- A New Kind Of Tyranny: The Global State's War On Those Who Speak Truth To Power
A New Kind Of Tyranny: The Global State's War On Those Who Speak Truth To Power
Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“What happens to Julian Assange and to Chelsea Manning is meant to intimidate us, to frighten us into silence. By defending Julian Assange, we defend our most sacred rights. Speak up now or wake up one morning to the silence of a new kind of tyranny. The choice is ours.”
– John Pilger, investigative journalist
All of us are in danger.
In an age of prosecutions for thought crimes, pre-crime deterrence programs, and government agencies that operate like organized crime syndicates, there is a new kind of tyranny being imposed on those who dare to expose the crimes of the Deep State, whose reach has gone global.
The Deep State has embarked on a ruthless, take-no-prisoners, all-out assault on truth-tellers.
Activists, journalists and whistleblowers alike are being terrorized, traumatized, tortured and subjected to the fear-inducing, mind-altering, soul-destroying, smash-your-face-in tactics employed by the superpowers-that-be.
Take Julian Assange, for example.
Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks—a website that published secret information, news leaks, and classified media from anonymous sources—was arrested on April 11, 2019, on charges of helping U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning access and leak more than 700,000 classified military documents that portray the U.S. government and its military as reckless, irresponsible and responsible for thousands of civilian deaths.
Included among the leaked Manning material were the Collateral Murder video (April 2010), the Afghanistan war logs (July 2010), the Iraq war logs (October 2010), a quarter of a million diplomatic cables (November 2010), and the Guantánamo files (April 2011).
The Collateral Murder leak included gunsight video footage from two U.S. AH-64 Apache helicopters engaged in a series of air-to-ground attacks while air crew laughed at some of the casualties. Among the casualties were two Reuters correspondents who were gunned down after their cameras were mistaken for weapons and a driver who stopped to help one of the journalists. The driver’s two children, who happened to be in the van at the time it was fired upon by U.S. forces, suffered serious injuries.
This is morally wrong.
It shouldn’t matter which nation is responsible for these atrocities: there is no defense for such evil perpetrated in the name of profit margins and war profiteering.
In true Orwellian fashion, however, the government would have us believe that it is Assange and Manning who are the real criminals for daring to expose the war machine’s seedy underbelly.
Since his April 2019 arrest, Assange has been locked up in a maximum-security British prison—in solitary confinement for up to 23 hours a day—pending extradition to the U.S., where if convicted, he could be sentenced to 175 years in prison.
Whatever is being done to Assange behind those prison walls—psychological torture, forced drugging, prolonged isolation, intimidation, surveillance—it’s wearing him down.
In court appearances, the 48-year-old Assange appears disoriented, haggard and zombie-like.
“In 20 years of work with victims of war, violence and political persecution I have never seen a group of democratic States ganging up to deliberately isolate, demonise and abuse a single individual for such a long time and with so little regard for human dignity and the rule of law,” declared Nils Melzer, the UN special rapporteur on torture.
It’s not just Assange who is being made to suffer, however.
Manning, who was jailed for seven years from 2010 to 2017 for leaking classified documents to Wikileaks, was arrested in March 2019 for refusing to testify before a grand jury about Assange, placed in solitary confinement for almost a month, and then sentenced to remain in jail either until she agrees to testify or until the grand jury’s 18-month term expires.
Federal judge Anthony J. Trenga of the Eastern District of Virginia also fined Manning $500 for every day she remained in custody after 30 days, and $1,000 for every day she remains in custody after 60 days, a chilling—and financially crippling—example of the government’s heavy-handed efforts to weaponize fines and jail terms as a means of forcing dissidents to fall in line.
This is how the police state deals with those who challenge its chokehold on power.
Make no mistake: the government is waging war on journalists and whistleblowers for disclosing information relating to government misconduct that is within the public’s right to know.
Yet while this targeted campaign—aided, abetted and advanced by the Deep State’s international alliances—is unfolding during President Trump’s watch, it began with the Obama Administration’s decision to revive the antiquated, hundred-year-old Espionage Act, which was intended to punish government spies, and instead use it to prosecute government whistleblowers.
Unfortunately, the Trump Administration has not merely continued the Obama Administration’s attack on whistleblowers. It has injected this war on truth-tellers and truth-seekers with steroids and let it loose on the First Amendment.
In May 2019, Trump’s Justice Department issued a sweeping new “superseding” secret indictment of Assange—hinged on the Espionage Act—that empowers the government to determine what counts as legitimate journalism and criminalize the rest, not to mention giving “the government license to criminally punish journalists it does not like, based on antipathy, vague standards, and subjective judgments.”
Noting that the indictment signaled grave dangers for freedom of the press in general, media lawyer Theodore J. Boutrous, Jr., warned, “The indictment would criminalize the encouragement of leaks of newsworthy classified information, criminalize the acceptance of such information, and criminalize publication of it.”
Boutrous continues:
[I]t doesn’t matter whether you think Assange is a journalist, or whether WikiLeaks is a news organization. The theory that animates the indictment targets the very essence of journalistic activity: the gathering and dissemination of information that the government wants to keep secret. You don’t have to like Assange or endorse what he and WikiLeaks have done over the years to recognize that this indictment sets an ominous precedent and threatens basic First Amendment values…. With only modest tweaking, the very same theory could be invoked to prosecute journalists for the very same crimes being alleged against Assange, simply for doing their jobs of scrutinizing the government and reporting the news to the American people.
We desperately need greater scrutiny and transparency, not less.
Indeed, transparency is one of those things the shadow government fears the most. Why? Because it might arouse the distracted American populace to actually exercise their rights and resist the tyranny that is inexorably asphyxiating their freedoms.
This need to shed light on government actions—to make the obscure, least transparent reaches of government accessible and accountable—was a common theme for Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who famously coined the phrase, “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”
Writing in January 1884, Brandeis explained:
Light is the only thing that can sweeten our political atmosphere—light thrown upon every detail of administration in the departments; light diffused through every policy; light blazed full upon every feature of legislation; light that can penetrate every recess or corner in which any intrigue might hide; light that will open up to view the innermost chambers of government, drive away all darkness from the treasury vaults; illuminate foreign correspondence; explore national dockyards; search out the obscurities of Indian affairs; display the workings of justice; exhibit the management of the army; play upon the sails of the navy; and follow the distribution of the mails.
Of course, transparency is futile without a populace that is informed, engaged and prepared to hold the government accountable to abiding by the rule of law.
For this reason, it is vital that citizens have the right to criticize the government without fear.
After all, we’re citizens, not subjects. For those who don’t fully understand the distinction between the two and why transparency is so vital to a healthy constitutional government, Manning explains it well:
When freedom of information and transparency are stifled, then bad decisions are often made and heartbreaking tragedies occur – too often on a breathtaking scale that can leave societies wondering: how did this happen? … I believe that when the public lacks even the most fundamental access to what its governments and militaries are doing in their names, then they cease to be involved in the act of citizenship. There is a bright distinction between citizens, who have rights and privileges protected by the state, and subjects, who are under the complete control and authority of the state.
Manning goes on to suggest that the U.S. “needs legislation to protect the public’s right to free speech and a free press, to protect it from the actions of the executive branch and to promote the integrity and transparency of the US government.”
Technically, we’ve already got such legislation on the books: the First Amendment.
The First Amendment gives the citizenry the right to speak freely, protest peacefully, expose government wrongdoing, and criticize the government without fear of arrest, isolation or any of the other punishments that have been meted out to whistleblowers such as Edwards Snowden, Assange and Manning.
The challenge is holding the government accountable to obeying the law.
Almost 50 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in United States v. Washington Post Co. to block the Nixon Administration’s attempts to use claims of national security to prevent The Washington Post and The New York Times from publishing secret Pentagon papers on how America went to war in Vietnam.
As Justice William O. Douglas remarked on the ruling, “The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.”
Almost 50 years later, with Assange being cast as the poster boy for treason, we’re witnessing yet another showdown, which pits the people’s right to know about government misconduct against the might of the military industrial complex.
Yet this isn’t merely about whether whistleblowers and journalists are part of a protected class under the Constitution. It’s a debate over how long “we the people” will remain a protected class under the Constitution.
Following the current downward trajectory, it won’t be long before anyone who believes in holding the government accountable is labeled an “extremist,” is relegated to an underclass that doesn’t fit in, must be watched all the time, and is rounded up when the government deems it necessary.
Eventually, we will all be potential suspects, terrorists and lawbreakers in the eyes of the government
Partisan politics have no place in this debate: Americans of all stripes would do well to remember that those who question the motives of government provide a necessary counterpoint to those who would blindly follow where politicians choose to lead.
We don’t have to agree with every criticism of the government, but we must defend the rights of all individuals to speak freely without fear of punishment or threat of banishment.
Never forget: what the architects of the police state want are submissive, compliant, cooperative, obedient, meek citizens who don’t talk back, don’t challenge government authority, don’t speak out against government misconduct, and don’t step out of line.
What the First Amendment protects—and a healthy constitutional republic requires—are citizens who routinely exercise their right to speak truth to power.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the right to speak out against government wrongdoing is the quintessential freedom.
Be warned: this quintessential freedom won’t be much good to anyone if the government makes good on its promise to make an example of Assange as a warning to other journalists intent on helping whistleblowers disclose government corruption.
Once again, we find ourselves reliving George Orwell’s 1984, which portrayed in chilling detail how totalitarian governments employ the power of language to manipulate the masses.
In Orwell’s dystopian vision of the future, Big Brother does away with all undesirable and unnecessary words and meanings, even going so far as to routinely rewrite history and punish “thoughtcrimes.”
Much like today’s social media censors and pre-crime police departments, Orwell’s Thought Police serve as the eyes and ears of Big Brother, while the other government agencies peddle in economic affairs (rationing and starvation), law and order (torture and brainwashing), and news, entertainment, education and art (propaganda).
Orwell’s Big Brother relies on Newspeak to eliminate undesirable words, strip such words as remained of unorthodox meanings and make independent, non-government-approved thought altogether unnecessary.
Where we stand now is at the juncture of OldSpeak (where words have meanings, and ideas can be dangerous) and Newspeak (where only that which is “safe” and “accepted” by the majority is permitted). The power elite has made their intentions clear: they will pursue and prosecute any and all words, thoughts and expressions that challenge their authority.
This is the final link in the police state chain.
Having been reduced to a cowering citizenry—mute in the face of elected officials who refuse to represent us, helpless in the face of police brutality, powerless in the face of militarized tactics and technology that treat us like enemy combatants on a battlefield, and naked in the face of government surveillance that sees and hears all—our backs are to the walls.
From this point on, we have only two options: go down fighting, or capitulate and betray our loved ones, our friends and ourselves by insisting that, as a brainwashed Winston Smith does at the end of Orwell’s 1984, yes, 2+2 does equal 5.
