Mar 07

Today’s News 7th March 2018

  • World's Largest Crypto Exchanges Are Raking In $3M A Day

    It doesn’t matter whether the price of bitcoin (or any other cryptocurrency) is rising or falling. The exchanges that execute the bulk of global crypto transactions are winning either way.

    As Bloomberg points out, while investors have fixated on the massive price appreciation across cryptocurrency pairs, in reality, it’s the exchanges that are pulling in the real money. The largest exchanges are generating as much as $3 million a day in fees – an amount that could eventually reach more than $1 billion for the year.

    And that’s using the lowest range of the fee scale…

    “The exchanges and transaction processors are the biggest winners in the space because they’re allowing people to transact and participate in this burgeoning sector,” said Gil Luria, an equity analyst at D.A. Davidson & Co, who reviewed the methodology for the revenue estimates.

    “There’s a big business there and it would not surprise me if they’re making hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue and possibly even billions a year.”

    Tokyo-based Binance, which has a reputation for listing almost every ICO, and Hong Kong-based OKEx are handling the largest volume of trading, equal to about $1.7 billion daily. Based on fees of 0.2 percent, which are higher than OKEx’s 0.07 percent for the most active traders, Binance is probably bringing in the most cash. Binance, which first launched in July, has experienced growth that’s unprecedented, even for the world of cryptocurrencies.

    Huobi, Bitfinex, Upbit and Bithumb, all of which are also based in Asia, are next in the rankings. These exchanges process between $600 million and $1.4 billion of trading volume and charge fees of 0.3 percent on average.

    Crypto

    More than half of the crypto currency trading happens on Asia-based exchanges, according to data compiled by smart contract platform Aelf. “They don’t make users go through the know-your-customer process until withdrawal,” Slaughter said. “It’s a complicated process. You can lose customers in the two or four hours that it takes. In Binance, you can go from not having an account to having funds on an account in less than 20 minutes.”

    South Korean exchange Upbit, which is among the top five in trading volume, only started operating in October. It’s controlled by Dunamu Inc., which also owns Kakao Talk, the most popular messaging app in Korea. Upbit is integrated in Kakao Talk and lists over 120 cryptocurrencies, thanks to a partnership with the US-based exchange Bittrex.

    All of the exchanges are privately held and only a few years old, which often means it’s difficult to pinpoint financial information or details about their management – and indeed, as we’ve pointed out before, some of the largest exchanges have attracted the scrutiny of regulators due to their shady business practices. HitBTC, the 10th largest, doesn’t provide any information on who runs it or where the firm is based, even as customers asked these questions on the exchange’s forum. Bit-Z, WEX and EXX, among the 20 biggest by trading volume, are some of the others that don’t provide those details either.

    However, competition from established financial institutions – like, say, Goldman Sachs –  public companies and traditional financial firms may push crypto exchanges to be more transparent and even reduce costs.

    “More conventional businesses like banks and funds are likely to acquire crypto platforms at some point to make sure they have a strategic foothold in the market,” he said. “It’s a no-brainer. Financial services is where all the real business revenue in crypto is,” said Chris Slaughter, co-founder of crypto investment platform Samsa.

  • Dictator For Life: The Rise Of The American Imperial President

    Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

    I’m not a fan of Communist China.

    It’s a vicious totalitarian regime that routinely employs censorship, surveillance, and brutal police state tactics to intimidate its populace, maintain its power, and expand the largesse of its corporate elite.

    Just recently, in fact, China – an economic and political powerhouse that owns more of America’s debt than any other country and is buying up American businesses across the spectrum – announced its plan to make its president, Xi Jinping, president for life.

    President Trump jokingly thinks that’s a great idea.

    Trump thinks the idea of having a president for life is so great, in fact, that America might want to move in that direction. “Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday,” joked Trump.

    Here’s the thing: we already have a president for life.

    Sure, the names and faces and parties have changed over the years, but really, when you drill down under the personalities and political theater, you’ll find that the changing names and faces are merely cosmetic: no matter who sits on the throne, the office of the president of the United States has, for all intents and purposes, become a unilateral power unto itself.

