The auction for the annual “Power Lunch with Warren” – where bidders compete to win a 45-minute lunch with the Oracle of Omaha – took place Friday night. And on Saturday, its organizers confirmed that the winning bidder – who has opted to remain anonymous, at least for now – will shell out $4,567,888 for the opportunity.
Not only is that a new record sum for the annual charity auction, but it surpassed the previous record by $1 million – or roughly 30%. Bidding starts at $25,000, and the auction has only finished below $2 million once since 2010, according to the AP.
Buffett’s annual “Power Lunch with Warren” auction benefits an organization called Glide, which offers free meals, health care and other services to homeless and low-income individuals in San Francisco, and is an organization that Buffett’s late wife used to support. It has brought it more than $30 million in donations over decades, as bids to the event have risen from just thousands of dollars to, now, millions. Gilde helps provide meals to the homeless in San Francisco, which are then ostensibly defecated on the streets of the city, as we observed in “Behold, The Shit Map“.
Glide Chief Executive Officer Karen Hanrahan told Bloomberg: “A lot of the trend lines around homelessness, poverty and inequality are getting worse. The lines outside of our doors keep getting longer. The funds that we’ve raised with Warren Buffett have allowed us to be just responsive to the community and responsive to the needs of the city.”
* * *
The lunch will be held at Smith & Wollensky, Buffett’s favorite steakhouse in New York City. The winner can bring up to seven friends (split eight ways, that $4.6 million price tag comes to roughly $575,000 a head).
However, as WSJ’s Jason Gay argues, if you’ve committed to shelling out all of this money, it might make more sense to go alone. After all, is it really worth taking the risk that one of you idiot friends might monopolize the conversation and waste all of your precious time with Buffett? Keep in mind that one previous winner, Ted Weschler, was offered a job at Berkshire by Buffett.
And though it’s tempting to dismiss this year’s winning bid as just one more example of the market froth that could potentially portend a turn in the business cycle, in at least one (albeit morbid) sense, we feel that hefty price tag can be justified. After all, nobody lives forever. And although Buffett is, by all accounts, in good health (despite subsisting on a diet of cheeseburgers and Coke), every ‘lunch with Warren’ is, well, one less ‘lunch with Warren’.
Plus, after a few relatively quiet years for Berkshire, so far, 2019 has been an eventful one for the firm: The Kraft Heinz accounting debacle and Berkshire’s decision to back Occidental’s bid for Anadarko were both major business stories. And Buffett hasn’t been stingy with granting interview requests, including a lengthy discussion at Berkshire’s Omaha offices with three reporters from the FT.
So whoever the winning bidder may be, at least he or she will have plenty to talk about.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2EL7rGn Tyler Durden
All across the nation, students are being prodded like cattle into classrooms, and the one-size-fits-all approach is failing them.
There is a popular saying that “the proof is in the pudding.” In the first part of this article set, my colleague Mike Margeson spelled out the historical roots of the American schooling system. He clearly laid out the blueprint that men like Horace Mann used to build a system that does anything but “educates.” Factor in that trillions of dollars have been spent on schooling, and it makes it even harder to justify.
A Broken System
Yet we continue to hear the “Red for Ed” crowd scream for more funding. Here in the state of Indiana, the superintendent of public education is leading an assault on the state legislature for a meager 2 percent increase in state funding. Many educators are characterizing this as a decrease in funding! In no other walk of life would we continue to pour so many resources into a failed system. If you had any doubt about this after reading Part One, let me present you with some facts.
In what was one of many fiery speaking engagements, the late John Taylor Gatto delivered a line that has resonated with me as I have studied the effects the public schooling system has on children. In this particular speech, Gatto was recounting the story of Jaime Escalante, the educator who successfully taught calculus at Garfield High School in Los Angeles yet was forced to resign.
As he finishes describing the trials and fate of Escalante, Gatto explains that above racism and other forms of bigotry is the embedded idea that what really occurred was a deliberate attempt to stop genuine learning. Earlier in the speech, Gatto laid out a compelling case of how and why schooling is meant to keep citizens ignorant. This success at an inner city school was not going to be tolerated by the establishment. He implored his listeners to understand the real problem and to quit “fencing with shadows.”
Flushing Money Down the Drain
So what does this mean? Throughout history, compulsory schooling has consistently been viewed as not only progressive but also in need of reform. The most common method of reform has been to throw piles of money at the problem. According to the Department of Education’s (DOE) website, the DOE spent an estimated $69.4 billion in 2017. Compare that to the initial $2.9 billion ($23 billion adjusted for inflation) budgeted under the Elementary and Secondary School Act of 1965.
To put this into context, education spending as a percent of gross domestic product has gone from 2.6 percent in the 1950s to 6.1 percent as recently as 2010. This is just a look at federal spending; each state also allocates a portion of their budget to education, with California leading the way at over $72 million. Finally, we have seen a tremendous amount of private capital injected to help reform schools. Institutions such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have invested billions of dollars in education. All this spending must be yielding better results, right? Let’s take a look.
Contrary to what those in public education will tell you, the system is flush with cash, which generates very few positive results. Take New York as an example. The state was front and center in the reform battle during President Obama’s Race to the Top (RTT) initiative. Leading up to the controversial dash for cash, the city had been experiencing an education overhaul, including battles over charters and a knock-down fight with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his Board of Education chief, Joel Klein, and the powerful unions. The state was seeing an infusion of Wall Street cash backing charters, which were being throttled by state Democrats and union bosses.
