And just like that it’s over — war averted, apparently, as the Pentagon announced Tuesday US defense posturing and military build-up in the Persian Gulf has thwarted potential attacks an Americans.
Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan said Iran was forced to “put on hold” plans to harm American troops and their allies in the region:
“I think our steps were very prudent and we’ve put on hold the potential for attacks on Americans and that is what is extremely important,” Shanahan told reporters at the Pentagon, though without giving specifics.
He added that Iran was ultimately forced to “recalculate” its aggression.
Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan (left) with President Trump, via The New York Times.
Since John Bolton’s May 5th statements citing “credible intelligence” of a heightened Iran threat which supposedly put US troops in the cross hairs there’s been next to nothing in terms of actual details.
Instead the past two weeks has witnessed incessant blustering out of Washington, with daily threats that military action was looming against Iran.
And now with zero evidence that Iran was readying an attack, the Pentagon is essentially declaring victory following statements by Trump that he is not willing to escalate, but instead telling Iran’s leaders to “call me”.
During Shanahan’s press briefing he still underscored “the credibility of the intelligence” and called US deployment of a carrier strike group and B-52 bombers “very prudent”. Through these measures, he claimed, “we have put on hold the potential for attacks on Americans and that’s what’s extremely important.”
“I’d say we’re in a period where the threat remains high and our job is to make sure that there is no miscalculation by the Iranians,” Shanahan added.
“I just hope Iran is listening. We’re in the region to address many things, but it is not to go to war with Iran,” the Defense Secretary said.
Previously Trump warned Monday that he was ready to use “great force” if Iran harmed American interests in the region. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had also made statements saying it was “quite possible” Iran had sabotaged four oil tankers near the Strait of Hormuz last week, which actually appeared to be a softening of expectations the White House would come out and directly blame Iran.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2WlXlWs Tyler Durden
“No matter who you are, no matter how strong you are, sooner or later, you’ll face circumstances beyond your control.” – Cersei Lannister, Game of Thrones
Those coming of age today will face some of the greatest obstacles ever encountered by young people.
As such, they will find themselves forced to march in lockstep with a government that no longer exists to serve the people but which demands they be obedient slaves or suffer the consequences.
It’s a dismal prospect, isn’t it?
Unfortunately, we who should have known better failed to guard against such a future.
Worse, we neglected to maintain our freedoms or provide our young people with the tools necessary to survive, let alone succeed, in the impersonal jungle that is modern America.
We brought them into homes fractured by divorce, distracted by mindless entertainment, and obsessed with the pursuit of materialism. We institutionalized them in daycares and afterschool programs, substituting time with teachers and childcare workers for parental involvement. We turned them into test-takers instead of thinkers and automatons instead of activists.
We allowed them to languish in schools which not only look like prisons but function like prisons, as well—where conformity is the rule and freedom is the exception. We made them easy prey for our corporate overlords, while instilling in them the values of a celebrity-obsessed, technology-driven culture devoid of any true spirituality. And we taught them to believe that the pursuit of their own personal happiness trumped all other virtues, including any empathy whatsoever for their fellow human beings.
No, we haven’t done this generation any favors.
Based on the current political climate, things could very well get much worse before they ever take a turn for the better. Here are a few pieces of advice that will hopefully help those coming of age today survive the perils of the journey that awaits:
Be an individual. For all of its claims to champion the individual, American culture advocates a stark conformity which, as John F. Kennedy warned, is “the jailer of freedom, and the enemy of growth.” Worry less about fitting in with the rest of the world and instead, as Henry David Thoreau urged, become “a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.”
Learn your rights. We’re losing our freedoms for one simple reason: most of us don’t know anything about our freedoms. At a minimum, anyone who has graduated from high school, let alone college, should know the Bill of Rights backwards and forwards. However, the average young person, let alone citizen, has very little knowledge of their rights for the simple reason that the schools no longer teach them. So grab a copy of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and study them at home. And when the time comes, stand up for your rights before it’s too late.