    Although the Constitution invests the President with very specific, limited powers, in recent years, American presidents (Trump, Obama, Bush, Clinton, etc.) have claimed the power to completely and almost unilaterally alter the landscape of this country for good or for ill.

    The powers amassed by each successive president through the negligence of Congress and the courts—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 presidency itself has become an imperial one with permanent powers.

    As law professor William P. Marshall explains, “every extraordinary use of power by one President expands the availability of executive branch power for use by future Presidents.” Moreover, it doesn’t even matter whether other presidents have chosen not to take advantage of any particular power, because “it is a President’s action in using power, rather than forsaking its use, that has the precedential significance.”

    In other words, each successive president continues to add to his office’s list of extraordinary orders and directives, expanding the reach and power of the presidency and granting him- or herself near dictatorial powers.

    So you see, we have been saddled with a “president for life”—i.e., a dictator for life—for some time now.

    This abuse of presidential powers has been going on for so long that it has become the norm, the Constitution be damned.

    The government of laws idealized by John Adams has fallen prey to a government of men.

    As a result, we no longer have a system of checks and balances.

    All of the imperial powers amassed by Barack Obama and George W. Bush—to kill American citizens without due process, to detain suspects indefinitely, to strip Americans of their citizenship rights, to carry out mass surveillance on Americans without probable cause, to suspend laws during wartime, to disregard laws with which he might disagree, to conduct secret wars and convene secret courts, to sanction torture, to sidestep the legislatures and courts with executive orders and signing statements, to direct the military to operate beyond the reach of the law, to operate a shadow government, and to act as a dictator and a tyrant, above the law and beyond any real accountability—were inherited by Donald Trump.

    These presidential powers—acquired through the use of executive orders, decrees, memorandums, proclamations, national security directives and legislative signing statements and which can be activated by any sitting president—enable past, president and future presidents to operate above the law and beyond the reach of the Constitution.

    These are the powers that will be passed along to each successive heir to the Oval Office.

    This is what you might call a stealthy, creeping, silent, slow-motion coup d’etat.

    Donald Trump has already picked up where his predecessors left off: he has continued to wage war, he has continued to federalize the police, and he operates as if the Constitution does not apply to him.

    As tempting as it may be to lay all the blame at Trump’s feet for the totalitarian state of the nation right now, remember that he didn’t create the police state.

    He merely inherited it, along with the dictatorial powers of the presidency.

    If we are to return to a constitutional presidency, we must recalibrate the balance of power.

    As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the only thing that will save us now is a concerted, collective commitment to the Constitution’s principles of limited government, a system of checks and balances, and a recognition that they—the president, Congress, the courts, the military, the police, the technocrats and plutocrats and bureaucrats—answer to and are accountable to “we the people.”

    As historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. points out, “Holding a President to strict accountability requires, first of all, a new attitude on the part of the American people toward their Presidents, or rather a return to the more skeptical attitude of earlier times: it requires, specifically, a decline in reverence… The age of the imperial presidency has produced the idea that run-of-the-mill politicians, brought by fortuity to the White House, must be treated thereafter as if they have become superior and perhaps godlike beings.”

    Schlesinger continues:

    “If the nation wants to work its way back to a constitutional presidency, there is only one way to begin. That is by showing Presidents that, when their closest associates place themselves above the law and the Constitution, such transgressions will be not forgiven or forgotten for the sake of the presidency but exposed and punished for the sake of the presidency.”

    In other words, we’ve got to stop treating the president like a god and start making both the office of the president and the occupant play by the rules of the Constitution.

  • Teenage ISIS Supporter Arrested After Utah School Backpack Bomb Fails To Detonate

    A Utah Teenager who supports ISIS has been arrested after a backpack bomb failed to detonate at Pine View High School.

