- Imperial Folly Brings Russia And Germany Together
Authored by Pepe Escobar via InformationClearingHouse.info,
The Empire of Whiners simply can't get enough when it comes to huff, puff and pout as the Empire of Sanctions.
With an Orwellian 99% majority that would delight the Kim dynasty in North Korea, the "representative democracy" Capitol Hill has bulldozed its latest House/Senate sanctions package, aimed mostly at Russia, but also targeting Iran and North Korea.
The White House's announcement – late Friday afternoon in the middle of summer – that President Trump has approved and will sign the bill was literally buried in the news cycle amidst the proverbial 24/7 Russia-gate related hysteria.
Trump will be required to justify to Congress, in writing, any initiative to ease sanctions on Russia. And Congress is entitled to launch an automatic review of any such initiative.
Translation; the death knell of any possibility for the White House to reset relations with Russia. Congress in fact is just ratifying the ongoing Russia demonization campaign orchestrated by the neocon and neoliberalcon deep state/War Party establishment.
Economic war has been declared against Russia for at least three years now. The difference is this latest package also declares economic war against Europe, especially Germany.
That centers on the energy front, by demonizing the implementation of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline and forcing the EU to buy US natural gas.
Make no mistake; the EU leadership will counterpunch. Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission (EC), put it mildly when he said, "America first cannot mean that Europe's interests come last."
On the Russia front, what the Empire of Sanctions faces does not even qualify as a hollow victory. Kommersant has reported that Moscow, among other actions, will retaliate by banning all American IT companies and all US agricultural products from the Russian market, as well as exporting titanium to Boeing (30% of which comes from Russia).
On the Russia-China strategic partnership front, trying to restrict Russia-EU energy deals will only allow more currency swaps between the ruble and the yuan; a key plank of the post-US dollar multipolar world.
And then there's the possible, major game-changer; the German front.
The Fools on the Hill
Even without considering the stellar historical record of Washington not only meddling but bombing and regime-changing vast swathes of the planet — from Iraq and Libya to the current threats against Iran, Venezuela and North Korea — the Russia-gate hysteria about meddling in the 2016 US presidential election is a non-story, by now thoroughly debunked.
The heart of the matter is, once again, energy wars.
According to a Middle East-based US energy source not hostage to the Beltway consensus, "the message in these sanctions is the EU has no future unless it buys US natural gas to cut out Russia. To deny Russia the natural gas market of the EU was the goal behind the just lost war in Syria to put the Qatar-Saudi Arabia-Syria-Turkey-EU pipeline in and the opening to Iran for an Iran-Iraq-Syria-Turkey-EU pipeline. None of these plans worked."
The source adds as evidence the 2014 oil price war against Russia, orchestrated by "the dumping of Gulf States' surplus oil or reserve capacity on the world market. Since this has failed to bring Russia to its knees, the destruction of the Russian natural gas market in the EU has become a national priority for the United States."
As it stands, 30% of all EU oil and natural gas imports come from Russia. In parallel, the Russia-China energy partnership is being progressively enhanced. Russia is already geared to increase oil and gas exports to China and Asia as a whole.
The leadership in Berlin is now convinced that Washington is jeopardizing Germany's energy diversification/energy security via the sanctions war. Russian natural gas and oil is secured by overland routes and is not dependent on the oceans, which, as the energy source stresses, "are no longer under United States control. If Russia in response to United States belligerency drops an Iron Curtain over Europe, and redirects all its natural gas and oil exports to China and Asia, Europe will be utterly dependent on largely insecure sources of natural gas and oil such as the Middle East and Africa."
And that bring us to the "nuclear" possibility in the horizon; a Germany-Russia alignment in a Reinsurance Treaty, as first established by Bismarck. CIA-related US Think Tankland is now actively discussing the possibility.
Another US business/political source, also a practitioner of thinking outside the (Beltway) box, stresses, "this is what it's all about. That is the true goal of Russia, and the United States has fallen into the trap. The United States has had enough of Germany and what it considers dumping of German products on the United States through rigged currency. They are now threatening Germany with sanctions, and there is nothing Germany can do with the EU on their back facing vetoes from Poland, who is giving them trouble once again. The fools in Congress are really going after Germany, and throwing Germany in the arms of Russia."
The US as the New Carthage
A possible Germany-Russia alliance, as I've written before, rounds up the China/Russia/Germany entente capable of reorganizing the entire Eurasian land mass.
The Russia-China strategic partnership is extremely attractive to German business, as it smoothes access via the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). According to the business/political source,
"the US is at war with China and Russia (but not Trump, our President) and Germany is having second thoughts about being nuclear cannon fodder for the US.
I have discussed this in Germany, and they are thinking of renewing the Reinsurance Treaty with Russia.
No one trusts this US Congress; it is considered a lunatic asylum. Merkel may be asked to leave for the leadership of the UN, and then the treaty would be signed. It will shake the world and end any thought of the United States being a global power, which it isn't anymore."
The source adds, half in zest, "we think that Brzezinski died under the pressure of the realization that this was coming and that all his hatred of Russia and his life work to destroy them was becoming utterly undone."
