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Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

The Horsefly Cometh

You can see where this Mueller thing is going: to the moment when the Golden Golem of Greatness finally swats down the political horsefly that has orbited his glittering brainpan for a whole year, and says, “There! It’s done.”

It suggests that Civil War Two will end up looking a whole lot more like the French Revolution than Civil War One…The latter unfurled as a solemn tragedy; the former as a Coen Brothers style opéra bouffe bloodbath.

Having executed the presidential swat to said orbiting horsefly, Trump will try to turn his attention to the affairs of the nation, only to find that it is insolvent and teetering on the most destructive workout of bad debt the world has ever seen. And then his enemies will really go to work. In the process, they’ll probably wreck the institutional infrastructure needed to run a republic in constitutional democracy mode.

They got a good start in politicizing the upper ranks of the FBI, a fatal miscalculation based on the certainty of a Hillary win, which would have enabled the various schemers in the J. Edgar Hoover building to just fade back into the procedural woodwork of the agency and get on with life. Instead, their shenanigans were exposed and so far one key player, Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, was hung out to dry by a committee of his fellow agency execs for lying about his official conduct. Long about now, you kind of wonder: is that where it ends for him? Seems like everybody else (and his uncle) is getting indicted for lying to the FBI. How about Mr. McCabe, since that is exactly why his colleagues at the FBI fired him?

Perhaps further resolution of this murky situation awaits Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s forthcoming report, which the media seems to have forgotten about lately. An awful lot of the mischief at the FBI and its parent agency, the Department of Justice, is already on the public record, for instance the conflicting statements of Andrew McCabe and his former boss James Comey concerning who illegally leaked what to the press. On the face of it, it looks pretty bad when at least one of these Big Fish at the top of a supposedly incorruptible agency is lying. There are at least a dozen other Big Fish in there who still have some serious ‘splainin’ to do, and why not in the grand jury setting?

Nobody knows where the current Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, is in all this — and “is” may be too strong a word to describe his wraith-like tenure this past year. He seems less present than the portraits of his dead predecessors lining the hallway outside his office, considering the lively swirl of allegations all around him. Well, he did appoint yet another special counsel, an obscure US Attorney from Utah, John Huber, to evaluate several heaps of FBI dirty laundry, most particularly the strange and baffling treatment that Hillary Clinton has received in the matter of the Steele Dossier, the email server inquiry dropped by Comey, and the 2012 Uranium One incident that abracadabra’d about $150 million (from wealthy Russians!) into the Clinton Foundation coffers while she was Secretary of State. Mr. Huber is charged to follow up anything the Inspector General discovers to be a possible breach of the law.

But it’s finally back to Mr. Mueller, the zeppelin-sized horsefly circling the head of state. There was that Russia thing that set off the awful commotion in the FBI, which arose first in the charge that the newly-appointed National Security Advisor had a couple of conversations with the Russian ambassador during the presidential transition period. The President-elect’s furious adversaries managed to put across the story that American officials are not supposed to talk to ambassadors from foreign countries, which is about the most absurd proposition imaginable — except in a land where school kids are taught nothing about government or history. Anyway, Mr. Flynn was not even indicted for that, but rather for supposedly lying about it to a delegation of interrogators from Mueller’s office.

My guess is that Mr. Trump will sack Mr. Mueller when the IG’s report comes out and the shady machinations that brought Mueller onto the scene are revealed in full.

The #Resistance will lose its avatar and impeachment will become the sole campaign issue for November 2018.

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The NSA collected “call detail records” from over 500 million Americans’ phone calls in 2017, over three times the number gathered in 2016 according to a new report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).

This marks the second year of reporting following the passage of the 2015 USA FREEDOM Act – which requires that the DNI make public various search terms and surveillance statistics of collected “Call Detail Records,” in an Annual Statistical Transparency Report meant to limit the bulk collection of records.

The sharp increase to 534 million call records from 151 million occurred during the second full year of a new surveillance system established at the spy agency after U.S. lawmakers passed a law in 2015 that sought to limit its ability to collect such records in bulk. The reason for the spike was not immediately clear. –Reuters

To that end, the “shocking” 2017 figure of 534 million CDRs collected pales in comparison to the estimated billions of records collected each day under the old NSA bulk collection system exposed by former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden – and an earlier iteration of which was exposed by NSA whistleblower William Binney. 

In a statement, Timothy Barrett, a spokesman at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which released the annual report, said the government “has not altered the manner in which it uses its authority to obtain call detail records.”

