Raytheon Company has successfully shot down multiple drones using its advanced high powered microwave (HPM) and mobile high energy laser (HEL) weapon systems,stated the company press release Tuesday.
The directed-energy weapon system was paired with Raytheon’s Multi-spectral Targeting System, using sensors that directed microwaves and lasers to blast enemy unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) out of the sky during a field training exercise. Mounted on a Polaris MRZR 4 all-terrain vehicle, the system was extremely portable and could traverse almost any terrain.
“Countering the drone threat requires diverse solutions,” said Stefan Baur, Raytheon Electronic Warfare Systems vice president. “HEL and HPM give frontline operators options for protecting critical infrastructure, convoys and personnel.”
During the exercise, Raytheon’s targeting system directed HPM’s microwave energy at incoming enemy UAVs to disorient its guidance system. The system then fired the HEL which effectively blasted the drones out the sky. With a diesel power supply, the tracking system, HPM, and HEL can operate for several hours.
“After decades of research and investment, we believe these advanced directed energy applications will soon be ready for the battlefield to help protect people, assets and infrastructure,” said Dr. Thomas Bussing, Raytheon Advanced Missile Systems vice president.
Raytheon’s HEL and HPM were tested at an undisclosed location. The exercise expanded on previously directed energy weapon demonstrations such as the Army’s directed energy exercise in 2017.
Military officials have warned about the proliferation of small to medium-sized armed drones are accelerating at an alarming rate. Small drones offer new levels of stealth and utility for military and terror organization on the modern battlefield. These drones can be purchased on the internet, are relatively inexpensive to build, and the operator can learn to fly it in minutes.
Take, for example, a small drone packed with explosives flown by Yemen’s Houthi rebels hit a military parade at the Al Anad Air Base outside Aden, a port city in eastern Yemen, early this year, wounding a dozen troops from a Saudi-led coalition. The small drone was able to penetrate the base’s missile defense system and exploded over military leaders and troops. The use of small drones on the modern battlefield has revolutionized warfare in the 21st century, made conventional forces vulnerable.
A drone attack on Yemen’s largest air base has killed several people and left a dozen more injured. pic.twitter.com/qcvu7I5rG4
Last week, the Air Force said it was nearing operational use of its Tactical High-power Microwave Operational Responder (THOR), a high-powered microwave energy weapon that can shield a base from drone swarm attacks.
Inexpensive drone technology has given terror organizations around the world new operational capabilities that can conduct surveillance and carry munitions for a direct-attack role. A trend that has forced the Pentagon to spend hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, on new technology to combat this ever so expanding threat.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2H9Vf3I Tyler Durden
Democrats have voted to hold Attorney General Barr in contempt for failing to hand over documents that he is precluded by law from disclosing. Democrats on Capitol Hill are complaining of unprecedented White House obstruction creating a constitutional crisis. President Trump is described by these same individuals as a: “racist”; “traitor”; “authoritative dictator” and worse. If you, like me, have wondered why the tradition of civil public discourse evaporated, I think I have the answer.
The Democrats sole intention over the next year and a half is to create such a chaotic national political landscape that the 2020 electoral pitch to the American people will be that the only way to end the chaos is to vote President Trump out of office.
It would appear that Democrats have made the cold and calculated decision that they cannot effectively engage the President on policy. Understandably so. How do you argue against an economic policy that results in higher wages and the lowest unemployment numbers in a half decade after previously telling the public to get used to the new normal? How do you engage in a discussion of health care policy when the last plan you sold to the American public was based upon lower cost and an ability to keep both your plan and your doctor and all three turned out to be false? How do you effectively engage the President on immigration when the President has been on the issue for three and a half years while you have insisted there is not a problem? It would require an admission that doing nothing was in error and a capitulation that most of what Trump has wanted is in fact necessary.
The calculation appears to be that if the political scene becomes chaotic enough, a majority of likely voters will tune it all out and come to the conclusion that the only way to end the chaos is to change Presidents in much the same way that parents of screaming infants tend to give the infant what it wants. That impulse will be fostered by the continuous mantra that Trump’s personality is poisonous to our national unity. “He’s the cause of divisiveness.” “He’s a racist.” “He’s an authoritative dictator.” The added bonus for Democrats will be that the criminal charges soon to come over the Obama Administration’s interference in the 2016 election will be explained away as simply “trumped” up political charges by an “authoritative dictator”.
