Category: zerohedge

Authored by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog,

All over the planet, nature is starting to behave in some very unusual ways.  And unfortunately for us, a lot of the changes that we are witnessing in nature are quite detrimental for humanity.  Of course the truth is that we haven’t exactly been too kind to the planet that we are living on.  In fact, many would argue that we are in the process of absolutely devastating the Earth, and most of us don’t feel bad about that at all.  So could it be possible that it is now payback time?

Let me give you just one quick example of how we are destroying the planet.  According to a recent survey of U.S. beekeepers, an astounding 37 percent of all honeybee colonies were lost over the winter…

Every year since 2006, the University of Maryland’s nonprofit Bee Informed Partnership (BIP) conducts an annual survey to determine how many bee colonies were lost over the course of the year. The 2018–2019 survey asked 4,696 U.S. beekeepers to report how many colonies they lost, and the preliminary results of the survey suggest that things aren’t looking so good.

Of the more than 319,000 managed bee colonies in the survey, 37.7 percent were lost over the winter. This represents the largest die-off since the survey began, and a full 7 percentage points higher than the previous year. Having fewer honeybees is more than just an ecological problem, it’s also an economic one: Every year, honeybees contribute a nearly $20 billion value to U.S. crop production.

Of course we don’t have to look too far to find the culprit.  We are the ones that are killing all the bees off, and in the process we are setting the stage for an unprecedented ecological disaster, because if all the bees suddenly vanished human civilization would not last much longer at all.

In the end, we will be held accountable for what has been entrusted to us, and it appears that we are starting to get what we deserve.

The following are 10 signs that nature has turned against humanity…

#1 In the middle of the country, farmers are freaking out because giant black vultures are literally eating their farm animals alive.  And since the vultures are “federally-protected”, the farmers can’t do anything about it…

They’ll devour slimy newborn calves, full-grown ewes and lambs alive by pecking them to death.

First the eyes, then the tongue, then every last shred of flesh.

And there isn’t much defense against black vultures and turkey vultures, both of which are federally protected and cannot be killed without a permit.

#2 All up and down the east coast, Americans are becoming the victims of “flesh-eating bacteria” when they go into the water.  Here is one recent example from Florida…

A woman who cut herself while walking along the water on the Florida beach she loved died after contracting necrotizing fasciitis, becoming the latest victim of the flesh-eating bacteria.

Lynn Fleming, from Ellenton, about 15 miles north of Sarasota, fell and cut herself while she was walking at Coquina Beach on nearby Anna Maria Island two weeks ago.

At this point things have gotten so bad that the CDC is telling people with open wounds “to avoid bodies of water, especially swimming pools and hot tubs.”

#3 For decades, cockroaches have been multiplying despite our best efforts to eradicate them with insecticides.  But now they are developing resistance to our insecticides, and researchers are warning that this will make them “invulnerable”…

The day that squeamish humans—and exterminators—have long feared may have come at last: Cockroaches are becoming invincible. Or at least German cockroaches (Blattella germanica) are, according to a new study. Researchers have found that these creatures, which have long been a prevalent urban pest, are becoming increasingly resistant to almost every kind of chemical insecticide.

Not all insecticides are created equal. Some degrade the nervous system, whereas others attack the exoskeleton; they also have to be left out for varying amounts of time. But many insects, including cockroaches, have evolved resistance to at least one of the most commonly-used insecticides.

#4 Last week it was hotter in some parts of Europe that it has ever been before.  In fact, in one region in France the temperature actually hit 114 degrees Fahrenheit…

Hundreds of firefighters battled on Saturday to contain wildfires in southern France as a stifling heatwave brought record-breaking temperatures to parts of Europe, killing at least three people in Italy.

In the Gard region, where France’s highest temperature on record was registered on Friday at 45.9 degrees Celsius (114 degrees Fahrenheit), scores of fires burned some 600 hectares (about 1,500 acres) of land and destroyed several houses and vehicles, emergency services said.

#5 Along the California coastline, temperatures have been so hot that mussels have actually been “roasting in their shells”…

A record-breaking June heatwave apparently caused the largest die-off of mussels in at least 15 years at Bodega Head, a small headland on the northern California bay. And Sones received reports from other researchers of similar mass mussel deaths at various beaches across roughly 140 miles of coastline.

While the people who flocked to the Pacific to enjoy a rare 80F beach day soaked up the sun, so did the mussel beds – where the rock-bound mollusks could have been experiencing temperatures above 100F at low tide, literally roasting in their shells.

#6 And of course the east coast is not being left out either.  According to meteorologists, some portions of the east coast could see heat index values hit 110 degrees “as early as Wednesday”…

Another round of oppressive heat is already in the forecast this week for the East Coast with oppressive heat index values on the way for the parts of the Southeast by midweek. Heat index values could approaching 105 to 110 degrees in parts of the region as early as Wednesday.

