Brickbat: Close Enough for Government Work

Canadian Veterans Affairs Minister Lawrence MacAulay has apologized after Veterans Affairs Canada posted a video online celebrating the 74th anniversary of V-E Day that showed German troops instead of Canadian soldiers. In the video, MacAulay describes Canada’s contribution to the war effort over video showing images of Wehrmacht soldiers.

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Green Revolution Nonsense: Corbyn Wants To Nationalize UK National Energy Grid

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk,

UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn made an absurd proposal on Wednesday. He wants to nationalize SSE. Shares hammered.

The Telegraph reports Labour Power Grab Wipes £500m Off Firms.

The threat of a Labour government wiped more than £500m off SSE and National Grid on Wednesday as party plans to seize UK energy networks emerged.

Sector shares slipped as The Telegraph revealed Jeremy Corbyn wants to renationalise the £62bn network, compensating shareholders with government bonds below market rate.

SSE shares closed at a five-month low, sinking as much as 3.2pc as the City baulked at the plans. National Grid, which presents full-year results tomorrow, sank more than 2pc before halving its losses.

Labour’s official Bringing Energy Home proposal claims public ownership would spark a “Green Industrial Revolution”.

The Confederation of British Industry called the plans “hanging a ‘closed’ sign above the UK”. “The country needs policies focused on powering economic growth in the future, not revisiting mistakes,” said policy director Matthew Fell.

Support for Labour’s nationalisation agenda has slumped in recent weeks, says a ComRes poll for Water UK

ENA Members

Plan Details

For details of Corbyn’s absurd plan, please see Jeremy Corbyn draws up plans to seize control of UK’s energy with sweeping nationalisation of networks

A leaked Labour party document has revealed plans for a swift and sweeping renationalisation of the country’s £62bn energy networks at a price decided by Parliament. The blueprint, seen by the Telegraph, lays bare for the first time Mr Corbyn’s plan to bring all energy network companies under public ownership “immediately” following a Labour election win.

Those in Labour’s sights include the FTSE 100 energy giant National Grid, which is worth over £29bn, and the transmission arms of Big Six energy companies SSE and Scottish Power. The nationalisation agenda will also include all 19 of the UK’s smaller regional gas and power grids and the massive subsea power cables linking the UK to Europe.

The agencies will be tasked with sourcing low carbon or renewable sources for 60pc of all energy use by 2030. They will also oversee the rollout of electric vehicle charging networks and new energy storage projects across the country.

A spokesman for National Grid warned that the state-ownership plans “would only serve to delay” the huge investments needed to help the UK take a lead in the green economy.

The Price?

The Government gets to set the price paid for the takeover.

Labour Self Destruction

The Labour party is already split in several pieces over Brexit.

This move will raise more than a few eyebrows.

Corbyn in Praise of Venezuela

Recall that Corbyn is a supporter and fan of Venezuela and Hugo Chavez.

Here’s an even better video, just not one that I can embed: Corbyn Calls Hugo Chavez ‘An Absolute Legend in Every Way’

Green Revolution Nonsense

I am pleased as punch with the monstrous stupidity of this proposal.

Why?

Because Corbyn just handed Nigel Farage and his Brexit Party (which I support) a second major issue on a on a silver platter.

The Brexit Party is already in first place in the polls as noted in Brexit Party Surge: Tories Drop to 5th Place in European Parliament Polls

Labour and the Tory party are both in self-destruct mode.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2W8yHIS Tyler Durden

UK-US Row Over Iran Intel Unleashes Storm Of Behind The Scenes Infighting

A new report in Britain’s The Times says the UK’s Ministry of Defense (MoD) is standing by its senior officer in the US-led coalition in Iraq and Syria, who earlier this week publicly contracted the Pentagon and US administration by appearing to dismiss US intelligence claims over the heightened Iran threat. 

The awkward public exchange unfolded between the US military and its closest allied military coalition force during a Pentagon press conference on Tuesday wherein a top British commander in charge of anti-ISIS coalition forces rebuked White House claims on the heightened Iran threat. 

“No – there’s been no increased threat from Iranian-backed forces in Iraq and Syria,” British Army Maj. Gen. Christopher Ghika, a deputy head of the US-led coalition, asserted confidently in a video link briefing from Baghdad to the Pentagon in response to a CNN question.

Essentially this meant the powerful number two commander of “Operation Inherent Resolve” Combined Joint Task Force was questioning the entire basis on which the “imminent threats” and “high level of alert” shift in mission readiness decision was made. But now Britain’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office is said to be fuming over the handling of the situation.

The public disagreement, quickly picked up in world headlines, and further weakening the White House’s stance on the “Iran threat”, has unleashed a storm of controversy among allies behind the scenes. 

The Times report includes the following bombshell details:

Officials from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office are understood to be angry at the MoD’s handling of the situation. The row raises questions about the extent of intelligence that the US has shared with Britain about the alleged threat from Iran. Israeli media reported that the warnings were passed on by Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency. The US State Department has ordered non-emergency employees to leave Iraq.

