding to its bench. Last Saturday, former Comey aide Josh Campbell wrote a New York Times op-ed on why he was leaving the FBI on principle. By Monday, the network was announcing his new position as a “law enforcement analyst.”
They don’t even hide this stuff and refer to it by secret spook names like Operation Mockingbird anymore. They do it right in your face.
If anything, the media’s gotten worse since its total failure during the 2016 election and shows no sign of even wanting to improve. Much like the status quo in general, the mass media is fully committed to propagating a culture of stupidity and corruption.
And these are the people who lecture us about fake news.
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