    17-year-old Jack Whalen and his friends noticed a bag near a vending machine that was “smoking and sizzling.” After administrators evacuated the school’s 1,100 students, the bomb squad moved in and determined that it contained an explosive device which had the “potential to cause significant injury or death,” according to police. 

    Student Jack Whalen and friends discovered the bomb

    “I could smell a smoke smell and my friends actually saw it before I did,” said Jack Whalen, the teen who found the bag containing a “round, really fat” canister. 

    Evacuated students wait outside

    The suspect is an ISIS-supporting male classmate enrolled in the Junior ROTC program – who admitted to another incident at a neighboring high school in which he replaced the American flag with the ISIS flag, along with graffiti saying “ISIS IS COMI–“

    Invoved in the response were the St. George Police, the Washington County Bomb Squad, Washington County Sheriff’s Deputies, a bomb-sniffing police dog named Jax and his handler, and the local FBI.

    Upon a search of the suspect’s home, Police found bombmaking materials and evidence of his support for the Islamic State.

    “Based on our investigation we can confirm this was a failed attempt to detonate a homemade explosive at the school,” police said in a statement. “It was also determined that the male had been researching information and expressing interest in ISIS and promoting the organization.”

    The suspect has been preliminarily charged with the manufacture, possession, sale, use or attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction, with more charges pending. 

    “There were several factors that came into play yesterday which led to a positive outcome,” police said in their statement. “We’d like to recognize and thank the students who notified faculty and the [school resource officer] of the suspicious backpack. Their immediate action played a large role in this incident ending with no injuries.”

    Officer Lona Trombley of the St. George Police Department issued the following statement:

    There were several factors that came into play yesterday which led to a positive outcome. First, we’d like to recognize and thank the students who notified faculty and the SRO of the suspicious backpack. Their immediate action played a large role in this incident ending with no injuries.

    Second, the School Resource Officer program which allowed an officer to immediately be on scene to access and address the situation appropriately. He was then able to call inappropriate teams, such as; the Washington County Bomb Squad and Jax, the bomb-detecting K-9 from Dixie Regional Medical Center, to identify and disarm the explosive device. We’d also like to say thank you to the Bomb Squad and to Jax and his handler for responding to the call out.

    Third, the Washington County School District, who have implemented drills to practice for incidents such as this, which led to a quick and seamless evacuation of the school.

    Finally, we’d like to thank the Washington County Sheriff’s Office and the FBI, who responded to assist with everything from the investigation itself to barricading roads.

  • Peter Strzok Ignored Evidence Of Clinton Server Breach

    FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok reportedly ignored “an irregularity in the metadata” indicating that Hillary Clinton’s server may had been breached, while FBI top brass made significant edits to former Director James Comey’s statement specifically minimizing how likely it was that hostile actors had gained access.

    Sources told Fox News  that Strzok, who sent anti-Trump text messages that got him removed from the ongoing Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, was told about the metadata anomaly in 2016, but Strzok did not support a formal damage assessment. One source said: “Nothing happened.”

    In December, a letter from Senate Homeland Security Committee Chair Ron Johnson (R-WI) revealed that Strzok and other FBI officials effectively “decriminalized” Clinton’s behavior through a series of edits to James Comey’s original statement.

    The letter described how outgoing Deputy Director Andrew McCabe exchanged drafts of Comey’s statement with senior FBI officials, including Strzok, Strzok’s direct supervisor, E.W. “Bill” Priestap, Jonathan Moffa, and an unnamed employee from the Office of General Counsel (identified by Newsweek as DOJ Deputy General Counsel Trisha Anderson) – in a coordinated conspiracy among top FBI brass.

    It was already known that Strzok – who was demoted to the FBI’s HR department for sending anti-Trump text messages to his mistress – downgraded the language describing Clinton’s conduct from the criminal charge of “gross negligence” to “extremely careless.”

    Notably, “Gross negligence” is a legal term of art in criminal law often associated with recklessness. According to Black’s Law Dictionary, it is defined as “A severe degree of negligence taken as reckless disregard,” and “Blatant indifference to one’s legal duty, other’s safety, or their rights.” “Extremely careless,” on the other hand, is not a legal term of art.

