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Authored by Daisy Luther via The Organic Prepper blog,

Have you been glued to the news lately, nervously watching what’s going on in the Middle East? Are you concerned that World War III is about to kick off at any moment? Is the state of the economy frequently on your mind? Maybe it’s Ebola that keeps you up at night or the risk of a cyberattack or an EMP or that the political party not of your choosing will take over the government.

I’ve seen a lot of people expressing worry and fear. They’re afraid we’re about to get involved in a war. They’re worried about terror attacks and conflicts on American soil. They’re terrified that their sons and daughters will be sent off to risk their lives and limbs in another Afghanistan.

Maybe the media is manipulating you to be in a constant state of fear. When we’re scared, we don’t think clearly or act effectively.  I see a lot of fear and I don’t like it. It’s not a useful emotion. It’s not practical. Raging against the machine will not help you to survive anything from a car accident to a mass shooting to a nuclear attack. And I’m all about practicality. So let’s talk this through. You need to shake this off and get control of your thoughts.

Whatever your main concern is, I have bad news and good news.

First, the bad news. There’s not a darn thing you personally can do to prevent the things above from occurring. We are little fish in a big sea full of wealthy predators who are the ones that can actually cause change on those levels.

Now the good news. What we can change are our immediate environments. If you are expending a great deal of energy and emotion, focus it on the things that you can change. These (combined with luck) are the things that will have the biggest effect on whether you live or die.

Selco’s theory of circles

One of the things Selco spoke about last year in the Women’s Urban Survival Course in Croatia was circles. No, it wasn’t a geometry lesson. It was a way of looking at the world that he has learned the hard way.

Imagine different parts of the world as giant circles. You’ve got North America, Europe, the Middle East, etc., etc.

Within those giant circles are smaller circles. To name a few, here in the US, you’ve got different states, you’ve got different movements like pro-gun and anti-gun, you’ve got different political belief systems, you’ve got different religions.

Then you’ve got smaller circles still. You have individual towns, churches, schools, and community organizations.

Then there are the circles that really count the most: your close friends, your family members, your immediate neighborhoods.

The summary of Selco’s lesson was this: When you think about where you personally can make the most changes that will have the greatest effect on your survival, where does your power lie?

That’s right. Within the smallest circles. Those are the things we can actually do something about so completely freaking out over the news is not productive at all.

(By the way, ladies, we still have a couple of spaces open in this year’s Urban Survival Course in Croatia. Go here for more information. I’ll be there and would love to meet you.)

Out of all the lessons we were taught in that week, I think the lesson about focusing our energy on the things we can control just might be the most important one of all.

You should still pay attention to what is going on in the world.

I’m not telling you that you shouldn’t be interested in or follow current events.

On the contrary.

It’s incredibly important to stay informed. But you can’t wallow in it and rail at it to the exclusion of taking common-sense steps.

We need to know what the potential threats are so that we can be prepared for them. We must be aware of what’s going on in the world instead of blithely keeping up with the Kardashians or some other nonsense.

I get my news from a wide variety of websites and generally find the truth lies somewhere in the middle if there’s any truth at all.

So watch the news. Read the articles. But understand two things.

#1) Your power ends at the knowledge of these events.

When the wheels of the government are already in motion, there isn’t a whole lot we as individuals can do to stop them. We are screaming into the void when we rant on social media or website comments sections about being pro-war or anti-war or vent our fury about the mismanagement of the national budget.

Sure, it’s important to be heard and to let the figures pulling the strings know our thoughts about what’s going on.

But if we could really change things, do you think our food supply would be chemically tainted and that our national healthcare would be an unaffordable disgrace to which only the wealthy or the extremely poor have access? Do you think our government would be funding $22,000,000 efforts to bring Serbian cheese up to US standards or spending half a million to study the mating calls of Panamanian frogs?

We can be outraged all we want – and trust me – I am outraged. But I personally only have the power to point out these things. I cannot fix them no matter how much I want to do so. I’m not wealthy. I’m not a powerful politician. My ability to respond is limited to sharing information.

I don’t love it, but that’s reality. And you’ve got to live in reality.

#2) We’re probably being lied to anyway.

Let’s look at a couple of events. The death of Soleimeni and the Las Vegas massacre. Do you really, honestly, deep down in your soul think we got the whole story on either of these events?

Was Soleimeni beloved or hated? It really depends on which news outlet you watch. I saw a lot of people who looked heartbroken when they turned up for his funeral on one news outlet but on others, there were people cheering in the streets. What’s the truth? We’re probably never going to know. The “reality” we’re given depends on the agenda of the news network that shows the footage.

And allegedly, nobody knows what caused Stephen Paddock to open fire on a country music concert in Las Vegas a couple of years back. Heck, many people aren’t even convinced that Paddock was the shooter. I don’t believe for one single second that no motive was ever found for such a horrific crime on such a massive scale, but we won’t get the answers anytime soon, if ever.

We simply cannot rely on the news to accurately inform us. The mainstream media is the modern-day Ministry of Propaganda. You can get a general idea of what’s going on, but don’t expect to learn the true motives behind these events from Fox or CNN or any of the other networks. Everyone’s got a bias. Everyone’s got an agenda.

When Selco talked about the Balkan war, he explained how people were bombarded with propaganda to make them hate and fear their neighbors. Why? Because a war was good for a handful of powerful people. And the little guys lie us got dragged along for a brutal ride on a tidal wave of manufactured rage.

So watch and read, but know that you’re only getting a biased fraction of the real story.

Your power lies in smaller circles.

So far, this article probably seems like a bummer. You are probably wondering why on earth a person who covers current events is writing such an article.

I’m writing it because I see so many people utterly panicking over things beyond their control. We, the ordinary, everyday people, cannot prevent whoever is president, whether it’s Obama or Trump or Bush, from droning the daylights out of a country with nuclear capabilities.  We can make our opinions known because sometimes a public outcry works. But we can neither prevent nor insist upon these events.

