Iran: “American Soil Is Now Within Range Of Iranian Bombs”

Iran: “American Soil Is Now Within Range Of Iranian Bombs”

Tyler Durden

Sun, 09/06/2020 – 20:15

Authored by Majid Rafizadeh via The Gatestone Institute,

Those who advocate pursuing a policy of appeasement toward the ruling mullahs as a means of changing the Iranian regime’s behavior fail to understand that the more the international community will give the mullahs, the more Tehran will become belligerent and emboldened. One day after the United Nations Security Council voted in favor of lifting the arms embargo on Iran, for instance, the ruling mullahs unveiled a ballistic missile that reportedly can reach the United States.

The headline of a report by Iran’s state-controlled Afkar News read in Farsi, “American Soil Is Now Within the Range of Iranian Bombs”. The report boasted about the damage that the Iranian regime could inflict on the US:

“By sending a military satellite into space, Iran now has shown that it can target all American territory; the Iranian parliament had previously warned [the US] that an electromagnetic nuclear attack on the United States would likely kill 90 percent of Americans.

The report also threatened the EU, which voted in favor of lifting the arms embargo against Iran:

“The same type of ballistic missile technology used to launch the satellite could carry nuclear, chemical or even biological weapons to wipe Israel off the map, hit US bases and allies in the region and US facilities, and target NATO even in the far west of Europe.”

The Trump administration attempted to re-impose international sanctions on Iran after the UN rejected extending the arms embargo. Those are the four rounds of UN sanctions that were in place before the Obama administration and the Iranian regime supposedly reached the JCPOA nuclear deal, which Tehran never signed. When US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo attempted to trigger the snapback, however, 13 of the 15 countries that are members of the Security Council wrote letters expressing their opposition to the US proposal and to the re-imposition of international sanctions against Iran. The opponents included longtime transatlantic allies and partners of the US, including France, the United Kingdom, Germany and Belgium.

This is not the first time that the Iranian regime has become more aggressive after the international community pursued policies of appeasement with the mullahs. Recall when, upon the JCPOA’s agreement, former President Barack Obama pointed out that he was “confident” that the lifting of sanctions and the nuclear deal would “meet the national security needs of the United States and our allies”? It was even outlined in the JCPOA preamble that all signatories — which, again, Iran was not — “anticipate that full implementation of this JCPOA will positively contribute to regional and international peace and security.” What, though, was the outcome?

The international community witnessed a greater propensity for Yemeni Houthi rockets launched at civilian targets, the deployment of Hezbollah foot-soldiers in Syria, and increasing attacks by the Iranian-funded Hamas into southern Israel. With billions of dollars of revenue pouring into the pockets of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Tehran did not change its behavior for the better. Instead, it became more empowered and emboldened to pursue its revolutionary ideals of anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism. Iran became, according to the US Department of State, “the world’s worst state sponsor of terrorism.”

At the peak of these appeasement policies towards the mullahs during the Obama Administration, Iran was emboldened to publicly harass the US Navy, detained US sailors and imprisoned American citizens. Khamenei also repeatedly threatened “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” and made incendiary remarks about wiping Israel from the face of earth “in less than 8 minutes.”

As the international community gave the regime more, Iran intensified test-firing its ballistic missiles, capable of carrying nuclear warheads, an act in clear violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2231:

“Paragraph 3 of Annex B of resolution 2231 (2015) calls upon Iran not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology.”

After each act of appeasement towards the ruling mullahs, the regime also ratcheted up its domestic repression and human rights violations as well. According to Human Rights Watch, after the JCPOA “nuclear deal” and after sanctions were lifted, Iran escalated the imprisonment and executions of human rights and political activists. The regime became “the top executioner of women and holds the record on per capita executions in the world” and, according to Amnesty International, the world’s leading executioner of juveniles.

For Iran’s ruling mullahs, compromises and appeasement means weakness. The more the international community gives the mullahs, the more the regime apparently feels empowered to pursue its malign behavior.

