iftttwall

Authored by Duane Norman via FMShooter.com,

Unfortunately the “Green New Deal” continues to stay in the news.  When Majority Leader Mitch McConnell forced the bill to the Senate floor for a vote, Utah Senator Mike Lee used his 13 minutes on the Senate floor to spend more time discussing Reagan on a Velociraptor and Star Wars Tauntauns than making a coherent policy argument against the bill’s outlined policy.

Afterwards, AOC got all upset and issued her own “people are dying” whining tirade, blaming everyone (but herself) for all the CO2 she claims is causing any extreme weather in America.  This all occurred, of course, right before the Senate voted on the deal, with the final tally going 57-0, with 43 Democrats (including Bernie Sanders) voting “present” instead putting themselves on record on where they stood on the GND initiative.

All the while, American politicians from both parties all but ignored far more prevalent emissions emanating from abroad – especially from the two biggest culprits, China and India:

Of course, Chinese, Indian and Southeast Asian pollution issues are hardly limited to CO2 emissions:

While Democrats have tried to pivot away from the Green New Deal, posturing with a dead-on-arrival bill to force President Trump back into the Paris climate agreement, all US politicians continue to turn a blind eye to China making a mockery of the toothless Paris accords:

The research, carried out by green campaigners CoalSwarm, suggests that 259 gigawatts of new capacity are under development in China.

The authors say this is the same capacity to produce electricity as the entire US coal fleet.

In this study, the researchers used satellite photos to examine every power plant that was subject to a suspension order. They found construction ongoing at many locations.

China has chosen to greatly expand coal power production (64.7% of Chinese electricity generation) while snubbing nuclear power (just 3.9% of Chinese electricity generation).  And even the (fake) New York Times has been forced to admit that China is openly lying about its Paris accord compliance:

China, the world’s leading emitter of greenhouse gases from coal, has been burning up to 17 percent more coal a year than the government previously disclosed, according to newly released data. The finding could complicate the already difficult efforts to limit global warming.

Even for a country of China’s size, the scale of the correction is immense. The sharp upward revision in official figures means that China has released much more carbon dioxide — almost a billion more tons a year according to initial calculations — than previously estimated.

China’s low regard for reducing fossil fuel emissions continues in spite of opposition to the nation’s excessive smog within the country – instead of curtailing polluting activity, China has instead chosen to build massive air purifiers in the heart of its cities:

An experimental tower over 100 metres (328 feet) high in northern China – dubbed the world’s biggest air purifier by its operators – has brought a noticeable improvement in air quality, according to the scientist leading the project, as authorities seek ways to tackle the nation’s chronic smog problem.

In spite of claims it “can run” on solar energy, the project’s officials wouldn’t confirm or deny whether or not the tower uses coal power to run, which would be an irony unto itself.  Amazingly enough, China is more than content to chastise US lawmakers from both parties (who are more than happy enough to take the baitin the push for carbon taxes), recently stating that the US isn’t doing enough to “pay its debts”:

China called on rich countries to “pay their debts” on climate change at global talks on Thursday, criticising developed countries for not doing enough to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and provide finance to help poor countries do the same.

And its not just within China – the Chinese are funding coal power plants across the world, outsourcing even more flouting of the Paris agreements to many of the other nations that are also signatories: 

China financed more than a quarter of all coal plants announced outside the country last year according to a new report, putting its clean energy image at risk as Chinese institutions fund coal-fired projects in emerging markets.

Chinese institutions last year provided $36bn of financing for coal plants outside the country, 26 per cent of the 399 gigawatts of such plants planned or committed last year, according to a report published by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), a US-based non-profit.

Chinese bankers and project planners like coal-backed projects because they are cheap. While they are restricted by Chinese pollution and emissions targets at home, they are free to fund coal-backed projects abroad. “They see the long-term financial, environmental and health consequences of these projects as the responsibility of the other side,” said IEEFA’s Ms Brown.

Meanwhile, in spite of Trump’s insistence that he will save US coal power…

…coal power plants are in rapid decline in the US, as the shale revolution has given way to a rapid rise in natural gas-fired plants.  This has also come at the expense of nuclear power – by far the largest source of carbon-free energy in the US, “expensive” nuclear plants are shuttering at a rapid pace:

So even though the US withdrew from the Paris accord while China stayed in and chastised Trump’s exit, the US has still done a better job of reducing its CO2 emissions than China has.  Go figure.  

Anyone with half a functioning brain knows that the Paris agreements are completely ineffectual – crafted by hypocritical elites that patrol the planet on private jets for the purpose of effecting massive energy taxation upon everyone on earth.  It is hardly a surprise to see left-wing smooth brains jump on board, but the pathetic defense put forward by the GOP’s “best and brightest” leaves little hope that a credible defense against these policies can be put into effect by their opponents.