Speak truth to power. Don’t be naive about those in positions of authority. As James Madison, who wrote our Bill of Rights, observed, “All men having power ought to be distrusted.” We must learn the lessons of history. People in power, more often than not, abuse that power. To maintain our freedoms, this will mean challenging government officials whenever they exceed the bounds of their office.
Resist all things that numb you. Don’t measure your worth by what you own or earn. Likewise, don’t become mindless consumers unaware of the world around you. Resist all things that numb you, put you to sleep or help you “cope” with so-called reality. Those who establish the rules and laws that govern society’s actions desire compliant subjects. However, as George Orwell warned, “Until they become conscious, they will never rebel, and until after they rebelled, they cannot become conscious.” It is these conscious individuals who change the world for the better.
Don’t let technology turn you into zombies. Technology anesthetizes us to the all-too-real tragedies that surround us. Techno-gadgets are merely distractions from what’s really going on in America and around the world. As a result, we’ve begun mimicking the inhuman technology that surrounds us and have lost our humanity. We’ve become sleepwalkers. If you’re going to make a difference in the world, you’re going to have to pull the earbuds out, turn off the cell phones and spend much less time viewing screens.
Help others. We all have a calling in life. And I believe it boils down to one thing: You are here on this planet to help other people. In fact, none of us can exist very long without help from others. If we’re going to see any positive change for freedom, then we must change our view of what it means to be human and regain a sense of what it means to love and help one another. That will mean gaining the courage to stand up for the oppressed.
Cultivate spirituality, reject materialism and put people first. When the things that matter most have been subordinated to materialism, we have lost our moral compass. We must change our values to reflect something more meaningful than technology, materialism and politics. Standing at the pulpit of the Riverside Church in New York City in April 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. urged his listeners:
[W]e as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motive and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
Pitch in and do your part to make the world a better place. Don’t rely on someone else to do the heavy lifting for you. Don’t wait around for someone else to fix what ails you, your community or nation. As Gandhi urged: “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”
Say no to war. Addressing the graduates at Binghampton Central High School in 1968, at a time when the country was waging war “on different fields, on different levels, and with different weapons,” Twilight Zonecreator Rod Serling declared:
Too many wars are fought almost as if by rote. Too many wars are fought out of sloganry, out of battle hymns, out of aged, musty appeals to patriotism that went out with knighthood and moats. Love your country because it is eminently worthy of your affection. Respect it because it deserves your respect. Be loyal to it because it cannot survive without your loyalty. But do not accept the shedding of blood as a natural function or a prescribed way of history—even if history points this up by its repetition. That men die for causes does not necessarily sanctify that cause. And that men are maimed and torn to pieces every fifteen and twenty years does not immortalize or deify the act of war… find another means that does not come with the killing of your fellow-man.
Finally, prepare yourselves for what lies ahead.The demons of our age—some of whom disguise themselves as politicians—delight in fomenting violence, sowing distrust and prejudice, and persuading the public to support tyranny disguised as patriotism. Overcoming the evils of our age will require more than intellect and activism. It will require decency, morality, goodness, truth and toughness. As Serling concluded in his remarks to the graduating class of 1968:
“Toughness is the singular quality most required of you… we have left you a world far more botched than the one that was left to us… Part of your challenge is to seek out truth, to come up with a point of view not dictated to you by anyone, be he a congressman, even a minister… Are you tough enough to take the divisiveness of this land of ours, the fact that everything is polarized, black and white, this or that, absolutely right or absolutely wrong. This is one of the challenges. Be prepared to seek out the middle ground … that wondrous and very difficult-to-find Valhalla where man can look to both sides and see the errant truths that exist on both sides. If you must swing left or you must swing right—respect the other side. Honor the motives that come from the other side. Argue, debate, rebut—but don’t close those wondrous minds of yours to opposition. In their eyes, you’re the opposition. And ultimately … ultimately—you end divisiveness by compromise. And so long as men walk and breathe—there must be compromise…
Are you tough enough to face one of the uglier stains upon the fabric of our democracy—prejudice? It’s the basic root of most evil. It’s a part of the sickness of man. And it’s a part of man’s admission, his constant sick admission, that to exist he must find a scapegoat. To explain away his own deficiencies—he must try to find someone who he believes more deficient… Make your judgment of your fellow-man on what he says and what he believes and the way he acts. Be tough enough, please, to live with prejudice and give battle to it. It warps, it poisons, it distorts and it is self-destructive. It has fallout worse than a bomb … and worst of all it cheapens and demeans anyone who permits himself the luxury of hating.”