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Global Times: Tesla Wreck In Nanchong Killed 2, Has “Raised Doubts” Over Car’s Functions, Quality

Global Times: Tesla Wreck In Nanchong Killed 2, Has “Raised Doubts” Over Car’s Functions, Quality

Tyler Durden

Sun, 09/06/2020 – 19:50

Could the ongoing love affair between the Chinese Communist Party and Elon Musk be hitting some speedbumps?

Confirming what appeared to be a horrifying accident in Nanchong yesterday involving a Tesla that ran amok on a city street and left mangled bodies strewn behind it, China’s state owned mouthpiece The Global Times is now “raising doubts” over Tesla’s functions and quality, according to an article published late Saturday. 

The article offers updates on yesterday’s terrifying scene, stating that the car was reportedly being driven by a 51 year old woman and the accident resulted in 2 dead and 6 injured. The possibility of drunk driving and driving under the influence of drugs have been excludedaccording to the report. Media outlets claimed that “the car had gone out of control”. 

By raising the issue, The Global Times seems to have possibly given a nod that the government could be concerned as to the origins of the accident. “Some netizens suggested that the driver had made a mistake, but others doubt the effectiveness of Tesla’s autobrake and intelligent driving functions,” the article says. 

The article also notes several other similar incidents involving Tesla vehicles over the last few months:

Tesla cars have reportedly been responsible for several accidents in the past three months, according to a report from autoju.com. On August 17, a driver from Wenzhou, East China’s Zhejiang Province, said his Model 3 suddenly sped up and rushed into the parking lot, damaging about a dozen cars. He also noted that the car’s brake was not working. Another driver from Hangzhou also reported in May that her Tesla once accelerated for no reason. 

Recall, it was only hours after Consumer Reports posted a scathing review of Tesla’s Full Self Driving option that video surfaced on Twitter of what was claimed to be Shuangfu Street in Nanchong City, the scene of where a Tesla allegedly “ran out of control and crashed into multiple cars.”

The videos appended to the Tweets appeared to show bodies strewn throughout the street, police on the scene and concerned onlookers. Reports on Twitter and a report published on NetEase’s news app claimed that 3 people have been killed and 8 people have been injured.

The videos painted a disturbing scene, showing what appear to be lifeless bodies on the street in the aftermath of the event. The video also clearly shows a wrecked black Tesla Sedan, which appears to have rear ended a parked car.

 

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Don’t Steal This Book: Taibbi

Don’t Steal This Book: Taibbi

Tyler Durden

Sun, 09/06/2020 – 19:25

Authored by Matt Taibbi via taibbi.substack.com,

On Thursday, August 27th, the same day Donald Trump formally accepted the Republican nomination, National Public Radio aired an interview with Vicky Osterweil, author of a book called In Defense of Looting.

The white trans daughter of a science professor, Osterweil told a credulous NPR interviewer that looting was justified because it “strikes at the heart of property, of whiteness and of the police,” and also “provides people with an imaginative sense of freedom and pleasure.”

She added riots reveal how “without police and without state oppression, we can have things for free.”

I was so sure the Osterweil book was satire – a clever comic doing a Marxist Andy Kaufman routine – that I bought it. It’s not a joke!

In Defense of Looting is supposed to be the woke generation’s answer to Steal This Book, another anarchist instructional published in an epic period of unrest. But the differences between the books are profound.

Abbie Hoffman’s classic guide to “U.S. on no dollars a day” was furious, persuasive, funny, crazy, packed with trenchant commentary about the vicious banalities of sixties America, and entertaining on every page, even when you disagreed with him. If only his iconic definition of free speech were remembered more often today:

Steal This Book could stand alone as a work of assiduous experimental journalism, filled as it was with “survival techniques” for life underground he’d gleaned in multiple innovative ways, including responses to ads placed in revolutionary newspapers. Hoffman even supposedly fact-checked the anonymous tips about places on the map to find free food, get treated for sexually-transmitted diseases, score drugs, etc.