Unsurprisingly, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes (perhaps the most disingenuous person in mainstream media) hosted a “town hall in the Bronx” with AOC – which essentially amounted to an endorsement of her legislation.  There was no challenge on the deal’s details, and obviously no mention of global emissions – just a “call to action” from a pathetic host who behaved as more of a puppet than a journalist who would challenge any policy proposal.  And MSNBC’s audience?  They just ate the whole thing up – more than willing to push heavy taxation to no effect on global pollution.

Sadly, if the GOP’s best defense against the Paris agreements and the Green New Deal completely ignores excessive foreign flouting of “emissions targets”…

…sooner or later, we will be in for some sort of massive worthless legislation that will accomplish nothing – except higher taxes and more useless regulations. 

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

Banks that for decades were tasked with brokering corporate bond trades – and paid Boiler Room-type spreads for the privilege – are now being pushed aside. As Bloomberg reports, upstart bond marketplaces like MarketAxess, Tradeweb and Liquidnet are all indicating that many bond trades occurring on their platforms are now happening between investors directly, without traditional bank-side brokering. This, needless to say, would have a deleterious effect on bank top lines as brokering institutional order flow for the $9.2 trillion market has historically been one of the main key source of revenue.

Over the last 10 years, corporate-bond traders have been one of the last groups of traders to adopt electronic transactions, even as the rest of the market evolved around them, largely due to the non-standardized nature of corporate bonds (and certainly leveraged loans). But now new rules have forced many dealers to act like machines, seeking bids and offers for bonds and linking the two, instead of just buying securities and holding onto them.

As Bloomberg reports, 27% of the corporate bond trades at MarketAxess were made on its all-to-all platform, Open Trading, in the fourth quarter; this was up from 3% in 2014. On Liquidnet’s platform, more than 90% of volume is between investors. And while electronic trading still remains relatively small, its market share is growing and will likely accelerate as it presents a much more cost-beneficial option to the buyside, especially in a time when trading volumes have collapsed in a world of buy-and-hold-while-praying-the-Fed-will-stay-loose. 

One of the reasons behind the tectonic shift is that regulations after the 2008 crisis made it more expensive for dealers to hold bonds, which has resulted in inventories dwindling by more than 55% over the last 5 years. Rising corporate debt also has investors fearful of a looming credit crunch and speed matters. As the market starts to weaken, money managers look to offload bonds any way they can – through dealers or electronically – in the fastest possible way, and often that involves computers.

Richard McVey, chief executive officer of MarketAxess said: “We’ve opened the architecture so anyone can trade with
anyone else. The cost savings when they find a natural match are meaningful.”

All-to-all trading is also gaining favor because, just like stock trading, it grants traders the option of anonymously seeking a counterparty instead of having to wait on a dealer, especially one who may have a conflict of interest in transacting with you (as the Jesse Litvak scandal revealed). Investors polled by Greenwich Associates said that “all-to-all protocols would be the biggest factor helping trading over the next two years.” 

In all, electronic bond trading made up 26% of the market in the third quarter. Those transactions were generally $4 million and under – a sum that, in the bond market, isn’t usually enough to be worth a bank’s time. Most trades over $50 million are generally still done using bankers. Still, the world’s 12 largest dealers collected $2.2 billion from company bond and loan trading last year, down from $2.8 billion in 2017 and $3.9 billion the year before, according to Bloomberg.

Discussing electronic trading, Rich Repetto, an equity analyst at Sandler O’Neill said that “it is the model of tomorrow for fixed-income trading. All-to-all represents significant advancement in automation in the market.”

But the bankers aren’t dead just yet. Sometimes, in an illiquid market with tons of complex instruments and trades often exceeding tens of millions in value, it’s nice to have a person on the other end of the phone line. 

Kevin McPartland, head of market-structure research at Greenwich Associates said: “People want to talk to people, and know they are doing the right thing on transactions that are $50 million or $100 million.”

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2VcI4nk Tyler Durden

Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

Overshadowing the United States’ “mother of all bombs” or the MOAB, Iran is now claiming to have the “father of all bombs.” The inflammatory claim was made by a top commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC).

The bomb was developed under a special request of the IRGC, the corps’ Aerospace Force commander, Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, said in an interview on Friday, according to RT. 

 “Following a proposal by the Aerospace Force of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), [Iran’s] Defense Industries [Organization] manufactured a 10-ton bomb. These bombs are at our disposal,” PressTV cited the commander as saying. 

“They can be launched from Ilyushin aircraft and they are highly destructive,” he added, without providing any further details on the capabilities of the ordinance.

The Iranian commander compared the “father of all bombs” to the U.S.’s MOAB. The new Iranian name, however, might trigger a bomb naming dispute with Russia, as they have already possessed a non-nuclear ordnance known as the “daddy,” for its previously dubbing: the “father of all bombs.”