Major cities from North Carolina to New Jersey will see a long stretch of temperatures at or above 90 degrees, which means another heat wave is on the way for cities like Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.

#7 Thanks to the unusually high temperatures, wasp nests are absolutely thriving across the southern United States.  In fact, one expert anticipates that there will be dozens of “super nests” in his area this year…

Warmer winters contribute to these nests, Mr. Ray said. Most yellow jackets don’t survive the cold months because they freeze to death or have trouble finding food. They need a fair amount of sugar and carbohydrates, he said.

“The queens are the only ones who have an antifreeze compound in their blood,” Mr. Ray said. “So normally, a surviving queen will have to start a colony from scratch in the spring. With our climate becoming warmer, there might be multiple surviving queens producing more than 20,000 eggs each.”

#8 Meanwhile, the middle of the country is being absolutely hammered by the wettest year that it has ever experienced.  And just when you thought that it couldn’t possibly get any wetter, more storms are scheduled to come rolling through…

But a new system was moving through the Northern Plains Sunday morning and already bringing some severe storms to Minnesota.

The system will attempt to bring some cooler air down from Canada, which will interact with the heat situated in the Midwest and spark storms across parts of the Plains and the Midwest, from Wyoming to Illinois.

#9 In recent months we have also seen unusually large hail absolutely hammer communities all over the country.  For example, it is being reported that some portions of Montana were just hit with “baseball-sized hail”…

Thunderstorms that moved through southwestern Montana dropped baseball-sized hail in western Powder River County and golf ball-sized hail as the storm moved to the east.

The National Weather Service reports Wednesday night’s storm left behind broken windows and damaged crops.

Baseball-sized hail fell near Moorhead, a community about 35 miles southwest of Broadus, while Broadus recorded a 70 mph (113 kph) wind gust. Communities just north of Moorhead reported golf ball-sized hail.

#10 Needless to say, all of this wet weather has just continued to feed the unprecedented flooding that we have seen along our major rivers.  At this point, we are being told that the horrific flooding along the Mississippi River may go beyond the end of the summer…

The 2019 Mississippi River flood fight is going to slog deep into the summer — and maybe much longer.

While communities north of St. Louis are beginning the expensive path to recovery after record-breaking winter and spring precipitation and runoff, people below the Missouri River are shoveling mud from their houses and praying for a dry spell.

The Lower Mississippi Valley remains in a flood crisis as high water continues to swamp streets, homes, businesses, sewage and water treatment plants, and farm fields, including across some of the poorest counties in the United States.

These are ten examples that have just been in the news during the past few days.  If I wanted to cover all of the unusual events that we have witnessed so far in 2019 I would have to write an entire book.

The truth is that global weather patterns are dramatically shifting and our planet is becoming increasingly unstable.  And no matter how hard humanity tries to find solutions, the reality of the matter is that things are going to continue to get worse.

We have passed the tipping point, and we are starting to experience the consequences for decades of exceedingly foolish decisions.

We have entered the time of “the perfect storm”, and everything that can be shaken will be shaken.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2FNmL64 Tyler Durden

On Tuesday a San Diego military court found decorated Navy SEAL team leader Eddie Gallagher not guilty of premeditated murder in the death of a teenage ISIS prisoner in Iraq in 2017.

The case stems from a 2017 Middle East deployment where the SEAL platoon led by Gallagher was engaged in a mission supporting Iraqi troops fighting to drive ISIS insurgents out of the city of Mosul. Gallagher was alleged to have killed the young ISIS fighter as he was being treated by US medical personnel. 

However, last month the case took a dramatic turn after the court learned that the defendant couldn’t have fatally stabbed a captured 15-year-old ISIS fighter – based on a SEAL combat medic testifying under immunity that he was the one who killed the enemy combatant.

The medic claimed he had engaged in a “mercy killing” by holding his thumb over the wounded ISIS detainee’s trachea tube until he suffocated, and that Gallagher was not responsible, though the SEAL team leader did pause to pose in a photograph with the deceased.

On Tuesday Gallagher was acquitted on all but one charge by the jury made up of fellow active service members – posing with a corps in a photograph – which carries a max sentence of four months, of which he’s already served 201 days awaiting trial. 

According to CNN:

Gallagher’s defense portrayed him as an “old-school, hard-charging warrior” who was targeted by younger “millennial” SEALs who harbored “personal animosity” toward him.

Gallagher’s chief attorney, Timothy Parlatore, had presented a narrative to the jury of five Marines and two Navy sailors that SEALs who testified against the chief were lying in the hope of getting him kicked out of the Navy.

“This case is not about murder, it’s about mutiny,” said Parlatore during his prior opening statements, referring to Gallagher as a seasoned and decorated fighter leading a team of SEALs who were frightened in combat. 

