Wild Conspiracy Theory? The Truth Behind The Biggest Threat To The “War On Terror” Narrative

Wild Conspiracy Theory? The Truth Behind The Biggest Threat To The “War On Terror” Narrative

Tyler Durden

Tue, 11/03/2020 – 23:05

Authored by Cynthia Chung via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

If you must break the law, do it to seize power: in all other cases observe it.”

– Julius Caesar

The illegal invasion of Libya, in which Britain was complicit and a British House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee’s report confirmed as an illegal act sanctioned by the UK government, over which Cameron stepped down as Prime Minister (weeks before the release of the UK parliament report), occurred from March – Oct, 2011.

Muammar al-Gaddafi was assassinated on Oct. 20th, 2011.

On Sept 11-12th, 2012, U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens, U.S. Foreign Service information management officer Sean Smith, and CIA contractors Tyron Woods and Glen Doherty were killed at two U.S. government facilities in Benghazi.

It is officially denied to this date that al-Qaeda or any other international terrorist organization participated in the Benghazi attack. It is also officially denied that the attack was pre-meditated.

On the 6th year anniversary of the Benghazi attack, Barack Obama stated at a partisan speech on Sept 10th, 2018, delivered at the University of Illinois, that the outrage over the details concerning the Benghazi attack were the result of “wild conspiracy theory” perpetrated by conservatives and Republican members of Congress.

However, according to an August 2012 Defense Intelligence Agency report  (only released to the public in May 2015), this is anything but the case. The report was critical of the policies of then President Obama as a direct igniter for the rise of ISIS and the creation of a “caliphate” by Syria-based radical Islamists and al-Qaeda. The report also identified that arms shipments in Libya had gone to radical Islamist “allies” of the United States and NATO in the overthrowing of Col. Muammar al-Gaddafi. These arms shipments were sent to Syria and became the arsenal that allowed ISIS and other radical rebels to grow.

The declassified DIA report states:

AQI [al-qaeda –iraq] SUPPORTED THE SYRIAN OPPOSITION FROM THE BEGINNING, BOTH IDEOLOGICALLY AND THROUGH THE MEDIA… WESTERN COUNTRIES, THE GULF STATES AND TURKEY ARE SUPPORTING THESE EFFORTS… THE WEST, GULF COUNTRIES, AND TURKEY SUPPORT THE [SYRIAN] OPPOSITION… THERE IS THE POSSIBILITY OF ESTABLISHING A DECLARED OR UNDECLARED SALAFIST PRINCIPALITY IN EASTERN SYRIA (HASAKA AND DER ZOR), AND THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THE SUPPORTING POWERS TO THE OPPOSITION WANT, IN ORDER TO ISOLATE THE SYRIAN REGIME…” [emphasis added]

Another DIA document from Oct 2012 (also released in May 2015), reported that Gaddafi’s vast arsenal was being shipped from Benghazi to two Syrian ports under the control of the Syrian rebel groups.

Essentially, the DIA documents were reporting that the Obama Administration was supporting Islamist extremism, including the Muslim Brotherhood.

When the watchdog group Judicial Watch received the series of DIA reports through Freedom of Information Act lawsuits (FOIA) in May 2015, the State Department, the Administration and various media outlets trashed the reports as insignificant and unreliable.

There was just one problem; Lt. Gen. Flynn was backing up the reliability of the released DIA reports.

Lt. Gen. Flynn as Director of the DIA from July 2012 – Aug. 2014, was responsible for acquiring accurate intelligence on ISIS’s and other extremist operations within the Middle East, but did not have any authority in shaping U.S. military policy in response to the Intel the DIA was acquiring.

In a July 2015 interview with Al-Jazeera, Flynn went so far as to state that the rise of ISIS was the result of a “willful decision,” not an intelligence failure, by the Obama Administration.

In the Al-Jazeera interview Flynn was asked:

Q: You are basically saying that even in government at the time you knew these groups were around, you saw this analysis, and you were arguing against it, but who wasn’t listening?

FLYNN: I think the Administration.

Q: So the Administration turned a blind eye to your analysis?

FLYNN: I don’t know that they turned a blind eye, I think it was a decision. I think it was a willful decision.

Q: A willful decision to support an insurgency that had Salafists, al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood?

FLYNN: It was a willful decision to do what they’re doing.

Flynn was essentially stating (in the 47 minute interview) that the United States was fully aware that weapons trafficking from Benghazi to the Syrian rebels was occurring.

In fact, the secret flow of arms from Libya to the Syrian opposition, via Turkey was CIA sponsored and had been underway shortly after Gaddafi’s death in Oct 2011. The operation was largely run out of a covert CIA annex in Benghazi, with State Department acquiescence.

This information was especially troubling in light of the fact that the Obama Administration’s policy, from mid-2011 on, was to overthrow the Assad government. The question of “who will replace Assad?” was never fully answered.

Perhaps the most troubling to Americans among the FOIA-released DIA documents was a report from Sept. 16, 2012, which provided a detail account of the pre-meditated nature of the 9/11/12 attack in Benghazi, reporting that the attack had been planned ten days prior, detailing the groups involved.