There would appear to be two potential outcomes:
1. The American electorate sees through the smoke and punishes the Democrats at the ballot box for their conduct; or
2. The scheme works and Democrats get a pass on their complicity in the Obama Administration’s interference in the 2016 election.
The true beauty of democracy is in either scenario, we the American people get exactly what we deserve.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/307ScAA Tyler Durden
Over 1% of the populations of Guatemala and Honduras have entered the United States since September, according acting Homeland Security chief Kevin K. McAleenan, who added that the figure includes 3% of one Guatemalan county alone.
Speaking at the 49th Washington Conference of the Americas, McAleenan said “The current migration flows, especially of vulnerable families and children, from Central America through Mexico, to remote areas all along the U.S. border, represent both a security and humanitarian crisis,” adding “The situation is not sustainable.”
McAleenan predicted that April figures for illegal immigration will be even worse than March’s shocking figures – which saw over 100,000 migrants enter the country and led to the White House shaking up its immigration team, according to the Washington Examiner.
“In March, we had over 103,000 irregular arrivals of undocumented migrants — 90% crossing the U.S. border unlawfully and unsafely in the hands of human smugglers. We will see similar numbers in April,” said the DHS chief – adding that a there has been a shift in illegal immigrants coming from Central America, from predominantly Mexico-based to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
“These trends are deepening and accelerating. According to a recent USAID funded study conducted by Vanderbilt University’s Latin American Public Opinion Project in Guatemala earlier this year, 1 in 4 Guatemalans have an intention to migrate from Guatemala, with 85% of them expressing the United States as their preferred destination,” said McAleenan.
“That’s over 4 million Guatemalans who intend to migrate to the United States. Imagine if almost the entire population of the state of Western United States left the country. What kind of impact would that have on the economy, culture, and identity? What does that mean for future generations?”
He explained that the U.S. economy is a lure for illegal immigrants, and poor economic conditions at home are a “push.”
But, he added, Washington shares the blame. “The main cause of the current increases is the weakness in the U.S. immigration system, the vulnerabilities of our legal framework, which allow migrants, especially families and unaccompanied children, to stay in the U.S. for months or years, even though the vast majority will not ultimately receive legal status,” he said.
To the Central American insiders, he said that one solution will be to work better with those nations to deal with immigration and the economy. –Washington Examiner
“We want to work closely with all three countries’ customs administrations to help increase the efficiency of cross-border trade by reducing supply chain barriers and support exports and job creation. From an infrastructure, technology, automation, and legal perspective, DHS’s Customs and Border Protection is pursuing broad support for the region’s customs administrations to modernize practices in all of these areas,” he said, adding “DHS also intends to support the Department of State in highlighting those targeted aid programs where accountable partnerships have made an impact at addressing root causes of migration. The president has made clear that we need to operate from a shared understanding and invest only in efforts that produce results.”
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2Hb82l7 Tyler Durden
In the United States, we are lucky to have massive convenience at our fingertips. I was talking to one of the instructors for the urban survival course, who is from Sweden, on a car ride. He was blown away by some of the things I told him about the levels of convenience and comfort in the United States. Things I completely took for granted don’t even exist there. I thought some of you might be interested in hearing about some of the insights we discussed.
Before I left for the course, I was walking my dogs a mile or two every day with my dogs, but that was about it. I thought it was enough but I learned during the field exercises that it wasn’t even close to the physicality required during an SHTF situation. But I digress. Let’s get back to convenience.
A caveat before people respond indignantly and tell me about all the inconvenience with which they deal every day: this is an opinion piece. Obviously many people in America still work out hard and have manual jobs. But when two-thirds of American adults and 30% of American children are overweight or obese, you have to see that you are not in the majority.
And it’s the majority here that I’m discussing. Between a combination of low-quality food and extremely sedentary lifestyles, the majority are killing themselves with convenience.
In the United States, depending on where you live, everything is dropped in your lap.
Food can be quickly acquired by shouting your order into a microphone and driving around a building, all without you having to leave your car. And if you live in a larger town or city, with the advent of services like GrubHub and DoorDash, the food delivered to your home is no longer the domain of pizza chains. You can have your choice of practically any restaurant in town brought right to your door within 45 minutes.