The report further quoted a former head of the British Army, who said it was “unfortunate that there should be publicly expressed divergent views” on the issue by allies.

The source, identified as General Lord Dannatt, said: “It’s pretty unusual. The UK was accused by the US from time to time of slightly going our [own] way in southern Iraq and southern Afghanistan, but that was respected as operational divergences of opinion, which is something different from straight contradiction.”

Following Tuesday’s Pentagon press briefing a rare and swift rebuke was issued from the US side hours later, when US Central Command (CENTCOM) released its own statement slamming Gen. Ghika’s words as inaccurate, insisting coalition troops in Iraq and Syria were an a “high level of alert” due to the “Iran threat”. 

“Recent comments from OIR’s [Operation Inherent Resolve] deputy commander run counter to the identified credible threats available to intelligence from US and allies regarding Iranian-backed forces in the region,” the CENTCOM statement said.

“US Central Command, in coordination with OIR, has increased the force posture level for all service members assigned to OIR in Iraq and Syria. As a result, OIR is now at a high level of alert as we continue to closely monitor credible and possibly imminent threats to US forces in Iraq.”

Britain’s MoD had also tried to do damage control, saying in written statement following the CENTCOM press release, according to The Times: Captain Urban added that Operation Inherent Resolve, the US-led mission, “is now at a high level of alert as we continue to closely monitor credible and possibly imminent threats to US forces in Iraq”.

US troops in the Middle East, via The Times:

“Major-General Ghika speaks as a military officer in the US-led coalition focused on the fight against Daesh [Isis] in Iraq and Syria,” the MoD statement continued.

“His comments are based on the day-to-day military operations and his sole focus is the enduring defeat of Daesh. He made clear in the Pentagon briefing that ‘there are a range of threats to American and coalition forces in this part of the world. There always have been, that is why we have a very robust range of force protection measures.’ ”

The MoD statement added: “The UK has long been clear about our concerns over Iran’s destabilising behaviour in the region.”

One former British diplomat to the Middle East said as quoted in The Times report that, “I cannot remember a precedent and certainly not one that is so public”.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2WM5u3r Tyler Durden

“A World Aching For Peace & Stability Can No Longer Afford NATO”

Authored by Jon Wight, op-ed via RT.com,

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg calling for an end to the fighting in Libya is like an arsonist calling for the house he’s just burned to the ground to stop emitting smoke…

For this reason it can only be an excess of black humor or wilful amnesia on the part of Mr Stoltenberg that explains his perverse call for this particular conflict to end in this particular country, eight years after it received a prolonged visit from a Western military alliance over which he currently presides.

Along with recent NATO exercises in Estonia, involving 9,000 troops operating just 15km from Russia’s border, Jens Stoltenberg’s call for a peaceful resolution to the ongoing crisis in Libya  suggests that the pride of place above the entrance to NATO headquarters in Brussels should be inscribed in bold letters with the Orwellian mantra of ‘War is peace. Freedom is slavery’.

Because ever since the demise of the Soviet Union, NATO has been engaged in a perennial quest for meaning and relevance, which means to say for opportunities to unleash its democracy missiles and drop its democracy bombs. It is a quest that has and continues to involve ideologues in the media, neocon think tanks, and governments going out of their way to convince people across Europe and the US that without NATO manning the ramparts of Western civilization, the barbarians located to the North, South, East and West of them will come and destroy everything they hold dear.

Stripped of obfuscation, what we have here is a tawdry and base exercise in scaremongering; its aim to inculcate the belief that Russia, Iran, China, North Korea, Venezuela (you can take your pick) is their enemy and a threat to their security. Thus it is that the extent to which people living in the West refuse to internalise the propaganda of their own ruling class and its functionaries is determined by their ability to see the world as it truly is, rather than continue to exist in the darkened room of Western exceptionalism.   

One man who understood this was Karl Marx, who put it thus:

To call upon people to give their illusions about their condition, is to call on them to give a condition that requires illusions.

And when people do give up a condition that requires illusions, and more importantly do so on a collective basis, a dynamic of social change is unleashed – a dynamic such as the Yellow Vest movement in France, for example. I suspect you would find it hard to convince any member of this mass protest movement, who’ve been determinedly protesting Macron and his neoliberal centrist works for the past six months across France, that what they need right now is NATO to protect them from Russia.

On the contrary, the violence that has and continues to be visited on thousands of protesters on the streets of Paris and elsewhere by Macron’s security services, makes a strong case for NATO intervention there. This, after all, was the premise upon which the Libyan intervention in 2011 rested, was it not: to protect civilians from the government against which they’d risen up in protest?

Well then NATO, what are you waiting for?

While we wait for those NATO fighter bombers to appear over Paris, let us return for a moment to Estonia to remind ourselves that the moral swamp of fascism has not yet been drained in Europe, not when today we have the glorification of Estonians who fought under the banner of Waffen SS during WWII.