Steal This Book was also an equal opportunity offender, as cutting toward phonies within the revolutionary ranks as it was toward the “Pig Empire”:

The duty of a revolutionary is to make love and that means staying alive and free. That doesn’t allow for cop-outs. Smoking dope and hanging up Che’s picture is no more a commitment than drinking milk or collecting postage stamps.

There are a lot of things one can say about Abbie Hoffman, but he was no LARPer. He wrote the introduction for Steal this Book in jail, doing time for contempt for his memorable lunacy at the Chicago Seven trial, when he among other things told the judge to “stick it up his bowling ball.” He once tried to halt the Vietnam war by using psychic energy to levitate the Pentagon 300 feet in the air, where it would turn “orange and vibrate until all evil emissions had fled.” Abbie Hoffman was interesting.

Then there’s Vicky Osterweil.

Read the rest here.

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“Full Of Crap”: Charles Barkley Slams ESPN Host Who Claimed “White Privilege” Landed Steve Nash Nets Coaching Job

“Full Of Crap”: Charles Barkley Slams ESPN Host Who Claimed “White Privilege” Landed Steve Nash Nets Coaching Job

Tyler Durden

Sun, 09/06/2020 – 19:00

NBA legend Charles Barkley could be proof that common sense isn’t quite dead yet.

The veteran NBA player and TNT commentator took to the air days ago to speak out about comments made by Stephen A. Smith, who had asserted on his own show that NBA Legend Steve Nash was hired for a coaching job over Mark Jackson and Tyron Lue because of “white privilege”. 

According to Stephen A. Smith, Nash’s record as a player doesn’t count; he only got the job only because he was white. Smith said, talking about a league where predominantly black athletes are paid millions: “Ladies and gentlemen, there’s no way around this. This is white privilege. This does not happen for a black man.”

He continued: ““You just want to scream. You want to scream to high heavens. How the hell does this always happen for somebody else other than us?”

Nash is a 2 time NBA Champion, 2 time NBA MVP, 5 time NBA assist leader and a 8 time NBA All-Star.

Smith’s comments prompted a reaction from Charles Barkley, who said on air one day later: “I was very disappointed with some of the guys on television today talking about ‘white privilege.’ They’re like, ‘Well, this doesn’t happen to black guys.’ I’m like, ‘It happened to Doc Rivers, it happened to Jason Kidd, it happened to Derek Fisher.’ So I was really disappointed.”

Barkley continued: “When you have a responsibility, especially when you have to talk about something serious like race, you can’t be full of crap. You’ve got to be honest and fair.”

You can watch video of Barkley’s comments here:

Barkley continued to highlight Nash’s fantastic record as a player. He agreed that the NBA needed more black coaches but also said it “wasn’t the right time” to have that conversation. 

Smith was also criticized by ESPN colleague Jay Williams, who Tweeted: “Come on SA. Steve Nash being chosen over Mark Jackson/Ty Lue is not “White Privilege”.. 2 superstar black athletes ultimately made the decision & we know who they are and what they are about.”

Hilariously enough, we did not hear Smith speak out when the NBA’s Montezl Harrell referred to Luka Doncic as “bitch ass white boy” during a game several weeks ago. But, we digress…

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Customs And Border Protection Bought Half A Million Dollars Worth Of Location Data

Customs And Border Protection Bought Half A Million Dollars Worth Of Location Data

Tyler Durden

Sun, 09/06/2020 – 18:35

Submitted by Sovereign Man

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) just got its hands on a whole bunch of location data. The news service Motherboard (Vice’s technology segment) uncovered a procurement order for $476,000 paid to the company Venntel Software last month. Venntel specializes in location data mining, compiling and selling GPS data gathered on users from various phone apps.

Sources who work with Venntel gave Motherboard more insight into the type of data the government now has its hands on.