“They didn’t want to get in the fight,” Parlatore said. “So they banded together to make a plan to get Edward Gallagher out of the fight, permanently” by reporting Gallagher to Naval commanders shortly after the 2017 incident. 

Notably President Trump had issued a public statement in support of the controversial SEAL as he stood accused of murder, tweeting that he should be moved to a less restrictive environment instead of the Brig at Miramar base in San Diego, citing his past record of bravery in battle. 

In honor of his past service to our Country, Navy Seal #EddieGallagher will soon be moved to less restrictive confinement while he awaits his day in court. Process should move quickly! @foxandfriends @RepRalphNorman

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 30, 2019

In total he had faced up to seven criminal counts, including: premeditated murder, willfully discharging a firearm to endanger human life, posing for a photo with a casualty, retaliation against members of his platoon for reporting his alleged actions, obstruction of justice, and the attempted murders of two noncombatants.

Sentencing for the ‘posing for a photo with a casualty’ charge is expected to be issued quickly and will likely be greatly reduced based on time served. 

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2FL2qOI Tyler Durden

Conditions at a Texas migrant detention center recently toured by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are nothing like what was described by the virtue-signaling Congresswoman, according to the President of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, Rev. Samuel Rodriguez. 

Rodriguez toured the same El Paso County facility as AOC, and said he was “full of indignation” and “shocked at the misinformation” regarding the conditions at border facilities, according to Fox News. 

“I read the reports, saw the news clips. I just wanted to see what was actually happening in order to better enable our efforts to find a fair and a just solution to our broken immigration system,” Rodriguez, who has advised presidents Trump, Obama and George W. Bush on immigration reform. “To my surprise, I saw something drastically different from the stories I’ve been hearing in our national discourse. Even as a veteran of immigration advocacy in the U.S., I was shocked at the misinformation of the crisis at the border,” he added. 

“We found no soiled diapers, no deplorable conditions and no lack of basic necessities,” said Rodriguez, who said that when he asked border agents if they staged the facility in response to the negative press: “They unequivocally denied it — we were witnessing the identical conditions the attorneys saw when they toured the facility days earlier.” 

In fact, some told him the sources from whom the negative coverage originated “never toured the areas of the facility that we toured” and speculated they might have had political motivations.

The pastors left encouraged by the commitment and dedication of America’s Border Patrol and immigration officers, “many of which are Latinos, by the way.” He said one emotional Border Patrol agent turned to him and said, referring to the vilification: “Pastor Sam, what they’re saying about us is completely false. We care about these kids and have a passion for our calling.” –Fox News

NHCLC board member, immigrant and pastor Carlos Moran said “we, as evangelical leaders that serve in different segments, are very committed to helping children regardless of their status and we commend those officers that are trying their very best to serve and fulfill their duty at the border. However, we do call on our political leaders to set aside their personal agendas and begin focusing on resolving this immigration crisis.“

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2RQcQl9 Tyler Durden

After several unsuccessful attempts to put his preferred candidates on the Fed’s board, moments ago Donald Trump announced that he intends to nominate Christopher Waller, who is currently the Executive VP and Director of Research, at the St. Louis Fed, to the board of the Federal Reserve. Prior to his current position, Christopher served as a professor and Chair of Economics at Notre Dame.

….Prior to his current position, Christopher served as a professor and Chair of Economics at Notre Dame.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 2, 2019

For those who haven’t heard of Waller before, it’s hardly a shock: it appears to be his intention to keep a low profile.

This is what we do know about Waller, from his St Louis Fed profile:

He received his B.S. in economics from Bemidji State University in 1981, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Washington State University in 1984 and 1985, respectively. His principal research interests are monetary theory, political economy and macroeconomic theory.

Prior to joining the Fed as research director in June 2009, Mr. Waller served as a professor and the Gilbert F. Schaefer Chair of Economics at the University of Notre Dame. He was also a research fellow with Notre Dame’s Kellogg Institute for International Studies.

From 2006 to 2007, he served as the acting department chair for Notre Dame’s Department of Economics and Econometrics. From 1998 to 2003, Mr. Waller was a professor and the Carol Martin Gatton Chair of Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics at the University of Kentucky. During that time, he was also a research fellow at the Center for European Integration Studies (ZEI) at the University of Bonn. From 1992-1994, he served as the director of graduate studies at Indiana University’s Department of Economics, where he also served as associate professor (1992 to 1998) and an assistant professor (1985 to 1992).

However, the reason why gold is spiking after hours, is that shortly after tweeting the Waller nomination, Trump also confirmed the previously rumored nomination of Judy Shelton to the Fed board:

I am pleased to announce that it is my intention to nominate Judy Shelton, Ph. D., U.S. Executive Dir, European Bank of Reconstruction & Development to be on the board of the Federal Reserve Judy is a Founding Member of the board of directors of Empower America and has served on the board of directors of Hilton Hotels.