So, in a sense, it's "welcome to the 1930s all over again and the rise of nationalism in Europe. This time Germany will not make the mistakes of 1914 and 1941 but will stand against their traditional Anglo-Saxon enemies. The United States has truly become today's Carthage and the disorder in Congress reflects the same stupidity of Carthage facing Rome. Legislators undermined their genius Hannibal as they are undermining the greatest president of the United States since Andrew Jackson. As Sophocles wrote in 'Antigone', 'God first makes mad those he wishes to destroy.' This Congress is mad."
- Where Snowden Failed, THIS Won't
By Chris at www.CapitalistExploits.at
When in 2013 Ed Snowden revealed to Joe Sixpack that his data was indeed being hacked and intercepted, not by crazy vodka swilling Ivan in Novgorod but by team America, there was the sort of surprise and outrage that comes with finding your 5-year old just wiped snot across your brand new leather sofa. A lot of yelling and screaming, limbs flailing, and a decent level of embarrassment for Johnny Snotnose, who in this instance was the NSA.
Less than 12 months later, all was forgotten. In the end nobody gave an isht.
In the ghettos of social media the Kardashians were calling and “Hey look, did you know there are pornos on the Internet with woman and farm animals?”
Joe Sixpack doesn’t care about the fact that his photos are accessible, even the naughty ones. Indeed almost every app downloaded today requests permission to breach that gap. Joe doesn’t care about his contacts list being breached. He clicks the
“Sure, rape me”“Accept Permissions” button with glee, eager to get the download finished so that he can start sharing photos of what’s on his dinner plate with the whole world because… well, actually I have no idea.It’s insane to me. Sadly the hoi-polloi spend more time looking at Joe’s dinner choice than reading the fine print on the permissions they’ve just granted to the apps downloaded.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that a goldfish-like memory could be to blame. I certainly thought people would care but obviously I was wrong because ever since then we’ve had more reasons to be outraged over real problems of this nature than you could shake a stick at.
Since Snowden, Wikileaks have provided an absolute deluge of additional fodder in this space. What’s happened?
Nothing! Nobody cares.
Just yesterday we were alerted to “Dumbo” a CIA project.
Try finding anything on the MSM about it and it’s like searching for a Texan cattle farmer at a vegan food festival.
Sure, we know the MSM are a complete joke but the masses still gather around the MSM drinking fountain for their daily dose of intellectual junk food. What did they have to say on the topic?
Instead of outrage and public humiliation showered on the perpetrators, we’re treated to snowflakes, daffodils, and bubble bath enthusiasts fighting the injustices perpetrated on Joey, who goes by the name Sheila due to his desire to don a frock and spend all his money rearranging his bits at the cosmetic surgeon.
There is, however, one thing that’s going to change it all…
Money.
Data security is like a seatbelt. It only matters when you park the beemer into a gum tree at speed.
People only protect data when that data is attached to economic value.
Ask anyone who’s bought, sold, and transacted in bitcoin what computer they use and not one will say a Windows machine.
The reasons for this are quite simple. That’d be like driving blindfolded at speed without a seatbelt, after chugging back a half a bottle of Glenfiddich.
This is just a first step in data security, and I use bitcoin as an example because typically the folks who have spent any time figuring it out know a thing or two about data security and cryptography.
Back to the masses, though.
Clearly when the wet-lipped psychopaths at some three letter agency are looking at Joe’s Facebook content or the naughty video he made last night with his girlfriend, Joe doesn’t much care. But when Joe begins storing real value and assets on his computer or smartphone and they get stolen, then, and only then, will Joe very quickly attach value to his data security. The learning curve promises to be steep.
That world is coming super fast as I mentioned previously.
Adoption of safety measures will come faster than Brangelina were picking up new ethnic babies from Nambabwia or wherever a few years back. When people realise that their livelihood is directly attached to their data security, then, and only then, will the begin to care.
I posted this chart previously in an article on the rise of cyber security:
Mark Andreessen famously stated that software is eating the world and by George, he was right. With all that software though comes a different set of problems. One of those problems, one even larger than John Prescott, is cyber security.
Now once again, I suspect Joe Sixpack won’t give an isht if someone can see that he’s turning on his heating system from his smartphone while on the way home. But when it gets disrupted and hacked and his phone automatically pays for a weekend at the Marriott in Bali without his knowledge, Joe will search for solutions in a blind panic.
When Joe begins getting paid via smart contracts and in value tokens attached to his workplace and it’s all done on a network, Joe will care a lot.
Economic incentives, both fear and greed, never change. What’s changing is our financial architecture and how we’re going to have to deal with that.
Fortunes will be made on the back of what promises to be an explosion in data security. Watch!
– Chris
“The great fear that I have is that nothing will change.” — Edward Snowden
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Liked this article? Then you’ll probably like my other missives on
this topic as well. Go here to access them (free, of course).
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- From Jihad To Jobs, Paul Craig Roberts Says "Fakes News Is A US Media Specialty"
Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,
The American media specializes in fake news.