The report revealed that it was in fact an al-Qaeda linked terrorist group that was responsible for the Benghazi attack. That despite this intelligence, the Obama Administration continued to permit arms-trafficking to the al-Qaeda-linked Syrian rebels even after the 9/11/12 attacks.

In August 2015, then President Obama ordered for U.S. forces to attack Syrian government forces if they interfered with the American “vetted, trained and armed” forces. This U.S. approved Division 30 Syrian rebel group “defected” almost immediately, with U.S. weapons in hand, to align with the Nusra Front, the formal al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria.

Obama’s Semantics War: Any Friend of Yours is a Friend of Mine

“Flynn incurred the wrath of the [Obama] White House by insisting on telling the truth about Syria… He thought truth was the best thing and they shoved him out.”

– Patrick Lang (retired army colonel, served for nearly a decade as the chief Middle East civilian intelligence officer for the Defense Intelligence Agency)

Before being named Director of the DIA, Flynn served as Director of Intelligence for the Joint Staff, as Director of Intelligence for the U.S. Central Command, and as Director of Intelligence for the Joint Special Operations Command.

Flynn’s criticisms and opposition to the Obama Administration’s policies in his interview with Al-Jazeera in 2015 was nothing new. In August 2013, Flynn as Director of the DIA supported Gen. Dempsey’s intervention, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in forcing then President Obama to cancel orders to launch a massive bombing campaign against the Syrian government and armed forces. Flynn and Dempsey both argued that the overthrow of the Assad government would lead to a radical Islamist stronghold in Syria, much like what was then happening in Libya.

This account was also supported in Seymour Hersh’s paper “Military to Military” published in Jan 2016, to which he states:

Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, director of the DIA between 2012 and 2014, confirmed that his agency had sent a constant stream of classified warnings to the civilian leadership about the dire consequences of toppling Assad. The jihadists, he said, were in control of the opposition. Turkey wasn’t doing enough to stop the smuggling of foreign fighters and weapons across the border. ‘If the American public saw the intelligence we were producing daily, at the most sensitive level, they would go ballistic,’ Flynn told me. ‘We understood Isis’s long-term strategy and its campaign plans, and we also discussed the fact that Turkey was looking the other way when it came to the growth of the Islamic State inside Syria.’ The DIA’s reporting, he [Flynn] said, ‘got enormous pushback’ from the Obama administration. ‘I felt that they did not want to hear the truth.’

[According to a former JCS adviser]’…To say Assad’s got to go is fine, but if you follow that through – therefore anyone is better. It’s the “anybody else is better” issue that the JCS had with Obama’s policy.’ The Joint Chiefs felt that a direct challenge to Obama’s policy would have ‘had a zero chance of success’. So in the autumn of 2013 they decided to take steps against the extremists without going through political channels, by providing U.S. intelligence to the militaries of other nations, on the understanding that it would be passed on to the Syrian army and used against the common enemy, Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State [ISIS].” [emphasis added]

According to Hersh’s sources, it was through the militaries of Germany, Israel and Russia, who were in contact with the Syrian army, that the U.S. intelligence on where the terrorist cells were located was shared, hence the “military to military”. There was no direct contact between the U.S. and the Syrian military.

Hersh states in his paper:

The two countries [U.S. & Syria] collaborated against al-Qaida, their common enemy. A longtime consultant to the Joint Special Operations Command said that, after 9/11, ‘Bashar was, for years, extremely helpful to us while, in my view, we were churlish in return, and clumsy in our use of the gold he gave us. That quiet co-operation continued among some elements, even after the [Bush administration’s] decision to vilify him.’ In 2002 Assad authorised Syrian intelligence to turn over hundreds of internal files on the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria and Germany. Later that year, Syrian intelligence foiled an attack by al-Qaida on the headquarters of the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, and Assad agreed to provide the CIA with the name of a vital al-Qaida informant. In violation of this agreement, the CIA contacted the informant directly; he rejected the approach, and broke off relations with his Syrian handlers.

…It was this history of co-operation that made it seem possible in 2013 that Damascus would agree to the new indirect intelligence-sharing arrangement with the U.S.

However, as the Syrian army gained strength with the Dempsey-led-Joint Chiefs’ support, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey escalated their financing and arming of al-Nusra and ISIS. In fact, it was “later” discovered that the Erdogan government had been supporting al-Nusra and ISIS for years. In addition, after the June 30th, 2013 revolution in Egypt, Turkey became a regional hub for the Muslim Brotherhood’s International Organization.

In Sept. 2015, Russia came in and directly intervened militarily, upon invitation by the Syrian government, and effectively destroyed ISIS strongholds within Syrian territory. In response, Turkey shot down a Russian Sukhoi Su-24 on Nov 24th, 2015 for allegedly entering Turkish airspace for 17 seconds. Days after the Russian fighter jet was shot down, Obama expressed support for Erdogan and stated at a Dec. 1st, 2015 press conference that his administration would remain “very much committed to Turkey’s security and its sovereignty”. Obama also said that as long as Russia remained allied with Assad, “a lot of Russian resources are still going to be targeted at opposition groups … that we support … So I don’t think we should be under any illusions that somehow Russia starts hitting only Isil targets. That’s not happening now. It was never happening. It’s not going to be happening in the next several weeks.”

