Yet no matter who wins this presidential election, you can rest assured that the new boss will be the same as the old boss, and we—the permanent underclass in America—will continue to be forced to march in lockstep with the police state in all matters, public and private.
Indeed, it really doesn’t matter what you call them—the Deep State, the 1%, the elite, the controllers, the masterminds, the shadow government, the police state, the surveillance state, the military industrial complex—so long as you understand that no matter which party occupies the White House in 2021, the unelected bureaucracy that actually calls the shots will continue to do so.
In the interest of liberty and truth, here are a few hard truths about life in the American police state that will persist no matter who wins the 2020 presidential election. Indeed, these issues persisted—and in many cases flourished—under both Republican and Democratic administrations in recent years.
Overcriminalization will continue. In the face of a government bureaucracy consumed with churning out laws, statutes, codes and regulations that reinforce its powers and value systems and those of the police state and its corporate allies, we will all continue to be viewed as petty criminals, guilty of violating some minor law. Thanks to an overabundance of 4,500-plus federal crimes and 400,000-plus rules and regulations, it is estimated that the average American actually commits three felonies a day without knowing it. In fact, according to law professor John Baker, “There is no one in the United States over the age of 18 who cannot be indicted for some federal crime.” Consequently, we now find ourselves operating in a strange new world where small farmers who dare to make unpasteurized goat cheese and share it with members of their community are finding their farms raided, while home gardeners face jail time for daring to cultivate their own varieties of orchids without having completed sufficient paperwork. This frightening state of affairs—where a person can actually be arrested and incarcerated for the most innocent and inane activities, including feeding a whale and collecting rainwater on their own property—is due to what law scholars refer to as overcriminalization.
Jailing Americans for profit will continue. At one time, the American penal system operated under the idea that dangerous criminals needed to be put under lock and key in order to protect society. Today, as states attempt to save money by outsourcing prisons to private corporations, imprisoning Americans in private prisons run by mega-corporations has turned into a cash cow for big business. In exchange for corporations buying and managing public prisons across the country at a supposed savings to the states, the states have to agree to maintain a 90% occupancy rate in the privately run prisons for at least 20 years. Such a scheme simply encourages incarceration for the sake of profits, while causing millions of Americans, most of them minor, nonviolent criminals, to be handed over to corporations for lengthy prison sentences which do nothing to protect society or prevent recidivism. Thus, although the number of violent crimes in the country is down substantially, the number of Americans being jailed for nonviolent crimes such as driving with a suspended license is skyrocketing.
Endless wars that enrich the military industrial complex will continue. Having been co-opted by greedy defense contractors, corrupt politicians and incompetent government officials, America’s expanding military empire is bleeding the country dry at a rate of more than $15 billion a month (or $20 million an hour)—and that’s just what the government spends on foreign wars. That does not include the cost of maintaining and staffing the 1000-plus U.S. military bases spread around the globe. Incredibly, although the U.S. constitutes only 5% of the world’s population, America boasts almost 50% of the world’s total military expenditure, spending more on the military than the next 19 biggest spending nations combined. In fact, the Pentagon spends more on war than all 50 states combined spend on health, education, welfare, and safety. Yet what most Americans fail to recognize is that these ongoing wars have little to do with keeping the country safe and everything to do with enriching the military industrial complex at taxpayer expense. Consider that since 2001, Americans have spent $10.5 million every hour for numerous foreign military occupations, including in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Police shootings of unarmed Americans will continue. No matter what our party politics, race, religion, or any other distinction used to divide us, we all suffer when violence becomes the government’s calling card. Remember, in a police state, you’re either the one with your hand on the trigger or you’re staring down the barrel of a loaded gun. At least 400 to 500 innocent people are killed by police officers every year. Indeed, Americans are now eight times more likely to die in a police confrontation than they are to be killed by a terrorist. Americans are 110 times more likely to die of foodborne illness than in a terrorist attack. Police officers are more likely to be struck by lightning than be made financially liable for their wrongdoing. As a result, Americans are largely powerless in the face of militarized police.
SWAT team raids will continue. More than 80,000 SWAT team raids are carried out every year on unsuspecting Americans for relatively routine police matters. Nationwide, SWAT teams have been employed to address an astonishingly trivial array of criminal activity or mere community nuisances including angry dogs, domestic disputes, improper paperwork filed by an orchid farmer, and misdemeanor marijuana possession, to give a brief sampling. On an average day in America, over 100 Americans have their homes raided by SWAT teams. There has been a notable buildup in recent years of SWAT teams within non-security-related federal agencies such as the Department of Agriculture, the Railroad Retirement Board, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Office of Personnel Management, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Education Department.
The government’s war on the American people will continue. “We the people” are no longer shielded by the rule of law. While the First Amendment—which gives us a voice—is being muzzled, the Fourth Amendment—which protects us from being bullied, badgered, beaten, broken and spied on by government agents—is being disemboweled. Consequently, you no longer have to be poor, black or guilty to be treated like a criminal in America. All that is required is that you belong to the suspect class—that is, the citizenry—of the American police state. As a de facto member of this so-called criminal class, every U.S. citizen is now guilty until proven innocent. The oppression and injustice—be it in the form of shootings, surveillance, fines, asset forfeiture, prison terms, roadside searches, and so on—will come to all of us eventually unless we do something to stop it now.
The rise of the surveillance state will continue. Government eyes are watching you. They see your every move: what you read, how much you spend, where you go, with whom you interact, when you wake up in the morning, what you’re watching on television and reading on the internet. Every move you make is being monitored, mined for data, crunched, and tabulated in order to form a picture of who you are, what makes you tick, and how best to control you when and if it becomes necessary to bring you in line. Police have been outfitted with a litany of surveillance gear, from license plate readers and cell phone tracking devices to biometric data recorders. Technology now makes it possible for the police to scan passersby in order to detect the contents of their pockets, purses, briefcases, etc. Full-body scanners, which perform virtual strip-searches of Americans traveling by plane, have gone mobile, with roving police vans that peer into vehicles and buildings alike—including homes. Coupled with the nation’s growing network of real-time surveillance cameras and facial recognition software, soon there really will be nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.
The erection of a suspect society will continue. Due in large part to rapid advances in technology and a heightened surveillance culture, the burden of proof has been shifted so that the right to be considered innocent until proven guilty has been usurped by a new norm in which all citizens are suspects. This is exemplified by police practices of stopping and frisking people who are merely walking down the street and where there is no evidence of wrongdoing. Making matters worse are Terrorism Liaison Officers (firefighters, police officers, and even corporate employees) who have been trained to spy on their fellow citizens and report “suspicious activity,” which includes taking pictures with no apparent aesthetic value, making measurements and drawings, taking notes, conversing in code, espousing radical beliefs and buying items in bulk. TLOs report back to “fusion centers,” which are a driving force behind the government’s quest to collect, analyze, and disseminate information on American citizens.
Government tyranny under the reign of an Imperial President will continue. The Constitution invests the President with very specific, limited powers: to serve as Commander in Chief of the military, grant pardons, make treaties (with the approval of Congress), appoint ambassadors and federal judges (again with Congress’ blessing), and veto legislation. In recent years, however, American presidents have anointed themselves with the power to wage war, unilaterally kill Americans, torture prisoners, strip citizens of their rights, arrest and detain citizens indefinitely, carry out warrantless spying on Americans, and erect their own secretive, shadow government. The powers amassed by each past president and inherited by each successive president—powers which add up to a toolbox of terror for an imperial ruler—empower whomever occupies the Oval Office to act as a dictator, above the law and beyond any real accountability. The grim reality we must come to terms with is the fact that the government does whatever it wants, freedom be damned. More than terrorism, more than domestic extremism, more than gun violence and organized crime, the U.S. government has become a greater menace to the life, liberty and property of its citizens than any of the so-called dangers from which the government claims to protect us. This state of affairs has become the status quo, no matter which party is in power.
The government’s manipulation of national crises in order to expand its powers will continue. “We the people” have been the subjected to an “emergency state” that justifies all manner of government tyranny and power grabs in the so-called name of national security. Whatever the so-called threat to the nation—whether it’s civil unrest, school shootings, alleged acts of terrorism, or the threat of a global pandemic in the case of COVID-19—the government has a tendency to capitalize on the nation’s heightened emotions, confusion and fear as a means of extending the reach of the police state. Indeed, the government’s answer to every problem continues to be more government—at taxpayer expense—and less individual liberty.
The bottom line is this: nothing taking place on Election Day will alleviate the suffering of the American people. Unless we do something more than vote, the government as we have come to know it—corrupt, bloated and controlled by big-money corporations, lobbyists and special interest groups—will remain unchanged. And “we the people”—overtaxed, overpoliced, overburdened by big government, underrepresented by those who should speak for us and blissfully ignorant of the prison walls closing in on us—will continue to trudge along a path of misery.
As I point out in my book BattlefieldAmerica: The War on the American People, these problems will continue to plague our nation unless and until Americans wake up to the fact that we’re the only ones who can change things for the better and then do something about it. If there is to be any hope of restoring our freedoms and reclaiming control over our government, it will rest not with the politicians but with the people themselves.
After all, Indeed, the Constitution opens with those three vital words, “We the people.”
What the founders wanted us to understand is that we are the government.
There is no government without us—our sheer numbers, our muscle, our economy, our physical presence in this land. There can also be no police state—no tyranny—no routine violations of our rights without our complicity and collusion—without our turning a blind eye, shrugging our shoulders, allowing ourselves to be distracted and our civic awareness diluted.
No matter which candidate wins this election, the citizenry and those who represent us need to be held accountable to this powerful truth.
RQ-180? Next-Gen Spy Drone Spotted Over California Tyler Durden
Tue, 11/03/2020 – 23:25
A mysterious military drone, operating near Edwards AFB, California, was photographed in broad daylight and recently uploaded to social media.
Instagram user Rob Kolinsky of Sundowner Studios uploaded the photograph on Nov. 1 of the drone but has since replaced the image with a graphic that reads, “[REDACTED]”, according to The Aviationist.
In the original post, Kolinsky wrote, “this [military drone] flew over my house several weeks ago and I still have yet to identify it! It’s shaped like a B-21 (in illustrations) but was painted white. Mystery!”
He continued: “I was not going to post it but I thought that if it were really classified, they wouldn’t be flying it in broad daylight like this. Can anyone lend a hand in identifying her?”
While Kolinsky mentioned the photograph is from “several weeks ago,” there was no mention of the exact date, time, or specific location. Nevertheless, there was no mention of the camera used to take the photo.
