Author: admin

“Qatar Island”: Saudis Launch Massive Canal Project To Cut Off Neighbor

It almost sounds too insane to be believed, but Saudi Arabia’s move to further isolate neighboring Arab rival Qatar by literally turning it into an island is but the latest in an intense year long feud between the two countries that has already produced its fair share of bizarre headlines.

Tiny but ultra-wealthy Qatar is a peninsula which shares a 37.5 mile border (60km) with Saudi Arabia on the kingdom’s northeast side and juts out from the Arabian peninsula about 100 miles into the Persian Gulf. 

Saudi media revealed this week the kingdom is quickly moving forward with ambitious plans to dig a 200 meter wide and 15-10 meter deep canal the entire length of the land border, effectively creating ‘Qatar island’ — as some Mideast news sources are already calling it.

Of course, the Qataris don’t appear to have a say in their own country’s geographic fate, and the Saudis and Emirates further plan to locate nuclear waste sites and a military base along the proposed canal to boot. 

The so-called “Salwa Marine Canal Project” has reportedly opened up to bidding among five international companies that specialize in digging canals, with bids closing next Monday and the project to be awarded in 90 days, according to regional sources. The canal project is estimated to cost up to 2.8 billion riyals ($750 million) according to Saudi-based Sabq newspaper.

Qatar has remained defiant throughout its unprecedented summer diplomatic crisis with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states which have brought immense pressure to bear on the oil and gas rich monarchy through a complete economic and diplomatic blockade imposed by its neighbors. Saudi and UAE officials have long accused Qatar of supporting terrorism, aligning with Iran, and meddling in the affairs of its gulf neighbors in a crisis that has resulted in the near complete unraveling of the GCC. 

The Salwa canal was first announced in April but many observers dismissed it as but the latest in outrageous Saudi claims and punitive measures aimed at Qatar. 

Newsweek reported in early April:

Apparently, Riyadh is not content with traditional isolation. The so-called “Salwa Marine Canal Project” would establish a military base in one area of the border and a nuclear waste site in another. The waste would come from the nuclear reactors that Saudi Arabia is planning to build. The border would then be clearly demarcated by a wide canal. The UAE would also build a nuclear waste site at its border’s closest point to Qatar.

But it now appears to be concretely advancing and not a bluff. 

Beyond nuclear waste and military installations, Riyadh further envisages beach resorts in Salwa, Sakak, Khor al-Adeed and Ras Abu Qamees, and marinas for yachts and leisure.

According to Dubai-based Gulf News the canal will be fully within the Saudi side of the border, meaning Qatar will have no rights or access to the waterway. Gulf News further (somewhat enthusiastically) notes that “In April, Saudi border guards took control of the Salwa crossing, effectively cutting off Qatar’s only terrestrial link with the outside world.”

The project will reportedly be funded entirely but UAE and Saudi private investors, and it will be interesting to see if it actually comes to fruition. If so, building what is essentially a massive 60km long mote to physically cut off an entire country would certainly constitute a first in the history of diplomatic warfare.

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Rapper Akon Creates ‘Akoin’ Cryptocurrency

Authored by Molly Jane Zuckerman via CoinTelegraph.com,

Rapper and singer Akon of twelve Billboard Top Ten Hits, including the famous “Smack That,” has announced the creation of his own cryptocurrency for use in his new African “Akon Crypto City,” Page Six reported yesterday, June 19.

image courtesy of CoinTelegraph

During a panel at Cannes Lion, Senegal-descended Akon said that his cryptocurrency, the Akoin, will be available in two weeks for use in the 2,000 acres of land recently given to him by the president of Senegal.

The new Akon Crypto City describes itself as a “100% crypto-based city with Akoin at the center of transactional life […] blend[ing] leading Smart City planning designs with a blank canvas for cryptonizing our daily human and business exchanges, towards inventing a radical new way of existence.”

Akon, who has already been involved with bringing solar power to Africa through his Lighting Africa project, said that bringing cryptocurrency to Africa can help empower its public:

“I think that blockchain and crypto could be the savior for Africa in many ways because it brings the power back to the people and brings the security back into the currency system and also allows the people to utilize it in ways where they can advance themselves and not allow government to do those things that are keeping them down.”

When asked about the specifics of the technology, Akon demurred, noting, “I come with the concepts and let the geeks figure it out.”

The singer also mentioned the possibility of his running for U.S. president in 2020, imagining a future debate between himself, current president Donald Trump, and rapper Kanye West:

“And the debate stage will be set where it’s all about me. It’s perfect, a masterplan. I’m going to come in with a team so crazy, man, it’s all going down. I’m not holding my tongue. The way I look at it, win or lose, at least I get the movement going, I get the conversation going.”