    18 U.S. Code § 793 “Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information” specifically uses the phrase “gross negligence.” Had Comey used the phrase, he would have essentially declared that Hillary had broken the law.

    In order to justify downgrading Clinton’s behavior to “extremely careless,” however, FBI officials also needed to minimize the impact of her crimes. As revealed in the letter from Rep. Johnson, the FBI downgraded the probability that Clinton’s server was hacked by hostile actors from “reasonably likely” to “possible.” 

    “Given that combination of factors, we assess it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s personal e-mail account,” Comey said in his statement.

    By doing so, the FBI downgraded Clinton’s negligence – thus supporting the “extremely careless” language. 

    The FBI also edited Clinton’s exoneration letter to remove a reference to the “sheer volume” of classified material on the private server, which – according to the original draft “supports an inference that the participants were grossly negligent in their handling of that information.” Furthermore, all references to the Intelligence Community’s involvement in investigating Clinton’s private email server were removed as well. 

    Director Comey’s original statement acknowledged the FBI had worked with its partners in the Intelligence Community to assess potential damage from Secretary Clinton’s use of a private email server. The original statement read: 

    W]e have done extensive work with the assistance of our colleagues elsewhere in the Intelligence Community to understand what indications there might be of compromise by hostile actors in connection with the private email operation. 

    In summary; the FBI launched an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private server, ignored evidence it may have been hacked, downgraded the language in Comey’s draft to decriminalize her behavior, and then exonerated her by recommending the DOJ not prosecute. 

    Meanwhile, a tip submitted by an Australian diplomat tied to a major Clinton Foundation deal launched the FBI’s counterintelligence operation against the Trump campaign – initially spearheaded by the same Peter Strzok who worked so hard to get Hillary off the hook. 

    And Strzok still collects a taxpayer-funded paycheck.

  • Putin's Hypersonic Rocket Revealed To Be A Modified Iskander Ballistic Missile

    Last Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin used his state-of-the-nation speech to showcase six superweapons that would supposedly revolutionize the game of geopolitics for Russia, and give his country a significant military advantage over the United States. In particular, Putin revealed that Russia possesses hypersonic technologies that can render NATO’s U.S.-led missile defense system completely “useless.”

    From a national security perspective, Putin’s claims of hypersonic weapons should not be underestimated but should be analyzed in an attempt to parse fact from fiction.

    The team of analysts at The Drive precisely did that, and made several conclusions: In particular, one of the weapons Putin mentioned in his speech was an air-launched hypersonic anti-ship missile launched from a Mikoyan MiG-31 Foxhound. Upon closer examination, the Drive team found the hypersonic weapon closely resembles the Iskander short-range ballistic missile.

    Here is the video of the air-launched hypersonic missile from Putin’s speech: 

    The team even pointed out that the missile underneath the MiG-31 “doesn’t even look that highly modified, although it’s exhaust fairing, which drops off during launch, throws off the Iskander’s signature profile a bit at first glance.”

    The modern Iskander missile platform, currently deployed by the Russian military, comes in two forms — the Iskander-M short-range tactical ballistic missile and the Iskander-K cruise missile. According to the team, the Iskander-M is not an air-breathing missile, but instead has a solid state rocket fuel propulsion system. “Yet Russia claims its new hypersonic missile has a flight profile like that of a cruise missile.”

    The team then asks this question: is this missile actually an air-launched ballistic missile system?

    Putin’s air-launched hypersonic weapon is called the KH-47M2 Kinzhal. Shortly after Putin’s speech, Russia’s Aerospace Force Commander-in-Chief Sergei Surovikin described the Kinzhal’s capabilities to reporters:

    “The Kinzhal system substantially boosts the capabilities of the Russian Aerospace Force to respond to any possible act of aggression against our country and along with other strategic weapon systems will help deter possible adversaries from rushing headlong into action… The fast-speed fixed-wing carrier allows delivering a missile with unique performance characteristics to the area of its discharge within minutes. The main propulsion unit mounted on the aero-ballistic missile accelerates a warhead to hypersonic speed within seconds. The missile’s maneuvering at speeds exceeding the speed of sound by several times allows it to reliably breach all air defense and anti-ballistic missile defense systems that exist or are being developed.”