Russia’s daddy was technically the first FOAB. The Aviation Thermobaric Bomb of Increased Power, known as the “father of all bombs” (FOAB), was successfully tested by Russia in 2007. It was said to have impressive results for a non-nuclear device. The “daddy” will net a 44-ton yield when detonated. The bomb also explodes mid-air, and vaporizes its targets, collapses structures, and leaves a “moon-like scorched landscape”.

“We believe it’s real,” said retired Col. Rick Francona, a military analyst and former US military attache in Syria. “The Russians have been among the pioneers of these thermobaric bombs,” the analyst said according to CNN in 2017. 

“I don’t have any doubt that they could build this,” Francona said. “It falls under their [Russia’s] technological capabilities.”

But that won’t stop Iran from claiming they also have a FOAB and further amplifying the already immense war rhetoric.

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

In the aftermath of the college admissions scandal, some have asked what is the IRR on investing up to $1.2 million in a Yale education. Here is one answer.

Omar Zaki, a recent Yale grad was busted by the SEC on Monday which in a complaint accused the 21-year-old of running a hedge fund, Armitage Capital, while enrolled at the Ivy League university, and claiming to investors that his firm relied on an algorithm that had produced eye-popping returns over a 10-year period (which incidentally means he launched his quant trading career when he was 11).

This was one of many misrepresentations Zaki allegedly made to investors: in reality, not only did the fund never use any algorithm, but the Yale grad also misled investors about how much money he managed and wrongly reported returns in excess of 80% from December 2016 through early March 2017, Bloomberg reported.

The 21 year old economics and physics major told investors he managed up to $5 million, raised $1.7 million from 11 clients from January 2017 to February 2018 by investing in biotech companies. In his ICOBench profile, he also said that “he was an early investor in the crypto space and continues to remain passionate about the space.”

Here is the key section from the SEC’s filing on Zaki’s misrepresentations:

Zaki prepared multiple versions of the Fund’s prospectus dated May 16, 2017, which contained some or all of the following false information: (i) the Fund had trading history dating from December 2016 to April 2017, even though it did not start trading until June 2017; (ii) the Fund had returns in its biotech portfolio in excess of 80% from December 2016 through early March 2017, even though it did not maintain a separate biotech portfolio or conduct any trading at all until June 2017; (iii) the Fund had returns from its SPY algorithm trading ranging from 18% to 114% over a 10 year period, even though the algorithm was not available to the Fund prior to 2017 and was never deployed; (iv) the Fund deployed a foreign exchange trading strategy on April 1, 2017, that had positive returns, even though it did not engage a foreign exchange trader until April 29, 2017, and the trader was never able to deploy his strategy; and (v) Individual A and others were among the Fund’s management, even though Zaki was solely responsible for its management and operations. Zaki also claimed that a portfolio manager joined the Fund in December 2016, even though the  individual was not affiliated with the Fund until May 2017

* * *

Zaki made several additional misrepresentations to Investor A. On October 21, 2017, Zaki sent messages to Investor A, falsely claiming the value of Investor A’s Fund investment had grown 30% in two months. To support his statement, Respondent provided a screenshot showing what he purported to be Investor A’s account value. At the time that he sent the message, Zaki knew that the screenshot included other investors’ funds.

The next trading day, the account value dropped significantly. Zaki took repeated steps to conceal investment losses from Investor A. For example, on October 25, 2017, Respondent provided Investor A with a trading log that contained false information about theFund’s trading history, including listing securities that the Fund did not trade and false purchase and sale prices to inflate the Fund’s returns.

In other words, he was your garden variety member of fintwit.

Zaki settled the SEC’s allegations without admitting or denying its findings, agreeing to pay a $25,000 fine, which the SEC is letting him pay in installments of $2,083.33 over three years. As part of the SEC settlement, the young “investor” agreed to a bar on working as an investment adviser, with the right to reapply after three years.

So had Zaki’s parents spent $1.2 million on his Ivy league education what would they have gotten, besides a rap sheet of course? Nothing much: in the settlement, the regulator said Zaki is currently unemployed.

The SEC’s full complaint is below (link).

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

Authored by Lawrence Thomas via GoldTelegraph.com,

For almost a decade, global central banks have been avid gold buyers. Gold purchases by central banks in 2018 rose 36 percent over the previous year. Central banks are now holding 366 tons of the yellow metal. These gold purchases are the largest since 1971 when President Nixon ceased the gold standard and the tie between the U.S. dollar and gold, which rapidly led to the devaluation of the U.S. dollar.