Indeed, since the Clinton regime the American media has produced nothing but fake news.
Do you remember the illegal US bombing and destruction of Yugoslavia? Do you remember “war criminal” Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian president branded “the butcher of the Balkans,” who was compared to Hitler until Hillary passed the title on to the President of Russia? Milosevic, not Bill Clinton, was arrested and placed on trial at the International Criminal Tribunal. He died in prison, some say murdered, before he was cleared of charges by the International Criminal Tribunal. http://www.globalresearch.ca/milosevic-and-the-destruction-of-yugoslavia-unpleasant-truths-no-one-wants-to-know/5540873
Do you remember the destruction of Iraq justified by the orchestrated propaganda, known by the criminal George W. Bush regime to be an outright lie, about Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction,” weapons that the UN arms inspectors verified did not exist? Iraq was destroyed. Millions of Iraqis were killed, orphaned, widowed, and displaced. Saddam Hussein was subjected to a show trial more transparent than Stalin’s trial of Bukharin and then murdered under the pretext of judicial execution.
Do you remember the destruction of Libya based entirely on Washington’s lies and the criminal misuse of the UN no-fly resolution by turning it into a NATO bombing of Libya’s military so that the CIA-armed jihadists could overthrow and murder Muammar Gaddafi? Do you remember the killer bitch Hillary gloating, “we came, we saw, he died!”
Do you remember the lies that the criminal Obama regime told about Assad of Syria and the planned US invasion of Syria that was blocked by the UK Parliament and the Russian government? Do you remember that Obama and the killer bitch sent ISIS to do the job that US troops were prevented from doing? Do you remember General Flynn revealing on TV that it was a “willful decision” of the criminal Obama regime to send ISIS to Syria over his objection as Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency? This bit of told truth is why Gen. Flynn is hated by the Washington criminals who forced him out as Trump’s National Security Adviser.
Do you remember the US coup in Ukraine against the democratically elected government and its replacement with a neo-nazi regime? Do you remember that Washington’s crime against Ukrainian democracy was quickly hidden behind false charges of “Russian invasion”?
Can you think of any truthful report in the American news in the past two decades?
All of the lies leading to the death of millions told by the criminal Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama regimes were transparent. The US media could easily have exposed them and saved the lives of millions of peoples and saved seven countries from destruction in whole or part. But the presstitutes cheered on the gratuitous and criminal destruction of countries and peoples. Every one of the presstitutes is a war criminal under the standards set by US Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson at the Nuremberg trials.
We cannot even get a truthful jobs report. Friday (Aug. 4) the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported 205,000 new private sector jobs in July and a drop in the unemployment rate to 4.3%. This is fake news.
The Associated Press’s Christopher Rugaber rah-rahs the fake news, adding that many economists think “robust hiring could continue for many more months, or even years.” Let’s think about that for a moment. Generally speaking economists regard full employment to be a 5% rate of unemployment. There can never be a zero rate of unemployment because of frictions in the job market. For example, there are people between jobs who have lost or quit a job and are looking for a new one, and there are people who have dropped out of the work force, perhaps to spend more time parenting or to care for an aged and ill parent, and have reentered the work force. Economists also believe that employment cannot go too low without pushing up inflation.
Assuming economists have not suddenly changed their minds about what rate of unemployment is full employment, if the unemployment rate is currently 4.3%, it is already below the full employment rate. How can the rate continue to fall for years when the economy is already at full employment? Apparently, this question did not occur to the AP reporter or to the “many economists.”
Of course, the 4.3% unemployment rate is fake news. It does not include millions of discouraged workers. When these workers who have not looked for jobs within the last four weeks are included, the unemployment rate jumps to 22-23%.
Now consider the alleged 205,000 July new jobs. Probably about half of these jobs are due to the add-ons from the birth-death model, and the other half from manipulations of seasonal adjustments. John Williams at shadowstats.com will tell us. However, let’s assume the jobs are really there. Where does the BLS tell us the jobs are?
Eighty-nine percent of the jobs are in services, essentially domestic non-tradable services.
Professional and business services account for 49,000 of the jobs, of which 30,000 are in administrative and waste services (garbage collection) and 14,700 are in temporary help services.
54,000 of the jobs are in education and health services, of which ambulatory health care services, home health care services and social assistance account for 46,900 of the jobs.
62,000 of the jobs are in leisure and hospitality, of which waitresses and bartenders account for 53,100 of the jobs and amusements, gambling, and recreation account for 5,900 jobs.
This picture of American employment has been holding for about two decades. It is a portrait of a third world labor force. The jobs are not in export industries. The jobs are not in high productivity, high value-added occupations that produce a middle class income. The jobs are in lowly paid, often part-time domestic services.
The jobs do not produce incomes that provide discretionary spending to drive up business profits. So why did the stock market hit new highs? The answer is that corporate executives are taking advantage of the Federal Reserve’s zero interest rates to borrow money with which to buy back their companies’ shares in order to drive up their bonuses, the main component of their pay.
