Category: zerohedge

Authored by Mohammed Ayoob via National Interest,

Both India and Pakistan have between 120 and 140 nuclear warheads, according to estimates provided by the Arms Control Association. However a report produced in 2015 by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Stimson Center asserts that Pakistan may be outpacing India in terms of its nuclear stockpile, and may possess 350 nuclear warheads in the next five to ten years. A 2016 SIPRI report confirmed the assessment that Pakistan has more nuclear warheads than India.

However, what distinguishes the two neighbors’ nuclear-weapons programs from each other is not so much the pace of production or the size of the stockpiles, but their radically different nuclear doctrines.

The major difference between the two countries’ nuclear doctrines is that while India has renounced first use of nuclear weapons, Pakistan has refused to do so by reserving its right to use nuclear weapons in the face of India’s conventional superiority.

So far, uncertainty regarding Pakistan’s nuclear threshold is the principal factor preventing a major conflagration in South Asia. Pakistan’s refusal to disavow first use of nuclear weapons, and its emphasis on amassing tactical nuclear weapons and short-range missiles as a corollary of its nuclear doctrine, can be explained in light of its conventional-force inferiority vis-à-vis India. It is in fact a mirror image of the American nuclear doctrine as applied to central Europe during the Cold War. The United States refused to disavow first use of nuclear weapons, and deployed tactical nuclear weapons in central Europe on a large scale, because of NATO’s presumed inferiority in terms of conventional power vis-à-vis that deployed by the Warsaw Pact.

But for Pakistan, the uncertainty introduced by its nuclear doctrine has achieved another major objective as well. It has provided Pakistan with the shield behind which terrorist groups armed and trained by Islamabad, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad, can engage in acts of terror that create mayhem not only in Indian-administered Kashmir but also in other parts of India. The fear of escalating a conflict with Pakistan to the nuclear level has prevented India from retaliating to these provocations with the massive use of its superior conventional force.

India desisted from retaliating against terrorist bases or Pakistani military installations even when a massive terrorist operation launched from Pakistan targeted India’s financial capital, Mumbai, in November 2008. This attack lasted for more than sixty hours and left at least 174 people dead.

However, it seems that the logic of this deterrence is fast eroding. Attacks such as the one in Mumbai, and subsequent assaults on Indian military installations in Kashmir and elsewhere, have also provided justification for India’s hard-line Hindu nationalists to heighten anti-Pakistan rhetoric, and putting pressure on the Indian government to intensify its military response. In the past few months, Indian retaliatory attacks have targeted not only terrorist bases but also Pakistani military facilities, causing significant casualties among Pakistani forces.

The escalation in the last two years in terror attacks, especially by Jaish-e-Muhammad, with the obvious connivance of the Pakistan army, on Indian military targets in Kashmir and surrounding Indian states has made the situation very perilous. In the past several months, terrorist groups operating from Pakistan have undertaken several such major attacks, causing significant loss of life among Indian security forces.

A major terrorist attack on the Uri camp in Jammu and Kashmir in September 2016, which left seventeen military personnel dead, motivated the Indian government to reassess its strategy for responding to such attacks. On September 29, 2016, India launched its first publicly acknowledged “surgical strike” against terrorist bases in Pakistan. Although there had been speculation that India had conducted such strikes earlier as well, this was the first admission by New Delhi that it was ready to launch major retaliatory attacks against targets in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

In the latest incident, in February 2018, Jaish terrorists attacked an Indian military camp in Jammu; five army personnel and four militants were killed. In retaliation, the Indian army destroyed a Pakistani army post with the help of rocket launchers, killing, according to Indian sources, twenty-two Pakistani personnel. This tit-for-tat exchange is reaching dangerous proportions.

So far, the Pakistani military has downplayed Indian incursions and retaliatory attacks and refused to recognize their seriousness, because it does not want to appear weak in the eyes of the Pakistani public, which is then likely to clamor for revenge. However, the Pakistani military cannot continue to downplay Indian attacks, especially in light of the increasing fatalities. There is the danger that at some point, either by miscalculation or by design, an Indian surgical strike in Pakistani territory will push the Pakistani military—which controls the nuclear weapons—to retaliate in force.

If a full-scale war erupts, at some point Pakistan, unable to counter superior Indian conventional forces, could resort to battlefield nuclear weapons, as its doctrine proclaims. While India subscribes to a no-first-use doctrine, it has made it abundantly clear that it will massively retaliate against any use of battlefield nuclear weapons by Pakistan without making a distinction between tactical and strategic nuclear weapons. This strategy, as enunciated in a statement issued by the government of India on January 4, 2003, is designed to inflict unacceptable damage on the enemy.

Former Indian national security advisor Shivshankar Menon elaborated this strategy in his memoirs:

“India would hardly risk giving Pakistan the chance to carry out a massive nuclear strike after the Indian response to Pakistan using tactical nuclear weapons. In other words, Pakistani tactical nuclear weapon use would effectively free India to undertake a comprehensive first strike against Pakistan.”