The NSA has found that a number of factors may influence the amount of records collected, Barrett said. –Reuters

The DNI notes, however, that “the CIA, remains currently unable to provide the number of queries using U.S. person identifiers of unminimized section 702 noncontents information for CY2017.” 

What’s a 702 target?

According to the report, “Under Section 702, the government “targets” a particular non-U.S. person, group, or entity reasonably believed to be located outside the United States and who possesses, or who is likely to communicate or receive, foreign intelligence information, by directing an acquisition at – i.e., “tasking” – selectors (e.g., telephone numbers and email addresses) that are assessed to be used by such non-U.S. person, group, or entity, pursuant to targeting procedures approved by the FISC. Before “tasking” a selector for collection under Section 702, the government must apply its targeting procedures to ensure that the IC appropriately tasks a selector used by a non-U.S. person who is reasonably believed to be located outside the United States and who will likely possess, communicate, or receive foreign intelligence information.

What is a Call Detail Record?

The ODNI defines a CDR as “session identifying information (such as originating or terminating telephone number, an International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) number, or an International Mobile Station Equipment Identity (IMEI) number), a telephone calling card number, or the time or duration of a call. See 50 U.S.C. §1861(k)(3)(A).”

That said, “CDRs provided to the government do not include the content of any communication, the name, address, or financial information of a subscriber or customer, or cell site location or global positioning system information.”

A number of factors influence the volume of records collected, said Barrett, which include “the number of Court-approved selection terms – like a phone number – that are used by the target; the way targets use those selection terms; the amount of historical data that providers retain; and the dynamics of the ever-changing telecommunications sector,” adding “We expect this number to fluctuate from year to year.”

To see how CDRs add up, the DNI report has provided a handy illustration which shows how one FISA court order might lead to the collection of 6,000 records.

“Assume an NSA intelligence analyst learns that phone number (Phone A) is being used by a suspected international terrorist (target). Phone A is the “specific selection term” or “selector” that will be submitted to the FISC (or the Attorney General in an emergency) for approval using the “reasonable articulable suspicion” (RAS) standard. Assume that one provider (provider X) submits a record showing Phone A called unique identifier Phone B – what is referred to as a “call event.” This is the “first hop.” In turn, assume that NSA submits the “first-hop” Phone B to the provider X, and finds that unique identifier was used to call another unique identifier Phone D. This is the “second-hop.” If the unique identifiers call one another multiple times, then multiple CDRs are produced and duplication occurs. Additionally, the government may receive multiple CDRs for a single call event. NSA may also submit the specific selection Phone A number to another provider (provider Y) who may have CDRs of the same call events.”

You can read the report here:

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Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

I sometimes try to get establishment loyalists to explain to me exactly why we’re all meant to be terrified of this “Russian propaganda” thing they keep carrying on about. What is the threat, specifically? That it makes the public less willing to go to war with Russia and its allies? That it makes us less trusting of lying, torturing, coup-staging intelligence agencies? Does accidentally catching a glimpse of that green RT logo turn you to stone like Medusa, or melt your face like in Raiders of the Lost Ark?

“Well, it makes us lose trust in our institutions,” is the most common reply.

Okay. So? Where’s the threat there? We know for a fact that we’ve been lied to by those institutions. Iraq isn’t just something we imagined. We should be skeptical of claims made by western governments, intelligence agencies and mass media. How specifically is that skepticism dangerous?

The establishment is weaponizing hysteria over “Russiagate” and “fake news” to attack Black Lives Matter activists, anti-war voices, water protectors & other real progressives… & justifying it with the Orwellian lie they’re “fighting propaganda”. #WorldPressFreedomDay pic.twitter.com/xWi14nmS3a

— Dr. Jill Stein🌻 (@DrJillStein) May 3, 2018

Trying to get answers to such questions from rank-and-file empire loyalists is like pulling teeth, and they are equally lacking in the mass media who are constantly sounding the alarm about Russian propaganda. All I see are stories about Russia funding environmentalists (the horror!), giving a voice to civil rights activists (oh noes!), and retweeting articles supportive of Jeremy Corbyn (think of the children!). At its very most dramatic, this horrifying, dangerous epidemic of Russian propaganda is telling westerners to be skeptical of what they’re being told about the Skripal poisoning and the alleged Douma gas attack, both of which do happen to have some very significant causes for skepticism.

