Author: admin

Authored by Pepe Escobar via ConsortiumNews.com,

The Russia-China strategic partnership, consolidated last week in Russia, has thrown U.S. elites into Supreme Paranoia mode, and they are now holding the whole world hostage…

Something extraordinary began with a short walk in St. Petersburg last Friday.

After a stroll, they took a boat on the Neva River, visited the legendary Aurora cruiser, and dropped in to examine the Renaissance masterpieces at the Hermitage. Cool, calm, collected, all the while it felt like they were mapping the ins and outs of a new, emerging, multipolar world.

Chinese President Xi Jinping was the guest of honor of Russian President Vladimir Putin. It was Xi’s eighth trip to Russia since 2013, when he announced the New Silk Roads, or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

First they met in Moscow, signing multiple deals. The most important is a bombshell: a commitment to develop bilateral trade and cross-border payments using the ruble and the yuan, bypassing the U.S. dollar.

Then Xi visited the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), Russia’s premier business gathering, absolutely essential for anyone to understand the hyper-complex mechanisms inherent in the construction of Eurasian integration. I addressed some of SPIEF’s foremost discussions and round tables here.

In Moscow, Putin and Xi signed two joint statements – whose key concepts, crucially, are “comprehensive partnership”, “strategic interaction” and “global strategic stability.”

Xi and Putin cruising into a multipolar world: Aurora Cruiser Museum (Wikipedia)

In his St. Petersburg speech, Xi outlined the “comprehensive strategic partnership”. He stressed that China and Russia were both committed to green, low carbon sustainable development. He linked the expansion of BRI as “consistent with the UN agenda of sustainable development” and praised the interconnection of BRI projects with the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU). He emphasized how all that was consistent with Putin’s idea of a Great Eurasian Partnership. He praised the “synergetic effect” of BRI linked to South-South cooperation.

And crucially, Xi stressed that China “won’t seek development to the expense of environment”; China “will implement the Paris climate agreement”; and China is “ready to share 5G technology with all partners” on the way towards a pivotal change in the model of economic growth.

So what about Cold War 2.0?

It was obvious this was slowly brewing for the past five to six years. Now the deal is in the open. The Russia-China comprehensive strategic partnership is thriving; not as an allied treaty, but as a consistent road map towards Eurasia integration and the consolidation of the multipolar world.

Unipolarism – via its demonization matrix – had first accelerated Russia’s pivot to Asia. Now, the U.S.-driven trade war has facilitated the consolidation of Russia as China’s top strategic partner.

Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs better get ready to dismiss virtually everyday statementscoming, for instance, from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Joseph Dunford, when he alleges that Moscow aims to use non-strategic nuclear weapons in the European theater. It’s part of a non-stop process – now in high gear – of manufacturing hysteria by frightening NATO allies with the Russian “threat.”

Moscow better get ready to dodge and counteract reams of reports such as the latest from the RAND corporation, which outlines – what else? – Cold War 2.0 against Russia.

In 2014, Russia did not react to sanctions imposed by Washington. Then, it would have sufficed to merely brandish the threat of default on $700 billion in external debt. That would have killed the sanctions.

Now, there’s ample debate inside Russian intelligence circles on what to do in case Moscow faces the prospect of being cut off the CHIPS-SWIFT financial clearing system. 

A 1936 map of Eurasia. (Flickr)

With few illusions about what may pass at the G20 in Osaka later this month, in terms of a breakthrough in U.S.-Russia relations, intel sources told me Rosneft’s CEO Igor Sechin is prepared to send a more “realistic” message— if push eventually comes to shove.

His message to the EU, in this case, would be to cut them off, and link with China for good. That way, Russian oil would be completely redirected from the EU to China, making the EU completely dependent on the Strait of Hormuz.

Beijing for its part seems to have finally absorbed that the current Trump administration offensive is not a mere trade war, but a full fledged attack on its economic miracle, including a concerted drive to cut China off from large swathes of the world economy.

The war on Huawei – the Rosebud of China’s 5G supremacy – has been identified as an attack on thedragon’s head. The attack on Huawei means an attack not only on tech, mega-hub Shenzhen, but the whole Pearl River Delta: a $3 trillion yuan ecosystem, which supplies the nuts and bolts of the Chinese supply chain for high-tech manufacturers.

Enter the Golden Ring

Neither China’s technological rise, nor Russia’s unmatched hypersonic know-how have caused America’s structural malaise. If there are answers they should come from the Exceptionalist elites.

The problem for the U.S. is the emergence of a formidable peer competitor in Eurasia – and worse still, a strategic partnership. It has thrown these elites into Supreme Paranoia mode, which is holding the whole world hostage.