….Judy is a Founding Member of the board of directors of Empower America and has served on the board of directors of Hilton Hotels.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 2, 2019

Courtesy of Mish Shedlock we previously profiled Shelton, a Trump economic advisor and a gold standard advocate:

….Judy is a Founding Member of the board of directors of Empower America and has served on the board of directors of Hilton Hotels.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 2, 2019

This is what Bloomberg reported back in May: “The White House is considering conservative economist Judy Shelton to fill one of the two vacancies on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors that President Donald Trump has struggled to fill. She’s currently U.S. executive director for the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and previously worked for the Sound Money Project, which was founded to promote awareness about monetary stability and financial privacy.”

On April 21, Judy Shelton had an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal: The Case for Monetary Regime Change.

Since President Trump announced his intention to nominate Herman Cain and Stephen Moore to serve on the Federal Reserve’s board of governors, mainstream commentators have made a point of dismissing anyone sympathetic to a gold standard as crankish or unqualified.

But it is wholly legitimate, and entirely prudent, to question the infallibility of the Federal Reserve in calibrating the money supply to the needs of the economy. No other government institution had more influence over the creation of money and credit in the lead-up to the devastating 2008 global meltdown. And the Fed’s response to the meltdown may have exacerbated the damage by lowering the incentive for banks to fund private-sector growth.

What began as an emergency decision in the wake of the financial crisis to pay interest to commercial banks on excess reserves has become the Fed’s main mechanism for conducting monetary policy. To raise interest rates, the Fed increases the rate it pays banks to keep their $1.5 trillion in excess reserves—eight times what is required—parked in accounts at Federal Reserve district banks. Rewarding banks for holding excess reserves in sterile depository accounts at the Fed rather than making loans to the public does not help create business or spur job creation.

Meanwhile, for all the talk of a “rules-based” system for international trade, there are no rules when it comes to ensuring a level monetary playing field. The classical gold standard established an international benchmark for currency values, consistent with free-trade principles. Today’s arrangements permit governments to manipulate their currencies to gain an export advantage.

Money is meant to serve as a reliable unit of account and store of value across borders and through time. It’s entirely reasonable to ask whether this might be better assured by linking the supply of money and credit to gold or some other reference point as opposed to relying on the judgment of a dozen or so monetary officials meeting eight times a year to set interest rates. A linked system could allow currency convertibility by individuals (as under a gold standard) or foreign central banks (as under Bretton Woods). Either way, it could redress inflationary pressures.

Judy Shelton is author of the 1998 book Money Meltdown; and previously she had concluded that “Central bankers, and their defenders, have proven less than omniscient.”

Following the (implied) news that Shelton is being nominated to the Fed board, gold spiked $10 from $1,425 to $1,435 in minutes,

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2KRGRAd Tyler Durden

Authored by Gary Goldman via The Mises Institute,

Congressional lawmakers may need a primer on the meaning of a “budget.” As the average American family knows all too well, a budget is the way to determine what you can afford to spend. A family that exceeds its budget usually decides that it needs to eliminate wasteful spending.

But instead of cracking down on waste, some lawmakers want to double down. The wasteful program, in this case, is the Joint Strike Fighter, a warplane known as the F-35. The Trump administration, in its most recent defense spending request, asked for enough funding for 78 of these jets. As we’ll see, that was already a huge waste.

But lawmakers on the House Armed Services Committee want to spend even more than that. In the annual, must-pass National Defense Authorization Act, the committee: 

“Authorizes $10 billion to procure 94 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft, an additional 16 aircraft above the administration’s request.”

Lawmakers say this spending will allow “the forces to modernize and equip themselves with the most advanced and capable fifth-generation aircraft.”

That would be great, if it was true. But the history of the F-35 tells a much different story.

First, let’s note that the entire program has been over budget almost since it was conceived in the 1990s. That’s partly because the military wanted one type of plane that could accomplish several different types of missions for three branches of the service. As the RAND Corporation later found, trying to build a one-size-fits-all platform meant spending more than building three separate platforms would have.

Over the years, the plane failed test after test, and had to be retrofitted at a cost of additional tens of billions of dollars. “The estimated total price for research and procurement has increased by $22 billion in current dollars adjusted for inflation, according to the Pentagon’s latest annual cost assessment of major projects,”Bloomberg reported back in April. “The estimate for operating and supporting the fleet of fighters over more than six decades grew by almost $73 billion to $1.196 trillion.”

Second, the military and contractor Lockheed rushed the F-35 into the air,building new jets before the prototypes had completed their shakeout flights. When new problems, with both software and hardware, inevitably cropped up, planes had to be taken out of service and fixed.

Finally, while they were good at running up a tab, the planes don’t deliver value for the money.

It’s not clear that the jet, when it does fly, is even effective. For example, the Air Force is using much older planes in some deployments, because it wants its jets to be seen (and therefore feared). The F-35 doesn’t effectively project force. Far from becoming an effective weapon, the F-35 is proving to be a fragile one that cannot accomplish its missions.