That it is here, today, where NATO troops are engaged in military exercises on the border not just of any country, but the country whose people did more than any other to crush Hitler’s genocidal project in Europe seven decades ago, stands as a diabolical disgrace. There is no flag big enough to cover the shame involved in such a squalid turn of events, and no amount of historical revisionism can ever justify it.

And neither can ever be justified the murder of Libya eight years ago with the full participation of the same military alliance Jens Stoltenberg and his ilk want us to believe is the last best hope for peace and security in the world. Though the organization’s current secretary general may wish to elide NATO’s role in this crime, refusing to provide him with the satisfaction of doing so is a non-negotiable condition of the historical memory from which intellectual and ethical integrity flows.

A country that in 2010 could boast of a UN High Development Index coterminous with that of first world countries in child mortality, life expectancy, education, women’s rights, etc, is today a place where death and discord reign – and whereslave markets, yes slave markets, are alive and kicking.

In the last analysis, NATO’s legacy of provocation, intimidation and aggression contradicts its otherworldly and fatuous claim of being a military alliance that is dedicated to, according to the organization’s ownwebsite, democratic values and the peaceful resolution of conflicts.

There is nothing democratic about slave markets, and neither is there anything peaceful about conducting military exercises on Russia’s border; legitimising thereby the historical anti-Russian animus and fascist proclivities that exist within states that have been reduced to cat’s paws of Western hegemony.

The only possible conclusion to be drawn, after we draw up  the necessary historical balance sheet, is that NATO’s continuous existence is an impediment to peace, justice, global stability and, with it, human progress. It is a relic of the first Cold War which has done much to bring about the New Cold War, calling to mind the cogent analysis of Roman imperialism provided by political economist Joseph Schumpeter in the second decade of the 20th century:

There was no corner of the known world where some interest was not alleged to be in danger or under actual attack. If the interests were not Roman, they were those of Rome’s allies; and if Rome had no allies, then allies would be invented. When it was utterly impossible to contrive such an interest—why, then it was the national honor that had been insulted. The fight was always invested with an aura of legality. Rome was always being attacked by evil-minded neighbors, always fighting for a breathing space. The whole world was pervaded by a host of enemies, and it was manifestly Rome’s duty to guard against their indubitably aggressive designs. They were enemies who only waited to fall on the Roman people.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2JrMPqS Tyler Durden

Yemen, Iran, and the War Powers Act

Children walk through a badly damaged neighborhood in Aden, Yemen (Giles Clark/OCHA).

Even as  the debate over a possible US confrontation with Iran continues, the US continues to support the Saudi-led war against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. Last month, President Donald Trump vetoed a congressional resolution that would have terminated US military aid to Saudi Arabia and its allies in the Yemen conflict; the resolution was backed by virtually all congressional Democrats, as well as seven Republican senators and sixteen GOP members of the House.

But Trump’s veto of the resolution is not enough to make the US role in this conflict legal. It is still in violation of the 1973 War Powers Resolution (also known as the War Powers Act). That legislation forbids the “introduction” of US forces into “into hostilities or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances,” for a period of more than 90 days without congressional authorization (an initial 60 day period, followed by an additional 30 day extension). Significantly, the WPR defines “introduction” into hostilities to include  “the assignment of member[s] of [the US] armed forces to command, coordinate, participate in the movement of, or accompany the regular or irregular military forces of any foreign country or government when such military forces are engaged, or there exists an imminent threat that such forces will become engaged, in hostilities.”

While US forces are not directly engaged in combat in Yemen, the Trump Administration itself admits that they have provided intelligence, logistical support, and—at times—even in-flight refueling of Saudi aircraft. As Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee (a co-sponsor of the Yemen resolution), puts it, “We’re literally telling the Saudis what to bomb, what to hit, and what and who to take out.” That pretty clearly amounts to US involvement in the command, coordination, and “movement” of Saudi forces—exactly the sort of thing that the WPR forbids, absent congressional authorization.

US involvement in the Yemen War dates back to the Obama administration, and has long since passed the 90 day WPR deadline. Congress has never voted to authorize that involvement. Thus, it is illegal.

Trump’s veto of the recent Yemen Resolution does not change that. That Resolution was an exercise of Congress’ authority under Section 5(c) of the WPR, which allows Congress to use a “concurrent resolution” to terminate a conflict “any time that United States Armed Forces are engaged in hostilities outside the territory of the United States, its possessions and territories without a declaration of war or specific statutory authorization. This enables Congress to end US involvement even if the 90 day WPR deadline has not yet been exceeded. But that deadline still applies to cases where Congress has not passed a concurrent resolution terminating US involvement or the president has vetoed such a resolution (as in the Yemen case). The Trump administration, like the Obama administration before it, remains in violation of the WPR.

At least for the time being, US involvement in the Yemen conflict remains very limited. But that could change over time, especially if the war drags on and the Saudi-led coalition continues to fail to achieve its objectives. In that event, the US could become more seriously enmeshed in the conflict.