Not every central bank has followed this trend. Venezuela, which is in the midst of an economic collapse, sold 25 tons of gold in 2018 in an attempt to repay its debts. But Venezuela is an exception. Other central banks are eager to increase their gold reserves as a hedge against economic uncertainty. Gold ownership by central banks is at a 50-year high as global purchases have increased 75 percent over the past year.

1. United States

The Federal Reserve holds the largest amount of gold of any other central bank, 8,133.5 tons. This is 75.2 percent of its foreign reserves. The Federal Reserve has not been as active in the gold-buying spree as other countries in an effort to keep the dollar from devaluing.

2. Germany

Germany’s central bank has been busy repatriating 674 tons of gold from the Banque de France and the Federal Reserve Bank. During the Cold War, the country’s closeness to what was then Russia-controlled East Germany drove Germany to store its gold with other countries. Now, the Deutsche Bundesbank is calling its gold back home. This move is expected to be completed by 2020. Germany currently holds 3,370.0 tons of gold, which account of over 70 percent of its foreign reserves. Germany, which experienced hyperinflation in the 1930s which saw the Deutschmark become valueless, has learned its history lesson.

3. Italy

Italy plans on holding on to its 2,451.8 tons of gold. The Bank of Italy has stated that it considers gold a safe investment in times of economic turmoil and a safeguard against the volatility of the U.S. dollar. Gold represents 67.9 percent of Italy’s foreign reserves.

4. France

France has gradually ceased selling its gold reserves in an effort to hold on to the 2,436.0 tons of gold it currently has. This amounts to over 60 percent of the country’s foreign reserves. Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Front Party, has advocated for a freeze on the sale of gold, as well as repatriation of all of France’s gold currently being held by foreign countries.

5. Russia

The Russian Central Bank has been bullish on gold for six years. In 2017, it overtook China to become the fifth largest holder of gold reserves. Much of this is due to trade tensions between the U.S. and Russia. Two years ago, Russia purchased 224 tons of gold and sold off much of its U.S. Treasury debts. This move is seen as a defensive effort to weaken the U.S. dollar as the top global reserve currency. Currently, Russia holds 2,119.2 tons of gold in reserves. The Russian Central Bank is leading the way in gold purchases in its efforts to devalue the dollar.

Since the U.S. placed economic sanctions against Russian, its central bank has been accumulating gold as a safety net against having its assets frozen. In 2018, it purchased 8.8 million ounces of gold.

6. China

China, which currently holds 1,864.3 tons of gold in reserve, a low amount among the leading gold-holding countries, but there have been many reports that the country has left some of the gold purchases off its books. However. China is expanding its reserves slowly. It is also the leading producer of gold in the world.

Global central banks now hold the greatest share of the world’s gold, approximately 33,800 tons. Gold has been a critical diversification tool, a safety hedge against inflation, or as collateral for loans.

Central banks in Austria and Switzerland have also indicated that they consider gold an essential reserve against future emergencies. The Polish central bank expressed the fact that their gold reserves allow diversification and greater independence and less reliance on the financial stability of other countries.

Sweden, Greece, and Portugal have expressed the same sentiments. Gold is a haven of safety during economic turndowns.

Countries have held #gold as a reserve asset throughout history…

Here are the top ten holders:

🇺🇸 = 8,133.5
🇩🇪= 3,369.7
🇮🇹= 2,451.8
🇫🇷= 2,436.0
🇷🇺= 2,119.2
🇨🇳= 1,864.3
🇨🇭= 1,040.0
🇯🇵= 765.2
🇳🇱= 612.5
🇮🇳= 607.0

Is your country on the list?
#GoldmoneyResearch pic.twitter.com/oqF4azEoKZ

— Goldmoney Research (@GMoneyResearch) March 28, 2019

The world’s central banks are counting on the power of gold to help them through bad economic times. Is this something investors should be thinking about, as well? The current economic growth experienced around the globe is expected to come to an end, as all economic upswings do. Some economists are predicting a recession by 2020. In the event of such an occurrence, investors should be position by having a proven hedge during bearing times.

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

Authored by Anthony Mueller via The Mises Institute,

People like the welfare state because they suppose that it comes at no costs and provides many benefits. If people knew how much the present consumption of social benefits entails less prosperity in the future, the population would have a critical attitude towards the welfare state and politicians would have a harder time selling their fraud. Just as a society that ranks security over liberty loses both, a society that attributes a higher value to social benefits than to wealth creation ends up with neither wealth nor benefits.

A short-term perspective is intrinsic to modern democracy. It is run not by the people but by political parties. Such a political system promotes the redistribution of the cake and neglects that the goods must be produced before they can be consumed. Without production, however, there can be no distribution. The illusion is widespread and propagated by the political machinery that production is independent of its distribution so that one could redistribute without weakening production. Yet how the product is distributed affects its future making.

