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According to a recent Eurobarometer survey, at least seven in ten respondents in all 28 EU member states perceive fake news to be a problem in their country.
You will find more infographics at Statista
The share was highest in Cyprus with 91 percent saying “yes, it is definitely a problem” or “yes, it is a problem to some extent”.
Greece came second, followed by Italy.
In the UK, 84 percent of people said that fake news is a problem in their country.
via RSS https://ift.tt/2G9kFQc Tyler Durden
Authored by Rob Slane via TheBlogMire.com,
There are a lot of issues surrounding the case of Sergei and Yulia Skripal which, at the time of writing, are very unclear and rather odd. There may well be good and innocent explanations for some or even all of them. Then again there may not. This is why it is crucial for questions to be asked where, as yet, there are either no answers or deeply unsatisfactory ones.
Some people will assume that this is conspiracy theory territory. It is not that, for the simple reason that I have no credible theory – conspiracy or otherwise – to explain all the details of the incident in Salisbury from start to finish, and I am not attempting to forward one. I have no idea who was behind this incident, and I continue to keep an open mind to a good many possible explanations.
However, there are a number of oddities in the official narrative, which do demand answers and clarifications. You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist or a defender of the Russian state to see this. You just need a healthy scepticism, “of a type developed by all inquiring minds!”
Below are 30 of the most important questions regarding the case and the British Government’s response, which are currently either wholly unanswered, or which require clarification.
1. Why have there been no updates on the condition of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in the public domain since the first week of the investigation?
2. Are they still alive?
3. If so, what is their current condition and what symptoms are they displaying?
4. In a recent letter to The Times, Stephen Davies, Consultant in Emergency Medicine at Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust, wrote the following:
“Sir, Further to your report (“Poison exposure leaves almost 40 needing treatment”, Mar 14) may I clarify that no patients have experienced nerve agent poisoning in Salisbury and there have only ever been three patients with significant poisoning.”
His claim that “no patients have experienced nerve agent poisoning in Salisbury” is remarkably odd, as it appears to flatly contradict the official narrative. Was this a slip of the pen, or was it his intention to communicate precisely this — that no patients have been poisoned by a nerve agent in Salisbury?
5. It has been said that the Skripals and Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey were poisoned by “a military grade nerve agent”. According to some claims, the type referred to could be anywhere between five and eight times more toxic than VX nerve agent. Given that just 10mg of VX is reckoned to be the median lethal dose, it seems likely that the particular type mentioned in the Skripal case should have killed them instantly. Is there an explanation as to how or why this did not happen?
6. Although reports suggested the involvement of some sort of nerve agent fairly soon after the incident, it was almost a week before Public Health England issued advice to those who had visited The Mill pub or the Zizzi restaurant in Salisbury on the day that the Skripals fell ill. Why the delay and did this pose a danger to the public?
7. In their advice, Public Health England stated that people who had visited those places, where traces of a military grade nerve agent had apparently been found, should wash their clothes and:
“Wipe personal items such as phones, handbags and other electronic items with cleansing or baby wipes and dispose of the wipes in the bin (ordinary domestic waste disposal).”
Are baby wipes acknowledged to be an effective and safe method of dealing with objects that may potentially have been contaminated with “military grade nerve agent”, especially of a type 5-8 times more deadly than VX?
8. Initial reports suggested that Detective Sergeant Bailey became ill after coming into contact with the substance after attending the Skripals on the bench they were seated on in The Maltings in Salisbury. Subsequent claims, however, first aired by former Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Lord Ian Blair on 9th March, said that he came into contact with the substance at Sergei Skripal’s house in Christie Miller Road. Reports since then have been highly ambiguous about what should be an easily verifiable fact. Which is the correct account?
9. The government have claimed that the poison used was “a military grade nerve agent of a type developed by Russia”. The phrase “of a type developed by Russia” says nothing whatsoever about whether the substance used in the Salisbury case was produced or manufactured in Russia. Can the government confirm that its scientists at Porton Down have established that the substance that poisoned the Skripals and DS Bailey was actually produced or manufactured in Russia?
10. The former ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, has claimed that sources within the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) have told him that scientists at Porton Down would not agree to a statement about the place of origin of the substance, because they were not able to establish this. According to Mr Murray, only under much pressure from the Government did they end up agreeing to the compromise wording, “of a type developed by Russia”, which has subsequently been used in all official statements on the matter. Can the FCO, in plain and unambiguous English, categorically refute Mr Murray’s claims that pressure was put on Porton Down scientists to agree to a form of words and that in the end a much-diluted version was agreed?
11. On the occasion that the FCO did attempt to refute Mr Murray’s claims, the wording they used included a straightforward repetition of the same phrase – “of a type developed by Russia”. Is the FCO willing and able to go beyond this and confirm that the substance was not only “of a type developed by Russia”, but that it was “produced” or “manufactured” in Russia?
12. Why did the British Government issue a 36-hour ultimatum to the Russian Government to come up with an explanation, but then refuse their request to share the evidence that allegedly pointed to their culpability (there could have been no danger of their tampering with it, since Porton Down would have retained their own sample)?