This case is by no means the first recent illegal presidential US of war powers. The Obama administration, for example, started an illegal military intervention in Libya, which violated both the War Powers Act and the Constitution (which reserves the power to initiate war to Congress). Obama also started—and Trump continued—the war against ISIS without proper congressional authorization. But the fact that illegal US involvement in the Yemen conflict is not a unique case doesn’t make it right. To the contrary, the ongoing nature of the problem makes it all the more important for Congress to reassert its control over the initiation of war. The Yemen resolution was a step in the right direction. But Congress can and should do much more.

The issue is more than just a matter of technical legality, of interest only to legal scholars. Legislative control over the initiation of war prevents that decision from falling under the control of any one person, and ensures that we only enter a conflict if there is a broad political consensus in favor of doing so. Along with others, I did what I could to to make that case during the Obama years, and it remains just as valid today.

Meanwhile the Yemen War continues, having already killed an estimated 67,000 people, and created millions of refugees.  The principal blame for all that death and suffering rests with the combatants. Both sides have committed their share of atrocities. But US support for the Saudi-led coalition has helped make the situation even worse than it might be otherwise. And we have little, if any, benefit to show for it. Certainly none that even comes close to justifying the enormous human cost of the war. That is morally problematic in itself, even aside from the possibility that the US could become more deeply involved in the war.

There is plenty of room for reasonable disagreement over how best to deal with the danger posed by Iran. I am very skeptical that all-out war is the right approach. But I am also somewhat more hawkish than many other libertarians, and more open to various types of military action than many of them.

But regardless of the specific policy in question, we should be able to agree that the US should not initiate war without proper legislative authorization. For the moment, President Trump seems to have overruled his more hawkish advisers and tried to pull back from military confrontation. But that decision should not rest in the hands of the president alone. As James Madison put it, “the trust and the temptation would be too great for any one man.”

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Yemen, Iran, and the War Powers Act

Children walk through a badly damaged neighborhood in Aden, Yemen (Giles Clark/OCHA).

Even as  the debate over a possible US confrontation with Iran continues, the US continues to support the Saudi-led war against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. Last month, President Donald Trump vetoed a congressional resolution that would have terminated US military aid to Saudi Arabia and its allies in the Yemen conflict; the resolution was backed by virtually all congressional Democrats, as well as seven Republican senators and sixteen GOP members of the House.

But Trump’s veto of the resolution is not enough to make the US role in this conflict legal. It is still in violation of the 1973 War Powers Resolution (also known as the War Powers Act). That legislation forbids the “introduction” of US forces into “into hostilities or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances,” for a period of more than 90 days without congressional authorization (an initial 60 day period, followed by an additional 30 day extension). Significantly, the WPR defines “introduction” into hostilities to include  “the assignment of member[s] of [the US] armed forces to command, coordinate, participate in the movement of, or accompany the regular or irregular military forces of any foreign country or government when such military forces are engaged, or there exists an imminent threat that such forces will become engaged, in hostilities.”

While US forces are not directly engaged in combat in Yemen, the Trump Administration itself admits that they have provided intelligence, logistical support, and—at times—even in-flight refueling of Saudi aircraft. As Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee (a co-sponsor of the Yemen resolution), puts it, “We’re literally telling the Saudis what to bomb, what to hit, and what and who to take out.” That pretty clearly amounts to US involvement in the command, coordination, and “movement” of Saudi forces—exactly the sort of thing that the WPR forbids, absent congressional authorization.

US involvement in the Yemen War dates back to the Obama administration, and has long since passed the 90 day WPR deadline. Congress has never voted to authorize that involvement. Thus, it is illegal.

Trump’s veto of the recent Yemen Resolution does not change that. That Resolution was an exercise of Congress’ authority under Section 5(c) of the WPR, which allows Congress to use a “concurrent resolution” to terminate a conflict “any time that United States Armed Forces are engaged in hostilities outside the territory of the United States, its possessions and territories without a declaration of war or specific statutory authorization. This enables Congress to end US involvement even if the 90 day WPR deadline has not yet been exceeded. But that deadline still applies to cases where Congress has not passed a concurrent resolution terminating US involvement or the president has vetoed such a resolution (as in the Yemen case). The Trump administration, like the Obama administration before it, remains in violation of the WPR.

At least for the time being, US involvement in the Yemen conflict remains very limited. But that could change over time, especially if the war drags on and the Saudi-led coalition continues to fail to achieve its objectives. In that event, the US could become more seriously enmeshed in the conflict.

This case is by no means the first recent illegal presidential US of war powers. The Obama administration, for example, started an illegal military intervention in Libya, which violated both the War Powers Act and the Constitution (which reserves the power to initiate war to Congress). Obama also started—and Trump continued—the war against ISIS without proper congressional authorization. But the fact that illegal US involvement in the Yemen conflict is not a unique case doesn’t make it right. To the contrary, the ongoing nature of the problem makes it all the more important for Congress to reassert its control over the initiation of war. The Yemen resolution was a step in the right direction. But Congress can and should do much more.