As George Orwell recognized, “In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/07/2019 – 23:45 - Putin Touts Laser Systems & Futuristic Arms To Be Deployed By Military
Putin Touts Laser Systems & Futuristic Arms To Be Deployed By Military
Perhaps trying to keep up with the Pentagon’s own developing ‘Laser Weapon System’ program, President Vladimir Putin this week touted that Russia is out front in terms of the next futuristic arms race, including “Hypersonic, laser and other state-of-the-art weapon systems”.
At a meeting of military commanders at the Kremlin on Wednesday, Putin boasted that “Hypersonic, laser and other state-of-the-art weapon systems, which no other country possesses, will be put in service,” but also added that such advanced technology is “no excuse for Russia to threaten anybody”.
File image of a Lockheed Martin Laser weapon system. “On the contrary, we are ready to do everything in our power to promote the disarmament process in view of our latest weapon systems, which are developed with the sole purpose of guaranteeing security in the face of growing threats we face,” Putin explained.
The comments come after multiple statements out of both Washington and Moscow over the past two years hyping each’s ‘hypersonic weapons’ research and capabilities.
However, as US state-funded Voice of America noted mockingly, “Hardly a day goes by now without some announcement from the Kremlin of a test firing of this or that new missile, a military exercise here or there or the launching of a new warship or development of a fresh weapon system.”
The US Marine Corps has of late reportedly been field testing a new laser weapon system designed to blast enemy drones out of the sky. Silent, invisible and precise — the new Compact Laser Weapons System (CLaWS) is said to be a directed energy weapon approved by the Pentagon for use by combat personnel.
Within the past half-decade the Pentagon has developed a powerful ship-mounted Laser weapon system capable of downing projectiles flying nearby.
Both the US and Russian navies are already in possession of ship-mounted laser devices believed capable of shooting drones or other small aircraft from the sky.
However, some defense tech analysis reports have questioned the ultimate power and effectiveness of experimental laser weapons, which require an immense amount of energy to power.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/07/2019 – 23:25 - Deep State On The National Security Council: Colonel Vindman Is An "Expert" With An Agenda
Deep State On The National Security Council: Colonel Vindman Is An "Expert" With An Agenda
Authored by Philip Giraldi via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
The current frenzy to impeach President Donald Trump sometimes in its haste reveals that which could easily be hidden about the operation of the Deep State inside the federal government. Congress is currently obtaining testimony from a parade of witnesses to or participants in what will inevitably be called UkraineGate, an investigation into whether Trump inappropriately sought a political quid pro quo from Ukrainian leaders in exchange for a military assistance package.
The prepared opening statement by Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, described as the top Ukraine expert on the National Security Council (NSC), provides some insights into how decision making at the NSC actually works. Vindman was born in Ukraine but emigrated to the United States with his family at age three. He was commissioned as an army infantry officer in 1998 and served in some capacity in Iraq from 2004-5, where he was wounded by a roadside bomb and received a purple heart. Vindman, who speaks both Ukrainian and Russian fluently, has filled a number of diplomatic and military positions in government dealing with Eastern Europe, to include a key role in Pentagon planning on how to deal with Russia.
Vindman, Ukrainian both by birth and culturally, clearly was a major player in articulating and managing US policy towards that country, but that is not really what his role on the NSC should have been. As more than likely the US government’s sole genuine Ukrainian expert, he should have become a source of viable options that the United States might exercise vis-à-vis its relationship with Ukraine, and, by extension, regarding Moscow’s involvement with Kiev. But that is not how his statement, which advocates for a specific policy, reads. Rather than providing expert advice, Vindman was concerned chiefly because arming Ukraine was not proceeding quickly enough to suit him, an extremely risky policy which has already created serious problems with a much more important Russia.
Vindman apparently sees Ukraine-Russia through the established optic provided by the Deep State, which considers global conflict as the price to pay for maintaining its largesse from the US taxpayer. Continuous warfare is its only business product, which explains in part its dislike of Donald Trump as he has several times threatened to upset the apple cart, even though he has done precious little in reality. Part of Vindman’s written statement (my emphasis) is revealing: “”When I joined the NSC in July 2018, I began implementing the administration’s policy on Ukraine. In the Spring of 2019, I became aware of outside influencers promoting a false narrative of Ukraine inconsistent with the consensus views of the interagency. This narrative was harmful to US government policy. While my interagency colleagues and I were becoming increasingly optimistic on Ukraine’s prospects, this alternative narrative undermined US government efforts to expand cooperation with Ukraine.”
Alexander Vindman clearly was pushing a policy that might be described as that of the Deep State rather than responding to his own chain of command where it is the president who does the decision making. He also needs a history lesson about what has gone on in his country of birth. President Barack Obama conspired with his own version of Macbeth’s three witches – Rice, Power and Jarett – to overthrow the legitimate government of Ukraine in 2014 because it was considered to be too close to Moscow. The regime change was brought about by “mavericks” like the foul-mouthed neocon State Department officer Victoria Nuland and the footloose warmonger Senator John McCain. Vice President Joe Biden also appeared on the scene after the “wetwork” was done, with his son Hunter trailing behind him. Since that time, Ukraine has had a succession of increasingly corrupt puppet governments propped up by billions in foreign aid. It is now per capita the poorest country in Europe.
Washington inside-the-beltway and the Deep State choose to blame the mess in Ukraine on Russian President Vladimir Putin and the established narrative also makes the absurd claim that the political situation in Kiev is somehow important to US national security. The preferred solution is to provide still more money, which feeds the corruption and enables the Ukrainians to attack the Russians.
Colonel Vindman, who reported to noted hater of all things Russian Fiona Hill, who in turn reported to By Jingo We’ll Go To War John Bolton, was in the middle of all the schemes to bring down Russia. His concern was not really over Trump vs. Biden. It was focused instead on speeding up the $380 million in military assistance, to include offensive weapons, that was in the pipeline for Kiev. And assuming that the Ukrainians could actually learn how to use the weapons, the objective was to punish the Russians and prolong the conflict in Donbas for no reason at all that makes any sense.
Note the following additional excerpt from Vindman’s prepared statement: “….I was worried about the implications for the US government’s support of Ukraine…. I realized that if Ukraine pursued an investigation into the Bidens and Burisma, it would likely be interpreted as a partisan play which would undoubtedly result in Ukraine losing the bipartisan support it has thus far maintained.”
Vindman’s concern is all about Ukraine without any explanation of why the United States would benefit from bilking the taxpayer to support a foreign deadbeat one more time. One wonders if Vindman was able to compose his statement without a snicker or two intruding. He does eventually go on to cover the always essential national security angle, claiming that “Since 2008, Russia has manifested an overtly aggressive foreign policy, leveraging military power and employing hybrid warfare to achieve its objectives of regional hegemony and global influence. Absent a deterrent to dissuade Russia from such aggression, there is an increased risk of further confrontations with the West. In this situation, a strong and independent Ukraine is critical to US national security interests because Ukraine is a frontline state and a bulwark against Russian aggression.”
The combined visions of Russia as an aggressive, expansionistic power coupled with the brave Ukrainians serving as a bastion of freedom is so absurd that it is hardly worth countering. Russia’s economy is about the size of Italy’s or Spain’s limiting its imperial ambitions, if they actually exist. Its alleged transgressions against Georgia and Ukraine were both provoked by the United States meddling in Eastern Europe, something that it had pledged not to do after the Soviet Union collapsed. Ukraine is less an important American ally than a welfare case, and no one knows that better than Vindman, but he is really speaking to his masters in the US Establishment when he repeats the conventional arguments.
It hardly seems possible, but Vindman then goes on to dig himself into a still deeper hole through his statement’s praise of the train wreck that is Ukraine. He writes “In spite of being under assault from Russia for more than five years, Ukraine has taken major steps towards integrating with the West. The US government policy community’s view is that the election of President Volodymyr Zelensky and the promise of reforms to eliminate corruption will lock in Ukraine’s Western-leaning trajectory, and allow Ukraine to realize its dream of a vibrant democracy and economic prosperity. The United States and Ukraine are and must remain strategic partners, working together to realize the shared vision of a stable, prosperous, and democratic Ukraine that is integrated into the Euro-Atlantic community.”
Alexander Vindman does not say or write that the incorporation of Ukraine into NATO is his actual objective, but his comments about “integrating with the West” and the “Euro-Atlantic community” clearly imply just that. The expansion of NATO up to Russia’s borders by the rascally Bill Clinton constituted one of the truly most momentous lost foreign policy opportunities of the twentieth century. The addition of Ukraine and Georgia to the alliance would magnify that error as both are vital national security interests for Moscow given their history and geography. Vindman should be regarded as a manifestation of the Deep State thinking that has brought so much grief to the United States over the past twenty years. Seen in that light, his testimony, wrapped in an air of sanctimoniousness and a uniform, should be regarded as little more than the conventional thinking that has produced foreign policy failure after failure.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/07/2019 – 23:05 - Retailers Scramble For Promotions To Combat Shorter Holiday Selling Season
Retailers Scramble For Promotions To Combat Shorter Holiday Selling Season
Not unlike how the Fed runs monetary policy, retailers this holiday season are trying to “move the goalposts” in order to cram more sales into what is technically a shorter holiday selling season.
The fourth quarter is make or break for many retailers and, this year, Thanksgiving – traditionally the mark of the beginning of the holiday shopping season – falls on the 28th of November. This is about a week later than the 22nd of November, when it fell last year, according to Reuters.
The result? Retailers have 6 less days to drive sales between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
The last time a shortened holiday season happened was in 2013, when retail chains and delivery companies “scrambled” to get packages to shoppers in time for Christmas. Retailers are looking to avoid the rush of 2013 again, while at the same time gearing up to compete head on with Amazon, which has been offering free one-day shipping on over 10 million products since June.
The holiday season for retail companies can sometimes account for as much as 40% of annual sales.
Target Corp’s chief executive, Brian Cornell, said: “It’s a very compressed holiday season…every day counts.”
Target will be offering a “Drive Up” service where it lets customers order online or on the app and then pick up their items at the store without ever leaving their car. The service will be available in all 50 states. Target says most orders will be available within an hour and brought out in “less than 2 minutes” upon arrival.
They are offering this service in addition to free shipping with no minimum purchase and same day delivery services.
Best Buy is also promising free next-day delivery on thousands of items and Walmart is offering free next-day delivery on orders over $35 without a membership fee.
Steve Sadove, senior adviser for Mastercard and a former CEO and chairman of department store operator Saks Inc. said: “A shorter holiday season puts more importance on each shopping day. The sales outlook for the season remains positive despite the fewer days between Thanksgiving and Christmas.”