There’s good news, though.

The thing is, you do have power. You have the power to cause a change in your smaller circles. You can help your community to become better prepared because on smaller levels, in smaller circles, our voices do count for a whole lot more.

And if you aren’t interested in even going that big, you can dial it down to the smallest of circles. Your family, your friends, and your immediate neighbors. People always think that their prepping community has to be a group of self-proclaimed preppers with supplies stacked up to the rooftops.

But that isn’t the case.

There are all sorts of ways to build small circles.

You can build communities in all sorts of ways. From your mail carrier to your neighbor who has laying hens to your other neighbor with the enviable 6-foot tall tomato plants, all of these folks could be valuable friends to have. You can meet with a group of ladies and knit or help a neighbor erect a shed in his backyard with an old-fashioned “barn-raising.”

You build your community by being a decent human being, by helping when you can, and by looking out for one another.

Obviously not all of us have neighbors we’d trust when battening down the hatches and in those situations, we could be better off to be with family members.

But however we do it, by building our inner circles, those small intimate circles, we become stronger. We create communities that will work together to help out another member if he breaks his leg and can’t feed his livestock. Then that member shares the harvest. We build a community that has our backs because they know we will have theirs.

I belonged to the coolest community ever when I lived in California. It was an informal group of homesteaders who got together to teach one another and have potluck dinners and share skills. We became so close-knit that when wildfires drew near, we’d open up pastures for our friends’ livestock if they needed to evacuate and we’d give the humans our spare bedrooms.

Were they all preppers? No, definitely not. Some of them weren’t at all on board with stashing beans and rice and bullets and bandaids. But would I want to hunker down with them if the end of the world was happening? Darned right I would. These were people who gave generously of their time to teach others homesteading skills and answer questions and even pop over to help out at butchering time.

Remember that your small circle doesn’t have to be solely made up of preppers, per se. Sure it would be nice, but in most situations, especially if you’re hunkering down, your community is made up of your closest neighbors. So build relationships with them. You don’t have to tell them you have enough pasta to feed a village in Italy for a year in your basement to build this relationship. But never underestimate the power of a neighbor who has your back.

Be nice to people. Help when you can. Tip decently at your local cafe. Treat others with respect. Seek out those with the same values who are also helpful and respectful. Those are the folks you want around you.

Is this foolproof? Or course not. There are selfish people in the world. There are cowardly people in the world. There are the folks who talk a good talk and are totally on board…until they’re not because a better opportunity came along.

As many of you know, I am traveling full-time right now but I still build some community everywhere I go. I hit up the same bakery or juice bar for breakfast every day and strike up a conversation. I speak to the neighbors. I smile and I make friends. I socialize. I pick up things if someone drops them. I smile and make an effort to communicate even when my grasp of the local language is poor. Basically, I am a decent person and I make real human connections. Because of this, I’ve found that locals give me all kinds of tips, from where to buy the best produce to who produces the best rakija or which doctor I might want to visit for a medical issue.

If I can do that in countries where I don’t even speak the language, you can do this in the town where you live.

Try to focus on what you can control, not on what you can’t control.

In these days when it seems like war is only a heartbeat away, or an EMP could strike at any moment, or a cyber attack could change the world as we know it, or any other epic disaster could occur, sometimes you have to take a step back.

Sometimes, current events are incredibly overwhelming.

When you find yourself getting overwhelmed, take a look at your circles. Are you getting overwhelmed by the big circles you can do nothing about?

If so then it’s time to focus on the small circles. The things you can do are:

• Stock up on food.

• Become more physically fit.

• Put back some additional fuel.

• Buy that Big Berkey you’ve had your eye on.

• Improve your medical kit.

• Enhance your skills. Go shooting, learn to can, learn about hunting and foraging. There are many skills that would be useful in a bad situation that you can learn and practice right now.

• Seek practical information about dealing with a wide variety of potential disasters.

• Work on your relationships with those around you.

• Be aware – your situational awareness is your early warning system. Get your face out of your phone and pay attention to what’s happening around you. Here’s a great cautionary tale on situational awareness.

If you’re letting the news cycles drive you into a panic, then it’s time to take a step back. Turn off the television or computer or wherever you get your news. Focus on what you can do – and there’s a lot you can do.

Is World War III about to happen?

We’ve been on this cusp multiple times over the past ten or twenty years. At some point, we’ll probably go over the edge. Will it be this time? I’ve written about the possibility of world war at least a dozen times over the past 7 years because tensions were incredibly high each time.

So far, we’ve been fortunate and all-out world war has not erupted. But for how long will our luck hold out? There’s absolutely no way to know.

All we can know for sure is that we can build strong communities. Perhaps we’re creating local civil defense teams. Maybe we’re getting ready to hunker down with our families. We can network and make friends where we are right now.

For your own sanity and peace of mind, focus on controlling your small circles. Stop expending so much energy and emotion on the things you cannot control. Prepping should give you peace of mind, not a constant anxiety attack. Don’t let the barrage of terrifying headlines send you spiraling into fear. We don’t make good decisions when we’re fearful. Awareness and fear are two entirely different things.

Workable survival plans aren’t big. They aren’t grandiose, national-level movements

They’re small. They are community-oriented at the largest and family-oriented at the smallest. Definitely pay attention to the world around you because you need to be aware of important signs and signals.

But focus your energy on your small circles. Change and enhance the things that are within your power.

Toyota announced that it will break ground next year on a 175-acre, hydrogen powered “prototype city of the future” at the base of Mt. Fuji, where 2,000 employees, retirees and others will live alongside the latest in smart home technology, hyper-efficient street design, AI-guided robotics, and new mobility products.