Venntel’s technology only gives anonymized data, meaning it does not identify specific people or phone numbers. It gives only a randomized identification number. BUT there is an easy way to identify the owners of the phone.

The technology allows the CBP to draw a perimeter around a geographical area, and obtain the location data for any phones in that area. In this way, CBP could draw a circle around one particular home, acquire the data from it, and surmise that the few devices in that home belong to the homeowners.

What this means:

This allows Customs and Border Protection to ignore laws that require them to obtain a warrant before surveilling particular subjects. They simply purchase the data, instead of having to show probable cause that a crime has been committed.

And keep in mind that CBP does not just target immi’It’s just a question of, one, is it ethical, and two, does that open up the information to being released elsewhere?,’grants. They recently flew their surveillance drones over cities outside the border zone to help other local and federal law enforcement agencies identify and monitor protesters. Of course, CBP is being tight lipped about what exactly the Venntel software will be used for.

A CBP spokesman said:

“Consistent with its border security and law enforcement authorities, CBP has acquired limited access to commercial telemetry data through the procurement of a limited number of licenses to a vendor provided interface.”

This is not the first government agency to use this loophole to skirt the intent of the Fourth Amendment– which requires a warrant to collect certain personal information on people. In June, the House Oversight Committee opened an investigation into Venntel’s sales of personal data to the Department of Homeland Security, Internal Revenue Service, and Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Users generally have to consent in cell phone applications to allow this type of data to be collected for marketing purposes. But that consent does not include government surveillance.

What you can do about it:

Of course, the fewer apps you give permission to share your location with, the less vulnerable you will be to this particular software identifying you. In a recent, exclusive interview for Total Access (Sovereign Man’s top-tier service), Simon talked to a world-class security expert who worked in military cybersecurity.

He gave some tips on how to stop your devices from handing out your personal data.

Compartmentalize.

Use different phones. One you trust more, and one you trust less– and therefore avoid putting personal or sensitive information on it.

For instance, people can hack into your device through sophisticated tools such as Pegasus– spyware that can gain access through a phone call or text.

That’s how Jeff Bezos was targeted by the Saudis who stole pictures from his phone which Bezos had sent to his mistress (and it cost Bezos about $40 billion in a divorce).

If Bezos had one phone for close friends and family, and a second phone for talking to sketchy Saudi Princesses, this situation could have been avoided.

Depending on your security goals, you could, for instance, keep one phone for downloading all the apps you want that may see your location, and a different phone which you take with you to places you don’t want to be tracked.

Internet of Things devices like your Smart TV, refrigerator, or baby monitor– any appliance that connects to the Internet– are not very secure. They open holes on your network to the Internet where automated scanning can be used by hackers to find places to exploit.

Hackers could use unsecured devices to do nefarious things and make it look like it came from your IP address. Or they could access your other devices (like phones and laptops) from the hacked device.

To protect against this, set up two different wifi networks, which you can do from the same router. Put all your Internet of Things devices on one network, and the Internet you actually use for phones and laptops on the other.

That fences off your personal devices, so if anyone gains access to your Smart TV for instance, they cannot also access your main devices. The TV can’t see your laptop because they are on different networks.

Other ways to compartmentalize:

  • Use a password generator and secure manager (like 1password.com or Bitwarden.com) to create random, different passwords for each account.
  • Use different email addresses for each account. You can create email aliases and multiple addresses, and forward them to your main account with tools from simplelogin.io or anonaddy.com.
  • Use different phone numbers (which you can acquire from Google Voice or other VoIP services). That way fewer people have access to your main number. Your main number could be exploited to gain access to more secure accounts, or for a SIM swap attack, where hackers transfer your phone number to their device, and can then receive reset codes for any accounts linked to that number.

It’s a good idea to get started, little by little, understanding how cyber-security for your personal life works, at least at a basic level. A little homework makes you more vigilant to the threats, and allows you to recognize and avoid common vulnerabilities.