Both Akon’s cryptocurrency and presidential ambitions mirror those of John McAfee, formerly of McAfee Anti-Virus software and now well-known crypto enthusiast. McAfee announced recently that he would be releasing his own fiat currency backed by crypto, as well as plans to run for president in order to gain a wider platform for promoting cryptocurrency.

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Bridge: US Liberals Are Clinically Insane And Care Nothing For The American People

Authored by Robert Bridge via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

Even before Donald Trump won the White House, there were strong indications that something was not quite right with the Liberal mindset. Today, all doubt on the matter has been cleared away.

The mass hysteria that swept across Liberal America, like one giant tear tsunami, following Hillary Clinton’s ‘surprise’ loss in the 2016 presidential election has reached a new level of madness and can now be described as a deep-seated psychosis.

There are some understandable reasons for the Left’s collective mental breakdown. Briefly, ‘Russiagate’ is disintegrating into a burlesque theater of the absurd, while Trump – from jump-starting the Heartland’s industrial sector, to making peace with a nuclear-armed dictator, to ‘winning’ the World Cup – is on a serious roll. If the momentum continues, it may give the Republicans a crucial victory in November congressional midterms. The Democrats, acutely aware as to what is at stake yet unable to stop Trump, are showing a side of their character that can be best described as treacherous. And in order to see the symptoms of a disintegrating Democratic Party one only need look at the US entertainment industry.

For example, actor Robert DeNiro, one of the most outspoken Hollywood critics of Trump, forced his captive audience at the recent Tony Awards to sit through an invective against the US leader, which started with the juvenile comment, “F*ck Trump!” Just in case his audience – which may have included some minors, not to mention Republicans – did not hear him the first time, DeNiro repeated it. The pathetic outburst, which was certainly not the first time a fading Hollywood star has used the pulpit at an awards ceremony to make a weak political impression, won DeNiro a cheap standing ovation.

Back in January 2017, before Trump was even moved into Pennsylvania Avenue, actress Meryl Streep pulled a similar stunt, lecturing the president on the diverse composition of US society in general and Hollywood in particular: “Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners and if we kick them all out, you’ll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts,” Streep said, a comment that reinforces the idea that actors should just stick to their scripts instead of venturing into the minefield of politics.

In between those dual diatribes by two famous Hollywood has-beens have been countless other deranged Liberal stunts, including the moment when ‘comedian’ Kathy Griffin released a photograph of herself holding Trump’s ‘severed head’ aloft, to Johnny Depp making a veiled threat to assassinate the president.

“When was the last time an actor assassinated a president,” Depp asked concertgoers in Glastonbury, a reference to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth, an actor.

However, all that was mere dress rehearsal for the outrageous and very revealing comments by Bill Maher, a popular and provocative HBO talk show host.

“I feel like the bottom has to fall out at some point. And by the way, I’m hoping for it,” Maher commented last week. “Because I think one way you get rid of Trump is a crashing economy. So please, bring on the recession … Sorry if that hurts people, but it’s either root for a recession or you lose your democracy.”

At first, that may have sounded like a courageous comment until one realizes that Maher, who earns enough money to have donated one million dollars to back Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection efforts, won’t feel any of the repercussions from an imploding economy. From the relative safety of his high-security neighborhood, people like Maher will only feel the consequences from economic ruin vicariously via CNN, MSNBC and a host of other hyper-Liberal news channels that would be only too happy to provide 24/7 coverage on the ensuing chaos.

Maher’s comment speaks volumes about the true nature of the so-called progressive Liberals. Despite all of their virtue signaling and identity grandstanding about the various groups, sexes, religions, nationalities and other various subsets that make up the colorful quilt of America, they clearly have no interest in the welfare of the people.

A good example of this political opportunism came in the Obama era when a non-stop avalanche of cultural experiments were put to work further dividing and conquering the country into atomized, bite-size pieces, ready for easy consumption by the Democrats come election day. In an effort to appear ‘progressive’, a term with no real meaning or sense anymore, Liberals will popularize any cause, however base and diabolical, even if it serves to destroy the very fabric of the nation.

Witness the transgender movement, for example, which the Obama administration practically forced on the American people without any debate in the matter. Under Obama, public schools were told to either allow transgender students the right to use the bathroom of their choice or lose federal support. Here we have a prime example of ‘social justice warriors’ more concerned with guaranteeing the rights of a minuscule part of the population, while ignoring the millions of women and children who will feel rightly threatened with the prospect of sharing a bathroom or changing facility with a male. Much to its credit, the Trump administration put an end to that nonsense.