By contrast, the concept of the Golden Ring of Multipolar Great Powers has been floated, by which Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Russia and China might provide a “stability belt” along the South Asia Rimland.

I have discussed variations of this idea with Russian, Iranian, Pakistani and Turkish analysts – but it sounds like wishful thinking. Admittedly all these nations would welcome establishing the Golden Ring; but no one knows which way Modi’s India would lean – intoxicated as it is with dreams of Big Power status as the crux of America’s “Indo-Pacific” concoction.

It might be more realistic to assume that if Washington does not go to war with Iran – because Pentagon gaming has established this would be a nightmare – all options are on the table ranging from the South China Sea to the larger Indo-Pacific.

The Deep State will not flinch to unleash concentric havoc on the periphery of both Russia and China and then try to advance to destabilize the heartland from the inside. The Russia-China strategic partnership has generated a sore wound: it hurts – so bad – to be a Eurasia outsider.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2R7DGEL Tyler Durden

The Justice Department revealed on Monday that it is investigating several “non-governmental organizations and individuals” in its “multifaceted” and “broad” probe into alleged misconduct by US intelligence agencies surrounding the 2016 US election, according to a DOJ letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY).

The letter was in response to Nadler’s request as to the scope of the investigation, led by Connecticut US Attorney John Durham. 

According to Fox News, Durham is looking into whether “foreign intelligence services” played a role. Of note, the highly controversial “Steele Dossier” – created by an ex-British spy for employer Fusion GPS on behalf of the Clinton campaign an the DNC was referred to as “crown material” in emails unearthed last month.

And while the letter doesn’t name specific individuals, foreign intel services or non-governmental organizations, the prime suspects here would be Christopher Steele, Fusion GPS, Stephan Halper, “Azra Turk,” Alexander Downer, Joseph Mifsud, along with UK and Australian intelligence services. 

Last week, reports indicated Steele had agreed to talk with Durham if certain preconditions were met. Multiple sources familiar with the matter told Fox News, meanwhile, that Durham is “very dialed in” and “asking all the right questions.” Separately, sources within the Justice Department confirmed to Fox News that Barr has met “on multiple occasions in recent weeks” with Durham in Washington, D.C.

Numerous problems with the Steele dossier’s reliability have surfaced, including several issues that were brought to the FBI’s attention before it cited the dossier in its FISA application and subsequent renewals. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report made plain, for example, that then-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen did not travel to Prague to conspire with Russian hackers seeking to access Democrat files, as the dossier alleged. –Fox News

They knew…

On Sunday, Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) told Fox News that he had seen “additional documents” which reveal that “prior to the first FISA application, Peter Strzok, Andy McCabe, and others at the FBI knew that Christopher Steele’s dossier was not credible.” 

Meadows, speaking to “Fox News Sunday,” pointed specifically to a report from The Hill’s John Solomon, who found that Ukrainian businessman Konstantin Kilimnik, a key figure in Mueller’s report, was actually a U.S. informant. In his report, Mueller linked Kilimnik to Russian intelligence, and did not mention Kilimnik’s secretive ties to the U.S. in the report other court filings — even as Mueller suggested former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s ties to Kilimnik were nefarious. –Fox News

“The deeper the dive we take into the Mueller report, we’re starting to find out some of the conclusions, and actually some of the facts they put forth in there, are a misrepresentation of what we actually know,” said Meadows. 

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2IyCNkK Tyler Durden

Authored by Philip Giraldi via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

Voters looking ahead to 2020 are being bombarded with soundbites from the twenty plus Democratic would-be candidates. That Joe Biden is apparently leading the pack according to opinion polls should come as no surprise as he stands for nothing apart from being the Establishment favorite who will tirelessly work to support the status quo.

The most interesting candidate is undoubtedly Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, who is a fourth term Congresswoman from Hawaii, where she was born and raised. She is also the real deal on national security, having been-there and done-it through service as an officer with the Hawaiian National Guard on a combat deployment in Iraq. Though in Congress full time, she still performs her Guard duty.

Tulsi’s own military experience notwithstanding, she gives every indication of being honestly anti-war. In the speech announcing her candidacy she pledged “focus on the issue of war and peace” to “end the regime-change wars that have taken far too many lives and undermined our security by strengthening terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda.” She referred to the danger posed by blundering into a possible nuclear war and indicated her dismay over what appears to be a re-emergence of the Cold War.