13. How is it possible for a state (or indeed any person or entity) that has been accused of something, to defend themselves against an accusation if they are refused access to evidence that apparently points to their guilt?
14. Is this not a clear case of the reversal of the presumption of innocence and of due process?
15. Furthermore, why did the British Government issue an ultimatum to the Russian Government, in contravention of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) rules governing such matters, to which both Britain and Russia are signatories, and which are clearly set out in Article 9, Paragraph ii of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC)?
16. Given that the investigation, which has been described by the man leading it as being “an extremely challenging investigation” and as having “a number of unique and complex issues”, and given that many of the facts of the case are not yet known, such as when, where and how the substance was administered, how is it possible for the British Government to point the finger of blame with such certainty?
17. Furthermore, by doing so, haven’t they both politicised and prejudiced the investigation?
18. Why did the British Government feel the need to come forward with an accusation little more than a week into the investigation, rather than waiting for its completion?
19. On the Andrew Marr Show on 18th March, the Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, stated the following:
“And I might just say in response to Mr Chizhov’s point about Russian stockpiles of chemical weapons. We actually had evidence within the last ten years that Russia has not only been investigating the delivery of nerve agents for the purposes of assassination, but it has also been creating and stockpiling Novichok.”
Where has this intelligence come from and has it been properly verified?
20. If this intelligence was known before 27th September 2017 – the date that the OPCW issued a statement declaring the completion of the destruction of all 39,967 metric tons of chemical weapons possessed by the Russian Federation – why did Britain not inform the OPCW of its own intelligence which apparently contradicts this claim, which they would have had a legal obligation to do?
21. If this intelligence was known after 27th September 2017, why did Britain not inform the OPCW of this “new” information, which it was legally obliged to do, since it allegedly shows that Russia had been lying to the OPCW and had been carrying out a clandestine chemical weapons programme?
22. Also on the Andrew Marr show, Mr Johnson made the following claim after a question of whether he was “absolutely sure” that the substance used to poison the Skripals was a “Novichok”:
“Obviously to the best of our knowledge this is a Russian-made nerve agent that falls within the category Novichok made only by Russia, and just to get back to the point about the international reaction which is so fascinating.”
Is the phrase “to the best of our knowledge” an adequate response to Mr Marr’s request of him being “absolutely sure”?
23. Is this a good enough legal basis from which to accuse another state and to impose punitive measures on it, or is more certainty needed before such an accusation can be made?
24. After hedging his words with the phrase, “to the best of our knowledge”, Mr Johnson then went beyond previous Government claims that the substance was “of a type developed in Russia”, saying that it was “Russian-made”. Have the scientists at Porton Down been able to establish that it was indeed “Russian-made”, or was this a case of Mr Johnson straying off-message?
25. He also went beyond the previous claim that the substance was “of a type developed in Russia” by saying that the substance involved in the Skripal case “falls within the category Novichok made only by Russia”? Firstly, is Mr Johnson able to provide evidence that this category of chemical weapons was ever successfully synthesised in Russia, especially in the light of the OPCW’s Scientific Advisory Board stating as recently as 2013, that it has “insufficient information to comment on the existence or properties of ‘Novichoks‘“?
26. As Craig Murray has again pointed out, since its 2013 statement, the OPCW has worked (legally) with Iranian scientists who have successfully synthesised these chemical weapons. Was Mr Johnson aware that the category of “Novichok” chemical weapons had been synthesised elsewhere when he stated that this category of chemical weapons is “made only by Russia”?
27. Does the fact that Iranian scientists were able to synthesise this class of chemical weapons suggest that other states have the capabilities to do likewise?
28. Is the British Government aware that the main plant involved in attempts to synthesise Novichoks in the 1970s and 1980s was based not in Russia, but in Nukus in Uzbekistan?
29. Does the fact that the US Department of Defence decontaminated and dismantled the Nukus site, under an agreement with the Government of Uzbekistan, make it at least theoretically possible that substances or secrets held within that plant could have been carried out of the country and even back to the United States?
30. The connection between Sergei Skripal’s MI6 recruiter, Pablo Miller, who also happens to live in Salisbury, and Christopher Steele, the author of the so-called “Trump Dossier”, has been well established, as has the fact that Mr Skripal and Mr Miller regularly met together in the City. Is this connection of any interest to the investigation into the incident in Salisbury?
* * *
If there are any journalists with integrity and inquisitive minds still living in this country, I would be grateful if they could begin doing their job and research the answers to these sorts of questions by asking the appropriate people and authorities.
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In the wake of a massive data harvesting scandal, it has emerged that Facebook approached at least two major Australian political parties during the final weeks of their 2016 election in order to help them “microtarget” voters using a powerful data matching tool, reports the Sydney Morning Herald.
Facebook offered “advanced matching” as part of their so-called Custom Audience feature to both the conservative (if not confusingly named) Liberal Party, as well as the “democratic socialist” Labor Party. The tool promised to allow the parties to compare data they had collected about voters – such as names, birth dates, phone numbers, postcodes and email addresses – and match that information to Facebook profiles.
The combination of data sets would then allow political parties to target Australian swing voters with custom tailored ads over Facebook, which advertised a 17% increase in matching rates using a beta version of the service provided to the Liberal Party.
