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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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via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2FPqzE6 Tyler Durden

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.

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

Here’s another paradox for traders to digest.

In a quarter in which virtually every asset class posted positive returns, the lowest, BBB-rated investment-grade bonds shruged off well-publicized fears of a “fallen angel” tsunami, i.e., a wave of downgrades to junk, and soared to the best first quarter performance since 1995. According to Bloomberg debt rated BBB returned 5.8% in the first three months, compared to a drop of 2.1% in the first quarter of 2018.

The breathtaking move continued on the first day of April and benefited the riskiest of names as Junk bonds spread tightened by a massive 11bps, the most since January. As Bloomberg’s Sebastian Boyd noted, “the breadth is spectacular. Of 480 movers in the Bloomberg Barclays U.S. High Yield index, 89% are tighter on the day. Every single industry group is tighter, led by pharmaceuticals. On a sector basis, the best performers are communications and health care, but with a move as broad as this isn’t really linked to industry-specific news” and is instead tied to the euphoria that was unleashed by China’s manufacturing PMI which sent global risk assets soaring.

But it’s not junk bonds we are concerned about at least in the context of this post, but rather the BBB IG space: as a reminder, BBB debt now accounts for nearly 60% of the entire $6.4 trillion US investment grade space, with a similar portion for Europe. This is why virtually every fixed income luminary has warned that the next recession may be catalyzed by massive downgrades which would blow up the junk bond space, which at last check was roughly one-third the size of the entire BBB-rated bond universe.

And yet, despite the blistering return of the lowest-rated IG debt, concerns of massive downgrades are starting to be realized: according to the latest S&P data compiled by Bloomberg, the first quarter saw the most credit ratings downgrades for U.S. companies relative to upgrades since the beginning of 2016.

The Q1 downgrade wave was sprearheaded by several prominent names as major companies including utility PG&E, retailer J.C. Penney and entertainment giant Walt Disney all had their ratings cut “in a quarter that saw nearly two downgrades for every upgrade.”

Worse, the ratio dipped for both investment grade and high yield bonds, with downgrades outpacing upgrades for higher quality issuers for only the fourth time in the last twelve quarters.

So is the bond downgrade frenzy merely a delayed reaction to the sharp price drops observed in the fourth quarter and the start of Q1, or are the rating agencies ahead of the curve for once? If so, and if the downgrade cascade accelerates from here and engulfs the BBB space in coming months and quarters, the stellar bond market performance observed in the first quarter may end up being the biggest bull trap since 2007.

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

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

Just like we witnessed during the last recession, major retailers are laying off tens of thousands of workers, and it looks like this will be the worst year for store closings in all of U.S. history.  Many are referring to this as “the retail apocalypse”, and without a doubt this is one of the toughest stretches for retailers that we have ever seen.  But many believe that what we have witnessed so far is just the beginning.  After all, if retailers are struggling this much now, how bad will things be once the next recession really gets rolling?

Of course the truth is that things have been rocky for the retail industry for quite a few years, but the numbers are telling us that this crisis is really starting to accelerate.

According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, retail layoffs were up a whopping 92 percent in January and February compared to the same period a year ago.  The following comes from NBC News…

More than 41,000 people have lost their jobs in the retail industry so far this year — a 92 percent spike in layoffs since the same time last year, according to a new report.

And the layoffs continue to mount, with JCPenney announcing this week it would be closing 18 stores in addition to three previously announced closures, as part of a “standard annual review.”

Yes, competition from Internet commerce is hurting the traditional retail industry, but it certainly doesn’t explain a 92 percent increase.

And very few retailers have been able to avoid this downsizing trend.  At this point, even the largest retailer in the entire country has begun “quietly closing stores”…

Walmart is closing at least 11 US stores across eight states.

The stores include one Walmart Supercenter in Lafayette, Louisiana, and Walmart Neighborhood Market stores in Arizona, California, Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and Washington.

For decades, Wal-Mart has been expanding extremely aggressively.

They have plenty of cash, and so the only way that it would make sense for them to close stores is if they anticipated that we are heading into a recession.

Here is a list of the addresses where Wal-Mart stores are closing…

• 6085 W. Chandler Blvd., Chandler, Arizona

• 3900 W. Ina Road, Tucson, Arizona

• 1600 Saratoga Ave., San Jose, California

• 712 N. Western Ave., Liberal, Kansas

• 1229 NE. Evangeline Trwy., Lafayette, Louisiana

• 3603 Broad River Road, Columbia, South Carolina

• 1757 W. Andrew Johnson Hwy., Morristown, Tennessee

• 2501 University Commons Way, Knoxville, Tennessee

• 7000 Iron Bridge Road, North Chesterfield, Virginia

• 2864 Virginia Beach Blvd., Virginia Beach, Virginia

• 7809 NE. Vancouver Plaza Dr., Vancouver, Washington

Of course Wal-Mart is in far better shape than almost everyone else in the industry.

