Nov 03

Today’s News 3rd November 2018

  • The Danger In Media Telling Only Half The Story On Political Violence

    Authored by Sean Malone via The Foundation for Economic Education,

    When mass media displays such a clear bias, then the people who are on the losing end of that bias are not going to be happy…

    In the last few months, we’ve seen numerous acts of politically motivated or targeted violence. Some of these cases have been plastered all over the news for days or weeks. Some others have been met with deafening silence. And which is which hasn’t exactly been random.

    There is clear bias in the reporting of political violence and I believe this has had some serious consequences for people’s ability to trust the media and bridge a divided culture.

    To understand why, we need to look at what’s actually happened recently, so while what follows is far from a complete list of all the politically-motivated violence, it encompasses many of the most recent and highest-profile examples:

    • October 2018: Trump-supporting lunatic Cesar Sayoc, Jr. attempted (but completely failed to) to deliver (non-functional) bombs to over a dozen Democratic leaders including Obama, Clinton, Maxine Waters, and Eric Holder among others. As we learn more about this story, it becomes increasingly clear that Sayoc has a long history of threats and violence going back to at least the mid-90s.

    • October 2018: Anti-semite Robert Bowers shot and killed 11 people and injured 6 others at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, and although he seems to have been anti-Trump, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has already blamed Trump for creating the environment that encouraged Bowers’ actions.

    • October 2018: Another man with a substantial history of mental illness and violence, Gregory Bush, entered a Kroger grocery store in Jefferstown, Kentucky and essentially executed a 67-year old  man named Maurice Stallard with a handgun for no apparent reason, after which he exited the store and shot and killed another woman, Vickie Lee Jones (67) before he was challenged by another shopper who drew a legally concealed weapon and shot back at him. Bush apparently attempted to enter a church nearby before he went to the Kroger, presumably with the intent to kill. Although there is currently no motive known, many people assume Bush was motivated by racism because he is white while his two victims were black and one witness recounts hearing him say “Don’t shoot me and I won’t shoot you. Whites don’t kill whites,” to the man who confronted him. 

    • October 2018: Envelopes testing positive for Ricin (an incredibly dangerous poison for which 22 micrograms/kilogram of body weight constitutes a lethal dosage) were sent to Secretary of Defense, Gen. James Mattis.

    • April 2018: Self-described “Incel” Alek Minassian drove a van into a crowd in Toronto and killed 10 people. Incels are considered “right-wing” although “Involuntary Celibacy” is mainly a reaction to feminism and has no inherent connection to right/left politics.

    And of course, all this is in the context of the awful Charlottesville Riot from last year, where in…

    • August 2017: Neo-Nazi James Fields killed Heather Heyer and injured 19 others with his car at the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally after he drove through a crowd of protesters. What you probably don’t know is that his trial is set for November, and he was recently assaulted in prison.

    Also, while this isn’t actually a known example of political violence, you’ll certainly recall:

    • October 2017: Stephen Paddock opens fire on a crowd of country music fans in Las Vegas from his room on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel, killing 58 people and causing injury to 851 others either directly or via the resulting panic. This was the deadliest mass shooting in US history, and yet no motive is known, little information has been released to the public, and the press coverage died out relatively quickly.

    I’m including the Las Vegas shooting in this list because it sparked another national gun control debate, this time over whether or not it should be legal to own bump stocks.

    You’ll probably also have heard about a number of cases of street violence involving the “Proud Boys”, and perhaps you might have recently learned that Facebook shut down that group’s main page.

    And you’ll have probably heard of various racist/anti-Semitic threats and acts of vandalism against Jewish community centers, churches, and other political targets, which are often assumed to be a product of Trump’s rhetoric.

    • October 2018: Ricin envelopes were not just sent to James Mattis, but also to President Trump, along with Senator Ted Cruz and Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson. The FBI arrested a suspect in Utah, William Clyde Allen, believed to have sent all the packages in a coordinated effort. Allen confessed to sending all four letters, but we also learned that—similar to the inoperable bombs allegedly sent by Cesar Sayoc, Jr.—none seemed to contain actual Ricin, but rather castor seed from which Ricin is made.

    • October 2018: In Las Vegas, a Democratic activist working for American Bridge 21st Century named Wilfred Michael Stark assaulted Kristin Davidson, campaign manager for Nevada’s Republican gubernatorial candidate, Adam Laxalt. Stark had previously been arrested for similar activity at a GOP rally in Virginia.

    • October 2018: In Minnesota, Republican state-representative Sarah Anderson was chased and punched by a man ripping up GOP campaign signs, and two days earlier, Republican candidate Shane Mekeland suffered a concussion after being punched in the back of the head while having dinner at a local restaurant.

    • October 2018: The Republican Party Headquarters in Manhattan, New York was vandalized with spray-paint, smashed windows, and a threatening notethat read: “Our attack is merely a beginning. We are not passive, we are not civil, and we will not apologize.”

    • October 2018: Jackson Cosko, an intern working for Democratic Senator Sheila Jackson Lee was charged by the United States Capitol Police with “doxxing” Republican Senators Mike Lee, Orrin Hatch, and Lindsey Graham. While doxxing itself isn’t violence, it has frequently led to serious harassment and violence as people have access to personal information such as the home addresses, phone numbers, and email address of the victims.

    • October 2018: Florida man, Jame Royal Patrick, Jr., was arrested for making death threats to people who supported Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court.

    • October 2018: Shots were fired at the Republican party campaign office in Daytona Florida, breaking the windows. Fortunately, no one was in the office.