But it isn’t just about food. Instacart offers pick-up services from a wide variety of stores, including places like chain grocers, Wal-Mart, and Target. All you have to do is drive up, let them know by phone that you’ve arrived, and pop your trunk. Poof. Your shopping is done. In some cities, you can even use services like Instacart to have these things brought to your door.
Amazon has brought us practically anything else we could want with two-day shipping, regardless of where you live in the country. Gone are the days of scouring half a dozen stores to locate the whatchamacallit you needed. A quick search on Amazon and One-Click ordering and it’s yours within 48 hours and you never moved off your comfy chair.
If you need to go somewhere you don’t even have to drive yourself or take public transit. Uber or Lyft will happily send somebody to pick you up and drive you anywhere you need to go for a reasonable price, and you can watch the approach of your driver from the convenience of your phone.
Entire billion dollar industries are evolving to make our lives more convenient and easy every single day. Imagine how stunned our hunter-gatherer ancestors would be to discover we don’t even have to leave the house to be clothed and fed in epic abundance.
We don’t walk much, either.
And speaking of drive-thrus and driving to the store to get your Instacart packages, we drive everywhere. Part of this is because of the way suburbia is developed. It’s rare to live in a neighborhood where you can walk to the market, the bakery, and the wine store. So instead of walking to get our goods, we drive there, dash in, and get back in our cars. Those in big cities probably walk far more than those in suburbia, and for those in the country, it depends if they actually have a place to walk and whether they’re taking care of a large property.
And if we’re not walking to run our errands, we’re not carrying stuff. We get as close as possible with our cars if heavy groceries need to be lugged in and we carry as little as we can if we’re heading somewhere. When you walk the dogs, you might take your phone and some poop bags but you’re generally not taking it as a training opportunity and strapping on a pack.
Then there are the stairs.
Even two-story buildings in the United States have elevators much of the time because everything, by law, has to be easily accessible to every person. (And no, I’m not saying that people in wheelchairs need to try to haul themselves up the stairs. I’m discussing a trend.) But it goes even further than that. Adding elevators to your home is a growing trend in both the United States and Canada. New home builders are including elevators in the original design of some homes.
On the other hand, in Europe, they don’t have elevators in many buildings with fewer than five floors. I walked up and down more stairs in the past month than I have in the past year at home combined, and I live in a three-story house.
And the list of conveniences that would blow the minds of people I met in the Balkans goes on.
It’s an agoraphobic’s paradise in the United States.
You can get all sorts of mobile services that come to your door – everything from hairstyling to dog grooming. Other people mow our lawns, clean our homes, service our vehicles, and take care of us in general. There are even people who hire others to walk their dogs. Some people definitely need help with physical tasks but able-bodied people should be able to do a little yard work, shouldn’t we? Especially if we’re preparing for some kind of apocalypse.
In many areas, things are perfectly level, the sidewalks are carefully maintained (because who wants to ask for trouble in our litigious society), and a slight incline is considered a “hill” that people avoid to make their dog walk a little easier.
You can get meal kits brought to your door with every single ingredient you need to make a gourmet meal, right down to the seasonings accurately doled out in little packages. You can have fresh fruits and vegetables dropped off at your door by your local CSA. You can get subscription services of all types with the delivery of things like cosmetics, fitness gear, food from exotic locales, wine, candy, home decor items, socks, and dog paraphernalia.
Looking at it from the perspective of the area where I’ve been spending time, it’s simply mind-boggling that all of these riches are brought to you at the click of a button.
And it’s killing us.
As I mentioned earlier in this article, the obesity rate in the United States is staggering. A lot of it is our food. Thanks to subsidization by the USDA, many of the foods that are cheap are highly processed with low-quality ingredients. The NY Times reports:
At a time when almost three-quarters of the country is overweight or obese, it comes as no surprise that junk foods are the largest source of calories in the American diet. Topping the list are grain-based desserts like cookies, doughnuts and granola bars. (Yes, granola bars are dessert.)
That’s according to data from the federal government, which says that breads, sugary drinks, pizza, pasta dishes and “dairy desserts” like ice cream are also among Americans’ top 10 sources of calories.