Announced by CEO Akio Toyoda during a Monday presentation at the 2020 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, the ambitious project built on the site of a former car factory has been referred to by Toyota as the “Woven City,” due to its integration of three types of transportation.

The community was designed by Danish architect Bjarke Ingels, whose firm designed the 2 World Trade Center building in New York, as well as Google’s Silicon Valley and London offices, according to Reuters.

One street would be for faster vehicles, while a second street will be for lower-speed personal mobility vehicles such as scooters and bikes, along with pedestrians. A third would be a “park-like promenade for pedestrians only,” according to The Verge.

“These three street types weave together to form an organic grid pattern to help accelerate the testing of autonomy,” says Toyota.

Employee residences would be equipped with AI-guided smart home technology and robotics.

The residencies would be equipped with smart home technology, such as in-home robotics to assist with daily living. “The homes will use sensor-based AI to check occupants’ health, take care of basic needs and enhance daily life, creating an opportunity to deploy connected technology with integrity and trust, securely and positively,” the company said. –The Verge

“This is my personal ‘Field of Dream’,” said Toyoda, adding “If you build it, they will come.” 

There’s nothing new about automakers using big plots of land to build proving grounds with fake city backdrops to test out new vehicles. But what Toyota is proposing is a dramatic escalation of that concept: a real city with real people who would live within the automaker’s amped-up vision of the future.

That vision includes a lot of autonomous vehicles. Last year, Toyota first introduced its “e-Palette” concept, which was described as a “fully-automated, next generation battery electric vehicle designed to be scalable and customizable for a range of Mobility as a Service businesses.” They looked similar to transparent cargo or shipping containers on wheels that grow and shrink in size depending on their specific task. –The Verge

According to Toyota, their automated mobility vehicles will allow for ride-sharing and carpooling, and will serve as ‘roach coaches’ for hungry employees.

“You may be thinking, ‘Has this guy lost his mind?’,” asked Toyoda. “‘Is he like a Japanese version of Willy Wonka?’ Perhaps.“

Privacy concerns

As The Verge rightly notes, “Left unsaid, of course, was anything related to access to data, privacy, or nondisclosure agreements that residents would presumably need to sign before agreeing to live in Toyota’s up-jumped company town. Toyota already owns the land where it’s proposing to build, but selecting a population while complying with local residential rules will undoubtedly be complicated and not necessarily something the company would be well-suited to do.”

Authored by Eion Higgins via CommonDreams.org,

As President Donald Trump spent the early days of 2020 instigating and then backing down from a potentially catastrophic confrontation with Iran, corporate media in the U.S. turned to the very same people who promoted the country’s worst foreign policy disaster in a generation to advocate for repeating the mistakes of two decades ago. 

The decision of networks and cable news outlets like CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News to bring on a stream of past advocates for and architects of the 2003 invasion of Iraq was panned by progressives who watched in horror and frustration as the same arguments were deployed in service of all-out war with Iran. “It’s War Inc. all over again,” tweeted The Nation‘s Dave Zirin.

Trump’s ordered assassination of Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani on January 3 proved the catalyst for escalated tensions between the U.S. and Iran. It also opened the door for news outlets to welcome back some of the key Bush-era war cheerleaders.

The more things change, the more they stay the same, wrote Rolling Stone‘s Tim Dickinson.

“The Trump administration’s sudden, violent confrontation with Iran stands in contrast to the methodical march to war with Iraq under George W. Bush and his neoconservative cabinet in 2003,” Dickinson wrote. “But the rhetoric around the two conflicts has been strikingly similar — as has the reliance on ‘razor thin’ evidence of an imminent threat to establish a cause for war.”

Soleimani’s death by drone strike was celebrated in real time by former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer, who spent the run-up to the Iraq War selling the public on the necessity of the conflict.

Ari Fleischer: “I think it is entirely possible that this is going to be a catalyst inside Iran where the people celebrate this killing of Soleimani” pic.twitter.com/UfcTOkvqAw

— Jason Campbell (@JasonSCampbell) January 3, 2020

“I think it is entirely possible that this is going to be a catalyst inside Iran where the people celebrate this killing of Soleimani,” Fleischer told Fox in the hours after Soleimani’s killing, flanked by Bush administration advisor Karl Rove.

In contrast to Fleischer’s prediction, Soleimani’s funeral and remembrance ceremonies over the weekend turned out mourners enraged at the assassination across Iran in the millions. Former Vice President Dick Cheney’s similar claim in 2002 that U.S. troops in Iraq would be “welcomed as liberators” was equally true.

Fleischer was nonetheless welcomed back to Fox on Tuesday and Wednesday to give his thoughts on the conflict and attack Democrats for questioning the rush to war.

“It’s concerning, to say the least, to see some of the biggest backers of the Iraq War—an abject failure that, coupled with the ongoing war in Afghanistan, has cost the United States trillions of dollars and thousands of lives—are publicly (and in some instances, gleefully) opining about the potential impact of war with Iran, in some cases even using the same rhetorical stylings to do so,” said Vox‘s Jane Coaston of the similarity in rhetoric.

On MSNBC, which bills itself as a liberal alternative to right-wing behemoth Fox, host Ari Melber on January 7 in the wake of Iranian retaliation for the assassination spoke to former General Barry McCaffrey, who called for a devastating response against Iran. 

“Our only good response at this point is an overwhelming dominance of air and naval power that can be employed against the Iranian homeland,” said McCaffrey.

Unmentioned in the segment was McCaffrey’s position on the board of Raytheon, a major U.S. weapons supplier. 

“Liberal” MSNBC guest Gen. McCaffery: “Our only good response at this point is an overwhelming dominance of air and naval power that can be employed against the Iranian homeland” pic.twitter.com/SMDZ9SRm2n

— Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew_lawrence) January 8, 2020

The next day, Melber hosted former Sen. Joe Lieberman, a one-time Democrat whose embrace of the Bush administration’s push for war across the Middle East led to an unofficial expulsion from the Democratic Party in 2006, though Lieberman was re-elected as an independent.