A concept of justice that is only concerned with the social justice of distribution is a contradiction in terms. The justice of distribution of the goods has as its other side the justice regarding the efforts of producing the goods. Justice, rightly understood, has a distributive and a commutative aspect. The disregard of the commutative aspect of justice in favor of the distributive justice is unjust. Such an approach is also irrational since distribution is possible only when there is something to distribute.

Redistribution is unjust and economically irrational when it punishes those who produce. When the redistribution of income and wealth becomes excessive, the active part of the population withdraws from production and parasitism takes over, economic progress will falter und finally disappear. This way, society will impoverish, and the poor are left with less to nothing. In the end, the poor themselves will pay the steepest price of this policy because they will be the hardest hit when growth falls and the misery rise.

It is unethical to strive towards more justice as if it were an absolute good. The cost of imposing equality exceeds its benefits. At first, the negative effects of income equalization on economic growth are not visible. For some time, capital consumption may compensate for weak economic growth. This erosion does not immediately show up in the national income statistics because consumption counts as a part of the national product.

An insidious form of capital consumption takes place through government debt accumulation. A budget deficit means that the overall volume of national savings falls. Fewer savings imply that economic investment potential has become smaller. In the economic statistics, the expenditures  —  whether they are from the state or from the private side  — count equally as a contribution to the national product. Yet while the spending benefits the current receivers of the government expenditures, the lower capital formation will later show up in weaker economic growth and punishes all.

In as much as public debt is an enemy of economic growth, it is also an enemy of wealth creation. The benefits which the government distributes in the short run and that are financed by higher public debt will reduce economic growth and make poverty persistent and more widespread in the long run.

Government debt weakens economic growth and weak economic growth leads to higher government expenditures and thus furthermore to a rising debt burden. Less economic growth ignites more demand for social benefits and more redistribution leads again to even less growth. Numerous countries have fallen into the trap where social expenditures weaken the economy and where this weakness requires more spending, which in turn weakens the economy.

Cycle of Welfare Spending and Economic Stagnation

Source: A. P. Mueller: Beyond the State and Politics. Capitalism for the New Millennium. Amazon KDP 2018

The expansion of the welfare state leads to a rising public debt, which weakens the economic performance. A weakening economy entails more welfare spending and leads to a further rise of public debt, which, in turn, leads to more welfare spending. A dangerous side effect of this fall into a downward spiral is that the anti-capitalistic attitude in the population increases, since for most citizens, the causal links are difficult to recognize.

This vicious cycle is noticeable in the decline in the rate of productivity growth of the industrialized countries since the 1970s that came along with the expansion of the welfare state and the rise of public debt. The welfare state and government debt are the main causes of the decline in productivity rates. Over the past decades, the rates of the annual increase of productivity of the major industrialized countries have fallen from an average of five percent in the 1960s to around two percent in the 1990s and keep on falling.

The escape from the welfare trap is the challenge of our time. Less productivity growth means less economic growth and less economic growth means lower income. The longer a country remains stuck in the trap, the harder it is to get out. To overcome the vicious cycle, the insight must take hold that an excessive welfare state erodes productivity.

Without productivity gains, there is no increase in real per capita income. The labor productivity of a country determines its income level. The industrialized nations must get out of the whirlpool of welfare spending, public debt, and weak economic growth. Lifting the purchasing power of salaries requires higher productivity. More state control is not the way to higher productivity but less regulation, less intervention, and less redistribution.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2I40Rxn Tyler Durden

A military helicopter training facility, constructed by Russia’s Rosoboronexport, was revealed in Venezuela Friday, several days after Moscow deployed troops and equipment to the crisis-stricken South American country, reported TASS News.

“A modern helicopter training center was built under Rosoboronexport’s contract with Venezuelan state-owned defense manufacturer (CAVIM). Its opening ceremony took place on March 29,” Rosoboronexport said.

The statement added that the training facility had opened earlier in the week “with Russian and Venezuelan specialists participating.”

“At present, Russian helicopters supplied to Venezuela not only take part in operations against smugglers, but also successfully perform aerial survey of wildfires, take part in rescue and evacuation missions in areas hit by natural disasters and deliver humanitarian cargo to remote regions of the country,” Rosoboronexport added.

A source within Venezuela’s Army Aviation told TASS that the facility would make the training process more efficient for future helicopter pilots and crews.

Rosoboronexport will supply Russian-made Mi-35M multi-role combat attack helicopters for missions related to targeting illicit drug production facilities, the source said.

“One Mi-35M2 helicopter is capable of delivering a special group of five or six officers, providing fire support if necessary and evacuating the team after the task is fulfilled,” the source said.

The announcement came several days after Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced the build-up of Russian troops and equipment in the country.

The Trump administration condemned President Maduro on Friday for what it said was his cozy relationship with Moscow.