Mastercard is expecting retail sales ex-automobiles to grow 3.1% over last year between November 1 and December 24.
The holiday shopping season has been pushed back by retailers every year, however, regardless of when Thanksgiving falls. The season used to start on Black Friday, but has now been pushed back into late October by companies like Walmart, who seek to get an earlier jump every year.
For instance, Wayfair is already offering up to 70% off top selling items while companies like Amazon, Target and Kohls are already offering Black Friday deals, weeks before Black Friday.
Carol Spieckerman, president at consultancy Spieckerman Retail said: “Retailers will need to plant a sense of urgency early-on, then reinforce it after Thanksgiving, when the rubber meets the road.”
Another headwind for holiday sales remains the trade war with China, however. Tariffs imposed by President Trump continue to “weigh on sentiment” heading into the holiday season.
79% of Americans worry that tariffs will make their holiday shopping trips more expensive this year, according to the National Retail Federation, a leading industry trade body. Another round of U.S. tariffs on Chinese consumer goods is set for December 15.
Recall, we recently noted that a slowdown in trucking ahead of the holiday season could be an ominous sign.
The slowdown in the domestic trucking industry suggests the consumer is likely to disappoint this holiday season, we said in late October.
And for more color on consumer trends, not just in the US but perhaps on a global view, the global shipping container industry is sounding an alarm.
Shipping rates for 40′ containers have taken another leg lower in the last several months. This means retailers are ordering fewer consumer goods from China and other emerging markets, a clear indication the consumer is weakening.
Last month, Amazon guided its forecast for the holiday season lower. Analysts were absolutely shocked, but it marks the beginning of a new trend where the consumer is expected to come under financial stress, pull back on spending, and could start saving as the next recession nears.
Tracking freight rates and volumes of various forms of transportation in domestic and global supply chains have given us perhaps an idea of what’s to come, that is, an underwhelming holiday season for retailers.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/07/2019 – 22:45 - 35 Reasons To Leave California
35 Reasons To Leave California
Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if there was a “reboot” button for an entire state? Because the truth is that if an entire state ever needed to completely start over it is the state of California. At this point it has become the epicenter for just about everything that is wrong with America, and each year it just keeps coming up with new ways to become an even worse cesspool of social decay and depravity.
Millions of people have already left the state, and millions more are thinking of leaving. One recent survey found that 47 percent of all Californians are thinking about moving out of the state in the next five years, and a different survey discovered that 53 percent of those currently living in the state would like to leave. If about half the people in your state are seriously considering leaving, it is safe to say that things have gone horribly wrong. But instead of changing course, those running California continue taking the state down a very self-destructive path.
It is such a shame, because California should be one of the greatest places in the world to live. The weather is wonderful most of the year, the state still possesses extraordinary natural beauty, and the tech industry provides plenty of high paying jobs.
When I was growing up, millions of young Americans dreamed of moving there and living “the California dream”, and when I was a young man I seriously explored the possibility of moving there myself.
And the truth is that a lot of great things have come out of the state. The following comes from a recent article by Ann Coulter…
In the last century, every great thing started in California: surfing, jeans, Disneyland, tax revolts, McDonald’s, movies, car culture, the Grateful Dead, right on red turns, Merle Haggard, skateboarding, Apple computer, and the last two elected Republican presidents not named “Bush.”
But now I don’t know why anyone would want to live there.
If you currently live in California, I am about to tell you a whole bunch of reasons why you should leave. In fact, if I could get everybody to leave the state, I would.
However, if you feel specifically called to stay, then that is what you should do. Without a doubt, light is needed the most where things are the darkest, and California needs as much light as it can get right now.
Unfortunately, I believe that it is too late for the state as a whole. It is headed for a date with destiny, and most of the nearly 40 million people that live there have absolutely no idea what is coming.
If you live in the state and you do not know what you should do, I would get out while you still can. The following are 35 reasons why you should move away from California…
1. Incredibly high taxes. At this point, California has the highest marginal tax rate in the entire country.
2. Absurd housing costs.
3. The median home value in the state is now more than half a million dollars, and that is about twice as high as the national average.
4. It has been estimated that it now takes approximately $350,000 a year to live a middle class lifestyle in the city of San Francisco.
5. Endless wildfires.
6. Epic mudslides.
7. Horrific traffic jams.
8. Los Angeles has the worst traffic congestion in the entire world.
9. The education system is awful.
10. Medical tyranny.
11. One of the highest poverty levels in the United States.
12. Thousands of drug addicts are literally pooping in the streets.
13. Almost half of all the homeless people in the entire nation live in California.
14. The state is literally being overrun by millions of rats.
15. Los Angeles has been ranked as the second most rat-infested city in the country.
16. At this point things are so bad that even Los Angeles City Hall is being overrun by rats.
17. Illegal immigration is out of control, and the sanctuary cities in California are making things even worse.
18. Rising gang activity.
19. High crime rates.
20. There is now a law in California that protects shoplifters. So for those that enjoy shoplifting, this might actually be a reason to move into the state.
21. The drug war that has been raging in Mexico is increasingly spilling across the border.
22. California has been ranked as the worst state in the nation to do business year after year.
23. California is also one of the most litigious states in the entire country.
24. The once pristine beaches in the state are now being “completely overrun with fecal bacteria”.
25. Nancy Pelosi.
26. Kamala Harris.
27. Governor Gavin Newsom.
28. The lieutenant governor, the attorney general, the secretary of state and the state treasurer are all Democrats.
29. Democrats make up nearly two-thirds of the California State Senate.
30. Democrats make up more than two-thirds of the California State Assembly.
31. Both of the U.S. senators and 46 out of the 53 members of the House of Representatives that California sends to Washington are Democrats.
32. Much of the population is openly hostile to those that identify as conservatives.
33. California has been on the cutting edge of America’s moral decay for decades.
34. There have been more than 100,000 earthquakes in the state so far this year.
35. One day the “Big One” will hit California, and the geography of the state will be dramatically altered. The devastation will be unlike anything we have ever witnessed, and the death toll will be unimaginable.
If Donald Trump wins the next presidential election, there is a group of activists in California that plan to get a “Calexit” referendum on the ballot for the following election.
Those activists don’t want to be part of a country that would elect Trump two times, because they consider their values to be completely and utterly incompatible with Trump’s values.
But what is happening in this nation is far bigger than just Trump.
To me, it would be wonderful if the rest of the nation decided that their values were completely and utterly incompatible with California’s values. We desperately need to turn America around, and the way to do that is to head in a completely opposite direction from the way that California is going.
Sadly, it does not appear that is going to happen. California may be racing ahead of most of the rest of the country, but our final destination will be the same.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/07/2019 – 22:25 - Taiwan Warns Of Possible Invasion If China's Economy Continues To Deteriorate
Taiwan Warns Of Possible Invasion If China's Economy Continues To Deteriorate
As the global synchronized slowdown intensifies, Taiwan is now warning if Beijing can’t create a soft landing in its economy, the threat of a Chinese invasion would be on the horizon.
Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu sounded the alarm in a Reuters interview on Wednesday, when he said, Chinese officials would likely invade self-ruled Taiwan to divert domestic economic pressures if a soft landing cannot be achieved.
“If the internal stability is a very serious issue, or economic slowdown has become a very serious issue for the top leaders to deal with, that is the occasion that we need to be very careful,” Wu said.
“We need to prepare ourselves for the worst situation to come…military conflict,” he warned.
Taiwan’s top diplomat Joseph Wu on threat from Beijing: “If the internal stability is a very serious issue…that is the occasion that we need to be very careful…We need to prepare ourselves for the worst situation to come…military conflict.”@MOFA_Taiwan https://t.co/qtAlhefldJ
— Jonathan Cheng (@JChengWSJ) November 7, 2019
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China’s untenable debt load and Beijing’s resulting inability to boost the credit impulse has certainly frightened Wu, who knows that if China’s economy, already near a 30-year low, continues to implode, that military conflict with mainland China would be nearing.
Wu noted that China’s economy is on shaky grounds at the moment, but nothing that would suggest a conflict to be imminent.
“Perhaps Xi Jinping himself is called into question of his legitimacy, by not being able to keep the Chinese economy growing,” Wu said, referring to Chinese President Xi.
“This is a factor that might cause the Chinese leaders to decide to take external action to divert domestic attention.”
China’s growing military presence in the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea, the East China Sea, and the Philippine Sea has become “very serious,” Wu said.
“We certainly hope that Taiwan and China could live peacefully together, but we also see there are problems caused by China, and we will try to deal with it,” he said.
And to make things more complicated, the US House of Representatives foreign affairs committee recently voted unanimously to approve a new bill that would strengthen ties between Washington and Taipei.
The bill is called the Taiwan Allies International Protection and Enhancement Initiative would allow the US to defend Taiwan from Chinese diplomatic pressures.
The Trump administration has been selling Taiwan billions of dollars in fighter jets, tanks, and other military weapons, to beef up defenses if Beijing attempts to invade.
And with macroeconomic headwinds that continue to flourish across the world, this means China will likely slow into 2020. Every downtick in China’s GDP should be correlated to the increasing probability of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/07/2019 – 22:05 - Nevins: Where Is That Confounded Recession?
Nevins: Where Is That Confounded Recession?
Authored by Daniel Nevins via FFWiley.com,
“Ah, excuse me. Oh, will ya excuse me. I’m just trying to find the recession. Has anybody seen the recession?”
Ask that question in a roomful of forecasters, and you’ll hear plenty of reasons why the next recession is dead ahead: the inverted yield curve, the tariff war, weak PMIs, the global manufacturing downturn.
Events might eventually prove those recession forecasts to be correct, although I would say not until mid-2020 at the earliest, and a recession at that time remains just a possibility. I say that because we haven’t yet seen enough cause for alarm in the three areas that most reliably predict recessions. Before every recession, we see at least one, usually two and often every one of the following three precursors:
-
Deterioration in the housing sector
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Restrictive public policies
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Significant damage to the real spending capacity of households, businesses or both
In other words, when trouble emerges across some combination of housing activity, public policies and real spending capacity, we’ll know to expect a recession. Trouble in one of those areas should put us on alert, whereas two or three would mean we should bank on it. So what’s missing from today’s popular recession narratives is adequate support from the “Big-3” precursors, and without that support, it’s probably too soon to bet on a recession. The U.S. economy always expands when the housing sector is stable, public policies are growth-supportive and real spending capacity is increasing. Simply put, no sign of the Big-3 means no recession.
But isn’t there a first time for everything? Can it really be so simple?
There is, and I don’t expect to convince anyone the economy is that simple without first providing some evidence, so I’ll continue. I’ll focus mostly on spending capacity, which is where I stray furthest from traditional, mainstream methods.
Why spending capacity?