But these undeniable facts about employment did not prevent Christopher Rugaber and the other financial presstitutes or newspaper headline writers or “many economists” from asking “How much better can it get?” (Atlanta Journal-Constitution front page, Aug. 5, 2017).
It is not only seven Muslim countries that Washington and its presstitutes have destroyed in whole or part with lies. Washington’s lies have also destroyed the American economy and the American work force.
- Mysterious Trader With "Nearly Unlimited Bankroll" Said To Manipulate, Dominate Price Of Bitcoin
It was over three years ago, back in May 2014, when we wrote “How Bots Manipulated The Price Of Bitcoin Through “Massive Fraudulent Trading Activity” At MtGox” in which we first demonstrated one of the more striking observed “bot-driven” bitcoin manipulation schemes, in this case related to the infamous collapse of the now defunct Mt.Gox bitcoin exchnage.
As we wrote at the time, a number of traders began noticing suspicious behavior on Mt. Gox. Basically, a random number between 10 and 20 bitcoin would be bought every 5-10 minutes, non-stop, for at least a month on end until the end of January, by what appeared to be two algos, named later as “Willy” and “Markis.” Each time, (1) an account was created, (2) the account spent some very exact amount of USD to market-buy coins ($2.5mm was most common), (3) a new account was created very shortly after. Repeat. In total, a staggering ~$112 million was spent to buy close to 270,000 BTC – the bulk of which was bought in November.
“So if you were wondering how Bitcoin suddenly appreciated in value by a factor of 10 within the span of one month, well, this is why. Not Chinese investors, not the Silkroad bust – these events may have contributed, but they certainly were not the main reason. But who did it? and why?”
Of course, in the end this alleged manipulation did not help Mt.Gox which eventually collapsed in what has been the biggest case of cryptocoin fraud in history.
We bring up this particular blast from the past, because in the latest case of bitcoin market abuse – with Bitcoin trading at all time highs above $3,000 – Cointelegraph reports of rumors swirling about a trader “with nearly unlimited funds who is manipulating the Bitcoin markets.” This trader, nicknamed “Spoofy,” received his “nom de guerre” because of his efforts to “spoof” the market, primarily on Bitfinex.
Of course, spoofing is what Navinder Sarao pled guilty of last year, when regulators inexplicably changed their story, and instead of blaming a Waddell and Reed sell order for the May 2010 flash crash, decided to scapegoat the young trader who allegedly crashed the market due to his relentless spoofing of E-mini futures (and also making $40 million in the process of spoofing stock futures for over five years).
It now appears that a spoofer has once again emerged, only this time in Bitcoin.
For those unfamiliar, spoofing is simple: it is the illegal practice of placing a large buy order just below other buy orders, or a large sell order just above other sell orders, then cancelling if it appears that the order is about to be hit or lifted. The idea is to make traders think that somebody with deep pockets is getting ready to buy or sell, in hopes of moving the market. If traders see a sell order of 2000 Bitcoin they may rush to panic sell before the whale crashes the price. And vice versa on the bid-side.
As an example of Spoofy’s trading pattern, here is a breakdown of a typical “trade” by the mysterious entity as noted by BitCrypto’ed who first spotted the irregular activity: Spoofy is a regular trader (or a group of traders) who engages in the following practices:
- Places large bids ($2 million and up) for Bitcoin, usually just under a smaller bid order, only to remove them once someone starts to sell. These orders usually have a lifetime of minutes, or sometimes as short as 5–10 seconds to manipulate the price up (more common)
- Places large asks ($2 million and up), for Bitcoin when he wants the price to go down, or stop going up (less common)
- Occasionally ‘Spoofy’ will allow orders deep in the orderbooks to remain for a few hours, usually $50–$100 below the current price. For example, during the recovery above $2,000, he had roughly 4,000 BTC of false orders in the $1,900 range that were unlikely to execute, and ultimately were never executed.
As noted above, spoofing is actually illegal – as ultimately the trader has no intention of ever executing the publicized trade – but as Bitcoin markets are largely unregulated, it’s a very common practice.
What is unusual in this case is the nearly unlimited bankroll that Spoofy has at his disposal: He regularly places orders approaching $60 million.
Even more unusual is that, as cointelegraph reports, most of Spoofy’s activity occurs on a single exchange: Bitfinex. This exchange came under fire earlier this spring when Wells Fargo cut off their banking ties. As a result, it’s virtually impossible to deposit fiat on Bitfinex without going through intermediaries.
Yet unlike most Bitfinex traders, Spoofy appears to have special privileges, and has massive sums of both fiat and Bitcoin at his disposal on that exchange, likely one of the only traders who does.
* * *
In addition to spoofing, “Spoofy” also engages in wash trading, or effectively trading with himself. As BitCrypto’ed points out in a recent blog post:
“Spoofy makes the price go up when he wants it to go up, and Spoofy makes the price go down when he wants it to go down, and he’s got the coin… both USD, and Bitcoin, of course, to pull it off, and with impunity on Bitfinex.”