One of Wal-Mart’s key competitors, Shopko, has just announced that they will be shutting down all of their stores…

Shopko will liquidate its assets and close all of its remaining locations by mid-June.

The company was unable to find a buyer for the retail business and will begin winding down its operations beginning this week, the company said in statement released Monday. The decision to liquidate will bring an end to the brick-and-mortar business that began in 1962 with one location in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

And personally I was very saddened to learn that Lifeway Christian Bookstores has also decided to close all their brick and mortar stores…

Lifeway Christian Bookstores announced last week it would be closing the doors of all 170 brick and mortar stores, in a pivot to focusing on digital and e-commerce.

“The decision to close our local stores is a difficult one,” said Lifeway Chief Executive Officer Brad Waggoner. “While we had hoped to keep some stores open, current market projections show this is no longer a viable option.”

Whenever I do an article like this, I always have some readers that try to convince me that this is only happening because of the growth of Internet retailing.

And yes, Internet retailing has been growing, but it still accounts for less than 10 percent of all U.S. retail sales.  In addition, it is important to point out that Internet retailers had a very disappointing holiday season just like brick and mortar retailers did.

Ultimately, the truth is that the U.S. economy has been steadily slowing down in recent months.

During the months of December, January and February, the amount of stuff being moved around the country by truck, rail and air was lower than during all of those same months a year earlier.  The following comes from Wolf Richter…

Now it’s the third month in a row, and the red flag is getting more visible and a little harder to ignore about the goods-based economy: Freight shipment volume in the US across all modes of transportation – truck, rail, air, and barge – in February fell 2.1% from February a year ago, according to the Cass Freight Index, released today. The three months in a row of year-over-year declines are the first such declines since the transportation recession of 2015 and 2016.

I have a feeling that when we get the final numbers for March that they will show that this streak has now extended to four months.

Right now, unsold goods are starting to pile up in U.S. warehouses at a rate that we haven’t seen since the last recession.  Many retailers that are barely clinging to life will simply not survive if economic conditions continue to deteriorate.

Unfortunately, it appears that things are only going to get rougher for the U.S. economy in the months ahead.

So more retail workers are going to get laid off, more stores are going to close, and there are going to be a lot more stories about our ongoing “retail apocalypse” in the mainstream media.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2U91i0x Tyler Durden

Nearly nine years have passed since the May 6, 2010 flash crash – when the Dow plunged nearly 1,000 points within minutes, before swiftly recovering most of the loss – yet the scapegoating of those alleged to be responsible by the CFTC continues.

The trial of a Chicago programmer who allegedly created the software used by Navindar Singh Sarao, the “flash crash trader” who pleaded guilty in November 2016 to one count of wire fraud and one count of spoofing futures markets, began on Monday, with Sarao expected to testify as the prosecution’s key witness.

Jitesh Thakkar, who is being charged with conspiracy to manipulate markets, never placed any trades. Prosecutors are claiming that the conspiracy occurred between 2011 and April 2015, beginning with an email exchange with Sarao where he agreed to build the software. For those keeping score at home, this means that Thakkar’s alleged misbehavior occurred after the 2010 crash (though, to be fair, there have been several similar ‘flash crashes’ since, including the Aug. 24, 2015 ‘flash crash’ where the Dow dropped 1,100 points during the first five minutes of trading.

Nav Sarao

According to Bloomberg, the program Thakkar created for Sarao had a “back of the queue” function that automatically delayed the execution of the spoofed orders for S&P 500 futures contracts on CME Group Inc.’s Globex trading platform. After placing the spoofed orders, Sarao would open positions intended to profit off these orders, before cancelling them. Spoofing became a crime in the US with the passage of Dodd-Frank.

Thakkar isn’t the first programmer to become embroiled in a spoofing case, as BBG explains. Some suspect that a programmer who testified against convicted spoofer Michael Coscia would have been indicted if he hadn’t agreed to testify. Though Thakkar will be the first non-trader prosecuted under the Dodd-Frank law.

The first person convicted of spoofing was Michael Coscia. During his 2015 trial, the programmer who designed the algorithm Coscia used was a key prosecution witness. Some legal experts speculated the programmer might have been charged had he not agreed to testify. Prosecutors have indicated that traders aren’t their only targets when it comes to market manipulation cases.

By prosecuting Thakkar, prosecutors said they’re hoping to send a message.

“We will also seek to find and hold accountable those who teach others how to spoof, who build the tools designed to spoof, or who otherwise aid and abet the wrongdoing,” the US Department of Justice said in a statement announcing the criminal charges in January 2018 against eight individuals, including Thakkar. “The government wants to send a message that you have to be careful how you design these programs” for traders, Wayne State’s Henning said. If Thakkar is found not guilty, the message will be that “you have to be careful about how you design these programs, but you don’t really have much to worry about,” he said.