    • October 2018: A hairdresser Jordan Hunt starts an argument with a female pro-life demonstrator in Ontario, and after a few minutes of conversation roundhouse-kicks her in the face on camera.

    • September 2018: GOP campaign offices in Laramie, Wyoming, were set on fire by arsonists. The same thing happened in Hillsborough, North Carolina, back in 2016, so this is nothing especially new.

    • September 2018: In San Francisco, a man named Farzad Fazeli attempted to stab Republican campaign worker Rudy Peters with a switchblade while he was working at an election booth at a Castro Valley town festival.

    • July 2018: Martin Astrof was arrested for threatening to kill GOP campaign staffers and President Trump.

    • July 2018: Someone vandalized the Lincoln, Nebraska (my hometown) GOP headquarters by smashing its windows with a brick and spray-painting “ABOLISH ICE” on the sidewalk.

    • August 2017: Missouri lawmaker, Maria Chappelle-Nadal, said on social media that she hoped President Trump would be assassinated. She later was formally censured by the Missouri State Senate.

    And of course, I’d hope you remember…

    • October 2017: In Alexandria, Virginia, James T. Hodgkinson (a Bernie Sanders fanatic angry with the results of the 2016) died with a list of Republican targets in his pocket in a shootout with police after he shot four people: lobbyist Matt Mika, legislative aid Zack Barth, Capitol Police officer Crystal Griner, and Republican Congressman Steve Scalise who nearly died. The shooting took place at a baseball diamond where several Republican Senators and Congressmen were practicing for the annual Congressional Baseball Game for Charity.

    Another thing you might not realize is that many of the skirmishes involving the Proud Boys group were actually caused by Antifa and Democratic Socialists of America activists—though you’d hardly know it from the way most reporters frame these events—and Antifa social media pages have not been shut down.

    Comparing media coverage between Antifa and conservative groups is, I believe, particularly instructive.

    Almost a year ago, YouTube commentator Matt Christiansen called attention to the differences in a video he made about Dartmouth professor, Mark Bray (talk at UC Berkeley).

    Bray is the author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook. 

    Christiansen points out that although most news media routinely and uncritically report the claim that nearly all examples of modern political violence are instigated by groups like the Proud Boys, alt-right ideologues, or actual neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups like the KKK, there have been numerous examples of Antifa violence which have not had anything whatsoever to do with protesting “fascists” or any kind of right-wing activity at all. For example, the recent takeover of multiple streets in downtown Portland, Oregon, or any of numerous examples of Antifa members attacking journalists.

    What’s more, over the past 4-5 years there have been dozens of examples of left-wing protesters using violence to shut down mainstream conservative (or simply non-progressive) speakers like Charles Murray, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Ben Shapiro, Dave Rubin, Milo Yiannopoulos and others.

    Yet no organized conservative group attempted to prevent Mark Bray from speaking.

    His talk—which explicitly defended Antifa’s use of violence in the face of right-wing speech on the basis that allowing such speech could lead to fascism—was not silenced anywhere in the United States. Meanwhile, many people who have never called for or defended any kind of violence have been subject to aggressive “no platforming” protests which have included substantial property damage, death threats, and physical assaults.

    Somehow the supposed “fascists” are generally allowing other perspectives to be heard while the “anti-fascists” are not only attempting to violently silence the most abhorrent voices but also thoughtful academics, journalists, and non-political commuters.

    We rarely hear this discussed in major media, and Antifa is frequently presented as not only well-intended, but actually heroic.

    It’s fairly clear that this is tremendously one-sided.

    I’m mainly talking about this because the way this stuff is reported drives me insane, and it affects us all in really important ways. Mass media essentially determines which of these examples of politically-motivated violence are important and worth talking about, and which are not.

    If the news that gets reported doesn’t bother to tell readers and viewers about angry left-wing lunatics who assault Republican campaign workers, set fire to GOP offices, or shoot Republican congressmen, and if reporters and pundits don’t care to spend much time writing about a series of threatening letters testing positive for ricin poison or threats of and/or the actual attempted murder of Republicans over their political views, then the people who consume news will not know about those kinds of things.

    And of course, this would be fine if reporters and pundits did the same thing whenever a right-wing lunatic did something insane. But that’s not what happens.

    Most of the mainstream media (arguably with the support of all of the major social networks and even Google) devote tremendous attention to every instance of right-wing violence while utterly ignoring comparable cases coming from left-wing perpetrators. As a result, it’s difficult for the average person to know what’s actually happening in the world, and they end up with a completely one-sided understanding of the current state of political violence.

    We can see what people are hearing and talking about illustrated clearly by looking at Google Trends, and as you can see below, vastly more people heard about Cesar Sayoc and the pipe-bomb scare than they did William Clyde Allen’s ricin letters – although, again, both were targeted towards major political figures and both should have been treated as deadly assassination attempts until the ineffectiveness was confirmed.

    This bias also makes it easy for political partisans to split themselves into bubbles that each have entirely different sets of facts.

    Liberals/Progressives will hear of every instance of someone who could even remotely be considered “right-wing” doing anything wrong yet remain entirely isolated from the slightest hint that people who share their ideology have ever done anything wrong at all. Conservatives are in a slightly better position—in that it’s nearly impossible to avoid hearing about right-wing political violence—but the more social media dominates people’s information streams, the easier it is for them to similarly wall themselves off from information that makes them uncomfortable.

    Point is, there are legitimate reasons for everyone to be seriously concerned with the quality of reporting that we normally see with respect to this kind of activity.