Beyond America’s borders, where was the seething outrage and visceral hate of the social justice warriors (in reality, snowflakes) when Obama was bombing parts of the Middle East back to the Stone Age? Where were the Academy Award rants as the Nobel Peace Prize winner was raining hell down on innocent civilians? What it have mattered if they knew that Obama dropped over 26,000 bombs in the last year of his reign? Or does ‘social justice’ only apply to Americans? These itinerant ‘warriors’ simply do not care, and have been able to shut down any debate they deem inappropriate – even on college campuses, once the flashpoint for anti-war protests.

The dripping self-righteousness and perceived moral authority of the Liberals is simply nauseating, especially when it is understood that no other group is in reality more supportive of military action than they are.

Indeed, the only time Trump won a golf clap from these warmongering hypocrites was when he bombed, however tepidly, a Syrian airfield following an alleged chemical attack by Syrian forces in April 2017.

Appearing on CNN, analyst Fareed Zakaria declared, “I think Donald Trump became president of the United States” last night. “American leaders… don’t need to go to a pesky Congress every time they want to use military force.”

I am tempted to believe that Trump tossed these psychopaths the bone of military conflict just to expose them for the real ‘social warriors’ they really are.

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For The First Time In U.S. History White Deaths Outnumber Births In Majority Of States

Deaths now outnumber births among whites in more than half of the United States, according to demographers at the University of Wisconsin in partnership with the University of Texas at San Antonio. Meanwhile the birth/death ratio among blacks, asians and latinos remains robust.

Notably, the number of white deaths increased while births diminished between 1999 and 2016, signaling what could usher in a faster-than-expected transition to a future in which whites are no longer the majority in America.

With significantly fewer white births and a rising number of deaths, natural increase (births minus deaths) actually ended in 2016. In that year, for the first time in U.S. history, data from the National Center for Health Statistics showed more white deaths than births in the United States. –wsic.edu

“It’s happening a lot faster than we thought,” said Rogelio Sáenz, a demographer at the University of Texas at San Antonio and a co-author of the report, which covers the period from 1999 to 2016 using data from the National Center for Health Statistics. Sáenz said he initially thought that the results must be a mistake.

We find overall white natural decrease in the U.S. for the first time in 2016 according to NCHS data. We also find that twenty-six states are currently experiencing it and that its occurrence has accelerated significantly in the past two years from seventeen states in 2014 to twenty-six states in 2016. Some 56 percent of the U.S. population reside in the 26 white natural decrease states and many of them are among the nation’s most populous and urbanized.  –wsic.edu

The pattern first started nearly two decades ago in a handful of states with aging white populations like Pennsylvania and West Virginia. But fertility rates dropped drastically after the Great Recession and mortality rates for whites who are not of Hispanic origin have been rising, driven partly by drug overdoses. That has put demographic change on a faster track. The list of states where white deaths outnumber births now includes North Carolina and Ohio. –New York Times

The rapid change has sweeping implications for the cultural makeup of the United States; transforming a nation of mostly white baby boomers to a multiethnic and racial patchwork that can already be seen in many parts of the country. 

A majority of the youngest Americans are already nonwhite and look less like older generations than at any point in modern American history. In California, 52 percent of all children are living in homes with at least one immigrant parent, Professor Sáenz said.

What does it mean for the political map? Some experts say that rapid demographic change became a potent issue in the 2016 presidential race — and helped drive white voters to support Donald J. Trump. .

–New York Times

How does this affect politics?

The New York Times points out that of the 26 states in which white deaths now exceed births, 13 voted for Donald Trump and 13 voted for Clinton. Four of the states switched from Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016 – Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Florida – though it’s unclear how the change in demographics will affect politics in the future.

Florida was the first state where white deaths outstripped births around 1993, largely because it was drawing a lot of retirees. But its population has been one of the fastest growing in the nation. Retirees have kept coming, replenishing the white population, and its large Hispanic population has helped lift the state over all. The median age for Hispanics in the United States is 29, prime for child bearing, compared with 43 for whites.

Deaths began to exceed births for whites countrywide in 2016, according to the report. But in many states, as in Florida, white people moving in made up the losses. However, in 17 states, including California, Michigan, New Jersey and Ohio, those migrants weren’t enough and the white populations declined between 2015 and 2016, said Kenneth M. Johnson, a demographer at the University of New Hampshire and the report’s other author. Five of those states registered drops in their total populations that year: Vermont, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Mississippi and Connecticut. –New York Times

“People say demographics is destiny and there’ll be more people of color — all that is true,” said Yale social psychologist Jennifer Richeson. “But they also say the U.S. is going to become more progressive, and we don’t know that. We should not assume that white moderates and liberals will maintain current political allegiances, nor should we expect that the so-called nonwhite group is going to work in any kind of coalition.”