The issue is more than just a matter of technical legality, of interest only to legal scholars. Legislative control over the initiation of war prevents that decision from falling under the control of any one person, and ensures that we only enter a conflict if there is a broad political consensus in favor of doing so. Along with others, I did what I could to to make that case during the Obama years, and it remains just as valid today.

Meanwhile the Yemen War continues, having already killed an estimated 67,000 people, and created millions of refugees.  The principal blame for all that death and suffering rests with the combatants. Both sides have committed their share of atrocities. But US support for the Saudi-led coalition has helped make the situation even worse than it might be otherwise. And we have little, if any, benefit to show for it. Certainly none that even comes close to justifying the enormous human cost of the war. That is morally problematic in itself, even aside from the possibility that the US could become more deeply involved in the war.

There is plenty of room for reasonable disagreement over how best to deal with the danger posed by Iran. I am very skeptical that all-out war is the right approach. But I am also somewhat more hawkish than many other libertarians, and more open to various types of military action than many of them.

But regardless of the specific policy in question, we should be able to agree that the US should not initiate war without proper legislative authorization. For the moment, President Trump seems to have overruled his more hawkish advisers and tried to pull back from military confrontation. But that decision should not rest in the hands of the president alone. As James Madison put it, “the trust and the temptation would be too great for any one man.”

from Latest – Reason.com http://bit.ly/2Wbvjgr
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What Putin And Pompeo Did Not Talk About

Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,

Russia is uneasy over the destabilization of Tehran, and on other hotspots the powers’ positions are clear…

Even veiled by thick layers of diplomatic fog, the overlapping meetings in Sochi between US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and President Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov still offer tantalizing geopolitical nuggets.

Russian presidential aide Yury Ushakov did his best to smooth the utterly intractable, admitting there was “no breakthrough yet” during the talks but at least the US “demonstrated a constructive approach.”

Putin told Pompeo that after his 90-minute phone call with Trump, initiated by the White House, and described by Ushakov as “very good,” the Russian president “got the impression that the [US] president was inclined to re-establish Russian-American relations and contacts to resolve together the issues that are of mutual interest to us.”

That would imply a Russiagate closure. Putin told Pompeo, in no uncertain terms, that Moscow never interfered in the US elections, and that the Mueller report proved that there was no connection between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign.

This adds to the fact Russiagate has been consistently debunked by the best independent American investigators such as the VIPS group.   

‘Interesting’ talk on Iran

Let’s briefly review what became public of the discussions on multiple (hot and cold) conflict fronts – Venezuela, North Korea, Afghanistan, Iran.

Venezuela – Ushakov reiterated the Kremlin’s position: “Any steps that may provoke a civil war in the country are inadmissible.” The future of President Maduro was apparently not part of the discussion.

That brings to mind the recent Arctic Council summit. Both Lavrov and Pompeo were there. Here’s a significant exchange:

Lavrov: I believe you don’t represent the South American region, do you?

Pompeo: We represent the entire hemisphere.

Lavrov: Oh, the hemisphere. Then what’s the US doing in the Eastern Hemisphere, in Ukraine, for instance?

There was no response from Pompeo.

North Korea – Even acknowledging that the Trump administration is “generally ready to continue working [with Pyongyang] despite the stalemate at the last meeting, Ushakov again reiterated the Kremlin’s position: Pyongyang will not give in to “any type of pressure,” and North Korea wants “a respectful approach” and international security guarantees.

Afghanistan – Ushakov noted Moscow is very much aware that the Taliban are getting stronger. So the only way out is to find a “balance of power.” There was a crucial trilateral in Moscow on April 25 featuring Russia, China and the US, where they all called on the Taliban to start talking with Kabul as soon as possible.

Iran – Ushakov said the JCPOA, or Iran nuclear deal, was “briefly discussed.”.He would only say the discussion was “interesting.”

Talk about a larger than life euphemism. Moscow is extremely uneasy over the possibility of a destabilization of Iran that allows a free transit of jihadis from the Caspian to the Caucasus.

Which brings us to the heart of the matter. Diplomatic sources – from Russia and Iran – confirm, off the record, there have been secret talks among the three pillars of Eurasian integration – Russia, China and Iran – about Chinese and Russian guarantees in the event the Trump administration’s drive to strangle Tehran to death takes an ominous turn.

This is being discussed at the highest levels in Moscow and Beijing. The bottom line: Russia-China won’t allow Iran to be destroyed.

But it’s quite understandable that Ushakov wouldn’t let that information slip through a mere press briefing.

Wang Yi and other deals

On multiple fronts, what was not disclosed by Ushakov is way more fascinating than what’s now on the record. There’s absolutely no way Russian hypersonic weapons were not also discussed, as well as China’s intermediate-range missiles capable of reaching any US military base encircling or containing China.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, third right, meets Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, center left, in Sochi on 14 May 2019. Photo: AFP / Russian Foreign Ministry Press Service / Anadolu

The real deal was, in fact, not Putin-Pompeo or Pompeo-Lavrov in Sochi. It was actually Lavrov-Wang Yi (the Chinese Foreign Minister), the day before in Moscow.