This is a very scary scenario. Pakistan’s overreliance on its nuclear deterrence, especially its refusal to subscribe to the no-first-use doctrine, when combined with its reckless support for terrorist groups attacking Indian military and civilian targets, could unintentionally usher in a nuclear winter – and spell doom not only for South Asia, but for a much wider area surrounding the subcontinent.

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A few days ago, we published a Property Shark analysis of the wealthiest zip codes in America, and found that – to our complete lack of surprise – the wealthiest towns are clustered around the Bay Area and New York City A, attend their own schools, shop at their own stores and live in their own exclusive enclaves of wealth.

While those data were largely anticipated, that study also showed that midwestern and even some southern areas had seen remarkable gains.

The same pattern applies to Property Shark’s latest study, which ascertained the wealthiest zip codes in the country by median income. Contrary to what one might expect, PS found that most of the nation’s 100 most expensive zip codes were on the West Coast, while most of the wealthiest 100 zip codes were on the East Coast.

The ultimate takeaway from these data are that, as one might expect, being able to afford an expensive home doesn’t necessarily mean a wealthy family will buy one. After all, frugality is inevitably one of the traits that helped them accumulate wealth.

* * *

The East Coast Dominates The Light Of High-Earning Zips Codes

Of the nation’s top 100 earning zip codes, 70 are located on the East Coast…

Predictably, there are two areas where most zip codes are clustered: The Northeast with 48 zip codes, and the suburbs around Washington DC, with 28 spots in the top 100.

Going by state, the ranking of the most expensive zip codes for housing was dominated by California, with 77 spots on the list. However, the picture changed drastically when PS looked for the highest-earning zip codes. By that measure, Cali only took 17 spots in the top 100, while New York led with 20 codes. Of those, 8 are located in Manhattan. Most of the others cover well-established communities in Westchester County.

Maryland and Connecticut trail New York and California, each claiming 10 spots in the ranking. New Jersey and Virginia follow, further strengthening the East’s dominance, thanks to the D.C. suburbs. Washington, DC itself only managed to claim 1 spot in the ranking.

Unlike the list of priciest zip codes for home prices, the by-income scale is more heterogeneous, with 15 states taking spots on the list. Virginia, Washington DC, Delaware, Illinois, Texas, and Pennsylvania were all absent from the top 100 most expensive zip codes, but they were present in the homeowner income ranking.

* * *

Here’s Where Zip Codes With $250k+ Income Stand In Terms Of Home Prices

The first 11 highest-earning zip codes all feature a yearly median household income of over $250,000. New York leads with 5 of the 11 zip codes that feature top-bracket median incomes, followed by California with 4 zip codes. Of the top 11 zip codes by median income, the highest ranked based on median sale price is 10013 in Manhattan, which took the 2nd spot.

On the other hand, San Diego’s 92145 did not even make the cut in the 100 priciest zips for housing, although the median income here exceeds $250,000. The median price here clocked in at $1,332,500, not enough to secure it a spot in the top 100. Furthermore, 2 of the 11 zip codes have median sale prices well below $1 million—Chappaqua’s 10514 and Chicago’s 60603. In zip code 60603, the median sale price recorded in 2017 was $495,000 and, with a median gross income of over $250,000, it stands out as the market with the smallest gap between median price and income.

Check out Property Shark’s interactive map here:

 

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Fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe may have just thrown former FBI Director James Comey under the bus – perhaps intentionally.

Recall that McCabe was fired for, among other things, an “improper media disclosure.” In other words leaking. 

In a Saturday morning appearance on CNN with host Michael Smerconish, Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley suggested that McCabe’s statement following his firing “immediately” raised a flag, which may lead to serious consequences for his former boss. McCabe’s statement reads in part: 

The OIG investigation has focused on information I chose to share with a reporter through my public affairs officer and a legal counselor. As Deputy Director, I was one of only a few people who had the authority to do that. It was not a secret, it took place over several days, and others, including the Director, were aware of the interaction with the reporter.

Turley notes “There was one line in the case statement last night that I immediately flagged. Because he said that he had authority to do this and he conferred with the director – the director at the time was James Comey.” 

“Now, the problem there is that James Comey said under oath that he never leaked information and never approved a leak,” said Turley. “So, if the Inspector General believes this was a leak to the media, it raises serious questions about Comey’s previous testimony and could get him into serious trouble.“

This directly contradicts Comey’s statement under oath that “he never leaked information, and never approved a leak.” Turley continued. “So if the Inspector General believes this was a leak to the media, it raises serious questions about Comey’s previous testimony that could get him into serious trouble.”