Today, not one of those “opposition groups” has shown itself to have remained, or possibly ever been, anti-extremist. And neither the Joint Chiefs nor the DIA believed that there was ever such a thing as “moderate rebels.”

Rather, as remarked by a JCS adviser to Hersh, “Turkey is the problem.”

China’s “Uyghur Problem”

Imad Moustapha, was the Syrian Ambassador to the United States from 2004 to Dec. 2011, and has been the Syrian Ambassador to China for the past eight years.

In an interview with Seymour Hersh, Moustapha stated:

‘China regards the Syrian crisis from three perspectives,’ he said: international law and legitimacy; global strategic positioning; and the activities of jihadist Uighurs, from Xinjiang province in China’s far west. Xinjiang borders eight nations – Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India – and, in China’s view, serves as a funnel for terrorism around the world and within China. Many Uighur fighters now in Syria are known to be members of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement – an often violent separatist organisation that seeks to establish an Islamist Uighur state in Xinjiang. ‘The fact that they have been aided by Turkish intelligence to move from China into Syria through Turkey has caused a tremendous amount of tension between the Chinese and Turkish intelligence,’ Moustapha said. ‘China is concerned that the Turkish role of supporting the Uighur fighters in Syria may be extended in the future to support Turkey’s agenda in Xinjiang. We are already providing the Chinese intelligence service with information regarding these terrorists and the routes they crossed from on travelling into Syria.’ ” [emphasis added]

This view was echoed by a Washington foreign affairs analyst whose views are routinely sought by senior government officials, informing Hersh that:

Erdoğan has been bringing Uighurs into Syria by special transport while his government has been agitating in favour of their struggle in China. Uighur and Burmese Muslim terrorists who escape into Thailand somehow get Turkish passports and are then flown to Turkey for transit into Syria.

China understands that the best way to combat the terrorist recruiting that is going on in these regions is to offer aid towards reconstruction and economic development projects. By 2016, China had allegedly committed more than $30 billion to postwar reconstruction in Syria.

The long-time consultant to the Joint Special Operations Command could not hide his contempt, according to Hersh, when he was asked for his view of the U.S. policy on Syria. “‘The solution in Syria is right before our nose,’ he said. ‘Our primary threat is Isis and all of us – the United States, Russia and China – need to work together.’“

The military’s indirect pathway to Assad disappeared with Dempsey’s retirement in September 25th, 2015. His replacement as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Joseph Dunford, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee in July 2015, two months before assuming office, “If you want to talk about a nation that could pose an existential threat to the United States, I’d have to point to Russia.”

Flynn’s Call for Development in the Middle East to Counter Terrorism

Not only was Flynn critical of the Obama Administration’s approach to countering terrorism in the Middle East, his proposed solution was to actually downgrade the emphasis on military counter-operations, and rather focus on economic development within these regions as the most effective and stable impediment to the growth of extremists.

Flynn stated in the July 2015 interview with Al-Jazeera:

“Frankly, an entire new economy is what this region needs. They need to take this 15-year old, to 25 to 30-year olds in Saudi Arabia, the largest segment of their population; in Egypt, the largest segment of their population, 15 to roughly 30 years old, mostly young men. You’ve got to give them something else to do. If you don’t, they’re going to turn on their own governments, and we can solve that problem.

So that is the conversation that we have to have with them, and we have to help them do that. And in the meantime, what we have is this continued investment in conflict. The more weapons we give, the more bombs we drop, that just fuels the conflict. Some of that has to be done, but I’m looking for other solutions. I’m looking for the other side of this argument, and we’re not having it; we’re not having it as the United States.” [emphasis added]

Flynn also stated in the interview that the U.S. cannot, and should not, deter the development of nuclear energy in the Middle East:

It now equals nuclear development of some type in the Middle East, and now what we want… what I hope for is that we have nuclear [energy] development, because it also helps for projects like desalinization, getting water…nuclear energy is very clean, and it actually is so cost effective, much more cost effective for producing water from desalinization.

Flynn was calling for a new strategic vision for the Middle East, and making it clear that “conflict only” policies were only going to add fuel to the fire, that cooperative economic policies are the true solution to attaining peace in the Middle East. Pivotal to this is the expansion of nuclear energy, while assuring non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, which Flynn states “has to be done in a very international, inspectable way.”

When In Doubt, Blame the Russians

How did the Obama Administration respond to Flynn’s views?

He was fired (forced resignation) from his post as Director of the DIA on April 30th, 2014. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who was briefed by Flynn on the intelligence reports and was also critical of the U.S. Administration’s strategy in the Middle East was also forced to resign in Feb. 2015.

With the election of Trump as President on Nov. 8 2016, Lt. Gen. Flynn was swiftly announced as Trump’s choice for National Security Adviser on Nov. 18th, 2016.