The BitCrypto’ed blog also describes Spoofy’s wash trades, when he trades with himself by either selling into his own buy orders or vice versa. Wash trading at high volumes can induce a frenzy of buying or selling, as other traders respond to the high trading volume. Spoofy can execute wash trades at very low cost, about $1,000 per million dollars of volume.
A single entity (entity could be a trader, or a group of traders), single handedly wash traded 24,000 Bitcoins in shorts. In order to do this, you would need to have at least 24,000 BTC on Bitfinex and the USD to buy them with.
When Bitfinex announced its plan to distribute Bitcoin Cash, it initially planned to distribute Bitcoin Cash to holders of short positions. Immediately following that announcement, a single trader short sold tens of thousands of Bitcoin all at once. It’s likely this trader was Spoofy himself, hoping to acquire as much Bitcoin Cash as possible.
The large number of shorts on Bitfinex also led many to believe that an epic short squeeze was coming, and many Bitcoin traders purchase coins in expectation of this. Suddenly, he “claimed” all of his own shorts, closing them using his own Bitcoin. The number of shorts dropped drastically, yet without affecting the price at all.
Bifinex itself admitted the manipulation on August 2, one day after the fork:
“After the methodology announcement on July 27th, several accounts began large-scale manipulation tactics in an attempt to obtain BCH tokens at the expense of exchange longs and lenders on the platform, causing the distribution coefficient to artificially plummet.
We have determined that this kind of manipulation?—?including wash trading and self-funding shorts?—?is in violation of Bitfinex’s terms of service. Those who intended to take unfair advantage of the circumstances surrounding the BCH distribution at the expense of other users have been sanctioned accordingly.”
Interestingly, BitCrypto’ed claims that Spoofy isn’t limited to just Bitcoin, and that shortly after this ‘trader’ was ‘sanctioned’ by Bitfinex, another interesting thing happened: ETCBTC shorts immediately disappeared on August 1.
Here we can see how the ETCBTC shorts simply vanished, from 60,000 ETC short, to a low of 93 ETC. But let’s not just look at ETCBTC, what about ETCUSD?
A giant middle finger. Notice the dramatic increase and decrease in longs with no effect on price.
I’m not sure what to make of these, but it calls into question the legitimacy of this data. The point I’m trying to make by showing the ETCBTC/ETCUSD margin pairs also engaging in very funny business at the same exact time, how are we supposed to know that the BTCUSD longs on Bitfinex are not also subject to this manipulation?
ETCBTC Shorts = Clear evidence of manipulation
ETCUSD Longs =Clear evidence of manipulation
BTCUSD Shorts = Clear evidence of manipulation (and admitted by Bitfinex)
BTCUSD Longs = BTCUSD Longs in terms of USD, has never been higher in Bitfinex’s history. See the green line.
It’s not just Bitfinex: Spoofy’s activity also drives crypto prices on other exchanges, as arbitrage takes place. Because BItcoin is so thinly traded, a single large “whale” can potentially move the entire market.
Just like in US stock markets where HFTs find instant price arbitrage opportunities, with the help of extensive spoofing, the same takes place in bitcoin exchange.
People underestimate how much exchanges follow each other. Manipulation on one exchange will affect prices on other exchanges. You have traders that watch all of the exchanges and if one exchange starts to pull ahead, they too buy on cheaper exchanges.
You don’t just have people, but you also have bots that will do the same thing, so price reactions can be immediate.
Just like equities. And while Spoofy is certainly exercising outsized control over the Bitcoin price, it is uncertain how much of an affect this is having across all the markets. The price is currently rising, having finally surmounted the $3,000 barrier. The only problem? Nobody knows how much of this increase is organic and sustainable, and how much is due to the market manipulation of Spoofy and others.
Finally, nobody knows who he is: The identity of Spoofy remains a mystery. He may be i) a single trader, ii) a large OTC trading firm or group of colluding traders, iii) or even the Bitfinex management themselves. He sometimes seeks to drop Bitcoin price, and sometimes acts to increase it. One thing is certain: one single trader seems to have a “central bank”-like impact on the entire crypto market.
- Stephen Miller Is Reportedly In The Running For Scaramucci's Old Job At The White House
President Donald Trump has barely been in office for six months and already he's seen three communications directors come and go – Mike Dubke, Sean Spicer (who handled its duties when the post was vacant) and Anthony Scaramucci.
And now sources inside the White House are telling Axios that Senior Policy Adviser Stephen Miller is in the running for the communications director job after his on-camera thrashings of CNN’s Jim Acosta and the NYT’s Glenn Thrush elicited widespread praise from conservatives last week and reportedly made an impression on the president.
To be sure, the Trump administration is still “in the name-gathering process” and Miller isn’t even the top contender for the job. Miller faces some opposition, including from members of the Republican establishment, who believe he’s “unpersuasive.” But the fact that he made Acosta look like a “jacka**” in front of the whole country has helped him in Trump’s estimation.
Miller’s experience working with the media began during his stint as an aide to then-Senator Jeff Sessions. At the time, he “was effectively an adjunct of the Breitbart team,” according to Axios. During his tenure in the White House, he’s already helped shape the administration’s communications strategy by working on some of Trump’s biggest speeches, including the “American Carnage” inaugural address, which he co-wrote with Steve Bannon.