    “All the test launches of the most advanced hypersonic aero-ballistic missiles that have been conducted have ended with the accurate destruction of the designated targets. From December 1st last year, the first aviation unit armed with the Kinzhal aircraft missile system switched to accomplishing experimental and combat duty missions to practice the fundamentals of its combat use.”

    Various media outlets reported the propulsion system was “an air-breathing ramjet engine for a sustained cruise, not a rocket engine.” The analyst team hit back at them and said there is no evidence of an air-breathing ramjet engine technology on the missile, but rather, all the imagery points to “indeed an air-launched Iskander ballistic missile that may have some additional targeting capabilities, like being able to hit moving ships at sea.”

    The War Zone analysts summarize their findings and conclude: Putin’s air-launched hypersonic missile is nothing more than a modified Iskander missile. Nevertheless, Putin has leveraged existing assets turning the Iskander missile into a super missile, which should not be discounted in the national security community.

    An air-launched ballistic missile is a relevant capability that dramatically expends the reach (by roughly four times), deployability, and flexibility over existing Iskander missiles. But if this missile does indeed have anti-ship capabilities, that’s a huge leap in capability for Russia’s already incredibly dense anti-ship missile arsenal.

    According to Putin, the system is somewhat mature and has already been deployed on experimental duty to airfields in Russia’s expansive Southern Military District.

    This development will likely only increase calls for broader, more layered ballistic missile defense, not to mention the fielding of new targeting new sensors, and the distributing of some “shooter” roles to airborne systems. This includes those armed with directed energy weapons (lasers) and even very-long-range air-to-air missiles.

    The high probability that Russia has adapted their staple tactical ballistic missile system into an air-launched variant with expanded targeting capability is also a reminder that Moscow can make big and even credible capability claims by leveraging and adapting assets that they have already invested in heavily.

    Putin’s superweapons are still in the research and testing phase, with unknown timelines of deployment. Still, last week, the Russian president’s circus act rattled America’s military-industrial complex. We know that because immediately after Putin’s speech, the DARPA Director called for a press conference demanding more funding for his hypersonic programs to counter Russia.

    Unfortunately, Cold War 2.0 has already started and will likely be underway for quite some time. At least now we are beginning to get the picture of the war machines that will be fighting the next world war: hypersonic weapons, fifth-generation stealth fighters, artificial intelligence, robotic vehicles, energy weapons, and of course low yield nuclear weapons.

  • Gasparino: Sam Nunberg To "Seek Treatment" After Drunken Media Trainwreck

    After a day of bizarre interviews with the media, fired Trump campaign associate Sam Nunberg says he’s going to get help for substance abuse problems, and that he will comply with Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    While Nunberg denied drinking to CNN’s Erin Burnett after she said she smelled alcohol on his breath, Fox Business Network’s Charlie Gasparino said Nunberg admitted to him that he had been hitting the sauce.

    “When I interviewed [Nunberg], and I interviewed him early, he admitted to me he was drinking,” Gasparino reported.

    “He’s also going to seek treatment for what ails him,” he continued. “There’s something. Drinking I believe is a big part of it and that’s what happened yesterday.”

    Gasparino also shed light on his 45-minute off-air conversation with Nunberg yesterday prior to most of his media appearances, after which he warned the other networks that the former Trump aide was inebriated. 

    “We had a debate about whether we should trust information from a man who was inebriated. In the middle of that, [Nunberg] went to the Washington Post and a series of interviews. And that’s when it went off the rails,” Gasparino said, with MSNBC’s Katy Tur being the first stop.

    “I may cut Katy Tur a break because she was the first one. But after that, you’re putting a guy on that has issues.”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    After an awkward appearance on CNN, host Erin Burnett wrapped up the interview by suggesting Nunberg had been drinking. 