In a recent interview with Fox News’s Tucker Carlson, Gabbard doubled down on her anti-war credentials, telling the host that war with Iran would be “devastating,” adding that:

“I know where this path leads us and I’m concerned because the American people don’t seem to be prepared for how devastating and costly such a war would be…

So, what we are facing is, essentially, a war that has no frontlines, total chaos, engulfs the whole region, is not contained within Iran or Iraq but would extend to Syria and Lebanon and Israel across the region, setting us up in a situation where, in Iraq, we lost over 4,000 of my brothers and sisters in uniform. A war with Iran would take far more American lives, it would cost more civilian lives across the region…

Not to speak of the fact that this would cost trillions of taxpayer dollars coming out of our pockets to go and pay for this endless war that begs the question as a soldier, what are we fighting for? What does victory look like? What is the mission?”

Gabbard, and also Carlson, did not hesitate to name names among those pushing for war, one of which begins with B-O-L-T-O-N. She then asked “How does a war with Iran serve the best interest of the American people of the United States? And the fact is it does not,” Gabbard said. “It better serves the interest of people like [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Bibi Netanyahu and Saudi Arabia who are trying to push us into this war with Iran.”

Clearly not afraid to challenge the full gamut establishment politics, Tulsi Gabbard had previously called for an end to the “illegal war to overthrow the Syrian government,” also observing that “the war to overthrow Assad is counter-productive because it actually helps ISIS and other Islamic extremists achieve their goal of overthrowing the Syrian government of Assad and taking control of all of Syria – which will simply increase human suffering in the region, exacerbate the refugee crisis, and pose a greater threat to the world.” She then backed up her words with action by secretly arranging for a personal trip to Damascus in 2017 to meet with President Bashar al-Assad, saying it was important to meet adversaries “if you are serious about pursuing peace.” She made her own assessment of the situation in Syria and now favors pulling US troops out of the country as well as ending American interventions for “regime change” in the region.

In 2015, Gabbard supported President Barack Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran and in 2016 she backed Bernie Sanders’ antiwar candidacy. More recently, she has criticized President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal. Last May, she criticized Israel for shooting “unarmed protesters” in Gaza, a very bold step indeed given the power of the Israel Lobby.

Tulsi Gabbard could well be the only genuine antiwar candidate that might truly be electable in the past fifty years, and that is why the war party is out to get her. Two weeks ago, the Daily Beast displayed a headline:

“Tulsi Gabbard’s Campaign Is Being Boosted by Putin Apologists.”

The article also had a sub-headline: “The Hawaii congresswoman is quickly becoming the top candidate for Democrats who think the Russian leader is misunderstood.”

The obvious smear job was picked by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, television’s best known Hillary Clinton clone, who brought it up in an interview with Gabbard shortly thereafter. He asked whether Gabbard was “softer” on Putin than were some of the other candidates. Gabbard answered: “It’s unfortunate that you’re citing that article, George, because it’s a whole lot of fake news.” Politico the reported the exchange and wrote: “’Fake news’ is a favorite phrase of President Donald Trump…,” putting the ball back in Tulsi’s court rather than criticizing Stephanopoulos’s pointless question. Soon thereafter CNN produced its own version of Tulsi the Russophile, observing that Gabbard was using a Trump expression to “attack the credibility of negative coverage.”

Tulsi responded “Stephanopoulos shamelessly implied that because I oppose going to war with Russia, I’m not a loyal American, but a Putin puppet. It just shows what absurd lengths warmongers in the media will go, to try to destroy the reputation of anyone who dares oppose their warmongering.”

Tulsi Gabbard had attracted other enemies prior to the Stephanopoulos attack. Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept described how NBC news published a widely distributed story on February 1st, claiming that “experts who track websites and social media linked to Russia have seen stirrings of a possible campaign of support for Hawaii Democrat Tulsi Gabbard.”

But the expert cited by NBC turned out to be a firm New Knowledge, which was exposed by no less than The New York Times for falsifying Russian troll accounts for the Democratic Party in the Alabama Senate race to suggest that the Kremlin was interfering in that election. According to Greenwald, the group ultimately behind this attack on Gabbard is The Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD), which sponsors a tool called Hamilton 68, a news “intelligence net checker” that claims to track Russian efforts to disseminate disinformation. The ASD websiteadvises that “Securing Democracy is a Global Necessity.”

ASD was set up in 2017 by the usual neocon crowd with funding from The Atlanticist and anti-Russian German Marshall Fund. It is loaded with a full complement of Zionists and interventionists/globalists, to include Michael Chertoff, Michael McFaul, Michael Morell, Kori Schake and Bill Kristol. It claims, innocently, to be a bipartisan transatlantic national security advocacy group that seeks to identify and counter efforts by Russia to undermine democracies in the United States and Europe but it is actually itself a major source of disinformation.