Miller also has a reputation for “bugging reporters at all hours with his story pitches, and seemingly had a direct line to Matt Drudge. The running joke was that the Sessions' office had a permanent lease on at least one of the prized top-left Drudge links.”
As Axios notes, the quality that Trump values most is an aide's ability to make him look good on television – particularly if they can do it at the expense of a CNN or NYT reporter, like Miller did.
Even Thrush admits that Miller is obviously qualified.
Been rumored forever. This makes all the sense in the world. https://t.co/HjvKGelYvX
— Glenn Thrush (@GlennThrush) August 5, 2017
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
But the most important question, which Axios doesn’t address, is what’s the relationship like between Miller and Trump’s new Chief of Staff John Kelly, who was widely credited with ousting Scaramucci from the communications director post last month after he had held the job for only 10 days. Miller’s knack for currying favor with the Jared and Ivanka faction in the West Wing has helped him establish a reputation as someone who’s widely liked and respected in the administration, particularly for his “rainman” like ability to recall immigration statistics.
Still, does he have the "General's" respect? His chances of lasting in the job more than just a few weeks depend on it.
- Did An Author From The 1800s Predict Trump And America's Downfall?
Authored by Josie Wales via TheAntiMedia.org,
Did a 19th-century author really predict Trump’s election, Russiagate, and the potential collapse of the country?
It’s impossible to say for sure, but the ever-resourceful and endlessly curious users of Reddit and 4chan have unearthed some fascinating evidence to give some substance to the fantasy.
In the late 1800s, an American lawyer, political writer, and novelist named Ingersoll Lockwood penned two fantasy novels about a highly-imaginative little boy named “Wilhelm Heinrich Sebastin von Troomp, commonly called, ‘Little Baron Trump,’ and his wonderful dog Bulger.” Little Baron Trump is the main character in both The Travels and Adventures of Little Baron Trump and His Wonderful Dog Bulgar and Baron Trump’s Marvelous Underground Journey, which follow the wealthy boy and his dog as they leave “Castle Trump” to embark on a journey underground to explore the theory that the earth is not solid, but inhabited by people who were chased underground by “terrible disturbances.”
The boy learned of this theory through a manuscript given to him by his father called World within a World, which was written by a celebrated thinker and philosopher named Don Fum. Before leaving Castle Trump in the Marvelous Underground Journey, Baron’s father refers to Don as a “safe and trusty counselor” and reminds him of the Trump motto – “the pathway to glory is strewn with pitfalls and dangers.” As Baron goes on a search for the portal to the “World within a World” with Don as his guide, his travels take him to the Ural mountains in Russia. So Little Baron Trump and his dog are guided by Don to Russia.
While all of this is fascinating – and one heck of a coincidence – it’s Lockwood’s third book that really throws everyone for a loop.
“The Chicago Platform assumes, in fact, the form of a legendary propaganda. It embodies a menace of national disintegration and destruction.”
That quote, taken from Garret A. Hobart’s public speech of acceptance of the Republican nomination on September 10th, 1896, also serves as the epigraph of a book also published in 1896 by Ingersoll Lockwood, titled 1900 or The Last President. It was stamped by the Library of Congress on September 28th, just two weeks after Hobart gave that speech.
The Last President opens in New York City on November 3rd, 1896, with the announcement of the newly-elected president of the United States, who happens to be an outsider candidate – the candidate who represented the “common man,” who would liberate the people from the grip of the bankers, and “undo the bad business of years of unholy union between barters and sellers of human toil and the law makers of the land.”
Aka, an anti-establishment candidate.
The very first page describes New York in turmoil over the announcement, with mounted policemen yelling through the streets:
“Keep within your houses; close your doors and barricade them. The entire East Side is in an uproar.
Mobs of vast size are organizing under the lead of Anarchists and Socialists, and threaten to plunder and despoil the houses of the rich who have wronged them for so many years.”
As the riots advance upon Madison Square, the book reads,
“The Fifth Avenue Hotel will be the first to feel the fury of the mob.
Would the troops be in time to save it?”
According to Newsweek, Trump Tower now sits where The Fifth Avenue Hotel used to stand.
There are many theories floating around the internet; some say Barron Trump is actually Lockwood, who traveled through time to write about his adventures; others believe Steve Bannon is a 50-year old Barron Trump and they’re time-traveling together; another believes “we are all Barron and Barron is all of us,” and some of us are simply chalking it up to 2017 having a competition with itself to see just how weird it can get.
- Baltimore Weekend Ceasefire Ends With 2 Killings
Submitted by Stock Board Asset
Heading into this weekend, we reported on a ceasefire agreement between Baltimore “gang leaders, drug dealers and others linked to the violence”. The ceasefire was called “Nobody kill anybody for 72-hours”, but it seems that was too much to ask for the violence-plagued city on pace for its highest number of killings ever.