Watch:

Law Professor Jonathan Turley: McCabe firing suggests Comey lied to Congress while under oath about ‘never leaking or approving a leak.’ pic.twitter.com/7y0z7qGZhe

— Josh Caplan (@joshdcaplan) March 17, 2018

Turley writes in The Hill:

McCabe is accused of misleading investigators about allegedly giving information to a former Wall Street Journal reporter about the investigation of Hillary Clinton and the Clinton family’s charitable foundation. McCabe asserts in his post-firing statement that he not only had authority to “share” that information to the media but did so with the knowledge of “the director.” The FBI director at the time was Comey. –The Hill

Turley continues: 

If the “interaction” means leaking the information, then McCabe’s statement would seem to directly contradict statements Comey made in a May 2017 congressional hearing. Asked if he had “ever been an anonymous source in news reports about matters relating to the Trump investigation or the Clinton investigation” or whether he had “ever authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports about the Trump investigation or the Clinton investigation,” Comey replied “never” and “no.”

Former FBI Assistant Director Chris Swecker said on Friday that the upcoming OIG report will contain some “pure TNT,” whenever it comes out – which should shed more light on the FBI’s transgressions surrounding the 2016 U.S. election. 

The timing of McCabe’s statement and Comey’s apparent perjury comes at an inconvenient time for the former FBI director, who’s selling $100 tickets to attend stops on his upcoming book tour to promote: “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership.”

As Turley notes, “If he gave McCabe the green light for his “interaction,” the title could prove embarrassingly ironic.”

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Authored by Sabrina Martin via PanamPost.com,

Sociologist Tomas Paez argues that the disastrous socialist public policy of Chavez and Maduro has been the primary factor in the massive exodus from Venezuela.

“The main cause of Venezuelan emigration is socialism of the 21st century,” said sociologist Tomás Páez, coordinator of the Global Project of the Venezuelan Diaspora; responding to Nicolás Maduro’s comments admitting to a “brain drain” in the country.

The Venezuelan dictator said on Wednesday, March 14, there existed a massive “brain drain” in Venezuela, and also confessed that the diaspora is seeking to “improve their life abroad.”

“There are some young people who have left Venezuela with the idea of improving their life abroad. It’s okay, go and come back because they will not find a better country than Venezuela,” said Maduro.

But Maduro conceals that most migrants are doing so to escape the dictatorship and its disastrous consequences.

“The Cause of Venezuelan Emigration is Socialism”

According to studies of the Global Project of the Venezuelan Diaspora, since Hugo Chávez and his successor Maduro came to power, more than three million citizens have decided to leave Venezuela. The main causes, it says, are insecurity, impunity, and of course, the unprecedented economic crisis.

In an interview, the sociologist Tomás Páez explained the reasons for this massive exodus and explained why “migration is always good.”

What are the main reasons why Venezuelans have decided to leave their country?

There are two fundamental reasons that are summarized in the following sentence: the only full refrigerator in Venezuela is in the morgue. This phrase summarizes the two main problems facing Venezuelans: insecurity and economic deterioration.

This is fueled by the great problem that is the socialist model that was installed in Venezuela and that has destroyed the country.

When we asked Venezuelans if they were willing to return, the majority answered yes, but not in these conditions.

The Venezuelans we interviewed responded that in order to return to their country it would be necessary to change the political model and that the country need prioritize the right to property and the most important thing of all: the right to life.

What do Venezuelans look for when they leave their country?

Venezuelan migration has more or less repeated the same pattern of all Latin American emigration. The desired destinations offer greater freedom and development: generally those in the north, such as the United States, Canada, and countries of the European Union.

However, in recent years, due to the economic failure of Venezuela, which has impoverished 87% of the population, it has become impossible to buy plane tickets to those northern countries, so now the migrants decide to go by land and reach countries such as Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Uruguay, Argentina, Panama and even by sea, to the Caribbean islands.

I give the example of a university professor who earns between 5 and 7 dollars a month; a university professor in Venezuela would have to work between 15 and 18 years without stopping to buy a plane ticket; that’s why now they emigrate by bus, on foot, or by boat.

What is the economic profile of Venezuelan migrants?

From Venezuela, more and more people of lower socioeconomic status are leaving, but, above all, it remains working professionals.

Most of the Venezuelan society has been impoverished, except those who have done business with the Chavez and Maduro regimes; all others have become impoverished.

“A university professor in Venezuela would have to work between 15 and 18 years without stopping to buy a plane ticket”

Impoverished people are leaving, but most of them have studied at the college level, but with their salaries in Venezuela, they can’t even buy a bicycle. The migrants are young entrepreneurs with a high level of academic training.

There are three million Venezuelans distributed in 90 countries in more than 300 cities in the world today.

What are the consequences of this massive exodus from Venezuela?

I must emphasize that for the government there is no diaspora. The regime does not disclose emigration statistics. All the information we obtain, therefore, we do with the help of other countries.

We go to Venezuelan organizations throughout the world, to researchers from different universities, because currently, the Maduro regime hides the records, so that they can deny what is happening.

” Those who have left have been able to develop their skills, learn, and make new contacts”

In Venezuela, there is no brain drain as the government says. If those people had stayed in the country, they would not have jobs or access to technology or research. There would be no possibility to study.

Although all socialism generates a diaspora, fortunately, those who have left have been able to develop their skills, learn, and make new contacts,

What is your impression in relation to the migratory policies followed by countries such as Peru, Colombia, Argentina, etc?