    “We talked earlier about what people in the White House were saying about you ― talking about whether you were drinking or on drugs or whatever had happened today,” said Burnett. “Talking to you, I have smelled alcohol on your breath.”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Nunberg – an early aide to the Trump campaign, was fired in 2015 over racially charged Facebook posts. While on his drunken media tour on Monday, he repeatedly said said he wouldn’t cooperate with a subpoena from Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

    //video.foxbusiness.com/v/embed.js?id=5746124958001&w=466&h=263

    Watch the latest video at video.foxbusiness.com

    “I’m not going to cooperate with Mueller. It’s a fishing expedition,” Nunberg told Bloomberg News. “They want me in there for a grand jury for testimony about Roger Stone. He didn’t do anything. What is he going to do? His investigation is BS. Trump did not collude with Putin. It’s a joke.”

  • The SPY Of Crypto? Coinbase Launches Cryptocurrency Index Fund

    Coinbase dashed the hopes of thousands of ripple investors, who’ve been holding out hope that the exchange would add the coin, when it revealed that its “major announcement” Tuesday afternoon was, in fact, the introduction of the Coinbase Index Fund, a pioneering investing vehicle that just might do to cryptocurrencies what the ETFs like the SPY did for stocks. 

    The company published the announcement on its blog:

    We’re excited to announce Coinbase Index Fund.

    Coinbase Index Fund will give investors exposure to all digital assets listed on Coinbase’s exchange, GDAX, weighted by market capitalization. If a new asset is listed on the exchange, it will be automatically added to the fund.

    Index funds have changed the way that many people think about investing. By providing diversified exposure to a broad range of assets, index funds enable investors to track the performance of an entire asset class, rather than having to select individual assets. We’re excited to give our customers the ability to invest in the potential of blockchain-based digital assets as a whole.

    Twitter users were unimpressed however because, as the company pointed out, Coinbase and associated exchange GDAX only lists four coins…

    The news had some impact on the price of cryptocurrencies, which have been slumping Tuesday, with Ripple lower and the rest bouncing marginally higher…

     

     

     

     

     

    The company didn’t offer a date for the product launch, saying only that it would be available “very, very shortly.” However, there’s a catch: the fund will only be available to accredited investors based in the US. Over time, Coinbase hopes it can expand as regulators grow more comfortable with the product. The fund will be pegged to Coinbase’s new Coinbase Index…

    Coinbase

    During an appearance on CNBC, Coinbase COO Asiff Hirji said crypto is “an asset class” and that “individual investors, they tend to trade in funds, and they tend to trade in index funds, passive investing. That’s why we’ve created the index and we’ve created the index fund to enable that.”

    Importantly, the company also said it would add more coins to its platform as it vets them and there is more “regulatory certainty.”

    “We are committed to adding more assets to the exchange. If we add an asset to the exchange, it will show up in the fund. It will be market-cap weighted. We have a framework for how that works,” Hirji said. “We’re trying to make this super simple,” he added.

    The fund is marketed toward an entry-point for folks who are new to digital tokens, or for those who want a passive investment, Coinbase product manager Reuben Bramanathan told Axios.

    The fund also has a minimum investment of $10,000 and a flat 2% fee – though there are no performance fees.

    As Axios points out, Bitwise Asset Management announced its own token-focused fund in December, raising funding from several big name VCs. Several smaller companies are also looking into building indexes and funds of their own. But Coinbase, which has more brokerage accounts than Charles Schwab thanks to last year’s rally, has the clout to become a major player quickly.

    Watch the full segment below:

    Coinbase president announces index fund, initially for accredited investors from CNBC.

     

  • How The US Establishment Lies Through Its Teeth, For War Against Russia

    Authored by Eric Zuesse via TheDuran.com,

    The same people, Republicans and Democrats, who lied through their teeth for an invasion of Iraq in 2003, are doing it again for an invasion of Russia, sometime soon, so as to ‘defend’ ‘democracy’.