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the only way we’ll ever achieve change in this country is for the American people to finally say “enough is enough” and fight for the things that truly matter.
It doesn’t matter how old you are or what your political ideology is. If you have something to say, speak up. Get active, and if need be, pick up a picket sign and get in the streets. And when civil liberties are violated, don’t remain silent about it.
Wake up, stand up, and make your activism count for something more than politics.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2YGek3m Tyler Durden
Before we do, some basic price facts: Gold peaked in 2011 just above $1900. Since then it’s been an exercise in dread for gold bugs (Disclosure: I have no position, not trading Gold myself). Gold bottomed in early 2016 and now it’s back in the same price range it’s basically been in since 2013. So basically the price of Gold has gone nowhere over the past 6 years which could be interpreted as a consolidation range.
While the price chop may seem arbitrary we can however discern some structural conclusions on a larger time frame chart:
2 key trend lines:
A supporting trend line from the 2008 lows connecting the 2015/2016 lows and the 2018 lows. Price remains above this trend line.
A trend line that formed resistance off of the 2011 and 2012 highs and represented resistance in 2016 and initially in 2017. Price has broken above that trend line in 2017 and has remained ever since.
Bottomline: Trend line resistance has been overcome and trend line support has been affirmed. Combined these events are supportive of a potentially larger bullish outlook.
However price has really not make much progress. In the chart above one may identify a potential bull flag, that has risk back to the support trend line.
Taking a closer look we can see an additional pattern, and I present a structure identified by my better half Mella, a potential inverse pattern on Gold:
To be clear: This is not a confirmed pattern, it’s a potential pattern, but it comes with the aforementioned bull flag as well. To see confirmation Gold needs to move solidly above 1350-1380, a perhaps tall order in its current configuration, but that pattern, if triggered may be quite powerful as it implies a $1520 target.
When is the pattern and support structure invalid? A sustained drop below 1250 would spell trouble. 1250 represents confluence support of the long term support trend line and the .236 fib level shown in the earlier chart.
Another way to think about the setup? Risk/reward. If the pattern plays out, risk can be defined as 1230/1250 and upside reward to 1520, or about 3% downside and 19% upside from current price levels.
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via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2WW29PH Tyler Durden
If there was any lingering doubt that President Trump has treated Huawei like a ‘bargaining chip’ during trade talks with the Chinese, Bloomberg just put the issue to rest.
In a report sourced to administration insiders, BBG reported that the Trump administration waited to blacklist Huawei until talks with the Chinese had hit an impasse, because they were concerned that targeting Huawei would disrupt the talks.
Plans to punish Huawei – including possible economic sanctions – had been kicking around for months. And prosecutors took their first tentative steps toward holding Huawei ‘accountable’ by convincing Canada to arrest Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou.
And once trade talks had broken down, there was a ‘scramble’ to implement the measures against Huawei.
Though BBG doesn’t offer a definitive answer on this, it reports that some are suspicious that Trump is pressuring Huawei to ‘gain a negotiating edge’ with Beijing (meanwhile, the Chinese leadership are furious about the decision).
Timing of the U.S. action raised questions about whether President Donald Trump is punishing the company in part to gain a negotiating edge with Beijing in a deepening clash over trade. Talks between Beijing and Washington deadlocked this month as Trump accused China of backing out of a deal that was taking shape with U.S. officials, saying China reneged on an agreement to enshrine a wide range of reforms in law.
Another take on what happened suggested that the decision to hold back on Huawei actually came from the bureaucracy, as administration officials were worried President Trump would just scrap the measures as a favor to Xi, like he did last year with ZTE Corp. Those concerns haven’t entirely abated.
Washington has offered Huawei some wiggle room by suspending the new restrictions for 90 days. The company has been stockpiling chips, and reportedly already has enough to keep its business running for three months.