Just weeks later, Flynn was targeted by the FBI and there was a media sensation over Flynn being a suspected “Russian agent”. Flynn was taken out before he had a chance to even step into his office, prevented from doing any sort of overhaul with the intelligence bureaus and Joint Chiefs of Staff, which was most certainly going to happen. Instead Flynn was forced to resign on Feb. 13th, 2017 after incessant media attacks undermining the entire Trump Administration, accusing them of working for the Russians against the welfare of the American people.

Despite an ongoing investigation on the allegations against Flynn, there has been no evidence to this date that has justified any charge. In fact, volumes of exculpatory evidence have been presented to exonerate Flynn from any wrongdoing including perjury. At this point, the investigation of Flynn has been put into question as consciously disingenuous and as being stalled by the federal judge since May 2020, refusing to release Flynn it seems while a Trump Administration is still in effect.

The question thus stands; in whose best interest is it that no peace be permitted to occur in the Middle East and that U.S.-Russian relations remain verboten? And is such an interest a friend or foe to the American people?

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D.C. Voters Tell Cops and Prosecutors to Leave Psychedelic Users Alone

psilocybin-mushrooms-Wikipedia

Voters in Washington, D.C., today approved a ballot initiative that says investigating and arresting adults for noncommercial production, distribution, and possession of “entheogenic plants and fungi” should be “among the lowest law enforcement priorities for the District of Columbia.” With two-fifths of precincts reporting, more than three-quarters of voters favored Initiative 81.

The measure covers plants or mushrooms containing ibogaine, dimethyltryptamine, mescaline, psilocybin, or psilocyn. In addition to declaring those psychedelics a low priority, Initiative 81 asks the D.C. attorney general and the U.S. attorney for D.C. to “cease prosecution” of such cases.

Last year Denver voters approved a groundbreaking initiative that made adult possession of psilocybin the city’s lowest law enforcement priority and prohibited the use of public money to pursue such cases. This year the city councils of Ann Arbor, Oakland, and Santa Cruz enacted similar measures.

The D.C. initiative goes further in some respects, since it covers additional psychedelics and applies to noncommercial cultivation and distribution as well as possession. But unlike the psilocybin measures, it does not include a prohibition on spending money to enforce the drug bans.

“Entheogenic plants and fungi have been demonstrated, through scientific studies, to be beneficial in addressing a variety of afflictions, including substance abuse, addiction, trauma, post-traumatic stress syndrome, chronic depression, anxiety, diabetes, [and] cluster headaches,” the initiative says. “Practices with entheogenic plants and fungi have long existed, have been considered sacred to a number of cultures and religions for millennia, and continue to be enhanced and improved. Citizens of the District of Columbia seeking to improve their health and well-being through the use of entheogenic plants and fungi currently use them in fear of arrest and prosecution.”

Initiative 81 was supported by the D.C. Democratic Party and opposed by Rep. Andy Harris (R–Md.), who also worked hard to block marijuana legalization in the District. “This is a bald-faced attempt to just make these very serious, very potent, very dangerous—both short term and long term—hallucinogenic drugs broadly available,” Harris complained in a July interview with the New York Post. “Public health has to be maintained. We know of course, once you make it a very low enforcement level and encourage prosecutors not to prosecute it, what would prevent people from using hallucinogens, getting behind the wheel of a car and killing people?”

An August poll put public support for the initiative at 60 percent, with 24 percent opposed and 16 percent undecided. It does not look like voters were dissuaded by Harris’ arguments.

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Mississippi Voters Approve Medical Use of Cannabis

cannabis-leaves-5-MIS-Photography

Mississippi voters today approved a ballot initiative that allows patients with a physician-certified “debilitating medical condition” to use marijuana for symptom relief. With 53 percent of precincts reporting, more than two-thirds of voters favored legalizing medical marijuana, and nearly three-quarters preferred Initiative 65, the more liberal of two options.

Mississippi is the 34th state, and the second in the Deep South, to allow medical use of marijuana. South Dakota has a similar initiative on its ballot this year that also looks likely to pass.

Gov. Tate Reeves, a Republican, opposed Initiative 65, as did the American Medical Association and the Mississippi State Medical Association. Supporters included Mike Espy, a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate. A poll conducted in May put public support for the measure at 57 percent, including respondents who said they supported both Initiative 65 and Initiative 65A, a more restrictive measure that would have authorized state legislators to write the rules for medical use.

Initiative 65 applies to patients with “cancer, epilepsy or other seizures, Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, cachexia, post-traumatic stress disorder, positive status for human immunodeficiency virus, acquired immune deficiency syndrome, chronic or debilitating pain, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, glaucoma, agitation of dementias, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, sickle-cell anemia, autism with aggressive or self-injurious behaviors, pain refractory to appropriate opioid management, spinal cord disease or severe injury, intractable nausea, severe muscle spasticity, or another medical condition of the same kind or class.” With a doctor’s approval, qualified patients will be allowed to obtain marijuana from state-licensed “treatment centers” and possess up to 2.5 ounces at a time.

The initiative charges the Mississippi Department of Health with licensing and regulating treatment centers, whose sales will be taxed at the standard 7 percent state rate. The deadline for writing regulations is July 1. The health department is required to start issuing ID cards to patients and licenses to treatment centers by August 15.