Every time I can, I thank all these countries for the aid they are giving to Venezuelans. They are nations that have understood the situation and have assumed that migration is always good.

How do you explain to the world the contention that migration “is always good”, especially at a time when xenophobia is increasing?

Emigration is not just about people; these people also represent knowledge and investment. The countries that have grown the most economically for decades did so because of the great contribution of migrants. As occurred in Venezuela in the late 70s, or with countries like the United States that are full of migrants.

“Migration adds value, knowledge, and skill.”

For example, in Europe rice companies grew by 300% thanks to the arrival of migrants who consumed much of that product. It is a chain; the migrants began to demand rice and then their subsequent sales grew: that impelled the production and the hiring of new workers for cultivating and harvesting rice. Migration adds value, knowledge, and skill.

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The Washington Post has revealed that President Trump attempted to extricate US troops from Syria by asking ally Saudi Arabia to foot the bill for postwar reconstruction and “stabilization” projects in the area of northeast Syria currently occupied by US coalition forces, to the tune of $4 billion. The deal would involve US allies like Saudi Arabia moving into a lead position regarding coalition policy in Syria, while hastening a US exit.

Though the coalition continues to claim that its occupation of Syrian soil is toward anti-terror and humanitarian efforts, including the reestablishment of civilian infrastructure in a region previously controlled by ISIS, America’s top general, CENTCOM chief Gen. Joseph Votel, admitted in congressional testimony this week that the Syrian government along with its Russian and Iranian allies have effectively won the war.

General Votel’s very frank admissions on Syria stunned hawks like Senator Graham, who were looking for more muscular policy goals. The Washington Post summarized this part of the exchange as follows: 

[A]sked on Tuesday in a Congressional hearing if Bashar al-Assad had “won”, Gen. Joseph Votel, head of US Central Command, replied, “I do not think that is too strong of a statement. I think [Russia and Iran] have provided him with the wherewithal to be ascendant at this point.”

Senator Lindsey Graham asked Votel, “And it is not your mission in Syria to deal with the Iranian-Assad-Russia problem?” Graham asked Votel. “That’s not in your ‘things to do,’ right?”

The general replied, “That’s correct, senator.”

Votel declined to say whether he believed the US military should pursue that broader objective. And asked whether it was still policy that Assad must leave power, Votel said: “I don’t know that that’s our particular policy at this particular point. Our focus remains on the defeat of ISIS.”

However, US policy does remain fundamentally aimed at preventing Assad and his allies from reasserting control over oil and resource rich northeast Syria, and this is where Trump reportedly envisions the Saudis as having a greater role to play, taking the pressure off US forces.

According to the Washington Post the deal was articulated by Trump directly to Saudi Arabia’s King Salman in a December phone call. The Post reports:

In a December phone call with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman, President Trump had an idea he thought could hasten a U.S. exit from Syria: Ask the king for $4 billion. By the end of the call, according to U.S. officials, the president believed he had a deal.

The White House wants money from the kingdom and other nations to help rebuild and stabilize the parts of Syria that the U.S. military and its local allies have liberated from the Islamic State. The postwar goal is to prevent Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his Russian and Iranian partners from claiming the areas, or the Islamic State from regrouping, while U.S. forces finish mopping up the militants.

But missed (or more likely deliberately ignored) by the Post reporters is the central irony that Saudi Arabia could possibly “stabilize” anything in Syria at all. As the New York Times concluded in a lengthy investigation over the kingdom’s role in fueling the rise of ISIS and directing the broader jihadist insurgency in Syria, the Saudis are “both the arsonists and the firefighters” in Syria and throughout the region.

Revelation of the $4 billion proposed deal comes as Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman is set to arrive in Washington on Monday for high level talks with US officials, including a Tuesday meeting with President Trump. The Saudi Embassy in Washington refused to comment on the offer, and neither side has yet confirmed or denied that a deal was reached or is in the works.

Last month the US announced a mere $200 million pledge toward reconstruction efforts in Syria – a paltry sum (considering total rebuilding costs have been widely estimated at $200-350 billion) perhaps intended to highlight the need of other countries to share in the burden. The Washington Post continues:

For Trump – who has long railed against insufficient burden-sharing by allies under the U.S. security umbrella – getting others to foot the bill for expensive postwar efforts is important. A $4 billion Saudi contribution would go a long way toward U.S. goals in Syria that the Saudis say they share, particularly that of limiting Assad’s power and rolling back Iran’s influence. By comparison, the United States last month announced a $200 million donation to the stabilization effort.

The more simple translation of Trump’s message to the Saudis seems to be something like this: “Our occupation of Syria is costly. If you don’t want Assad and Iran to regain the whole country, then you’re invited to take over the occupation yourselves.” 

Judging by Trump’s recent maneuvers with the Saudis and CENTCOM chief Votel’s congressional testimony, it appears we are in for more long, painful mission creep and perpetuation of the illegal occupation of Syria with no end in sight. 