What do these foods have in common? They are largely the products of seven crops and farm foods — corn, soybeans, wheat, rice, sorghum, milk and meat — that are heavily subsidized by the federal government, ensuring that junk foods are cheap and plentiful, experts say.
Between 1995 and 2010, the government doled out $170 billion in agricultural subsidies to finance the production of these foods, the latter two in part through subsidies on feed grains. While many of these foods are not inherently unhealthy, only a small percentage of them are eaten as is. Most are used as feed for livestock, turned into biofuels or converted to cheap products and additives like corn sweeteners, industrial oils, processed meats and refined carbohydrates. (source)
And even when we try to clean up our diets, foods are genetically modified, produce is doused in pesticides, and it’s packaged in all sorts of hormone-disrupting material that leaches in when you heat it up.
But it’s not just the crappy food. A lot of folks in the United States just do not get off their butts. And – I hate to say it – but I’m talking to a lot of people in the survival and preparedness world. Sitting at a keyboard or phone typing all day while Netflix plays in the background is sedentary to a deadly degree. On average Americans sit for 8.2 hours per day and this does not include the average 7-ish hours a day we’re sleeping. And when we’re not sitting, it doesn’t mean we’re doing things that are good for us. We spend a great deal of time standing in line and driving in our cars. And the trend toward inactivity is only increasing.
High blood cholesterol and triglycerides (dyslipidemia, or high blood fats).
Heart attacks due to coronary heart disease, heart failure, and stroke.
Bone and joint problems, more weight puts pressure on the bones and joints. This can lead to osteoarthritis, a disease that causes joint pain and stiffness.
Stopping breathing during sleep (sleep apnea). This can cause daytime fatigue or sleepiness, poor attention, and problems at work.
Gallstones and liver problems.
Some cancers.
The National Institute of Health is incredibly concerned about the future of overweight, sedentary Americans.
More recent evidence points to differential roles for body fat distribution patterns, in addition to excess overall adiposity, in elevating risk of many major chronic diseases. The large numbers of children entering adulthood overweight, together with increased weight gain in adulthood, portend an enormous burden in terms of human suffering, lost productivity, and health care expenditure in the coming decades. (source)
And – since it’s the purview of this website – imagine if the SHTF and you were too overweight and sedentary to go out and acquire the supplies you need to survive. Imagine what will happen when your medication runs out and you have a preventable disease brought on by your sedentary lifestyle. Imagine how your family will feel watching you suffer.
You need to add more movement to your life.
Unless you are among the 23% of Americans who meet the national exercise guidelines, you need to add more movement to your life. I suspect that there are a lot of people who believe they are disabled because getting started on a movement program is hard. It really does hurt, I know. But there’s a very good chance as you begin to move more it will become far easier. Don’t give in to it if your doctor says, “Oh, you’re disabled” and hands you a sticker for your car unless you really, truly are. If there’s even a glimmer of doubt in your mind, try to move just a few more steps each day. Instead of using the scooter to shop, push a cart to give yourself something to lean on. You aren’t training for a marathon – 10 extra steps a day will add up if you keep on pushing. But, MOVE.
The best way to increase movement is to decrease convenience. I don’t mean that you need to suddenly become a hunter-gatherer but you need to get off your duff. (To get started, check out this article or Bug Out Boot Camp and of course, always contact your doctor before beginning an exercise program. Blah, blah, blah.)
You need to carry heavy things instead of getting them delivered. You need to climb the stairs instead of taking the elevator or escalator. You need to actually go inside the store to do your shopping instead of sitting in your car, waiting for stuff to get loaded into your trunk. Park at the back of the parking lot, or better yet, at a store further away. Quit ordering from Amazon and buy things locally so you can walk around the store. Look for the hills and walk up and down them instead of avoiding them. If you want to eat restaurant food, go to the dad-gum restaurant. Find a place to walk to every day – maybe the post office, a coffee shop, or the dog park – and make it part of your routine.
It’s not unusual in other parts of the world to walk 8, 10, or even more miles, every single day. You don’t need to start there but maybe you should strive to get there. Once you’re in your groove, it should only take an hour or so to walk a mile. Using your feet as transportation is one of the healthiest things you can do.