Rural areas began to experience a disproportionate number of aging whites long before other parts of the country – as young people tend to migrate towards urban areas – never to return home. 

“There are just hardly any young people in the county anymore,” said Michael Brown, 66, a retired hospital maintenance worker in Robersonville, North Carolina. He tells the Times that his two daughters went away to college and never moved back. “We are the last generation who stayed with their parents,” said Brown.

 

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China’s Oil Trade Retaliation Is Iran’s Gain

Authored by Tom Luongo,

I’ve told you that once you start down the Trade War path forever it will dominate your destiny.

Well here we are.  Trump slaps big tariffs on aluminum and steel in a bid to leverage Gary Cohn’s ICE Wall plan to control the metals and oils futures markets.   I’m not sure how much of this stuff I believe but it is clear that the futures price for most strategically important commodities are divorced from the real world.

Alistair Crooke also noted the importance of Trump’s ‘energy dominance’ policy recently, which I suggest strongly you read.

But today’s edition of “As the Trade War Churns” is about China and their willingness to shift their energy purchases away from U.S. producers.  Irina Slav at Oilprice.com has the good bits.

The latest escalation in the tariff exchange, however, is a little bit different than all the others so far. It’s different because it came after Beijing said it intends to slap tariffs on U.S. oil, gas, and coal imports.

China’s was a retaliatory move to impose tariffs on US$50 billion worth of U.S. goods, which followed Trump’s earlier announcement that another US$50 billion in goods would be subjected to a 25-percent tariff starting July 6.

It’s unclear as to what form this will take but there’s also this report from the New York Times which talks about the China/U.S. energy trade.

Things could get worse if the United States and China ratchet up their actions [counter-tariffs]. Mr. Trump has already promised more tariffs in response to China’s retaliation. China, in turn, is likely to back away from an agreement to buy $70 billion worth of American agricultural and energy products — a deal that was conditional on the United States lifting its threat of tariffs.

“China’s proportionate and targeted tariffs on U.S. imports are meant to send a strong signal that it will not capitulate to U.S. demands,” said Eswar Prasad, a professor of international trade at Cornell University. “It will be challenging for both sides to find a way to de-escalate these tensions.”

But as Ms. Slav points out, China has enjoyed taking advantage of the glut of U.S. oil as shale drillers flood the market with cheap oil.  The West Texas Intermediate/Brent Spread has widened out to more than $10 at times.

By slapping counter tariffs on U.S. oil, that would more than overcome the current WTI/Brent spread and send Chinese refiners looking for new markets.

Hey, do you know whose oil is sold at a discount to Brent on a regular basis?

Iran’s.  That’s whose.

And you know what else?  Iran is selling tons, literally, of its oil via the new Shanghai petroyuan futures market.

Now, these aren’t exact substitutes, because the Shanghai contract is for medium-sour crude and West Texas shale oil is generally light-sweet but the point remains that the incentives would now exist for Chinese buyers to shift their buying away from the U.S. and towards producers offering substitutes at better prices.

This undermines and undercuts Trump’s ‘energy dominance’ plans while also strengthening Iran’s ability to withstand new U.S. sanctions by creating more customers for its oil.

Trade wars always escalate.  They are no different than any other government policy restricting trade.  The market response is to always respond to new incentives.  Capital always flows to where it is treated best.

It doesn’t matter if its domestic farm subsidies ‘protecting’ farmers from the business cycle or domestic metals producers getting protection via tariffs.

By raising the price above the market it shifts capital and investment away from those protected industries or producers and towards either innovation or foreign suppliers.

Trump obviously never read anything from Mises, Rothbard or Hayek at Wharton. Because if he did he would have come across the idea that every government intervention requires an ever-greater one to ‘fix’ the problems created by the first intervention.

The net result is that if there is a market for Iran’s oil, which there most certainly is, then humans will find a way to buy it.  If Trump tries to raise the price too high then it will have other knock-on effects of a less-efficient oil and gas market which will create worse problems in the future for everyone, especially the very Americans he thinks he’s defending.

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Chinese Investments In The US Plunge By 92%

Coming amid the escalating trade war between the US and China, many were quick to blame the collapse in Chinese investments in the US on tensions surrounding protectionism. And indeed, according to research firm Rhodium Group, China’s direct investments in the U.S. plunged in the first half of 2018 as Chinese companies completed acquisitions and greenfield investments worth only $1.8 billion, a 92% drop over the past year, and the lowest level in seven years.