In addition to the almost $700 million in RTT funds and the $61.4 million spent at the state level, the city of New York saw millions of dollars invested from groups like Democrats for Education Reform (DFER). So what are the results of these investments? According to Cornell University’s NYC Education Data program, less than half of all eighth graders in the state are proficient in English language arts and math. We see this same type of result across the country.
Indeed, these results do not stack up well internationally, either. A 2015 Organization for Economic Cooperation Development report shows just how far behind American students are falling. The average score for 15-year-olds in math, language, and science on the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) test for the US was 470. Only Mexico (402), Chile (423) and Turkey (420) had lower scores. Thirty-one other nations had scores higher than the US, with Japan leading the way at 532.
Where to Look for Solutions
Why, in 2019, after all the money spent and all the reforms that have been instituted, are we still seeing such horrific results in our schools? The answer is much simpler than it has been made out to be: The system is broken. There is no remedy to fix this system. It is fundamentally flawed. The famous saying that you cannot fix a problem with the same mind that created it rings so true. So if reform will not work, what are we to do?
Again, the answer is simple: unschool. First, let’s be clear—charters and virtual schools are not desired long-term outcomes. They are soft variants of the current system, and while they may show growth in the short-term, in the long run, they still stifle learning due to government regulation. There are many methods for accomplishing the goal of unschooling. Some systems are already in place, such as homeschooling. Another great model is the Sudbury School. This is a democratic system of education that allows students the autonomy to determine their own paths of learning.
All across the nation, students are being prodded like cattle into classrooms, and the one-size-fits-all approach is failing them. They are bored and uninterested, and we blame them. We tell them and their parents that there is something medically wrong with them—that they need medication and counseling. This ought to weigh on the minds of every adult in America as cruel and abusive. Only systems that return power, and ultimately the desire to learn in children, will suffice. We need more educators like John Taylor Gatto to speak up and have the courage to buck the system. We need more leaders like Kerry McDonald and Dr. Peter Gray, who have led the charge in researching and promoting the unschooling model. Until that time, we will keep fencing with shadows.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2Ir7hp1 Tyler Durden
More details about DeWayne Craddock, the Virginia Beach civil engineer who killed 12 people and wounded nearly half a dozen others (including a police officer) on Friday during “protracted gun battle” inside the municipal building where he had worked, have started to emerge over the weekend.
And from a series of interviews with those who had worked with Craddock, a vague understanding of what may have been his motive has started to emerge.
DeWayne Craddock
While Craddock had no history of violence at work or in his personal life, according to the New York Times, he had been involved in a violent incident in the workplace in recent weeks, and had been warned that disciplinary action would be taken.
City officials including City Manager David Hansen said Craddock “was still employed” by the city at the time of the attack. “He had a security pass like all employees had and he was authorized to enter the building.”
However, the Washington Post reported Sunday morning that Craddock had resigned from his position by email Friday morning, just hours before the shooting began.
Despite having no history of aggressive behavior, Craddock had begun acting strangely in recent weeks, even getting into “scuffles” with other works. He had even got into a violent altercation on city grounds, and was warned that disciplinary action would be taken.
Though his motives weren’t clear, his neighbors had told reporters on Saturday that Craddock’s wife had abruptly left him in the not-too-distant past.
When he stormed Building 2, the building where he had worked for more than a decade, helping to manage the city’s water and sanitary sewer system, Craddock was armed with two .45-calber hand guns, at least one of which was outfitted with a silencer, and loaded with extended magazines. Two more guns were later found inside his home.
Police have yet to comment on a possible motive, and the reasons behind Craddock’s sudden lurch toward staggering violence remain unclear.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2JRID3L Tyler Durden
At tipping points like now, the steps we take in the present determine our future…
Bill was 48 when his wife stunned him with a request for divorce. Right up until that moment, he’d thought everything was fine.
He’d been pouring all his energy into his work to provide a very comfortable life for his wife and 2 children. But she was unhappy and fell out of love while Bill wasn’t paying attention to matters at home. He’d taken her for granted and forgot to be present for the most important people in his life, and to be grateful in the moment.
After she was gone, Bill was filled with emptiness and regret. All he wanted was to get her back, but it was too late. The damage had been done. What he had before was now in the past.
This parable of Bill’s loss serves as a reminder to all of us that, with all that’s awry in the world, it’s all too easy for those of us who are paying attention to gripe about everything that’s going wrong.
Yes, there are many trends that are headed on the wrong trajectory. But this tumultuous period of history also affords each of us the fantastic opportunity to contribute positively to the new future that’s on the way.
Please take this article an invitation to be grateful for what you have, and to notice just how wonderful our current lifestyle truly is. It won’t remain this way, as I’ll expound on in a moment.
So take the time to be grateful, hug those that you love, and feed the parts of your life that nourish you most. Maintaining perspective in times such as these is really important.
The truth is that we happen to be alive at a time of peak abundance and technological miracles. It’s never been easier or more comfortable to be a human. On nearly every dimension — longevity, dependable access to food, quality of shelter, personal safety, leisure time, intellectual pursuits, technological advancements — no previous generation of humans have enjoyed the excesses and luxuries that we currently do.
What are you going to do with that good fortune while it lasts?
The ‘Good Old Days’
Once I truly understood the role of net energy in delivering the miraculous abundance we experience, and then connected that to the impending decline of global fossil fuels, I came to a startling conclusion: These are the “good old days”.