Don’t be a casualty of the culture of convenience.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2PTyyDK Tyler Durden
Tens of millions of Americans in 43 states may have been exposed to toxic fluorinated compounds known as PFAS in their drinking water, according to the non-profit Environmental Working Group (EWG) and the Social Science Environmental Health Research Institute, at Northeastern University.
The report shows PFAS chemicals have exposed upwards of 19 million through contaminated groundwater. Researchers found 610 contaminated locations ranging from public water systems, military bases, military and civilian airports, industrial plants, dumps, and firefighter training sites.
PFAS chemicals were used in thousands of industrial applications and consumer products such as apparels, carpeting, food packaging, firefighting foams, and metal plating. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has warned that the toxic chemicals are present in the blood samples of the general population. Prior studies have shown the dangerous chemicals have been linked to weakened childhood immunity, thyroid disease, cancer, and other major health issues.
“The Environmental Protection Agency has utterly failed to address PFAS with the seriousness this crisis demands, leaving local communities and states to grapple with a complex problem rooted in the failure of the federal chemical regulatory system,” said Ken Cook, president of EWG. “EPA must move swiftly to set a truly health-protective legal limit for all PFAS chemicals, requiring utilities to clean up contaminated water supplies.”
The map below locates 610 places in 43 states that have dangerously high levels of PFAS chemicals in groundwater. Data from the US Department of Defense and public water utility reports were also included in the map. This additional data shows 117 military sites, including 77 military airports, which have high levels of PFAS firefighting foam.
“The updated map shows that PFAS contamination is truly a nationwide problem, impacting millions of Americans in hundreds of communities,” said Phil Brown, a professor of sociology and health sciences at Northeastern University and director of the Social Science Environmental Health Research Institute.
Michigan is the epicenter of PFAS contamination, has 192 sites on the map. California has 47 contamination sites, and New Jersey has 43.
“Leaders in many communities and states are doing great work to raise awareness about PFAS and push for cleanup, but this is a national crisis demanding national action. The EPA should act more quickly to evaluate all PFAS chemicals and restrict their use, and polluting industries should be held responsible,” said Brown.
There are currently no laws enforcing limits PFAS chemicals under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act. The EPA said back in 2016, 70 parts per trillion of PFAS or below, is safe drinking water.
“This is a national crisis and it requires a national response,” EWG Vice President Bill Walker told the McClatchy Company news service.
Earlier this year, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler announced by 4Q19, the agency will “propose a regulatory determination” for PFAS, which would then allow amendments to be filed for establishing safe limits under the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Associated Press reported.
Last month, Congress introduced new legislation that would require the EPA to set new limits for PFAS by 2021-22.
EWG’s report shows that America’s drinking water crisis goes way beyond Flint.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2DVJITA Tyler Durden
A decade ago, declaring that a man is a man and a woman is a woman would have been self-evident and uncontroversial. In recent years, however, the debate over transgender rights and identity politics has changed that. In sports, we have seen the rise of biologically male athletes who have been allowed to compete in women’s sports because they self-identify as female.
But not everyone is on board with this postmodern progressive agenda. Some people in sports are fighting back, albeit carefully. In April 2018, the International Association of Athletes Foundation created rules that regulate the maximum amount of testosterone people competing in women’s sports can have, and this would affect among others South African Olympic gold medal winner Caster Semenya.
She challenged the new rule, but on May 1, 2019, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) rejected her appeal. If she wants to compete in sports, she now must take testosterone-suppressing drugs.
A critical fact that has been left out of the story as reported in most mainstream media outlets is that the new rule applies only to intersex individuals who have male chromosomes (XY). The press release by CAS makes this clear:
“The DSD [Differences of Sex Development] covered by the Regulations are limited to athletes with ‘46 XY DSD’ – i.e., conditions where the affected individual has XY chromosomes. Accordingly, individuals with XX chromosomes are not subject to any restrictions or eligibility conditions under the DSD Regulations.”
Since Semenya is covered by these regulations in the ruling by CAS, it implies that she was born a biological male but with some female traits. As early as 2009, media outlets reported that she did not have a womb and that she had internal testicles.
This crucial fact means that the new testosterone rule is only a partial victory for biological females. Although the new regulation requires intersex people to suppress their testosterone production, it indirectly acknowledges the right of people who are born as biological males to compete in a category of sport that is specially created to allow women to compete.