Not disclosed by Melber to his audience? The fact that Lieberman works for Israel Aerospace Industries, a defense company with $1 billion in sales in the U.S. 

Melber did not respond to a request for comment at press time. 

As Popular Information‘s Judd Legum reported Thursday morning, Lieberman and McCaffrey are hardly alone in advocating for war in the media without revealing their financial interests in the conflict. Legum lists nine former government officials with ties to the defense industry who are being presented to the American people as experts without noting their connections to the military industrial complex.

One of the people profiled by Legum is Michael Chertoff, the former Bush-era secretary of Homeland Security. On CNN, Chertoff claimed Trump has unilateral power to attack Iran and start a war. 

But, Legum pointed out, there was some context for those remarks conveniently left out of the coverage:

Neither Chertoff nor CNN disclosed that Chertoff is chairman of the board of the American subsidiary of BAE Systems, the fourth largest weapons manufacturer in the world. 

Print media was not immune to the lack of accountability shown by tv. On January 5, the Washington Post ran a piece by former Bush administration national security advisor Stephen Hadley saluting the assassination of Soleimani and calling for war if necessary. 

That Hadley is on the board of Raytheon alongside MSNBC‘s McCaffrey did not receive a mention.

The onus for disclosure, wrote Eyes on the Ties reporter Rob Galbraith, is on the Post‘s editor Fred Hiatt: 

Running another hawkish column by Hadley without noting his enormous financial incentive to stoke the engines of war shows that the Post in general, and Hiatt in particular, has failed to learn anything from Syria, Iraq, or any of the other times that war profiteers have used their pages to clamor for missile strikes and invasions. This is made all the more egregious since, however dismissively, Hiatt acknowledged Hadley’s conflict of interest in 2013, and yet still went ahead and printed his op-ed today without disclosing this conflict—again.

“It’s not 2003, but it sure feels like it,” wrote HuffPost‘s Jessica Schulberg in a piece detailing a number of the Bush administration officials and varied Iraq War boosters brought on by the corporate media to discuss the push for war.

“In a sane and just society, the architects of the nearly 17-year-old war in Iraq—which is still ongoing and has left an estimated half-million people dead—would face war crimes charges and those who cheered them on would be thoroughly discredited,” Schulberg continued. “Instead, they are the ‘experts’ praising President Donald Trump’s decision to assassinate top Iranian military commander Gen. Qasem Soleimani and offering the public insight on the way forward with Iran.”

Escalating tensions in the Middle East and threats of war between the US and Iran have sent insurance rates for petroleum tankers higher, especially for vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz, reported Reuters, citing industry insiders. 

War risk premiums that oil tanker owners pay each time as they transit the Persian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz, and the Gulf of Oman are surging in the last ten days following Iran militia attacking the US embassy in Baghdad and Iran launching missiles at US military bases. 

One Singapore-based LNG shipbroker told Reuters that war premiums are “adding about $150,000 to $200,000 (to overall costs) per trip.”

About a quarter of all the world’s crude and LNG transits on chemical tankers through the Strait of Hormuz and could be susceptible to attack as Iran has vowed to retaliate against the US for the airstrike that killed top Iranian Commander Qasem Soleimani last Friday. So far, the Iranians have launched more than a dozen missiles at two military bases in Iraq.  

The latest indications from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Force Commander Amir Ali Hajizadeh on Thursday said that more missile attacks on US bases could continue across the region. 

This was the case on Wednesday when Iran-backed militia fired three rockets at the US embassy in Baghdad. 

Increasing tension between Iran and the US and the threats of war across the region have led to the rise in war-risk insurance for oil tankers.

“We are obviously concerned with regard to the tension around the wider (Gulf) area,” said Svein A Ringbakken, managing director of Norwegian ship insurer Den Norske Krigsforsikring for Skib (DNK) told Reuters. “Ships’ transits in these areas have already for some time been subject to additional war risks insurance premiums, which may increase in light of the recent developments.”

A London-based shipbroker told Reuters that ship insurers had quoted the breach rate for seven days at around 0.35% of insurance costs, up from about 0.15% in December. 

Saul Kavonic, an analyst with Credit Suisse, said escalating tensions in the Middle East could lead to a closure of the Strait of Hormuz: “A prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz could see LNG spot prices skyrocket, and see a demand destruction scenario emerge turning the current soft LNG market on its head,” he warned. 

We reported on Wednesday that Petrobras, Bahri – Saudi Arabia’s state-run tanker operator – and other tanker companies had suspended sailing through the Straits of Hormuz.  

Even as Trump was rage-tweeting on Jan 4, two days after the killing of Iran’s top military leader Qassem Soleimani, that he would hit 52 targets including Iranian heritage sites for potential retaliation if America suffered losses following an Iranian attack, warning that “those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD”, the US president was busy, secretly using an encrypted back-channel to bring the world back from the brink of war.

As the WSJ reports, just hours after the U.S. strike which killed Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the Trump administration sent an urgent back channel message to Tehran: “Don’t escalate.” The encrypted fax message was sent via the Swiss Embassy in Iran, one of the few means of direct, confidential communication between the two sides, U.S. officials told the WSJ. Then, in frantic attempts to de-escalate even as top US and Iranian leaders were stirring patriotic sentiment and nationalistic fervor, the White House and Iranian leaders exchanged further messages in the days that followed, which officials in both countries described as far more measured than the fiery rhetoric traded publicly by politicians.

It worked: a week later, and after a retaliatory, if highly theatrical, Iranian missile attack on two military bases hosting American troops that purposefully inflicted no casualties, Washington and Tehran have stepped back from the brink of open hostilities (for now).