    The US has by now swallowed up virtually all lands surrounding Russia, at least in Europe, the latest being Ukraine, and is placing its missiles now on and near Russia’s borders, which is to Russians like would be to Americans if Russia had swallowed up Canada and were placing its missiles there.

    But the lying holier-than-thou US Establishment accuses Russia of being ‘aggressive’ when Russia holds war-games on and near its borders in order to prepare for a US-NATO invasion, which actually looks increasingly likely to them every day — and not because of ‘Russian propaganda’, but because of the US Government’s actions.

    Hillary Clinton clearly hated Russians and wanted to start a war against Russia by establishing a no-fly zone in Russia’s ally Syria (which Russia defends while the US invades and occupies Syria) so as to shoot down Russia’s planes there, and then, when Russia shoots down US planes in retaliation, America would have its pretext for invading Russia itself ‘so as to defend democracy against Russian aggression’ — but instead, Donald Trump became elected, and he has now turned out to be almost as much of a neoconservative as she was. This displays how extreme the grip is that the neocons, the Establishment and its many minions who dominate both of the two Parties and the press, now have.

    An example of the Establishment’s holier-than-thou lies, is an article that appeared on February 22nd at the magazine, The National Interest, whose article-title is itself a marvelous deception, “Averting the US-Russia Warpath” (while the subliminal message there is: reasons why we’ll probably have to invade Russia), and whose authors are three ‘defense’ hawks, including James Northey Miller, of Harvard.

    He had been an Under Secretary of Defense during the Administration of the merely moderately neoconservative President Barack Obama — the President who in 2014 grabbed Ukraine, and who used Al Qaeda in Syria to lead ’the rebels’ there in order to try to grab Syria. (Ukraine had been friendly toward Russia and is now rabid against Russia; and Syria was and is allied with Russia; so, both of these two lands were American grabs, and the neocon Trump continues both.)

    Anyone who trusts the US Government to represent in international affairs the interests of America’s public, instead of the interests of America’s billionaires, has been deceived by the Establishment’s (the billionaires’ and their agents’) virtually all-pervasive propaganda in America, and therefore needs a lot of re-learning about US history before understanding anything about US foreign policies.

    There is very good and sound reason why around the world the United States is considered, by far, to be “the biggest threat to peace” — because it is. (The Peter Kuznick book and Oliver Stone documentary Untold History of the United States, are the best cleaner-away of ‘historical’ lies about US history from 1912 to 2012 that I know of — and the seeing or reading of that, will expose to anyone the mockery of historical truth which is represented in articles such as “Averting the US-Russia Warpath.”)

    This ordinary, and profoundly deceptive, article starts:

    FOR NEARLY twenty years following the end of the Cold War, military confrontation between the United States and the Russian Federation seemed implausible. Even during periods of tension, as during the Kosovo crisis in the late 1990s, few believed that disagreement between Washington and Moscow could lead to a serious crisis, no less war.

    Before the first decade of the new century had passed, however, Russian officials were accusing the United States of working to isolate Russia. Such apprehensions have mounted steadily in Russia in the years since. At the same time, Russian behavior, including interventions in Ukraine and Syria, military posturing and harassment in Europe, and interference in Western elections, has led many in the United States to conclude that, while a US-Russian conflict is by no means inevitable, the risk of such a confrontation is growing.

    The “Russian officials were accusing the United States,” while there was supposedly actual “Russian behavior, including interventions in Ukraine and Syria, military posturing and harassment in Europe, and interference in Western elections,” which pretexts the Establishment is now debating with itself whether that will be sufficient to ‘justify’ an American and NATO invasion, as response.

    This holier-than-thou and upside-down presumption, of Russian-government guilt and American-government innocence, is reeking throughout that pompous article; but what’s even worse is that the reality is exactly the opposite of the story-line that’s portrayed in it.