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Submitted by Nicholas Colas of DataTrek Research

Today we highlight the most interesting investment firm on Earth: In-Q-Tel, the US Central Intelligence Agency’s venture capital arm. The “Q” in the name is an homage to James Bond’s quartermaster. The rest of the story is even cooler than that, and what they own is a useful signpost for the direction of many disruptive technologies.

The US Central Intelligence Agency runs a venture capital fund called In-Q-Tel, based in Arlington, Virginia. A few quick facts, courtesy of LinkedIn and the company’s website:

• IQT has 186 active employees, with operations in the Bay Area as well as DC.

• Its mission is “To identify and partner with startup companies developing innovative technologies that protect and preserve our nation’s security.”

• The current CEO and President is Chris Darby, an Intel Corp alum. The lead partner is Steve Bowsher, who is based in San Francisco and has the usual Harvard/Stanford educational credentials common in the VC community.

Why you should care: IQT knows how to pick winners and isn’t afraid to go it alone.

• It was, for example, the only outside firm that would invest in Palantir’s first round. That company, founded by Peter Thiel, uses advanced software and big data analysis to solve cyber espionage and other 21st century problems. The rest of the VC community passed, with some outright telling Thiel the idea would never work.

• IQT plunked in $2 million back in 2004 and got Palantir the connections to work with the US government on several serious cyber security problems. Which they solved.

• Fast forward to now, and Palantir’s value may be as high as $20 billion and there is talk of an IPO. Even if IQT’s original $2 million investment only gave them 1% of the company, they have a 100-bagger on this trade.

So what is IQT invested in now? The juiciest ideas are secret, but here are some of the public ones:

• SnapDNA. Portable chip-based DNA analysis. Identify anyone on Earth in real time by their genetic fingerprint.

• Magnet Forensics. Digital forensic analysis of evidence from computers, phones and tablets to fight crime and guard national security.

• Sonitus Technologies. In-mouth microphones and speakers to allow for secure and high fidelity communication in any environment.

• And one notable prior investment: Keyhole, a satellite imagery company. Sold to Google in 2005, where it became Google Earth.

You can see more (including video of the in-mouth mike) here, and IQT’s website is here: https://www.iqt.org.

Separately, a list of unpublicized In-Q-Tel portfolio companies is shown below, courtesy of The Intercept.

Bottom line: this is one of those companies to add to your “Smart money” list. When you see them make an investment, understand they have a real edge.

And on a final note, Israel’s Mossad is following in IQT’s footsteps with a VC firm named Libertad Ventures. Their initial focus will be on robotics, energy, encryption, web intelligence, and natural language processing. They do not, however, intend to take equity. Or call out what they own.

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In a global market with (mostly, so-called) free trade, it’s common to see economies that are very specialized, each producing specific goods based on the competitive advantages, incentives, and resources they have available.

As VisualCapitalist’s Jeff Desjardins explains, whether those inputs are inexpensive labor, ample amounts of natural resources, or a surplus in engineering talent, countries can use these advantages to manufacture and sell goods on the international market at a higher level of quality or a better price than competitors.

SIMPLIFYING WORLD TRADE

Today’s infographic comes to us from VoucherCloud, and it helps us get a sense of this specialization by looking at the top export of every country in the world. It’s a simple but telling way to see what countries are ‘good’ at producing… and therefore, what is the most-damaging tariff that Trump could apply on each nation…

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Authored by Darius Shahtahmasebi via TheAntiMedia.org,

At this critical juncture in modern history where tensions run at an all-time high between world powers that possess extensive nuclear weapons supplies, the United States and the United Kingdom would do well to re-educate themselves on the art of diplomacy.

Instead, the United Kingdom has put its foot on the throttle, openly blaming Russia for poisoning a former Russian spy and his daughter in the U.K. Together with France, Germany and the United States, this western alliance has called on Russia to explain the military-grade novichok nerve toxin attack on Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury, England. They both remain in critical condition.

U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May was one of the first to openly blame Russia for the incident, calling it a “brazen” act and expelling 23 Russian diplomats almost immediately. She also cut off high-level contact with Moscow for the attack on U.K. soil.

U.S. President Donald Trump also came out behind the U.K., stating it “certainly looks like the Russians were behind” the incident. Apparently, Trump is happy to believe conspiracy theories regarding Russian interference as long as he is not the subject matter.

Do we know the full facts regarding what happened to Skripal? No. But the minute western governments not only claim to know what happened but also take further action to demonize the state in question, we should immediately be skeptical.

Let’s take a hypothetical scenario. Supposing someone wanted to kill Skripal but hoped to make it look like the Russian government was behind it, would it really be that hard for someone else to use the novichok nerve toxin in the commission of the killing?

“Could somebody have smuggled something out [of the Soviet Union]?” Amy Smithson, a U.S.-based biological and chemical weapons expert, queried to Reuters. “I certainly wouldn’t rule that possibility out, especially a small amount and particularly in view of how lax the security was at Russian chemical facilities in the early 1990s.”