After Kolinsky removed the photo, Aviation Week reporters Steve Trimble and Guy Norris wrote an article describing the “new aircraft generally matching Aerospace DAILY’s understanding of the shape of what is commonly known as the RQ-180 unmanned aircraft system (UAS).”
“Quick review of the image. there is some JPG artifacting going on around the subject but could be the compression as well. The subject it self looks pretty legit I put some similar drones aside it for comparison. B2 is out of the question because it has a double ‘saw tooth’ tail,” said on Twitter user.
Quick review of the image. there is some JPG artifacting going on around the subject but could be the compression as well. The subject it self looks pretty legit I put some similar drones aside it for comparison. B2 is out of the question because it has a double ‘saw tooth’ tail. pic.twitter.com/WTTJthiarj
Not too long ago, we reported a combat stealth drone also known as “loyal wingman” for fourth and fifth-generation aircraft was spotted in Australia.
Who knows if the mysterious drone was an actual RQ-180, but what this all suggests is that the US military is quickly advancing autonomous war machines as geopolitical tensions rise with China.
Total 213 – KY (8), IN (11), WV (5), SC (9), AL (9), TN (11), OK (7), MS (6), ME (1/2) FL (29), AR (6), WY (3), LA (8), ND (3), SD (3), NE (4/5), KS (6), MO (10), UT (6), ID (4), OH (18), TX (38), IA (6), MT (3)
BIDEN
Total 238 – VT (3), VA (13), CT (7), IL (20), DE (3), NJ (14), RI (4), ME (1/2), MA (11), MD (10), DC (3), NY (29), NM (5), CO (9), NH (4), NE (1/5) CA (55), OR (7), WA (12), AZ (11), NM (5), HI (4), MN (10)
Only one state flipped (for now if Fox projections hold): Arizona for Biden.
NBC News projects that Democrats will maintain their control of the House of Representatives.
Mail-in ballot delays are hitting now:
WI (no way we’re announcing tonight),
MI (Friday),
PA (no count anytime soon) and
GA (biggest Dem county stopped counting, Trump leading by 300k).
That’s 62 electoral votes in total. 62 is a big number in a race for 270. That’s why we might not know tonight.
Jonathan Tamari of the Philadelphia Inquirer warned that:
“One huge red flag for Biden in PA: He’s currently trailing in Chester County, a key suburb that Clinton won by 25.5k – and Dems were counting on for a bigger win. Still a lot of mail ballots not counted there, but Biden needs to win big there.”
Biden addressed the nation at 0045ET:
“Your patience is commendable. We knew this was going to go long, but who knew we were going to go into tomorrow morning, maybe even longer. But look, we feel good about where we are. We really do. I’m here to tell you tonight we feel confident we are going to win this election.”
“We believe we’re on track to win this election,” Biden says.
“We can know the results as early as tomorrow morning but it may take a little longer. As I’ve said all along it’s not my place or Donald Trump’s place to say who wins the election, it’s up to the American people.”
“Keep the faith guys! We’re going to win this”
Trump replied, via tweet:
“We are up BIG, but they are trying to STEAL the Election. We will never let them do it. Votes cannot be cast after the Polls are closed!”
Adding that he will be making a statement tonight, “a big win!”
As Michael Tracey noted, “We’re approaching a nightmare scenario. They’re both essentially declaring victory.”
* * *
As Victor Davis Hanson notes, the 2020 election is not just about Joe Biden sitting on a perceived lead and trying to run out the clock against barnstorming incumbent President Trump. It is really a choice between changing rules when they are deemed inconvenient and respecting constitutional norms and long-held traditions that have served America well for many years.
Watch the 2020 Election results (or not):
* * *
Upsets/Notable
Big Loss For Trump – Fox calls Arizona for Biden
Additionally, Democrat Mark Kelly is way ahead of GOP incumbent Martha McSally in the Arizona Senate race. More than 10 points ahead with 73% of precincts reporting.
The Trump campaign is not happy at the early call from Fox. Campaign spokesman Jason Miller tweeted:
We only need 61% of the outstanding, uncounted Election Day votes in Arizona to win.
These votes are coming from “our counties,” and the 61% figure is very doable based on what our other Election Day votes are looking like.
@FoxNews should retract their call immediately.
Politico / WSJ / NYT not calling AZ for Biden
Republicans Flip Alabama Senate Seat
AP is projecting that Tom Tuberville, a former Auburn University football coach, has won the Senate race in the red state of Alabama, unseating Democrat Doug Jones who won the seat in a special election in 2017. So that’s a pickup for the Republicans. The Democrats so far have picked up one Senate seat — Cory Gardner’s in Colorado.
Meanwhile, we may be seeing our first House seat flip of the night as freshman Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell is losing to Republican Carlos Gimenez in Florida’s 26th congressional district with 83% of precincts reporting.
In Colorado, Fox News projects that Democrat John Hickenlooper has defeated incumbent Republican GOP Senator Cory Gardner.
Axios reports when each state official has said we can expect unofficial election results:
Arizona: Early ballots will have to have the signatures verified, and there’s no way to know how many voters will turn those in on Election Day, according to Sophia Solis, spokesperson for the office of Arizona’s secretary of state.
Florida: Election night results will not be released at the state level until 8 pm Eastern, according to a spokesperson for the Florida Department of State. The spokesperson declined to provide any other projections for the timing of results.
Georgia: Results are expected late Tuesday for non-close races. Even in the close races, Walter Jones, spokesperson for the Secretary of State office said, they will probably have it sorted out by Wednesday.
Michigan: TheSecretary of State’s office expects it to take until roughly Friday to process and count all the ballots, according to spokesperson Tracy Wimmer.
Minnesota: “We expect that all or substantially all of in-person election day votes and absentee votes will reported election night or soon after,” said Peter Bartz-Gallagher, a spokesperson for the Secretary of State’s office.
North Carolina: “Results reported by the end of election night will include 97 percent or more of all ballots cast in North Carolina in the 2020 general election,” according to the Board of Elections.
Ohio: “We expect results from Tuesday evening into Wednesday morning,” said Maggie Sheehan, press secretary for the Ohio Secretary of State’s office.
Pennsylvania: Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar said in a recent interviewthat she expects the “overwhelming majority” of votes will be counted by Friday, Nov 6.
Texas: The Texas secretary of state’s office declined to provide any expected timeline given the large size of the state and that elections are run on a county-by-county-basis.
Wisconsin: “In some bigger cities, especially where they count absentee ballots at a central location instead of the polling place, we might not see all the results until the next morning,” said Reid Magney, a spokesperson for the Wisconsin Elections Commission.
On election night itself, Michael Snyder saysthe most important state to focus on will be Florida. As I discussed in a previous article, Florida is one of the states that allows mail-in ballots to be counted in advance, and we should have a really good idea of what the results are going to look like in the state by the end of the night.
If Biden is declared the winner in Florida on election night, that is going to be a really, really bad sign for Trump. There really isn’t a path to 270 electoral votes for Trump without Florida.
If Trump wins Florida, or if the vote is too close to call, then Pennsylvania becomes crucially important.
Unfortunately, Pennsylvania is one of the states that does not allow mail-in ballots to be counted in advance, and they are going to have millions of them to count.
‘These are unprecedented times. Because of the coronavirus, there were millions of votes cast by mail so it may take longer than usual to count every vote,’ he says in a new ad for the nonpartisan group, The Voter Project.
‘The folks in our election offices – your neighbors, family and friends are working hard ensuring every single vote is counted,’ he says.
Pennsylvania is supposed to have every vote counted by Friday, but we are deeply skeptical.
Interestingly, and not exactly confidence-inspiring, Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon reportedly said this afternoon that:
“We continue to have multiple pathways to 270 electoral votes” says they can win 270 even without PA and FL,”according to Time’s Charlotte Alter.
* * *
Or follow along with Matt Taibbi and Katie Halper as they drink and comment on the state-by-state counts (but definitely do not declare any victory).
As Matt Taibbi writes, in life, as in cult sci-fi/adventure thrillers starring Geneva’s own Christopher Lambert, winner takes all:
Unfortunately, there are good reasons to doubt we’ll see anyone’s head fully lopped off this evening. The enormous number of mail-in votes, coupled with a slate of conflicting state rules about when such votes are counted – added to a high likelihood of unpredictable logistical difficulties associated with the pandemic – make a delayed conclusion to the Trump-Biden electoral contest very possible.
Usually, high in-person turnout favors Democrats. This year, because so many Democrats voted early (and Republicans have been warned away from mail ballots), the situation will likely be reversed. This means we could very well have early results that look confusing, maybe even like a wipeout for Trump, when what we’re actually seeing is just in-person votes being counted faster than mail votes. We also could see opposite scenarios.
Overall, the likelihood is that Joe Biden will win, and comfortably, but the issue is when that result comes in. Imagine the chaos of the Iowa Democratic caucus, with all the attendant scarcely-believable explanations coming from officials and vote-counters, expanded to presidential scale. That’s the horror-movie scenario for this evening.
Because of the fear both sides have about the results, the quantity of media spin tonight is likely to be, as rule 7 below notes, “unprecedented.” Partisans from both red and blue camps will be prepping audiences for bad news in ways that deflect blame from their own consultant pals, and also planting seeds for arguments likely to be made in contested-result scenarios. Expect Republicans to tell tales of trucks of fake ballots shipped over the Rio Grande in burlap sacks, while Democrats might counter with photos of wheelchair-bound minority voters invited to exercise their democratic covenant at ad-hoc ballot stations re-located to the top of hundred-foot climbing walls.
DRINKING GAME RULES
The main rule is implied: just start drinking and don’t stop for the next few years.
As for tonight specifically, here goes:
Drink for EVERY MENTION of:
1) “Red mirage”;
2) “Blue mirage”;
3) “Path to victory” or “route to victory”;
4) “Most important election of our lifetime”;
5) “Still too close to call”;
6) “Shy Trump supporter”;
7) “Unprecedented”;
8) “Firewall.” Double if this is accompanied by an awkward effort by an anchor to inoffensively characterize the minority voting bloc to which they’re ascribing monolithic voting tendencies;
9) “Neck and neck”;
10) “Broward County” or “Miami-Dade”;
11) “It could be a big night for (whatever)”;
12) “It all comes down to Pennyslvania.”