When you try to get down to the brass tacks of the actual argument being made and demand specific details about the specific threats we’re meant to be worried about, there aren’t any to be found. Nobody’s been able to tell me what specifically is so dangerous about westerners being exposed to the Russian side of international debates, or of Russians giving a platform to one or both sides of an American domestic debate. Even if every single one of the allegations about Russian bots and disinformation are true (and they aren’t), where is the actual clear and present danger? No one can say.

No one, that is, except the Atlantic Council.

We Need a NATO for Infowar | Commentary by @elisabethbraw of @AtlanticCouncilhttps://t.co/ntIpBplhGe pic.twitter.com/Ij6f74gwc9

— Defense One (@DefenseOne) May 3, 2018

In an absolutely jaw-dropping article that you should definitely read in its entirety, Elizabeth Braw took it upon herself to finally answer the question of why Russian propaganda is so dangerous, using the following hypothetical scenario:

What if Russia suddenly announced that its Baltic Fleet had dispatched an armada towards Britain? Would most people greet the news with steely resolve in the knowledge that their governments would know what to do, or would constant Kremlin-influenced reports about the incompetence of British institutions make them conclude that any resistance was pointless?

I mean, wow. Wow! Just wow. Where to even begin with this?

Before I continue, I should note that Braw is a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, the shady NATO-aligned think tank with ties to powerful oligarchswhose name comes up when you look into many of the mainstream anti-Russia narratives, from the DNC hack to the discredited war propaganda firmBellingcat to Russian trolls to the notorious PropOrNot blacklist publicized by the Washington Post.Her article, published by Defense One, is titled “We Need a NATO for Infowar”, and it argues that westerners need to be propagandized by an alliance of western governments for our own good.

Back to the aforementioned excerpt. Braw claims that if Russian propaganda isn’t shut down or counteracted, Russia could send a fleet of war ships to attack Britain, and the British people would… react unenthusiastically? Wouldn’t cheer loudly enough as the British Navy fought the Russians? Would have a defeatist emotional demeanor? What exactly is the argument here?

That’s seriously her only attempt to directly address the question of where the actual danger is. Even in the most cartoonishly dramatic hypothetical scenario this Atlantic Council member can possibly imagine, there’s still no tangible threat of any kind. Even if Russia was directly attacking the United Kingdom at home, and Russian propaganda had somehow magically dominated all British airwaves and been believed by the entire country, that still wouldn’t have any impact on the British military’s ability to fight a naval battle. There’s literally no extent to which you can inflate this “Russian propaganda” hysteria to turn it into a possible threat to actual people in real life.

A NATO for infowar? As if the entire Western mainstream media doesn’t already provide that function. https://t.co/MbNYv2mnvm

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) May 3, 2018

It gets better. Check out this excerpt:

Such responses to disinformation are like swatting flies: time-consuming and ineffective. But not addressing disinformation is ineffective, too. “Western media still have this thing where they try to be completely balanced, so they’ll say, ‘the Russians say this, but on the other hand the Americans say this is not true,’ They end up giving a lie and the truth the same value,” noted Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the former president of Estonia.

I just have so many questions. Like, how desperate does a writer have to be for an expert who can lend credibility to their argument that they have to reach all the way over to a former president of Estonia? And on what planet are these people living where Russian narratives are given the same weight as western narratives by western mainstream media? How can I get to this fantastical parallel dimension where western media “try to be completely balanced” and give equal coverage to all perspectives?

Braw argues that, because Russian propaganda is so dangerous (what with the threat of British people having insufficient emotional exuberance during a possible naval battle and all), what is required is a “NATO of infowar”, an alliance of western state media that is tasked with combatting Russian counter-narratives. Because, in the strange Dungeons & Dragons fantasy fairy world in which Braw penned her article, this isn’t already happening.

And of course, here in the real world, it is already happening. As I wrote recently, mainstream media outlets have been going out of their minds churning out attack editorials on anyone who questions the establishment narrative about what happened in Douma. A BBC reporter recently admonished a retired British naval officer for voicing skepticism of what we’re being told about Syria on the grounds that it might “muddy the waters” of the “information war” that is being fought against Russia. All day, every day, western mass media are pummeling the public with stories about how awful and scary Russians are and how everything they say is a lie.

This is because western mass media outlets are owned by western plutocrats, and those plutocrats have built their empires upon a status quo that they have a vested interest in preserving, often to the point where they will form alliances with defense and intelligence agencies to do so. They hire executives and editors who subscribe to a pro-establishment worldview, who in turn hire journalists who subscribe to a pro-establishment worldview, and in that way they ensure that all plutocrat-owned media outlets are advancing pro-plutocrat agendas.