    Part of being well-informed is being able to put things into context and gain a meaningful perspective, and that can only happen when you have all the information, not just half of it as we so often get.

    Only getting half the story makes it easy to blame your political opponents for everything that’s going wrong in the world, but it’s also a mistake. If Trump—for example—is to blame for people like Cesar Sayoc, Jr.’s failed bombing spree, is Bernie Sanders to blame for James Hodgkinson? Is Maxine Waters responsible for Farzad Fazeli? Is Hillary Clinton, Tim Kaine, or Eric Holder the cause of arson and vandalism in Wyoming?

    If you think that Trump’s rhetoric is causing right-wing violence, surely it stands to reason that the similarly heated rhetoric coming from the other side is to blame for the left-wing variants of these kinds of crimes?

    Of course, if you only ever saw one side or the other, it would be extremely easy to think that the only people who are out there doing terrible things are your political opponents, and from there you can concoct a grand theory as to why based on how evil the other party is without much challenge when another possibility is simply that it’s the individual criminal who is responsible for their own actions.

    There’s another problem here, as well.

    When mass media displays such a clear bias—and please make no mistake, whether fully intentional or not, that’s exactly what this is—then the people who are on the losing end of that bias are not going to be happy. And since they’re actually justified in their complaints, it’s very easy for them to convince people who have less skin in the game that media isn’t trustworthy as well.

    All this does is push people further to the extremes, which makes it easier for the biggest lunatics to find reasons to believe even crazier conspiracy theories and find reinforcement for their belief that violence is the appropriate response.

    I want this to stop, and while there’s no magic bullet, I don’t think that can happen until the reporting on these kinds of subjects gets a lot better and more people are more fully-informed about everything that is going on in our world—not just the parts that confirm partisan biases.

  • Tether Says It Has $1.8 Billion In An Offshore Bank Account

    It has been two weeks since tether, the “stablecoin” of choice for crypto day traders who need to quickly enter and exit positions in different alt coins, broke below its $1 peg to trade as low as 85 cents as long-simmering doubts about its dollar backing exploded back into view, stoked by rumors that several prominent exchanges were preparing to de-list it.

    While tether has recovered, skepticism about the feasibility of tether, and “stablecoins” in general, has continued to fester, stoked by the fact that tether’s parent company has never bothered to publish an audit of its holdings to prove to the public that it has the necessary dollar reserves to guarantee convertibility. Tether also found itself at the center of a separate controversy back in June when a University of Texas academic published a paper alleging that shady traders were using tether to manipulate the price of bitcoin.

    Tether

    In an effort to restore faith in tether, the company on Thursday published a letter from a Bahamanian bank affirming that the company has $1.8 billion in deposits sitting in an account offshore. But as several traders swiftly pointed out, the letter from Deltec Bank & Trust, which describes itself as “an independent financial services group”, bore a few notable inconsistencies. For one, the PDF that tether made available for download featured inconsistent timestamps, suggesting that the document was ‘modified’ before being released to the public.

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    Others pointed out that whoever wrote the letter didn’t attach their name – only an incomprehensible signature, which is a serious red flag, as one trader pointed out on twitter.

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    Rather than quiet traders concerns, these inconsistencies could have the opposite effect. Particularly since the company fired its auditor a year ago. But for now, the price is holding steady.

     

  • Three Events That Could Change The Face Of America

    Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

    The past year in general has been a firestorm of news events, many of them misrepresented by the mainstream media but nevertheless important signals that the economic, social and geopolitical systems we are familiar with are changing or destabilizing rapidly.  It is important to understand, however, that the implications of these events have been building for YEARS, not for mere weeks or months.  They are not sudden and inexplicable consequences of “linchpin theory”, the outcome of these events was pre-planned and engineered far in advance.

    This does not mean that establishment interests including globalists will necessarily get what they want.  Which is why I believe they intend to produce multiple crises at once, hoping that at least a few will produce the effects they desire in the population.  I call it the “scattershot strategy”; by creating a swarm of manipulated “bullets” of social/psychological leverage each with the same intended target, the result becomes more certain and predictable.  Much like smashing troops into the same point in a line of defense over and over again – eventually it is more likely to break where you expect it to break.

    Some of these scattershot events are a little more obvious than others, at least in terms of how they are handled.  Not all of them are started by the globalists, but all of them are certainly seen as opportunities for exploitation.  Here are three of the latest events that I believe represent a dire end-game if the public is not made aware that their reactions to the events are just as important if not more important as the events themselves.

    1. The Murder Of Jamal Khashoggi

    Few of us had ever heard of Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi a month ago, and most in the public still have no clue as to the implications of his death.  I’m not going to theorize much on the reasons why the Saudi government apparently trapped Kashoggi in their consulate in Istanbul, Turkey and then allegedly tortured him to death.  The mainstream theory is that this was punishment for the journalist’s escape from Saudi Arabia and subsequent criticisms of Prince Mohammad bin Salman, the rising dictator within the Saudi regime.

    Why did Khashoggi willingly and stupidly enter a Saudi consulate, considered sovereign Saudi soil, when he knew he was a potential target for the government?  Why would Saudi agents murder the journalist in such an obvious way and in such an obvious place?  If he was such a threat, why not kill him away from a Saudi facility?  Why not make it look like a robbery or an accident?

    It seems to me that normal procedures for assassination were not followed in the slightest when it came to Jamal Kashoggi.  And, as Turkish authorities released information on Saudi involvement, the normal attempts at cover-up by multiple governments were missing.  This story could have been muddled in a fog of disinformation leading away from Saudi Arabia, but it wasn’t.