President Trump’s national security adviser John Bolton and U.S. special envoy for Venezuela Elliott Abrams said Russia’s presence in the country is extremely destabilizing for the Western Hemisphere.

“We strongly caution actors external to the western hemisphere against deploying military assets to Venezuela, or elsewhere in the hemisphere, with the intent of establishing or expanding military operations,” the national security adviser said in a statement.

Russia responded over the weekend by indicating it had sent military personnel to the Latin American country based on a military-technical cooperation agreement from 2001.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said approximately 100 troops have been sent to the country “for as long as needed.”

Russia and China both support the Maduro regime. President Maduro has said,” American imperialists want to kill me.”

Moscow has recently accused Washington of engineering a violent coup in Venezuela in violation of the United Nations Charter.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2JX3t2s Tyler Durden

Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

Our predicament is simple to describe.

Since the dawn of civilization, powerful individuals have controlled the stories people tell themselves about who they are, who’s in charge, how a good citizen behaves, what groups should be loved, what groups should be hated, and what’s really going on in the world. When you study what we call history, you’re mostly just reading the ancient proto-propaganda of whatever kingdom happened to win the last war during that period of time. When you study what we call religion, you’re mostly reading stories that were advanced by ancient governments explaining why the people should be meek, forgiving taxpayers instead of rising up and killing their wealthy exploiters.

This continues to this day. We fill our children’s heads with lies about how the world works, how the government works, how the media works, and, on a deeper level, how their own consciousness works, and the entire process is shaped to funnel power toward the people who control our stories. The modern schooling system was largely formed by John D Rockefeller, widely considered the wealthiest person in modern history, in order to create generations of docile gear-turners for the industrial plutocratic machine. Modern schooling is essentially mainstream media in a building; it promotes authorized narratives day in and day out to ensure that children will have a reaction of cognitive dissonance and rejection when confronted with information which contradicts those narratives.

This funnels the populace seamlessly into the narrative control matrix of adulthood, where childhood indoctrination into mainstream narratives lubricates the way for continual programming of credulous minds with mass media propaganda. All the print, TV and online media they are presented with supports the status quo-supporting agendas of the same plutocratic class that John D Rockefeller dominated all those years ago. This ensures that no matter how bad things get, no matter how severely our spirits are crushed by end-stage metastatic neoliberalism, no matter how many stupid, pointless wars we’re duped into, no matter how much further we are drawn along the path toward extinction via climate chaos or nuclear war, we will never revolt to overthrow our rulers.

That’s three paragraphs. Our predicament is simple to describe and easy to understand. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy to solve.

Everyone has at some point known someone in some kind of an abusive relationship, whether it be with a partner, a family member, or a job, and we all know that helpless feeling of being unable to help someone who refuses to walk away from the source of their abuse.

“Just leave him!” we say in exasperation. “The door’s right there! It’s not locked!”

But it’s never that simple. It’s never that simple because, although the abusee is indeed physically capable of walking out the door, the thoughts that are in their head keep them from choosing that option.

This is because no abuser is simply violent or cruel: they are also necessarily manipulative. If they weren’t manipulative, there wouldn’t be any “abusive relationship”; there’d just be someone doing something horrible one time, followed by a hasty exit out the door. There can’t be an ongoing relationship that is abusive unless there’s some glue holding the abusee in place, and that glue always consists primarily of believed narrative.

“I didn’t mean it. I love you. I just get frustrated sometimes because of your stupidity.”

“You can’t leave; you’ll never make it out there on your own. You need me.”

“I’m the only one who’ll ever be there for you. Nobody else will ever love you because you’re so disgusting.”

“Your children need their father. You have to stay.”

“I need you! I’ll die without you!”

“I’m not doing that. You’re paranoid and crazy.”

“Your inability to forgive me means something is wrong with you.”

They seldom say it so overtly, because if they did its malignancy would be easy to spot, but those are the ideas which get subtly implanted into the abusee’s head day after day after day by way of skillful manipulation.

“It’s her own fault for staying,” someone will inevitably say.

No it isn’t. Not really. The abuser is at fault for the overt abuse, and the abuser is also at fault for the psychological manipulations which keep the abusee in place in spite of terrible cruelty. It’s all one thing, and it’s entirely the abuser’s fault.

Humanity’s predicament is the same. I often hear revolutionary-minded thinkers voicing frustration at the mainstream public for choosing to stay within this transparently abusive dynamic instead of rising up and forcing change, and yes, it is self-evident that the citizenry could easily use its vastly superior numbers to do that if it collectively chose to. The door is right there. It’s not even locked.

But the people aren’t failing to choose the door because they love being abused, they’re failing to choose the door because they’ve been manipulated into not choosing it. From cradle to grave they’re pummeled with stories telling them that this is the only way things can be, in exactly the same way a battered wife or a cult member are pummeled with stories about how leaving is impossible.