“We don’t communicate with the Iranians that much, but when we do the Swiss have played a critical role to convey messages and avoid miscalculation,” a senior U.S. official said.

While a spokesman at Iran’s mission to the United Nations declined to comment on the exchanges, he said “we appreciate [the Swiss] for any efforts they make to provide an efficient channel to exchange letters when and if necessary.” Another Iranian official said the back channel provided a welcome bridge, when all others had been burned: “In the desert, even a drop of water matters.”

In retrospect, it should hardly be a surprise that the perpetually neutral Swiss were the last recourse to prevent potential war.

As the WSJ notes, from the Swiss Embassy, a Shah-era mansion overlooking Tehran, the country’s role as a diplomatic intermediary has stretched through four turbulent decades and seven presidencies, from the hostage crisis under Jimmy Carter to Barack Obama’s nuclear deal. But it was seldom tested like this.

Here’s how it happened.

The first American fax was sent immediately after Washington confirmed the death of Soleimani, the most important figure in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the U.S. officials said. It arrived on a special encrypted fax machine in a sealed room of the Swiss mission – the most enduring, and secret, method since the 1979 Islamic Revolution – for the White House to exchange messages with Iran’s top leadership, especially when the two nations are concurrently parading in public media in their bellicose propaganda to earn political brownie points.

The equipment operates on a secure Swiss government network linking its Tehran embassy to the Foreign Ministry in Bern and its embassy in Washington, say Swiss diplomats. Only the most senior officials have the key cards needed to use the equipment.

Early on Friday morning, just hours after Soleimani’s death, Swiss Ambassador Markus Leitner, a 53-year-old career diplomat, delivered the American message by hand to Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif. Predictably, Zarif responded to the U.S. missive with anger, according to a WSJ source: “[U.S. Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo is a bully,” he said, according to one U.S. official briefed on Zarif’s response. “The U.S. is the cause of all the problems.”

The US may indeed be the cause of all the problems, but it also has all the weapons, and despite the pompous rhetoric, Iran knew full well it could not hope to escalte in tit-for-tat fashion without risking virtually everything. Which is why, Iran was quick to take advantage of Leitner’s mediation.

The Swiss ambassador – who regularly visits Washington for closed-door sessions with Pentagon, State Department and intelligence officials eager to tap his knowledge about Iran’s opaque and fluid politics – spent the next several days after Soleimani’s killing shuttling back and forth in a low-key but high-wire diplomatic mission designed to let each side speak candidly. It was a vivid contrast to the jabs of President Trump and Mr. Zarif on Twitter.

Shortly after Trump tweeted on Jan 4 that the US had picked 52 Iranian targets for eventual escalation, Zarif responded just as belligerently on the next day: “A reminder to those hallucinating about emulating ISIS war crimes by targeting our cultural heritage,” he wrote. “Through MILLENNIA of history, barbarians have come and ravaged our cities, razed our monuments and burnt our libraries. Where are they now? We’re still here, & standing tall.”

However, at the same time as Zarif was seeking to emulate Trump’s twitter bluster, the Iranian foreign minister called the Swiss ambassador to take a message to the U.S. It was more restrained, and subsequent statements from both sides helped prevent miscalculations, the officials said.

“When tensions with Iran were high, the Swiss played a useful and reliable role that both sides appreciated,” said a senior Trump administration official. “Their system is like a light that never turns off.” Unlike Twitter, that is, which has emerged a medium for spreading premeditated, fake, outrage to mass consumption and whose sole purpose is to distract from what is truly happening behind the scenes.

It’s not the first time the Swiss have helped pull back the middle east from the brink of mushroom clouds: they have served as messengers between Washington and Tehran since 1980, in the wake of the seizure of the American Embassy—and 52 hostages —in Tehran by Iranian revolutionaries. Swiss diplomats call the role the “brieftrager” or “the postman.”

In the years after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Swiss shepherded messages to help avoid direct clashes. When President Obama assumed office, Switzerland hosted the talks that led to a nuclear deal. When Washington lifted sanctions, Swiss businesses had an early jump on rivals.  When Trump reimposed sanctions, he gave the Swiss a phone number to pass the Iranians, saying: “I’d like to see them call me.”

So far, Tehran has continued to speak through the Swiss.

* * *

Why has this archaic method of communication proven so effective at pulling the world back from the edge of crisis?

Former Swiss ambassadors say the diplomatic channel is effective because the U.S. and Iran can trust a message will remain confidential, be delivered quickly, and will reach only its intended recipients. Statements passed on the back channel are always precisely phrased, diplomatic, and free of emotion, something which is clearly impossible on Trump’s favorite social media platform, twitter, which he uses for precisely the opposite purpose: to spark outrage and to appeal to base emotions of his core supporter group.

Switzerland, a landlocked country of nine million with no standing army where everyone owns a gun, parlays its role as the world’s neutral “postman” (and until recently, secret banker) to lever access to the great powers.

And speaking of Swiss bank, the WSJ notes that currently Swiss diplomats are working to get Washington’s green light for Swiss banks to finance exports to Iran that aren’t subject to sanctions—like food and medicine. “We do things for the world community, and it’s good,” said a former ambassador. “But it is also good for our interests.” Of course it is: for the privilege of funding the most basic human needs, those same Swiss banks can charge exorbitant rates of interest in a country that for years has had a negative official interest rate.

Iran isn’t the only geopolitical hot spot where the Swiss Embassy represents U.S. or other countries’ interests after the breakdown of diplomatic relations: the Swiss now holds six mandates including representing Iran in Saudi Arabia, Georgia in Russia and Turkey in Libya and the U.S. in Cuba according to the WSJ. In April 2019, the Trump administration asked Bern to represent it in Venezuela but President Nicolás Maduro’s government has yet to approve.