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Boris Johnson Sets New Oct. 15 Deadline For Brexit Trade Talks With Brussels

Boris Johnson Sets New Oct. 15 Deadline For Brexit Trade Talks With Brussels

Tyler Durden

Sun, 09/06/2020 – 18:10

With rumors about the EU potentially pushing for another extension to Brexit talks emerging in the British press, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has reportedly delivered an ultimatum to the EU and its top negotiatiors that if there’s no final Brexit trade deal in place by the European Council meeting on Oct. 15, then Britain will simply move ahead with plans to exit the transition period with a trading arrangement on “Australian” (read: bare bones WTO) terms.

This latest threat was first reported by the Telegraph, and previews a statement that Johnson will reportedly deliver on Monday, ahead of the beginning of the eighth round of talks, which is set to start on Tuesday in London.

Since they started in February, talks have reportedly gone nowhere since they started in February as the EU’s demands re: Britain and the EU now have just five weeks to strike a trade deal, Boris Johnson will warn on Monday as he rules out extending negotiations beyond the middle of next month.

The PM is reportedly expected to declare that there’s simply “no sense” in allowing talks to continue past the October European Council meeting (Oct. 15-16), which is seen as a key opportunity for the EU to finalize the agreement with all of its member states, which would avoid the possibility of a laborious last-minute sprint, or another politically unpalatable extension, something Johnson has insisted he cannot – and will not – tolerate.

Johnson has tasked Michael Gove, a senior cabinet official and one-time rival for the Tory leadership and prime minister’s seat, with preparing the government for a ‘no deal’ exit, and the editors of the Telegraph have insisted that the government’s preparations have continued throughout the pandemic, and that Johnson believes the UK will be ready to keep all four of its constituent nations together, and outside of the EU, if things don’t pan out.

One strategy that the Tories are embracing to ensure a clean break if a long-term trade deal can’t be reached is to pass a law that would effectively invalidate Britain’s commitments under the hated “Irish Backstop”. The FT, which first reported the news, cited several officials from the EU and UK side who insisted that effectively going back on Britain’s word would sabotage the Brexit talks, effectively ensuring that the UK comes crashing out of the EU at the end of the year.

But what a difference a year makes. If the UK slides out of the EU at the end of the year, there’s little critics can say that hasn’t already been said, and ignored, by the British people, who effectively doubled down on their commitment to leave the EU when they reelected the conservatives during a snap vote late last year.

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A Rogue Institution And A Clear & Present Danger To Liberty In America

A Rogue Institution And A Clear & Present Danger To Liberty In America

Tyler Durden

Sun, 09/06/2020 – 17:45

Authored by David Stockman via InternationalMan.com,

We have never heard more gibberish, double talk, and lies from one podium than we have from Fed Chairman Powell.

There is no other way to say it: The Fed has become a dangerous rogue institution that has usurped plenary power over the financial system.

This is all based on implicit theories that eventually lead to a massive speculative blow-off, even as it sucks the vitality out of the Main Street economy in the interim.

The implicit theory is brazenly simple: The Fed believes that relentless credit expansion fosters greater economic growth and full employment. It believes that there is no practical limit to how much debt the household, business, and government sectors of the economy can tolerate or any notable adverse trade-offs from ever-higher leverage ratios.

Self-evidently, lower interest rates foster more debt issuance.

When economic growth falters for any reason, the Fed’s first action is to push rates even lower. This ratcheting process has gone on for more than three decades, and interest rates have, for all practical purposes, been obliterated.

The chart below takes all the short-run bobbing and weaving out of the GDP data by showing the rolling 20-year average of annual growth.

It is dispositive.

By 2019, the rolling 20-year growth trend had fallen to 2.1% per annum—a figure less than half of the 4.4% level in place exactly 50 years ago.

The above dismal trend line was not for want of trying with the debt elixir.