The difficulty of our times is not that we are locked up; we aren’t. The difficulty is that far too many of us are manipulated into choosing a prison cell over freedom.

The fact of the matter is that a populace will never rise up against its oppressors as long as it is being successfully propagandized not to. It will never, ever happen. The majority will choose the prison cell every time.

You’d expect that more dissident thinking would be pouring into solving this dilemma, but not much is. People talk about elections and political strategies, they talk about who has the most correct ideology, they talk about rising up and seizing the means of production due to unacceptable material conditions, they wax philosophical about the tyranny of the state and the immorality of coercion, but they rarely address the elephant in the room that you can’t get a populace to oust the status quo when they do not want to.

Nothing will ever be done about our predicament as long as powerful people are controlling the stories that the majority of the public believe. This is as true today as it was in John D Rockefeller’s time, which was as true as when Rome chose to spread the “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s” submissiveness of Christianity throughout the Empire. The only difference is that now the powerful have a century of post-Bernays propaganda scienceunder their belt, and a whole lot of research and development can happen in a hundred years.

So what’s the solution? How do you awaken a populace that is not just manipulated into choosing its prison cell every time, but is also manipulated into believing that any suggestion that they’re in a prison cell is a crazy conspiracy theory?

Well, what do you do when a loved one is in an abusive relationship? It never works to shake them and scream “You’re being abused!”; that just causes them to tighten up and dig in deeper with their abuser’s narratives about how this is the only way things can be and anyone who says otherwise is crazy. What works is to lovingly help that sovereign spark within them gather evidence that the narratives they’re being fed by their abuser are lies. Point out every time where reality contradicts the stories they’ve been told. Weaken their trust in the old stories while strengthening their confidence in their own perception and their sense of entitlement and worthiness. Help them to see that they’re being lied to, and that they deserve better.

This breaking of trust needs to happen within the respective partisan echo chambers of those who are being propagandized. It’s useless to increase the distrust of CNN and MSNBC among Trump’s base, for example, but it’s very useful to increase their distrust in right-wing narratives. It’s useless to increase Democrats’ distrust in Trump and Fox News, but it’s very useful to get them skeptical of the narrative control machine they’ve been plugged into. Each head of the two-headed one-party system needs to be attacked in a way that makes sense inside each of its respective echo chambers.

Mostly, though, what we need is we need is for more thinkers to be more focused on the real problem. I know some influential minds read this blog; if they can help seed the idea out among the movers and shakers of dissident thought that propaganda is our first and foremost problem, we just might get somewhere. We need a major shift of focus onto the narrative control matrix and the obstacle that it poses to revolution, and everyone can help shift us there in their own way.

The propaganda machine won’t be adequately disrupted without intensive effort, and until it is we’re going to keep selecting the prison cell every time.

*  *  *

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The U.S. Air Force announced last week that it had selected Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota to be the preferred location for the first operational B-21 Raider bomber unit, as well as a training group, reported the United States Air Forces in Europe – Air Forces Africa.

The release said the second and third bombing units would be based at Whiteman AFB, Missouri, and Dyess AFB, Texas.

“These three bomber bases are well-suited for the B-21,” Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson said in the release. “We expect the first B-21 Raider to be delivered beginning in the mid-2020s, with subsequent deliveries phased across all three bases.”

Ellsworth AFB was selected as the first location for the next-generation stealth bomber because of its strategic location in the Midwest. The release said Ellsworth AFB has “sufficient space and existing facilities necessary to accommodate simultaneous missions.”

The service is expected to make the final decision after it compiles the National Environmental Policy Act and other regulatory and planning processes on where to base the B-21 by 2021.

In 4Q18, the Air Force said that Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma would provide temporary support for the B-21, and Edwards AFB in California would conduct testing and evaluation trials. 

Robins AFB in Georgia and Hill AFB in Utah were also chosen to support Tinker on maintaining, overhauling and upgrading the B-21, the Air Force said last fall.

The Air Force will retire the B-1 Lancers and B-2 Spirits once series production of the B-21 begins.

“We are procuring the B-21 Raider as a long-range, highly survivable aircraft capable of penetrating enemy airspace with a mix of weapons,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Dave Goldfein said in the release. “It is a central part of a penetrating joint team.”

The head of the U.S. Air Force Global Strike Command expects 100 B-21 bombers will be the minimum ordered and envisions some 175–200 bombers in service by 2030. At $550 million per plane in FY10 dollars, the entire program could cost American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars.

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

Authored by Jonathon Moseley via AmericanThinker.com,

Gun-owners, they are coming: on March 21, a Fredericksburg man was prosecuted and convicted of the misdemeanor crime of merely holding a B.B. gun in public.  I know because I was in the trial, as the attorney defending Mr. Wolff.