But this report effectively confirms that the administration wasn’t being entirely truthful when it said there was ‘no link’ between Huawei and the trade talks. Trump said back in December that he would go so far as to intervene in efforts to extradite Meng Wanzhou if it would help with the trade talks. And although that would be extreme, we should rule it out just yet.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2Qf70sF Tyler Durden
As the investigations into the Trump-Russia investigation proceed, it’s not too difficult to figure out a few of the theoretical starting points.
The first and most obvious theory is the one largely promulgated in the media for the better part of two years. It goes something like this: The sharp, super-sleuth investigative skills of top officials within the Justice Department and our intel community enabled them to identify Donald Trump and his campaign as treacherous conduits to Russian President Vladimir Putin himself.
That theory was summarily dismissed by special counsel Robert Mueller’s conclusion that there wasn’t so much as even coordination between Russia and Trump, or any American.
So that leaves several other possibilities … and none of them is good:
They knew
One possibility to be considered is that top Obama administration officials knew all along there never was any real collusion or crime at play, but they manufactured the false Russia premise in order to justify their political spying.
Under this hypothetical scenario, they wanted to get inside information on the Trump campaign and, perhaps, gather dirt against the competition for blackmail or political purposes.
This effort included surveillance using paid spies and wiretaps on multiple Trump associates, as reported in the press.
The Obama officials had lots of help from foreign players such as the United Kingdom and Russia’s nemesis, Ukraine. Ukrainian-linked Democrats assisted with an early effort to gin up negative press coverage about key players, such as Trump associate Paul Manafort, who had been hired by the pro-Russian Ukrainian government prior to the anti-Russian Ukrainian government taking over in 2014. There were other Ukraine entanglements, such as the lucrative position earning millions of dollars that then-Vice President Joe Biden’s son got in 2015 to serve on the board of a Ukrainian energy company under the anti-Russia Ukraine regime.
Anyhow, under this scenario, after Trump defied all predictions and won the election, those who had conspired against him went into panic mode. They rightly worried that Trump, his national security adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, and others outside the “establishment” would be able to see what Justice Department and intel officials had been up to in secret.
They were worried that not only would their furtive activities in 2016 be exposed but that their behavior during the past decade-plus, when there were many other documented surveillance and intel abuses. These abuses include improper surveillance of American citizens, political figures, journalists and other targets.
One can only imagine all the things they did that never became public. Whose communications did they pretend to capture accidentally? Whose bank records, photos, emails, text messages, internet history and keystrokes were monitored? What unverified or false evidence did intel officials present to the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to get wiretaps on political enemies? Who improperly “unmasked” whom?
Hypothetically, these government officials — desperate to keep their deeds in the dark — rushed to amplify the Trump-Russia collusion narrative. Putting Trump under investigation, even if under false pretenses, would accomplish the goal of keeping him from poking around into their business and practices. Any attempts he’d make to find out what was going on inside his own Justice Department or intel agencies would automatically be declared “Obstruction!”
However, they were sloppy.
First, they were sloppy in the improper actions they undertook over a decade or more. They never imagined outsiders would ever really get a look at the evidence of their alleged wrongdoing. Then, they became sloppier in their panic-stricken attempts to cover up after Trump got elected.
As you can see, this scenario presumes a level of corruption.
For those who aren’t prepared to accept the possibility that some within our Justice Department and intel community would frame Trump and his associates to keep their own alleged crimes secret, there is at least one other possibility. But it may not be much more palatable.
They didn’t know
If Mueller is correct and there was no collusion or even coordination between Russia and Trump, or any American, and if the Obama administration officials who insisted that was the case are not corrupt, then they collectively suffered from one of the most historically monumental cases of poor judgment in U.S. intelligence history.
Under this scenario, the seasoned experts entrusted to protect our national security committed the kind of bush-league mistakes that few novice investigators would make. They jumped to conclusions with no evidence. They let their own biases lead them down trails in the wrong direction. They misinterpreted evidence, misread people’s actions and barked up the wrong trees. They misconstrued exceedingly common business and political contacts with Russians as deep, dark, dastardly plots. They wasted energy and resources chasing specters, ghosts and conspiracies where none existed.