Before he took office, President Trump promised reform. “The F-35 program and cost is out of control. Billions of dollars can and will be saved on military (and other) purchases after January 20th,” he Tweeted. His administration isn’t exactly delivering, but it’s not too late for lawmakers to reconsider.

One committee staffer recently told reporters that lawmakers want to collect more information about the F-35 and other weapon programs. “It’s been a while since we’ve seen an independent cost estimate from the services.” If the military will provide fair information about the cost of the F-35, lawmakers could still enact a sensible budget that would slash wasteful spending on this plane.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2RP6RwD Tyler Durden

Sorry, Elon.

If it wasn’t apparent already, the state of California has effectively confirmed that Alphabet’s Waymo is the official front-runner in the battle to bring self-driving taxis to market. To wit, TechCrunch reported on Tuesday that the California Public Utilities Commission has granted Waymo permission to carry passengers in its self-driving taxis – so long as the cars remain within a limited geographic area (in this case, the South Bay) and have safety drivers at the wheel, ready to take over should some mishap occur.

So far, Waymo is the only autonomous car company that has received permission to carry passengers as part of the state’s pilot program.

Here’s more.

The California Public Utilities Commission today granted Waymo a permit on Tuesday to participate in the state’s Autonomous Vehicle Passenger Service pilot. Waymo confirmed the approval. A statement from a Waymo spokesperson provides some hints as to how and where the company intends to use this permit.

“The CPUC allows us to participate in their pilot program, giving Waymo employees the ability to hail our vehicles and bring guests on rides within our South Bay territory,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “This is the next step in our path to eventually expand and offer more Californians opportunities to access our self-driving technology, just as we have gradually done with Waymo One in Metro Phoenix.”

For these reasons, this permit is a much bigger milestone than the permissions Waymo and other autonomous car companies received to test-drive in areas around Phoenix, Ariz. and NorCal. It represents the first real concrete step toward a commercially viable passenger-carrying business.

The company also received an exemption allowing it to hire third-party contractors to work as safety drivers in its fleet (though per TC, the drivers will all participate in Alphabet’s training program).

Instead, this gives Waymo permission to use its self-driving vehicles – which are the Chrysler Pacifica hybrid minivans and eventually the Jaguar I-PACE electric vehicle – to transport people. The company still faces certain restrictions. It can’t charge for rides and the vehicles must have safety drivers behind the wheel. Waymo will also have to provide reports to CPUC with information on total passenger miles traveled and safety protocols.

The CPUC also gave Waymo an exemption that will allow the autonomous vehicle technology startup to use a third-party company to contract out safety operators. Waymo argued in a letter requesting the exemption that while the company’s “team of test drivers will include some full-time Waymo employees, operating and scaling a meaningful pilot requires a large group of drivers who are more efficiently engaged through Waymo’s experienced and specialized third-party staffing providers.”

Waymo isn’t the first company to receive this type of permit from the California Department of Motor Vehicles, but it is the first major contender in the race to build self-driving taxis to receive one.

Waymo isn’t the first to receive the permit. Back in December, Zoox scored the inaugural permit from the CPUC. Pony.ai and and AutoX, which started as an autonomous delivery company, also have received permits.

Waymo has been testing self-driving vehicles in California for years. But its first ride-hailing service began in Arizona, a state with fewer regulatory hoops for companies to jump through.

The permit comes with some important restrictions: Waymo can’t charge passengers for rides, cars must remain within the testing area, and safety drivers must accompany every ride.

But when Elon Musk predicted earlier this year that a fleet of 1 million Tesla robo taxis would be prowling the streets of the US by next year, well, most just laughed it off. But as Tesla continues to lag in the autonomous vehicle race (Tesla’s autopilot technology has resulted in the deaths of several unsuspecting Tesla owners, and who could forget how Uber shuttered its autonomous vehicle testing in Arizona after one of its cars accidentally killed a vagrant), the vaunted distinction of being the first to the robo-taxi market might belong to Alphabet instead.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2LyUaoK Tyler Durden

Authored by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

“The liberal idea has become obsolete. … (Liberals) cannot simply dictate anything to anyone as they have been attempting to do over the recent decades.”

Such was the confident claim of Vladimir Putin to the Financial Times on the eve of a G-20 gathering that appeared to validate his thesis.

Consider who commanded all the attention at the Osaka summit.

The main event was Trump’s meeting with China’s Xi Jinping and their agreement to renew trade talks. Xi runs an archipelago of detention camps where China’s Uighur Muslims and its Kazakh minority have their minds coercively “corrected.”

A major media focus at the summit was Trump’s meeting with Putin where he playfully admonished the Russian president not to meddle again in our 2020 election. The two joked about how both are afflicted with a media that generates constant fake news.