This is as good as it gets. This is as easy and wonderful as it’s ever been for the average human on earth. And we’re now at (actually, likely past) the peak. Soon, everyone will fondly reminisce about this soon-to-be-bygone era:
“Remember when you could just hop on a plane and go anywhere in the world for the cost of just a day or two of your income?”
“Or how about walking into a grocery store, anytime of the year, and buying whatever fresh veggies you wanted — at any time of the day or night, no matter what season it was? Remember that?”
Today’s daily miracle of life is insanely good. Simply click a mouse button and in just a day or two the big, brown truck of happiness rolls up your driveway delivering goodies. Or blythely sleep through a painless surgical procedure. Maybe use GPS to navigate the worst Boston commute as you smoothly glide in a well-engineered personal chariot with 150 horses under the hood.
Face it, we have it better than true royalty did just 100 years ago.
But it won’t last. It can’t. The flows of energy that are required to maintain the complexity of our current system simply aren’t there.
These energy systems which make our current global economy run are still 80% reliant on fossil fuels. So are our current alternative energy systems — which are are still mined, refined, built and installed using fossil fuels. There are exactly zero full-cycle alternative energy systems that can be rebuilt using their own energy output. As Nate Hagens wisely says: they are not really renewable energy systems, but replaceable energy systems.
We could and we should be doing things very differently here at this moment in human history. But we’re acting like we always have; ignoring problems up until the point things start breaking badly. This is simply insane with nearly 8 billion people on the planet (quickly heading towards 10 billion) and yet we have no comprehensive plan for weaning ourselves off of fossil fuels.
Looking out at the next 20 years is downright frightening.
By 2040, we’ll be well past the point of Peak Oil if this model is correct (which is running three scenarios based on how much oil there might be, low med, and high):
The implications of oil’s inevitable and predictable decline are so profound that it’s a crime you’re only reading about it here and maybe one or two other “fringe” places on the net. Given its importance to everyone living on the planet today, it should be constant front page news everywhere.
Once we’re past peak production of oil, the entire suburban Ponzi experiment folds like a cheap card table, modern industrial agriculture becomes too expensive to continue, and the entirety of the financial system loses its motive power.
But, there’s no plan at all for addressing this. Not from any national government that I’ve seen. And I’ve been tracking this predicament for 15 years now.
Which brings me back to gratitude, which I think will be critical for dealing with the coming grief of losing our current comforts.
Having gratitude for what you do have is infinitely better for your mental well-being than worrying about what you don’t, or won’t, have. When I fly somewhere I’m grateful for the magical speed and ease of the technology. When I fill up my gas tank on my car, I’m grateful for the incredibly complex supply chains and financial systems that have to be in place for that to happen.
‘It’s not having what you want, it is wanting what you’ve got.’
~ Sheryl Crow
We really better appreciate all we have right now. Because our modern lifestyle just can’t last.
Don’t Be Like Bill
Bill made mistakes and now lives with regrets. Don’t be like Bill.
It’s perfectly clear that much of what we take for granted today is the product of multiple unsustainable systems all trundling towards the day when they fail.
We’re in ecological overshoot; which means the birds, bees and big game still around today may be extinct in our lifetime. And along with them, much of our food web.
Imagine the regret we’ll feel then.
We’re also in debt overshoot; which means that a future of economic austerity awaits as companies and households start to fail in large number. Whether the killing blow comes via deflation or inflation is academic at this point. The end result will be the same: less prosperity and opportunity for all — because we splurged today without thought for how we’d pay tomorrow’s bills when they arrived.
Imagine our regret then.
We’re burning through the last dregs of high-net energy oil. And we’re in population overshoot, too. Replacing that oil and feeding so many of ourselves will take energy — lots and lots of energy — but where will it come from? We don’t yet know at this point. And we’re not even yet admitting to ourselves that we have a problem. A big problem. So we’re highly likely to slam head-first into the biggest global ever energy crisis modern man has ever seen.
Imagine our regret when that day arrives.
What Happens Next
While all this probably sounds depressing, it’s doesn’t have to be.
It’s just how things stand today. But there is still time to improve our destiny, at least, at the individual level.
Let this wake-up call become your invitation to bring your very best self to the game. You can either choose to be engaged in the reformation of life on this planet, or be carried along by the changes as they emerge (which will probably be far less enjoyable than the former option).
The true opportunity here is for each of us to appreciate that this is the one and only shot we’re going to get at life, as far as we know. So make of it what you can.
That’s the invitation.
Our ‘tribe’ here at Peak Prosperity is full of people actively engaged in answering this invitation by bringing their best selves. It really is community of high-achieving quality thinkers and doers unlike any other. I invite you to join us.
Together, we’re facing these multiple problems and predicaments head on, and using them as motivation to align ourselves and our actions with the world as it truly exists — not as we wish it were.
It’s not easy. But then again nothing worthwhile ever is.
In Part 2: Preparing For The Reckoning we forecast what is most likely to happen next as the current policies in play begin failing. How few years left of status quo can we enjoy before the repercussions become too painful to ignore?
What can we each do today to improve our own destiny tomorrow?
At tipping points like now, our future is dependent on the steps we take in the present.
As Tesla Model S vehicles now start to age beyond a few years, it seems that more and more of them are winding up somehow catching fire. The latest example comes from Belgium, where a Tesla Model S caught fire and completely burned down while plugged in at a Supercharger in Antwerp. Dutch media is reporting that the vehicle caught fire “a little while” after starting to charge, according to electrek:
“The driver of the car had parked it at a so-called ‘Supercharger’, a fast charging station, at the Novotel at Luithagen-Haven. When he returned a little later, his Tesla and the supercharger were lit up. Possibly there was a technical problem before charging.”