Fairfax Media reports that while the conservative Liberal Party turned Facebook down over concerns that sending voter data overseas to Facebook servers would violate the Privacy Act and the Electoral Act, the Labor Party took Facebook up on their offer.
Asked specifically whether Labor used the tool, a Labor spokesman said in a statement: “A range of different campaign techniques and tools are used for campaigning, from doorknocking to phone banking to online. Labor works with different groups to get our message out, including social media platforms like Facebook.“
“All of our work is in complete compliance with relevant laws, including the Commonwealth Electoral Act, which makes it a criminal offence to misuse information on the electoral roll.” –Sydney Morning Herald
Under Australia’s Privacy Act (1988), I have the right to request all data held about me be destroyed or deidentified (reduced to demographic statistics), but given Facebook has shadow-profiles on people who never even used it, that’s kind of useless.
— Michael Vaughan (@Michael_06S) March 24, 2018
There are reports this morning that Facebook approached Australia’s major political parties during the 2016 election, offering a data matching tool which could target voters. #9News pic.twitter.com/A0Jc7ImtGL
— Nine News Australia (@9NewsAUS) March 23, 2018
That said, the Herald reports that the Labor Party (ALP) digital team would have “hashed” – or anonymized, any electoral roll data “on a local browser,” sources tell the Herald. This would have prevented personally identifiable information to be uploaded to foreign servers.
Both the Labor Party and Facebook sought to downplay the “advanced matching” feature.
The Custom Audiences tool is widely used by brands and advertisers to target potential customers.
“Lots of people use the custom audience tool. Civil society groups use it too with their massive databases. I don’t think it’s anywhere near as sinister as people think,” a Labor source said.
Facebook said in a statement: “All parties are offered the same training, materials and products – whether existing or new — at the same time. It is a decision for each campaign as to whether and how they choose to use them.”
The company has this week been unable to say whether data of Australian users is hosted locally or offshore. –smh
Facebook has been contacted by Australia’s privacy commissioner to with questions over Australians who may have been caught up in a massive data harvesting scandal which has unfolded over the last week – raising the possibility of sanctions against the social media giant.
News of Facebook’s attempt to help Australian political parties influence their 2016 election comes days after Mark Zuckerberg told CNN that the possibility of the social media giant influencing the 2016 U.S. election was “a pretty crazy idea.”
That’s kind of interesting considering that Facebook was also helping the Obama Campaign target voters using harvested data, similar to what Cambridge Analytica was doing for several GOP candidates in the 2016 election. Obama’s former campaign director admitted over Twitter that Facebook not only knew of the campaign’s data harvesting to “suck out the whole social graph,” but that they “didn’t stop us once they realized that was what we were doing.”
And WikiLeaked emails released during the 2016 election revealed that Facebook COO Cheryl Sandberg really wanted “Hillary to win badly,” after Hillary came over to Sandberg’s house and was “magical with her kids.”
Then there’s Sandberg telling John Podesta “Look forward to working with you to elect the first woman President of the United States.”
Notably, there don’t seem to be any emails from Facebook executives to Trump’s campaign manager with similar sentiments.
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Authored by Matt Purple via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
John Bolton is that most ludicrous of creatures: the unreconstructed Bush-era foreign policy thinker
Would that John Bolton were only a clown. The mustachioed alleged diplomat, briefly of the Bush administration – and initially criticized as too controversial even for that team – has now been appointed national security advisor. That position will give him the president’s ear on matters of foreign policy, as well as control over which other administration principals enjoy such access. Donald Trump pledged that if elected he would be a different kind of Republican president, and he’s delivered: under the last GOP administration, Bolton occupied a slightly lower-ranking position than he does now.
Bolton is indeed no circus act: he’s one of the sharpest and most dangerous national security operatives in Washington. To take just one example, last summer, Trump made it known that he was considering pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal, a campaign promise he wanted fulfilled but that had been discouraged by his then-secretary of state Rex Tillerson. Sensing an opportunity, Bolton wrote an essay for National Review explaining in breezy (i.e. Trump-digestible) terms just how to abrogate the agreement. The piece is chockablock with nonsense: at one point it claims sans any evidence that the Obama administration believed the JCPOA was “disadvantageous to the United States.” It also offers scant evidence to underpin its claim that Iran was in violation of the deal, an assertion that’s been repeatedly repudiated by the authorities at the IAEA. But the truth wasn’t the point: the piece was meant to water a seed in the president’s mind, to lend expert opinion to Trump’s burning preference that the JCPOA be reversed.
That Bolton did this shouldn’t surprise anyone because this is how Bolton works: shrewdly and always towards the goal of more war. As Gareth Porter detailed in a rigorously reported piece for TAC, during his tenure under Bush, Bolton maneuvered behind the scenes to pump up a pretext for conflict between the United States and Iran. Among his methods was to pretend that satellite images of a military base at Parchin demonstrated Iranian nuclear experimentation. That supposed smoking gun is cited to this day by neocons as proof of Iran’s atomic dreams.
What makes Bolton unique among hawkish operators is that he doesn’t feel the need to hide any of these machinations.