A US investment banker doing business in Russia told me:

“Note how Pompeo ran like mad to Sochi. We are frightened and overstretched.”

Diplomats later remarked: “Pompeo looked solemn afterwards. Lavrov sounded very diplomatic and calm.” It’s no secret in Moscow’s top diplomatic circles that the Chinese Politburo overruled President Xi Jinping’s effort to find an accommodation to Trump’s tariff offensive. The tension was visible in Pompeo’s demeanor.

In terms of substance, it’s remarkable how Lavrov and Wang Yi talked about, literally, everything: Syria, Iran, Venezuela, the Caspian, the Caucasus, New Silk Roads (BRI), Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU), Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), missiles, nuclear proliferation.

Or as Lavrov diplomatically put it: 

“In general, Russia-China cooperation is one of the key factors in maintaining the international security and stability, establishing a multipolar world order. . . . Our states cooperate closely in various multilateral organizations, including the UN, G20, SCO, BRICS and RIC [Russia, India, China trilateral forum], we are working on aligning the integration potential of the EAEU and the Belt and Road Initiative, with potentially establishing [a] larger Eurasian partnership.”

The strategic partnership is in sync on Venezuela, Syria, Iran, Afghanistan – they want a solution brokered by the SCO. And on North Korea, the message could not have been more forceful.

After talking to Wang Yi, Lavrov stressed that contacts between Washington and North Korea “proceeded in conformity with the road map that we had drafted together with China, from confidence restoration measures to further direct contacts.”

This is a frank admission that Pyongyang gets top advice from the Russia-China strategic partnership. And there’s more:

“We hope that at a certain point a comprehensive agreement will be achieved on the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and on the creation of a system of peace and security in general in Northeast Asia, including concrete firm guarantees of North Korea’s security.”

Translation: Russia and China won’t back down on guaranteeing North Korea’s security. Lavrov said:

“Such guarantees will be not easy to provide, but this is an absolutely mandatory part of a future agreement. Russia and China are prepared to work on such guarantees.”

Reset, maybe?

The indomitable Maria Zakharova, Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman, may have summed it all up. A US-Russia reset may even, eventually, happen. Certainly, it won’t be of the Hillary Clinton kind, especially when current CIA director Gina Haspel is shifting most of the agency’s resources towards Iran and Russia.

Top Russian military analyst Andrei Martyanov was way more scathingRussia won’t break with China, because the US “doesn’t have any more a geopolitical currency to ‘buy’ Russia – she is out of [the] price range for the US.”

That left Ushakov with his brave face, confirming there may be a Trump-Putin meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Osaka next month.

“We can organize a meeting ‘on the go’ with President Trump. Alternatively, we can sit down for a more comprehensive discussion.”

Under the current geopolitical incandescence, that’s the best rational minds can hope for.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2VGuSv2 Tyler Durden

Cryptos Just Flash-Crashed

Shortly before 11pmET, cryptos suddenly jerked lower with Bitcoin flash-crashing over 15% before bouncing back…

Bitcoin was hit the hardest…

Bitcoin collapsed over $1500 before quickly ramping back higher…

No immediate catalyst for the moves in crypto but we note that China’s offshore yuan started to accelerate lower at the same time…

As did US equity futures…

After commentaries run by Chinese state media outlets on Friday suggest the nation has little no interest in continuing trade negotiations with the U.S. for now.

 

 

 

 

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2W8T6NZ Tyler Durden

“We’re Done With Asking Nicely”: British Columbia Launches Probe After Report Finds $7.4 Billion Laundered In 2018

Better late than never, eh?

On the heels of a stunning report revealing over $7 billion in laundered money through British Columbia in 2018 (mostly in the form of Chinese oligarchs buying Vancouver real estate and using it to park money offshore), the province will finally hold a public inquiry into money laundering, according to CBC. The decision was announced by BC Premier John Horgan and Attorney General David Eby on Wednesday morning. They were joined by Finance Minister Carole James. 

At the announcement, Horgan said: “It became abundantly clear to us that the depth and the magnitude of money laundering in British Columbia was far worse than we imagined when we were first sworn in, and that’s why we established the public inquiry today.” 

Heading up the inquiry will be B.C. Supreme Court Justice Austin F. Cullen, who will be looking into real estate, gaming, financial institutions and the corporate and professional sectors. Eby claimed that the recent report formed the basis for the inquiry, while also noting that some individuals had refused to participate in voluntary reviews. Cullen has been given “significant” powers to compel witnesses, testimony, gather evidence and search and seize records with a warrant. 

Eby also said that Organized Crime Reduction Minister Bill Blair assured him that the government would cooperate with the inquiry. Eby said: “We are done with asking nicely. Today, our government has given Justice Cullen the authority to do more than ask for voluntary participation.”