If this is a possible scenario as Smithson has intimated, it should be ruled out as a possibility before the U.K. expels Russian diplomats who may or may not have been involved in an assassination attempt.

Diplomacy is an art form. Right now, we don’t need world powers escalating tensions and blaming Russia for every single thing that goes wrong across the globe.

Just how powerful is Russia, exactly? We are not only supposed to believe that the former Soviet Union can elect presidents at whim in the world’s most powerful country, but that it is also openly going around trying to assassinate people on British soil using chemical weapons that would directly implicate itself as the perpetrator.

Former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray wrote in a blog post:

“The same people who assured you that Saddam Hussein had WMD’s now assure you Russian ‘novochok’ nerve agents are being wielded by Vladimir Putin to attack people on British soil. As with the Iraqi WMD dossier, it is essential to comb the evidence very finely. A vital missing word from Theresa May’s statement yesterday was ‘only.’ She did not state that the nerve agent used was manufactured ONLY by Russia. She rather stated this group of nerve agents had been ‘developed by’ Russia. Antibiotics were first developed by a Scotsman, but that is not evidence that all antibiotics are today administered by Scots.”

Murray also referred his readers to an article in Foreign Policy that laid out Israel’s quietly advancing chemical and biological weapon capabilities. If we want to talk about evidence, it’s actually worth noting that Israel is reportedly in the business of launching assassination attempts, even on scientists and researchers. Israeli operatives have even been caught during their assassination attempts whereas, as Murray notes, Russia has never actually killed a “swapped spy” before. Of course, this is not to say that Israel is responsible for the crime in question, but until hard evidence is produced that directly implicates the current Russian leadership, it is worth considering that other countries also have the power to launch assassination attempts.

Regardless, more allegations against Russia are still mounting. The U.S. recently accused Russia of a wide-ranging cyber assault on its energy grid and other parts of its infrastructure, gearing up to impose more sanctions in response.

Now, after years of constantly being painted as the enemy, Russia just declared via Twitter that a “Cold War II” has, indeed, begun. And who can blame them?

The temperature of 🇷🇺 🇬🇧 relations drops to ➖2️⃣3️⃣, but we are not afraid of cold weather. pic.twitter.com/mand9YyoaE

— Russian Embassy, UK (@RussianEmbassy) March 14, 2018

It is time for these countries to go back to the drawing board and teach themselves diplomacy. Nikki Haley is not a diplomat, the essential requirement of her job at the U.N. She is a warmongering neoconservative who is incapable of asking for basic evidence. The only high-level politician calling for diplomacy is the U.K.’s Jeremy Corbyn, the same man who is persistently demonized by the local and worldwide media, even while he has continued to be on the right side of history regarding almost every conflict since he became a politician.

“This horrific event demands first of all the most thorough and painstaking criminal investigation, conducted by our police and security services,” Corbyn said.

“To rush way ahead of the evidence being gathered by the police, in a fevered parliamentary atmosphere, serves neither justice nor our national security.”

He also said that his Labour party is “of course no supporter of the Putin regime, its conservative authoritarianism, abuse of human rights or political and economic corruption” but “that does not mean we should resign ourselves to a ‘new cold war’ of escalating arms spending, proxy conflicts across the globe and a McCarthyite intolerance of dissent.”

While the calm voice of reason, Corbyn to this day is vilified by the corporate media.

The hostility towards Russia is one thing, but the double standards and hypocrisy are completely mind-blowing.

The U.S. and its allies are the most meddlesome entities on the planet, but whenever something moves that can be blamed on Russia, Syria, North Korea or Iran, they take immediate action against adversarial states before a full investigation can ever be completed.

It is a shoot first, ask questions later type of approach, and it needs to stop.

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Last week we reported  that residents of New Jersey were about to enter the 9th circle of financial hell as the state, fast approaching a fiscal, economic and budgetary catastrophe, was preparing to raise taxes on “almost everything.”

But if New Jerseyans are approaching a tax inferno, residents of Illinois are already there.

According to a recent analysis by WalletHub, Illinoisans pay $8,300 per home in various state and local taxes, more than any other state in the nation. In the annual ranking of taxpayer burden by state, WalletHub found that Illinois households give up just under 15% of their annual earnings to pay state and local taxes, over 1 percent more than residents of the second highest taxed state, Connecticut with 13.85%. Of course, they also pay federal taxes on top of that.

 

Putting these numbers in context, Illinois residents – apart from being the most highly taxed in all the US – pay three times more in state and local taxes than residents of the lowest taxed state, Alaska, and about 40% more than the US average of 10.8%.

While residents of Illinois are no strangers to financial hell – this is the second consecutive year that Illinois was  ranked top in the nation in weight of local tax burden – it hardly makes it any more palatable that they keep getting screwed by their financially incompetent leaders.

Worse, the state’s financial doldrums come after another $5 billion income and corporate tax hike in 2017.