.@SecPompeo: On #WorldPressFreedomDay, we renew our commitment to promoting & protecting a free press — an essential pillar of democracy, & we honor journalists who have dedicated their lives to promote transparency & accountability throughout the world. https://t.co/6TFWT77tOT

— Department of State (@StateDept) May 3, 2018

The western empire is ruled by a loose transnational alliance of plutocrats and secretive government agencies. That loose alliance is your real government, and that government has the largest state media network in the history of civilization. The mass media propaganda machine of the western empire makes RT look like your grandmother’s Facebook wall.

In that way, we are being propagandized constantly by the people who really rule us. All this panic about Russian propaganda doesn’t exist because our dear leaders have a problem with propaganda, it exists because they believe only they should be allowed to propagandize us.

And, unlike Russian propaganda, western establishment propaganda actually does pose a direct threat to us. By using mass media to manipulate the ways we think and vote, our true rulers can persuade us to consent to crushing austerity measures and political impotence while the oligarchs grow richer and medicine money is spent on bombs. When we should all be revolting against an oppressive Orwellian oligarchy, we are instead lulled to sleep by those same oligarchs and their hired talking heads lying to us about freedom and democracy.

Russian propaganda is not dangerous. Having access to other ways of looking at global geopolitics is not dangerous. What absolutely is dangerous is a vast empire concerning itself with the information and ideas that its citizenry have access to. Get your rapey, manipulative fingers out of our minds, please.

If our dear leaders are so worried about our losing faith in our institutions, they shouldn’t be concerning themselves with manipulating us into trusting them, they should be making those institutions more trustworthy.

Don’t manipulate better, be better. The fact that an influential think tank is now openly advocating the former over the latter should concern us all.

*  *  *

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Thanks to advances in robotic technology, scientists have been able to study a massive “dead zone” in the Arabian sea – a region with so little oxygen that virtually nothing can live. Scientists began to observe the oxygen-starved zones in the 1970s – which naturally form in the deep sea, but are also found wherever excess nitrogen and phosphorous-based fertilizers run off into coastal waters.

By one account nearly 8-12% of the nitrogen fertilizer applied worldwide is lost from fertilized fields and transported to the sea. In some individual fields, the value can be as high as 50%.

Still more nitrogen is lost during the disposal of animal wastes from modern industrialized production of pork and chickens. Here nitrogen is lost during inadvertent overflow of waste lagoons, and nitrogen is transported to groundwater, which makes its way to stream channels. –blog.nature.org

By 2008, 405 dead zones – also known as Oxygen Minimum Zones (OMZ) had been identified by Sweden’s Göteborg University.

New research from the University of East Anglia (UEA) has confirmed that the Gulf of Oman dead zone – floating in the strait bordered by Iran, Pakistan, Oman and the UAE, is indeed the largest in the world.

That’s not all… it’s growing.

Two robot submarines called Seagliders, each around the size of a small human diver, were able to collect data for eight months in parts of the Gulf of Oman previously unable to be monitored due to concerns over piracy and geopolitical tensions. 

“We barely have any data collected for almost half a century because of how difficult it is to send ships there,” said lead researcher, Bastien Queste.

What they found was stunning; since the 1990’s, the gulf’s dead zone has undergone “a dramatic increase” in both size and severity, and is now made up of entirely of low, or no-oxygen waters also known as suboxic or anoxic conditions respectively.  

“As part of this project, we went to the Gulf of Oman, which shares its water masses with the wider Arabian Sea, and found that the oxygen was much lower than we thought from the outdated data,” Queste told Gizmodo. “The region is now anoxic—essentially extending the Arabian Sea OMZ into the marginal regions, much closer to where people live, fish, and depend on the marine environment. Hence the growing concerns.”

“Our research shows that the situation is actually worse than feared. The area of dead zone is vast and growing. The ocean is suffocating,” Queste said in a statement.

“All fish, marine plants, and other animals need oxygen, so they can’t survive there. It’s a real environmental problem, with dire consequences for humans, too, who rely on the oceans for food and employment.”

Aside from their impact on sea life, dead zones also affect the atmosphere, as the absence of oxygen dramatically changes the chemical cycling of nitrogen – a key nutrient for plant growth. Nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas 300 times more potent than C02, is instead produced, said Queste. 

Computer simulations of ocean oxygen show a decrease in oxygen over the next century and growing oxygen minimum zones.

However these simulations have a difficult time representing small but very important features such as eddies which impact how oxygen is transported.