Firefighters were so concerned about the vehicle reigniting that they lifted the vehicle up with a crane and submerged it into a pool of water, which is usually the worst possible idea when dealing with a chemical fire:
“Moments later, the fire was extinguished by the fire department by immersing the car in a container with water. To ensure that the fire does not flare up again, the Tesla, or what remains of it, remained in the water for the rest of the night.”
Tesla did not immediately return a request for comment. Recall, in 2016 a Tesla Model S also caught fire while at a Supercharger station in Norway. Interestingly enough, in that case, firefighters were told “not to use water” to try and extinguish the battery fire.
And even the pro-Tesla blog at electrek can’t help but make an astute observation: “It seems like there have been many Tesla fires lately and they seem to all be Model S vehicles. We know of at least 4 in the past 2 months.”
As a result of the 2016 fire, Tesla wound up pushing a software update and blaming a “short circuit” in the the car. Tesla also recently has pushed a software update as a result of numerous vehicles appearing to spontaneously combust – one recently in China, and another in Hong Kong. We hope that this update is more effective than the one issued in 2016.
And that’s not the only piece of bad news for Tesla this weekend. Investigators have been probing a fatal crash in Florida that killed a pedestrian back in April after blowing through an intersection.
22-year-old Benavides Leon Naibel died after the impact of the crash threw her about 20 feet into the woods at the intersection. 27-year-old Angulo Dillion, who was with her, was in serious condition. A Monroe County Sheriff’s Office deputy was the first to find them.
Until this weekend, authorities were unsure as to whether or not the car’s Autopilot function had been engaged at the time of the accident, when the vehicle failed to stop at a 3 way stop sign intersection.
While investigators told the FL Keys News that the investigation into Autopilot was still ongoing, the article notes that driver George McGee had dropped his phone, looked down and subsequently ran the stop sign. The driver later told Monroe County Deputy Joel Torres that the car was on “cruise control” when he dropped the phone.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2wEb4tf Tyler Durden
Congressional Republicans have set their sights on former FBI Director James Comey and former CIA Director John Brennan for their roles in the Trump-Russia ‘witch hunt’ that may have been conducted illegally using flimsy evidence.
In particular, GOP lawmakers along with President Trump are looking to blame the two former intelligence chiefs over the use of the highly controversial Steele report – created by former UK spy Christopher Steele .
The dossier, a shadowy document that makes a series of salacious allegations about Trump, has long been a flashpoint for Republicans.
Some Republicans allege that FBI investigators relied too heavily on it to obtain a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant on former Trump campaign aide Carter Page. Some of the allegations in the dossier have been verified, while others were proven false or remain unsubstantiated. –The Hill
In May, a dispute erupted over whether Comey or Brennan pushed to include the Steele Dossier in the US intelligence community assessment (ICA) on Russian interference. According to Fox News, an email chain exists indicating that Comey told his subordinates that Brennan insisted on the dossier’s inclusion, while a former CIA official “put the blame squarely on Comey,” according to the report.
According to former Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), communications between Comey and Brennan are the key to unlocking the decisions behind the dossier.
“Whoever is investigating this, tell them to look for emails between Brennan and Comey in December of 2016,” Gowdy told Fox News‘s Sean Hannity last month.
Republican lawmakers took Gowdy’s cue.
“Comey and Brennan have made a lot of statements, some under oath, about the origins of the Trump Russia investigation, the timing and role of the Steele dossier and reasons for surveillance of Trump campaign officials. As I’ve been saying for awhile now, some of that is inconsistent with the contents of classified documents and the sworn testimony of other witnesses,” Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas), a member of the Judiciary Committee, told The Hill.
“And more recently, some of what Brennan and Comey have been saying is now inconsistent with one another. As Attorney General Barr said this morning, it just doesn’t jive. Someone isn’t telling the truth,” he continued. –The Hill
Attorney General William Barr has placed Connecticut US attorney John Duham in charge of reviewing the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation, while President Trump gave Barr complete power to declassify information linked to the investigation – leading Democrats to suggest that Trump would ‘pursue a political agenda’ while investigating the politicized ‘witch hunt’ against him.
“Selectively declassifying sources and methods in order to serve a political agenda will make it harder for the intelligence community to do their jobs protecting this country from those who wish to do us harm,” said Senate Intelligence Vice Chairman Mark Warner (D-VA).
Perhaps Congressional Republicans will focus next on Joseph Mifsud – the Maltese professor and Clinton ally who ‘seeded’ the rumor that Russia had dirt on Hillary Clinton.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2IhJGXF Tyler Durden
With the news that Julian Assange is “wasting away” in Belmarsh prison hospital, and with UN rapporteur Professor Nils Melzer’s report detailing how this happens, I’m once again drawn towards the lawlessness that all “authorities” involved in his case have been displaying, and with impunity. They all apparently think they are literally above the law. Their own laws.
But they can’t be, nowhere, not above their respective national laws nor the international ones their countries have signed up to. They can’t, because that would instantly make any and all laws meaningless. So you tell me where we find ourselves today.
There’s this paragraph in an article by Jonathan Cook entitled Abuses Show Assange Case Was Never About Law, which lists “17 glaring anomalies in Assange’s legal troubles”, that sums it all up pretty perfectly:
Australia not only refused Assange, a citizen, any help during his long ordeal, but prime minister Julia Gillard even threatened to strip Assange of his citizenship, until it was pointed out that it would be illegal for Australia to do so.