No doubt stories headlined “Tulsi Gabbard Communist Stooge” are in the works somewhere in the mainstream media. The Establishment politicians and their media component have difficulty in understanding just how much they are despised for their mendacity and unwillingness to support policies that would truly benefit the American people but they are well able to dominate press coverage. Given the flood of contrived negativity towards her campaign, it is not clear if Tulsi Gabbard will ever be able to get her message across.

But, for the moment, she seems to be the “real thing,” a genuine anti-war candidate who is determined to run on that platform. It might just resonate with the majority of Americans who have grown tired of perpetual warfare to “spread democracy” and other related frauds perpetrated by the band of oligarchs and traitors that run the United States.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2RcIKYN Tyler Durden

Morgan Stanley’s Mike Wilson, already the most bearish of Wall Street’s sellside research analysts, turned his bearishness up a notch today, when he slashed his EPS forecast for next year as a result of Morgan Stanley’s economists changing their forecasts for global growth to a stagnation through year end rather than a continued recovery as a result of “sustained escalation and incremental tariffs further slowing growth projections to the point of recession”, and now sees not only a further decline in earnings in 2019 but also unchanged earnings in 2020, downward revised from a prior forecast of a +5% increase in EPS, as corporate profit hit their plateau for this cycle, and obviously once the recession hits, it’s only downhill from there.

Wilson summarizes his gloomy outlook as follows: “we believe an exogenous cost shock would be very hard to absorb. Autos,electrical equipment & machinery, textiles, computers/electronics,and certain chemical/commodity sectors appear the most exposed to rising tariffs on goods from China”.

The basis of Wilson’s latest cut to corporate profits is a scenario analysis which assesses economic growth in three distinct paths around US-China trade tensions, and uses these paths to scenario test the S&P itself.

We further use the results to adjust our official S&P forecasts, though we note that since our forecasts take into account additional considerations beyond trade, our bull, base,and bear cases do not match the three trade paths one for one. Even in the absence of incremental trade escalation, our earnings model is already calling for negative EPS growth over the next 12 months and trade tensions add to the downside in earnings growth.

In the chart below, Wilson provides a brief summary of the trade paths analyzed as well as implications for economic forecasts:

The next chart then shows the projections of the bank’s Leading Earnings Indicator with the three trade paths modeled out to 2021. Clearly the period around late 2019 when EPS are expected to slide below 0% is key.

Exhibit 3 presents these data in table form, with the MS analyst providing more details on the price level/earnings impact of each of these paths below, noting that earnings growth troughs at -4% in March 2020 for path 1, -9% in November 2020 for path 2and -14% in April 2021 for path 3. Ominously for 2020, the best case anticipates an unchanged EPS print at best, with the downside path resulting in an additional 12% drop in EPS. The earnings recession ends only in 2021, when EPS is expected to grow between 2% and 5%.

What are the details behind the 3 specifics paths considered? The details are laid out below:

• Path 1: Working Towards a Deal (S&P rises to 3,000 but then slides down to 2,750)

If a deal is reached around the G20 meeting or if there is a sense that negotiations are moving towards a resolution, Wilson expects US equities to initially rally back towards our bull case of 3,000 on the S&P 500, but likely fall short of new highs. From there, he believes that risk/reward skews to the downside (towards our base case of 2,750) as the market still has to confront the earnings deceleration that Morgan Stanley has been calling for since last year. In path 1, earnings growth decelerates to -4%Y by March 2020 (trough level) and ends 2020 at 0%Y. Wilson “highly doubts” that the S&P would be pricing in this level of earnings deceleration at ~3,000.For context, consensus 2019 EPS growth is still 4%Y (above the 0%Y base case estimate) and consensus 2020 EPS growth is still 11%Y (well above our revised 0%Y base case estimate).

• Path 2: Uncertainty Lingers (S&P drops to between 2,400 – 2,750)

If escalation continues for the next 3-4 months, we would anticipate the near-term price action at the benchmark level to be poor over that period—the S&P trades between our base case and bear case price targets of 2,750 and 2,400, respectively. The economy may escape a recession, but the mild earnings recession that we foresee taking place this year likely gets exacerbated amid weakening corporate/consumer confidence, further cost pressure and an inability to pass on costs through pricing. The model shows earnings growth troughing at -9%Y in November 2020 and finishing the year at -8%Y in path 2. From a price level standpoint, Wilson does not believe that the market would trade all the way down to his bear case in this scenario as the earnings recession would not be extreme enough to drive an unemployment cycle (i.e.,an economic recession, which is Morgan Stanley’s bear case). Furthermore, the bank’s economists believe that the Fed would cut rates around 3Q19 in this scenario, which may be supportive of risk assets,at least initially.