On Sunday, Gov. Reeves, who says he is “against efforts to make marijuana mainstream,” warned that Initiative 65 would give Mississippi “the most liberal weed rules in the US,” with “pot shops everywhere” and “no local authority.” The measure allows local governments to impose zoning rules and regulations on dispensaries but says they “shall be no more restrictive” than the requirements for pharmacies.

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New Energy Vehicles Will Be 20% Of China’s Total New Car Sales By 2025

New Energy Vehicles Will Be 20% Of China’s Total New Car Sales By 2025

Tyler Durden

Tue, 11/03/2020 – 22:45

The boom in EV stocks may not be stopping anytime soon. Recent momentum in names like Kandi Technologies, Nio, Tesla, Fisker and other electric vehicle names – already fueled by states like California vowing to ban internal combustion engine vehicles – could see a continued tailwind from the world’s largest auto market, China.

Sales of new energy vehicles are going to make up 20% of the country’s total new auto sales by the year 2025, China’s State Council estimated early this week. 

The “new energy” category includes battery electric, plug-in hybrid and hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles. Sales will rise as the country’s “NEV industry has improved their technology and competitiveness,” according to a new policy paper reviewed by Reuters

In the country’s 5 year plan to 2025, the State Council has pushed for improvements in EV technologies, building more efficient charging and implementing battery swapping networks. The Chinese government will also adopt quotas and incentives to to “guide automakers” (i.e. force them) to make EVs after Federal subsidies end in two years.

The government is also looking at ways to implement EVs for public uses, commercial use and mass transit. 

While the country’s new outlook is slightly lower than the 25% goal it set for itself in a policy proposal published by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology last year, it would still mark a significant expansion in the world’s largest auto market. 

Recall, we noted at the beginning of September that most Chinese EV startups were being backed and bailed out by the Chinese state during the pandemic. 

This report was just weeks after we reported that many EV manufacturers in the super-saturated Chinese market were going public as a means to avoid bankruptcy.

For example, when NIO was under tremendous financial pressure just months ago, it was the municipal government of Hefei that stepped in to bail the company out by investing $1 billion in cash for a 24.1% stake in the company’s China’s entity – and getting the company to relocate its headquarters to its province. Hefei has “hopes of creating a powerful rival to Tesla,” according to Nikkei.

Similarly, other local governments have stepped into help China’s young EV names. Not unlike Elon Musk’s Tesla, China’s Nio, Xpeng Motors, Li Auto and WM Motor have also all relied on taxpayer/state money to push their visions forward. 

Earlier this year, we wrote about the successful IPO of Li Auto on the U.S. markets. It “received investments from several entities backed by municipal governments of Changzhou and Xiamen as well as state-run investment bank China International Capital Corporation.”

Additionally, we reported earlier this year ago that competition in China’s EV market is already starting to become super-saturated.

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Futures Explode Higher As Odds Of Reflation Trade, Contested Election Collapse

Futures Explode Higher As Odds Of Reflation Trade, Contested Election Collapse

Tyler Durden

Tue, 11/03/2020 – 22:38

It was supposed to be a Blue Wave… and if not a Blue Wave then at least a landslide victory for Joe Biden over Donald Trump. Well, not only is that not likely to happen, but suddenly it seems that Trump may be a decisive winner and not need Pennsylvania, with Betfair odds now 70% in his favor.

So what does that mean for a market that had almost entirely priced in a Biden/Blue Wave victory? Well, as we noted on Oct 31, when we pointed out the collapse in Nasdaq shorts, we said that a surge in the Nasdaq was imminent as the so-called dumb money reversed.

Fast forward to today, when this expected short squeeze has unleashed a massive Nasdaq short squeeze, that sent the tech index 4% higher at which point it was briefly halted as circuit-breakers were triggered.

There are two reasons for this:

  1. The lack of a Blue Wave means that no massive reflation trade is coming, and so instead we will get a re-deflation rotation, which is great for Treasurys and for growth/duration stocks such as tech.
  2. The lack of concerns about a contested election, means that all of the crash protection that traders had accumulated for just such an eventuality, will be unwound and stocks will surge, which is precisely what they are doing on Tuesday night as in addition to NQs, the Emini is also exploding higher.

Meanwhile, since a pro-China Biden administration is not coming, the Yuan is plunging as the odds are now that we are facing 4 more years of escalating trade war with China.

Finally, after tumbling early as a result of the surge in the dollar, gold has recovered much of its losses, as no matter if it’s Trump or Biden, one thing is certain: much more fiscal stimulus is coming, and even more dollar debasement is just around the corner.

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D.C. Voters Tell Cops and Prosecutors to Leave Psychedelic Users Alone

psilocybin-mushrooms-Wikipedia

Voters in Washington, D.C., today approved a ballot initiative that says investigating and arresting adults for noncommercial production, distribution, and possession of “entheogenic plants and fungi” should be “among the lowest law enforcement priorities for the District of Columbia.” With two-fifths of precincts reporting, Initiative 81 was favored by more than three-quarters of voters.