And so, if the world has any hope of avoiding an all out war between US and Iran, it will have to go through Bern, at least figuratively. As tensions between Washington and Tehran have escalated, the Swiss backchannel has remained active. In December the two countries released prisoners at the same time at a special hangar in the Zurich airport – U.S. special envoy on Iran Brian Hook and Iran’s Zarif sat in separate rooms as the Swiss directed the carefully choreographed exchange.

“The Swiss channel has become enormously important because of what they can do in the short term to lessen tensions,” said former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who worked with the Swiss on the prisoner exchange. “It’s the only viable channel right now.”

Authored by Derrick Broze via TheMindUnleashed.com,

As Virginia’s new Democratic legislature promises gun control measures, the wives of National Guardsman are warning that impending gun legislation threatens to turn neighbor against neighbor.

As the 2020 Virginia legislative session began, Democratic Governor Ralph Northam and fellow Democrats continued their push for new gun control bills. In the months since a May 2019 shooting left 12 people dead and four others injured at a Virginia Beach municipal building, Democratic politicians have repeatedly expressed their desire to implement new restrictions such as universal background checks, a ban on certain weapons, and controversial red flag laws.

However, the calls for gun restrictions have not been welcomed by all Virginians. Instead, the push for more gun control has sparked a movement that has expanded across Virginia and continues to grow in other states including California, Illinois, Colorado, New Mexico, and Florida.

The so-called Second Amendment “sanctuary city” movement takes it’s name from previous resolutions introduced by opponents of hard line immigration policies. These sanctuary cities are defined as a city (or a county, or a state) that limits its cooperation with federal immigration enforcement agents in order to protect low-priority immigrants from deportation, while still turning over those who have committed serious crimes.

In a similar fashion, supporters of Second Amendment sanctuary cities are now asking local law enforcement to refuse to comply with orders from the state regarding gun control.

In Virginia, home to the National Rifle Association headquarters, the sanctuary city movement came as a response to Democrats promising new gun laws after they took control of both chambers of the Virginia Legislature in the 2019 election. For example, Delegate Dan Helmer recently introduced House Bill 567, which would prohibit indoor shooting ranges in any building not owned or leased by the Commonwealth of Virginia or the federal government. To be exempt from the bill a range would need to have fewer than 50 employees working in the building or 90% of users must be law enforcement employees. The bill would also require users to present a government photo identification card, and ranges must maintain a log of each user’s name, phone number, address, and the law-enforcement agency where users are employed.

If passed, the bill could lead to the closing of a number of indoor shooting ranges across the state, with government and law enforcement employees being the only legal users of indoor ranges.

The Virginia Citizens Defense League has been leading the fight to introduce resolutions that declare local officials will oppose any “unconstitutional restrictions” on the Second Amendment right to bear arms. So far 86 of Virginia’s 95 counties have passed sanctuary city measures. In late December, Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring issued an opinion statement, alleging that the resolutions are “part of an effort by the gun lobby to stoke fear” and will “have no legal effect.”

Democratic Virginia Rep. Donald McEachin told the Washington Examiner that Governor Northam could cut off state funds to local bodies that refuse to comply to new gun control laws and could call in the National Guard to enforce the laws, if necessary. Although Northam has said he has no plans to call in the National Guard, the statement by McEachin has already caused backlash.

On December 30, Virginia Delegate Dave LaRock sent a letter to Governor Northam asking him to deescalate the situation after LaRock received a letter from Michaela Claywell, a Virginian and wife of an active-duty Virginia Guardsman. Claywell told LaRock that she has witnessed threats of violence being made against Guardsman on social media.

“I have written a letter to Governor Northam asking him to meet with the wives of the Virginia Guard officers to explain how he specifically plans to take immediate action to deescalate this situation,” LaRock stated. “I have been told by Michaela that this situation is harming careers and undermining the safety and peace-of-mind of families across Virginia.”

The social media threats come as a direct response to the notion that Guardsman would be called upon to enforce gun control laws being proposed in the 2020 session. Mrs. Claywell and a number of wives of high-level officers in the Virginia National Guard are calling on Governor Northam and other state and federal officials to calm the situation.

“Please use your collective influence to protect our soldiers and our families,” Claywell wrote.

While the state of Virginia grapples with how to move forward during these challenging times, the Second Amendment sanctuary city movement is only growing. The movement started to pick up pace in April 2018 after one of the first resolutions was passed in Effingham County, Illinois. David Campbell, a member of the Effingham County Board, told the Epoch Times that his county’s state attorney and sheriff have said they will not prosecute law-abiding citizens.

“It all started right there, and then it just blossomed. I think we are into 15 states now,” Campbell stated. “I get calls constantly from other states and from other counties wanting a copy of our resolution and a map of how we did it.”

So far 70 of Illinois’s 102 counties have passed some form of Second Amendment sanctuary resolution. The movement is showing no signs of slowing down as it spreads across the states of Kansas, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Illinois, and Virginia. 

The painful decline in Class 8 orders that we have been documenting on a month-by-month basis has resulted in truck manufacturing orders hitting a decade low in 2019, according to Americas Commercial Transportation (ACT) Research Co., a leading publisher of commercial vehicle industry data, market analysis, and forecasting services for the North American market.

Full year volume for Class 8 orders was 181,000 for the year, compared to 490,100 units in 2018. 

Sales in December followed the year’s trend, ticking lower on a year over year basis despite showing a 14% sequential rise.

Federal tax rate cuts in 2018 encouraged carriers to expand their fleets, resulting in major backlogs and tough comparable numbers for 2019, according to the Triad Business Journal.

In addition to the tough comps, ACT President and Senior Analyst Kenny Vieth also blamed the issues on “lower freight demand” in 2019. 