At the end of 1969, total public and private debt (blue area in the chart below) stood at $1.54 trillion, which has since mushroomed to, well, nearly $78 trillion!

In exactly half a century, the level of debt weighing on the US economy attributable to all borrowers—households, businesses, governments, and financials—is up by 51X.

However, at the same time, the national income or nominal GDP (red area in the chart below), which supports it, has risen by only 21X.

That alone points to the skunk in the woodpile.

Total US Debt vs. Nominal GDP, 1969–2019

The debt-to-GDP ratio in 1969 stood at 1.47X, which had been roughly centered in that area for a century since 1870—an interval that saw the greatest explosion of economic growth, mass prosperity, technological progress, and accumulated wealth in human history.

It happened without any increase in the national leverage ratio at all. It had remained at the golden mean of 1.5X debt-to-income throughout.

Today the total debt-to-national income ratio stands at 3.47X, or exactly two more turns of debt than 50 years ago.

To be sure, two extra turns of debt sounds like investment banker jargon, but the phrase captures the essence of the rot that lies at the heart of the nation’s financial system and economy.

Those two extra turns amount to $43 trillion of incremental debt, which constitutes the millstone crushing economic growth and the rudiments of sustainable prosperity.

Stated differently, at the 1969 national leverage ratio of 1.47X, total public and private debt today would clock in at $32 trillion, not $75 trillion. Had the leverage ratio not tripled over the last half-century, the trend rate of economic growth would not have been cut in half.

After all, aggregate economic growth comes from the sum of labor hours employed and productivity improvements. Given the massive burst of technological innovation ushered in by the computer age since 1969, there should have been no want of the latter.

Today, we are employing barely 60% of the available adult labor hours in the US economy. That means there are more than enough latent labor hours available to support pre-1969 levels of growth.

In the case of the employment/population ratio—even allowing for the fact that in 1969 most jobs were full-time and today there is a huge part-time, gig-based element to the workforce—was 14% lower in February (pre-lockdown) than it was back then.

So if the raw productivity and potential labor hours were there to support a continuation of the 4.0% historical growth rate shown above, why has it faltered to less than half of that level during the last half-century?

As Dustin Hoffman might have said in the iconic moment of The Graduate, which was released on the eve of 1969—malinvestment!

That’s what the massive expansion of debt, the systematic falsification of interest rates, and financial asset prices confected by the Fed has wrought.

Capital and technology have been misallocated and wasted; potential labor resources have been inefficiently deployed or not at all.

The legions of money-dealers and speculators in today’s economy are an example of the former.

An example of the latter is the fact that millions of jobs moved offshore because of the Fed’s inflation of debt and the domestic price-cost-wage structure.

Less Interest, More Debt

Jay Powell and his merry band of money-wreckers would not even recognize the charts above.

They are so caught up in groupthink and recency bias that they are not even aware of where their monetary perfidy has taken the nation’s finances and economic foundation.

Each new economic crisis or shock leads them to the same knee-jerk policy spasm: less interest, more debt!

It also leads them into outright intellectual mendacity, that is, the spurious claim that even tiny upward toggles in rock-bottom interest rates are a mortal threat to the economy and must be suppressed with even more heavy-handed intervention.

In that context, Powell let the cat out of the bag when he made the preposterous claim—and with no if, ands or buts—that the insane $2.8 trillion of new money printed by the Fed since the onset of the lockdown in mid-March was some kind of Bernanke-esque profile in the courage to print.

What he describes below did not happen, not even remotely:

“What happened was markets stopped working. They stopped working, and companies couldn’t borrow, they couldn’t roll over their debt. People couldn’t borrow. Financial turbulence and malfunction, a financial system that’s not working, can greatly amplify the negative effects of what was clearly going to be a major economic shock.

What our tools were put to work to do was to restore the markets to function. I think some of that has really happened, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, and that’s a good thing.”

This is the same Gigantic Lie Ben Bernanke unleashed in the fall of 2008.