The man wants to pulverize Tehran and he’s not afraid to say so. In 2015, Bolton wrote a piece for the New York Times subtly titled “To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran.” Never mind that the adverbial clause in that sentence had no definitive evidence in its favor; it was off to war because, as Bolton put it, “extensive progress in uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing reveal [Iran’s] ambitions” (imagine if that standard was applied universally). The coming operation, Bolton promised, would be akin to Operation Opera in 1981 when Israel destroyed a single Iraqi nuclear reactor, except that this one would take out multiple installations at Natanz and Fordow and Arak and Isfahan and…
The details never add up because they’re not supposed to. Bolton’s wheelhouse has never been the tactical nitty-gritty; he’s an ideologue whose credo dogmatizes violence against enemies regardless of consequences or cost. On the Iraq war, he declared in 2015, “I still think the decision to overthrow Saddam was correct.” On Libya, in 2011 before the Obama administration launched its calamitous intervention, Bolton recommended that the United States assassinate Moammar Gaddafi. On North Korea, he innocently suggested there was a “legal case” for a first strike. On Russia, you will not be surprised to learn that he thinks Trump needs to get tougher, including launching a cyber-attack that would be “decidedly disproportionate” to anything the Russians have done. He also thinks it’s time to revisit the “One-China Policy” that prevents us from antagonizing Beijing by recognizing an independent Taiwan.
There are all manner of vexatious wrinkles amidst those pronouncements. For instance, a foreign policy realist might note that the deposal of Iraq’s regime and the ascendance of Shiite power in Baghdad, which Bolton supported, greatly availed Iran, which Bolton detests. But again, such nuances are dwarfed by the big-picture concepts in which Bolton deals, like American Power and Dictatorships and Strength. Most foreign policy gurus, despite supporting generally hawkish policies, have at least disowned the war in Iraq and made some perfunctory efforts to adjust for its failures. Not Bolton, who is that most ludicrous of creatures: the unreconstructed Bush-era thinker. He belongs behind a glass display in the American History Museum, not enjoying a second wind at the apex of the federal bureaucracy.
But alas, the president himself has spoken. There are conditions to Bolton’s employment. CNN is reporting that Bolton promised Trump—quote—“he wouldn’t start any wars” if he became national security advisor, and surely that’s a promise he’ll keep. Bolton, after all, has never started (or fought in) a war in his life. What he will do is counsel Trump to take the most belligerent course of action possible in every given situation. Up first will be the Iran deal, which, with Bolton now at NSC and Mike Pompeo at State, seems certain to be the subject of a hardened stance from the White House, which will further isolate America from its allies, as the Europeans, more commercially entangled with Tehran than we are, decline to go along.
That brings us back to Trump, the insurgent who won the 2016 election pledging to repudiate the George W. Bush legacy and keep the United States out of foreign wars.
It’s a show of both neocon strength and Trump impressionability that a mere year and a half later the most warmongering personality in Washington has already clambered all the way up to national security advisor.
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On Sunday President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced the beginning of Turkish military operations in Iraq’s Sinjar region a week after Turkey and allied Syrian FSA groups captured Afrin from Kurdish fighters. During that prior victory speech immediately on the heels of the Syrian Kurdish retreat from Afrin, Erdogan had promised further “extensions” of his forces in the region, including into Eastern Syria and Iraq, while making repeat historical references to the Ottoman empire.
Erdogan warned at the time that Turkish troops would keep pushing east further into Syrian Kurdish YPG territory (Kurdish “People’s Protection Units” which Turkey considers an extension of the terrorist PKK), which would eventually pit his forces against the US armed and trained Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
During Sunday’s speech he pledged to take Tal Rifaat (northwest of Aleppo) and Manbij: “the U.S. needs to transfer the control of Manbij to its real owners from the terrorist organization as soon as possible,” according to the Turkish daily Hurriyet. US-backed forces are present in both places.
Erdogan also in typically brazen fashion put Iraq’s government on notice, saying “We have told the central [Iraqi] government that the PKK is establishing a new headquarters in Sinjar. If you can deal with it, you handle it. But if you cannot we will suddenly enter Sinjar one night and clear this region of terrorists.”
It appears he is ready to make good on that promise, as the AP reports:
Turkey’s president has announced the country is conducting operations in northern Iraq against Kurdish rebels it deems “terrorists.”
Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday said “operations” have begun in Sinjar to clear the mountainous area of Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, fighters.
Erdogan later said that if the PKK does not vacate Sinjar and Qandil, where it has its headquarters, “it would be inevitable for us to do so personally.”
Erdogan announced the new engagement to a crowd in the Black Sea province of Trabzon, declaring: “We said we would go into Sinjar. Now operations have begun there. The fight is internal and external.” However, it is unclear to what degree he is merely further reiterating his prior threats and to what degree the mustering of Turkish forces for an Iraq incursion has actually begun on the ground.
Reuters quickly cast doubt that ground operations had actually been initiated, citing Iraq’s Joint Operations Command which denied that foreign forces had crossed the border:
Iraq’s Joint Operations Command denied that any foreign forces had crossed the border into Iraq.