Fortunately for Thakkar, the bar for a conviction is high. To convince the jury that Thakkar is guilty, prosecutors will need to prove that he knew he was participating in an illegal scheme to dig markets.

Sarao, who hasn’t given any interviews since his guilty plea, earned (and was later scammed out of) tens of millions of dollars trading from his parent’s home outside London. He is cooperating with authorities to try and earn as light a sentence as possible, though he has been banned from trading for life.

Meanwhile, HFT traders on Wall Street have been largely ignored by regulators as the scapegoated Sarao, who made just under $1 million on the day of the flash crash, a pittance in the grand scheme of things. Though a former programmer for Goldman Sachs was famously convicted, then vindicated, then convicted again for “stealing” code, including some of the bank’s HFT strats.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2CMD5CA Tyler Durden

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

The sore beset people of this land may be good and goddam sick of politics, RussiaGate, and Trump-inspired social strife, but they may soon have something more down-to-earth to worry about: Biblical floods and plagues.

Media hysteria around the Mueller Report has nearly eclipsed news of historic flooding in the midwest that has already caused $3 billion in damage to farms, homes, livestock, and infrastructure. With spring rainfall already at 200 percent of normal levels, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) issued a statement in late March saying, “This is shaping up to be a potentially unprecedented flood season, with more than 200 million people at risk for flooding in their communities.”

More to the point, two major western dams show disturbing signs of potential failure that may bring on unprecedented disasters. The Oroville Dam on the Feather River north of Sacramento — the highest earthen dam in the US — nearly blew out in February 2017 when record rains damaged the main spillway, threatening to send a 30-foot wall of water downstream towards California’s capital and towns along the way. When that spillway was closed to assess the damage, which was significant, the secondary emergency spillway was opened for the first time since the dam was built in 1968. It too started disintegrating and before long Lake Oroville began flowing over the top of the dam itself. The state had to order evacuation of 188,000 people in three counties. Frantic efforts to drop sandbags from helicopters stabilized the damage and, luckily, the rain stopped.

Subsequent lawsuits against the state’s Department of Water Resources revealed shoddy maintenance, theft of equipment, and poor record keeping. Now, two years later, new cracks have appeared in the repaired Oroville Dam main spillway. The Sierra Nevada snowpack stands at 153 percent above average, and the National Weather Service predicts that weak El Nino conditions with above-average Pacific Ocean temperatures are likely to produce above-average rainfall this spring along with the snowpack melt.

The Fort Peck Dam on the upper Missouri River in Montana is likewise troubling experts watching a record snowpack in the Rocky Mountains. It too is an earthen dam — the world’s largest by volume — filled with hydraulic slurry. Because it is located on the flat high plains, the dam is extremely long, running 21,000 feet — about four miles — from end to end. Behind it is a reservoir that is the fifth-largest man-made lake in the nation.

Concern is rising because the coming snow melt coincides with unusually active seismic activity around the Yellowstone Caldera, one of the world’s super-volcanos. The slurry construction of the dam inclines it to liquification when the ground shakes.

Failure of the Fort Peck dam would send the equivalent of a whole year’s flow of the Missouri River downstream in one release that could potentially wash away the other five downstream dams in the Missouri River Mainstem Reservoir System, along with every bridge from Montana to St. Louis, an unimaginable amount of farm and town infrastructure, and several nuclear power installations.

It would be the greatest national disaster in US history. Just sayin’.

A shy, science-nerd correspondent writes:

“Epidemiologists speculate that a flooding event in Central Asia steppes triggered the 1347 Eurasian plague outbreak.  Rumors of a mass human die-off in India reached Europe in the mid-1340’s.  The Mongols besieging the coastal city of Trebizond on the shore of the Black Sea catapulted plague infested corpses over the city walls and Italian merchant ships fleeing Trebizond carried the infestation to Genoa which foolishly permitted the dying crew to land…

Rodents hosting plague spreading fleas typically inhabit arid grassland regions such as the Great Plains of America and the semi deserts of California and New Mexico. The current flooding of the American Mid-West and the mass dumping of flood tainted wheat, corn and soybeans will likely spark a rodent population explosion in the region, which in the context of rat-swarming homeless encampments may yield a 1347 repeat event in North America during the 2020s. What happened before can happen again.”

The homeless camps around Los Angeles have turned up cases of other medieval-type diseases typical of human settlements before public sanitation became a standard feature of civilized life: Many are spread through feces (as well as drug use): Hepatitis A, Typhus, shigellosis (or trench fever, spread through body lice), and tuberculosis. Gawd knows what is coming across the border into America’s proudly leading “sanctuary state.” Wait for it. Just sayin’.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2UmXg41 Tyler Durden