At the G-20 class picture, Trump was seen smiling and shaking hands with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whom U.S. intelligence says ordered the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

Trump called the prince “a friend” who has done a “spectacular job.”

Trump then left for Seoul, traveled to the DMZ, and crossed into North Korea to shake hands with Kim Jong Un, who runs a police state unrivaled for its repression.

Negotiations on Kim’s nuclear weapons may be back on track.

Among other G-20 leaders present were Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi of India and President Recep Erdogan of Turkey, who has imprisoned tens of thousands following a coup attempt in July 2016.

In his interview with the FT’s Lionel Barber, Putin appeared as much an analyst of, as an advocate for, the nationalism and populism that seems to be succeeding the 20th-century liberalism of the West.

Why is liberalism failing? Several causes, said Putin. Among them, its failure to deal with the crisis of the age: mass and unchecked illegal migration. Putin praised Trump’s efforts to secure the U.S. border:

“This liberal idea has become obsolete. It has come into conflict with the interests of the overwhelming majority of the population…

This liberal idea presupposes that… migrants can kill, plunder and rape with impunity because their rights as migrants have to be protected.”

Putin deplored Chancellor Angela Merkel’s 2015 decision to bring into Germany a million refugees from Syria’s civil war.

His comments came as 10 Democratic candidates in the second presidential primary debate were raising their hands in support of the proposition that breaking into the USA should cease to be a crime and those who succeed in breaking in should be given free health care.

Putin also sees the social excesses of multiculturalism and secularism in the West as representing a failure of liberalism.

In a week where huge crowds celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall “uprising” in Greenwich Village, as it is now called, with parties and parades, Putin declared:

“Have we forgotten that all of us live in a world based on biblical values? … I am not trying to insult anyone because we have been condemned for our alleged homophobia. But we have no problem with LGBT persons. God forbid, let them live as they wish.”

He added, “But some things do appear excessive to us. They claim now that children can play five or six gender roles.”

Elton John pronounced himself “deeply upset.”

Putin did not back off:

“Let everyone be happy … But this must not be allowed to overshadow the culture, traditions and traditional family values of millions of people making up the core population.”

Putin took power, two decades ago, as this 21st century began. In recent years, he has advanced himself not only as a foe of liberalism but a champion of populism, traditionalism and nationalism.

Nor is he hesitant to declare his views regarding U.S. politics.

Of Trump, Putin says, “He is a talented person (who) knows very well what his voters expect of him. … Trump looked into his opponent’s attitude toward him and saw changes in American society.”

Recalling his own controversial comment that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest tragedy of the 20th century, Putin said the tragedy was not the death of Communism but the shattering of the Russian Federation into 15 separate nations.

The tragedy was the “dispersal of ethnic Russians” across the newly independent successor states of the Soviet Union: “25 million ethnic Russians found themselves living outside the Russian Federation. … Is this not a tragedy? A huge one! And family relations? Jobs? Travel? It was nothing but a disaster.”

What may be said of Putin?

He is no Stalin, no Communist ideologue, but rather a Russian nationalist who seeks the return of her lost peoples to the Motherland, and, seeing his country as a great power, wants NATO out of his front yard.

While we have issues with him on arms control, Iran and Venezuela, we have a common interest in avoiding a war with this nuclear-armed nation as we did with the far more menacing Soviet Empire of the Cold War.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2RNsgqe Tyler Durden

With former Vice President Joe Biden’s appeal fading fast amid campaign gaffes and a royal ass-kicking by Kamala Harris during last week’s debate (which was planned months in advance), there is a growing consensus that the 2020 election will come down to Harris vs. Trump.

Not only have Harris’s poll numbers been sharply accelerating while both Biden and Bernie Sanders have suffered recent hits, she’s the clear primary winner right now according to PredictIt, which allows people to bet on the outcome. 

Want to know what else puts Harris at the top of the pack? According to the Washington Examiner‘s Jerry Dunleavy, her top campaign attorney, Marc Elias, is the same guy who hired Fusion GPS for the Clinton Campaign. 

Marc Elias, who heads Perkins Coie’s political law group, became general counsel for California Sen. Kamala Harris’ presidential bid this year. Elias, who held the same position in Clinton’s campaign, is named in two pending Federal Election Commission complaints and in a recent federal lawsuit alleging that the Clinton campaign broke campaign finance laws when it used Perkins Coie to hire Fusion GPS. –Washington Examiner

Fusion GPS, in turn, hired former MI6 spy Christopher Steele to cook up a dossier full of fabrications about then-candidate Trump and his 2016 campaign, which was then shopped to media outlets and passed along to US intelligence, where it was later used to obtain a warrant to spy on Trump campaign aide Carter Page. 

Dunleavy notes that in 2017, former Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook admitted that he authorized Elias to hire Fusion GPS, saying ““I asked our lawyer and I gave him a budget allocation to investigate this, particularly the international aspect.” Mook said he received information directly from Fusion GPS or Steele about the Trump-Russia project. 