    The consequences are immense.  The end of diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia could result on the part of Western nations.  There is even talk of Prince Salman being removed from power and his “Vision for 2030” economic plan going the way of the dodo.  I see this as highly unlikely, though.

    While the mainstream misrepresents Salman’s economic plan as a means to make Saudi Arabia less dependent on oil, the Vision for 2030 was primarily about distancing Saudi Arabian oil from dependency on U.S. and Western markets.

    The decoupling of the U.S. from Saudi Arabia has been in the making for years.  This is not something new, or something that would be decided by the killing of a single Saudi journalist.  From the passage of a bill by Congress to make the Saudi government liable for damages during the 9/11 attacks, to Saudi threats to dump $750 billion in U.S. assets (under the Obama Administration), to the Saudi atrocities in Yemen, to the rise of Mohammad bin Salman through extortion, there is no shortage of reasons why the U.S. and Saudi Arabia might end relations.

    I am of course talking about mainstream narrative, here.  The deeper issue at hand is that globalists are seeking an end to the U.S. dollar as the world reserve currency and the petro-currency, and Saudi Arabia is a key catalyst to breaking the dollar’s back in a way that makes it appear as though global banks had nothing to do with the situation.

    As I have been pointing out for quite some time, Mohammad bin Salman’s Vision for 2030 is not his vision; it is part of a larger globalist dynamic for a completely centralized world monetary system and economy.  Salman’s Vision for 2030 is bankrolled through his Public Investment Fund (PIF) by well know n globalist institutions like the Carlyle Group, Goldman Sachs, Blackstone and Blackrock.

    Saudi separation from the U.S. has been ongoing, including far reaching oil trade deals with China and Russia , two countries seeking to remove the dollar in bilateral trade.  The moral question of trade relations with a tyranny like Saudi Arabia is not what I am questioning here.  I am simply pointing out the US dollar’s dependency on petro-status, which is tied inexorably to Saudi oil.

    The path has already been set.  The murder of Khashoggi and its exposure does not hurt globalist intentions, it actually HELPS them by creating a narrative in which the Saudi move away from the U.S. becomes a product of “random chaos” rather than part of a “vision” funded by globalists.  If Prince Salman is removed from the equation (an action I am doubtful will take place), the “Vision for 2030” will continue.

    Even with Donald Trump’s apparent apprehension to break aggressively from the Saudis over the issue, Congress has already suggested they will move ahead with actions against the vital oil nation without the White House.

    Is this to say that Khashoggi was killed in order to create a geopolitical linchpin to aid globalist schemes for de-dollerization?  No.  Khashoggi is not that important.  But this is certainly an event that the globalists and the media they control seem intent on exploiting, adding weight to a long running plan to divide the US from its key oil partner and thus ending the petro-dollar without any links back to them.

    2, The Immigrant Caravan

    Illegal immigration is a pillar issue within U.S. politics, at least in terms of conservatives and their support far any particular piece of legislation or government action.  My position is the conservative one because it is the logical one – I am not against immigration as long as it is done legally.  Open border policies are a travesty that create an influx of people who do not necessarily share the values set forth in the American Constitution.  We have already seen the economic and social disasters that have befallen Europe due to their open border policies, and it would be foolish to repeat that process here.  No foreign person has a “right” to access to the U.S., just as no American has a right to access to any other country.

    Now comes the part of this issue that conservatives might not want to hear.

    Is illegal immigration a form of invasion?  I would say yes, especially if it is being encouraged or funded by globalist interests. That said, we must be careful not to respond to this invasion as if it is a military one.  It isn’t.

    Why?  Because military invasions require military responses, and military responses invariably lead to more power for governments.  Troops on the southern border of the U.S. might sound rational given the circumstances, but I would remind liberty movement activists of a little program they should all be familiar with:  Rex 84 and Operation Garden Plot.

    As I warned in my article ‘How A Collapse In South America Could Trigger Martial Law In The U.S.‘, published in 2016, the globalists have long been planning a potential trigger for martial law measures in America using a southern border “invasion” as a rationale.  The exposure of Rex 84 came unexpectedly during the Iran/Contra hearings, and the documents are available to read here.

    Rex 84 mentions the use of facilities, or detention camps, as a means to control the hypothetical border invasion.  This led to the long running “conspiracy theory” of so-called FEMA camps.  The pre-existence of FEMA camps is not an issue I delve into (as we saw during Katrina, a sports stadium could easily be turned into a FEMA camp in a matter of days).  That said, the posture of the Trump Administration at this time due to the coming migrant caravan reminds me in a disturbing way to the script outlined in Rex 84.

    How far will Trump go to secure the border?  Will he declare martial law on the border as he seems ready to do?  Would it stop at the border, or would it spread like a cancer?  After all, once martial law is used to deal with unruly migrants, why not use it to deal with unruly leftists?  Will conservatives go against their constitutional principles and support such a policy?

    There is a good reason why the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 was passed.  Originally, it prevented the use of military as law enforcement within the US unless an act of Congress bid otherwise.  Of course, George W. Bush and the Neo-cons changed all that with the John Warner Defense Authorization Act, an act that was barely covered by the mainstream media at the time, and which gives the President full power to declare martial law unilaterally.

    Some people may argue that Posse Comitatus is an outdated concept and that other protections are in place to prevent a totalitarian outcome.  But are there really any protections?