“The operations command confirmed that the situation in Nineveh, Sinjar and the border areas was under the control of Iraqi security forces and there is no reason for troops to cross the Iraqi border into those areas,” it said in a statement.
Sources in Sinjar said there was no unusual military activity in the area on Sunday.
Meanwhile, regional Arabic media has reported that a large Iraqi Army contingent has arrived in Sinjar on the heels of a withdrawal of PKK fighters from the region – actions which Erdogan’s threats were clearly designed to precipitate.
PKK fighters first moved into Sinjar in 2015 and waged an effective campaign against ISIS, but announced their withdrawal last week in the wake of Turkey’s threat of invasion, though it is unclear how many PKK fighters have remained in the area.
For now, it appears that Erdogan – fresh off the momentum of the Turkish annexation of Afrin – has gotten Baghdad to move on the PKK without firing a single shot. And it appears he is trying the same tactic regarding the US-backed SDF, which is unlikely to move the Americans toward action or realignment of interests.
During the same speech announcing operations in Sinjar, Erdogan said, “Hopefully we will take control of Tal Rifaat in a short span of time.” He also threatened Syrian Kurds in Manbij while naming their US sponsors: “the U.S. needs to transfer the control of Manbij to its real owners from the terrorist organization as soon as possible,” according to the Turkish daily Hurriyet.
In comparison to his rhetoric aimed at the Iraqi government, the Turkish president’s words regarding American forces were softened: “Of course we will not point gun to our allies, but we will not forgive terrorists.”
It will be interesting to see to what degree the ‘mad Sultan’ actually makes good on his threats and promises, especially as his forces inevitably inch closer to American bases in northern Syria.
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After all the preparation, all the expectation, cheerleading and doomsaying, China’s Yuan-denominated crude oil futures contract began trading tonight and appears to be off a good start with well over 10 billion yuan notional traded within the first hour.
So far it has tracked WTI futures well, trading at around a $2 premium to WTI (when translated from yuan to USD)…
Additionally, well over 23,000 contracts have traded within the first hour for a notional trading volume of over 10 billion yuan – more than $1.5 billion notional… signaling significant demand.
Offshore Yuan is moving in sync with ‘Petroyuan’ futures – as WTI tends to track the USD.
As we most recently noted, after numerous “false starts” over the last decade, the “petroyuan” is now real and China will set out to challenge the “petrodollar” for dominance. Adam Levinson, managing partner and chief investment officer at hedge fund manager Graticule Asset Management Asia (GAMA), already warned last year that China launching a yuan-denominated oil futures contract will shock those investors who have not been paying attention.
This could be a death blow for an already weakening U.S. dollar, and the rise of the yuan as the dominant world currency.
But this isn’t just some slow, news day “fad” that will fizzle in a few days.
Back in 2015, the first of a number of strikes against the petrodollar was dealt by China. Gazprom Neft, the third-largest oil producer in Russia, decided to move away from the dollar and towards the yuan and other Asian currencies.
Iran followed suit the same year, using the yuan with a host of other foreign currencies in trade, including Iranian oil.
During the same year China also developed its Silk Road, while the yuan was beginning to establish more dominance in the European markets.
But the U.S. petrodollar still had a fighting chance in 2015 because China’s oil imports were all over the place. Back then, Nick Cunningham of OilPrice.com wrote…
Despite accounting for much of the world’s growth in demand in the 21st Century, China’s oil imports have been all over the map in recent months. In April, China imported 7.4 million barrels per day, a record high and enough to make it the world’s largest oil importer. But a month later, imports plummeted to just 5.5 million barrels per day.
That problem has since gone away, signaling China’s rise to oil dominance…
The petrodollar is backed by Treasuries, so it can help fuel U.S. deficit spending. Take that away, and the U.S. is in trouble.
It looks like that time has come…
A death blow that began in 2015 hit again in 2017 when China became the world’s largest consumer of imported crude…
Now that China is the world’s leading consumer of oil, Beijing can exert some real leverage over Saudi Arabia to pay for crude in yuan. It’s suspected that this is what’s motivating Chinese officials to make a full-fledged effort to renegotiate their trade deal.
So fast-forward to now, and the final blow to the petrodollar could happen starting today. We hinted at this possibility back in September 2017…
With major oil exporters finally having a viable way to circumvent the petrodollar system, the U.S. economy could soon encounter severely troubled waters.
First of all, the dollar’s value depends massively on its use as an oil trade vehicle. When that goes away, we will likely see a strong and steady decline in the dollar’s value.
Once the oil markets are upended, the yuan has an opportunity to become the dominant world currency overall. This will further weaken the dollar.
Amongst all the trouble ahead for the dollar, there are some good news too. The U.S. might have ditched the gold standard in the 1970’s, but with gold making a return to world headlines… we could see a resurgence.
For the first time since our nation abandoned the gold standard decades ago, physical gold is being reintroduced to the global monetary system in a major way. That alone is incredibly good news for gold owners.
A reintroduction of gold to the global economy could result in a notable rise in gold prices. It’s safe to assume exporters are more likely to choose a gold-backed financial instrument over one created out of thin air any day of the week.