Drink EVERY TIME:
13) A commentator says “(something) is on the ballot tonight,” and that something is not the name of a candidate;
14) John King looks visibly aroused on the way to the Magic Wall;
15) A member of the media uses the word “we” to describe Democratic Party results;
16) A Republican accuses Democrats of stuffing ballots. Double if the alleged plot involves use of undocumented immigrants as sham voters;
17) A Democrat mentions voter suppression. Double if this is accompanied by a warning that this is the “only way” Trump could win;
18) Any commentator suggests Trump will not give up power if he loses;
19) Someone reports the possibility of results-delaying litigation over a new set of voting irregularities detected today;
20) A commentator reacts to a result by seriously wondering aloud if Russians are meddling;
21) There is video of Melania Trump looking a little too happy that her husband is losing;
22) Trump ups the ante on an outrageous lie about his opponents at the 11th hour, like that Biden has already written an executive order canceling free enterprise, or has decided to grant American citizenship to everyone in Bangladesh;
23) Biden says something incomprehensible, dozes off, or forgets whom he’s talking with in a TV appearance;
24) Someone cuts to: shot of boarded-up windows. Double when windows are actually broken.
25) Someone cries on set as results come in. Or, alternatively, does the political version of the Bill Simmons fist pump:
Finally, we fall back to Buckminster Fuller’s infamous quote for some context tonight:
If you take all the machinery in the world and dump it in the ocean, within months more than half of all humanity will die and within another six months they’d almost all be gone; if you took all the politicians in the world, put them in a rocket, and sent them to the moon, everyone would get along fine.
Stay safe and remember that politics is all about subverting you emotionally and then reaping your production. The rest are details.
“If you must break the law, do it to seize power: in all other cases observe it.”
– Julius Caesar
The illegal invasion of Libya, in which Britain was complicit and a British House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee’s report confirmed as an illegal act sanctioned by the UK government, over which Cameron stepped down as Prime Minister (weeks before the release of the UK parliament report), occurred from March – Oct, 2011.
Muammar al-Gaddafi was assassinated on Oct. 20th, 2011.
On Sept 11-12th, 2012, U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens, U.S. Foreign Service information management officer Sean Smith, and CIA contractors Tyron Woods and Glen Doherty were killed at two U.S. government facilities in Benghazi.
It is officially denied to this date that al-Qaeda or any other international terrorist organization participated in the Benghazi attack. It is also officially denied that the attack was pre-meditated.
On the 6th year anniversary of the Benghazi attack, Barack Obama stated at a partisan speech on Sept 10th, 2018, delivered at the University of Illinois, that the outrage over the details concerning the Benghazi attack were the result of “wild conspiracy theory” perpetrated by conservatives and Republican members of Congress.
However, according to an August 2012 Defense Intelligence Agency report (only released to the public in May 2015), this is anything but the case. The report was critical of the policies of then President Obama as a direct igniter for the rise of ISIS and the creation of a “caliphate” by Syria-based radical Islamists and al-Qaeda. The report also identified that arms shipments in Libya had gone to radical Islamist “allies” of the United States and NATO in the overthrowing of Col. Muammar al-Gaddafi. These arms shipments were sent to Syria and became the arsenal that allowed ISIS and other radical rebels to grow.
“AQI [al-qaeda –iraq] SUPPORTED THE SYRIAN OPPOSITION FROM THE BEGINNING, BOTH IDEOLOGICALLY AND THROUGH THE MEDIA… WESTERN COUNTRIES, THE GULF STATES AND TURKEY ARE SUPPORTING THESE EFFORTS… THE WEST, GULF COUNTRIES, AND TURKEYSUPPORT THE [SYRIAN] OPPOSITION… THERE IS THE POSSIBILITY OF ESTABLISHING A DECLARED OR UNDECLARED SALAFIST PRINCIPALITY IN EASTERN SYRIA (HASAKA AND DER ZOR), AND THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THE SUPPORTING POWERS TO THE OPPOSITION WANT,IN ORDER TO ISOLATE THE SYRIAN REGIME…” [emphasis added]
Another DIA document from Oct 2012 (also released in May 2015), reported that Gaddafi’s vast arsenal was being shipped from Benghazi to two Syrian ports under the control of the Syrian rebel groups.
Essentially, the DIA documents were reporting that theObama Administration was supporting Islamist extremism, including the Muslim Brotherhood.
There was just one problem; Lt. Gen. Flynn was backing up the reliability of the released DIA reports.
Lt. Gen. Flynn as Director of the DIA from July 2012 – Aug. 2014, was responsible for acquiring accurate intelligence on ISIS’s and other extremist operations within the Middle East, but did not have any authority in shaping U.S. military policy in response to the Intel the DIA was acquiring.
In a July 2015 interview with Al-Jazeera, Flynn went so far as to state that the rise of ISIS was the result of a “willful decision,” not an intelligence failure, by the Obama Administration.
In the Al-Jazeera interview Flynn was asked:
Q: You are basically saying that even in government at the time you knew these groups were around, you saw this analysis, and you were arguing against it, but who wasn’t listening?
FLYNN: I think the Administration.
Q: So the Administration turned a blind eye to your analysis?
FLYNN: I don’t know that they turned a blind eye, I think it was a decision. I think it was a willful decision.
Q: A willful decision to support an insurgency that had Salafists, al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood?
FLYNN: It was a willful decision to do what they’re doing.
Flynn was essentially stating (in the 47 minute interview) that the United States was fully aware that weapons trafficking from Benghazi to the Syrian rebels was occurring.
In fact, the secret flow of arms from Libya to the Syrian opposition, via Turkey was CIA sponsored and had been underway shortly after Gaddafi’s death in Oct 2011. The operation was largely run out of a covert CIA annex in Benghazi, with State Department acquiescence.
This information was especially troubling in light of the fact that the Obama Administration’s policy, from mid-2011 on, was to overthrow the Assad government. The question of “who will replace Assad?” was never fully answered.
Perhaps the most troubling to Americans among the FOIA-released DIA documents was a report from Sept. 16, 2012, which provided a detail account of the pre-meditated nature of the 9/11/12 attack in Benghazi, reporting that the attack had been planned ten days prior, detailing the groups involved.
The report revealed that it was in fact an al-Qaeda linked terrorist group that was responsible for the Benghazi attack. That despite this intelligence, the Obama Administration continued to permit arms-trafficking to the al-Qaeda-linked Syrian rebels even after the 9/11/12 attacks.
In August 2015, then President Obama ordered for U.S. forces to attack Syrian government forces if they interfered with the American “vetted, trained and armed” forces. This U.S. approved Division 30 Syrian rebel group “defected” almost immediately, with U.S. weapons in hand, to align with the Nusra Front, the formal al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria.
Obama’s Semantics War: Any Friend of Yours is a Friend of Mine
“Flynn incurred the wrath of the [Obama] White House by insisting on telling the truth about Syria… He thought truth was the best thing and they shoved him out.”
– Patrick Lang (retired army colonel, served for nearly a decade as the chief Middle East civilian intelligence officer for the Defense Intelligence Agency)
Before being named Director of the DIA, Flynn served as Director of Intelligence for the Joint Staff, as Director of Intelligence for the U.S. Central Command, and as Director of Intelligence for the Joint Special Operations Command.
Flynn’s criticisms and opposition to the Obama Administration’s policies in his interview with Al-Jazeera in 2015 was nothing new. In August 2013, Flynn as Director of the DIA supported Gen. Dempsey’s intervention, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in forcing then President Obama to cancel orders to launch a massive bombing campaign against the Syrian government and armed forces. Flynn and Dempsey both argued that the overthrow of the Assad government would lead to a radical Islamist stronghold in Syria, much like what was then happening in Libya.
This account was also supported in Seymour Hersh’s paper “Military to Military” published in Jan 2016, to which he states:
“Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, director of the DIA between 2012 and 2014, confirmed that his agency had sent a constant stream of classified warnings to the civilian leadership about the dire consequences of toppling Assad. The jihadists, he said, were in control of the opposition. Turkey wasn’t doing enough to stop the smuggling of foreign fighters and weapons across the border. ‘If the American public saw the intelligence we were producing daily, at the most sensitive level, they would go ballistic,’ Flynn told me. ‘We understood Isis’s long-term strategy and its campaign plans, and we also discussed the fact that Turkey was looking the other way when it came to the growth of the Islamic State inside Syria.’ The DIA’s reporting, he [Flynn] said, ‘got enormous pushback’ from the Obama administration. ‘I felt that they did not want to hear the truth.’
[According to a former JCS adviser]’…To say Assad’s got to go is fine, but if you follow that through – therefore anyone is better. It’s the “anybody else is better” issue that the JCS had with Obama’s policy.’ The Joint Chiefs felt that a direct challenge to Obama’s policy would have ‘had a zero chance of success’. So in the autumn of 2013 they decided to take steps against the extremists without going through political channels, by providing U.S. intelligence to the militaries of other nations, on the understanding that it would be passed on to the Syrian army and used against the common enemy, Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State [ISIS].” [emphasis added]
According to Hersh’s sources, it was through the militaries of Germany, Israel and Russia, who were in contact with the Syrian army, that the U.S. intelligence on where the terrorist cells were located was shared, hence the “military to military”. There was no direct contact between the U.S. and the Syrian military.
“The two countries [U.S. & Syria] collaborated against al-Qaida, their common enemy. A longtime consultant to the Joint Special Operations Command said that, after 9/11, ‘Bashar was, for years, extremely helpful to us while, in my view, we were churlish in return, and clumsy in our use of the gold he gave us. That quiet co-operation continued among some elements, even after the [Bush administration’s] decision to vilify him.’ In 2002 Assad authorised Syrian intelligence to turn over hundreds of internal files on the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria and Germany. Later that year, Syrian intelligence foiled an attack by al-Qaida on the headquarters of the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, and Assad agreed to provide the CIA with the name of a vital al-Qaida informant. In violation of this agreement, the CIA contacted the informant directly; he rejected the approach, and broke off relations with his Syrian handlers.
…It was this history of co-operation that made it seem possible in 2013 that Damascus would agree to the new indirect intelligence-sharing arrangement with the U.S.”
In Sept. 2015, Russia came in and directly intervened militarily, upon invitation by the Syrian government, and effectively destroyed ISIS strongholds within Syrian territory. In response, Turkey shot down a Russian Sukhoi Su-24 on Nov 24th, 2015 for allegedly entering Turkish airspace for 17 seconds. Days after the Russian fighter jet was shot down, Obama expressed support for Erdogan and stated at a Dec. 1st, 2015 press conference that his administration would remain “very much committed to Turkey’s security and its sovereignty”. Obama also said that as long as Russia remained allied with Assad, “a lot of Russian resources are still going to be targeted at opposition groups … that we support … So I don’t think we should be under any illusions that somehow Russia starts hitting only Isil targets. That’s not happening now. It was never happening. It’s not going to be happening in the next several weeks.”