• Path 3: Indefinite Escalation (S&P drops to 2,400)

If talks stall, no deal is reached and 25% tariffs are put into place on all China imports, MS expects the S&P 500 to trade to Wilson’s bear case of 2,400 and potentially to December lows (2,351) over the next 6-12 months. Essentially, this path accelerates the likelihood of our bear case price expectation playing out. Earnings growth would reach a trough level of -14%Y by April 2021, and an unemployment cycle and economic recession would take place in the US. This level of trough earnings growth is roughly commensurate with levels seen during the 1990-91 and 2001 economic recessions (that said, MS does not believe that the earnings cycle would be as extreme as 2008-09 even in a path 3 outcome).

* * *

With these paths in mind, the already bearish Mr. Wilson has gotten even more bearish, and as a result he is adjusting his S&P earnings forecasts even lower to account for higher risk of slowing growth, noting that his model points to troughing earnings growth by early 2021 in the most bearish of the trade outcomes above. Additionally, he notes that his bull/base/bear cases reflect the subjective assessment of a 20/60/20 probability framework.

The resulting EPS revisions are the following:

• Bull Case: No changes. Earnings meet growth estimates this year but disappoint next year as domestic excesses and margin pressures continue to weigh on growth. Earnings in line with expectations,and reduced trade tensions allow for yields to rise while the equity risk premium compresses, lifting the multiple on net to 16.7x.
• Base Case: Continued trade uncertainty and modest increases in tensions further pressure business confidence and investment, lowering the 2020 earnings growth estimate to 0% from 5% and the June 2021 earnings growth estimate to 3% from 5.5%. As the economy avoids a recession and looks past an earnings growth trough, the multiple expands modestly off of current levels (to 16.5x) as the risk premium falls and rates remain supportive of valuation.
• Bear Case: Morgan Stanley’s bear case most closely reflects a mix of paths 2and 3 above which are set to see rising trade tensions and tariffs. In the bear case, 2019 earnings growth goes negative on the year (to -2.5% from our prior forecast of -1%) and earnings continue to compress in 2020 (-8% growth vs -6% prior). Earnings growth troughs in late 2020 but the recovery is not enough to deliver positive trailing growth by mid 2021, moving June 2021 earnings growth estimate to -1.3% from 3.2%. Significantly lower rates and a second derivative change in earnings growth help mitigate a higher equity risk premium,allowing the multiple to remain in line with current levels (~16.1x)

However, the scariest message in Wilson’s note is not his EPS forecast, which very well may prove optimistic in the case of an all out trade war, but his take on how the market will respond to what is now seen as an inevitable rate cut (or as much as three by the end of 2019).

Recall that on Friday, Bank of America’s CIO warned that a rate cut now could be a “huge risk” to the market as it would prompt a furious scramble for stocks even though macro data does not actually require one, let alone three rate cuts. As such, cuts by Powell would precipitate the next big bubble – a sentiment which was echoed just days later by One River’s Eric Peters – similar to the mistake the Fed did in 1998 which spawned the dot com bubble and the crash of 2000.

Picking up on this theme, Wilson writes that “the Fed has sounded more dovish lately and [is] open to cutting rates sooner than many had expected just a few months ago” but instead what the market really needs is solid fundamental data to sustain the rally.

Indeed, part of the Fed’s concern has been the still falling rate of inflation and inability to hit its 2 percent goal. Second is the fact that trade tensions are starting to weigh on business confidence and third is the weaker jobs data, which is the key to the economic cycle.

As such, “investor enthusiasm around the idea of easier Fed policy is understandable” he writes, but cautions that  “if the Fed were to cut out of concern that we are entering a real unemployment cycle, such a cut should not be bought.”

In other words, a Fed cut – precautionary or not – may hit as soon as July “but it may not halt [the coming] slowdown/recession.”

As a result, until there is further clarity on the employment picture, Wilson think “Friday’s rally should be faded and investors should continue to skew portfolios defensively with a cautious eye toward expensive growth stocks that are now at a greater risk of missing earnings estimates due to these very real macro economic risks that are independent of the trade outcome or monetary policy.”