Behavioral research, empirical data and casual observation all point towards households and businesses increasing their spending for as long as they have the capacity to do so. Changes in spending capacity predict changes in spending with remarkable accuracy, notwithstanding the Keynesian idea that spending follows the mysterious ebbs and flows of “animal spirits.” In fact, the spirits described by Keynesians might not be all that mysterious—they’re always present in some degree, they just happen to flow in proportion to spending capacity. They don’t disappear for no particular reason and then later reappear.
So I suggest closing your Keynesian textbook and looking instead to natural human behavior for clues about spending. Behavioral research tells us we’re naturally overconfident, believing our ventures will succeed with a certainty that defies the true probability of success. It also tells us we’re at least partially blind to certain obstacles to success, such as basic randomness. We’re naturally wired to have an illusion of control and an optimism bias alongside hindsight and confirmation biases, all of which encourage us to spend for as long as we have the capacity to do so.
But that’s not all. We’re also prone to a lack of self control that researchers have termed present bias and a tendency to spend like drunken sailors whenever in the company of other free-spending drunken sailors, thanks to our natural herding bias. I could go on, but you get the idea—once we consider human nature, it’s easier to appreciate why spending capacity is the economy’s driving force.
What Exactly Is Spending Capacity?
All that being said, I still need to define spending capacity, and my definition is broader than you might think. It starts with earnings—both household and business earnings—which of course help determine the resources available to be spent. It also includes risky asset prices, because spending depends partly on house price cycles and investment portfolio values. In fact, spending is more exposed to asset price volatility than ever before, with assets owned by households and nonprofits currently valued at 608% of annual GDP, compared to averages of 385% in the 1970s, 407% in the 1980s, 454% in the 1990s and 537% in the first decade of the 2000s.
Finally, there’s a third piece that’s usually overlooked, and I blame the economics profession for that. Spending depends not only on what households and businesses earn and own, as noted, but also on what they can borrow. And it depends not just on what they can borrow, but on what they can borrow from banks, in particular.
Why banks as opposed to other types of lenders?
Because banks are the only lenders that create spending power from “thin-air.” That’s not something you’ll learn in mainstream economics, which mangles the mechanics of money and banking, but if you’re trying to understand business cycles, it’s an essential fact. The key insight is that new bank credit expands the circular flow of income and spending (see the chart below), whereas other types of credit mostly sustain the existing flow by passing spending power from one party to another.
In other words, only banks increase spending power on a net basis, because they can make loans without requiring prior savings from past income. Apart from a small allocation of bank capital, banks conjure loan proceeds from thin air—that’s the crux of what their charters allow them to do. The monetary expansion authorized by bank charters explains why new bank credit is 69% correlated with spending in the same period and 58% correlated with spending in the next period, whereas corresponding figures for credit financed by prior domestic savings (not banks) are negligible (see the chart below).
(As obvious as the charts above might be to those who’ve either worked as bankers or studied banking from up close, mainstream economists tell a different story, teaching that banks are mere intermediaries and only central banks determine the money supply. Those mainstream claims have been called out repeatedly by practitioners, heterodox economists and even central bankers—the Fed, Bank of England and Bank for International Settlements have all provided information refuting textbook money and banking theory—but to no avail. Schools continue to teach money and banking incorrectly at both undergraduate and graduate levels.)
What Do the Big-3 Say about the Next Recession?
So spending capacity depends on real earnings, asset prices and the availability of new bank credit. Getting back to the Big-3 precursors that always materialize in some combination (again, not necessarily all three at once) before recessions, we can expand the third precursor using the determinants of spending capacity. Here’s the expanded list:
-
Deterioration in the housing sector
-
Restrictive public policies
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Significant damage to the real spending capacity of households, businesses or both, which could mean any of the following:
-
Earnings that fail to keep pace with inflation
-
Falling real asset prices
-
Restrictive bank credit
-
We can then expand the list further with more subcategories and by adding the foreign sector, which I include as a less influential input but one that could contribute to a recessionary process. The expanded list includes separate readings for:
-
fiscal and monetary policies
-
household and business earnings
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house and stock prices, and
-
bank credit conditions for households and businesses
Below are my assessments for each item, with comments on at least one of the indicators that support each assessment. (My email subscribers know that this is the same list that drops out of the 6-cycle forecasting approach described in my book, I’ve just tweaked the terminology to match the language used here.)
Housing sector: Not recessionary. Indicators such as new home sales and the NAHB housing market index show housing activity recovering nicely from a period of weakness in 2018.
Fiscal policy: Not recessionary. Government spending is growing at a decent clip in 2019, while taxes and net transfer receipts dropped to a new six-year low as a percentage of GDP in the first half of the year, which can only help household and business spending capacity. Also, July’s debt ceiling deal freed up more federal spending in the 2020 fiscal year.
Monetary policy: Not recessionary. I often use the yield curve slope as a guide to monetary policy, and today’s inverted curve might suggest that monetary policy is recessionary, but I’ve overridden that for three reasons: 1) the Fed barely lifted the inflation-adjusted fed funds rate in the 2015–18 tightening cycle, and therefore, fell far short of the typical recessionary tightening, 2) we’re now 11 months removed from the last rate hike, and 3) we’re three rate hikes into an easing cycle.
Business earnings: Slightly recessionary. With the Q3 earnings season over 70% complete, S&P projects GAAP earnings for the S&P 500 to be 2% lower than the matching year-ago figure, compared to increases of 3% in Q2 and 6% in Q1. S&P 500 operating earnings by I/B/E/S from Refinitiv tell approximately the same story—lower by 0.8% in Q3 (as of Nov. 5) after increasing by 1% in Q2 and 3% in Q1. Factset, by comparison, shows three consecutive year-over-year declines, but the changes are small (-0.3% in Q1, -0.4% in Q2 and likely to be somewhere between -1% and -3% in Q3). So however you look at it, the Q3 earnings dip is shallow. It’s significantly less severe than the 2015–16 earnings recession, although not as easily explained away as being a reflection of oil price volatility—this time the global manufacturing downturn is also part of the story. Factset expects the dip to continue in Q4, whereas projections from S&P and Refinitiv show positive year-over-year growth. All things considered, I have to call business earnings slightly recessionary, but the numbers aren’t yet convincing. Stay tuned.
Household earnings: Not recessionary. Using average hourly earnings as a guide, household earnings growth outpaced inflation by 1.2% over the past 12 months, while real disposable income increased by 3.2% over the same period. By either measure, household earnings are growing strongly enough to support continued gains in consumer spending.
Business credit conditions: Not recessionary. Although demand for C&I loans has stalled of late, ample credit remains available. The Fed’s Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey (SLOOS) shows that business lending standards haven’t significantly changed in either direction.
Household credit conditions: Not recessionary. Again, lending standards haven’t significantly changed in either direction. Also, bank balance sheets are expanding at a healthy pace—recent data shows banks adding enough real estate loans and mortgage bonds to grow thin-air spending power despite the dip in C&I loan demand.
Stock prices: Not recessionary. Record stock prices have boosted investment portfolio values and should help to support spending.
House prices: Not recessionary but on watch for a possible downgrade. House price growth is decelerating but remains slightly above the CPI inflation rate according to the S&P Case-Shiller 20-city index. It would have to drop another 2% or 3%, depending on changes in consumer inflation, before I would call it a recessionary reading.
Foreign sector: Not recessionary. Although slowing exports have weighed slightly on GDP, imports have dropped as a percentage of GDP (a measure of import penetration) in the first three quarters of 2019. On balance, data fail to support a “recessionary” assessment, although that could change in 2020 with either a steeper drop in exports or a rising propensity to import.
As reminder to regular readers and a heads-up to new readers, I’ve documented the predictive value of indicators discussed above in my 6-cycle forecast articles, my TSP (thin-air spending power) articles and my book Economics for Independent Thinkers.
Conclusions
All Big-3 precursors considered, the near-term outlook is weaker than normal but not yet recessionary—the expansion appears to have enough policy support, spending capacity growth and overall momentum to continue through at least the first quarter or two of 2020.
Deeper into the year, the outlook could darken as many forecasters predict, especially if corporate earnings continue to slide. But we could just as easily see more of the same—an economy that grinds slowly higher as real incomes grow, asset prices trend upwards and bank balance sheets expand. To gauge which of the scenarios is becoming more likely, I suggest watching the Big-3 and tuning out most everything else.
“Have you seen the recession? I ain’t (yet) seen the recession!”
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/07/2019 – 21:45 -
- Fed Warns Climate Change Is A Major Threat To The Economy
Fed Warns Climate Change Is A Major Threat To The Economy
What is a good way for the Fed to deflect attention from the fact that after a decade of liquidity injections it has created the world’s largest asset bubble? Why point to another, even bigger – in its view – threat. And with green bonds, unlimited fiscal deficits and MMT all the rage (if not today, then soon), what better bogeyman for the Fed to wave in front of the public than the hottest topic, so to speak, of the day: climate change.
Speaking at the GARP Global Risk Forum, NY Fed executive vice president Kevin Stiroh warned in his prepared remarks, that climate change – not, say, asset bubbles created by his employer – is a major threat that risk managers can’t ignore.
“The U.S. economy has experienced more than $500 billion in direct losses over the last five years due to climate and weather-related events. In addition, climate change has significant consequences for the U.S. economy and financial sector through slowing productivity growth, asset revaluations and sectoral reallocations of business activity” he
That was how Stiroh framed the one danger that, according to the Fed, is emerging as the biggest threat to the US economy.
But why is the Fed, whose only concern should be the cost of money, suddenly preoccupied with the weather? Because as the EVP says in his speech, “as supervisors, we can consider climate-related risks in terms of both microprudential and macroprudential objectives.”
In other words, it’s only a matter of time before the Fed blames the weather for the next great, “unexpected” crisis… which like the bubbles of 2001 and 2008 was entirely the Fed’s doing.
Lulckily, the Fed apparatchik did stop before providing advice on how to combat climate change – of which it is the primary enabler, as its loose money policy allows zombie corprorations with outdated emissions standards to stay in business – and said that “supervisors should take a risk management perspective, not a social engineering one. It is beyond our mandate to advocate or provide incentives for a particular transition path.”
Rather, Stiroh said, “supervisors should focus on the risks that emerge along the path decided by the public at large and their elected governments. Supervisors can use our tools to ensure financial institutions are prepared for and resilient to all types of relevant risks, including climate-related events.”
It wasn’t clear what tools he was referring to (the Fed certainly has plenty of those), but he did break down the climate change risk into two main categories for risk managers:
- Physical risk is the potential for losses as climate-related changes disrupt business operations, destroy capital and interrupt economic activity.
- Transition risk is the potential for losses resulting from a shift toward a lower-carbon economy as policy, consumer sentiment and technological innovations impact the value of certain assets and liabilities. These effects will be felt across business sectors and asset classes, and on the strategies, operations and balance sheets of financial firms.