Under this scenario, the misguided obsession over nonexistent treachery and enemies of the state caused the officials to underestimate or ignore the real threats that were right under their noses.
We do know this much: Only after Trump was elected did these officials ring major alarm bells about the Russians. It’s as if they are utterly unaware that the election interference they suspected and detected happened while they were in charge.
Or maybe they just hope to convince us to look the other way.
Instead of looking the other way, we might be well advised to open the books and examine how these officials were running their shops well before 2016. What does either scenario imply about how these operators behaved behind closed doors? How did they use their power and the powerful tools at their disposal? How well did they guard the nation’s interests and our deepest secrets?
Whether they were corrupt or inept, whether they knew or whether they didn’t know, the questions seem important to answer.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2HMCr9K Tyler Durden
US equity futures are sliding as Asian markets open after a NYTimes report that the Trump administration is considering limits to a Chinese video surveillance giant’s ability to buy American technology.
Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology, a company controlled by the Chinese government, is now the world’s largest supplier of video surveillance equipment, with internet-enabled cameras installed in more than 100 countries.
The move would effectively place the company on a United States blacklist, and as NYT notes, it also would mark the first time the Trump administration punished a Chinese company for its role in the surveillance and mass detention of Uighurs, a mostly Muslim ethnic minority.
And this escalation has sparked selling in stocks…
And yuan…
Congress and the administration have responded with other measures that may clamp down on Hikvision’s business. Congress included a provision in its 2019 military spending authorization bill that banned federal agencies from using Chinese video surveillance products made by Hikvision or Dahua.
The Trump administration is also considering imposing sanctions on specific Chinese officials known to play critical roles in the surveillance and detention system in Xinjiang. These sanctions would be imposed under the Global Magnitsky Act. The highest-ranking official being considered for this type of targeted sanction is Chen Quanguo, a member of the party’s Politburo and party chief of Xinjiang since August 2016.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2VTUm8j Tyler Durden
Here we go again with a claim that seems to surface every Spring: the US says it is looking into allegations the Syrian government has used chemical weapons as it continues an offensive against jihadists in northwest Syria.
Just as in prior incidents, it appears the sole originator of the claim is al-Qaeda in Syria, currently battling it out with pro-Assad forces near Idlib. And like with prior chemical attack allegations, it comes at a moment the jihadists are fast losing ground in the area.
US State Department says it sees signs Syrian government may be renewing use of chemical weapons, including alleged chlorine attack on May 19.
File photo from fighting in Douma last year, site of a prior chemical attack allegation, via the AFP.
The State Department spokesman said in a written statement the US is closely monitoring Assad military operations in northwest Syria after an alleged chlorine attack on Sunday. “We are still gathering information on this incident, but we repeat our warning that if the Assad regime uses chemical weapons, the United States and our allies will respond quickly and appropriately,” the statement reads.
The May 19 claimed incident has received little to no media coverage since it allegedly happened Sunday, with nothing in the way of any kind of photographs or footage yet to surface, unlike prior highly publicized chemical attack claims. It allegedly occurred near Idlib or possibly in northeast Latakia province, a government stronghold southwest of Idlib, and it appears the initial claim was made by none other that Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham before being picked up by Syrian opposition media groups and among some western Middle East think tanks analysts.
According to prior United States government statements Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) is synonymous with al-Qaeda in Syria (as it rebranded from Nusrah Front). Thus it once again it appears the United States is blindly parroting the claims al-Qaeda terrorists.
The few details that currently exist surrounding the claimed chemical attack were reported Sunday by Middle East-based source Al Masdar News:
The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) launched a new attack to capture the key town of Kabani in the northeastern countryside of the Latakia Governorate.
Led by the 4th Armored Division, the Syrian Arab Army began their assault by launching a flurry of missiles and artillery shells towards the positions of Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham and the Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP).
During this barrage of missiles, the militants accused the Syrian Arab Army of using chlorine gas against them.