One final point: last year, when Wilson predicted fire and brimstone in the early part of 2018, most of his peers (and clients) laughed at him. In late December, Wilson had the last laugh when the S&P closed almost right on top of his S&P forecast. Will this time be different, or will Wilson’s gloom prove right again, and if so with the Fed’s credibility in tatters, what happens in a world in which not even the buyer of last resort can push risk assets higher? We’ll know the final answer in just a few short months.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2IxVMMt Tyler Durden

Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

DARPA is perhaps the most disturbing entity in existence today.  The Department of Defense’s research arm is paying scientists to invent ways to instantly read soldiers’ minds using tools like genetic engineering and the end goal is “thought-controlled weapons.”

The government is absolutely taking mind control very seriously, and this should make every human alive take pause. Back in May, DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) announced that six teams will receive funding under the Next-Generation Nonsurgical Neurotechnology (N3) program. Participants are tasked with developing technology that will provide a two-way channel for rapid and seamless communication between the human brain and machines without requiring surgery.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Things are so far gone, that we have no idea. People have virtually no sense of how deeply we are being steered off the path. Our very opinions, the information we receive, and the way in which our brains determine the strength of our opinions is all being skewed by algorithms, and by deliberate manipulations.

Science fiction is behind the curve of what they are actually attempting right now. A few more years of censorship and editing of content through social media, and a few more years of total integration with technology, and humanity may no longer be recognizable. It certainly won’t be free unless some very raw facts are quickly faced and dealt with. –SHTFPlan

“Imagine someone who’s operating a drone or someone who might be analyzing a lot of data,” said Jacob Robinson, an assistant professor of bioengineering at Rice University, who is leading one of the teams. “There’s this latency, where if I want to communicate with my machine, I have to send a signal from my brain to move my fingers or move my mouth to make a verbal command, and this limits the speed at which I can interact with either a cyber system or physical system. So the thought is maybe we could improve that speed of interaction.” This is being painted a rosy idea to help soldiers in combat, however, this is a weapon of mass destruction. Once a soldier’s mind can be read, they no longer own their thoughts. This is truly horrifying.

DARPA is trying to spur a breakthrough in noninvasive or minimally invasive brain-computer interfaces (BCIs).

The agency is interested in systems that can read and write to 16 independent locations in a chunk of brain the size of a pea with a lag of no more than 50 milliseconds within four years, said Robinson, who is under no illusion about the scale of the challenge.

“When you try to capture brain activity through the skull, it’s hard to know where the signals are coming from and when and where the signals are being generated,” he told Live Science. “So the big challenge is, can we push the absolute limits of our resolution, both in space and time?” -Live Science

Despite multiple attempts to put a “positive spin” on mind control, a DARPA insider finally and nervously admits the truth. There is no positive way to look at mind control. It’s the ultimate form of slavery and we are closer than most care to admit. This technology is in the hands of the military-industrial complex President Eisenhower once gravely warned us about.  Dr. Robert Duncan notes scientists “are brainwashed into believing that everything we are doing is of benefit to mankind, but look who pays our bills? The military. It’s all for war, it’s all for control, for government control…”

Volume 2 details the CIA’s practices of interrogation and cybernetic mind control in their pursuit to weaponize neuropsychology. It covers the art of bio-communication war. Human beings are complex machines but their inner workings have been deciphered. Mind control and brainwashing have been perfected in the last 60 years. –Project: Soul Catcher: Secrets of Cyber and Cybernetic Warfare Revealed

The future looks bleaker as we move through life. No good can come from AI weapons “reading soldiers’ minds” and no good will come from the enslavement of mankind, which is the ultimate goal. How much longer until the only thing that really belongs to you (your thoughts) is controlled by your master?

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2wIBWbK Tyler Durden

The half brother of North Korea’s Kim Jong Un – who was assassinated in Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia in February 2017, when two women smeared his face with the nerve agent VX – was an informant for the Central Intelligence Agency and met with agency operatives on several occasions, Wall Street Journal reports, citing a person who knew about the matter.

Kim Jong Nam was once considered to be the heir to late North Korean leader Kim Jong Il but he fell out of favor with his father in 2001 after he was caught trying to enter Japan on a false passport, and was arrested at Tokyo airport, apparently en route to Disneyland. Kim Jong Nam had been critical of Kim Jong Un, reportedly saying in 2012 that he “won’t last long” because of his youth and inexperience. The two brothers have different mothers, Bloomberg reports.

While details of Kim’s relationship with the CIA are not clear, several former U.S. officials told WSJ that he had no known power base in Pyongyang and would unlikely be able to give details of North Korea’s inner workings. The same unnamed U.S. officials also told the Journal that Kim was also in contact with security services of China.