The reality, however, is that this has little to do with the Chinese trade spat, and everything to do with China’s crackdown on outbound M&A and conglomerate “investments” which as we said back in 2015, were just a thinly veiled scheme to cover capital outflows.

Rhodium confirms as much:

The rapid decline in Chinese FDI in the U.S. was driven by a “double policy punch” — Beijing cracking down on rapid outbound investment and the U.S. government increasing scrutiny on Chinese acquisitions through the Committee on Foreign Investment as well as taking a more confrontational stance toward economic engagement with China in general.

The investment tracker is based on collection and aggregation of data on individual transactions, including acquisitions, greenfield projects, and expansions.

Whatever the reason behind the sharp drop, however, it doesn’t change the fact that there has been a recent collapse in recycled Chinese capital back into the US. And, while it may not have caused it, Trump’s recent change in trade policy will certainly make future Chinese direct investment far more problematic. As Bloomberg notes, “lawmakers and the White House are planning fresh curbs on Chinese investment.” Furthermore, as we reported earlier, a just released White House report claimed that China’s spectacular economic growth “has been achieved in significant part through aggressive acts, policies and practices that fall outside of global norms and rules.”

As Thilo Hanemann, a Rhodium direct said, “the more confrontational approach of the Trump administration toward economic relations with China has cast some doubt, in these companies’ minds, about their position here.”

The first-half slump follows a 35% drop in 2017, and if the sale of assets is taken into account – as Chinese investors sold $9.6 billion of US assets in the first five months of 2018, mostly driven by deleveraging pressures from Beijing – the net investment flow is negative. And with former high-profile acquirers such as HNA Group Co., Anbang Insurance Group Co. and Dalian Wanda Group Co. putting their assets up for sale, it will be a long time before China’s serves as a source of direct capital in the US again.

 

 

 

 

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For The Deep State, Smearing Julian Assange Is As Good As Killing Him

Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Steemit.com,

As I write this, demonstrations around the world are taking place in protest of WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange’s arbitrary detention and silencing by the US-centralized power establishment that has been actively pursuing his destruction for over a decade. The demonstrations will be well-attended, but not a fraction as well-attended as they should be. They will receive international attention, but not a fraction as much attention as they should.

This is because the manipulators and smear merchants who have made their careers paving the way for oligarchic agendas have been successful in killing off sympathy for the plight of Assange. As we discussed yesterday, sympathy is key for getting narratives to take hold in public consciousness. This is why western corporate media will circulate pictures of dead children all day long when it’s in the interests of advancing longstanding imperialist agendas, but never when those children were killed by western weapons. If you can tug at someone’s heart strings while telling them a story, the story you tell them will slide right in with minimal scrutiny. And it works the other way, too: if you can prevent someone’s heart strings from being plucked while hearing about a legitimately heartbreaking story, you can prevent that story from taking hold.

Kill all sympathy for a dissident journalist and you kill all belief in his side of the story.

And Assange’s side of the story is indeed devastating to the preferred narrative of the US-centralized empire. A journalist (yes, journalist, per definition) who publishes 100 percent authentic documents exposing the inner mechanics of power structures all over the world, who was forced to seek political asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy in London in order to avoid extradition by the same government which brutalized Chelsea Manning, is on its face a highly sympathetic story. And it does tremendous damage to the narrative that America and its close network of allies are freedom-loving democracies whose systems of government are nothing like those naughty, oppressive regimes they seek to topple.

So they smear him. As often as possible, using whatever they can, they smear his reputation. Because if they can kill all sympathy for him and his outlet, it’s as good for their agendas as actually killing him.

The smears work because the social engineers know how to manipulate people. In America, for example, people are herded into two isolated ideological holding pens and encouraged to identify as much as possible with whichever pen they’re in so that narratives can be slipped into their consciousness in a smooth, streamlined way. Are you in the ‘R’ pen and upset about the hand you’ve been dealt? You should blame the ‘D’ pen, and those foreigners who are of no strategic consequence to your rulers. Are you in the ‘D’ pen and upset about the hand you’ve been dealt? You should blame the ‘R’ pen, and those Russians whose downfall would advance the longstanding geopolitical agendas of your rulers.

In the same way, those in the ‘R’ pen were fed narratives against Julian Assange in 2010 which they lapped up because believing them was easier than believing that the pen they’re so tightly identified with had enabled the evils revealed in WikiLeaks releases about US war crimes. And in exactly the same way, those in the ‘D’ pen were fed narratives against Julian Assange in 2016 which they lapped up because believing them was easier than believing that the pen they’re so tightly identified with is pervasively corrupt.