The measure covers plants or mushrooms containing ibogaine, dimethyltryptamine, mescaline, psilocybin, or psilocyn. In addition to declaring those psychedelics a low priority, Initiative 81 asks the D.C. attorney general and the U.S. attorney for D.C. to “cease prosecution” of such cases.

Last year Denver voters approved a groundbreaking initiative that made adult possession of psilocybin the city’s lowest law enforcement priority and prohibited the use of public money to pursue such cases. This year the city councils of Ann Arbor, Oakland, and Santa Cruz enacted similar measures.

The D.C. initiative goes further in some respects, since it covers additional psychedelics and applies to noncommercial cultivation and distribution as well as possession. But unlike the psilocybin measures, it does not include a prohibition on spending money to enforce the drug bans.

“Entheogenic plants and fungi have been demonstrated, through scientific studies, to be beneficial in addressing a variety of afflictions, including substance abuse, addiction, trauma, post-traumatic stress syndrome, chronic depression, anxiety, diabetes, [and] cluster headaches,” the initiative says. “Practices with entheogenic plants and fungi have long existed, have been considered sacred to a number of cultures and religions for millennia, and continue to be enhanced and improved. Citizens of the District of Columbia seeking to improve their health and well-being through the use of entheogenic plants and fungi currently use them in fear of arrest and prosecution.”

Initiative 81 was supported by the D.C. Democratic Party and opposed by Rep. Andy Harris (R–Md.), who also worked hard to block marijuana legalization in the District. “This is a bald-faced attempt to just make these very serious, very potent, very dangerous—both short term and long term—hallucinogenic drugs broadly available,” Harris complained in a July interview with the New York Post. “Public health has to be maintained. We know of course, once you make it a very low enforcement level and encourage prosecutors not to prosecute it, what would prevent people from using hallucinogens, getting behind the wheel of a car and killing people?”

An August poll put public support for the initiative at 60 percent, with 24 percent opposed and 16 percent undecided. It does not look like voters were dissuaded by Harris’ arguments.

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Chang: Will America Hand Space Dominance To China?

Chang: Will America Hand Space Dominance To China?

Tyler Durden

Tue, 11/03/2020 – 22:25

Authored by Gordon Chang vi The Gatestone Institute,

China will be launching satellites almost every other week starting next March. In one instance the gap in next year’s frenetic schedule of launches will be only five days.

This year, through the end of September, China launched 29 satellites, more than any other nation. The U.S. was a close second with 27.

Beijing aims to widen its lead. Most observers worry that the Chinese regime is determined to get to the moon before U.S. astronauts return there, but another troublesome development is that China will quickly be filling up orbits with satellites.

With a presidential candidate who has not been all that communicative, Americans may want to think more about space policy.

In short, there are growing concerns that a new administration will, with the best of intentions but an utter lack of common sense, hand space leadership to the Chinese.

Observers believe that, going forward, US space policy will not differ much from the current one. Yet a new administration could make crucial differences in emphasis that will have far-reaching consequences.

Take last December’s establishment of the Space Force, the sixth branch of the American military. No one thinks anyone will reverse that long-delayed and much-needed move.

Yet American space warriors still worry. Brandon Weichert of The Weichert Report said in an interview with Gatestone that there might be a move to “staff the Space Force with people inimical to its mission.”

Space Force’s mission is to fight wars in space, but are all Americans fully committed?

Some believe the US space program should emphasize climate change research. If there is no overall increase in space spending, there will be less money for, among other things, defending American assets in space.

There are many American assets to defend. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists Satellite Database, the U.S. owned or operated 1,425 of the 2,787 satellites in orbit as of August 1.

This large lead — it was even larger last decade — convinced the Obama administration it was not wise to “militarize” space because the U.S. had so much more to lose should it trigger an arms race in the heavens.

President Obama’s view sounds smart but was deeply mistaken because, among other things, it failed to take into account the fact that Beijing was already weaponizing the high ground. “China has been working hard to militarize space since the issuance of its ‘863 Program’ of 1986,” Rick Fisher of the Virginia-based International Assessment and Strategy Center told Gatestone. The 863 Program was followed by 1992’s “Project 921,” run by the General Armaments Department of the Central Military Commission. After the sweeping 2015 reorganization of the Chinese military, control of space ended up in the Commission’s Armaments Development Department.

“Space was not then and is not now a weapons-free sanctuary, like Antarctica,” Weichert, also the author of the just-released Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, said.

As a result of Obama’s flawed decision, the U.S. lagged in both developing weapons to kill other nations’ satellites and devising methods to protect its own.

“Even as Obama tied America’s hands behind its back in space, the Russians and later the Chinese were developing robust counterspace capabilities,” Weichert added.

America is therefore in many respects behind Russia and China in the ability to fight “over great distances at tremendous speeds, ” as Space Force’s General John Raymond said in September.

Moreover, there are other policy proposals that would degrade America’s ability to defend itself. The Obama administration, for instance, announced in June 2010 a new policy stating the U.S. would “consider proposals and concepts for arms control measures if they are equitable, effectively verifiable, and enhance the national security of the United States and its allies.” Unfortunately, there are many who still believe America can come to agreement with China.