Meanwhile, wages in the Prairie State refuse to rise: according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, wage growth in Illinois in Q3 2017 was only 0.6. As Illinois News has suggested, one potential explanation for this is that many Illinoisans have simply stopped working. A February report by Moody‘s said Illinois is at a 40-year low for workforce participation.

Alternatively, it may also be the result – or cause – of the Illinois population exodus. Recall that In 2017, Illinois not only lost 125,000 residents in aggregate, or 1 every 4.3 minutes, resulting in the biggest net population outflow that year of all US states…

… it also dropped to 6th most populous state in the US behind Pennsylvania according to Illinois Policy.

Finally, while we will have more information and a broader breakdown of state and local income taxation across the US tomorrow, it is worth noting that – perhaps ironically – red states impose materially lower taxes than blue states.

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Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,

The Guardian ran an article yesterday by one of its editors, David Shariatmadari, that both proves and disproves its own theme at the same time: “An Information Apocalypse Is Coming”. Now, I don’t fancy the term apocalypse in a setting like this, it feels too much like going for a cheap thrill, but since he used it, why not.

My first reaction to the headline, and the article, is: what do you mean it’s ‘coming’? Don’t you think we have such an apocalypse already, that we’re living it, we’re smack in the middle of such a thing? If you don’t think so, would that have anything to do with you working at a major newspaper? Or with your views of the world, political and other, that shape how you experience ‘information’?

Shariatmadari starts out convincingly and honestly enough with a description of a speech that JFK was supposed to give in Dallas right after he was murdered, a speech that has been ‘resurrected’ using technology that enables one to make it seem like he did deliver it.

An Information Apocalypse Is Coming. How Can We Protect Ourselves?

“In a world of complex and continuing problems, in a world full of frustrations and irritations, America’s leadership must be guided by the lights of learning and reason, or else those who confuse rhetoric with reality, and the plausible with the possible will gain the popular ascendancy with their seemingly swift and simple solutions to every world problem.”

John F Kennedy’s last speech reads like a warning from history, as relevant today as it was when it was delivered in 1963 at the Dallas Trade Mart. His rich, Boston Brahmin accent reassures us even as he delivers the uncomfortable message. The contrast between his eloquence and the swagger of Donald Trump is almost painful to hear.

Yes, Kennedy’s words are lofty ones, and they do possess at least some predictive qualities. But history does play a part too. Would we have read the same in them that we do now, had Kennedy not been shot right before he could deliver them? Hard to tell.

What’s more, not long before JFK was elected president America had been in the tight and severe grip of J. Edgar Hoover and Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist campaign, in which lots of reality was replaced with rhetoric, something Kennedy undoubtedly had in mind while writing the speech. JFK was not just addressing future threats, he was talking about the past as well.

But the writer slips into a much bigger faux pas right after: injecting Trump into the picture. It’s fine if someone doesn’t like Trump, but naming him there and then, in an article about ‘information apocalypse’, also means confusing objectivity with regards to your topic with subjectivity concerning your political ideas. While the Kennedy speech item relates to -advancing(?)- technology, a valid part of the apocalypse, mentioning Trump has nothing to do with that apocalypse, at least not objectively. Back to David Shariatmadari:

The problem is, Kennedy never spoke these words. He was killed before he made it to the Trade Mart. You can only hear them now thanks to audio technology developed by a British company, CereProc. Fragments of his voice have been taken from other speeches and public appearances, spliced and put back together, with neural networks employed to mimic his natural intonation. The result is pretty convincing, although there’s a machine-like ring to some of the syllables, a synthetic stutter. Enough to recognise, if you already know, that this is a feat of technology, not oratory.

We like to think of innovation as morally neutral. We empower scientists and engineers to range freely in the hope they might discover things that save labour and lives. The ends to which these are put aren’t the responsibility of the researchers. The agile robots produced by Boston Dynamics might look like they could cheerfully pin you up against a wall and snap your neck, but do we really want to close off this avenue of research? After all, they might equally be capable of performing life-saving surgery. The methods used to resurrect JFK can also help people with illnesses such as motor neurone disease – like the late Stephen Hawking – that affect their ability to speak.

It’s certainly true that we are so ‘geared’ towards progress, we ‘conveniently’ forget and ignore that every next step carries its own shadow side, every yin comes with its yang. ‘Progress’ and ‘innovation’ – and related terms- ring so positive in our eyes and ears it borders on -wilful- blindness. That blindness is set to play a major role in our future, and in our acceptance as gospel of a lot of ‘information’.

“Dual use” of technology is not a new problem. Nuclear physics gave us both energy and bombs. What is new is the democratisation of advanced IT, the fact that anyone with a computer can now engage in the weaponisation of information; 2016 was the year we woke up to the power of fake news, with internet conspiracy theories and lies used to bolster the case for both Brexit and Donald Trump.

Ouch! See, he does it again. This is not an objective discourse on ‘information disinformation’, but a way to make people think -through a method he’s supposed to be exposing- that ‘fake news’ led to Brexit and Trump. That’s a political view, not a neutral one. Yes, there are many voices out there who connect ‘fake news’ directly to things they don’t like, but that’s just a trap.