The team combined their Seaglider data with a very high-resolution computer simulation to determine how oxygen is spread around the north-western Arabian Sea throughout different seasons and the monsoons.-UEA.AC.UK

What the team found was that the dead zone moves up and down between seasons – forcing fish to live in a thin layer near the surface.

“Management of the fisheries and ecosystems of the western Indian Ocean over coming decades will depend on better understanding and forecasting of oxygen levels in key areas such as the Gulf of Oman,” added Dr Queste.

And as Earth’s population grows, so will agricultural output – which will only worsen the problem. 

“Increase in land use, larger cities, and increased pollution will also lead to more nutrients, such as nitrogen and phosphorus, entering the water, which promotes more algae that later sink and get consumed by the bacteria,” adding that “It’s an incredibly intricate system with many moving parts!”

What’s the solution? According to Duke University’s William H. Schlesinger, dead zones can be mitigated from a “more judicious use of fertilizer, so that the largest percentage of it is assimilated by the crop plant of interest.” He notes that we “need to treat nitrogen and phophorus in human and animal wastes as a resource to be recycled, not an unfortunate byproduct to be disposed.

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Today’s surge in AAPL stock, when news of more purchases by Warren Buffett in the first quarter unleashed a buying frenzy, sending the stock to a new all time high, had a secondary effect of accelerating the entire FAANG sector (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google), which now makes up a bigger piece of the tech pie than ever before.

As the chart below show, FAANGs now accounts for over 27% of the Nasdaq Composite, a new all time high, doubling in the past 5 years. 

It also triggered a warning from none other than Goldman Sachs which looked at a similar ratio, that of the Info Tech sector as a $ of the S&P, and conclude that “Large exposure = large risk“

First, some background on the stunning impact of tech stocks on the overall market:

Over the last five years, fast sales growth and high profit margins have driven the Technology sector to contribute 73% of S&P 500 margin expansion and one-third of EPS growth. The strong fundamentals have led to remarkable outperformance: Since the start of 2017 the Tech sector has contributed 43% of the total S&P 500 return, with the “FANG” stocks alone accounting for 12% of the market return.

That’s the good news. Now the not so good.

First: unprecedented concentration: the Tech sector’s widespread popularity raises the risk facing portfolio managers. At the start of 2018 Tech stocks accounted for 26% of large-cap mutual fund portfolios, equating to a 235bp overweight relative to benchmarks, the largest among sectors. Hedge fund filings show a similar preference among levered investors, with 24% net exposure to Technology. Passive investors are also exposed to the risk of a downturn given the Tech sector’s large market weight, at 25% of S&P 500 market cap.

Second: the historical record: During the last 50 years, only the Energy sector in the early 1980s (26% weight), Tech in the late 1990s (35%), and the Financials sector in the mid-2000s (22%) have similarly exceeded 20% of S&P 500 index weight.

It is what happened next that is of major concern, because as Goldman recounts,forebodingly, “those three episodes each culminated in an absolute price decline in excess of 50% for the high-flying sector and underperformance relative to the S&P 500 of roughly 30%.“

In other words, the higher they get, the harder they fall.

Worse, as Goldman’s Ben Snider warns, “arithmetically, the Tech sector’s large weight could easily drag down the broad market if investors cut exposures without finding an appealing place to reallocate.”

Even worse, there is no place to run, as 2018 has witnessed the largest and fastest rise in stock correlations on record outside of 1987, with Tech sector correlations in particular rising far above their historical averages. In other words, “the current market environment makes it difficult for investors to embrace the parts of the Tech sector not facing fundamental risk from potential regulation, despite their appeal”

Snider’s parting words of caution: with the Tech sector facing increased regulatory scrutiny, “investors are asking how much risk Tech poses to their portfolios—and whether another sector can pick up the slack, should Tech leadership crumble.”

Or maybe they are just imitating Warren Buffett: after all, the last time the Berkshire billionaire got in trouble with his bank holdings in 2008, the government bailed him out. Surely, if there is one sector that is the “new banks” in 2018, that would be the FAANGs, because if it goes down, so does Buffett, so does almost every hedge fund, and ultimately, so does the market.

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Submitted by Elizabeth Vos of Disobedient Media

Disobedient Media previously reported our conversation with UK political analyst Chris Blackburn, whose research raises serious questions regarding the media’s portrayal of the Maltese ‘scholar,’ as a central pillar of the Trump-Russia collusion scandal. This article continues the conversation between this writer and Blackburn, focusing specifically on the media response and lack thereof to the information presented by Chris in our previous report.