We wonder what hay wagon Powell thinks we fell off of.

That’s because he made the same specious argument that Bernanke made in the fall of 2008 when he went off the deep end, taking the Fed’s balance sheet from $900 billion (which took 94 years to accrue) to $2.3 trillion in a mere 13 weeks.

Needless to say, once you get in the price control business for debt, you are inherently in the price control business for all financial assets because the cost of the former drives the discount rate for equities and other long-duration assets.

It is the most egregious folly ever imagined.

It causes a massive windfall to the top 1% and 10%, which own 53% and 88% of the stock, respectively. It also fuels a self-reinforcing speculative mania that eventually collapses under its own weight.

In a debt-saturated system, the Fed’s massive bond purchases never transmit anything outside the canyons of Wall Street. This money-printing madness only drives bond prices higher and cap rates lower. This means relentless and systematic inflation of financial asset prices.

As a practical matter, the bottom 90% don’t own enough stock or even inflated government and corporate bonds to shake a stick at. Instead, what meager savings they have accumulated languish in bank deposits, CDs, or money market funds earning exactly what the Fed has decreed—nothing!

So, when Powell says he’s only trying to help the average American, you have to wonder whether he is just stupid or the greatest lying fraud yet to occupy the Fed’s big chair.

It doesn’t matter why. The Fed is now a rogue institution that comprises a clear and present danger to the future of prosperity and liberty in America.

*  *  *

The truth is, we’re on the cusp of a economic crisis that could eclipse anything we’ve seen before. And most people won’t be prepared for what’s coming. That’s exactly why bestselling author Doug Casey and his team just released a free report with all the details on how to survive an economic collapse. Click here to download the PDF now.

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Xi’s Political Rivals Run For Cover: “A Purge Is Coming – Be Careful”

Xi’s Political Rivals Run For Cover: “A Purge Is Coming – Be Careful”

Tyler Durden

Sun, 09/06/2020 – 17:20

Nikkei Asian Review has more details on Xi Jinping’s ongoing purge in preparation to establish total authority over China’s Communist Party, including related to some recent key, deeply symbolic acts:

Also on Aug. 26, Xi convened a meeting of 300 or so senior police and state security officials from across the country at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People.

In a pompous ceremony, Xi handed to the police force a newly designed red and blue flag.

The red portion, occupying the top half of the flag, symbolizes the party and is meant to portray the police’s absolute loyalty to the party, it was explained.

It ultimately means that for the first time the country’s police forces are under Xi’s direct control, instead under the immediate oversight of the government’s State Council.

Via Chinese state media

The Nikkei report links Xi’s penchant for bestowing new flags on state enforcement entities as underscoring their total loyalty to the party, which increasingly means himself, also given also significant rumors Xi is looking to resurrect Mao Zedong’s historic ‘Chairman’ title to replace his slightly less impressive title of General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party.

The report notes further:

Likewise, the People’s Armed Police — a paramilitary organization responsible for internal security, riot control and anti-terrorism efforts — has been placed under the full command of the Central Military Commission. It had previously been under the military and government.

Back in January 2018, Xi also conferred a new flag to the People’s Armed Police; one that was different from the People’s Liberation Army flag.

Each time Xi seeks to take control of a branch of law enforcement, he confers a flag.

Top trusted officials handpicked by President Xi have expressed worry about “two-faced people” as well as loyalty and political discipline.

Image: AP

Amid Xi’s ongoing anti-corruption purge, at least thirty top party officials have already fallen, which many say is reminiscent of Mao’s infamous first major party purge in 1941, dubbed the “Yan’an rectification movement” which paved the way for the founding father of the People’s Republic of China being declared chairman.  

Nikkei underscores that with the underlying intentions related to the rectification movement clear, rivals and political enemies are “running for cover” — including apparently leaders of the rival Communist Youth League, now in subtle ways relaying to its members: “A purge is coming. Everyone, be careful.”