“If there is testimony that the commissioner needs to get to the bottom of this, he will compel that testimony. We’re not constraining the commissioner in any way,” Horgan said. 

Earlier this week we discussed a report detailing the extent of money laundering in the Canadian province, which included more than $5.3 billion being laundered through the real estate market. The independent report released just days ago concluded that an astounding $7.4 billion was laundered in British Columbia in 2018, out of a total of $46.7 billion laundered across Canada throughout the same period. The report was published by an expert panel led by former B.C. deputy attorney general Maureen Maloney.

The reports come after the government commissioned them to try and shed light on laundering by organized crime in BC’s real estate market. This follows last June’s report on dirty money in casinos, which we also wrote about just days ago. 

RCMP commissioner Peter German was commissioned to write the report on real estate, and he concluded that illicit money is what led to “a frenzy of buying” that caused housing prices to spike around Metro Vancouver. The report concluded that there are thousands of properties worth billions at high risk for money laundering. 

An international anti-money laundering agency said last year that organized criminals were laundering about $1 billion per year in the province.

Green Leader Andrew Weaver had already called for a public inquiry: “Namely, that it would improve public awareness, play a crucial role in fault finding, and would help to develop full recommendations,” he said last week. In sum, the report made 29 recommendations, including for the entire province to launch a financial investigations unit. 

Finance Minister Carole James said last week: “…all the recommendations look critical, but the government wants to ensure it’s prioritizing the most important ones, while also noting that action already underway in the legislature on some solutions.”

In late April, we highlighted measures that Vancouver casinos were taking against money laundering, noting that they were resulting in casinos taking a brutal hit to their bottom lines. 

The final public inquiry report is expected to be delivered by May 2021 and an interim report is expected within the next 18 months.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2WRhRLY Tyler Durden

Meet The Man Who Mastered “Jeopardy!” By Ignoring Conventional Wisdom

Submitted by Bill Rice Jr., a freelance writer in Troy, Alabama. He can be reached at wjricejunior@gmail.com. A version of this story originally appeared in The American Conservative.

For all practical purposes, the manner in which contestants have played “Jeopardy!” has not changed since Art Fleming provided the game show’s first “answer” 55 years ago. That is, until James Holzhauer took his place behind the podium earlier this year.  

After winning 22 consecutive games by an astounding average margin of $64,913, one question must be asked: Had every one of these contestants been playing this game the wrong way?

If this is indeed the case,“a professional sports gambler from Nevada” may have shown the world what’s possible when a template – never challenged or questioned over half a century  – is blown up and replaced by another strategy that produces vastly superior results.

By now millions of Americans are familiar with James’s unorthodox “Jeopardy!” strategy. Unlike 99.9 percent of the game’s previous contestants, he starts at the bottom of the board and goes sideways.

“It seems pretty simple to me: If you want more money, start with the bigger-money clues,”  Holzhauer explained in an interview with Vulture magazine. He told NPR “What I do that’s different than anyone who came before me is I will try to build the pot first” before seeking out the game’s Daily Doubles. He then “leverages” his winnings with “strategically aggressive” wagers (read: wagers far larger than any contestant before him was willing to make).

This strategy – along with the fact he’s answering 96.7 percent of the clues correctly –  has allowed James to build insurmountable leads heading into Final Jeopardy. He can then be ultra-aggressive with his Final Jeopardy wagers, including one of $60,013. It was this wager that allowed James to establish his current single-game record of $131,016. (James now holds the Top 12 all-time records for one-game winnings). 

In 22 episodes, James has earned $1.69 million. Given that each show takes about 24 minutes to play, James is averaging $192,045/hour. 

How could a strategy that really is “pretty simple” – one that on a per-hour basis generates more income than any job in America – have been eschewed by approximately 25,000 previous contestants? 

There are several possible answers to this question, none of which speaks particularly well of America, or Americans.

One is that most people are afraid to challenge “conventional wisdom.” If something’s been done the same way for decades by everyone, no one thinks that it can be done differently. And/or people have observed that those who do challenge the Status Quo (“Who is Galileo?”)  aren’t always celebrated, at least in their own times.  

Holzhauer’s contrarian approach to “Jeopardy!” has clearly rubbed many Americans the wrong way.

Washington Post columnist Charles Lane labeled Holzhauer a “menace” who is guilty of violating the “unwritten rules of the game,” a view endorsed by CNN host Michael Smerconish.

Other pundits accused Holzhauer of using tactics that are “unfair” or “bad for the game.” He’s been called divisive, polarizing and controversial, someone who has “destroyed the quaintness of the game” and given America “deadly dull television.” Some speculate he’s “gaming the system,” perhaps even cheating. Many message board posters have pledged to boycott the  show until the “robotic” Holzhauer is defeated.

The opposite view –  thankfully held by more Americans if message board posts are a gauge – is that James is a sensation whose accomplishments should be celebrated. According to one story, he’s the “man who solved ‘Jeopardy!’