Caster Semenya
Women’s physiology is optimized to make them superior at giving birth. They are highly specialized baby factories. That comes at a cost. Men are typically better athletes. Even the fastest woman to have ever lived, Florence Griffith Joyner, is regularly beaten by junior male runners in colleges all over the country.
Women’s sport was created in recognition of that fact. Just as you need different weight classes in boxing or wrestling to make the competition fair, you also need a separate category for women so that they have a chance to compete on equal biological terms.
That had been considered fair by all – until the progressives came along and demanded that people who self-identify as women should be allowed to compete in a category created explicitly for humans with XX chromosomes.
So far, the progressive left has been allowed to colonize sports and other fields without much opposition by using a designated victim group as a moral spearhead. The CAS ruling shows that resistance is slowly mounting.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2vLESnp Tyler Durden
While it may come as a shock to liberals, it looks as though Donald Trump may not be the only one seeking to do everything legally possible to relieve their tax burden. And while Trump’s business performance from his decades-old tax filings made national news yesterday, another well-known name – Warren Buffett – stayed under the radar while quietly disclosing that his company had been defrauded to the tune of hundreds of millions while seeking tax benefits.
Berkshire Hathaway is claiming that it got fooled after taking a $377 million charge in Q1, according to Bloomberg. Buffett’s company invested hundreds of millions of dollars in tax-equity investment funds tied to a company that federal authorities are now saying engaged in fraud, according to Berkshire’s first quarter filings.
The name of the company Berkshire was tied to is DC Solar, a mobile solar generator company that authorities alleged ran a fraudulent scheme. Berkshire’s disclosure stated:
“In December 2018 and during the first quarter of 2019, we learned of allegations by federal authorities of fraudulent income conduct by the sponsor of these funds. As a result of our investigation into these allegations, we now believe that it is more likely than not that the income tax benefits that we recognized are not valid.”
And Berkshire Hathaway isn’t the only company claiming it was duped: names like Progressive and East West Bancorp, have also claimed to be hurt by investments related to DC Solar.
The solar company allegedly promoted its ability to provide “very favorable tax consequences” to lure in investors. Law-enforcement searched a business tied to the case in December and wound up concluding it was a “ponzi-type investment fraud scheme”.
The $377 million charge is still a drop in the bucket for Berkshire, who currently holds a $190 billion stock portfolio.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2Va999P Tyler Durden
Just last week, someone tested a long-range, intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM, with enough firepower to kills millions of people.
Except it wasn’t North Korea – it was the United States.
The test, a 4,200-mile flight designed “to ensure a continued safe, secure and effective nuclear deterrent” is a routine event, something nations such as Russia and China conduct on a regular basis. Oftentimes they go largely uncommented on, with no news coverage of them to speak of.
But that’s simply not the case with North Korea. Clearly, the world sees Pyongyang’s missile tests, including the one conducted late last week, which broke an over 500-day pause of missile testing of any kind, as something very different and very troubling.
Pyongyang, according to UN Security Council resolutions, is not supposed to test any missiles, ever. In fact, such missile launches are a big part of the reason America and its allies have enacted what has been called a policy of “maximum pressure,” a sanctions regime that seeks to deny Pyongyang almost any possible economic interaction with the outside world, regardless of the consequences.
“North Korea’s missile launches in 2017 nearly started a war,” explained a former White House staffer who spoke on background.
“Trump was angered he could not keep his promise to the American people, that he could stop North Korea from demonstrating how close it was to building missiles that can hit the US homeland. Those missile tests drove tensions through the roof.”
But then why the double standard? Why are we so afraid of North Korea’s missiles, or even nuclear weapons for that matter, if so many other countries have such similar and, in the case of Russia and China, even deadlier weapons? History, in fact, tells us that if North Korea ever decided to use nuclear weapons, the United States would wipe the Kim regime off the face of the Earth with a massive strike from a single 1980s-era US ballistic missile submarine.
The problem, at least as I see, is this: for whatever reason, we lose all rationality when it comes to evaluating the threat from Pyongyang. Are North Korea’s military capabilities getting better? Sure. Is that abnormal, considering that almost all technology, especially military technology, gets passed along thanks to the nature of international markets, spying, and the ability to steal just about anything using cyber-hacking? No.