“We were getting briefings that were put together by the law firm with information,” said Mook, adding “I’m proud that we were able to assemble some of the research that has brought this to light.” 

Watchdog groups allege that Hillary for America purposely concealed the hiring of Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele by reporting all the payments that it made to Perkins Coie as “legal services” without mentioning opposition research. Perkins Coie was paid over $12 million between 2016 and 2017 for its work representing Clinton and the DNC. According to its co-founder Glenn Simpson, Fusion GPS was in turn paid $50,000 per month from Perkins Coie, and Christopher Steele was paid roughly $168,000 by Fusion GPS for his work.

Perkins Coie admitted in an October 2017 letter that it had hired Fusion GPS, claiming that “Fusion GPS approached Perkins Coie” in March 2016 with the knowledge that Perkins Coie was representing Clinton and the DNC, and that Perkins Coie then “engaged” Fusion GPS from April of that year until just prior to the November election “to perform a variety of research services during the 2016 election cycle.” –Washington Examiner

According to an October 2017 report in the Washington Post, Elias personally “retained Fusion GPS … to conduct the research” which was “on behalf of the Clinton campaign and the DNC.” 

Meanwhile, don’t discount Elias just because the Fusion/Steele/Russia gambit didn’t pay off since Trump actually won the election, the guy is a stone-cold Democratic sharp-shooter. 

“Marc is known as one of the most skilled professionals in Democratic politics, in addition to being the party’s top election lawyer,” said former national press secretary for the Clinton campaign, Brian Fallon in 2017, adding “I am damn glad he pursued this on behalf of our campaign and only regret more of this material was not verified in time for the voters to learn it before the election.” 

Which begs the question, what will Elias be doing for the Harris campaign? 

Um… the former Hillary Clinton presidential campaign lawyer who hired the controversial Fusion GPS firm is now working for the Kamala Harris campaign

Kamala Harris is the chosen one #BlackHillary https://t.co/h5na88jlhr

— Ali Alexander (@ali) July 2, 2019

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2JomiYP Tyler Durden

After asking his lawyers to delay the census after the Supreme Court put on hold his plan to include a citizenship question in the survey next year, Fox News reports, without citing anyone, that the census will be printed without including controversial U.S. citizenship question.

As The New York Times proudly writes, the decision is a victory for critics who said the question was part of an administration effort to skew the census results in favor of Republicans.

Critics of the question have pointed to studies that indicate asking about citizenship will cause immigrants and non-citizens to skip the question or the census altogether, leading to an inaccurate count of the population, and an undercount of minority groups in particular.

This would seem to end Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’ two-year-old battle to add a question on citizenship, one that federal court judges in New York, California and Maryland have struck down as illegal, unconstitutional, or both.

This is not a total surprise, as the Trump administration had said repeatedly that the issue must be resolved by July 1 to allow enough time to send out the questionnaire by April 2020, the date set by Congress for the census to go out.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2KRy55f Tyler Durden

Authored by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog,

What if what you have been told over and over again is not really the truth?

For weeks, the mainstream media has been telling us that Iran is getting dangerously close to having nuclear weapons.  And now that the Iranians have publicly admitted that their uranium stockpile has exceeded the limit set by the nuclear deal, there is a lot of buzz that either the United States or Israel may soon strike Iran in order to prevent their nuclear program from proceeding even further.  But of course once the missiles start flying, it is going to be just about impossible to stop a major war from erupting in the Middle East. 

Before we get involved in such a war, we better make absolutely certain that Iran does not already have nuclear weapons, because a war with a nuclear-armed Iran could be absolutely cataclysmic.  If the Iranians felt that the survival of their regime was on the line, they would not hesitate to throw everything that they have at Israel and at U.S. forces in the region.  Unfortunately, very few people are talking about the well known evidence that Iran has had their hands on nukes for a long time.

In the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was a mad scramble for the nuclear weapons that were being held by Kazakhstan and Ukraine.  According to former CIA spy Reza Kahlili, during that time period Iran received at least two nuclear warheads from Kazakhstan…

Kazakhstan, which had a significant portion of the Soviet arsenal and is predominately Muslim, was courted by Muslim Iran with offers of hundreds of millions of dollars for the bomb. Reports soon surfaced that three nuclear warheads were missing. This was corroborated by Russian Gen. Victor Samoilov, who handled the disarmament issues for the general staff. He admitted that the three were missing from Kazakhstan.

Meanwhile, Paul Muenstermann, then vice president of the German Federal Intelligence Service, said Iran had received two of the three nuclear warheads and medium-range nuclear delivery systems from Kazakhstan.

If Iran did get two nuclear warheads from Kazakhstan, that is definitely very troubling, but not enough to cause Armageddon.