Vieth said: “Overbuying through 2019 and insufficient freight to absorb the ensuing capacity overhang continued to weigh on the front end of the Class 8 demand cycle in December. Recalling July and August, orders were down 80% from the corresponding months in 2018.”

As we have documented throughout the year, some truck manufacturers, like Mack Trucks and Volvo Trucks, announced layoffs. Volvo announced last year that it would lay off 700 people at its Dublin, Virginia plant. Daimler laid off 900 workers in October 2019 and Navistar will lay off 1,300 workers this month.

Some trucking companies that we have profiled, like Terrill Transportation, have closed down entirely. 

Authored by Bruce Wilds via Advancing Time blog,

It is far easier to believe the five favorite financial myths of our time when you are rolling in dough and flush with cash. Due to a slug of freshly printed liquidity being pumped into the global financial system stock markets are making new highs and asset bubbles continue to expand. An increase in liquidity results in people feeling comfortable to take on more risk and this tends to swell leverage. During such a time true price discovery has a way of being diminished.

Whether it is a question of people generally just being too lazy to question what they see or lacking the imagination to pull back the curtain to reveal the truth they often choose to accept what is presented to them as reality rather than go to the effort to seek the truth. A myth is often defined as any invented story, idea, or concept, an imaginary or fictitious thing, or an unproved or false collective belief that is used to justify a social institution. The entertainment industry has flourished as society seeks any diversion to pull our attention away from the sharp edges of reality and into the soft comfort of escape. This may be the result of past experiences where we have learned reality can be hard to face and we can’t handle the truth! In some ways, it could be said that our culture has become obsessed with avoiding what is real. 

Central Banks Failed To Stop (click to enlarge)

To say the system has been stoked by the actions of central banks is an understatement. In just the last few months nearly a trillion dollars of new stimulus has been poured into the markets. It comes in the form of  repo injections, new infrastructure programs, and things like slashing bank reserve requirements. A desperate attempt by central banks to keep the wheels from coming off the bus has been interpreted by many as confirmation the current trend of never-ending growth will continue. Rather than considering it is time for a reality check it is both easier and more comforting to adopt an “all is well” attitude and ignore the signs of danger lurking around the corner.

The crux of this article is about some of our society’s favorite myths that feed directly into the economy and how we feel about our financial security. While it could be argued the myths below have more to do with how we feel about life than about money, it cannot be denied that most people make many of their financial decisions based on the assumption the below statements are true. As a society, we rapidly choose to embrace and often choose not to question them because of the discomfort it would undoubtedly create. Sure many other myths exist or you can slice and dice them in other ways but the five below are very common and should be enough to remind you and even shed a bit of light upon the fact we are vulnerable at any time to having reality raise its’ ugly head.

Believing Myths Is A Head In Sand Approach

1. Government is for the people and by the people – Seriously? After the last few years and dog and pony show, we experienced during the last presidential primary all illusions of that should have been erased. After often being forced to choose between the least of two evils it is difficult to praise our political system. After all the talk about “we the people” the fact is the average “person” is far removed from the power to decide important issues.

2. Financial planning means you only have to start saving a little money each year to guarantee an easy retirement.  – The fact is life is a casino where our future is tenuous at best. Much of our circumstances and lives revolve around money and the number of options it gives us when we possess it. I intentionally used the term “casino” to conjure up the image of financial fortune. Which you can lose in a blink of an eye if things go against you. This myth includes things such as the promises made by the government and others such as pension plans and financial institutions will indeed be honored.

3. You have rights and that we are not slaves – I defer to a few lines from a blog by Gerry Spence who has spent his lifetime representing and protecting victims of the legal system from what he calls The New Slave Master: big corporations and big government. In his blog, Spence wrote; The Moneyed Master has closed its doors against the people and sits on its money like an old hen on rotten eggs. The people will not prevail. With its endless propaganda the Moneyed Master has caused its slaves to believe they are free.

4. Your life will progress and move along pretty much as you have planned – When you think back over the years of your life if you are like most people things have not unfolded as you had planned. You may not be in the occupation you trained for or with your true love. Throughout our life watershed events occur that we have little control over, this holds true when it comes to your finances as well. Things such as having an investment or pension plan go south can be very unsettling. The thought that things could be worse does not mean they will become so, this is a reason to count your blessings.

5. Those in charge or above you care about you and will protect you –  Well of this we can hope but more than one person has been sliced and diced by the people he or she trusted most. History shows when push comes to shove it is not uncommon for a person to look out for the person they treasure the most and that is often him or her self. Politicians and those in power tend to throw people under the bus rather than rise up and take responsibility for the problems they create.

My apologies if this post has been a downer or seems overly negative, however, it is what it is and it was written for a reason. Best stated by a comment I read on another site, these myths add up to where “This is not a can of worms but a warehouse stacked with pallets of cans of worms.”  Because of how believing the above myths can impact our lives it is important we recognize their existence. This is not to say that we cannot by making good and reasonable choices eliminate much of the risk we encounter by just getting out of bed each morning. Developing the habit of pressing on and forward to complete solid and reasonable goals is the best medicine to combat a deck that is often stacked against us. Be careful out there!

Like many US interventions in the Middle East before, this story seems to continue changing by the day. The rationale for taking out the “imminent” threat of Qasem Soleimani has now centered on President Trump’s claim, first presented before reporters Thursday, that the IRGC Quds force chief was “looking to blow up our embassy”.

And now the president has given further details on those prior statements, saying in a new interview with Fox News there was a plot to bomb four embassies across the region. 

“I can reveal that I believe it would’ve been four embassies,” Trump told Fox’s Ingraham in an exclusive interview set to air in full Friday night. When pressed on specific targets, the president revealed: “We will tell you that probably it was going to be the embassy in Baghdad.”