See, Cook is already skipping a step there. Gillard didn’t take Assange’s citizenship away, because that is against Australian law, but it’s just as much against Australian law for a government to let one of its citizens rot in some kind of hell. Still, they did let him rot, but as an Australian citizen. At that point, what difference does anything make anymore?
This is a pattern that runs through the entire Assange “file”, and it does so to pretty astonishing levels. Where you’re forced to think that the countries involved effectively have no laws, and no courts, because if they did, the actions by their governments would surely be whistled back by parliaments or judges or someone, anyone. They’re all essentially lawless.
There are 5 principal countries involved in the case (that doesn’t absolve any other country from its own responsibility for speaking out when international laws are broken). In alphabetical order, they are Australia, Ecuador, Sweden, the UK and the US. We can go through them in that order.
Australia: The above already mostly sums up where Australia comes up short, i.e. fails miserably to such an extent that both its legal and its political system should long have sounded a five alarm -but didn’t-. A government cannot abandon its own citizens abroad, just because it doesn’t agree with what that citizen has done or said.
It can’t do that even if that citizen is a Hannibal Lecter or an Adolf Hitler, and Julian Assange is very far removed from either. Nor has anyone ever even claimed that Assange broke even one Australian law, let alone proven it. What it comes down to then is that it’s the government that has broken its own laws, not Assange. That, too, is a pattern, it holds for all 5 countries I mentioned above.
It’s not Assange who breaks laws and should be persecuted for that, it’s the politicians who form the governments of these countries. Plus of course the parliamentarians tasked with controlling them. And the legal systems as well as the press tasked with controlling the entire system.
UN rapporteur Nils Melzer says in his report: “Australia is a glaring absence in this case. They’re just not around, as if Assange was not an Australian citizen. That is not the correct way of dealing with that.”
Ecuador: This country’s former president, Rafael Correa, followed international law on asylum in the exact way it was framed and intentioned, by granting Julian Assange asylum in the summer of 2012. But his successor and former friend Lenin Moreno broke that law in the most flagrant ways imaginable.
Ecuador is a signatory country to both the United Nations Human Rights Council and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. Moreno’s actions, which have led to UK police dragging Assange out of the Ecuador embassy in London, which international law says is Ecuadorian territory in which the UK has no jurisdiction, violate an entire litany of laws, rules and regulations phrased by both these international bodies, as well as Ecuador’s own laws (if only because they ARE a signatory member of both).
Asylum laws, necessarily international, have zero meaning if and when a country seeks to (re-)interpret them whenever the wind changes direction and/or a new government is installed. Asylum laws are there to last. You can’t throw out a person your country has previously granted asylum just because someone offers you a bag of money. That is the exact reason why there are such laws.
And every single country that is a signatory to these laws MUST protest what Moreno did to Assange, lest the laws covering asylum become invalid overnight. Well, that’s what they have become in April. For every single country, and for every single human being. That’s how far-reaching the events are.
Does phrasing it like that perhaps make it -a little bit- clearer how big an issue this is, that if it doesn’t apply to Assange, it by default doesn’t apply to anyone anymore? That his case wipes out many decades of jurisprudence, established after, and because of, two world wars and many other atrocities? That Assange’s treatment throws us back in time at least a full century?
Everyone NOT protesting what has been done to Assange had better think again. If you are a law student, lawyer, a judge in a democratic country, you have an obligation here, as much as all politicians have. It makes no difference what you think about Assange or what he’s done.
Sweden: The Swedes have sex crime laws that apparently are different from anyone else’s, more strict etc. Maybe they think they know better than everyone else?! In Assange’s story, this means they have closed the file on him on 2010, 2013 and 2017, but re-opened it again and again, for reasons that are not immediately clear -to me-.
This appears to indicate that once you’re suspected, let alone accused, of for instance rape, you may never be able to clear your name anymore. And don’t let’s forget that Assange was never charged with anything, not one single thing, all the way back to 2010.
From what we know, the two women mentioned in the case never wanted to file a complaint against him. But the police did. And then that complaint was thrown out. And revived. He was specifically allowed to leave the country after staying on for over a month, and then shortly after he did leave for London a Swedish prosecutor filed an Interpol Red Notice against him, something hitherto exclusively reserved for terrorists and war criminals.
Prosecutor Marianne Ny refused to interview Assange in London for years, though other such interviews – by Swedish prosecutors in Britain- took place 44 times during Assange’s stay in the Ecuador embassy. The UK even told Sweden not to close the case. And there’s still so much more that happened in Sweden. There is a term for a country that behaves like this: a rogue state.
The UK: Former UK ambassador and Assange adviser Craig Murray probably summarizes it best today when he says the UK has become a rogue state. This is true as well for Australia, Ecuador, Sweden and the US. It is the inevitable consequence of flouting the law.
Professor Melzer is the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture. Professor Melzer is Swiss. He is an extremely distinguished lawyer and Professor of International Law at the University of Glasgow in addition to Professor of International Humanitarian Law at the Geneva Academy. He served 12 years as a Red Cross Delegate. There is no doubting either Professor Melzer’s expertise or his independence in this matter. When Professor Melzer says that “UK courts have not shown the objectivity and impartiality required by law”, people should sit up and listen.