By enforcing a strong sense of identification with a particular ideological tribe, they ensure that the psychological discomfort known as cognitive dissonance will arise from any revelation which can be spun as detrimental to that tribe. They then create a narrative which alleviates that discomfort, and that narrative always damages the reputation of the enemies of the power establishment. It’s a snake oil cure for an ailment that they deliberately caused.

Nobody actually thinks that Julian Assange is a Russian agent, or a rapist, or a “hostile non-state intelligence service”, or any of the other absurd smears I’ve seen circulating about him throughout all political sectors of the US-centralized empire. Those are not ideas that anyone has taken on board because they sincerely believe there’s enough evidence for them to outweigh the undeniable fact that many extremely powerful and influential people stand to benefit from tarnishing his reputation on false pretenses. At best, they’re just fairy tales people tell themselves because they’re easier than believing that their favorite country/political party persecutes journalists for telling the truth and is as corrupt and evil as the various WikiLeaks publications of their communications would indicate. At worst, it’s a fairy tale they are deliberately seeding into public consciousness so that people will believe lies instead of truth.

People find all sorts of ways to wiggle their way around the cognitive dissonance that unedited, authentic documents can create in them when it challenges their deeply treasured identity structures. People who present themselves as anti-establishment progressives often say things like “Well, you can be critical of Assange and still support WikiLeaks for providing a valuable service.” And sure, that may be technically true, but it’s never actually true for the people who say it: look at their writings and social media posts and you won’t see them aggressively defending WikiLeaks, you’ll only see them smearing Assange as often as they can get away with. They’re just trying to retain their anti-establishment cred (another treasured identity structure) while promulgating smear campaigns which advance the agendas of the CIA and the State Department. They pay lip service to the image they’re trying to convey, but their actions tell you where they really stand.

People who disrupt dominant narratives will always be attacked and vilified, because those narratives often form the building blocks of people’s identity structures, their egos. An ego is just a collection of believed “I” stories; they typically include believed ideas about really basic things like “I am this body,” but they also include a bunch of other “I” stories like “I am a Democrat” or “I am a patriotic American” as well. Attacking dominant narratives on a large scale will cause intense cognitive dissonance in everyone who has a lot of identity wrapped up in the power structure which is weakened by that attack, to such an extent that it can feel as though you yourself are being personally attacked. The way Democrats have talked about Assange since 2016 you get the distinct impression they feel like he may as well have walked up and stabbed them.

As this webcomic from The Oatmeal brilliantly explains, the brain is hardwired to protect strongly valued belief systems in the same way it’s hardwired to make sure the body protects itself from a physical attack. This serves a useful function in that it gives us a cognitive strategy for making sense of the world that isn’t blown to pieces every time you encounter a new idea, but it can also be malformed in a way which does not accurately represent reality. When that happens, it really is worthwhile to tough it out through the brain’s distress signals of cognitive dissonance and consciously restructure your sense-making apparatus in a way that accommodates a more accurate perspective.

This is the invitation whenever you’re looking at a WikiLeaks drop which challenges your existing worldview. It’s just raw information sitting there, and you can choose to believe a story which allows you to comfortably dismiss it, or you can stick it out through the psychological discomfort and allow it to restructure your worldview. You have defense mechanisms in place to prevent random bits of information from tearing apart your sense-making apparatus that haven’t been properly audited for reliability, but a publishing outlet with a 100 percent perfect record for releasing authentic documents is as reliable a source of information as you will ever find.

If your goal is psychological comfort, you have plenty of good reasons to loathe Julian Assange and spend all day helping plutocrats and secretive government agencies damage his reputation so that nobody will ever pay attention to him or his publications. If your goal is the truth, however, it is to your benefit to ignore the smears, to accept the reality of how and why Assange is being targeted, and to allow the truths that have been revealed by WikiLeaks publications to reshape your understanding of how the world works.

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Black Hawks Down? Pentagon Admits Russian Chopper Trumps US

The U.S. Army’s Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters have fewer capabilities for critical missions than the Russian-made Mil Mi-17 (NATO reporting name: Hip) helicopters operating in Afghanistan’s Air Force, according to a new report from the Pentagon’s inspector general.

Afghan Armed Forces, which are jointly working with the Pentagon to develop and extend its Air Force’s capacities, have been flying the Russian-made helicopters since the early 1980s.

In response to President Putin’s covert/overt military operations in Ukraine and parts of the Middle East, U.S. lawmakers recently asked the Pentagon to phase out the Mi-17 sold by Rosoboronexport, Russia’s state-owned weapons exporter — in favor of American made helicopters in Afghanistan’s Air Force.