Today, not one of those “opposition groups” has shown itself to have remained, or possibly ever been, anti-extremist. And neither the Joint Chiefs nor the DIA believed that there was ever such a thing as “moderate rebels.”
Rather, as remarked by a JCS adviser to Hersh, “Turkey is the problem.”
China’s “Uyghur Problem”
Imad Moustapha, was the Syrian Ambassador to the United States from 2004 to Dec. 2011, and has been the Syrian Ambassador to China for the past eight years.
“‘China regards the Syrian crisis from three perspectives,’ he said: international law and legitimacy; global strategic positioning; and the activities of jihadist Uighurs, from Xinjiang province in China’s far west. Xinjiang borders eight nations – Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India – and, in China’s view, serves as a funnel for terrorism around the world and within China. Many Uighur fighters now in Syria are known to be members of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement – an often violent separatist organisation that seeks to establish an Islamist Uighur state in Xinjiang. ‘The fact that they have been aided by Turkish intelligence to move from China into Syria through Turkey has caused a tremendous amount of tension between the Chinese and Turkish intelligence,’ Moustapha said. ‘China is concerned that the Turkish role of supporting the Uighur fighters in Syria may be extended in the future to support Turkey’s agenda in Xinjiang. We are already providing the Chinese intelligence service with information regarding these terrorists and the routes they crossed from on travelling into Syria.’ ” [emphasis added]
This view was echoed by a Washington foreign affairs analyst whose views are routinely sought by senior government officials, informing Hersh that:
“Erdoğan has been bringing Uighurs into Syria by special transport while his government has been agitating in favour of their struggle in China. Uighur and Burmese Muslim terrorists who escape into Thailand somehow get Turkish passports and are then flown to Turkey for transit into Syria.”
China understands that the best way to combat the terrorist recruiting that is going on in these regions is to offer aid towards reconstruction and economic development projects. By 2016, China had allegedly committed more than $30 billion to postwar reconstruction in Syria.
The long-time consultant to the Joint Special Operations Command could not hide his contempt, according to Hersh, when he was asked for his view of the U.S. policy on Syria. “‘The solution in Syria is right before our nose,’ he said. ‘Our primary threat is Isis and all of us – the United States, Russia and China – need to work together.’“
The military’s indirect pathway to Assad disappeared with Dempsey’s retirement in September 25th, 2015. His replacement as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Joseph Dunford, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee in July 2015, two months before assuming office, “If you want to talk about a nation that could pose an existential threat to the United States, I’d have to point to Russia.”
Flynn’s Call for Development in the Middle East to Counter Terrorism
Not only was Flynn critical of the Obama Administration’s approach to countering terrorism in the Middle East, his proposed solution was to actually downgrade the emphasis on military counter-operations, and rather focus on economic development within these regions as the most effective and stable impediment to the growth of extremists.
“Frankly, an entire new economy is what this region needs. They need to take this 15-year old, to 25 to 30-year olds in Saudi Arabia, the largest segment of their population; in Egypt, the largest segment of their population, 15 to roughly 30 years old, mostly young men. You’ve got to give them something else to do. If you don’t, they’re going to turn on their own governments, and we can solve that problem.
So that is the conversation that we have to have with them, and we have to help them do that. And in the meantime, what we have is this continued investment in conflict. The more weapons we give, the more bombs we drop,that just fuels the conflict. Some of that has to be done, but I’m looking for other solutions. I’m looking for the other side of this argument, and we’re not having it; we’re not having it as the United States.” [emphasis added]
Flynn also stated in the interview that the U.S. cannot, and should not, deter the development of nuclear energy in the Middle East:
“It now equals nuclear development of some type in the Middle East, and now what we want… what I hope for is that we have nuclear [energy] development, because it also helps for projects like desalinization, getting water…nuclear energy is very clean, and it actually is so cost effective, much more cost effective for producing water from desalinization.”
Flynn was calling for a new strategic vision for the Middle East, and making it clear that “conflict only” policies were only going to add fuel to the fire, that cooperative economic policies are the true solution to attaining peace in the Middle East. Pivotal to this is the expansion of nuclear energy, while assuring non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, which Flynn states “has to be done in a very international, inspectable way.”
When In Doubt, Blame the Russians
How did the Obama Administration respond to Flynn’s views?
He was fired (forced resignation) from his post as Director of the DIA on April 30th, 2014. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who was briefed by Flynn on the intelligence reports and was also critical of the U.S. Administration’s strategy in the Middle East was also forced to resign in Feb. 2015.
With the election of Trump as President on Nov. 8 2016, Lt. Gen. Flynn was swiftly announced as Trump’s choice for National Security Adviser on Nov. 18th, 2016.
Just weeks later, Flynn was targeted by the FBI and there was a media sensation over Flynn being a suspected “Russian agent”. Flynn was taken out before he had a chance to even step into his office, prevented from doing any sort of overhaul with the intelligence bureaus and Joint Chiefs of Staff, which was most certainly going to happen. Instead Flynn was forced to resign on Feb. 13th, 2017 after incessant media attacks undermining the entire Trump Administration, accusing them of working for the Russians against the welfare of the American people.
Despite an ongoing investigation on the allegations against Flynn, there has been no evidence to this date that has justified any charge. In fact, volumes of exculpatory evidence have been presented to exonerate Flynn from any wrongdoing including perjury. At this point, the investigation of Flynn has been put into question as consciously disingenuous and as being stalled by the federal judge since May 2020, refusing to release Flynn it seems while a Trump Administration is still in effect.
The question thus stands; in whose best interest is it that no peace be permitted to occur in the Middle East and that U.S.-Russian relations remain verboten? And is such an interest a friend or foe to the American people?
New Energy Vehicles Will Be 20% Of China’s Total New Car Sales By 2025 Tyler Durden
Tue, 11/03/2020 – 22:45
The boom in EV stocks may not be stopping anytime soon. Recent momentum in names like Kandi Technologies, Nio, Tesla, Fisker and other electric vehicle names – already fueled by states like California vowing to ban internal combustion engine vehicles – could see a continued tailwind from the world’s largest auto market, China.
Sales of new energy vehicles are going to make up 20% of the country’s total new auto sales by the year 2025, China’s State Council estimated early this week.
The “new energy” category includes battery electric, plug-in hybrid and hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles. Sales will rise as the country’s “NEV industry has improved their technology and competitiveness,” according to a new policy paper reviewed by Reuters.
In the country’s 5 year plan to 2025, the State Council has pushed for improvements in EV technologies, building more efficient charging and implementing battery swapping networks. The Chinese government will also adopt quotas and incentives to to “guide automakers” (i.e. force them) to make EVs after Federal subsidies end in two years.
The government is also looking at ways to implement EVs for public uses, commercial use and mass transit.
While the country’s new outlook is slightly lower than the 25% goal it set for itself in a policy proposal published by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology last year, it would still mark a significant expansion in the world’s largest auto market.
Recall, we noted at the beginning of September that most Chinese EV startups were being backed and bailed out by the Chinese state during the pandemic.
This report was just weeks after we reported that many EV manufacturers in the super-saturated Chinese market were going public as a means to avoid bankruptcy.
For example, when NIO was under tremendous financial pressure just months ago, it was the municipal government of Hefei that stepped in to bail the company out by investing $1 billion in cash for a 24.1% stake in the company’s China’s entity – and getting the company to relocate its headquarters to its province. Hefei has “hopes of creating a powerful rival to Tesla,” according to Nikkei.
Similarly, other local governments have stepped into help China’s young EV names. Not unlike Elon Musk’s Tesla, China’s Nio, Xpeng Motors, Li Auto and WM Motor have also all relied on taxpayer/state money to push their visions forward.
Earlier this year, we wrote about the successful IPO of Li Auto on the U.S. markets. It “received investments from several entities backed by municipal governments of Changzhou and Xiamen as well as state-run investment bank China International Capital Corporation.”
Additionally, we reported earlier this year ago that competition in China’s EV market is already starting to become super-saturated.
Futures Explode Higher, Nadaq Briefly Halted As Odds Of Reflation Trade, Contested Election Collapse Tyler Durden
Tue, 11/03/2020 – 22:38
It was supposed to be a Blue Wave… and if not a Blue Wave then at least a landslide victory for Joe Biden over Donald Trump. Well, not only is that not likely to happen, but suddenly it seems that Trump may be a decisive winner and not need Pennsylvania, with Betfair odds now 70% in his favor.
So what does that mean for a market that had almost entirely priced in a Biden/Blue Wave victory? Well, as we noted on Oct 31, when we pointed out the collapse in Nasdaq shorts, we said that a surge in the Nasdaq was imminent as the so-called dumb money reversed.
The “smart money” are officially idiots: after record shorts a month ago, specs puked into upward momentum and were flat into the worst week for tech since March. This means that NQ will now surge as specs go short again pic.twitter.com/dxcC8NmSkL
… at which point it was briefly halted as circuit-breakers were triggered.
NASDAQ FUTURES HALTED FOR TWO MINUTES AFTER 3.9% RALLY
Technicals aside, there are two fundamentals reasons for this explosion higher:
The lack of a Blue Wave means that no massive reflation trade is coming, and so instead we will get a re-deflation rotation, which is great for Treasurys and for growth/duration stocks such as tech.
The removal of concerns about a contested election, means that all of the crash protection that traders had accumulated for just such an eventuality, will be unwound and stocks surge, which is precisely what they are doing on Tuesday night as in addition to NQs, the Emini is also exploding higher.
Bloomberg’s Stephen Spratt notes 4 more reasons for the mindblowing explosion higher in the Nasdaq:
The Democrats have pushed anti-competitive regulation for years. Just last month, a Democratic panel issued proposals to break-up tech giants. The chance of this happening just got marked down.
Chance of Biden tax increases just went down, while for a Trump tax cut, they just went up.
With the Ant IPO on hold, where’s that money going? Some suspect it can potentially go straight back into tech names for the short-term.
Lastly, a Trump win would mean an ‘as you were’ approach to investing, allowing further Nasdaq outperformance.
Meanwhile, since a pro-China Biden administration is not coming, the Yuan is plunging as the odds are now that we are facing 4 more years of escalating trade war with China.
Finally, after tumbling early as a result of the surge in the dollar, gold has recovered much of its losses, as no matter if it’s Trump or Biden, one thing is certain: much more fiscal stimulus is coming, and even more dollar debasement is just around the corner.