    As Gen. Wesley Clark once publicly proclaimed in an MSNBC interview, internment camps could be used in the U.S. for anyone considered “disloyal to the U.S.”  Trump has recently announced a plan for “tent cities” for incoming migrants, which, again, sounds a lot like the plan described in Rex 84.

    Where would the dominoes stop once they start to fall?  I suggest that they will not stop.  I suggest that if we support martial law measures on the southern border rather than revamping existing border patrol agencies and building that wall that Trump was so fond of promising, the end result will be martial law measures applied to the rest of us as outlined in Rex 84.

    3. Trump’s War With The Federal Reserve

    I predicted Trump’s eventual war with the Fed over a year ago, and I have written on the dangers if such a war recently, so I will not go into as much detail on this event.  I will say that like the immigrant caravan, this is another issue in which conservatives could be tricked into reactingwithout thinking of the long game.

    In my article ‘The Economic End Game Explained‘, I outline the strategy being used by globalists to diminish the U.S. economy as a means to open the door to mass support for a global monetary system controlled by the IMF and possibly the BIS.  This is a strategy they have openly discussed in their own publications.

    To be clear, the Fed has indeed acted as a destructive force within the U.S. economy.  Fed officials have openly admitted on numerous occasions to creating and then bursting financial bubbles that have led to disastrous results for the American public.  Jerome Powell, the current Fed chairman, warned in 2012 of the eventual and pervasive market crash that would occur if the Fed raised interest and cut balance sheet assets while markets were still addicted to easy credit.  Now, he is enacting those exact policies knowing what will happen.

    While I fully support the dismantling of the Federal Reserve as a saboteur of the U.S. economy, what I am concerned about is who will rebuild the U.S. system afterwards?  A White House war on the Fed will help cause the death of the dollar’s world reserve status.  This is a guarantee.  Our economy is utterly dependent on this status for it’s continued stability.

    You see, the globalists have created a Catch-22; if conservatives do not shut down the Fed, the Fed will continue raising rates and cutting its balance sheet into economic weakness just as they historically always have.  The “everything bubble” will burst and a collapse will result.  If we shut down the Fed our currency will lose reserve status and dollars held overseas will come flooding back into the U.S. through various channels causing hyperinflation (among other things).  A collapse is unavoidable.

    Again, who will be in charge of the rebuilding?  Will it be the American public, or will it be the globalists?  Given the fact that Trump retains banking elites and globalists within his own cabinet, we cannot rely on him to do the work in favor of a free citizenry.  Conservatives should be very careful in the coming months as to who they support and why.  Most narratives are NOT what they seem.

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  • "Your Pet Will Be Confiscated!": A Shocking Glimpse Inside China's New Social Credit System

    Citizens in one Chinese provincial capital can now be permanently blacklisted by China’s Orwellian digital panopticon ‘social credit system’ for simply failing to clean up after their pets. 

    It’s but the latest manifestation of the recently implemented, though long in development, nationwide social scoring credit system where people are ranked and punished or rewarded for their behavior, via The Telegraph:

    Chinese cities are launching a scoring system for dog owners where anyone found failing to care for their pets could be forced to pay a fine – or even have their dog confiscated.

    The credit system is already being enforced in the Chinese city of Jinan, and requires anyone with a dog to register with the police – with only one dog permitted per person.

    The license starts with a dozen points and is embedded as a QR code on a dog’s collar. Points are then deducted for various infractions, such as walking a dog without a leash or tag, not cleaning up poo, or being reported for a disturbance. Owners are docked three points if dogs are walked without a leash, for example, which must be less than 1.5 metres in length and under the control of someone at least 18 years of age.

    The system is now undergoing piecemeal implementation across various major cities and is now invading people’s lives in all kinds of extreme ways from public transportation to dog-walking to flagging pedestrians for crossing the street in an unsafe manner . 

    The system is currently far from being universally in place; however, the country’s communist government has plans to rank every citizen — all 1.4 billion of them —  by 2020.

    But various bizarre and rigid policies are already being felt and reported in different parts of China – from the state confiscating pets to dire recorded audio warnings threatening reprisal should commuters on a bullet train not bide by the rules. 

    China’s electronic “social scoring” utilizes vast networks of surveillance cameras, facial recognition software, A.I. digital monitoring, and extensive databases, was first announced in 2014 and aims to reinforce the idea that “keeping trust is glorious and breaking trust is disgraceful,” according to a government document — though we’re not sure if forgetting a pooper-scooper while taking the dog out warrants being digitally blacklisted by an all-seeing digital eye. 

    As scary as the whole program sounded when it first began receiving more media attention a year ago, to see it in action in the form of deterrent warnings to citizens is absolutely terrifying. 

    In one particularly jarring example a journalist traveling by bullet train from Beijing to Shanghai recorded an ominous audio message which blared loudly to passengers. The message was issued in Chinese and English, and takes the form of the kind of “safety and procedures” type message that airlines typically present after take-off , but this is the stuff of dystopian nightmare made reality. 

    A female voice can be heard on an intercom threatening people not to misbehave or else their “behavior will be recorded in individual credit information system.”

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    The chilling announcement as the commute was in progress reveals the reality that people are already living in fear of the nationwide social credit system. The voice warns that such infractions as travelling without a ticket or people who “behave disorderly” — like smoking in public places — would be “punished according to regulations, and the behavior will be recorded in individual credit information system.”

    The punishments are not defined in the audio message, but the reference to the credit information system means that even minor behavior infractions will be recorded permanently as part of a violator’s permanent electronic record. 