Soon after, we could see more and more nations jump on the bandwagon, resulting in a substantial rise in gold prices.
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Authored by Antony Mueller via Mises Canada,
Even if one agrees that anarcho-capitalism has become a necessity, the question arises whether such a governance is possible. After all, at first sight, insurmountable problems seem to prevent the flourishing of a stateless society. Libertarianism means a private law society. Private businesses in the marketplace provide the traditional functions of the state. The voluntary contract-order of anarcho-capitalism substitutes the hierarchical commando-coordination of activities of the state. The basic meaning of anarcho-capitalism is an order where horizontal cooperation based on voluntary exchange dominates the coordination of human activities.
Although a libertarian order amounts to a revolution as to its consequences, the path to its creation must be non-revolutionary. The spontaneous order of an anarcho-capitalist society requires that it comes about as a gradual process of privatizations. Beginning with the sale of semi-public enterprises and public utilities, privatization should extend step by step to education and health and finally encompass security and the judicial system. Supervised by an Assembly whose members are selected by lot from the constituency of the citizens, the function of government would be handed out to a private government management company.
Under anarcho-capitalism, most of what the state supplies in services could fall to a fraction of the present volume. On a world-wide scale, military spending alone comprises around 1.7 trillion US-dollars annually. The so-called ‘public services’ would not only become better and cheaper, but it would also turn out that under a free market, the demand for education, healthcare, defense, and domestic security would be much different from how it is now. Therefore, to privatize many of the activities, which now are under the authority of state would not only lead to a decrease of the costs per unit of the services but also reduce the volume of supply because a large part of the current supply of so-called ‘public goods’ is a useless waste. Losing none of the genuine benefits of education, healthcare, and defense, the budgets for these provisions could fall to a fraction of their present size.
If one includes the overblown judicial and public administration apparatus into the reduction of state activity, government spending, which nowadays is close to fifty percent of the gross domestic product in most industrialized countries, could come down to the single digits. Taxes and contributions could fall by ninety percent.
Different from what is presently the dominant belief, to privatize the police functions, and the judiciary is not such a big problem. It would mean to extend what is already going on. In the United States of today, for example, private policing, such as by security guards, happens already at a grand scale and comprises more than one million persons. In some countries, including the United States, the number of private police and security already exceeds the number of official policemen. The private provision of judicial services is on the rise. Arbitration courts experience a strong and increasing demand including services for cross-border disputes.
These trends will go on because private protection and arbitration is cheaper and better than the public provision. In Brazil, for example, which entertains one of the most expensive judicial systems of the world, currently about eighty million cases are pending without decision, and legal uncertainty has become monstrous. In the United States, many parts of the judicial system have gone berserk.
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Submitted by Shant Movsesian and Rajan Dhall MSTA from fxdailyterminal.com
Over the past year or so, we have seen the EUR gaining from strength to strength, pushing hard against the USD which in the current climate seems to be getting little reprieve from the political backdrop required to instill confidence in any currency.
As we saw on Friday, the fallout in equities saw a rush for the safe havens, of which the USD has clearly fallen out of favour, and replaced a while back by the EUR, which is also benefits when risk appetite is healthier amid the constant reminder of the the robust recovery in the Euro zone. The latter forms the basis on which many believe the ECB are falling behind the curve, but with inflation lagging – and this partly down to persistent surges in the EUR – the governing council have clearly been reluctant to call the end of QE for fear of another overreaction, which has taken hold of the JPY as the market calls, or rather pre-empts BoJ normalisation down the line.
These ‘pro-active’ moves have been excessive in nature in more recent times, just as we saw with the BoC hikes prompting sharp gains on the rates curve as well as the CAD, but which have been sharply reversed, albeit with the overhang of NAFTA uncertainty which has been prevalent over this time. With the EUR, it is the exchange rate which has been running away with it, less so rates as safe haven demand keeps short date German paper (in particular) bid to keep rates negative out to 5yr. Spreads with the periphery are the focal point as a result, and have narrowed to some degree though naturally we saw Italian BTPs come under pressure during the elections. This only resulted in a minor dip in the single currency, with long exposure still relatively high despite the spot rate clearly looking overstretched above the 1.2500 mark.
As ECB policy is inevitably on the turn, we once again expect economic divergence to start showing the strains on the level at which the various member states expect monetary policy to be. It is no surprise to see the German contingent leading the calls for the ECB to call time on the APP, but even the Buba’s Weidmann has conceded that rates will only rise well past the date bond buying cessation. Given this to be the case, we struggle to see what this insistence on forward guidance at this stage will do (rather than actually implementing it), given German business sentiment is starting to show concerns over the level of the exchange rate, and more so now when trade tensions are reaching fever pitch.
Rather than join the chorus looking for a EUR/USD move up to 1.3000 this year, which is in part predicated on further USD weakness, we continue to see a move back down to 1.2000 at some stage, but this does not rule out another stab at 1.2500, perhaps the 1.2600 level where we can only see exhaustion setting in again. If we do test higher levels first, this will then be the fourth (or fifth) time we have stalled at higher levels, the last episode falling shorting in the mid 1.2400’s. We highlight this pair due to the continued exposure levels as well as the overcrowded USD shorts in the market, which are also vulnerable to activity in the equity markets, based on a potential follow through into emerging markets and a (USD) squeeze as a result.