But wait, in a world in which asset managers only care about their year-end bonus and anything that happens on Jan 1 of next year is someone else’s problem, why should anyone on Wall Street give a rat’s ass about the weather, unless of course it is to capitalize on it? The Fed’s response: “climate change is a long-term issue where actions today are likely to have an impact over many decades. This exceeds the typical life span of a bank exposure, as well as the typical control and planning horizon of a financial institution. Risk management tools, models and scenarios are not designed to capture the long-term nature of climate-related risks. Nonetheless, real impacts are already being felt and we must develop the tools to assess and manage them.”
Impacts… like a 16-year-old girl with Asperger’s syndrome dictating monetary, fiscal and social policy?
One more thing: the Fed vice president’s remarks did not venture into a discussion on another hot topic: green QE, or central banks boosting bond issuance by refocusing their asset purchase programs toward “green bonds”, as the new ECB President Christine Lagarde suggested recently, when she hinted that the ECB might be open to the idea once she had more information.
It was not clear just how monetizing a “green” bond is any different than monetizing any other bonds. In fact, with the Fed already doing so to the tune of $60 billion in monthly Bill purchases as part of its “Not QE”, the only question is how will the Treasury rebrand 10 or 30Y bonds as “green”, in the process greenlighting even more debt and deficit monetization by the Fed, whose ultimate goal is clear to most by now: using “climate change” and “green bonds” as scapegoats behind a “Green New Deal” type of arrangement, in which the Fed basically adopts helicopter money, and becomes a de facto agent of the Treasury, monetizing almost every piece of debt sold by the US, making the Japanification of the US complete just as the final fiat currency devaluation experiment gets going.
At least Greta Thunberg will be happy for a few years before the social catalysm that results from the Fed’s final act of idiocy means that eating the rich – and just about anyone else – will be more than just a figure of speech.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/07/2019 – 21:25 - Glenn Greenwald Assaulted By Pro-Bolsonaro Goon During Live Broadcast
Glenn Greenwald Assaulted By Pro-Bolsonaro Goon During Live Broadcast
Authored by Jake Johnson via CommonDreams.org,
The Intercept‘s Glenn Greenwald was assaulted during a live broadcast Thursday by a right-wing Brazilian journalist and defender of the country’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro.
Greenwald, whose reporting this year has exposed unethical and possibly criminal behavior by Bolsonaro and his government, repeatedly called journalist and columnist Augusto Nunes a “coward” during a segment on Jovem Pan News, one of Brazil’s largest right-wing radio and Youtube outlets.
In a tweet ahead of his appearance, Greenwald said he had “many questions” for Nunes, who suggested in September that a juvenile judge should investigate Greenwald and his husband, Brazilian lawmaker David Miranda, for neglecting their adopted children.
“We have a lot of political differences, I have no problem being criticized for my work, I criticize him too, but what he did was the ugliest and dirtiest thing I’ve ever seen in my career as a journalist,” Greenwald said of Nunes’ comments during Thursday’s show.
This is genuinely horrifying, as have been all the threats/intimidation Bolsonaro and his goons have directed towards Glenn and his Intercept colleagues. https://t.co/9s4A6KnVQI
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) November 7, 2019
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Watch the full incident:
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/07/2019 – 21:05 - Not Just Billionaires: Now Democrats Want To Hit Millionaires With 10% Surtax
Not Just Billionaires: Now Democrats Want To Hit Millionaires With 10% Surtax
With 2020 Democratic candidates Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders threatening to separate billionaires from their money, two other Democrats have proposed tax hikes that would hit the wealthy with a 10% surtax on income above $2 million according to Bloomberg.
Introduced by Maryland Democrat Sen. Chris Van Hollen and Rep. Don Beyer of Virginia, the new plan would raise the effective top rate on wages to 47%, while capital gains would taxes would top out at 33.8%. The proposal “could raise $635 billion over 10 years,” according to surtax.org.
Van Hollen calls it “a simple system to ensure the wealthy are doing their part to invest in strengthening America’s future for everyone.”
The idea is the latest in a long string of Democratic plans to make wealthy Americans pay more. But with 2020 presidential candidates and members of Congress envisioning expensive programs to reshape U.S. health care, confront climate change, and offer free college educations there has been a greater urgency to find ways to finance these ambitions — and that involves higher taxes on the rich.
The arsenal of proposals includes wealth taxes, financial transaction levies and capital gains changes.
The Van Hollen-Beyer surtax would raise about $635 billion over a decade, according to projections from the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. By comparison, Senator Elizabeth Warren, one of the party’s leading presidential candidates, estimates that her wealth tax would raise $3.75 trillion over 10 years. –Bloomberg
The surtax is being framed as a more moderate approach of raising taxes on the top 0.2% of taxpayers, or around 329,000 Americans, and could be legislatively piggybacked on top of the existing tax code – which would make it easier for a Democratic-controlled Congress to pass under the next Democratic president.
“This is something moderates can support,” said Frank Clemente, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness. “I don’t think we are going to see a wealth tax anytime soon.”
Warren’s plan would impose a 2% levy on fortunes over $50 million and 6% on those above $1 billion, while Sanders’ plan would kick in a $32 million in assets and would top out at 8%.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/07/2019 – 20:45 - Rigged Again? Dems, Russia, & The Delegitimization Of America's Democratic Process
Rigged Again? Dems, Russia, & The Delegitimization Of America's Democratic Process
Authored by Elizabeth Vos via ConsortiumNews.com,
Establishment Democrats and those who amplify them continue to project blame for the public’s doubt in the U.S. election process onto outside influence, despite the clear history of the party’s subversion of election integrity. The total inability of the Democratic Party establishment’s willingness to address even one of these critical failures does not give reason to hope that the nomination process in 2020 will be any less pre-ordained.
The Democratic Party’s bias against Sen. Bernie Sanders during the 2016 presidential nomination, followed by the DNC defense counsel doubling down on its right to rig the race during the fraud lawsuit brought against the DNC, as well as the irregularities in the races between former DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Tim Canova, indicate a fatal breakdown of the U.S. democratic process spearheaded by the Democratic Party establishment. Influences transcending the DNC add to concerns regarding the integrity of the democratic process that have nothing to do with Russia, but which will also likely impact outcomes in 2020.
The content of the DNC and Podesta emails published by WikiLeaks demonstrated that the DNC acted in favor of Hillary Clinton in the lead up to the 2016 Democratic primary. The emails also revealed corporate media reporters acting as surrogates of the DNC and its pro-Clinton agenda, going so far as to promote Donald Trump during the GOP primary process as a preferred “pied-piper candidate.” One cannot assume that similar evidence will be presented to the public in 2020, making it more important than ever to take stock of the unique lessons handed down to us by the 2016 race.
Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during a 2016 Democratic primary debate. (YouTube/Screen shot)
Social Media Meddling
Election meddling via social media did take place in 2016, though in a different guise and for a different cause from that which are best remembered. Twitter would eventually admit to actively suppressing hashtags referencing the DNC and Podesta emails in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election. Additional reports indicated that tech giant Google also showed measurable “pro-Hillary Clinton bias” in search results during 2016, resulting in the alleged swaying of between 2 and 10 millions voters in favor of Clinton.
On the Republican side, a recent episode of CNLive! featured discussion of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which undecided voters were micro-targeted with tailored advertising narrowed with the combined use of big data and artificial intelligence known collectively as “dark strategy.” CNLive! Executive Producer Cathy Vogan noted that SCL, Cambridge Analytica’s parent company, provides data, analytics and strategy to governments and military organizations “worldwide,” specializing in behavior modification. Though Cambridge Analytica shut down in 2018, related companies remain.
The Clinton camp was hardly absent from social media during the 2016 race. The barely-legal activities of Clintonite David Brock were previously reported by this author to have included $2 million in funding for the creation of an online “troll army” under the name Shareblue. The LA Times described the project as meant to “to appear to be coming organically from people and their social media networks in a groundswell of activism, when in fact it is highly paid and highly tactical.” In other words, the effort attempted to create a false sense of consensus in support for the Clinton campaign.
In terms of interference in the actual election process, the New York City Board of Elections was shown to have purged over one hundred thousand Democratic voters in Brooklyn from the rolls before the 2016 primary, a move that the Department of Justice found broke federal law. Despite this, no prosecution for the breach was ever attempted.
Though the purge was not explicitly found to have benefitted Clinton, the admission falls in line with allegations across the country that the Democratic primary was interfered with to the benefit of the former secretary of state. These claims were further bolstered by reports indicating that voting results from the 2016 Democratic primary showed evidence of fraud.
DNC Fraud Lawsuit
The proceedings of the DNC fraud lawsuit provide the most damning evidence of the failure of the U.S. election process, especially within the Democratic Party. DNC defense lawyers argued in open court for the party’s right to appoint candidates at its own discretion, while simultaneously denying any “fiduciary duty” to represent the voters who donated to the Democratic Party under the impression that the DNC would act impartially towards the candidates involved.
“Bernie or Bust” protesters at the Wells Fargo Center during Democrats’ roll call vote to nominate Hillary Clinton. (Becker1999, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)
In 2017, the Observer reported that the DNC’s defense counsel argued against claims that the party defrauded Sanders’ supporters by favoring Clinton, reasoning that Sanders’ supporters knew the process was rigged. Again: instead of arguing that the primary was neutral and unbiased in accordance with its charter, the DNC’s lawyers argued that it was the party’s right to select candidates.
The Observer noted the sentiments of Jared Beck, the attorney representing the plaintiffs of the lawsuit:
…“People paid money in reliance on the understanding that the primary elections for the Democratic nominee —nominating process in 2016 were fair and impartial, and that’s not just a bedrock assumption that we would assume just by virtue of the fact that we live in a democracy, and we assume that our elections are run in a fair and impartial manner. But that’s what the Democratic National Committee’s own charter says. It says it in black and white.”
The DNC defense counsel’s argument throughout the course of the DNC fraud lawsuit doubled down repeatedly in defense of the party’s right to favor one candidate over another, at one point actually claiming that such favoritism was protected by the First Amendment. The DNC’s lawyers wrote:
“To recognize any of the causes of action that Plaintiffs allege would run directly contrary to long-standing Supreme Court precedent recognizing the central and critical First Amendment rights enjoyed by political parties, especially when it comes to selecting the party’s nominee for public office.” [Emphasis added]
The DNC’s shameless defense of its own rigging disemboweled the most fundamental organs of the U.S. body politic. This no indication that the DNC will not resort to the same tactics in the 2020 primary race,
Tim Canova’s Allegations
If Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s role as disgraced chairwoman of the DNC and her forced 2016 resignation wasn’t enough, serious interference was also alleged in the wake of two contests between Wasserman Schultz and professor Tim Canova in Florida’s 23rd congressional district. Canova and Wasserman Schultz first faced off in a 2016 Democratic primary race, followed by a 2018 general congressional election in which Canova ran as an independent.