I have detailed judge Michael Snow calling Assange a “narcissistic personality” in a brief hearing in which Assange had said virtually nothing but “not guilty”, on the basis of prejudice Snow brought with him into the courtroom. Snow convicted him summarily of bail jumping and sentenced him to a virtually unprecedented 50 weeks.
I have detailed Judge Arbuthnot, wife of a former Tory Defence Minister who co-owns a company with a former Head of MI6, mocking Assange and saying he can get all the exercise his health required on a Juliet balcony, as she dismissed a motion to have the bail charges dropped. I have detailed Judge Phillips of the Supreme Court choosing to rely on the French text and discount the English text of a treaty in arguing extradition was in order.
The bias of the British courts has been palpable and stinking.[..] when the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary and Illegal detention ruled that Julian was being held against his will in the Ecuadorean Embassy and should be permitted to leave to Ecuador, in repudiating the UN Working Group – whom the UK had supported in every single one of hundreds of previous cases – then Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond stood up in the Commons and denounced the UN Working Group as being “lay people not lawyers”, when in fact every single one of the panel is an extremely distinguished international lawyer.
Hammond’s lie to parliament did not surprise me; but I was genuinely astonished that the entire corporate and state media went along with this most blatant of lies and did not call it out. The BBC, Times, Financial Times, Guardian all reported Hammond’s comment that the UN panel were “not lawyers”. None of them would agree to publish a correction of this basic and easily verifiable fact.
Britain no longer makes a pretence of obeying the rule of international law. It simply refuses to acknowledge the concerns of the UN in the Assange case, happily dependent on the bubble of prejudice the political and media elite have manufactured. This is part of a general pattern of direspecting the UN. Theresa May as Home Secretary refused to let the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women inside Yarls Wood immigration detention centre to inspect conditions there. The Tory government reacted to the recent shocking UN report on poverty in the UK – none of the basic facts of which are challenged – by seeking to have the UN Rapporteur removed.
When you add this together with the UK’s refusal to accept the 13-1 Opinion of the International Court of Justice that the Chagos Islands belong to Mauritius, and the UK’s refusal to accept the ruling of the agreed International Chambers of Commerce Court of Arbitration that Britain must pay its debt to Iran, you get what is a very clear picture that the UK has gone full rogue state and has simply abandoned its support for the system of international law which was in very large part a UK creation.
UK Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt yesterday thought attack is the best defense and called out Professor Melzer for his criticism of the UK. Melzer responded by implying Hunt doesn’t know his own laws.
I was thinking when I saw the “conversation” that Hunt is basically implying Assange tortured himself. And that doesn’t just demonstrate poor knowledge of the law, that is full-blast BS. Because no matter what led to Assange seeking refuge in the Ecuador embassy, according to international law he always, under any and all circumstances, has (among other things) the right to proper medical care. The UK has refused him that.
It doesn’t even have anything to do with him being free to leave or not. Which he evidently was not. Moreover, other than skipping bail Assange didn’t do anything illegal, and under asylum laws, he had a right to skip bail. Once again, it’s not Assange who has broken laws, it’s everyone else involved in this tragic saga. And even if Assange had broken a law, he still would have had the right to proper medical care.
The US: Where to even start? The American hunt for Assange is a decade old and has recently escalated when they could get heir hands on the new Ecuador president. Then they invoked the much ridiculed 1917 Espionage Act to accuse a foreign national of spying. And whatever Assange has done, spying it is not.
But they obviously think they can get Eastern District of Virginia Judge Leonie Brinkema (aka the hanging judge) to pretend that it is, or at least that some of what he’s done falls under a law that almost everyone agrees should have been abolished long ago.
What Nils Melzer also mentioned in his report on Assange is that certain parts of the Espionage Act allow for the death penalty. Not those that he has been charged under so far, but they could attempt to stick them on. Which would make it illegal for the UK to extradite Julian Assange. But who still thinks these people give one flying hoot about the law?
For them, laws are things they use to further their means, nothing else. Other than that, they care nothing for the laws that govern their countries, even though they are the very same laws that allowed them to assume their power.
They think they’re going to get away with the murder of Julian Assange. Unhindered by any law. That means there no longer is a functioning -international- legal system. There are only rogue states left.
Observing diplomatic protocol has never been high on President Trump’s list of priorities, and why would it be? After all, it was his propensity for expressing his unfiltered opinion that helped endear him to the American public. So, as he prepares to embark Monday on a state visit to the UK where he will honor the soldiers who fought in ‘D-Day’, it’s worth asking: Why would he start now?
In keeping with his history of offering his unsolicited advice to the UK over its fumbling Brexit strategy, Trump has once again dived headlong into the kingdom’s biggest issues of the day: The ongoing Brexit negotiations, and the Tory leadership contest to install the UK’s next prime minister.
During an interview with the Sunday Times, Trump explained how he would handle negotiations with the EU if he were in Theresa May’s shoes. Instead of committing to pay the $50 billion ‘divorce settlement’ to which the UK is legally obligated, Trump would tell the bloc to kick rocks – then sue them if they complained.
Because she lacked the temerity to make these bold decisions, Theresa May, Trump said, had left the UK in a very difficult position (if only she had taken his advice!). Now, the UK has “very little to lose” in its Brexit-related negotiations.
“If I were them I wouldn’t pay $50 billion. That is me. I would not pay, that is a tremendous number,” Trump told the Sunday Times.
If a deal can’t be reached by the Oct. 31 extended deadline, then the UK should simply “walk away,” Trump added.