WSJ notes that the CIA has long taken an intensive interest in North Korea, although its totalitarian culture, and the lack of a U.S. embassy there, makes it one of the agency’s hardest targets.  As Joel Wit, a former State Department official and senior fellow at the Stimson Center think tank, noted:

“My experience has been that the CIA has repeatedly thought that it had well-placed sources in North Korea, human sources, that really knew what was going on… Those sources have more often than not proved to not know what’s going on.”

The two women involved in Kim Jong Nam’s murder have since been released from Malaysian prison.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2I7DdzG Tyler Durden

Authored by Robert Murphy via The Institute for Energy Research,

I recently gave a talk to a student group at Connecticut College on the economics of climate change. (The video is broken up into three parts on my YouTube channel: one, two, and three.) In this post I’ll summarize three of my main points:

(1) There is a huge disconnect between what the published economics research actually says about government policies to limit global warming, and how the media is reporting it.

(2) President Trump taking the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement doesn’t really affect anything on the margin, even if we stipulate the alarmist position on climate change. And

(3) If I’m wrong, and human-caused climate change really does pose a dire threat to humanity in the next few decades, then scientists are currently working on several lines of research of practical ways to actually deal with the problem.

The “Consensus Research” Does Not Justify Radical Political Intervention

I first clarified to the students that throughout my talk, I wasn’t going to grab results from right-wing think tanks, or from “fringe” scientists who were considered cranks by their peers. On the contrary, I would be relaying results from sources such as the work of a Nobel laureate William Nordhaus (whose model on climate change policy had been one of three used by the Obama Administration) and from the UN’s own periodic report summarizing the latest research on climate change science and policy.

To demonstrate just how wide the chasm is between the actual economics research and the media treatment of these issues, I described to the students the spectacle I observed back in the fall of 2018, when on the same weekend news came out that William Nordhaus had won the Nobel Prize for his pioneering work on the economics of climate change and that the UN released a “Special Report” advising governments to try to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The media treatment (sometimes in the same story) presented these events with no sense of conflict or irony, leading regular citizens to assume that Nordhaus’ Nobel-winning work supported the UN’s goals for policymakers.

But that is not true at all. Here’s a graph from a 2017 Nordhaus publication that I included in my presentation:

As the figure shows, Nordhaus’ model—and again, this isn’t cooked up by the Heritage Foundation, but instead was one selected by the Obama Administration’s EPA and was the reason he won the Nobel Prize—projects that if governments “did nothing,” total global warming would reach about 4.1 degrees Celsius. In contrast, if governments implemented the “optimal carbon tax,” as Nordhaus would recommend in a perfect world, then total warming would be about 3.5 degrees Celsius.

Anyone remotely familiar with the climate change policy debate knows that such an amount of warming would terrify the prominent activists and groups advocating for a political solution. They would quite confidently tell the public that warming of this amount would spell absolute catastrophe for future generations.

My point here isn’t to endorse Nordhaus’ model. My point is simply that Americans never heard anything about this when the media simultaneously covered Nordhaus’ award and the UN’s document calling for a 1.5°C limit. And yet, Nordhaus’ own work—not shown in the figure above, but I spell it out here—clearly concludes that such an aggressive target would cause far more damage to humans in the form of reduced economic output, that it would be better for governments to “do nothing” about climate change at all.

With or Without the United States, the Paris Agreement Was Going to “Fail”

To continue with the theme of how they’ve been misinformed, I reminded the students of the media’s apoplexy when Trump announced his intention to remove the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement (or treaty, in lay terms). I showed them a headline in which famed physicist Stephen Hawking said Trump was pushing the planet “over the brink.”

I then asked the students rhetorically, “You would think that the Paris Agreement was going to ‘work’ to contain the threat of climate change, except for Trump pulling out and wrecking it, right?”

And yet, the pro-intervention group ClimateActionTracker.org nicely illustrates that even if all countries met their pledges (including the U.S.), it wouldn’t come close to limiting warming to the weaker benchmark of 2°C, let alone the newer, more chic target of 1.5°C. Things were even worse if we evaluated the actual policies of governments (as opposed to what they stated they intended to do, about limiting their emissions).

Further, I included a screenshot (in the top left of the slide) from a Vox article published before Trump’s Paris announcement, which said not a single country on Earth was taking the 2°C target seriously.

Technological Solutions

After spending so much time showing that the political “solutions” were failing even on their own terms, I summarized a few avenues of research (see this article for details) where scientists are exploring techniques to either remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or reflect some incoming sunlight. Although I personally do not think human-caused climate change is a crisis, and do think that adaptation coming from normal economic growth will be more than sufficient to deal with any problems along the way, nonetheless scientists do have these other techniques in their back pocket, should they become necessary to “buy humanity a few decades of breathing room” while technology advances in the transportation and energy sectors.