China will be launching satellites almost every other week starting next March. In one instance the gap in next year’s frenetic schedule of launches will be only five days.
This year, through the end of September, China launched 29 satellites, more than any other nation. The U.S. was a close second with 27.
Beijing aims to widen its lead. Most observers worry that the Chinese regime is determined to get to the moon before U.S. astronauts return there, but another troublesome development is that China will quickly be filling up orbits with satellites.
With a presidential candidate who has not been all that communicative, Americans may want to think more about space policy.
In short, there are growing concerns that a new administration will, with the best of intentions but an utter lack of common sense, hand space leadership to the Chinese.
Observers believe that, going forward, US space policy will not differ much from the current one. Yet a new administration could make crucial differences in emphasis that will have far-reaching consequences.
Take last December’s establishment of the Space Force, the sixth branch of the American military. No one thinks anyone will reverse that long-delayed and much-needed move.
Yet American space warriors still worry. Brandon Weichert of The Weichert Report said in an interview with Gatestone that there might be a move to “staff the Space Force with people inimical to its mission.”
Space Force’s mission is to fight wars in space, but are all Americans fully committed?
Some believe the US space program should emphasize climate change research. If there is no overall increase in space spending, there will be less money for, among other things, defending American assets in space.
There are many American assets to defend. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists Satellite Database, the U.S. owned or operated 1,425 of the 2,787 satellites in orbit as of August 1.
This large lead — it was even larger last decade — convinced the Obama administration it was not wise to “militarize” space because the U.S. had so much more to lose should it trigger an arms race in the heavens.
President Obama’s view sounds smart but was deeply mistaken because, among other things, it failed to take into account the fact that Beijing was already weaponizing the high ground. “China has been working hard to militarize space since the issuance of its ‘863 Program’ of 1986,” Rick Fisher of the Virginia-based International Assessment and Strategy Center told Gatestone. The 863 Program was followed by 1992’s “Project 921,” run by the General Armaments Department of the Central Military Commission. After the sweeping 2015 reorganization of the Chinese military, control of space ended up in the Commission’s Armaments Development Department.
As a result of Obama’s flawed decision, the U.S. lagged in both developing weapons to kill other nations’ satellites and devising methods to protect its own.
“Even as Obama tied America’s hands behind its back in space, the Russians and later the Chinese were developing robust counterspace capabilities,” Weichert added.
America is therefore in many respects behind Russia and China in the ability to fight “over great distances at tremendous speeds, ” as Space Force’s General John Raymond said in September.
Moreover, there are other policy proposals that would degrade America’s ability to defend itself. The Obama administration, for instance, announced in June 2010 a new policy stating the U.S. would “consider proposals and concepts for arms control measures if they are equitable, effectively verifiable, and enhance the national security of the United States and its allies.” Unfortunately, there are many who still believe America can come to agreement with China.
Any such agreement, however, would be impractical. In space, almost everything has a dual purpose. Fisher, for instance, reports that China will put a laser on its upcoming space station for the announced purpose of eliminating space junk. Of course, such a laser is also capable of killing American satellites.
Other dual use items are Russia’s co-orbital “Space Stalkers.” In peacetime, they can be used to repair satellites. In wartime, Weichert says, “they can physically push U.S. satellites out of their orbits.” That would render America’s forces, and America itself, “deaf, dumb, and blind on land, at sea, in the air, and within cyberspace.”
In any event, neither Russia nor China honors agreements, especially arms control treaties.
There is another disturbing policy approach for Americans to consider. The Obama administration, in May 2011, sought to enlist China as a partner in the exploration of Mars. Weichert reports Vice President Biden himself proposed joint NASA-China National Space Administration missions in orbit. “Of course,” Weichert says, “this would have been simply the greatest tech transfer ever from the United States to China.”
There is no such thing as purely “civilian” cooperation with China, which has a civil-military fusion policy. All technical research, pursuant to that policy, gets pipelined into the Chinese military.
So what is at stake? The next 9/11 will almost certainly occur in space.
Epstein’s Notorious $20 Million Palm Beach Mansion To Be Demolished Tyler Durden
Tue, 11/03/2020 – 22:05
Jeffrey Epstein’s $20 million Palm Beach mansion where hundreds of underage girls were trafficked and sexually assaulted by the now deceased pedophile and his visitors, and which was featured heavily in the 4-hour Netflix documentary series Filthy Rich is set to be demolished by a Florida real estate developer.
A developer named Todd Michael Glaser was identified in The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday as having purchased the notorious property after it was put on the market for an almost $22 million asking price in July. It’s believed the closing price was about $18 million.
Jeffrey Epstein’s Palm Beach home located on El Brillo Way, AP/Shutterstock.
However area residents have wanted it gone for some time. After the deal is finalized in the coming weeks Glaser said he’ll demolish it and erect a 14,000-square-foot Art Moderne home in its place.
“Palm Beach is going to be very happy that [Epstein’s home] is gone,” he commented to the WSJ.
Epstein bought the six-bedroom home which is about 14,000 square feet in 1990 for $2.5 million. The deceased billionaire also assaulted young girls at properties across the US and the Caribbean, including a massive ranch property in New Mexico, his $88 million Manhattan townhouse, as well as what was branded ‘Pedo Island’ of Little St. James in the US Virgin Islands.
According to the WSJ report the New York home on the Upper East Side is still on the market at an asking price of $88 million.
However, given the whopping price tag combined with the weirdness factor of owning a home associated with rape and sex trafficking of minors, we doubt there will be any takers.
The home magazine Town & Country previously summarized the shady dealings of how the New York home was acquired in the first place:
Records show that the title for this Beaux Arts mansion was transferred to Epstein from his sometime mentor and client Les Wexner in 1996 for $0. The exact reasoning behind this generous gift is a mystery but various reports throughout the years have painted a picture of what the home was like on the inside.
And among the bizarre and perverse things found included “a massive mural of a prison yard, a massage table with sex toys and lubricant, a life-size female doll hanging from a chandelier, a sculpture of a naked African warrior, a room covered in leather, and a stuffed black poodle perched on a grand piano, along with the nude photographs that the FBI apparently turned up in a safe,” according to the magazine.
Every 26 seconds for the last 60 years seismologists have detected a ubiquitous pulse emanating from deep inside the Earth. The debate over the cause of this mysterious “microseism” has gone on for decades and produced several cogent hypotheses, but scientists still don’t know decisively what’s behind the phenomenon.
First observed and recorded by geologist Jack Oliver in the early 1960s, then studied more extensively in the following decades, the pulse is known to be stronger during storms. But storms don’t turn off and on every 26 seconds, nor do volcanos, which have also been proposed as the source.
In 2005, a graduate student named Greg Bensen tracked the origin of the pulse to a more narrow location, a single source in the Gulf of Guinea, off the western coast of Africa; six years later, another team honed in even closer, pinpointing the origin in an area of the Gulf of Guinea called the Bight of Bonny.
This team believed the waves crashing on that coast were responsible for the seismic blip. Others, however, weren’t convinced. Some believed it was caused by the sun itself. While tectonic activity, earthquakes, and volcanos regularly trigger solid seismic sounds, a more mellow soundscape of seismic static runs in near perpetuity.
Mike Ritzwoller, a seismologist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who has studied the pulse for decades, says that while the pulse is a mystery, seismic activity, in general, is not.
“Seismic noise basically exists because of the sun,” whose energy hits the equator and the poles unevenly, creating wind, storms, ocean currents, and waves, all of which work to displace and buffet energy onto the coastline.
“It’s like if you were tapping on your desk. It deforms the area near your knuckle, but then it’s being transmitted across the whole table,” Ritzwoller explains. “So someone sitting at the other side of the table, if they put their hand, or maybe their cheek, on the table, they can feel the vibration.”
With the advent more advanced tools and technologies, scientists have been able to study the pulse more closely and most generally agree that the Bight of Bonny is ground zero for whatever is happening. Currently, many researchers are beginning to think the cause may be that this specific place on the edge of the enormous North American continental shelf (far below the ocean floor) is basically the other end of the desk Ritzwoller used as a metaphor. In other words, a drum the size of a continent is somehow consolidating its reverberations into a single spot.
Some researchers still believe volcanism is the answer and point to an active volcano on the island of São Tomé in the Bight of Bonny as evidence.
Why any of these physical phenomena would produce such a strange clockwork pulse every 26 seconds remains a mystery.
“We’re still waiting for the fundamental explanation of the cause of this phenomenon,” Ritzwoller says with a beat of optimism about the next decades of seismology.
“I think the point [of all this] is there are very interesting, fundamental phenomena in the earth that are known to exist out there and remain secret.”
‘The Instagram Generation’ – Gen Z Are Notoriously Picky House Hunters, Survey Finds Tyler Durden
Tue, 11/03/2020 – 21:25
Though many of them are probably still living in mom and dad’s basement despite being two years removed from college, Gen Zers will soon become the most dominant force in the urban rental market.
As a result, landlords in major urban centers are trying to figure out how to cater to this new generation, particularly as their predecessors, the millennials, rotate out of housing markets like NYC and San Francisco.
With rents on the downtrend in formerly hot urban rental markets like Manhattan and San Francisco, landlords might get stuck going the extra mile to attract tenants.
In a recent study examining the priorities of Gen Z renters, the oldest of whom are now turning 24, researchers with RentCafe have discovered that Gen Z is far less willing to compromise on amenities and quality, unlike their predecessors. One could argue that this is in keeping with “Zoomers” behavior in other areas, like the workplace, where they are reportedly more likely to speak up for themselves, and less likely to toil relentlessly in silence, simply grateful to have a job.
Seeing as they’re the first generation to come of the age with social media, Gen Zers do more research online before deciding on an apartment. They’re more choosy than millennials, too. As the researchers wrote, “affordable quality” is the “Gen Z mantra”.
The most culturally diverse and digital native age cohort, Generation Z, the oldest of whom are turning 24 this year, are the new must-watch generation in the housing market. Already a growing share of today’s renters, the little-known Gen Z’s accounted for 19% of respondents in a recent survey on rentcafe.com about renting preferences.
It’s time to pay attention to how Gen Z renting preferences differ from what older generations value. Perhaps as expected, their choices stem from the fact that they value technology more than any other generation. Embracing technology and social media as a way of living, these young adults seem to know exactly what they are looking for when it comes to renting an apartment, what they expect from their apartment communities, and how much they are willing to spend. Although they are budget conscious and still at the dawn of their earning years, Gen Z renters want the highest-quality apartments and rental communities that feature the most technologically-advanced features.