And as I said, it may have to do with the fact that the writer works for a major newspaper, which of course he wants to, and wishes to, see as some kind of beacon against fake news, but if he lets his own personal views slip into an objective treatment of a topic this easily, it automatically becomes self-defeating.

There is no proof that Trump and Brexit’s success are down to fake news more than their opposite sides, ‘fake news’ is everywhere, and that very much includes the Guardian. The coverage of the UK government accusations against Russia in the poisoning case proves that more than ever.

You can be anti-Trump, anti-Brexit and anti-Putin all you want, but they don’t define fake news or an information apocalypse, any more than ‘commies’ did in the days of Hoover and McCarthy.

We may, however, look back on it as a kind of phoney war, when photoshopping and video manipulation were still easily detectable. That window is closing fast. A program developed at Stanford University allows users to convincingly put words into politicians’ mouths. Celebrities can be inserted into porn videos. Quite soon it will be all but impossible for ordinary people to tell what’s real and what’s not.

That is am almost bewildering line. Does the writer really think ‘ordinary people’ can today tell apart what’s real and what’s not? If his paper had honestly covered his country’s, and his government’s, involvement in the wars all over the Middle East and North Africa over the past decades, would his readers still be supportive of the politicians that today inhabit Westminster?

Or does the paper prefer supporting the incumbents over Nigel Farage and Donald Trump, because it owes its reputation and position and revenues to supporting the likes of Theresa May and Tony Blair? Yeah, I know, with a critical view, yada yada, but when has the Guardian labeled any UK politician a war criminal? Much easier to go after Farage, isn’t it? The question is: what part of this is fake, and what is not?

What will the effects of this be? When a public figure claims the racist or sexist audio of them is simply fake, will we believe them? How will political campaigns work when millions of voters have the power to engage in dirty tricks? What about health messages on the dangers of diesel or the safety of vaccines? Will vested interests or conspiracy theorists attempt to manipulate them?

This appears to make sense, but it does not really. We are way past that. ‘Ordinary people’ have already lost their capacity to tell truth from fiction. Newspapers and TV stations have long disseminated the views of their owners, it’s just that they now have -newfound- competition from a million other sources: the blessings of social media.

The core issue here is that 1984 is not some point in the future, as we for some reason prefer to think. We are living 1984. Perhaps the fact that we are now 34 years past it should give us a clue about that? People tend to think that perhaps Orwell was right, but his predictions were way early. Were they, though?

Also: Orwell may not have foreseen the blessings and trappings of social media, but he did foresee how governments and their media sympathizers would react to them: with more disinformation.

Unable to trust what they see or hear, will people retreat into lives of non-engagement, ceding the public sphere to the already powerful or the unscrupulous? The potential for an “information apocalypse” is beginning to be taken seriously.

This is a full-blown time warp. If it is true that people only now take the potential for an “information apocalypse” seriously, they are so far behind the curve ball that one must question the role of the media in that. Why didn’t people know about that potential when it was an actual issue? Why did nobody tell them?

The problem is we have no idea what a world in which all words and images are suspect will look like, so it’s hard to come up with solutions.

Yes, we do have an idea about that, because we see it around us 24/7. Maybe not with images as fully fabricated as the JFK speech, but the essence is manipulation itself, not the means by which it’s delivered.

Perhaps not very much will change – perhaps we will develop a sixth sense for bullshit and propaganda, in the same way that it has become easy to distinguish sales calls from genuine inquiries, and scam emails with fake bank logos from the real thing.

David, we ARE all bullshitters, we all lie all the time, for a myriad of reasons, to look better, to feel better, to seem better, to get rich, to get laid. It’s who we are. We lie to ourselves most of all. A sixth sense against bullshit and propaganda is the very last thing we will ever develop, because it would force us to face our own bullshit.

But there’s no guarantee we’ll be able to defend ourselves from the onslaught, and society could start to change in unpredictable ways as a result. Like the generation JFK was addressing in his speech, we are on the cusp of a new and scary age. Rhetoric and reality, the plausible and the possible, are becoming difficult to separate. We await a figure of Kennedy’s stature to help us find a way through. Until then, we must at the very least face up to the scale of the coming challenge.

We are not ‘on the cusp of a new and scary age’, we are smack in the middle of it. We haven’t been able to separate rhetoric and reality, the plausible and the possible, for ages. What’s different from 100 years ago, or 50 years ago, is that now we are faced with an information overload so severe that this in itself makes us less capable of separating chaff from wheat.

So yes, that perhaps is new. But bullshit and propaganda are not. And labeling Trump and Brexit the main threats misses your own topic by miles. You could make an equally valid point that they are the results of many years of bullshit and propaganda by old-style politics and old-style media.

Maybe they’re what happens when ‘ordinary people’ switch off from an overload of bullshit and propaganda forced upon them by people and institutions they grew up to trust. And then feel they were betrayed by. A sixth sense after all.

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