Any such agreement, however, would be impractical. In space, almost everything has a dual purpose. Fisher, for instance, reports that China will put a laser on its upcoming space station for the announced purpose of eliminating space junk. Of course, such a laser is also capable of killing American satellites.

Other dual use items are Russia’s co-orbital “Space Stalkers.” In peacetime, they can be used to repair satellites. In wartime, Weichert says, “they can physically push U.S. satellites out of their orbits.” That would render America’s forces, and America itself, “deaf, dumb, and blind on land, at sea, in the air, and within cyberspace.”

In any event, neither Russia nor China honors agreements, especially arms control treaties.

There is another disturbing policy approach for Americans to consider. The Obama administration, in May 2011, sought to enlist China as a partner in the exploration of Mars. Weichert reports Vice President Biden himself proposed joint NASA-China National Space Administration missions in orbit. “Of course,” Weichert says, “this would have been simply the greatest tech transfer ever from the United States to China.”

There is no such thing as purely “civilian” cooperation with China, which has a civil-military fusion policy. All technical research, pursuant to that policy, gets pipelined into the Chinese military.

So what is at stake? The next 9/11 will almost certainly occur in space.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3oXpnTJ Tyler Durden

Epstein’s Notorious $20 Million Palm Beach Mansion To Be Demolished

Epstein’s Notorious $20 Million Palm Beach Mansion To Be Demolished

Tyler Durden

Tue, 11/03/2020 – 22:05

Jeffrey Epstein’s $20 million Palm Beach mansion where hundreds of underage girls were trafficked and sexually assaulted by the now deceased pedophile and his visitors, and which was featured heavily in the 4-hour Netflix documentary series Filthy Rich is set to be demolished by a Florida real estate developer

A developer named Todd Michael Glaser was identified in The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday as having purchased the notorious property after it was put on the market for an almost $22 million asking price in July. It’s believed the closing price was about $18 million. 

Jeffrey Epstein’s Palm Beach home located on El Brillo Way, AP/Shutterstock. 

However area residents have wanted it gone for some time. After the deal is finalized in the coming weeks Glaser said he’ll demolish it and erect a 14,000-square-foot Art Moderne home in its place. 

“Palm Beach is going to be very happy that [Epstein’s home] is gone,” he commented to the WSJ.

Epstein bought the six-bedroom home which is about 14,000 square feet in 1990 for $2.5 million. The deceased billionaire also assaulted young girls at properties across the US and the Caribbean, including a massive ranch property in New Mexico, his $88 million Manhattan townhouse, as well as what was branded ‘Pedo Island’ of Little St. James in the US Virgin Islands.

Via SplashNews.com/TMZ

According to the WSJ report the New York home on the Upper East Side is still on the market at an asking price of $88 million.

However, given the whopping price tag combined with the weirdness factor of owning a home associated with rape and sex trafficking of minors, we doubt there will be any takers. 

The home magazine Town & Country previously summarized the shady dealings of how the New York home was acquired in the first place:

Records show that the title for this Beaux Arts mansion was transferred to Epstein from his sometime mentor and client Les Wexner in 1996 for $0. The exact reasoning behind this generous gift is a mystery but various reports throughout the years have painted a picture of what the home was like on the inside.

And among the bizarre and perverse things found included “a massive mural of a prison yard, a massage table with sex toys and lubricant, a life-size female doll hanging from a chandelier, a sculpture of a naked African warrior, a room covered in leather, and a stuffed black poodle perched on a grand piano, along with the nude photographs that the FBI apparently turned up in a safe,” according to the magazine.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2TTcZ8Z Tyler Durden

New Jersey Voters Overwhelmingly Approve Marijuana Legalization

cannabis-leaves-6-MIS-Photography

Voters in New Jersey, where the state legislature allowed medical use of marijuana in 2010, today said the state should extend its tolerance to recreational use. With 58 percent of precincts reporting, more than two-thirds of voters favored Public Question 1, which amends the state constitution to allow the production, distribution, sale, and consumption of cannabis, but only after state legislators and regulators write specific rules.

New Jersey, the 11th most populous state, joins 11 other states that have legalized recreational use since 2012. It is the first mid-Atlantic state to legalize marijuana and the third on the East Coast to do so, along with Maine and Massachusetts.

New Jersey’s constitutional amendment, which takes effect on January 1, charges the state legislature and the New Jersey Cannabis Regulatory Commission, which also oversees the medical marijuana industry, with writing rules for growing, processing, selling, and possessing cannabis for recreational use. Legal consumption will be limited to adults 21 or older. Retail sales will be taxed at the standard state rate of 6.625 percent, although the legislature could allow municipalities to impose additional levies of no more than 2 percent.

Gov. Phil Murphy and New Jersey Senate President Stephen Sweeney, both Democrats, supported Question 1, which requires state legislators to approve rules they had struggled to pass on their own. In four polls conducted from mid-April to mid-October, Question 1 was favored by 64 percent of voters on average, similar to the election outcome and the results of national polls on marijuana legalization. Supporters raised about 65 times as much money as opponents; top donors included the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, Scotts Miracle Gro, Weedmaps, and Drug Policy Action, the Drug Policy Alliance’s political arm.