62% of Gen Z renters believe apartment technology is extremely and very important
One of the most important aspects for the youngest group of renters today is no doubt technology, which they value more than any previous generation. in fact, 62% of the Gen Z respondents to our survey indicated technology as being extremely or very important in their apartment and community. 28% of them said it was extremely important, more than any other generation, and 34% of them said it was very important, again, more than any other generation.
Gen Z respondents also reported that the most important feature to have in their apartment community was “high-speed internet”, which came in higher than all other features, including parking, gym, or laundry.
In their apartments, technologically advanced features like smart locks & thermostats, as well as energy-efficient appliances, were ranked as more important than extra space, such as an extra bedroom.
Their digital features of choice were online rent payments and maintenance requests (37%), followed by a mobile app for managing rent and maintenance (28%), which is consistent with the preferences of other generations of renters. However, what sets them apart is that Gen Z respondents were more interested in text rent payments than the other respondents.
Where can you find the Gen Z’s? On Instagram
For the first time ever, Instagram is the most used social media channel by a generation, and Gen Z’s are the ones to make that shift. As they indicated in our survey, 36% of Gen Z’s chose Instagram as their top media channel, followed by 17% who prefer Facebook. In fact, of all of the age groups that responded to our survey, they were the only ones that reported preferring Instagram over Facebook. All other generations are overwhelmingly Facebook users.
Generation Z uses Google search to find apartments more than any other generation
Google search is the number one channel to find apartments these days, but for Gen Z more so than for others. According to our survey, 39% of the youngest of renters start their apartment search on Google. Second in popularity are apartment search websites, like rentcafe.com, which 27% of Gen Z’s use as a starting point in their search, equal to the share of Millennials, but above the other generations.
Property ratings and reviews are the top decision factor for Gen Z-ers
When asked what research they do before choosing a rental property, the largest share of Gen Z’s (30%) selected property ratings and reviews. Moreover, they reported relying on property ratings and reviews more than any other previous generation. The second most important research tools were videos and virtual tours, which were selected by 24% of Gen Z respondents.
Although technology fans and experts when it comes to online and social media resources, in person tours are still important even for this cohort before deciding on an apartment to rent. In fact, 72% of them prefer touring apartments in person, whether that is with an agent or self-guided.
It’s no surprise that price is important to young renters when choosing an apartment, as is for everyone, for that matter. However, the quality of the apartment is not something that Generation Z is eager to give up. In fact, of all of the age groups of renters, Gen Z-ers seem to care the most about the quality of apartment finishes and the quality of the building, more than any other generation.
While they do demonstrate maturity in realizing that they can’t afford to spend too much money on rent (yet), Gen Z’s are indicating that they aren’t willing to give up quality and know exactly what they’re looking for in their rental. Therefore, as their financial power grows in the coming years, we might expect a new type of renter to emerge: a tech-savvy, research-focused, and confident renter.
S&P Global Ratings projects the global debt-to-GDP level will swell to a record 265% this year. It also expects insolvencies and defaults to rise to levels not seen since the 2009 crisis.
Higher leverage and “a more challenging operating environment” has led S&P Global Ratings to downgrade 22% of corporate and sovereign debt issuers globally — “particularly speculative-grade borrowers and those suffering most from COVID19’s economic effects.”
According to the report, default rates could double by mid-2021.
Corporate bankruptcies are already surging in the US and many overleveraged small businesses are simply shutting down. A total of 509 companies had gone bankrupt this year as of Oct. 4, exceeding the number of filings during any comparable period since 2010.
A recent article at ForeignPolicy.com warned, “The next US administration will likely face a global debt crisis that could dwarf what the world experienced in 2008-2009. To prevent the worst, it will need to address the burdensome debt plaguing both the United States and the global economy.”
The report singled out the growing levels of debt in the US and called them “unsustainable.”
A surge in spending to mitigate the health and economic impacts of the pandemic has brought the total public debt in the United States to over 100 percent of GDP—its highest level since 1946 and a hurdle that will create a considerable drag on future economic growth. Other types of debt—household, auto, and student loans, as well as credit card debt—have seen similar surges. Almost 20 percent of US corporations have become zombie companies that are unable to generate enough cash flow to service even the interest on their debt, and only survive thanks to continued loans and bailouts.”
According to the Institute of International Finance (IIF), global debt is already well above the level S&P Global warned about. In April, the organization reported that global debt across all sectors rose by over $10 trillion in 2019, topping $255 trillion.
At over 322% of GDP, global debt is now 40 percentage points ($87 trillion) higher than at the onset of the 2008 financial crisis—a sobering realization as governments worldwide gear up to fight the pandemic.”
You can thank the Federal Reserve and central banks globally for this surge in indebtedness. In fact, we were warning about surging global debt long before the pandemic. In the wake of the Great Recession, central banks worldwide gave us 10 years of easy money. With loans cheap and easy to come by, households borrowed money. And governments borrowed money. And corporations borrowed money. With all of this borrowing, it should come as no shock that today the world is swimming in a sea of red ink.
Central banks simply doubled down on their debt-producing policies in response to the pandemic. The Federal Reserve immediately took interest rates to zero and it has promised to leave them there for years to come. It then launched “QE infinity,” and has increased the money supply at a record pace. Just last week, the Fed lowered the threshold for its “Main Street” loan program for small businesses down to $100,000.
Despite the record levels of indebtedness, S&P Global said it’s not concerned about a debt crisis. But it bases its view on some rather rosy assumptions, including the wide-spread availability of an effective COVID-19 vaccine. It also assumes a global economic recovery.
Conventional wisdom seems to be that the world can avoid economic pain simply by borrowing money that was created out of thin air by central banks. But any sane person understands you don’t borrow your way to prosperity. Borrowed money always has to be paid back. This is an unsustainable path and one to watch closely, despite the optimistic assurances of the mainstream.
Elon Musk Eyes Space Mining Of Asteroid Worth More Than Global Economy Tyler Durden
Tue, 11/03/2020 – 20:45
Not too long ago, NASA asked Tesla’s Elon Musk, who runs the rocket company SpaceX, to assist in a future space exploration mission of a giant metallic asteroid called “16 Psyche” that contains trillions of dollars in rare metals.
16 Psyche is one of the most massive objects in the asteroid belt orbiting between Mars and Jupiter. It measures 140 miles across, and in previous observations, it has been shown as a dense metallic core of a failed plant.
A new study, published Monday by Southwest Research Institute planetary scientist Dr. Tracy Becker, provides new insight into why NASA and Musk could be interested in this space rock that’s more than 230 million miles from Earth. The reason: The asteroid is entirely comprised of iron and nickel.
Some believe the asteroid is valued at around $10,000 quadrillion. For comparisons, the global economy in 2019 was worth about $142 trillion. 16 Psyche is turning out to be an astronomical treasure trove of wealth for whoever seizes it.
“We’ve seen meteorites that are mostly metal, but Psyche could be unique in that it might be an asteroid that is totally made of iron and nickel,” Becker said.
She continued: “Earth has a metal core, a mantle and crust. It’s possible that as a Psyche protoplanet was forming, it was struck by another object in our solar system and lost its mantle and crust.”
Becker’s study comes as SpaceX and NASA prepare for an uncrewed mission to the asteroid in 2022, with the spacecraft landing on 16 Psyche in 2026.
What this all suggests is the NASA and private corporations are in the beginning stages to mine space.
As we’ve noted several times (see: here & here), mining space will start on the moon and likely branch out from there.
A Reuters story from 2019 perfectly explains why Musk is interested in nickel-heavy 16 Psyche because he anticipated global shortages of the metal in the coming years.
The Biden campaign has worked tirelessly over the past year to channel the image of Joe Biden as a “serious person,” particularly on foreign policy matters. Biden, according to this narrative, is an elder statesman who grasps the intricacies of international politics. Trump, by contrast, is presented as an inept bull in a china shop who only speaks the language of “fire and fury.” Only Biden, we are told, can bring back stability around the globe.
This carefully curated image of Joe Biden’s strategic acumen and geopolitical foresight is at odds by the former vice president’s own stated views and policy track record. His statements about a variety of countries suggest that they are based less on a strategic view of world affairs than snap judgments.
Consider Korea. At the Third Presidential Debate on October 22, Trump touted the benefits of having “good relations” with foreign leaders like North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. Biden responded by invoking Hitler: “We had a good relationship with Hitler before he, in fact, invaded Europe, the rest of Europe. Come on. The reason he would not meet with President Obama is because President Obama said, ‘We’re going to talk about denuclearization. We’re not going to legitimize you and we’re going to continue to push stronger and stronger sanctions on you.’ That’s why he wouldn’t meet with us.” It should go without saying that likening Kim Jong Un to Adolf Hitler is not only wildly inflammatory but also contributes nothing to our policy understanding of either figure. The second part of Biden’s statement is even more dangerous, reflecting a failed commitment to old Washington orthodoxy at a time when a growing number of North Korea experts are quite correctly warning that a blanket insistence on denuclearization as a precondition for peace talks is futile and counterproductive.
Biden extended a similarly brash stance toward America’s friends. At a recent Philadelphia town hall event, Biden– who has incessantly lectured Trump on the perils of spurning America’s longstanding allies– all but consigned two key US partners into a new Axis of Evil: “And NATO is in the risk of beginning to crack because they don’t doubt — they doubt our — whether we’re there. You see what’s happened in everything from Belarus to Poland to Hungary, and the rise of totalitarian regimes in the world, and as well, this president embraces all the thugs in the world.” It bears repeating that Hungary and Poland— which have both had legitimate and competitive elections within the past several years– are not only members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, but are among the two biggest military contributors to NATO’s collective security arrangement. Biden’s comments are even more tone-deaf in light of data showing that Poland and Hungary consistently rank among the most pro-American EU member states. This unprompted attack has already prompted vigorous rebuke from the government in Budapest, needlessly harming relations between a NATO ally and prospective President-elect before they began.
Nor does Biden fare better on matters of grand strategy. At a political event in Iowa City, the former Vice-President dismissed the bipartisan consensus that Beijing poses potential economic and security threats to the United States. “China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man… I mean, you know, they’re not bad folks, folks. But guess what? They’re not competition for us,” he said. Biden’s reasoning? Chinese society is too divided, and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) too corrupt, to mount a credible challenge to the United States: “They can’t even figure out how to deal with the fact that they have this great division between the China Sea and the mountains in the east, I mean the west.. they can’t figure out how they’re going to deal with the corruption that exists within the system.”