Looking to some of the other currency pairings, EUR/JPY has come some way south of the highs seen closer to 137.00-138.00 this year, but on the daily charts has a lot of room on the downside before we reach value levels highlighted in the 115.00-110.00 area. In contrast, USD/JPY failed to test the 114.00-115.00 area before heading south, and has clawed its way through 105.00, but with limited momentum given the lack of breathing space north of 107.00. These are key technical factors which are worth considering, as we can no longer ignore the developments in the stock market, which are not only down to fears of a trade war, but of a Federal Reserve maintaining their gradual approach to rate normalisation. The ECB would have perhaps been hoping for a more hawkish ‘delivery’, but will have to delay the inevitable in the hope that the market finally takes note of interest rate differentials, which have been roundly cold-shouldered in this era of trading off expectations even further out on the horizon.
As an aside, we saw the USD reaction to last week’s rate hike as borderline bizarre, and if anything, more constructive for the greenback given an immediate move to 4 hikes this year would have flattened the Treasury curve. It didn’t.
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As the #deletefacebook campaign gains traction in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica data harvesting scandal, a number of people have reported that Facebook has also maintained a comprehensive record of phone calls and text messages on Android devices.
If you granted permission to read contacts during Facebook’s installation on Android a few versions ago—specifically before Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean)—that permission also granted Facebook access to call and message logs by default. The permission structure was changed in the Android API in version 16. But Android applications could bypass this change if they were written to earlier versions of the API, so Facebook API could continue to gain access to call and SMS data by specifying an earlier Android SDK version. Google deprecated version 4.0 of the Android API in October 2017—the point at which the latest call metadata in Facebook users’ data was found. Apple iOS has never allowed silent access to call data. –Ars Technica
Last week, New Zealander Dylan McKay requested his data from Facebook. Upon unzipping the downloaded file, McKay discovered that Facebook had stored around two years’ worth of metadata from phone calls he had made or received.
Downloaded my facebook data as a ZIP file
Somehow it has my entire call history with my partner’s mum pic.twitter.com/CIRUguf4vD
— Dylan McKay (@dylanmckaynz) March 21, 2018
McKay’s grandmother emailed him a photo of SMS text messages logged by Facebook.
My grandmother emailed me this from her data dump
sorry for the potato quality (read: what is a screenshot)
has a number of SMS records, spanning 2015-2017 claims to not use facebook or messenger apps, I have not verified this though pic.twitter.com/Nax5aBUeWQ
— Dylan McKay (@dylanmckaynz) March 25, 2018
I also have these from my grandmother, covering May-October 2017 pic.twitter.com/0T5PSmZNKc
— Dylan McKay (@dylanmckaynz) March 25, 2018
Others have reported similar data logged from their devices:
Oh wow my deleted Facebook Zip file contains info on every single phone cellphone call and text I made for about a year- cool totally not creepy.
— Mat Johnson (@mat_johnson) March 23, 2018
I had a similar issue with mine on Android. Don’t have FB installed but I do use Messenger and Instagram. Interestingly they only tracked when I rang my parents and girlfriend. Have never used Messenger in regards to my parents. Weird.
— Ben Wigham (@bmdwigham) March 24, 2018
I’ve just looked at the data files I requested from Facebook and they had every single phone number in my contacts. They had every single social event I went to, a list of all my friends (and their birthdays) and a list of every text I’ve sent.
— Emma Kennedy (@EmmaKennedy) March 25, 2018
Facebook explained that users’ contacts were uploaded in a “widely used practice.”
“The most important part of apps and services that help you make connections is to make it easy to find the people you want to connect with. So, the first time you sign in on your phone to a messaging or social app, it’s a widely used practice to begin by uploading your phone contacts,” said the company.
“Contact uploading is optional. People are expressly asked if they want to give permission to upload their contacts from their phone – it’s explained right there in the apps when you get started. People can delete previously uploaded information at any time and can find all the information available to them in their account and activity log from our Download Your Information tool.”
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Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,
I agree with Stephen Lendman (below) that the Russian government’s efforts to deal with the West on the basis of evidence and law are futile. There is only one Western foreign policy and it is Washington’s. Washington’s “diplomacy” consists only of lies and force. It was a reasonable decision for Russia to attempt diplomatic engagement with the West on the basis of facts, evidence, and law, but it has been to no avail. For Russia to continue on this failed course is risky, not only to Russia but to the entire world.
Indeed, nothing is more dangerous to the world than Russia’s self-delusion about “Western partners.” Russia only has Western enemies. These enemies intend to remove the constraint that Russia (and China) place on Washington’s unilateralism. The various incidents staged by the West, such as the Skirpal poisoning, Syrian use of chemical weapons, Malaysian airliner, and false charges, such as Russian invasion of Ukraine, are part of the West’s determined intent to isolate Russia, deny her any influence, and prepare the insouciant Western populations for conflict with Russia.