“If they don’t get what they want I would walk away. If you don’t get the deal you want, if you don’t get a fair deal, then you walk away,”
President Trump went on to praise his “friend” Nigel Farage, whose Brexit Party just won a sweeping plurality of the vote in last months’ EU Parliamentary elections, and recommended that whoever May’s successor might be, they should seriously consider sending Farage to Brussels to lead the next round of Brexit negotiations. Trump said it was “a mistake” not to include Farage in Brexit negotiations and encouraged the next prime minister to send him to Brussels.
“I like Nigel a lot. He has a lot to offer. He is a very smart person. They won’t bring him in. Think how well they would do if they did. They just haven’t figured that out yet,” Trump said.
One day earlier, Trump angered most of the candidates vying for the Tory leadership when he offered his unsolicited endorsement of Boris Johnson – who has encountered some resistance from his fellow Tories in recent days despite being the frontrunner among the party’s membership (who will ultimately vote on the top two candidates on the leadership ballot).
“I like him. I have always liked him. I don’t know that he is going to be chosen, but I think he is a very good guy, a very talented person. He has been very positive about me and our country.”
Following Trump’s endorsement, Liz Truss, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, endorsed Johnson, cementing the former foreign secretary’s first cabinet-level endorsement.
Trump added that other candidates had approached him in a bid to secure his endorsement, saying that he could “help anybody” he were to endorse.
“I could help anybody if I endorse them. I mean, we’ve had endorsements where they have gone up for 40, 50 points at a shot.”
But as Trump prepares to depart across the Atlantic, where he and his four adult children will meet the Queen, as well as Prince Harry, William and his wife, Kate, one individual will be conspicuously absent: The Dutchess of Sussex, Megan Markle, who will reportedly be home tending to her newborn son, Archie. Trump created a controversy late last week when he said that he didn’t know “that she was nasty” after being confronted with a comment she made about moving to Canada if Trump had won. Though Trump followed that up by praising Markle, saying he thought she made “a very good” American princess.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2QEUkvt Tyler Durden
Rep. Devin Nunes (D-CA) on Saturday called for the immediate release of “all backup and source information” for the Mueller report after internet sleuth @almostjingo (Rosie Memos) discovered that the special counsel’s office deceptively edited content which was then cited as evidence of possible obstruction.
“It’s all a fraud” tweeted Nunes, replying to a tweet by @JohnWHuber (Undercover Huber), who also posted a comparison between the Mueller report and a newly released transcript of a November 2017 voicemail message left by former Trump lawyer John Dowd, in which he asked former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s attorney for a “heads up” if Flynn was planning on saying anything that might damage the president.
Mueller omitted key context suggesting that Dowd was trying to strongarm Flynn and possibly obstruct, while the actual voicemail reveals that Dowd was careful not to tread into obstruction territory in what was a friendly and routine call between lawyers.
Dowd qualifies his request by saying “without you having to give up any…confidential information” in order to determine “If, on the other hand, we have, there’s information that…implicates the President, then we’ve got a national security issue, or maybe a national security issue, I don’t know… some issue, we got to-we got to deal with, not only for the President but for the country.”
Mueller’s edits omit this key context, strengthening the argument for obstruction.
Once again #MuellerReport edited messages to make them appear more damaging, full transcript of this phone call reveals Dowd’s message was pretty typical for a lawyer and he clearly states he’s not interested in any confidential info. What else did they manipulate🙄 pic.twitter.com/7JHRzgmh3Y
When reached for comment by attorney ‘Techno Fog’ (@Techno_Fog), Dowd said of the edits: “It is unfair and despicable. It was a friendly privileged call between counsel – with NO conflict. I think Flynn got screwed.”
EXCLUSIVE
We got a statement from former Trump lawyer John Dowd, responding to the Special Counsel’s deceptive edits of his voicemail to Flynn’s lawyer
“It is unfair and despicable. It was a friendly privileged call between counsel – with NO conflict. I think Flynn got screwed” pic.twitter.com/gizOEl0Fxu
Dowd told Fox News: “During the joint defense relationship, counsel for the president provided to Flynn’s counsel documents, advice and encouragement to provide to SC [the special counsel] as part of his effort to cooperate with the SC,” adding “SC never raised or questioned the president’s counsel about these allegations despite numerous opportunities to do so.“
Flynn pleaded guilty last year to lying to the FBI about contacts with Russians and is currently awaiting sentencing.
DOJ stonewalls on Flynn evidence
Meanwhile, the Justice Department has resisted a court order to release the transcripts of Flynn’s conversations with Russian officials, including former Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
This raises at least two questions. First, did the DOJ give Flynn the transcripts? And second, did the DOJ violate a previous court order from Judge Emmett Sullivan to produce evidence during discovery?
Note that the 5/16 Order required the production of “the transcripts of any other audio recordings of Mr. Flynn, including, but not limited to, audio recordings of Mr. Flynn’s conversations with Russian officials”
Compliance may be an issue. Awaiting Judge response…
China’s media propaganda campaign against the US in the increasingly dirty trade war between the two superpowers can be roughly divided into five parts. As the Economist’s Simon Rabinovitch broke down the various phases, these can be grouped roughly as follows: 1) quiet optimism; 2) reassessment; 3) put the theory to the test; 4) US failure is inevitable.