    The actual reality is: Ever since 24 February 1990, the US and its NATO allies have been pursuing secretly a continuation of the Cold War after the termination in 1991 of the Soviet Union, and of its communism, and of its counter-NATO military alliance, the Warsaw Pact; and the US plan has been to swallow up, first the former Warsaw Pact nations, and then the former nations (such as Ukraine itself) that were inside the Soviet Union itself, and then, any other foreign allies that Russia might still have (such as Syria); and, then, finally, to invade and conquer Russia itself.

    And, instead of helping those countries, the US Government has been destroying them.

    Neoconservative, holier-than-thou, lying is so widespread in America’s ‘news’media, there’s practically nothing else than such deceptions about Russia, that’s “Fit to Print” (or broadcast) in today’s United States, and this is true in the media of both Parties, not merely the Republican media, or the Democratic media. This neoconservative consensus — the bipartisan ceaseless warmongering — is driven by the military-industrial complex (MIC) profiteers, whose companies’ main market is the American and allied governments (so that in order to increase their sales, more and costlier weapons must be purchased by those governments).

    It’s the MIC-sick current style of capitalism: capitalism that’s of, by, and for, the billionaires: a fascism that’s merely called ‘democracy’. (By contrast, one area of commerce that Russia refused to privatize was its weapons-manufacturers — there aren’t any stockholders who pay politicians to increase the ‘defense’ budget: instead, the Government itself is in control over that.)

    America’s billionaires, and their many agents, are giving hypocrisy a bad name.

  • CNN Flies To Bangkok To Interview Hooker Who Claims To Know Trump's Dirty Secrets

    Over the last two weeks CNN has really outdone themselves. Not content to make national news for doxxing an elderly Florida woman and badgering her in front of her house, or sending a crew of aspiring journalists to a Russian “troll farm” to dig through their trash – the ratings-starved network has decided to go full Jerry Springer; sending a crew to Bangkok to interview a hooker, pardon a “sex coach” from Belarus who claims to be the missing link in the Trump-Russia collusion narrative due to her association with a Russian billionaire, Oleg Deripaska and Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Prikhodko.

    She’s also trying to get out of a Thai jail. 

    Anastasia Vashukevich, who describes herself as a “seductress” and a “sex coach,” was arrested after her $600/head five-day sex training seminar was raided by authorities. 

    While being carted through the Thai resort city of Pattaya in an open-air police van, Vashukevich said in a live Instagram broadcast that she has evidence of collusion between President Trump and Russians. 

    I am the only witness and the missing link in the connection between Russia and the U.S. elections – the long chain of Oleg Deripaska, Prikhodko, Manafort, and Trump,” Vashukevich said in a live Instagram broadcast on Tuesday, apparently filmed while being driven through the Thai resort city of Pattaya in an open-air police van. In exchange for help from U.S. intelligence services and a guarantee of my safety, I am prepared to provide the necessary information to America or to Europe or to the country which can buy me out of Thai prison.

    In a series of subsequent Instagram posts from jail, the prostitute better known by the alias Nasta Rybka, complained of falling ill and having “frostbitten kidneys.”

    Vashukevich made headlines last month after Russian opposition leader Alexi Navalny broadcast footage from her Instagram account from an August 2016 yacht trip with Prikhodko and Deripaska. Navalny alleged that Derpiaska had bribed Prikhodko, who is one of Russia’s most influential senior officials.

    Enter CNN

    CNN’s Ivan Watson met with Vashukevich, reporting “She described herself as a seductress. This woman claims to have evidence of Russian meddling in the U.S. election. The question, is this a desperate ploy to get out of jail, or as her friend claims, is this young woman truly in danger because she knows too much?”

    “For days several Russian friends have been held at this jail in the capital of Thailand where visitors are not allowed to bring cameras,” Watson reports.

    “I came out of this detention center. It was loud and hot and chaotic and talking through the bars she says she witnessed meetings between the Russian billionaire and three Americans who she refused to name. He claims they discussed plans to effect the U.S. elections but she wouldn’t give any further information because she fears she could be deported back to Russia.”

    More in the video below.

     

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