Tim Canova with supporters, April 2016. (CanovaForCongress, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
Debacles followed both contests, including improper vote counts, illegal ballot destruction, improper transportation of ballots, and generally shameless displays of cronyism. After the controversial results of the initial primary race against Wasserman Schultz, Canova sought to have ballots checked for irregularities, as the Sun-Sentinel reported at the time:
“[Canova] sought to look at the paper ballots in March 2017 and took Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes to court three months later when her office hadn’t fulfilled his request. Snipes approved the destruction of the ballots in September, signing a certification that said no court cases involving the ballots were pending.”
Ultimately, Canova was granted a summary judgment against Snipes, finding that she had committed what amounted to multiple felonies. Nonetheless, Snipes was not prosecuted and remained elections supervisor through to the 2018 midterms.
Republicans appear no more motivated to protect voting integrity than the Democrats, with The Nation reporting that the GOP-controlled Senate blocked a bill this week that would have “mandated paper-ballot backups in case of election machine malfunctions.”
Study of Corporate Power
A 2014 study published by Princeton University found that corporate power had usurped the voting rights of the public: “Economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.”
In reviewing this sordid history, we see that the Democratic Party establishment has done everything in its power to disrespect voters and outright overrule them in the democratic primary process, defending their right to do so in the DNC fraud lawsuit. We’ve noted that interests transcending the DNC also represent escalating threats to election integrity as demonstrated in 2016.
Despite this, establishment Democrats and those who echo their views in the legacy press continue to deflect from their own wrongdoing and real threats to the election process by suggesting that mere discussion of it represents a campaign by Russia to attempt to malign the perception of the legitimacy of the U.S. democratic process.
Hillary Clinton’s recent comments to the effect that Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard is being “groomed” by Russia, and that the former Green Party Presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein is a “Russian asset”, were soon echoed by DNC-friendly pundits. These sentiments externalize what Gabbard called the “rot” in the Democratic party outward onto domestic critics and a nation across the planet.
Newsweek provided a particularly glaring example of this phenomenon in a recent op-ed penned by columnist Naveed Jamali, a former FBI double agent whose book capitalizes on Russiagate. In an op-ed titled: “Hillary Clinton Is Right. Tulsi Gabbard Is A Perfect Russian Asset – And Would Be A Perfect Republican Agent,” Jamali argued:
“Moscow will use its skillful propaganda machine to prop up Gabbard and use her as a tool to delegitimize the democratic process.” [Emphasis added]
Jamali surmises that Russia intends to “attack” our democracy by undermining the domestic perception of its legitimacy. This thesis is repeated later in the piece when Jamali opines: “They want to see a retreat of American influence. What better way to accomplish that than to attack our democracy by casting doubt on the legitimacy of our elections.” [Emphasis added]
The only thing worth protecting, according to Jamali and those who amplify his work (including former Clinton aide and establishment Democrat Neera Tanden), is the perception of the democratic process, not the actual functioning vitality of it. Such deflective tactics ensure that Russia will continue to be used as a convenient international pretext for silencing domestic dissent as we move into 2020.
Given all this, how can one expect the outcome of a 2020 Democratic Primary — or even the general election – to be any fairer or transparent than 2016?
* * *
Elizabeth Vos is a freelance reporter, co-host of CN Live! and regular contributor to Consortium News.
If you value this original article, please consider making a donation to Consortium News so we can bring you more stories like this one.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/07/2019 – 20:25 - "CBS Sided With A Pedophile": Network Fires Staffer Who Had Access To Robach-Epstein Rant
"CBS Sided With A Pedophile": Network Fires Staffer Who Had Access To Robach-Epstein Rant
CBS has fired a female staffer believed to have had access to a candid tape of ABC host Amy Robach complaining that in 2016, the network shelved her scoop on Jeffrey Epstein’s sex crimes, according to Page Six.
“I’ve had the story for three years… we would not put it on the air,” Robach said on a hot mic moment leaked to Project Veritas. “It was unbelievable what we had, Clinton, we had everything.”
It hasn’t gone unnoticed that exposing Epstein would have hurt Hillary Clinton during the 2016 US election.
🚨WOW🚨
CBS News fires staffer who had access to leaked Amy Robach audio that was revealed by @Project_Veritas
The person who got fired in this situation was the one trying to protect the children who were being trafficked.
CBS sided with a Pedophile
— Benny (@bennyjohnson) November 7, 2019
CORRUPTION: @CBSNews FIRES supposed leaker for alleged actions @ABC.
Why is CBS covering for ABC News!?
BTW, do you really think that CBS person is the right source @jamesgoldston???
https://t.co/LonAjipEwi https://t.co/eaUAvI74xd
— James O’Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) November 7, 2019
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
You are witnessing an extraordinary series of events. @CBSNews fires employee ‘who had access’ to tape from RIVAL company, @ABC. Journalism execs collude to PUNISH source/Whistleblower (Irony, much?) for helping bring to light coverup of abuse. Truth to power? Media IS the power!
— James O’Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) November 7, 2019
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Watch the Robach video here:
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/07/2019 – 17:15 - NASA Gas Detector Plane Identifies "Super-Emitters" Across California
NASA Gas Detector Plane Identifies "Super-Emitters" Across California
NASA has made a surprising discovery in California after it flew a plane across the state outfitted with specialized gas-imaging sensors. The new data, published this week in the scientific journal Nature, found that a third of California’s methane emissions can be traced to several “super-emitters.”
In the last several years, NASA teamed up with the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and the California Energy Commission, discovered most methane emissions in California are from industrial facilities, such as landfills, large dairy farms, and oil and gas fields.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, flew a plane with the Airborne Visible InfraRed Imaging Spectrometer – Next Generation (AVIRIS-NG) over 300,000 facilities across California.
The team found 550 sources emitting highly concentrated methane into the atmosphere. At least 55 of these sources were considered “super-emitters” because of the high-volume of methane that was detected.
The study said the 55 “super-emitters” were responsible for at least a third of California’s total methane emission.
Of the 270 surveyed landfills, about 30 were observed to emit high amounts of methane and responsible for 40% of all emissions detected during the survey.
“These findings illustrate the importance of monitoring point sources across multiple sectors [of the economy] and broad regions, both for improved understanding of methane budgets and to support emission mitigation efforts,” said the lead scientist on the study, Riley Duren, a research scientist at the University of Arizona and an Engineering Fellow at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
In total, landfills accounted for 41% of the methane emissions, dairy and manure farms were 26%, and oil and gas operations 26%.
The survey marks the first time the federal government has flown a surveillance aircraft over any state to monitor methane emissions of facilities.
The release of this report could induce lawmakers to slap businesses that are considered “super-emitters” with methane taxes.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/07/2019 – 20:05 - Gordon Chang: Do Not Support China's Huawei, Cripple It Instead
Gordon Chang: Do Not Support China's Huawei, Cripple It Instead
Authored by Gordon Chang via The Gatestone Institute,
“A prominent Republican who advises President Donald Trump called America’s 5G strategy ‘the biggest strategic disaster in U.S. history,'” wrote China-watcher David Goldman recently.
Many people will regard that as an exaggeration, but America’s failure to have a 5G strategy will almost certainly prove to have historic consequences.
“5G” is shorthand for the fifth generation of wireless communication.
“In the very near future, dominating the wireless world will be tantamount to dominating the world,” wrote Newt Gingrich in Newsweek in February. That is not an exaggeration.
Why not? With speeds 2,000 times faster than existing 4G networks, 5G will permit near-universal connectivity to homes, vehicles, machines, robots, and everything plugged into the Internet of Things (IoT).
Moreover, with just about everything connected to everything else China will filch the world’s information. That is not a theoretical concern. For instance, nightly from 2012 to 2017, China surreptitiously downloaded data from the Chinese-built-and-donated headquarters of the African Union in Addis Ababa.
Chinese parties have already been criminally taking American information, intellectual property and data for decades, worth hundreds of billions of dollars a year. This continuing crime is essential to China’s implementation of numerous industrial policies, especially the controversial “Made in China 2025” initiative, a decade-long program to achieve dominance in technology sectors, including 5G.
Theft is by no means the full extent of the harm. China, with control of 5G, will be in a position to remotely manipulate the world’s devices. In peacetime, Beijing could have the ability to drive cars off cliffs, unlock front doors, and turn off pacemakers. In war, Beijing could paralyze critical infrastructure.
“China’s game,” Goldman wrote in an e-mail, “is to control the broadband, and then the e-commerce, and then the e-finance, and then all the tech startups servicing the ‘ecosystem,’ and then the logistics.”
As he told me this year, “The world will become a Chinese company store.”
There is no mystery to how Beijing thinks it will grab control of the store. The Chinese will use Huawei Technologies.
Huawei, built on stolen U.S. technology, is the world’s leading telecom-equipment manufacturer and is fast becoming the world’s 5G provider. As Goldman writes, “Huawei has signed equipment agreements with every telecom provider on the Eurasian continent.”
Beijing, since Huawei’s founding in 1987, has been subsidizing sales of the company’s equipment and otherwise promoting its wares. No prizes for guessing why. As Senator Marsha Blackburn told Fox News in July, Huawei is Beijing’s “mechanism for spying.” For instance, Beijing pilfered data from the African Union through Huawei servers located in the building the Chinese donated.
So, Huawei is a dagger aimed at the heart of America, and as the unnamed adviser quoted by Goldman suggests, the threat is a mortal one.
There are various strategies for meeting China’s 5G challenge, but the most direct one is crippling Huawei. The Trump administration has taken steps to do so, but now that effort is on the verge of collapse.
In fact, the Commerce Department looks set to support that dangerous Chinese firm. On Sunday, in an interview with Bloomberg Television in Bangkok, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said his department will “very shortly” grant exemptions from its Entity List designation to allow sales to Huawei.
“We’re in good shape, we’re making good progress, and there’s no natural reason why it couldn’t be,” Ross told the business channel.
In May, Ross’s Commerce Department added the Chinese telecom-equipment provider to its Entity List, so that American businesses needed prior approval to sell or license to Huawei the products and technology covered by U.S. export regulations. Since then, Commerce has granted two 90-day waivers from these prohibitions. The second waiver will expire November 19.
Commerce, it appears, will not issue another across-the-board waiver but will instead grant exemptions to specific companies. Ross said he has received 260 waiver requests.
Granting waivers would be a grave mistake. “The United States,” Brandon Weichert of The Weichert Report told me, “is letting China off the hook.”