In point of fact, serious ethnic cleavages and rampant corruption have not prevented China from aggressively expanding its geo-economic influence across every continent. From shoring up Venezuela’s embattled Nicolás Maduro with mercenaries and billions of dollars to systematically undercutting Washington’s economic and political reach in Africa, the CCP is actively challenging US interests across the world. This isn’t to say that those challenges are unmanageable with fresh and forward-looking strategies, but to deny their existence only serves to compound their growing threat.
Biden’s comments unsurprisingly drew the ire of politicians from as diverse a cast as Mitt Romney and Bernie Sanders. With the 2020 presidential election looming large on the horizon, Biden jettisoned his position for an entirely new set of talking points. By the summer of 2019, Biden was arguing that Trump is the one who is blind to the Chinese threat: “While Trump is attacking our friends, China is pressing its advantage all over the world… you bet I’m worried about China—if we keep following Trump’s path.” He labeled China as a “competitor” at a September 18 CNN town hall in 2020, and again during a 60 minutes interview last week.
It is unclear what prompted Biden’s change of heart, other than perhaps the electoral optics of being seen as soft on China at a time when millions of Chinese Uighur muslims are being ethnically cleansed in hundreds of internment camps strewn across China’s northwest. Biden’s abrupt, pre-election transformation into a China hawk has hardly been accompanied by concrete solutions for managing Sino-American competition. Instead, he continues to tout the old chestnuts of Washington’s inept bipartisan China policies: targeted sanctions for human rights abuses, multilateral action to stem China’s “illegal and unfair trade practices,” and more robust enforcement of intellectual property laws. These generic prescriptions are premised on the decades-old neoliberal article of faith that closer engagement with international institutions will inevitably bring China into the fold of liberal-democratic nations.
But a rising China remains a secondary concern for the Democratic candidate, whose go-to campaign trail foreign policy topic remains the Russia menace. Beginning with the Obama administration’s support for regime change in Ukraine during the 2014 Maidan revolution, Biden has distinguished himself as one of the foremost advocates for a bellicose approach toward Russia. Biden’s conceit stems from a peculiar, but unfortunately popular, understanding of Russian president Vladimir Putin’s true motives: “The Cold War was based on a conflict of two profoundly different ideological notions of how the world should function. This is just basically about a kleptocracy protecting itself… I think there’s a basic decision that they cannot compete against a unified West. I think that is Putin’s judgment. And so everything he can do to dismantle the post-World War II liberal world order, including NATO and the EU, I think, is viewed as in their immediate self-interest,” said Biden during a 2018 Council on Foreign Relations appearance.
In Biden’s view, Putin, an authoritarian kleptocrat fearful of losing his iron grip over Russia, is on a mission to divide and destroy NATO and the EU because he knows he can’t compete against a united west. Thus, concludes Biden, the thrust of Washington’s Russia policy should be to “impose meaningful costs” on Moscow for its vast and ever-growing list of transgressions against the free world. Predictably, these “meaningful costs” amount to more of the same: targeted sanctions, stationing NATO troops ever closer to Russia’s borders, corralling NATO into a united front against Russia’s global assault on democracy, and lobbying for the NATO accession of post-Soviet states like Georgia and Ukraine.
Though certainly punitive in their effect, it is unclear what concrete strategic goals these policies are meant to accomplish. After six years of crescendoing sanctions and international measures aimed at isolating Moscow geopolitically, Russia is no closer to pro-western regime change; if anything, the economic pain from sanctions has only stoked anti-western sentiment and further consolidated the Russian masses behind Putin’s government. Nor did the Obama-Biden administration’s punitive measures induce any significant changes in the Kremlin’s behavior, partly because the sanctions arrayed against Russia are so rigid and exhaustive that the Kremlin has long since abandoned any hope they will ever be lifted.
If nothing else, Biden’s recent foreign policy statements are par for the course of his four-decade long political career– one that has long been characterized by intermittent attempts to seize short-term political advantages by rewriting his own policy history. Since the beginning of the 2020 election, for example, Biden has consistently portrayed himself as an avowed opponent of the Iraq War. “From the moment Shock and Awe started,” said Biden at a Democratic Presidential Debate in 2019, “from that moment, I was opposed to the effort.” But, as numerous fact-checkers have noted, Biden was not at all opposed to “the effort.” In fact, he repeatedly endorsed the invasion of Iraq from 2003 through 2004, even chiding some skeptical Democrats for not being sufficiently supportive of the war effort. Biden’s volte-face only came in 2005, coinciding with his newly revealed intention to explore a presidential run. By then, opposition to the Iraq war was no longer a particularly novel political opinion to hold.
Biden’s track record hardly paints the portrait of a sophisticated statesman or “serious” foreign policy thinker. What emerges instead is the familiar portrait of an old party stalwart who will say anything, sign on to any position, to seize an advantage in that moment. What so many commentators and journalists have graciously dismissed as his countless ‘gaffes’ is really a reflection of a tired and outdated worldview.
* * *
Mark Episkopos is the new national security reporter for the National Interest.
China State-Owned News Calls Tesla “Unreasonable And Arrogant” In Handling Model S & X Recalls Tyler Durden
Tue, 11/03/2020 – 20:05
Could the love affair between Tesla and the Chinese Communist Party be drifting toward an unceremonious end?
From the looks of an editorial published in Xinhua on Tuesday, that could very well be the call. The country’s state owned news agency called Tesla “unreasonable and arrogant” in an article published on Tuesday that addressed Tesla’s recall of 30,000 imported Model S and Model X vehicles in the country.
“The automaker refused to acknowledge its defect outside China while taking the recall in the market, blaming the user behavior and pressure from regulatory bodies. Tesla needs to learn first to abide by the local regulations and protect legitimate rights of the car owners,” the editorial said, according to Bloomberg.
Recall, it was about a week ago we first highlighted a massive recall Tesla had to undergo in China due to lingering, years old questions about the safety of Model S and Model X suspensions.
Suspension issues are one of the oldest ongoing critiques involving Tesla’s manufacturing (before Musk shattered Cybertruck windows live on stage, before Model 3s had dirt collect in their bumper and before Model Ys saw their roofs fly off). Legacy complaints involving suspensions on vehciles date back years, to Tesla’s original run of Model S vehicles.
And what the NHTSA was too blind to see, the Chinese clearly noticed. That’s why Tesla was forced into a recall of 30,000 Model S and Model X vehicles made for the Chinese market over suspension issues to begin with.
The issue was due to “a weakness in the Model S and Model X suspension that can lead to a cracked linkage after an impact.”
We used the term “forced” into the recall because it didn’t appear as though Tesla was “on board” with it. In fact, according to Bloomberg, Tesla found “no defect with its Model S/Model X suspension and [said] that China is basically forcing an unnecessary recall”.
Despite the recall supposedly being over nothing, Tesla “decided not to dispute a recall for the China market only,” the company’s managing counsel wrote to the NHTSA in a letter from early September. The same letter indicated that the NHTSA knew about the Chinese recall since the beginning of September – though we’re not sure why anybody would expect the NHTSA, who has sat idly by and watched one fatal wreck after another involving Teslas, to do anything about it.
Recall, as far back as 2016, we were reporting about an investigation into the suspension of Tesla vehicles.
A major lingering question is whether the Chinese recall could prompt a similar recall – that would likely affect over 200,000 vehicles – in the U.S.
Far be it for us to tell the U.S. government that China is setting the example, but when dealing with matters of automobile safety and not accepting petulance and nonsense from manchild Elon Musk, China is drawing a nice roadmap.
Now, if someone would just wake the NHTSA from their coma…
Futures, Yields Tumble With Trump Set To Win Florida Tyler Durden
Tue, 11/03/2020 – 19:58
Recall all our previews said that Florida is a key state for Trump: without it, it was pretty much game over for the president. Well, it appears that despite galatic-szied brains such as Nate Silver giving Trump just 31% odds of winning Florida…
Ant’s IPO Suspension Shows It’s Too Big To Fail Now Tyler Durden
Tue, 11/03/2020 – 19:45
By Ye Xie, Bloomberg macro commentator and analyst
The first shock on Election Day didn’t come from the U.S. Rather, it was the news that China suspended Ant Group’s $35 billion initial public offering.
It’s a PR nightmare for Beijing to call Ant’s IPO off on the eve of what would be the world’s largest public listing – especially after Ant spurned New York to list in Shanghai and Hong Kong. It came just days after co-founder Jack Ma criticized regulators for being out of touch and mocked banks as pawnshops. The financial impact was big enough to cause the Hong Kong dollar to fall Tuesday.
The direct trigger may be the recent moves by policy makers to tighten control over online lenders. On Monday, the banking regulator released draft rules that would force lenders to fund at least 30% of the loans they offer together with banks, compared with Ant’s 2% currently.
The timing may be unfortunate, but the message is clear: Safeguarding the financial system has become China’s policy priority again, now that Beijing has managed to put the economy back on its feet even as tensions with the U.S. stay elevated.
At its core, it’s a debate about whether fin-tech companies should be considered financial or tech companies. Regulators think Ant’s business model – using lending and leverage to make money – isn’t so different from traditional banks. Therefore, the company should be subject to similar supervision on leverage and capital requirements.
In other words, Ant needs to be closely watched because it is too big to fail. The numbers speak for itself. Ant’s platforms doled out 1.7 trillion yuan ($255 billion) of loans to about 500 million people in the year through June. It runs the world’s biggest digital payment system, and its Tianhong Yu’e Bao Money Market Fund is one of the world’s largest of its kind with about $173 billion in assets.
What’s next? It is likely that Ant gets the greenlight for listing soon after it achieves regulatory and disclosure compliance. Unwinding an IPO of that size, with subscriptions from the world’s sovereign wealth funds and Chinese pension funds, would be a disaster, as Krane Funds’ CIO Brendan Ahern put it. But it’s unlikely that Ant can get the same valuation now because its expansion has been called into question.
Jack Ma’s nickname is Papa Ma for his vast wealth and influence. On Tuesday, however, it became clear who the real Big Daddy is.
Iran Mocks Washington “Pirates Of The Caribbean” For Selling Seized Fuel For $40 Million Tyler Durden
Tue, 11/03/2020 – 19:25
Not for the first time Iran has slammed the United States as “the pirates of the Caribbean” after the Department of Justice announcement late last week boasting that 1.1 million barrels in petroleum recently seized from four Iranian tankers bound for Venezuela were sold for $40 million.
The DOJ had alleged that Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) operatives were behind the clandestine shipments of fuel and weapons meant to circumvent sanctions. “We estimate that in excess of $40 million will be recouped by the United States related to the sale of petroleum from those four vessels,” acting US attorney for the District of Columbia Michael Sherwin the told reporters last week.