Two years ago in April 2017 it was also HTS that initially claimed a chemical attack by pro-Assad forces in Khan Shaykhun, Idlib province – which eventually resulted in President Trump ordering airstrikes on Syria for the first time.
During that incident, as well as ones following such as the more recent events in Douma outside of Damascus, both Syria and Russia have pointed the finger at al-Qaeda operatives and their backers for staging such “provocations” in order to draw in US intervention.
Brett McGurk — then White House appointed anti-ISIS envoy — previously described Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham, the group making the latest chemical attack claims, in unusually frank comments:
Interestingly, the State Department in its Tuesday statement made extensive reference to repeat Russian and Syrian “false flag” allegations. According to the State Dept.:
Russia and the Assad regime have made these false allegations as a pretext in advance of the Assad regime’s own barbaric chemical weapons attacks. The facts, however, are clear: the Assad regime itself has conducted almost all verified chemical weapons attacks.
The statement further said Russian media criticisms of the White Helmets are part of “a continuing disinformation campaign” to create a “false narrative”.
However, ironically these new allegations have surfaced just after a leaked report produced by the international watchdog, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), paints a very different picture contracting the US version of events on Douma last April 2018.
The Douma incident led to massive US and allied airstrikes on Damascus, which Trump had said was a “limited” and punitive campaign in order to prevent chemical weapons usage.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2QcpMAK Tyler Durden
A geologist has said that if the Yellowstone supervolcano erupts, it would destroy most of the United States, all but wiping the country off of the map. Dr. Jerzy Zaba is importantly not predicting that the volcano is going to erupt soon, but simply stating that it does have the power to destroy humanity and life as we know it.
According to Tech WP, Dr. Zaba says that Yellowstone, if it erupted in a similar manner as it did 640,000 years ago, it would destroy much of the United States. Dr. Zaba, who is a geologist at the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland, said the mass explosion is completely unavoidable although it’s impossible to say when that explosion will occur. In addition to the annihilation of the United States, the geologist also says about 5 billion other people will starve to death in the volcanoes aftermath: a volcanic winter.
It is forecasted that if there was an explosion similar to the one from 640,000. for years, it would destroy most of the United States. Discarded materials would cover everything with a meter layer within a radius of 500 km. And due to the emission of a huge amount of dust, gases or sulfur oxide to the atmosphere, there would be a temporary cooling of the climate. Sulfur oxide would create a thin veil of sulfuric acid around the planet reflecting sunlight. [This] would persist for many years. It is estimated that due to climate change about five billion people would starve to death. The scenario of such an explosion can be seen in the documentary film “Superwulkan – disaster scenario”. This is, of course, a catastrophic film, but a lot of scientific truth in it. –Dr. Jerzy Zaba, via Tech WP
An eruption at Yellowstone would cause the Earth’s temperature to plummet as the sulfuric acid would reflect the sunlight, making growing food difficult across the globe.
As more talk is made by geologists that suggest that the supervolcanoes are “waking up” around the world, the fears will simultaneously spike. That doesn’t mean an eruption will happen anytime soon, only that Earth will experience another supervolcano eruption in the future.
Experts still say there is no reason to fear a supervolcano eruption just yet, but understanding the devastation that we will all face sooner or later is important in the advancement of science and human survival.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2HJIoEv Tyler Durden
A San Francisco judge on Wednesday ordered a Berkeley Antifa organizer to pay Judicial Watch $22,000 in legal fees and $4,000 in litigation costs, while her co-plaintiffs were ordered to pay $1,000 each to the conservative legal watchdog.
Judge Vince Chhabria, an Obama appointee, called Yvette Felarca‘s lawsuit against Berkeley Unified – in which Judicial Watch was named as a party – “frivolous” and “unreasonable.”
Felarca is a prominent figure in By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), a group founded by the Marxist Revolutionary Workers League that protests conservative speaking engagements. In 2016, Felarca and two of her allies were arrested and charged with several crimes, including felony assault, for inciting a riot in Sacramento. Earlier this year, Felarca was ordered to stand trial for assault.