An Afghan Mi-17 helicopter flown by Lt. Col. Bakhtullah, 377th Afghan Air Force Squadron commander, takes off for an air-assault training flight, May 29 from Kabul International Airport, Afghanistan (2013). (Source: Afghanistan Air Force)

The transition to Black Hawk helicopters “presents several challenges that have yet to be fully addressed,” Pentagon Inspector General Glenn Fine wrote in a quarterly report, available to the public, on overseas contingency operations, posted last month after the first Black Hawk became operational in Afghanistan’s Air Force.

“Black Hawks do not have the lift capacity of Mi-17s. They are unable to accommodate some of the larger cargo items the Mi-17s can carry, and in general, it takes almost two Black Hawks to carry the load of a single Mi-17.

Furthermore, unlike Mi-17s, Black Hawks cannot fly at high elevations and, as such, cannot operate in remote regions of Afghanistan where Mi-17s operate.

According to 9th Air and Space Expeditionary Task Force-Afghanistan (9th AETF-A), the Mi-17s will play a “crucial role” in the near term fighting season. In the future, as Mi-17s phase-out of service, the aforementioned challenges will become more pronounced.”

The Pentagon’s inspector general detailed in the report that by the end of 2019, the Mi-17 helicopter inventory is expected to be reduced from 47 to 20. The fleet size is scheduled to decrease to 18 by the end of 2021 and then to 12 by the second half of 2022.

Bloomberg said that in 2017, after months of lobbying by Connecticut lawmakers, where the Black Hawk is manufactured (how convenient), Congress appropriated more than 800 million dollars for Afghanistan’s Air Force modernization program.

As of March 2018, the Pentagon delivered 8 Black Hawks with another 45 expected to arrive in the near term — with a total 159 planned over the next few years.

Army Lieutenant Colonel Kone Faulkner, a Pentagon spokesman, told Bloomberg in an email that the Defense Department concluded that Black Hawks could only perform 90 percent of the Afghanistan missions the Mi-17 fleet was performing.

Faulkner tried to spin a few positives about the Black Hawk, which he said, it “can fly at the required mission altitudes at which the Afghan Mi-17 missions are typically flown.”

He added, “in many cases, the UH-60 is as, or more, capable than the Mi-17” and that one version “provides more firepower than the Mi-17 variant, which is limited to rockets only and is less maneuverable.”

The Pentagon’s inspector general revealed that Afghanistan’s Air Force performs “80 percent of the maintenance tasks on their Mi-17s” and mostly relies on “contractor logistics support for the remaining 20 percent.” The inspector general said the Mi-17’s maintenance tasks are “much more conducive to the education level available in the general Afghan population than the UH-60As” when it comes to maintenance.

Faulkner again tried to point out more positives about the Black Hawks, adding that the helicopters have “significantly lower” operating costs than Mi-17s, and the transition will “enable a shift from a Russian supply chain to a well-established and reliable U.S. supply chain.”

While the military-industrial-complex with the help of Connecticut lawmakers has been rushing to sell their Black Hawks to Afghanistan, it is rare for a high-ranking Pentagon official to admit that Russian helicopters are far more superior than theirs. Is American (helicopter) Exceptionalism fading?

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Immigration Bills In Jeopardy After Dramatic GOP Bickering On House Floor

Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC), chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, had an angry confrontation with House Speaker Paul Ryan after confusion erupted over which version of an piece of immigration legislation the House of Representatives was set to vote on, with Meadows later claiming in a statement that “the leadership compromise bill omitted key provisions that had been agreed upon beforehand.”

Both men became animated – pointing fingers at each other to the point where reporters in the press gallery could hear the the heated discussion – such as Politico’s Jake Sherman who live-tweeted the drama. 

Meadows could be heard telling Ryan “It doesn’t matter anymore,” and “I don’t care anymore.” 

Meadows reportedly got in Ryan’s face over which of two similarly-named immigration bills the House is expected to vote on tomorrow. 

The more conservative legislation has been dubbed “Goodlatte,” after the bill’s author, Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va. But a second bill, commonly called the “compromise” bill, has also been referred to as “Goodlatte,” since he’s a sponsor of that package as well. Notably, House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., rebranded the compromise bill “the president’s bill” instead of the “leadership” bill. –Fox News

In order to clear things up, GOP leadership handed out talking points to lawmakers about the “compromise” bill – however Meadows claimed that the “talking points don’t match the text,” and “are not really for prime time.”

“This was a communication issue where the leadership compromise bill omitted key provisions that had been agreed upon beforehand,” Meadows spokesman Ben Williamson said in a statement. “We are working to resolve it.”