In the 42nd hour of the ceasefire, gunshots were heard at the 1300 block of Sargeant Street around 5:03pm (walking distance to Ravens Stadium). Officers arrived to find a 24-year old man suffering from gunshot wounds, where he died at Maryland Shock Trauma Center.
Around 10 p.m., officers responded to the 1600 block of Gertrude Ct, where a 37-year-old man was shot. He later died at Maryland Shock Trauma Center. Baltimore’s war-torn streets are located 40-miles north of Washington, D.C., where President Trump is too busy tweeting about Chicago’s violence. What’s rarely discussed on a national level is how Baltimore’s homicide rate is now doubled Chicago’s. Also, Baltimore’s population is 14-times smaller than New York City, but manages to sustain a higher homicide count this year.
Baltimore police spokesman T.J. Smith said that the killings should not take away from the goals of organizers. The killings appear to be the first homicides of the weekend according to NBC.
“Yes, there was a homicide. But,the work doesn’t stop,” Smith said in a tweet Saturday evening. “Organizers called and are in the area to continue to spread love.” Smith’s 24-year-old brother, Dionay Smith, was fatally shot in July.
Yes, there was a homicide. But,the work doesn’t stop. Organizers called and are in the area to continue to spread love. #BaltimoreCeasefire
— T.J. Smith (@TJSmithMedia) August 6, 2017
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Before the weekend, the city recorded 208 homicides in 2017, NBC affiliate WBAL-TV reported. Far larger New York City has recorded 160 murders through July 30, according to police data. Before the cease-fire began, one of the movement’s organizers, Erricka Bridgeford, said the effort might not stop all violence — but it could be a step in the right direction.
“We don’t think this is a cure,” she said. “We don’t think this will even necessarily stop violence that weekend, but we know that some people have made promises that they won’t, and that just might save somebody’s life.”
At the moment, crime and despair is certainly plaguing Baltimore’s inner city. The Economist lends a hand and signals their homicide model is indicating 2017 will be the deadliest year ever in Baltimore.
In July, we wrote an article titled: Visualizing America’s Wealth Inequality (From The Sky Above Baltimore). The article highlights the massive wealth inequality gap in Baltimore… Citizens are starting to wake up to the fact that 50-years of Democrat controlled leadership, along with deindustrialization has turned Baltimore into an utter war zone.
What I’m about to show you is a unique experience of Baltimore’s ceasefire. In the video, we start with an aerial tour of West Baltimore where the homicide rate is doubled Chicago’s. Then, we transition onto the streets with the activist and organizers of Baltimore’s ceasefire. This is a unique experience that the mainstream media will not show you because it destroys the narrative that everything is awesome.
You’ll hear for yourself from the citizens who live in these war-torn areas that everything is not awesome and they’re tired of being ignored. The longer mainstream ignores America’s inner city problem, the longer we waste time in finding a solution. As of today, there are no viable solutions to fix America’s inner cities, otherwise we wouldn’t be having this informative conversation.
America’s inner cities are becoming a public health issue that will soon affect us all. We’re all in this together….
- Ending the Golden Age of Nothingness
Sir Isaac Newton once famously said, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
Well, Ike knew a thing or two; for it is indubitable that he would never have had the necessary foundation of knowledge to whip up the law of universal gravitation without the works of Euclid or Copernicus before him. If not for Bach – and his father’s strict hand – perhaps Beethoven would have been a bricklayer. Without Langton and Magna Carta, the Founding Fathers never write the Constitution.
Those giants of Western Civilization were once of a sort that served mankind with wisdom, guiding their antecedents to look towards a future of beauty, freedom, and existential meaning. One Golden Age developed after another as great men were inspired to outdo the other or even to reach for the heavens in art, architecture, music, and literature.
Lately, though, it seems we’ve decided to perch instead on postmodern beings who, while great in technological stature, are cultural ogres.
When we peer through the looking glass today, all we see, both immediately surrounding and far afield, is a desolation of ugliness and mediocrity:
- Soulless architecture that betokens our standing as utilitarian drones.
- Popular music sung (or mumbled, rather) in the gutter-mouthed patois of degenerate gang members.
- Pointless films – often written by committee and informed by focus groups – that wallow for two banal hours in quick-cut action scenes without dramatic tension; one-dimensional characters as performed by two-dimensional celebrities in third-rate productions.
- An educational system that replaces the canon of Dante, Donne, and Mallory with The Red Wheelbarrow.
Modern art affirms nothing except for mindless consumerism and appealing to our basest instincts. For all our advanced tools and broad access to them, mankind should be practically minting new artistic genius. Yet nothing today can top the achievements of those of ages gone by.
So why then does Nature no longer, to paraphrase Forster, “throw out a god” to stand out as divine amongst the “thin-hammed mediocrities”, than when there were billions fewer in the world?
Because when it comes to art, profit motive suborns beauty and invites the average.
This wasteland came about when the best and most talented minds – those who could have been the next Shakespeare or Michelangelo – departed the land of the arts in favor of a life serving as cogs in a corrupted, increasingly statist machine that separates individuality and spits out utility.
When potentially great creators go where the money is, the fields of cultural endeavor are left to be tended by fools.