Today marks the 16th straight day of People’s Daily 钟声 (loosely, “Voice of China”) commentaries on the trade war. We’re into the US-failure-is-inevitable phase, on the heels of the your-China-theory-is-wrong phase. Here’s my breakdown of the flow: pic.twitter.com/fg2u8L3egN
And, as of this weekend, we now appear to be in the “despondent acceptance” phase (unlike the Kubler-Ross model, acceptance precedes anger and nuclear war), because as Xinhua reported overnight, China is now laying the blame squarely on the US for the breakdown of trade talks between the world’s two biggest economies, but hinted at its willingness to resume stalled negotiations with Washington while rejecting any attempt to force concessions from Beijing.
In a white paper on China’s official position on the trade talks released by the State Council Information Office on Sunday, Beijing made it clear the US government “should bear the sole and entire responsibility” for the current stalemate, and hit back at allegations that Beijing had backtracked from its earlier promises.
The trade war has not “made America great again,” the white paper said, but has done serious harm to the U.S. economy by increasing production costs, causing higher prices hikes, damaging growth and people’s livelihoods, as well as creating barriers to U.S. exports to China.
“It is foreseeable that the latest U.S. tariff hikes on China, far from resolving issues, will only make things worse for all sides,” according to the white paper, which also listed details of what it described as U.S. backtracking.
“The Chinese government rejects the idea that threats of a trade war and continuous tariff hikes can ever help resolve trade and economic issues,” according to the white paper. “Guided by a spirit of mutual respect, equality and mutual benefit, the two countries should push forward consultations based on good faith and credibility in a bid to address issues, narrow differences, expand common interests, and jointly safeguard global economic stability and development,” it said, according to Bloomberg.
As Vice Commerce Minister Wang Shouwen, who led the working-level team in the negotiations, said China is willing to work with the US to find solutions, but the latter’s strategy of maximum pressure and escalation can’t force concessions from China: “When you give the U.S. an inch, it takes a yard”, he said.
Of course, that ignores the fact that it was China that reneged on the terms of the agreement in the first days of May, at least according to Washington. Instead, on the allegation that China significantly changed the text under negotiation after the latest round of talks, the white paper said it was “common practice” to make new proposals and adjustments as the talks progressed, something the US had done consistently.
At a press conference in Beijing on Sunday, Shouwen accused the US of being “irresponsible” in accusing Beijing of backtracking on its promises. “Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed,” he said in English, the only time he strayed from his native tongue.
Meanwhile, the white paper said that Beijing remained “committed to credible consultations based on equality and mutual benefit”, but would “not give ground on matters of principle”.
When asked what the US side needed to do for the negotiations to continue, Wang referred to a preliminary agreement made by Chinese President Xi Jinping and his US counterpart Donald Trump in Argentina in December.
“The consensus then was to not raise tariffs, and work towards cancelling them,” he said.
Despite the presidents’ efforts, Beijing’s white paper came just a day after it introduced new tariffs on goods imported from the US.
Sunday’s document also accused the US of insisting on “mandatory requirements concerning China’s sovereign affairs”. Though it did not elaborate, the Post reported earlier that Washington had asked Beijing to “completely open its internet” as part of the trade deal. And at a seminar in Beijing on Friday, a group of former Chinese officials accused the US of using the trade talks to undermine China’s national security on issues like Taiwan and the South China Sea.
The latest propaganda escalation, which will not go by unnoticed by the trade hawks in the Trump administration, comes as Beijing has been increasingly critical of Washington over the breakdown of the trade talks and its treatment of Chinese technology giant Huawei. On Friday it said it planned to publish a list of “unreliable” foreign entities deemed to have damaged the interests of Chinese firms, based on anti-monopoly and national security grounds. A day later, Beijing announced an investigation into US logistics company FedEx for the “wrongful delivery of packages”, after Huawei accused FedEx of re-routing of its packages from China to the US.
Wang tried to play down concerns that a planned list of unreliable entities that China announced last week will be used to target foreign companies as a retaliation tool in the trade war. That might be an “over-interpretation,” Wang said, adding that China welcomed foreign firms that operate within the law. “There’s no grounds to blame China” for starting an investigation into FedEx Corp. mis-routing some packages from Huawei Technologies Co.
Meanwhile, when asked about US firms’ complaints that customs clearance was taking longer since the start of the trade war, he advised companies to contact the relevant authorities. “If certain firms are faced with specific issues, they can talk to local commerce departments,” he said.
On the increasingly touchy matter of exports of rare earth minerals, Wang repeated Beijing’s comments of the past week. “With the world’s richest rare earth resources we are willing to satisfy the normal needs of other countries,” he said. “But it’s unacceptable if other countries use rare earths imported from China to suppress China’s development.”
But in what could be the worst news for bulls who are clutching at any straw now to indicate an improvement in diplomatic relations, when asked about the possibility of a summit between Xi and Trump on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Osaka, Japan later this month – as suggested by the American president in May – Wang said he had no information on the matter, according to the SCMP.
Shi Yinhong, an adviser to China’s State Council and a specialist in US affairs at Renmin University in Beijing, said that despite the pressure from the US, Beijing had shown restraint in its efforts to fight back… which it has indeed, suggesting that Trump’s read of the calculus – one according to which China has more to lose than gain from taking trade war to the next level – is the correct one.
“In the areas of trade and technology, China has less leverage than the US, but it has kept its retaliatory measures within these areas,” he said. “If it extended its efforts to areas like North Korea and Iran, it could do much greater damage to Trump.”
The punchline: when addressing the chances of the two sides achieving a breakthrough in their trade negotiations by the time of the G20 summit, Shi said: “The difference is too wide and would be impossible for them to bridge in a month.”
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2IjnOuO Tyler Durden