To avoid war Russia should turn her back, but not her eyes, on the West, stop responding to false charges, evict all Western embassies and every other kind of presence including Western investment, and focus on relations with China and the East. Russia’s attempt to pursue mutual interests with the West only results in more orchestrated incidents. The Russian government’s failure to complete the liberation of Syria has given Washington Syrian territory from which to renew the conflict.
The failure to accept Luhansk and Donetsk into Russia has provided Washington with the opportunity to arm and train the Ukrainian army and renew the assault on the Russian populations of Ukraine. Washington has gained many proxies for its wars against Russia and intends to use them to wear down Russia. Israel has demanded that Washington renew the attacks on Iran, and Trump is complying. Russia faces simultaneous attacks on Syria, Iran, and the Donatsk and Luhansk Republics, along with troubles in former Central Asian republics of the Soviet Union and intensified accusations from Washington and NATO.
The crazed neoconservatives, such as Trump’s National Security Adviser John Bolton, think that Russia will buckle under the strains, sue for peace, and accept US hegemony. If this assumption is incorrect, the outcome of Washington’s hostile actions against Russia is likely to be nuclear war. The side that Stephen Lendman and I are talking is neither the side of Washington nor Russia, but the side of humanity and all life against nuclear war.
How the Russian government could ignore the clearly stated US hegemony in the 1992 Wolfowitz Doctrine is a mystery.
The Wolfowitz doctrine states that the US’s primary goal is “to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union.” The doctrine stresses that “this is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to general global power.” In the Middle East and Southwest Asia, Washington’s “overall objective is to remain the predominant outside power in the region and preserve US and Western access to the region’s oil.” The doctrine also states that the US will act to restrain India’s alleged “hegemonic aspirations” in South Asia, and warns of potential conflicts requiring military intervention with Cuba and China.
By “threat” Wolfowitz does not mean a military threat. By “threat” he means a multi-polar world that constrains Washington’s unilateralism. The doctrine states that the US will permit no alternative to US unilateralism. The doctrine is a statement that Washington intends hegemony over the entire world. There has been no repudiation of this doctrine. Indeed, we see its implementation in the long list of false accusations and demonizations of Russia and her leader and in the false charges against Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Venezuela, China, Iran, and North Korea.
If Russia wants to be part of the West, Russia should realize that the price is the same loss of sovereignty that characterizes Washington’s European vassal states.
* * *
Pompeo at State and Bolton as Trump’s national security advisor completed the neocon takeover of Trump’s geopolitical agenda. Wall Street is running domestic affairs.
The combination represents a major setback for world peace and stability. Greater aggression is likely, along with the triumph of neoliberal harshness over social justice, presenting a dismal and frightening state of affairs.
What to expect ahead? War in Syria is more likely to escalate than wind down, an unthinkable US/Russia confrontation ominously possible.
The Iran nuclear deal is either doomed, or likely to be gutted by Washington, accomplishing the same thing — with only tepid, ineffective opposition from P5+1 countries Britain, France and Germany.
The EU most often bends to Washington’s will when enough pressure is applied.
A relatively quiet Ukraine period could explode in greater Kiev war on Donbass, US-supplied heavy weapons and training aiding the aggression.
A Kim Jong-un/Trump summit is likely to fail to step back from the brink on the Korean peninsula, falsely blaming the DPRK for hostile US actions.
It’ll prove again Washington can never be trusted, its commitments are consistently breached when conflicting with its imperial objectives.
A possible trade war with China would be hugely destabilizing, along with being economically harmful to both countries and the global economy.
Further EU/US sanctions and other harsh measures are likely to be imposed on Russia over the Skripal affair, an escalated attempt to isolate the country and inflict economic harm – despite Western nations knowing Moscow had nothing to do with what happened.
Theresa May-led Tories are considering tough actions against Russia over the incident. So are other EU countries and Washington.
On Friday, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the Trump administration is considering a range of options against Moscow over the Skripal affair – “both to demonstrate our solidarity with our ally and to hold Russia accountable for its clear breach of international norms and agreements.”
No breach occurred. Neocons running US foreign policy don’t let facts and rule of law principles compromise their imperial objectives.
Theresa May provided Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron with cooked results of Britain’s investigation so far into the Skripal affair — “convincing” them the false accusations are “well-grounded,” despite knowing UK claims are pure rubbish.
Macron issued a deplorable statement, saying “there is no…plausible explanation” for what happened to the Skripals other than Kremlin responsibility – abdicating to US/UK-led Russophobic hostility.
On the world stage, Trump is hostage to neocon dark forces controlling him. Relations with Russia, China, and other sovereign independent nations are likely to worsen, not improve.
Unthinkable nuclear war remains an ominous possibility. Russia’s only option is building on its alliance with China and other allies, staying committed to respond firmly to US-led Western harshness against its sovereignty.
Virtually no possibility for improved Russian relations with Washington and Britain exists. It’s fruitless pursuing it.
German and other European dependence on Russian energy, mainly gas, offers only slim hope for improving things with these countries.
Looking ahead, prospects for world peace and stability are dismal. US-led Western hostility toward Russia could erupt in open conflict by accident or design.
The unthinkable could become reality. Preparedness should be Moscow’s top priority given the real danger it faces.
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