Another depressing possibility is that the overwhelming percentage of Jeopardy contestants (and, symbolically, the population writ large) is incapable of performing contrarian analysis, or of approaching a project or puzzle in a unique way.  Americans have either known for decades that “Jeopardy!” was being played the wrong way but were too chicken to play it correctly, or James Holzhauer is the only American who figured the game out.

It’s too soon to tell if future contestants will emulate James’s strategy. For what it’s worth, over the past two weeks, 16 contestants have competed in Jeopardy’s “Teacher Tournament” and every contestant reverted to the game’s normal style of play. Such is the enduring power of conformity, of not challenging conventional wisdom.

But what if conventional wisdom is wrong? And how often is it wrong?

According to Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson, the answer is “almost always.” 

Indeed, Samuelson wrote an important if largely overlooked book on this very subject in 2001. The book’s title:  Untruth: How The Conventional Wisdom Is (Almost Always) Wrong.

Samuelson’s thesis is that people or organizations with an “agenda” often create problems or a “crisis” that are exaggerated or not problems at all. The “solutions” policy makers give us typically make things worse. 

One can take his premise and run with it … and it holds. A few conventional wisdom examples:

  • To protect our freedoms and save lives, America must invade, occupy or attack nation after nation, countries which pose great threats to our country and/or our freedoms.
  • Man-made climate change is the greatest threat to our planet and its inhabitants and can and must be reversed at all costs.
  • Donald Trump will never be elected president of the United States.
  • Donald Trump will drain the swamp.
  • Russia “hacked” an election.
  • There’s only one way to play “Jeopardy!”

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Or, if not all wrong, at least not all sacrosanct.

Examples where conventional wisdom is often wrong could also be easily identified in the fields of science, health, economics and education. The point: if conventional wisdom really is “almost always wrong,” someone (or a lot of someones) need to expose this.

In the grand scheme of things, disproving the postulate that there’s only one way to play “Jeopardy!” might not seem like a big deal.  It could be, however, if a rare “eureka!” moment opened the floodgates of independent thought among more Americans, a development that might qualify as a tectonic shift in any quest to shatter a sub-optimal Status Quo.

As I was researching James, I learned the fascinating identify of one of his sources of inspiration.

“Do you follow hot-dog eating?”

This out-of-left-field question came after a reporter with Vulture asked James to respond to the charge he had “broken” Jeopardy.

“No. Can’t say I do,” the interviewer responded.

James: “About a decade ago, nobody ever thought someone could eat more than, like, 25 hot dogs in ten minutes. But this guy named Takeru Kobayashi came along and he shattered the record by so much that people realized there was a new blueprint to do this.” 

Here I was looking (in vain) for sports analogies to compare James’s paradigm-shifting strategy and it’s James himself who (of course) had the answer.

It wasn’t Secretariat winning by 31 lengths, or Bob Beamon breaking the long-jump record by almost 22 inches, or Wilt Chamberlain scoring 100 points in an NBA game who transcended what everyone thought was possible. These athletes were simply doing the same things they’d always done, just far better, at least on one occasion. 

The example that caught James’s attention – and gave me my perfect analogy – was the story of a 130-pound Japanese man with the goal of eating a mind-boggling number of hot dogs.

Freakonomics Radio – an outfit that appreciates what’s possible when a puzzle is looked at in novel ways – did a podcast on the great Kobayashi.

Through intense study and trial-and-error experimentation, Kobayashi discovered that if he ripped the hot dog in two, squeezed each piece into a ball, dipped the balls in water (thereby breaking down the starch), squeezed out the excess water and tossed each ball into his mouth his stomach could tolerate many more dogs. These simple innovations helped Kobayashi double the existing record his first time out. 

But here’s the kicker, one that offers hope for the world. Once Kobayashi smashed the record, his fellow competitors didn’t quit. They didn’t demand the rules be changed. They simply adapted their techniques and raised the level of their game. Today, an American once again holds the hot-dog-eating record72 wieners in 10 minutes!

The lesson is as obvious as Kobayashi’s bulging abdomen. When someone does think outside the box, when someone proves that performances once thought impossible are in fact easily obtainable, new levels of excellence become possible.

Back to James: “… So I’d be interested to see if there was a new paradigm in (‘Jeopardy!’). If someone comes along and breaks my record, and attributed it to my style, that would be really great,” he told Vulture.

When someone finally cures cancer, my wager is it will be someone like James Holzhauer, or Takeru Kobayashi. It will be someone who looks at all the work that’s come before him and says, “This doesn’t make sense. There’s a better way to approach this.”

Over the last two months James Holzhauer has been trying to teach Americans that eye-opening accomplishments are possible if one ignores or rejects conventional wisdom that is, in fact, wrong. The more Americans who absorb this lesson the better. But really it might take just one future James Holzhauer to improve our world. Let’s hope he or she’s been watching.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2EdszVu Tyler Durden