U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria, Northern District of California, who had previously ruled that Felarca’s lawsuit was “entirely frivolous,” wrote in his ruling awarding legal fees to Judicial Watch that Felarca and her co-plaintiffs’ First Amendment claims were “premised on the obviously baseless assumption” that the First Amendment condemns the speech of some while condoning the ideological missions of others. –Judicial Watch
Chhabria also said that “The plaintiffs also mischaracterized the documents under review” and had “failed to grapple with the role Ms. Felarca played in making herself a topic of public discourse through her physical conduct at public rallies and her voluntary appearance on Fox News.”
Fox News‘s Tucker Carlson took Felarca to town in 2017 over her definition of a “fascist” – challenging her to explain what she thinks should be done to people she disagrees with.
In 2017, Judicial Watch filed a California Public Records Act (CPRA) request seeking public records information about Felarca’s Antifa activism and its effect within the Berkeley Unified School District. In her lawsuit aimed at keeping the Berkeley school district from furnishing the records, Felarca alleged that Judicial Watch was misusing the law for political means and the district should refuse to provide the information.
In January 2018, a separate judge ordered Felarca to pay more than $11,000 in attorney and court fees for her frivolous attempt to get a restraining order against Troy Worden, the former head of the University of California (UC) Berkeley College Republicans. –Judicial Watch
Embarrassingly, Judge Chhabria also pointed out that “a significant portion of the documents the plaintiffs initially sued to protect from disclosure had been publicly disclosed months earlier in another suit brought by Ms. Felarca against BUSD, where she was represented by the same counsel. (See generally Felarca v. Berkeley Unified School District, No. 3:16-cv-06184-RS). The plaintiffs, therefore, had no reasonable argument to protect those documents from disclosure.”
In other words, Chhabria has a really crappy lawyer.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2EoavZ4 Tyler Durden
In his State of the Union address on February 5, U.S. President Donald Trump said that his administration was “holding constructive talks with a number of Afghan groups, including the Taliban… [in order] to be able to reduce our troop presence and focus on counter-terrorism.”
Trump continued, “We do not know whether we will achieve an agreement — but we do know that after two decades of war, the hour has come to at least try for peace.”
On April 26, following a meeting in Moscow on the status of the Afghan “peace process,” representatives of the U.S., China, and Russia released the following joint statement:
The three sides respect the sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity of Afghanistan as well as its right to choose its development path. The three sides prioritize the interests of the Afghan people in promoting a peace process.
The three sides support an inclusive Afghan-led, Afghan-owned peace process and are ready to provide necessary assistance. The three sides encourage the Afghan Taliban to participate in peace talks with a broad, representative Afghan delegation that includes the government as soon as possible. Toward this end, and as agreed in Moscow in February 2019, we support a second round of intra-Afghan dialogue in Doha (Qatar).
The three sides support the Afghan government efforts to combat international terrorism and extremist organizations in Afghanistan. They take note of the Afghan Taliban’s commitment to: fight ISIS and cut ties with Al-Qaeda, ETIM, and other international terrorist groups; ensure the areas they control will not be used to threaten any other country; and call on them to prevent terrorist recruiting, training, and fundraising, and expel any known terrorists.
The three sides recognize the Afghan people’s strong desire for a comprehensive ceasefire. As a first step, we call on all parties to agree on immediate and concrete steps to reduce violence.
The three sides stress the importance of fighting illegal drug production and trafficking, and call on the Afghan government and the Taliban to take all the necessary steps to eliminate the drug threat in Afghanistan.
The three sides call for an orderly and responsible withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan as part of the overall peace process.
The three sides call for regional countries to support this trilateral consensus and are ready to build a more extensive regional and international consensus on Afghanistan.
The three sides agreed on a phased expansion of their consultations before the next trilateral meeting in Beijing. The date and composition of the meeting will be agreed upon through diplomatic channels.
This statement was released a mere week after a summit between the Taliban and officials from the government of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani was postponed indefinitely, after the Taliban objected to the number of delegates that Kabul wanted to send to the meeting.