This followed statements earlier in the day by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo over the president’s Thursday assertion Soleimani sought to “blow up” embassies. Pompeo was pressed by reporters over the nature of the “imminent threat” claims. 

“We had specific information on an imminent threat and that threat stream included attacks on U.S. embassies. Period. Full stop,” he said. Asked about what made it imminent, Pompeo simply said: “It was going to happen.”

See President Trump’s newest statement asserting four embassies were being targeted in the Fox interview:

Trump: Actually, Soleimani was about to attack four separate US embassies. pic.twitter.com/FbiJklbbmc

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) January 10, 2020

At first it was unclear whether President Trump saw specific intelligence outlining such a threat, or perhaps was speaking generally and hyperbolic (“blow up” the embassy) of the pro-Iranian mob’s actions besieging the US embassy in Baghdad days prior to the Soleimani assassination. The demonstrators had been filmed setting the outer walls of the compound on fire during the chaotic events of early last week which resulted in a contingent of Marines rapidly deploying from Kuwait to bolster embassy security. 

Given Trump and Pompeo’s newest statements, it appears clear they’re referencing a previously unknown plot which they are presenting as tied to specific US intelligence data. 

CNN also reveals as much in the following: 

A senior defense official told reporters Thursday the US had intelligence about multiple plots and threats involving Soleimani, including one that involved a plan to attack the embassy using explosives.

The plot was separate and more sophisticated than the attempts to storm the US embassy in Baghdad by Molotov-cocktail wielding Khatib Hezbollah members and its supporters, an effort US officials have said was also orchestrated by Soleimani.

During Trump’s prior Thursday remarks, he tied the newly revealed alleged embassy bombing plot to the specific decision-making to go after Soleimani via drone strike, alongside other reasons including the Dec.27 death of a US contractor during a rocket attack by Khatib Hezbollah on a base in Kirkuk. 

“We caught a total monster. We took them out. And that should have happened a long time ago. We did it because they were looking to blow up our embassy,” Trump said during those initial remarks.

“We also did it for other reasons that were very obvious. Somebody died… people were badly wounded just a week before. And we did it. We had a shot at it … that was the end of a monster,” Trump added, referring to the death of the American contractor by Khatib Hezbollah.

Trump’s new claims have already resulted in push back from Congressional leaders briefed on the matter Wednesday. Sen. Chris Murphy was the first to slam the new statements late Friday, saying no such intelligence on planned embassy bombings was presented:

Let’s be clear – if there was evidence of imminent attacks on four embassies, the Administration would have said so at our Wednesday briefing. They didn’t.

So either Fox News gets higher level briefings than Congress…

or…wait for it…

there was no such imminent threat.

— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) January 10, 2020

And yet, confusion persists within the administration itself, as CNN reported that “Earlier Thursday, administration officials had explained Trump’s comments about the plot to blow up the US embassy by saying he was referring to the public demonstrations by Khatib Hezbollah.”

But in a separate Thursday rally in Toledo, Ohio, the president made it clear it was more than mere violent embassy protests: “Soleimani was actively planning new attacks, and he was looking very seriously at our embassies, and not just the embassy in Baghdad.” Trump added: “But we stopped him, and we stopped him quickly, and we stopped him cold.”

The latest interview with the president will air Friday night at 10 p.m. ET on Fox’s “The Ingraham Angle.”

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

Perhaps even PhD economists notice that manic-mania bubbles always burst–always.

Just a friendly heads-up to all the Bulls bowing and murmuring prayers to the Golden Idol of the Federal Reserve: the Fed just slashed its balance sheet–yes, reduced its assets. After panic-printing $410 billion in a few months, a $24 billion decline isn’t much, but it does suggest the Fed might finally be worrying about the reckless, insane bubble it inflated:

Just to review the numbers, which you can ponder on this chart from the St. Louis Federal Reserve (FRED).

• August 28, 2019: $3.760 trillion

• December 25, 2019: $4.165 trillion

• January 1, 2020: $4.173 trillion

• January 9, 2020: $4.149 trillion

There are two noteworthy items here. One is of course the panic-printing of $410 billion between September 1, 2019 and January 1, 2020 as the Fed’s assets zoomed from $3.760 trillion to $4.173 trillion in a mere 17 weeks.

But also note that the Fed only added a paltry $8 billion in the final week of 2019. Given the hundreds of billions of expansion being promised, this works out to a monthly run-rate of around $30 billion–not quite the $60 billion promised as a baseline, or the $100 billion per month panic-printed in Q4 2019.

Bu-bu-but wait–the Fed promised us $100 billion a month forever! Buying the SPX at 3,280 and Apple at $312 only makes sense if the Fed promised us SPX 3,500, 4,000 and 5,000, and AAPL $350, $400 and $500.

While all the faithful were busy bowing to the Fed’s mesmerizing Golden Idol, maybe the mortals in the Fed awakened from their dreams of omnipotence and realized that their “insurance against a recession” panic-printing had inflated the mother of all manic-mania bubbles.

Perhaps even PhD economists notice that manic-mania bubbles always burst–always. And just before they burst, devastating all those worshiping the Fed’s Golden Idol, pundits always declare “this time it’s different,” “the Fed has our back,” “stocks have reached a permanently high plateau,” “stocks have plenty of room to run higher,” and other platitudes mumbled by the Fed faithful.

Blinded by their own hubris, the Fed’s economists refuse to accept the impossibility of gently deflating the bubble they so recklessly inflated, and so their plan is to real quiet-like reduce the balance sheet, hoping nobody notices.

Perhaps they imagine they can lock the S&P 500 in at a permanently high plateau around 3,250, and that will be enough to banish the demons of a business/credit-cycle recession.

Maybe, maybe not. Can a Golden Idol control not just the stock market but the karmic consequences of hubris and false idolatry? The curtain just opened and the second act of the tragedy is just beginning.

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