Ross and others argue that the individual exemptions are justified because Huawei can obtain items either from China itself — Huawei has developed its Kirin chipset, said to be comparable to Qualcomm products — or from other countries. He argues that U.S. companies might as well be the ones making the sales. At issue are semiconductors from principally Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea.
Ross is thinking too small. The United States, instead of trying to make sales, should be stopping everyone from selling to Huawei.
America has the power to cut off all sales. Japan and South Korea are formal military allies of the United States, and Taiwan, although no longer a treaty partner, is even more dependent on Washington for its security. Because Huawei poses a critical threat to everyone, it is not clear why Washington should not pull out all the stops to get Japanese, South Korean, and Taiwanese suppliers to cut off the Chinese company.
Taipei says Washington has not asked Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the giant chip supplier, to end sales to Huawei. The issue, therefore, is why has the United States not even made a request.
Up to now, the Trump administration has been trying to persuade, sometimes nudging friends and partners. American officials have, for instance, said they might reduce intelligence sharing with countries maintaining Huawei gear in their 5G networks.
That is too mild. Given the importance of the issue, the Trump administration should be forcing others — Japan, South Korea, Taiwan — to make a choice: sell to Huawei or sell to the world’s largest market, America’s. Last year, America’s merchandise trade deficit with Japan was $67.2 billion. The comparable figures were $17.8 billion for South Korea, and $15.2 billion for Taiwan.
U.S. officials have been telling other countries not to buy Huawei 5G gear, but if they should not be buying Huawei, then Americans should not be supplying that Chinese company either.
Let’s put Huawei out of business, not support its efforts to harm us.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/07/2019 – 19:45 - Self-Driving Uber That Killed Pedestrian In 2018 Couldn't Detect Jaywalkers, NTSB Says
Self-Driving Uber That Killed Pedestrian In 2018 Couldn't Detect Jaywalkers, NTSB Says
An Uber vehicle that struck and killed a pedestrian in March 2018 had what are being called “serious software flaws” that led to the tragic incident.
The vehicle reportedly didn’t have the ability to recognize jaywalkers, according to a new report from engadget, who cited a report prepared by the NTSB. The safety agency blamed Uber’s software for not being able to recognize the victim of the accident as a pedestrian crossing the street. The vehicle didn’t calculate that it could potentially collide with the woman until just 1.2 seconds before impact, at which point it was too late to brake.
The NTSB said that Uber’s system “did not include a consideration for jaywalking pedestrians.”
In fact, the report says that the system detected her about 6 seconds before impact, but didn’t classify her as a pedestrian:
Although the [system] detected the pedestrian nearly six seconds before impact … it never classified her as a pedestrian, because she was crossing at a location without a crosswalk [and] the system design did not include a consideration for jaywalking pedestrians.
After recognizing the pedestrian (too late) the vehicle then wasted a second trying to calculate an alternative path or allowing the driver to take control. Uber has since eliminated this function in a software update.
Uber vehicles have failed to identify roadway hazards in at least two other cases, the report notes. In one, a vehicle struck a bicycle lane post that had bent into a roadway. In another, a driver was forced to take control of the vehicle to avoid an oncoming vehicle. The driver still wound up striking a parked car.
In the 7 months leading up to the pedestrian accident, Uber vehicles had been involved in 37 accidents, 33 of which involved other vehicles striking Uber test cars.
Uber began using “significantly revised software” in December 2018 when it began testing again. Simulating the Arizona incident with the new software, Uber said it would have now detected the pedestrian 289 feet before impact and would have had four seconds to brake before impact at a speed of 43.2 mph.
“The average stopping distance for a human is about 130 feet at that speed, including reaction time,” the report notes. This means that the vehicle would have likely been able to stop and avoid the accident.
Meanwhile, the NTSB plans on meeting on November 19 to determine the cause of the accident. Prosecutors have absolved Uber of liability but are still weighing the idea of criminal charges against the driver.
You can read the full NTSB report on the incident here.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/07/2019 – 19:25 - Breaking Open A Black Hole: The World's Most Dangerous Experiment
Breaking Open A Black Hole: The World's Most Dangerous Experiment
Authored by Haley Zaremba via OilPrice.com,
2012 was a big year for black holes. Or, rather, for our understanding of them. First, Scientific American published a moderately terrifying paper titled “Black Holes are Everywhere” and then a team of researchers at Princeton University numerically solved the Einstein-hydrodynamic equations in order to determine that black holes are, in fact, way easier to create than previously thought. Their findings showed that the formation of a black hole requires considerably less energy than previous calculations suggested. Meanwhile, perhaps at least partly because of these revelations, concern over the world-destroying possibility–no matter how unlikely–of a man-made particle collider opening up an Earth-swallowing black hole has remained omnipresent in the larger conversation around atomic research.
The “Ultrarelativistic Black Hole Formation” study from Princeton University, published in 2013, developed new computer models which they utilized to show that the formation of a black hole would actually require less than half the energy — 2.4 times less, to be precise — than previous research had determined. The study reports that the researchers found that “the threshold for black hole formation is lower (by a factor of a few) than simple hoop conjecture estimates, and, moreover, near this threshold two distinct apparent horizons first form postcollision and then merge.”
(Click to enlarge)
Credit: W. E. East and F. Pretorius, Phys. Rev. Lett. (2013)
As a report at Phys.org explains, “Researchers know that it is theoretically possible to create black holes because of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity—particularly the part describing the relationship between energy and mass—increasing the speed of a particle causes its mass to increase as well.” This is what drove the Princeton researchers to form a computer model based on Einstein’s original hydrodynamic equations. The model “provides a virtual window for viewing what happens when two particles collide—they focus their energies on each other and together create a combined mass that pushes gravity to its limit and as a result spawns a very tiny black hole. That result was expected—what was surprising was that the team found that their model showed that such a collision and result would require 2.4 times less energy than has been previously calculated to produce such a tiny black hole.”
And our galaxy is positively chock-full of them. It’s not just the famous supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, but scores of smaller black holes as well. Scientific American’s “Black Holes are Everywhere” tells readers that “most of the holes in our galaxy are perhaps 4 or 5 solar masses, and they’re teeny, with horizons of only about 12 km in radius. But there have to be tens of thousands of them, the inevitable remnants of the short lives of huge stars.”
This news fed into fears that “Mad Scientists Performing Universe-Breaking Experiments” were flying a bit too close to the sun (so to speak) by conducting experiments at the European Organization for Nuclear Research’s (CERN) Large Hadron Collider (LHC) with the potential to open up microscopic black holes with potentially disastrous consequences. These concerns surfaced before the LHC — an underground accelerator which forms a ring with a diameter of 5 miles near Geneva, Switzerland — was ever switched on. A 2008 report from NASA succinctly titled “The Day the World Didn’t End” tells readers that bringing the accelerator online “did not trigger the creation of a microscopic black hole. And that black hole did not start rapidly sucking in surrounding matter faster and faster until it devoured the Earth, as sensationalist news reports had suggested it might.”
The fear around these larger-than-life experiments was so potent and widespread that CERN has an entire page on their website dedicated to the Frequently Asked Question “Will CERN generate a black hole?“ and even the Princeton scientists addressed it in their academic report, noting that even with the new calculations finding that black holes require much less energy to open up than previously thought, opening up a black hole big enough to collapse the earth would still require billions of times more energy than the LHC is capable of generating. What’s more, even if and when a black hole did open up in the collider, it would disappear just as quickly thanks to an effect called Hawking radiation.
(Click to enlarge)
Source: https://science.nasa.gov/
While fears of the Armageddon-causing potential of these microscopic black holes may have been overblown, however, the fact that the particle can open up these tiny black holes was then and remains now an absolute truth. Even CERN’s FAQ page concedes that “The LHC will not generate black holes in the cosmological sense. However, some theories suggest that the formation of tiny ‘quantum’ black holes may be possible.” Of course, the page goes on to reassure concerned readers that “the observation of such an event would be thrilling in terms of our understanding of the Universe; and would be perfectly safe.”
Nevertheless, there are still some scientists who think we are right to be worried about these experiments that are probing the boundaries of physics. Just last year the well-respected (not to mention knighted) British scientist Sir Martin Rees published a warning to take fears around the LHC seriously in his book “On the Future.” As paraphrased by NBC’s science news site MACH, “the particles crashing about inside an accelerator could unleash bits of ‘strange matter’ that shrink Earth into a ball 300 feet across. In another [scenario], the experiments could create a microscopic black hole that would inexorably gnaw away at our planet from the inside. In the most extreme scenario Rees describes, a physics mishap could cause space itself to decay into a new form that wipes out everything from here to the farthest star.” Rees himself recognizes that these scenarios are extremely unlikely, but in the author’s own words, “given the stakes, they should not be ignored.”
And now that the Event Horizon Telescope has successfully captured the first-ever image of a black hole, scientists are dreaming up ever more radical future experiments. Let’s just hope that as scientists continue to push against the limitations of human knowledge and ability the headlines continue to read “The Day the World Didn’t End.” Or that we continue to have headlines at all.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/07/2019 – 19:05 - In Latest Saudi Shakedown, Aramco "Taps" Prince Al-Waleed For IPO Money
In Latest Saudi Shakedown, Aramco "Taps" Prince Al-Waleed For IPO Money
Back in November 2017, a number of prominent Saudi Arabian princes, government ministers, and business people were arrested in Saudi Arabia a few weeks after the creation of an anti-corruption committee led by Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman. Among them was one of Saudi Arabia’s wealthiest men, billionaire Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, who along with the other arrested individuals was confined in the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton and was only released months later after he pledged an unknown amount of money to the Saudi treasury. While the Crown Prince dubbed the arrests an anti-corruption exercise, it was plain that Saudi Arabia, then facing a gaping budget deficit had engaged in nothing short of a massive extortive shakedown.
Two years later Saudi Arabia is engaging in a similar shakedown, only this time instead of very broad “uses of funds”, it hopes to narrow down the extorted money solely for one purpose – to get more “willing” Aramco anchor investors.
And just like in 2017, Prince Al-Waleed – one of the largest investors in Twitter – is once again in the crosshairs.
As Bloomberg reports, one day after China tentatively agreed to invest $5 to $10 billion in the Aramco mega IPO which has so far found precisely zero anchor investors, Saudi Arabia was “negotiating commitments” from its wealthiest citizens to buy stock in the Aramco initial public offering. Translation: MbS gave his oligarchs a choice – invest in Aramco, or spend some more time in the Riyadh Ritz Carlton. Among those Riyadh has reportedly approached include the Olayan family and Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal to low-profile tycoons in the oil producer’s backyard.