The Second Amendment protects the right to keep and bear arms.  However, gun control activists are trying to criminalize gun ownership.  Their next step is that you are a criminal if you take a gun out in public.  If they have to let you own a gun, you can’t ever take it out of its case.

Liberals continue to try to criminalize private ownership of guns, despite losing a key battle in District of Columbia v. Heller, 128 S.Ct. 2783, 2820–2821, 171 L.Ed.2d 637, (2008).  Unlike conservatives, left-wingers never quit.  They intend to win the war eventually and disarm the American people.

Now they claim that it is illegal to “open carry” a firearm.  The mere existence of a gun if anyone else is around now has become the crime of “brandishing” and/or “assault” (which means frightening people, contrary to popular misunderstanding) or both.

In Virginia, in the Fredericksburg General District Court, my client was charged with two counts of “brandishing” a firearm under Va. Code § 18.2-282 and two counts of assault under the all-purpose (vague) Va. Code §18.2-57, for a single incident that took no more than 30 seconds.  (In my own defense, I took the case knowing that Virginia statutes are bad and need to be challenged by a campaign of appeals.)

In the early morning of January 3, 2019, Mr. Wolff — who because of the pain of his injuries did not sleep most of the night — heard a loud commotion in the private athletic club parking lot right to him.  There was a history of trespassing, drunken parties, and police activity there.  He described often seeing the blue flashing lights of police cars filling his living room from that spot over the years.  He knew that the parking lot was blocked by a cable and a lock, so anyone parking there would be committing a crime, including breaking the cable and the lock.  Just last week, he found a .22 bullet casing in that parking lot.

He testified that he did not know what was going on, so he took his B.B. gun for his own protection. 

 Standing in his own yard, he shouted across the fence, “What are you doing there?  That is private property.”  

The woman then shouted, “He’s got a gun!”  

The man and the woman then calmly walked away, never answering his question.  

They were “flaggers” assisting a road construction project, but nobody had ever informed Mr. Wolff before. 

His question was never answered.  He went back into his townhouse, thought the incident was over, and went back to his morning meal.

Nobody suggested that he ever pointed the B.B. gun at anyone, nor that he waved it or flourished it in an ostentatious or angry manner (referring to dictionary definitions of “brandish”).  But he was then arrested for two counts of “assault by intimidation” and two counts of brandishing, purely because the two workers said they were afraid.

There was body-cam video of the interviews after the fact.  Everyone agreed on the day of the incident that the defendant carried a B.B. gun by holding the barrel (the front tip up by his hip) so that the trigger end hung down near the ground, and that he held the B.B. gun down next to his leg. He then leaned it up against the fence.

There were four counts alleging two victims from the same incident.  So if you have a gun around ten people, you could be charged with twenty misdemeanors from one single action.  That would be ten crimes of brandishing by just holding the gun passively and ten crimes of assault from the same holding, because there are ten people around.

The judge seemed sympathetic but said that he felt constrained by prior court cases to find Mr. Wolff guilty of Va. Code § 18.2-282, which also criminalizes merely “holding” a firearm “in such manner as to” frighten someone.  The judge discussed with me that the statute is completely subjective from the standpoint of the complaining person.

I say this makes the statute unconstitutional — void for vagueness — because anyone can say he is afraid just because you are holding a gun.  How do you know what to means to hold a gun “in such a manner” as to make someone afraid?  There are no standards to follow.

How do you know if you are breaking the law?  What is “brandishing?”  Nobody knows.  There is no definition in the statute.  Virginia considers dictionaries, but those definitions are all over the map.

We should all be offended by vague and ambiguous laws that can be bent like putty in the hands of prosecutors or police.

Va. Code §18.2-282 and similar laws nationwide are unconstitutional because they are “void for vagueness,” in violation of the due process rights of the U.S. Constitution.  Mentions in precedents and dictionaries are inconsistent as well as incredibly vague and ambiguous.

Neither I nor Mr. Wolff has the funds to, but someone needs to take this all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down these vague laws.

Many of the events on January 3 were captured by police “body worn camera” video, which is still available to confirm every detail.  The trial was captured by court reporting firm Frances K. Haley & Associates, Inc.

Now, in order to take the case to Second Amendment organizations like the Virginia Civil Defense League, Gun Owners of America, and the NRA, or The Rutherford Institute with John Whitehead in Virginia, it is necessary to show the court reporter’s transcript to them.  They need to know that this case is a good example of the legal question before going forward with it.

Mr. Wolff is a disabled veteran living on a small pension.  He needs help to pay $1,300 for the court reporter’s transcript.  Otherwise, he won’t be able to take the case up on appeal.  If anyone cares about the growing assault on every American’s Second Amendment rights, please help with a donation of whatever you can manage, large or small.

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