    There are already a number of recent reports out of China of people either being punished and rewarded based on their social credit. For example earlier in the year student was denied his spot at university because his father was blacklisted for failing to pay off a 200,000-yuan ($28,700) bank loan. More commonly, people are now routinely barred from taking trains of public transport due to their low score. 

    But perhaps the most shocking aspect of the message recorded on the bullet train is just how seemingly banal it all sounds in the moment: one can easily imagine this kind of thing being rolled out in the West, which some analysts have been warning about. 

  • "An Information Apocalypse" Looms – Deepfakes And Political Manipulation

    Authored by Leonid Savin via Oriental Review,

    Not a day seems to go by without the American media writing about Russia’s Internet meddling in the US elections. Major international and specialist publications headquartered in the US are routinely regurgitating the myth about “Russian trolls” and “GRU hackers” without a single shred of evidence besides unsubstantiated accusations. Actually, evidence has been provided by a private company, but this evidence points to the contrary.

    As one Google project so convincingly shows, for example, for just $100 you can create the illusion that a Russian company is trying to influence public opinion within America. All you need to do is buy a mobile phone and a few SIM cards in Panama, choose a common Russian name and surname and use it to set up a Yandex account, then indicate your IP address is in Saint Petersburg using NordVPN. You can then set up an account with AdWords, pay for advertising using the details of a legally registered company, and place political content on the Internet that could be regarded as inflammatory.

    This was what was done by US citizens from Google and they didn’t hesitate to report on it. So what is stopping the NSA, the CIA, or some Russophobe fanatics familiar with hacking techniques from doing exactly the same thing, regardless of whether they belong to a political party or not?

    Common sense suggests that this is exactly what is being done to create the appearance of Russian interference, but no one is able to provide any real evidence, of course.

    Another example of how the US can influence public opinion is the creation of fake propaganda, a technique that was developed by the US military in Iraq in the early 2000s.

    According to the British non-governmental organisation The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, the Pentagon paid the British PR company Bell Pottinger more than $500 million to create fake videos showing various militant and terrorist activities. A group of Bell Pottinger employees was stationed alongside the US military in its Baghdad Camp Victory headquarters almost as soon as the American occupation began in 2003. A series of contracts was also issued between 2007 and 2011. The company’s former chairman, Lord Tim Bell, confirmed to journalists that Bell Pottinger did in fact carry out covert work for the Americans, the details of which cannot be disclosed for reasons of confidentiality.

    It is worth mentioning that Bell Pottinger was once responsible for shaping Margaret Thatcher’s image and helped the Conservative Party win three elections.

    Martin Wells, a former video editor with the company, said that his time in Camp Victory had opened his eyes and changed his life. On the US side, the project was supervised by former General David Petraeus. If he was unable to decide on a matter, then it was sent to the very highest levels in Washington for approval.

    The most scandalous part of the story is the propaganda videos produced by the UK company in the name of the terrorist group Al-Qaeda. Once the material was ready and in the required format, the videos were copied onto CDs and given to US marines, who would then leave them in Iraqi homes during searches and raids. A code was embedded into the CDs that made it possible to track where they were played. It was subsequently discovered that the fake Al-Qaeda videos were not just being watched in Iraq, but also Iran, Syria, and even the United States. It is possible that this tracking also helped US security agencies trace the distribution of fake propaganda videos, but how many people became extremists thanks to the Pentagon’s secret project?

    And since technology has come on leaps and bounds in recent years, there is now talk of possibly using artificial intelligence for projects like these – whether it is the political manipulation of elections or the spread of disinformation.

    In fact, AI-based technology has already been associated with several recent scandals. One of these was Cambridge Analytica’s use of information from Facebook profiles to target voters during the US presidential elections.

    Commenting on the scandal, The Washington Post noted that:

    “Future campaigns will pick not just the issues and slogans a candidate should support, but also the candidate who should champion those issues. Dating apps, the aggregate output of thousands of swipes, provide the perfect physical composite, educational pedigree and professional background for recruiting attractive candidates appealing to specific voting segments across a range of demographics and regions. Even further in the future, temporal trends for different voter blocks might be compared to ancestry, genetic and medical data to understand generational and regional shifts in political leanings, thereby illuminating methods for slicing and dicing audiences in favor of or against a specified agenda.”

    Artificial intelligence can also be used as a bot to substitute for a person and even to simulate a conversation. Algorithms like Quill, Wordsmith and Heliograf are used to convert tables of data into a text document and even write news articles on various subjects – Heliograf is used by The Washington Post, in fact – but bots can be used for both good and bad.

    According to the US military, AI-based information operations tools can empathise with people, say something if needed, and alter the perception that controls these physical weapons. Future information operations systems will be able to individually control and influence tens of thousands of people simultaneously.

    In the summer of 2018, DARPA launched a project to determine the possibilities of identifying fake video and audio generated by artificial intelligence. The analysis of such files is also done using artificial intelligence.

    Videos typically have more impact on an audience because it is believed that they are harder to fake than photographs. They also look more convincing than a text read out on behalf of a politician. This is no problem for modern technologies, however. In April 2018, a video was made public called ObamaPeele after the people involved.

    The video showed Barack Obama giving a rather strange speech, but the text was actually being read by an unseen actor. A special programme had processed what the actor was saying in such a way that Obama’s facial gestures were fully consistent with what was being said. Computer technology experts at Washington University conducted a similar experiment with a Barack Obama speech in 2017 and made the results publicly available with a detailed description of how it works.

    YouTuber ‘derpfakes‘ trained the AI image swap tool to create a composite of Trump’s face, over Baldwin’s speech and mannerisms.