That spat was only one example of why negotiations with the Taliban have not been going smoothly. Another is concern on the part of high-ranking Afghan diplomats and intelligence officials that their American counterparts may be betraying them. Afghan National Security Adviser Hamdullah Mohib, for example, publicly accused Zalmay Khalilzad — the U.S. State Department’s Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation — of having ambitions to become president of Afghanistan.
Sadly, no amount of blood, money or time spent in Afghanistan has been, or possibly will be, able to fashion it into a peaceful, united and democratic country. Pictured: U.S. Army soldiers carry a critically wounded American soldier on a stretcher to an awaiting helicopter, on June 24, 2010 near Kandahar, Afghanistan. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
“Our [the U.S.’s] agreement w/ China & Russia yesterday along w/ previous one w/ Europeans means we have emerging intl consensus on US approach to end the war AND assurances [that] terrorism never again emanates from #Afghanistan. More to do but important milestone. #Momentum”
Trump should be lauded for working toward a withdrawal from Afghanistan, where 14,000 U.S. troops still remain. But he should not expect to leave behind a peaceful situation in the failed state, which is made up of a complex web of tribal divisions and hostilities.
The ethnic Pashtuns, who comprise most of the Taliban’s recruits, account for about 40% of Afghanistan’s population. Taliban Pashtuns are largely from the Durrani Pashtun clan from southern Afghanistan in the Kandahar Province region, along the Pakistani border. The Durrani are historic enemies of the Ghilzai Pashtun clan, which inhabits the region east and south of Kabul.
President Ghani is closely allied with the Ghilzai Pashtun from eastern Afghanistan, and may have somewhat isolated himself by viewing his presidential responsibilities primarily through a Ghilzai lens.
The rivalry between Pashtun clans further complicates efforts to arrive at a negotiated settlement between the Taliban and the Ghani administration. There is a lack of trust even within the largely Pashtun Taliban.
Yet another factor militating against national unity is that Pashtun clans appear not to view Afghanistan’s non-Pashtun ethnic minorities as equal partners in a future Afghanistan. Pashtuns assume that Afghanistan is synonymous with “Land of the Afghans (or Pashtuns).”
Perhaps the most debilitating factor of all is that millions of Pashtuns also live in Pakistan, courtesy of the Durand Line. This dysfunctional demographic reality is a consequence of the late 19th century decision by imperial Britain to establish the border between Afghanistan and British India (which included today’s Pakistan) and Afghanistan. To the Pashtuns, however, the Durand Line is only a line on a paper map, to be ignored.
The point is that whatever the final terms of a negotiated U.S. withdrawal, Afghanistan’s strife will probably continue unabated.
The Taliban will still be able to count on a sizable supply of manpower — from Pakistan-based Pashtun males attending madrassas (schools for Islamic study). The Taliban may also rely upon continued support from Pakistan, unless Islamabad alters its strategic assessment that a pro-Pakistani regime in Afghanistan is a necessary wedge against India, its regional rival.
In addition, the Taliban and its Pakistani supporters are undoubtedly assured of an uninterrupted flow of financial support from Islamist sources in the Gulf States, as the strict Sunni nature of the Taliban brand of Islam is well-aligned with some of the Gulf State Islam.
Afghanistan’s remaining population consists of Tajiks (25%), Hazaras (19%), Uzbeks (6%) and various tribal peoples. Respectively, these Persian, Mongol and Turkic peoples, based upon their past armed resistance to Pashtun attempts to control the whole of Afghanistan, will most likely fight to maintain their autonomy. This historical reality alone should be sufficient cause for U.S. policy-makers to abandon the seemingly impossible task of building a unified, democratic, pro-Western Afghanistan.
Yet another reason not to harbor fantasies of a unified Afghanistan is the utter lack of what Mideast scholar Dr. Mordechai Kedar calls a “shared national consciousness.”
Even a superpower with good intentions such as the United States cannot accomplish the impossible. Sadly, no amount of blood, money or time spent in Afghanistan has been, or possibly will be, able to fashion it into a peaceful, united and democratic country.
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Dr. Lawrence A. Franklin was the Iran Desk Officer for Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. He also served on active duty with the U.S. Army and as a Colonel in the Air Force Reserve.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2EzxIaX Tyler Durden