However, the bad news doesn’t stop there.  According to Kahlili, when Ukraine finally transferred their nuclear weapons back to Russia, there “was a discrepancy of 250 nuclear weapons”…

To make matters worse, several years later, Russian officials stated that when comparing documents in transferring nuclear weapons from Ukraine to Russia, there was a discrepancy of 250 nuclear weapons.

Last week, Mathew Nasuti, a former U.S. Air Force captain who was at one point hired by the State Department as an adviser to one of its provincial reconstruction teams in Iraq, said that in March 2008, during a briefing on Iran at the State Department, the department’s Middle East expert told the group that it was “common knowledge” that Iran had acquired tactical nuclear weapons from one or more of the former Soviet republics.

This discrepancy was also reported by the media in Russia, and one Russian journal even suggested that those 250 nuclear warheads could have been sold to Iran…

On April 3 the Russian journal Novaia Gazeta reported that 250 nuclear warheads with a total yield of 20 megatons were not returned by Ukraine to Russia.

Novaia Gazeta suggested the warheads could have been sold to a third country, possibly Iran.

The 200-kiloton warheads were due to be returned to Russia in 1992 after Ukraine declared itself a nuclear-free zone following a payment by Moscow to Kiev of approximately $500 million. The missing warheads were inventoried on papers Ukraine submitted to Moscow that were officially accepted by Russia.

If Iran is sitting on 250 nuclear warheads, it would be absolutely suicidal to get into a full-blown war with Iran.

Of course the mainstream media in the U.S. has been repeating the “fact” that Iran doesn’t have nukes for so long that most of us no longer question it.

But in 2002, one Russian general unequivocally stated that “Iran does have nuclear weapons”…

Sometime a slip of the tongue is so incredible that no amount of doctoring can explain it. And sometimes a slip of the tongue is as intentional as could be. Take an appearance by Russian Deputy Chief of Staff Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky. He gave a briefing on Friday in Moscow during the Bush-Putin summit and was asked about whether Iran actually fired the Shihab-3 intermediate-range missile in a successful test earlier this month. The second question was whether Iran can threaten Israel, Russia or the United States with its nuclear and missile programs.

Then the Russian general takes a surprise turn: ‘Now, as to whether or not Iran has tested something like that. Iran does have nuclear weapons,’ Baluyevsky said. ‘Of course, these are non-strategic nuclear weapons. I mean these are not ICBMs with a range of more than 5,500 kilometers and more.”

And all the way back in 1998, two members of the U.S. House of Representatives publicly stated that the intelligence that they had been shown indicated that the Iranians already had nukes…

Representative Jim Saxton (R-NJ), chariman of the House Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, told the Jerusalem Post  ‘I believe that Iran already has nuclear weapons and that our policy should reflect that.’ Representative Bill McCollum (R-FL), also a member of the task force, said that evidence collected by the group ‘indicates Iran possesses nuclear capability.’ He added that ‘for years, we have received reliable information that Iran has been obtaining nuclear weapons’s parts and supplies from the former Soviet republics in Central Asia. Not only have we not dismissed these reports, but over these six years there has been a growing volume of supporting evidence.’

In addition to potentially obtaining nukes from elsewhere, the Iranians also aggressively developed their own nuclear weapons program for many years prior to agreeing to Obama’s nuclear deal.  Just a couple of years ago, a former director of the CIA and several other former U.S. officials made it very clear that they believe that Iran has probably already developed their own nuclear weapons…

We assess, from U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency reports and other sources, that Iran probably already has nuclear weapons. Over 13 years ago, prior to 2003, Iran was manufacturing nuclear-weapon components, like bridge-wire detonators and neutron initiators, performing non-fissile explosive experiments of an implosion nuclear device, and working on the design of a nuclear warhead for the Shahab-III missile.

Thirteen years ago Iran was already a threshold nuclear-missile state. It is implausible that Iran suspended its program for over a decade for a nuclear deal with President Obama.

You can dismiss all of this and continue to push for war with Iran if you would like.

But what are you going to do when Iran uses their nukes and millions of people end up dead?

Iran is run by a bunch of apocalyptic nutjobs that hate us with a passion that is absolutely overwhelming.  If World War 3 breaks out in the Middle East, they would use nuclear weapons against us without even thinking twice about it.

Thankfully they do not have missiles that can reach North America, but they do have missiles that can hit U.S. targets all over the Middle East, and all of Israel is in their range.

Of course if Iran starts using nukes we will definitely nuke them back, and such a turn of events would lead to scenarios that are absolutely unthinkable to most of us right now.

Maybe it is already too late to stop a war with Iran from happening.  I certainly hope that isn’t true, because the death and destruction would be off the charts even if Iran doesn’t have nukes.

The next several months are going to be absolutely critical, and we will see what happens.  Let us pray for peace to prevail, because the alternative will be more horrible than most of us can even imagine.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2KRxxfH Tyler Durden