    The DARPA project used so-called “deepfakes” – videos in which the face of one person has been superimposed onto the body of another. Experts note that technology like this has already been used to create several fake celebrity porno videos, but the method could also be used to create videos of politicians talking or doing something outrageous and unacceptable.

    Technologists at DARPA are particularly concerned that new AI techniques for creating fake videos make it almost impossible for them to be recognised automatically. Using so-called generative adversarial networks or GAN, it is possible to create realistic artificial images. Experts at DARPA are evidently concerned that this technology may be used by someone else, since, if the US loses its monopoly on the creation, verification and distribution of fake material, it will find itself facing the same problems it has been preparing for other countries.

    And while scientists in military uniforms are racking their brains over how to get ahead of other countries in such a specific information arms race, their civilian colleagues are already calling the trend “an information apocalypse” and “disinformation on steroids”.

  • Moscow Initiates De-dollarization: India To Pay For S-400 Systems In Rubles

    Since it became evident last summer that India was moving forward with purchase of at least five of Russia’s S-400 air defense systems, the controversial initiative which is part of India’s big ambitions for regional dominance immediately ruffled relations with Washington, resulting in the complete cancellation of at least one planned visit of Mike Pompeo and Jim Mattis to New Delhi. 

    The S-400s can detect, track and destroy supersonic bombers, drones, fifth-generation fighters, spy planes, and supersonic missiles at a range of up to 400km and altitude of 30km – in what many Indian officials have praised as a game-changing military acquisition which has further cemented the Russian-Indian defense relationship which includes Moscow now accounting for 62 percent of New Delhi’s arms imports.

    But this week, another huge bombshell dropped after a $5.4 billion deal for Indian to acquire the S-400 systems from Russia was clinched during Putins two-day visit to the country in early October: the contract will be settled in rubles as part of Moscow’s broader policy and pursuit of de-dollarization of the Russian economy. 

    The Russian S-400 missile system is among the most the most advanced in the world. Image via Reuters

    Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov announced on Wednesday, “The contract has been signed in rubles,” according to TASS.

    The idea of de-dollarizing the Russian economy has been actively discussed in the country lately due to the tightening of US sanctions.

    Russian President Vladimir Putin supports weaning the country’s financial sector off the US dollar, VTB Bank head Andrey Kostin told RIA Novosti. He added the move doesn’t mean the complete phasing-out of the American currency.

     

  • In WaPo Op-Ed, Erdogan Says "We Know The Order To Kill Khashoggi Came From Highest Level Of Saudi Government"

    With the Jamal Khashoggi grotesque murder by some 18 Saudi agents fading from the public’s attention, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan took the opportunity to remind the world that he now has the upper hand in the Middle Eastern balance of power, and said that the order to kill the U.S.-based journalist and Saudi dissident came from the “highest levels” of the Saudi government.

    “We know that the perpetrators are among the 18 suspects detained in Saudi Arabia,” Erdogan wrote in a Washington Post op-ed published Friday afternoon. “We also know that those individuals came to carry out their orders: Kill Khashoggi and leave. Finally, we know that the order to kill Khashoggi came from the highest levels of the Saudi government.”

    Some seem to hope this “problem” will go away in time. But we will keep asking those questions, which are crucial to the criminal investigation in Turkey, but also to Khashoggi’s family and loved ones.  A month after his killing, we still do not know where his body is. At the very least, he deserves a proper burial in line with Islamic customs. We owe it to his family and friends, including his former colleagues at The Post, to give them an opportunity to say their goodbyes and pay their respects to this honorable man. To ensure that the world will keep asking the same questions, we have shared the evidence with our friends and allies, including the United States.

    “As responsible members of the international community, we must reveal the identities of the puppetmasters behind Khashoggi’s killing and discover those in whom Saudi officials — still trying to cover up the murder — have placed their trust,” he concluded.

    Still, Erdogan admitted that who exactly “gave the order to kill this kind soul” was among a list of unanswered questions, and while Erdogan did not mention Prince Mohammed in his op-ed, he said that he does not think King Salman gave the order to kill Khashoggi.

    “As we continue to look for answers, I would like to stress that Turkey and Saudi Arabia enjoy friendly relations,” he wrote. “I do not believe for a second that King Salman, the custodian of the holy mosques, ordered the hit on Khashoggi. Therefore, I have no reason to believe that his murder reflected Saudi Arabia’s official policy.”

    Erdogan also took an indirect jab at Saudi Arabia, the puppetmaster behind the Sept 11 attack, for its involvement in the biggest terrorist attack on US soil, saying that “the murder of Jamal Khashoggi involves a lot more than a group of security officials, just as the Watergate scandal was bigger than a break-in and the 9/11 terror attacks went beyond the hijackers.”

    After first claiming Khashoggi – a Washington Post columnist critical of the Saudi government who was killed Oct. 2 – left the consulate alive, Saudi officials acknowledged on Oct. 19 that he was killed. At that point, the Saudi government said he was intentionally killed in a physical altercation in an unapproved operation to return to him to Saudi Arabia. Days later, a Saudi prosecutor acknowledged the killing was premeditated.

    A Turkish prosecutor said this week that Khashoggi was strangled soon after entering the consulate and that his body was then dismembered and dissolved in acid.

    Meanwhile, Mohammed bin Salman, whose name was not mentioned in Erdogan’s op-ed but whose picture captioned “Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia at the Pentagon in March” graces the headline, denied any foreknowledge of the plot, but skeptics in the United States and elsewhere are doubtful it could have been carried out without the approval of the kingdom’s day-to-day leader.