Soon after the best and brightest left for semi-lucrative STEM careers, the lands became fallow and our current Cultural Dark Age is the result; this abandonment has left the arts securely in the hands of green-haired Gender Studies majors and Nietzsche’s Last Man in skinny jeans.
Each passing generation then subsists off this degraded fare which nourishes neither the intellect nor the soul. Eventually, there will be no one left who can remember tasting anything better and thus the negative feedback loop is in full motion.
It will only worsen until conservatives realize that those who pump the imagery of art into the minds of the young wield infinitely more power than any engineer or writer of computer code could ever dream. That is why the left won the propaganda wars of the past few generations so completely. The cycle only breaks when the political right starts grooming their children to Make Culture Great Again.
One is constantly reading well-meaning advice in the columns and comments sections of alternative media stressing that parents should continue to nudge their children towards the hard sciences, because that’s the sector where they can procure the best livelihoods.
This is sound on the surface, especially for young adults whose gifts are geared for such work. But if you do push them towards those disciplines, make sure they are on the path to self-employment or starting their own companies. Because even in the STEM fields, conservatives hold little power.
Those kids will eventually be forced to toil for the leftists of Silicon Valley who grew up immersed in, and proudly adhere to, subversive culture. Or the budding scientist must supplicate to those in Washington who dispense the science grants. Kiss advancement goodbye if you hold the wrong opinions.
They’ll be employed by a corsortium of elitists whose ultimate goals are not only antithetical to tradition and morality, but will hasten its extinction.
These are the oligarchs whose philosophical ends are to bring about the Singularity, to silence dissent, or level humanity under one-world governance where cultural greatness, or even humble simplicity, will be made impossible. Better that your kid become a blue-collar laborer or even a NEET with a free mind than to be servants to a wicked system.
But for those of you with children of a creative bent, consider home-schooling them (or enrolling them in carefully-selected private schools) so you can bypass an educational system that is actively airbrushing Western Man’s achievements out of the history books; a system that has perverted the traditional liberal arts beyond recognition and almost out of remembrance.
Once a sufficient number are again steeped in what is the best of mankind, they will be back on the shoulders of proper giants.
They will then write the great novels, paint the sublime portraits, and direct the spiritually fortifying films that can make the fields of culture fertile once more. In so doing, the mediocrities will be banished to their romper rooms where they can frame each other’s finger paintings in deserved obscurity.
By reclaiming education and the arts from the left, we can end our current Golden Age of Nothingness and maybe even repair capitalism in the process.
A new Renaissance – moored to beauty, truth, and ethics – will ennoble the Man of the West, restoring him back to a balanced, fuller humanity. It will be as a torch to burn off the fraud and moral hazard that has attached itself like a leech to our increasingly globalist going concerns. Where virtue exists in abundance, such shady and mercenary practices are reviled.
Economic patriotism and handshake deals will be back in vogue. Instead of capitalism making utility of man, man will make utility of capitalism as originally conceived.
Lord Feverstone of Dystopia USA
- Illinois Makes "Barack Obama Day" State Holiday
Former President Barack Obama got a special present for his birthday this year: his very own holiday. According to NBC Chicago, on Friday Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner signed into law a measure to designate Aug. 4 as “Barack Obama Day” across the state. The holiday will be celebrated each year on Obama’s birthday beginning in 2018.
The holiday will be “observed throughout the State as a day set apart to honor the 44th President of the United States of America who began his career serving the People of Illinois in both the Illinois State Senate and the United States Senate, and dedicated his life to protecting the rights of Americans and building bridges across communities,” Senate Bill 55 reads.
Gov. Rauner praised the idea behind the bill earlier this year after a previous version, which would have made the day a legal state holiday, failed. The new holiday is commemorative.
“It’s incredibly proud for Illinois that the president came from Illinois. I think it’s awesome, and I think we should celebrate it,” Rauner told reporters in February. “I don’t think it should be a formal holiday with paid, forced time off, but I think it should be a day of acknowledgment and celebration.”
SB 55 was introduced by Sen. Emil Jones III, the son of former Senate President Emil Jones, Jr., who played a major role in launching then-state Senator Obama to the U.S. Senate in 2004 and considers himself to be the former president’s political “godfather.” While several lawmakers abstained from voting on the measure, it passed both houses without a single vote against.
“Barack Obama Day” joins other commemorative holidays like Adlai Stevenson Day, Ronald Reagan Day and Jane Addams Day, for which workplaces do not close.
Local legislators also voted in July to rename part of a Chicago-area highway after their former colleague, designating the stretch of Interstate 55 from the Tri-State Tollway south to mile marker 202 near Pontiac as the “Barack Obama Presidential Expressway.”
On Friday, Obama celebrated his 56th birthday, his first since leaving the White House, with Michelle Obama at Rasika West End in Washington, D.C.
Also on Friday morning, Joe Biden wished Obama happy birthday on Twitter Friday morning. “Your service has been a great gift to the country, and your friendship and brotherhood are a great gift to me. Happy birthday, Barack.”
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