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Joe Biden Joked In 2013 About China ‘Helping Him’ Politically

Joe Biden Joked In 2013 About China ‘Helping Him’ Politically

Tyler Durden

Sun, 09/06/2020 – 16:55

When Joe Biden was Vice President, he told an audience at a US-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue meeting that he had the “great pleasure” of spending “a fair amount of time with President Xi,” after Xi was made president of China. 

“I congratulated him on his elevation, I asked if he could possibly help me,” Biden then joked, in a clip which can still be viewed on the Obama White House YouTube page, according to the NY Post.

And as American Thinker frames it:

During the 2016 campaign, candidate Trump made a joke about asking Russia for help in finding Hillary Clinton’s deleted (and bleach-bitted) emails from her private server, and that was taken as evidence for launching an FBI investigation and subsequent special counsel probe on non-existent “collusion” with Russia. Yet back in 2013, Joe Biden, whose son was hauled around on Air Force Two to help him make lucrative deals with foreign powers including China, openly “joked” about asking Beijing for help becoming president, and we are only hearing of it this weekend:

Then, months after Biden’s June 2013 comments, he flew with son Hunter on Air Force Two, landing in Beijing where he would meet with Hunter’s Chinese partners at BHR Equity Investment Fund Management Co, according to the New York Post.

How else has China helped, or are helping, the Bidens?

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Trump Says Schools Teaching NY Times’ 1619 Project “Will Not Be Funded”

Trump Says Schools Teaching NY Times’ 1619 Project “Will Not Be Funded”

Tyler Durden

Sun, 09/06/2020 – 16:30

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

President Donald Trump on Sunday warned the Department of Education is investigating the use of the New York Times’ “1619 Project” in schools, saying that institutions that use the alternative narrative of U.S. history could lose federal funding.

The “1619 Project,” created by Nikole Hannah-Jones and widely panned by historians and political scientists, attempts to cast the Atlantic slave trade as the dominant factor in the founding of America instead of ideals such as individual liberty and natural rights. Some critics have said that it is an attempt to rewrite U.S. history through a left-wing lens. Some historians have criticized the project over inaccuracies such as the American Revolution having been fought to preserve the institution of slavery rather than for seeking independence from Britain.

“Department of Education is looking at this. If so, they will not be funded!” Trump wrote on Twitter Sunday, responding to a post that said California has “implemented the 1619 project into the public schools,” and that “soon you won’t recognize [A]merica.” California’s Department of Education came up with a draft model last month to include some of the project in history classes.

It echoes the sentiment of a bill that was proposed by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) introduced in July that proposes denying funds to a school that uses the 1619 Project. Schools in places like Washington D.C. and Chicago have modified their curriculum for the project.

Controversy erupted earlier this year when a professor at Northwestern University who helped fact-check the project said that she alerted Hannah-Jones about inaccuracies contained in the project but got no response.

“On August 19 of last year I listened in stunned silence as Nikole Hannah-Jones, a reporter for the New York Times, repeated an idea that I had vigorously argued against,” wrote professor Leslie Harris in Politico.

Harris also said she “vigorously disputed” the claim that protecting slavery was a major reason why the American Revolution was fought.

Far from being fought to preserve slavery, the Revolutionary War became a primary disrupter of slavery in the North American Colonies.

Lord Dunmore’s Proclamation, a British military strategy designed to unsettle the Southern Colonies by inviting enslaved people to flee to British lines, propelled hundreds of enslaved people off plantations and turned some Southerners to the patriot side.

It also led most of the 13 Colonies to arm and employ free and enslaved black people, with the promise of freedom to those who served in their armies,” Harris wrote.

Cotton, meanwhile, wrote in July that the project is “racially divisive” and engages in a revisionist rewriting of U.S. history.

“Not a single cent of federal funding should go to indoctrinate young Americans with this left-wing garbage,” said Cotton.

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