    Erdogan also said several question remain about the killing, including where his body is and who the supposed “local collaborator” is who the Saudis say was given Khashoggi’s remains.

    “Unfortunately, the Saudi authorities have refused to answer those questions,” Erdogan wrote. “Some seem to hope this ‘problem’ will go away in time. But we will keep asking those questions, which are crucial to the criminal investigation in Turkey, but also to Khashoggi’s family and loved ones.”

    The president added that Turkey has shared evidence with allies including the United States “to ensure that the world will keep asking the same questions” and warned against committing similar acts on NATO soil again.

    The full Washington Post Op-Ed can be read here.

  • Americans Are Now Trapped In Their Homes For The Longest Period Ever

    After the financial crisis of 2007–2008, housing-market headwinds limited the economic mobility of many American homeowners, according to ATTOM Data Solutions, as per a new report from MarketWatch.

    Starting in 2009, the average tenure of homes sold in 3Q broke a critical neckline of resistance above 4-years and doubled to 8-years by the end of 2017. This analysis shows Americans are holding on to their homes for the most extended length of time ever.

    As the Trump administration continues to promote the “greatest economy ever,” stagnation is building in the housing market, and it could get much worse in 2019.

    The average tenure of homes sold in 2018 jumped well above 8-years to 8.23 years in 3Q, which shows Americans are experiencing a rapid deterioration in their economic mobility to sell their home.

    ATTOM spokesman Daren Blomquist told MarketWatch that the long tail of the housing crisis had created stagnant conditions and contributed to a less dynamic housing market.

    Data from CoreLogic shows 2.2 million homeowners were still underwater on their mortgages in 2Q. Another 550,000 have 5% equity or less, which if they sold today, the homeowner would walk away with nothing.

    “The hypercompetitive market that’s emerged from the wreckage of the crisis is also keeping people in place. Many homeowners have ample equity in their homes, but hesitate to list those homes because they’re worried about finding a property to buy if they do sell,” said MarketWatch.

    MarketWatch also points out that some may be trapped by “rate lock” — enjoying the benefits of their ultra-low mortgage rates, and unwilling to spend more on financing costs.

    The top nine cities with the longest homeowner tenures are all in Connecticut or Massachusetts, and the next seven are in California.

    Oklahoma City, Denver, Colorado Springs, and Austin are cities with the lowest tenure.

    In a separate ATTOM report, annual home price appreciation slowed in 49% of local markets, including Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, and Miami.

    “The continued slowdown in the rate of home price appreciation nationwide and in many local markets is a rational response to worsening home affordability – which has deteriorated at an accelerated pace this year due to rising mortgage rates,” said ATTOM’s Blomquist. “Markets not experiencing this price appreciation cool-down may have more of an affordability cushion to work with, but some are in danger of overheating if home price gains continue to run hot.”

    With the housing market peaked, Americans could soon find out that they will be trapped in their homes much longer than they ever expected, as the US economy is expected to enter a slowdown in the second half of 2019 or early 2020.

  • The Next Generation Of Warfare: Genetically-Engineered Viruses

    Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

    Genetically engineered viruses could very well become the next generation of warfare. Deadly viruses modified in labs could be released eliminating entire communities of people as they infect making them a valuable asset to militaries worldwide.

    As dystopian as that sounds, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is already working on a project called Insect Allies which will use insects to infect crops with genetically modified viruses that edit the crops’ genetic profile to make them more resilient against disease, as well as natural and manufactured threats to the food supply.

    Joe Joseph of The Daily Sheeple said a quick Google search would give you enough information to let you know how horrific this kind of technology can be. “…and you’ll find it fascinating just at how unbelievable a weapon this could be, how unintentionally mistakes can be made that can cause irreversible damage…irreparable damage…to the human race. And I mean, FAST!” Joseph said.

    “A gene drive…if let’s just say there’s a mistake, you could feasibly wipe out the human race in a very very short period of time. It’s an unbelievable tool at the disposal of madmen.” –SHTFPlan

    DARPA attempted to squash rising fears about their Insect Allies project and issue reassurances after German and French scientists voiced questions and concerns about the program’s efficacy earlier this month.  Those scientists also suggested that it could be “widely perceived as an effort to develop biological agents for hostile purposes and their means of delivery, which—if true—would constitute a breach of the Biological Weapons Convention.”

    If the know-how and means exist to transmit genetic viruses that supposedly create beneficial crop mutations, the opposite will also be possible.  DARPA will be able to use insects to deliver gene editing viruses that destroy crops, ruin harvests and adversely affect the wider ecosystem, RT accurately pointed out. This means that those who fear this program are not far off at all for doing so.

    Another project receiving DARPA funding involves releasing genetically modified mosquitoes in the Florida Keys area to transmit a sterilizing genetic virus to their malaria-carrying counterparts. Apart from the unknown effects upon the wider ecosystem, the knowledge gleaned from such research could one day make it possible for a state, a non-state actor, or a non-state actor working on behalf of a state to accidentally or deliberately use insect vectors to unleash a variety of biological agents and genetic viruses upon an unsuspecting population.

    Russian president Vladimir Putin expressed his concerns over the potential for a human killing genetically engineered virus just last year. Whilst chairing a meeting of Russia’s Human Rights Council, Putin stated: “… do you know that biological material is being collected all over the country, from different ethnic groups and people living in different geographical regions of the Russian Federation? The question is – why is it being done? It’s being done purposefully and professionally. We are a kind of object of great interest.”

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