In response Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh tweeted: “The Pirates of the Caribbean openly boasting about their booty…” And he added: “No one civilized brags [about] stealing.”
Khatibzadeh attached the below headline images to the message while also claiming the fuel actually didn’t belong to Iran at the moment it was stolen.
“Only, as we said before: it wasn’t ours. But [somebody] else’s oil has certainly been stolen,” Khatibzadeh said further.
According to the AFP, the DOJ indicated much of the proceeds from the sale would go to a US fund for victims of “state-sponsored terrorism”. The report detailed:
US courts have ordered Iran’s clerical regime to pay damages over attacks, most recently in July when a judge told Tehran to pay $879.1 million over a 1996 bombing in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 US airmen.
Iran denies responsibility and states it has no intention of paying, saying the United States should instead compensate for past episodes including its support of Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq War.
Meanwhile there’s no doubt that leaders in Tehran will be watching the US presidential election with bated breath hoping for a Joe Biden victory.
A prior Iranian fuel tanker that had made it to Venezuela.
Biden has vowed to restore US participation in the 2015 nuclear deal brokered under the Obama-Biden administration, so long as Iran comes back into adhering to uranium enrichment caps and other conditions its recently broken in protest.
On the other hand the continuation of Trump and Pompeo’s ‘maximum pressure’ campaign could mean war would eventually be on the horizon, and a smashed Iranian economy for years given the unprecedented sanctions regimen.
Election Day “Shocker”: Mueller Went After WikiLeaks & Roger Stone For DNC Hacks But Found ‘Lack Of Evidence’ Tyler Durden
Tue, 11/03/2020 – 18:55
Much belatedly and amazingly a mere hours before election day Buzzfeed News published a bombshell report late Monday night based on the DOJ newly declassifying previously secret portions of the Mueller report (following a successful FOIA lawsuit to obtain them). It’s yet more smoking gun evidence proving long after the fact that core aspects of now deflated ‘Russiagate’ that American media spent years devoting wall-to-wall coverage to were deliberate manufactured falsehoods (shocker!), specifically as regards claims of early collaboration and “collusion” between Trump staffers, WikiLeaks, and the Russian government.
Unfortunately, like with the latest news that put the final nail in the coffin of the Steele dossier hoax, this too will fast be memory-holed given it’s now election day. We learn 18-months after the initial report’s redacted release that despite putting one of the most hyped central allegations facing Trump’s team and his past campaign adviser Roger Stone under a microscope, Mueller’s team of hundreds of FBI agents simply “did not have sufficient evidence” and thus never pursued charges, as the Buzzfeed report begins:
Prosecutors investigated Julian Assange, WikiLeaks, and Roger Stone for the hacking of Democratic National Committee servers as well as for possible campaign finance violations, but ultimately chose not to charge them, newly released portions of the Mueller Report reveal.
Although WikiLeaks published emails stolen from the DNC in July and October 2016 and Stone — a close associate to Donald Trump — appeared to know in advance the materials were coming, investigators “did not have sufficient evidence” to prove active participation in the hacks or knowledge that the electronic thefts were continuing. In addition, federal prosecutors could not establish that the hacked emails amounted to campaign contributions benefitting Trump’s election chances and furthermore felt their publication might have been protected by the First Amendment, making a successful prosecution tenuous.
Recall that throughout years it was an unquestioned article of faith communicated to the American public over the airwaves of MSNBC, CNN, CBS, and others that WikiLeaks essentially ran cover for Russia in a grand DNC email hack conspiracy designed to influence the 2016 presidential election while embarrassing Hillary. We were “assured” that this played a crucial role in Trump’s victory over Clinton.
The widespread unfounded allegations also served to permanently taint WikiLeaks as some kind of Moscow influence op, which also no doubt added pressure to UK attempts to apprehend Julian Assange from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, which ended up happening.
The relevant newly unredacted section details that investigators “considered whether to charge WikiLeaks, Assange, or Stone as conspirators in the computer-intrusion conspiracy,” given WikiLeaks’ “role in disseminating the hacked materials, and the existence of some evidence that Stone played a role in coordinating” the publication of Clinton adviser John Podesta’s emails:
“While the Office cannot exclude the possibility of coordination between Stone and WikiLeaks or that additional evidence could come to light on that issue, the investigation did not obtain admissible evidence likely to meet the government’s burden to prove facts establishing such coordination beyond a reasonable doubt,” the newly released portion said.
Amazing. Hours before Election Day comes news that Mueller aggressively tried to prosecute Assange and Roger Stone for a conspiracy related to the 2016 DNC/Podesta emails, but ran into “factual…hurdles” which could not establish any conspiracy. Perfect time to memory-hole this pic.twitter.com/Q9Szys4MmL
“While the investigation developed evidence that the GRU’s hacking efforts in fact were continuing at least at the time of the July 2016 WikiLeaks dissemination,” a newly unredacted section of the report reads, prosecutors “did not develop sufficient admissible evidence that WikiLeaks knew of — or even was willfully blind to — that fact.”
Phrases that are deeply inconvenient to longtime Russiagate peddlers appear in the newly released sections, such as “factual…hurdles” and “proof..lacking”. Speaking of these legal hurdles the report said bluntly:
Regardless, success [of criminal charges] would also depend upon evidence of WikiLeaks’s and Stone’s knowledge of ongoing or contemplated future computer intrusions – the proof that is currently lacking.
Likewise, prosecutors faced what they called factual hurdles in pursuing Stone for the hack. The report notes they lacked proof “beyond a reasonable doubt that Stone knew or believed that the computer intrusions were ongoing at the time he ostensibly encouraged or coordinated the publication of the Podesta emails.”
Wow a Russiagate conspiracy theory “did not have sufficient evidence”, for some reason that’s not a shocker https://t.co/12un24dN2R
Mueller wrote that the Justice Department“did not have admissible evidence,” for conspiracy convictions to stick. This definitive confirmation comes a whopping 18-months after the original redacted report’s release.
The DOJ tried to argue it could “compromise ongoing investigations” or possibly reveal sensitive law enforcement tactics or procedures in keeping the new information classified.
Or perhaps given they understood it would inevitably be released one day, why not release when it’s too late for the information to make a major impact? That is… now that the election is already upon us and with Americans having voted or made up their minds. But as a reminder, this is precisely how propaganda is supposed to work after all.
A Wirepoints review of last month’s COVID-19 data reveals just how flawed Illinois’ response to the coronavirus continues to be. The recent spike in cases has the government shutting down large parts of the state again in a brute-force approach, when its efforts should, instead, be hyper-focused on the elderly and opening up the economy for everyone else.
Data from October shows that the elderly continue to dominate Illinois’ COVID deaths, even more than in recent months. Of the 393 increase in Illinois COVID deaths from September to October, nearly two-thirds came from those aged 80 and over. Illinois’ blanket lockdown policies have consistently failed to stem the deaths of the elderly since the pandemic began, especially those in nursing homes.
Meanwhile, those same blanket bans have destroyed jobs, damaged mental health and caused many other problems for Illinoisans who are far less likely to be affected by the coronavirus. The CDC’s latest projections show a survival rate of 99.98% for infected Americans aged 20-50.
With the elderly still inadequately protected and younger Illinoisans suffering harm disproportionate to their COVID risk, it’s clear the state’s approach to taking on the coronavirus is upside down.
Outbreaks and the elderly
To see how the state continues to fail its elderly population, take a quick look at the average age of all COVID deaths in Illinois over the last couple of weeks. The daily average often reached 80 and on some days exceeded 82 years of age.
Overall, the age of Illinois’ COVID deaths for the month of October averaged 80, at least three years higher than the average over the entire pandemic period.
The share of deaths by age group in October also reveals how elderly deaths are becoming more dominant. The 80 and older bracket made up 55% of all deaths in October, compared to just 45% from March through September.
Another cut at that data shows 91% of Illinois’ COVID deaths in October were in the 60-and-older bracket. That’s a major increase from the 86% figure for the period between March and September.
Amazingly, a large number of those elderly deaths are still linked to retirement homes, despite the massive coverage that crisis has received. More than 425 deaths were tied to Long Term Care facilities from Oct. 2 to Oct 30, over 44% of all Illinois COVID deaths in that period.
The fact that the state still hasn’t gotten the outbreaks in Illinois retirement homes under control shows how misguided the return to broad lockdowns is. Instead of focusing time and energy on protecting the specific population that is dying from COVID, Illinois’ efforts are hurting everyone – including those the CDC says have a very low probability of dying.
Younger Illinoisans and risk
The CDC recently released their estimates of COVID’s Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) for the country.
The IFRs show that people between the ages of 20 and 50 have a 99.98% probability of survival if they’re infected. Said in the opposite way, the chance of death after infection for those in that age bracket is at 0.02%. For those under 20, the chance of death from COVID is just 0.003%.
On the other hand, the CDC data also shows that the risk of death jumps to over 5% for those over 70, again making the case that it’s the elderly who are most at risk.
The other demographic the state should focus on are the non-elderly with pre-existing conditions. There are 187 Illinoisans under the age of 40 who have died of COVID since the start of the pandemic. Most of them had one or more pre-existing conditions that include hypertension, diabetes, heart disease and obesity. We don’t know precisely because IDPH refuses to publish the numbers.
However, the Cook County Medical Examiner does provide them for the county. Of the county’s 66 COVID victims under the age of 40 (those which listed COVID as the primary cause of death), 54 had one or more comorbidity.
COVID-19 is a serious risk to a far smaller population than the number of people impacted by the state’s broader lockdowns, which we warned from the beginning would do more harm than good.
That viewpoint is now endorsed by signers of The Great Barrington Declaration, which includes many of the world’s top epidemiologists and infectious disease experts.
The state has spent billions on economic and other relief efforts as a result of the lockdowns, but the more effective plan would be to broadly open up the state and spend what is necessary to protect the elderly and the vulnerable. That means obsessing over safety in retirement homes as well as providing assistance to the elderly living among the general public.
Preventing healthcare facilities from being overwhelmed is also key. The state should ensure hospitals have the resources needed to handle major spikes in cases.
Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened, at least not judging by Illinois’ overall bed capacity (the same can be said for Illinois’ overall ICU bed capacity). Illinois’ hospital bed capacity grew to 35,000 in June and hasn’t budged since.
The science and data behind COVID is telling us it’s time to reopen. Until the data proves otherwise – and we should be vigilant in looking out for any changes in the virus – it’s time to flip the state’s COVID policy on its head.
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