Following polite but stern and “convincing” discussions with MbS and his goon squad, the billionaire Olayans, who own a major stake in Credit Suisse, are said to be considering buying several hundred million U.S. dollars worth of Aramco shares, according to the people. Prince Alwaleed – who knows too well what happens if he disagrees with the Crown Prince – has also “held talks” to commit a significant amount to the IPO.
Many others have also been ordered to “volunteer” their funds for the upcoming IPO according to Bloomberg: Aramco representatives have been seeking an investment from the Almajdouie family, whose businesses range from distributing Hyundai cars in the kingdom to a large logistics operation. They have also approached members of the Al-Turki clan, who are involved in fields from real estate to general trading, food distribution and ports.
Even though Bloomberg claims that so far there’s no certainty the wealthy investors will place orders, we beg to differ and suggest that when told by the government to buy, they will buy… and will do so at any valuation, even an insane one. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman has long insisted the state oil company is worth $2 trillion, a figure that many Western fund managers have balked at, with some proposing a valuation as low as $1 trillion (or less, depending on the price of oil).
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/07/2019 – 18:45 - When Is A Whistleblower, Not A Whistleblower?
When Is A Whistleblower, Not A Whistleblower?
Authored by Renee Parsons via Off-Guardian.org,
For those readers who care more about Donald Trump, Obama’s legacy or the Republican/Democrat parties rather than the Rule of Law and what remains of the US Constitution, the following scenario should be a Giant Wake up Call.
As the result of an anonymous “whistleblower” Complaint filed against President Trump on August 12, the House Intel Committee conducted a series of closed door hearings that violated Sixth Amendment protections while relying on an anonymous WB.
Right away, those hearings morphed into an impeachment inquiry that took on the spectacle of a clumsy kerfuffle not to be taken seriously – except they were.
There is an essential Ukraine backstory which began with the US initiating the overthrow of its democratically elected President Yanukovych in 2014.
Fast forward to Russiagate followed by Ukrainegate and an impeachment inquiry with Trump telling newly elected Ukraine President Zelensky in their now infamous July 25th conversation:
I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation in Ukraine; they say Crowdstrike. The server they say, Ukraine has it<.”
In a nutshell, possession of the CrowdStrike server is crucial to revealing the Democratic hierarchy’s role in initiating Russiagate as the Democrats are having a major snit-fit that now threatens the constitutional foundation of the country.
On October 31st the House voted to initiate a formal impeachment inquiry based on still mysterious Whistleblower’s allegations. At the time, there was still no confirmation of who the shadowy Whistleblower was or whether a Whistleblower even existed.
It is a fact that most whistleblowers bring the transgression proudly forward into the public light for the specific purpose of exposing the deeds that deserve to be exposed. At great personal cost, they then provide a credible case for why this offense is illegal or a violation of the public trust and deserves to be made public.
This alleged WB, however, defies the traditional definition of a WB who most often experiences the wrong-doing first hand and from a personal vantage while revealing said wrong-doing as a function within an agency of their employment.
This WB’s identity has been protected from public disclosure by TPTB, shrouded in mystery and suspicion as if fearful of public scrutiny or that his ‘truth’ would crumble under interrogation and not be greeted with unanimity. What is clear is that this WB had no direct experience but only second-hand knowledge of events which is defined as ‘hear say’ evidence. While inadmissible in a Court of law, why should ‘hear say’ be allowed when the subject is as profound as impeachment of a President?
Real-life CIA whistleblower Jon Kiriakou who served 22 months in prison, suggested this “whistleblower is not a whistleblower but a anonymous CIA analyst within the Democratic House staff.” When was the last time a real whistleblower was ‘protected’ by the government from public exposure.
There has been no explanation as to why this informant’s identity is necessarily been kept secret – and not just from the public but from Members of Congress especially as Republican Members have been unable to question him.
There has been no further information regarding a second “Whistleblower” who allegedly came forward to corroborate the first WB although why it is necessary to corroborate that which has already been publicly revealed remains questionable.
In a once unimaginable example of CIA–Democratic collusion, it turns out that the identity of the alleged WB is not such a secret after all.
Far from the public eyes of Americans, there has been a coordinated effort to stifle any exposure of his identity; presumably to prevent any revelation of the underpinnings of exactly how this convoluted scheme of malfeasance was organized. And as his name and political history within the Obama Administration and Democratic party are publicly scrutinized, it makes perfect sense why the TPTB would prefer to prevent public hearings or keep the WB’s identity under wraps.
His identity should have been public knowledge weeks ago and yet it took Real Clear Investigations, an alt-news website to publicly reveal what has been well known within the DC bubble for some weeks.
The answer to the title question is that this WB is instead a very well connected partisan lackey and CIA operative.
The alleged WB is said to be a 33 year old CIA analyst by the name of Eric Ciaramella who was an Obama White House holdover at the National Security Council until mid 2017.
Consequently, he has deep partisan ties to former VP Joe Biden, former CIA Director John Brennan and former National Security Advisor Susan Rice as well as the DNC establishment. And here’s where it get especially interesting; Ciaramella specializes in Russia and Ukraine, is fluent in both languages, ran the Ukraine desk at the Obama NSC and had close association with Ukrainian DNC hyper-activist Alexandra Chalupa.
Ciaramella’s bio reads like a litany of the political turmoil that has consumed the nation for the last three years as it is reported that he had a role in initiating the Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy while at the Obama White House and worked with Biden who was the Obama point-person on Ukraine issues in 2015 and 2016 when $3 billion USAID funding was being embezzled.
Clearly, Ciaramella has a wealth of information to share regarding the Biden Quid pro Quo scandal which is currently being muzzled by the corporate media.
With Ciaramella’s identity revealed, a former NSC staffer who was present during the Trump-Zelensky July 25th conversation testified that he saw nothing illegal in the talk. Tim Morrison told the House Intel Committee that “I want to be clear, I was not concerned that anything illegal was discussed” and that the transcript of the call which was declassified and released by the White House “accurately and completely reflects the substance of the call.”
As a result, Ciaramella is now refusing to publicly testify before the House or Senate Intel Committees.
More recently, Mark Zaid, attorney for Ciaramella has said that his client would accept written questions from Republicans on the House Intel Committee and that his client “wants to be as bipartisan as possible throughout this process while remaining anonymous.”
Seriously? He’s got to be kidding.
Did the reality of being required to testify in public just recently dawn on Ciaramella or was he not expecting that his every word and utterance would be scrutinized before the entire world? Is he so unfamiliar with the Sixth Amendment that he believes a Defendant’s right to confront his accuser should not apply to him or in a Presidential impeachment inquiry?
Did he actually believe he could make anonymous impeachment accusations against the President of the US without a ripple or without having to directly face questions from House and Senate Republicans? Who did he think would protect him from public scrutiny?
Given Ciaramella’s extensive partisan history since 2015 and his national security experience with Susan Rice in the Obama White House, it will be interesting if he receives a mention in the IG report on the abuse of FISA warrants and whether Ciaramella’s name has moved to the top of the Durham interviewee list.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/07/2019 – 18:25 - US Massacre In Mexico Requires Washington To Act, Here's What Could Happen Next
US Massacre In Mexico Requires Washington To Act, Here's What Could Happen Next
On Tuesday, nine Americans – a large family of what appear to be associated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – were killed during a highway ambush by drug cartel members.
The story sent shockwaves across the American press, President Trump, in a series of tweets, offered US assistance in bringing the criminals to justice. “If Mexico needs or requests help in cleaning out these monsters, the United States stands ready, willing & able to get involved and do the job quickly and effectively.”
A wonderful family and friends from Utah got caught between two vicious drug cartels, who were shooting at each other, with the result being many great American people killed, including young children, and some missing. If Mexico needs or requests help in cleaning out these…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 5, 2019
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….monsters, the United States stands ready, willing & able to get involved and do the job quickly and effectively. The great new President of Mexico has made this a big issue, but the cartels have become so large and powerful that you sometimes need an army to defeat an army!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 5, 2019
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This is the time for Mexico, with the help of the United States, to wage WAR on the drug cartels and wipe them off the face of the earth. We merely await a call from your great new president!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 5, 2019
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The slaughter of innocent Americans this week is a clear understanding that cartel wars in Mexico are evolving into a dangerous phase where foreigners, women, and children won’t be spared by cartels.
“There are no words for what happened to them.”
At a ranch in a valley in northern Mexico, Howarth #LeBaron gazes mournfully at his three surviving children. Days ago, they lost four siblings and their mother in a massacre blamed on a drug cartel. https://t.co/q0WABU9Jlv pic.twitter.com/VwQtwNGp1t
— AFP news agency (@AFP) November 7, 2019
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President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) has so far been more than willing to work with the Trump administration on border security but might have to readjust his approach in fighting cartels after the deaths of the Americans.
AMLO’s strategy in creating work programs and opportunities for Mexican youth isn’t working as cartel wars devastate many parts of the country.
Former anti-drug prosecutor Samuel Gonzalez told AP that “sooner or later, the government is going to have to adjust its strategy.”
Perhaps, the deaths of Americans this week is a serious wake-up call for AMLO and his administration to change the script or face tremendous backlash from the Trump administration.
“It is not that the government would have to declare war on the drug cartels, it is rather that the drug traffickers have declared war on the government,” Gonzalez said, “and in that situation the government has to respond in legitimate self-defense and with proportional force.”
Jacob Hornberger, the president of The Future of Freedom Foundation, said Washington officials have been contemplating three strategies over how to respond to the massacre in Mexico:
- Option 1: Have the Mexican military crackdown even more fiercely than it already has during the past 10 years of fierce military drug warfare.
- Option 2: Send in the US military and the CIA into Mexico.
- Option 3. Capture the head of the Sinaloa drug cartel, extradite him to the United States, and jail him for the rest of his life.
Hornberger finds it hard to believe that Option 1, 2, and 3 would solve the crisis, instead, he says there’s a straightforward solution that could end all of this madness: end the war on drugs.
“As we have been saying here at The Future of Freedom Foundation for 30 years, there is one — and only one — way to get rid of drug cartels, drug gangs, and drug lords. That way is through drug legalization, complete drug legalization. Not just marijuana. All drugs, including cocaine, heroin, meth, and opioids. Ditch them all.
With drug legalization, the drug cartels, drug gangs, and drug lords are out out business overnight. Gone. Isn’t that what drug-war proponents say they would like to see? Well, that’s the only way to see it.
That’s what happened, of course, when statists decided to re-legalize booze. They finally realized that they were never going to put the booze cartels, booze gangs, and booze lords out of business by cracking down on them ever more fiercely. They finally realized that the only way to achieve that goal was through legalization. And sure enough, the re-legalization of booze put them all out of business,” Hornberger wrote.
And the probability of the US government ending the war on drugs is very low. So it’s likely that AMLO and Washington will start increasing joint military operations against cartels in the not too distant future.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/07/2019 – 18:05
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