Conclusion

Americans, especially students, are being whipped into a panic over the allegedly existential threat of climate change. Yet the actual research, summarized in the UN’s own periodic reports and in the research of a Nobel laureate in the field, shows that at best only a modest “leaning against the wind” could be justified according to standard economic science.

By their own criteria, the alarmist activists are admitting that political measures are nowhere near achieving their goals. Their own rhetoric says that these activists are wasting everyone’s time pushing solutions that will end in catastrophe. Occasionally they slip up, as for example when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez admits that her “we have 12 years left” was not to be taken literally.

In order to bring light to the climate change debate, at this point one just needs to actually screenshot and explain the evidence from the establishment sources. The rhetorical framing of the issue is so far removed from the underlying research that this alone is heretical.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2IwLQ5U Tyler Durden

The leader of Hong Kong has pledged to move forward with legislation that will ease extraditions to China despite a massive protest from hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of citizens over the weekend. The legislation is backed by Beijing, according to Bloomberg, and would allow Hong Kong to enter into one-time agreements with places like China and Taiwan to move criminal suspects. 

Chief Executive Carrie Lam said that the government “could see people are still concerned about the bill.” Generally, a million people taking to the streets in protest can make that point clear. 

Lam has said that the legislation has been amended to protect human rights and called on Hong Kong’s elected Legislative Council to make further changes.

Lam remarked:

“The society has been closely and intensely discussing the amendment bill for four months. It should be returned to the Legislative Council, which should carry out its constitutional duty. This means after vetting the bill, legislators can amend or approve the bill or whatever. Our stand is still our stand today.”

“There is very little merit to be gained by delaying the bill,” Lam concluded. 

Hong Kong arrested 7 people who were parties to the protest on charges of “suspicion of attacking the police”. Lee Kwai-wah, senior superintendent of the city’s Organized Crime and Triad Bureau, said another 12 people were arrested for blocking roads. 

Jimmy Sham of the Civil Human Rights Front, the organizer of Sunday’s protest, pushed back on Lam’s comments: “Carrie Lam is provoking us. I don’t understand why a government doesn’t want us to live a comfortable life but to challenge us to see what price we can pay.”

Sham’s group plans on holding another protest outside of the legislature on Wednesday during the second of three required readings of the bill. 

Opposition lawmaker Claudia Mo said: “We don’t need any more written or verbal safeguards. We want the bill to be scrapped all together.”

China, meanwhile, has said it “firmly” supports Hong Kong’s stance on the bill.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters in Beijing that China  “opposes external intervention in Hong Kong’s internal legislation.”

Yesterday we noted that over 1 million people had marched in protest against the bill. 

Time lapse video shared online on how hundreds of thousands marched to protest against an extradition bill #extraditionbill in Hong Kong pic.twitter.com/hOps5KF5VC

— Stella Lee (@StellaLeeHKnews) June 9, 2019

According to the SCMP, it was the most unified protest march in the city in more than a decade, with some calling it the ultimate showdown over the bill, which goes to a vote on June 12.

If turnout numbers are accurate, it would represent the biggest protest since 2003, when 500,000 people demonstrated against national security legislation that was later withdrawn by the government.  The sea of marchers set off from Victoria Park just before 3pm and streets in nearby Causeway Bay were soon brought to a standstill as protesters clad in white chanted and sang songs as they walked in the oppressive heat, according to the SCMP.

Tensions escalated in recent weeks as Hongkongers from all walks of life have spoken out against the proposal. Petitions against the bill have circulated, thousands of lawyers staged a silent march and several chambers of commerce have voiced concerns. The bill’s proponents, mostly the city’s administration, see it as vital tool to fight transnational crime and maintain the rule of law.

“This is the last fight for Hong Kong,” the WSJ quoted Martin  Lee, a veteran opposition leader who founded the city’s Democratic Party. “The proposal is the most dangerous threat to our freedoms and way of life since the handover” of sovereignty, he said.

While the protests were mostly peaceful, there were occasional reports of scuffles between protesters and police, seven arrests and a fire in Central – but no major violence. Police gave the protesters a midnight deadline to disperse from government headquarters.

“I needed to let my voice be heard,” said Kitty Wong, a 38-year-old teacher who joined a protest for the first time. Gesturing to her two children, ages 8 and 9, she said: “We need to defend our home for the next generation.”

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2R3jeor Tyler Durden