Legalization still depends on action by legislators and regulators, and the amendment does not impose any deadlines. It is therefore not clear when permissible possession will be defined, or when licensed sales might begin. If the legislature passes a bill right away, a cannabis lawyer told The Philadelphia Inquirer, “you could see sales in the third or fourth quarter of 2021,” although there are “a lot of ifs and buts.”

In Maine, where voters approved recreational marijuana in 2016, legislators did not get around to authorizing commercial distribution until this year. Licensed sales began on October 9. In Massachusetts, where a legalization initiative passed the same year, licensed sales did not begin until November 2018.

“It doesn’t need to take that long in New Jersey,” Chris Goldstein, a spokesman for the South Jersey chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), told the Inquirer. He noted that legislators have already written a bill that could be the basis for implementing Question 1. That bill would allow medical marijuana dispensaries to start serving recreational consumers, meaning sales could begin relatively soon. Then again, the entire state has only a dozen or so dispensaries, and nearly 70 municipalities have preemptively banned marijuana retailers.

Since Question 1 does not define the limits of marijuana possession, except to exclude anyone younger than 21, cannabis consumers will still be subject to arrest until the legislature acts. Under current New Jersey law, possessing up to 50 grams (about 1.8 ounces) of marijuana is a “disorderly person” offense punishable by a maximum fine of $1,000 and up to six months in jail. Possessing more than that amount is a fourth-degree crime, punishable by a maximum fine of $25,000 and up to 18 months of incarceration.

“When I became governor, we had the widest white–nonwhite gap of persons incarcerated, believe it or not, of any American state,” Gov. Murphy told Yahoo! Finance last week, explaining his support for marijuana legalization. “The biggest reason was low-end drug offenses. So I get there first and foremost because of social justice.”

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New Jersey Voters Overwhelmingly Approve Marijuana Legalization

cannabis-leaves-6-MIS-Photography

Voters in New Jersey, where the state legislature allowed medical use of marijuana in 2010, today said the state should extend its tolerance to recreational use. With 58 percent of precincts reporting, more than two-thirds of voters favored Public Question 1, which amends the state constitution to allow the production, distribution, sale, and consumption of cannabis, but only after state legislators and regulators write specific rules.

New Jersey, the 11th most populous state, joins 11 other states that have legalized recreational use since 2012. It is the first mid-Atlantic state to legalize marijuana and the third on the East Coast to do so, along with Maine and Massachusetts.

New Jersey’s constitutional amendment, which takes effect on January 1, charges the state legislature and the New Jersey Cannabis Regulatory Commission, which also oversees the medical marijuana industry, with writing rules for growing, processing, selling, and possessing cannabis for recreational use. Legal consumption will be limited to adults 21 or older. Retail sales will be taxed at the standard state rate of 6.625 percent, although the legislature could allow municipalities to impose additional levies of no more than 2 percent.

Gov. Phil Murphy and New Jersey Senate President Stephen Sweeney, both Democrats, supported Question 1, which requires state legislators to approve rules they had struggled to pass on their own. In four polls conducted from mid-April to mid-October, Question 1 was favored by 64 percent of voters on average, similar to the election outcome and the results of national polls on marijuana legalization. Supporters raised about 65 times as much money as opponents; top donors included the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, Scotts Miracle Gro, Weedmaps, and Drug Policy Action, the Drug Policy Alliance’s political arm.

Legalization still depends on action by legislators and regulators, and the amendment does not impose any deadlines. It is therefore not clear when permissible possession will be defined, or when licensed sales might begin. If the legislature passes a bill right away, a cannabis lawyer told The Philadelphia Inquirer, “you could see sales in the third or fourth quarter of 2021,” although there are “a lot of ifs and buts.”

In Maine, where voters approved recreational marijuana in 2016, legislators did not get around to authorizing commercial distribution until this year. Licensed sales began on October 9. In Massachusetts, where a legalization initiative passed the same year, licensed sales did not begin until November 2018.

“It doesn’t need to take that long in New Jersey,” Chris Goldstein, a spokesman for the South Jersey chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), told the Inquirer. He noted that legislators have already written a bill that could be the basis for implementing Question 1. That bill would allow medical marijuana dispensaries to start serving recreational consumers, meaning sales could begin relatively soon. Then again, the entire state has only a dozen or so dispensaries, and nearly 70 municipalities have preemptively banned marijuana retailers.

Since Question 1 does not define the limits of marijuana possession, except to exclude anyone younger than 21, cannabis consumers will still be subject to arrest until the legislature acts. Under current New Jersey law, possessing up to 50 grams (about 1.8 ounces) of marijuana is a “disorderly person” offense punishable by a maximum fine of $1,000 and up to six months in jail. Possessing more than that amount is a fourth-degree crime, punishable by a maximum fine of $25,000 and up to 18 months of incarceration.

“When I became governor, we had the widest white–nonwhite gap of persons incarcerated, believe it or not, of any American state,” Gov. Murphy told Yahoo! Finance last week, explaining his support for marijuana legalization. “The biggest reason was low-end drug offenses. So I get there first and foremost because of social justice.”

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