Several GOP lawmakers told Fox News that they were disturbed at the spat between Ryan and Meadows – with one source saying that a few members who were previously a “hard yes” on the immigration legislation are now “squirming” after the confrontation. 

 

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Here Are The Three Possible Outcomes From Friday’s OPEC Meeting

Ahead of Friday’s OPEC meeting in which the oil producing cartel and Russia will most likely hike production for the first time in 2 years, various numbers are being thrown around, anywhere between 0 – which is how much additional oil Iran and Venezuela want to be produced – and 1.5 million barrels per day, which was the output increase goal of Russia as recently as Tuesday.

However, just like no production increase is impossible, especially with the pressure Trump is weighing on his new best friends, Saudi Arabia, so the upper end of the production range, or 1.5mmb/d. is also unlikely as Energy Aspects analyst Amrita Sen said says in interview on Bloomberg Television from Vienna. Predicting that Vienna’s session on Friday will be “one of the most political meetings we’ve seen in years, if not decades”

Sen also said that Russia’s proposal to increase output by 1.5mb/d is “non-starter,” “not even on the table for discussion” because crude prices would drop – sharply  – if OPEC+ agree to raise output more than 600kb/d.

As a result the London-based analyst – who was already assuming 500k b/d output increase in 2H from Gulf Arab producers and Russia, even before this week’s OPEC summit was floated – forecasts that producers will likely add 300k to 600k b/d as Saudi Arabia, Russia, Kuwait, U.A.E. all want to boost output.

Which brings us to the three possible outcomes from Friday’s meeting as laid out by energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie:

  • The most likely option to get wider support, is if OPEC agrees to boost production by 500kb/d, with Russia adding 100kb/d in 2H, for a total of 600kb/d.
  • The second possible option is for OPEC to keep current agreement to cut output, leading to a “small” implied draw in stockpiles in 3Q followed by a build in 4Q which would lead to lower prices heading into 2019 and oversupply for year.
  • The third option sees OPEC increasing output by 1m b/d, and Russia by 300k b/d, which would add 900k b/d on avg to inventories in 2H18 and 1.8m b/d in 2019, and likely much lower oil prices in the near-term.

The most likely option, one around 600,000 is also what the FT reported this afternoon saying that “a senior Opec figure suggested that Saudi Arabia was targeting a collective production increase of 600,000 to 800,00 barrels a day.” The range is a slight increase to the one floated earlier, and which called for a production increase of 300-600kb/d.

The target, which it proposes would be shared proportionally between all members of the so-called Opec+ group that are capable of raising output, has not yet been finalised but is forming the basis of discussions with other countries. The kingdom had earlier briefed that it was looking for a rise of between 300,000 and 600,000 barrels.

However, as reported previously, Iran – which continues to ignore the reality of a world in which it is sanctioned, and which will trim Iranian oil exports by up to 1mmb/d – is resisting the Saudi-led move which would send oil prices lower, putting the two Middle East rivals on a collision course ahead of Friday’s summit.

Bijan Zanganeh said he did not believe an agreement to relax production cuts — first agreed nearly two years ago amid a global supply glut — could be reached at the oil cartel’s meeting, insisting the group was not an “American organisation”.

“Opec is not an organisation to receive its instruction from President Trump,” Mr Zanganeh said on arriving in Vienna for the talks.

Or maybe it is. In a separate report from CNN, Zanganeh said that OPEC members were discussing going back to 100% compliance, and added that Iran may agree to a supply increase without the need for new agreement. Specifically Iran is envisioning a world in which there is no more “overdelivering on cuts” – largely as a result of the collapse of Venezuela’s oil infrastructure which has resulted in Caracas producing far less than even its production cut quota  – with analysts estimating that if those who have cut more than required scaled back to 100% compliance (instead of the 100%+ where it is now due to basket cases like Maduro) it would add a million-odd barrels a day to output.

Of course, at the end of the day, OPEC is really another name for Saudi Arabia, and whatever Riyadh wants, Riyadh gets. And on Wednesday, the Saudi energy minister, Khalid al-Falih, said that while they were still in consultations with other members, more countries were backing the idea that it was “time for us to change course”.

“The market demands more [oil] in the second half. The exact amount, the timing, the manner . . . we have a couple of days to discuss.

“I am confident that at the end of the day reason will prevail and we will do the right thing.”

In short, OPEC will most likely agree to boost production by around 800kb/d, with Iran kicking and screaming but ultimately agreeing, with significant risk that the final number could be above 1mm barrels per day.

And just in case the number ends up being “far higher”, Saudi Aramco, which would love a $100+ oil price ahead of its IPO, said that it has at least 2 million b/d in additional output capacity if required.

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