Our fear is simple to understand. For decades, we have grown so anxious over the North Korea challenge that we’re no longer able to look upon it rationally. We see a regime that is truly evil, that keeps large numbers of its own people in what can only be described as prison camps, and wonder what Kim Jong-un will prove capable of doing to us.
There is, however, a more logical way to view these missile tests. While I would never advocate ignoring the North’s growing missile capabilities, at the same time, we need to put them into their proper context. Even Kim’s most advanced ICBMs are technology that America mastered in the 1950s. It stands to reason that if Kim is willing to starve his own people, deprive his economy of any growth, and pour billions of dollars into missile tech, he will, at some point, develop weapons America and its allies mastered decades ago. And short of an invasion or a diplomatic agreement, under the present circumstances, there is very little we can do to stop him.
Our response needs to be tailored to the threat we face, not based on overhyped media coverage and what has now become fear-mongering.
If, in fact, it is in America’s national interest to ensure that North Korea does not have missiles or nuclear weapons, then we have a golden opportunity to test Kim’s intentions and potentially solve this challenge through diplomatic means. It was reported right before the second recent US-North Korea summit that a deal was close to being reached to end the Korean War, open liaison offices in both nations’ capitals, step up excavation work on Korean War battlefields, and trade the North’s Yongbyon nuclear facility for some sanctions relief. That is a deal that I would argue America should reconsider, as only a step-by-step process of disarming Pyongyang, where each side gets a benefit for making a concession, will work.
Taking a hardline approach – what many call the “big deal” – or only granting sanctions relief after full denuclearization and the end of Kim’s missile programs is completely impractical and something North Korea would never agree to. Nuclear armed nations don’t accept surrender as negotiation. Would we?
America, it seems, will be faced with some tough choices when it comes to North Korea. Thankfully, history tells us that a slow and steady approach to the Kim regime, trading concessions in a simultaneous and transactional manner, might just work. If not, more missiles will fly. Let’s just hope no one freaks out, as they will only get bigger, more powerful, and more capable with each passing day.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2PWB2kH Tyler Durden
Speaking at a rally in the Florida Panhandle, President Trump told the large crowd that China’s “Vice Premier is flying in” to continue trade talks, but “they broke the deal,” adding that “they’ll be paying.”
This off-the-cuff incremental remark prompted selling in US equity futures, extending overnight losses…
And the yuan…
And oil prices are also tumbling…
This market is extremely sensitive to trade headlines.
As a reminder, U.S. and China are set to resume trade negotiations only hours before new tariffs take effect that would push the world’s two biggest economies deeper into commercial conflict
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2H7Avsi Tyler Durden
Twitter user (@IamNomad) revealed that a single crypto address has been responsible for at least 50% of the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) transactions in the last 28 days, reported Cointelegraph.
BCH address qqrxa0h9jqnc7v4wmj9ysetsp3y7w9l36u8gnnjulq first receive BCH on April 4 and has since made 598,435 transactions. This accounts for 50% of the total 1.17 million transactions made on the Bitcoin Cash in the last three weeks.
The balance of the account (as of Monday 6 pm) currently stands at 4.29812196 BCH ($1,231.63) and has received 81.21829627 BCH ($23,273.10) during this period.
Another Twitter user (@djangobits) believes the account could be connected to a Transaction Volume Booster (TVB). He tweeted:
“It’s the TVB, the transaction volume booster. You don’t want to make your cryptocurrency look useless, right.”
We made a video and condensed the file into a GIF, showing a 10-second burst of at least ten transactions with an average value per sale value of .00000273 BCH.
Glancing through Monday’s time and sales – most of the transaction amounts average .000273 to .000274 BCH every few seconds on the blockchain. With transaction fees virtually non-existent on Bitcoin Cash for this dollar amount, the consistent transactions have overinflated volumes, deceiving investors of real activities on the blockchain.
A hard fork of BCH is scheduled for May 15, with a scaling and privacy code change being enforced to improve its privacy and scalability, said Cointelegraph.
Several days before the mysterious BCH address came online, the coin surged 104.64% in 43 hours – the goal of the address with thousands of trades per day is to make the cryptocurrency look attractive, thus allowing some whale to dump the remaining of their coins onto unsuspecting retail. Thanks for play.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2VSC1Yv Tyler Durden