Disobedient Media: You have pointed out that journalists have been aware of the connections between Mifsud and Claire Smith, Pittella and others. Do you care to comment on members of establishment media who know about the pertinent facts surrounding this issue but have remained silent?

Chris Blackburn: “When the George Papadopoulos story broke back in October, The Washington Post had already been in contact with Joseph Mifsud. They had received emails between the ‘professor’ and the former campaign advisor to Donald Trump. The Post was also the first media organization to name Mifsud publicly. I would be interesting to know who leaked the investigation before FBI Special Agent Robert Gibbs submitted the indictment against George Papadopoulos for lying to the FBI. Mueller’s team is often touted as being leak free.”

“In a rush, American and European journalists started digging into Joseph Mifsud. The reporting was excellent to begin with. As The Washington Post had an unfair month-long head start, they were the first to focus on Mifsud’s ties to Italy, ‘Mifsud helped to establish in Rome [Link Campus]with a senior Italian politician who had been implicated in a series of scandals. The university later withdrew its participation.’ But they failed to elaborate on the scandals or the fact they involved Italian intelligence services. Mifsud was certainly more than a humble academic.”

“The Guardian then picked it up, ‘Link Campus had a reputation for being closely connected to some elements within the Italian intelligence services.’ It was an understatement. Link Campus is intelligence central. It attracted foreign intelligence organizations. The CIA worked there.”

“While legacy press were frothing at the mouth over a new Watergate-style scandal. I was loosely collaborating with Jon Worth, A European blogger and Brian Whitaker, the former Middle East Editor at The Guardian. Worth was blogging about Joseph Mifsud and getting way a head of the mainstream media. He created charts to show Mifsud’s ties to politicians.”

“I found Mifsud’s link to Gianni Pittella and the Democratic National Committee on the 3rd November and tweeted it to a BBC journalist. Jon wrote ‘Gianni Pittella and his ‘caro amico’ Joseph Mifsud‘ on his blog a few days later. Journalists were interested in our loose alliance because we were churning out large amounts of linkages and stories that hadn’t been covered. But, the interest in Mifsud’s ties to European intelligence figures began to drop off rapidly.”

“Luke Harding of The Guardian wrote a profile on Simona Mangiante in January. She was connected to Gianni Pittella, George Papadopoulos, and Joseph Mifsud. He had wanted to examine the claim in Jon Worth’s blogs and my research that Pittella was a fulcrum, ‘She was introduced to Mifsud in about 2012 by Gianni Pittella, a well-known Italian MEP who in 2014 became president of the Socialists and Progressive Democrats group. “I always saw Mifsud with Pittella” claimed Mangiante, she also said the London Centre for International Law Practice Mifsud’s was a “facade. “I never met any Russians there … But the center certainly wasn’t what it pretended to be” Harding tries to make LCILP sound like a Russian front, ‘she acknowledged to the Guardian that she might have inadvertently been sucked into a Russian intelligence plot.’”

Chris continued: “The problem is there is nothing Russian about LCILP or the London Academy of Diplomacy; both organizations have ties to the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Pittella’s links to the Democratic National Committee were well known to ‘Mifsud scholars’ in Europe, so why was Harding omitting a rather pertinent part of the story and pushing it toward Russia?”

“Harding is the author of Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and how Russia helped Donald Trump Win. He is also closely connected to Chris Steele, the former MI6 officer and editor of the infamous ‘ Steele dossier,’ the contents of which are still being fought over and spun in US Congress.”

* * *

Disobedient Media: What do you make of Buzzfeed’s latest attempt to salvage the Mifsud-as-Russian-spy narrative by claiming he visited Russia just before being named (but not indicted) by Robert Mueller?

Chris Blackburn: “Alberto Nardelli of Buzzfeed has been coming up with some amazing stories. He also wrote that the Guardia di Finanza are chasing Joseph Mifsud over alleged financial crimes. What he didn’t tell his readers is that Col. Cosimo di Gesu, the head of Guardia di Finanza, Italy’s financial crime and anti-mafia agency, is a faculty member of Link Campus alongside Mifsud, Gianni Pittella, and Enzo Scotti.” [Emphasis Added]

“Nardelli’s spectacular reporting on the Italian ties of Mifsud is beginning to look rather suspect. Mifsud’s former colleagues are now charged with hunting him down? It’s like the Tom Clancy novel ‘ The Hunt for Red October’, but swapping a Russian submarine for a Maltese academic.”

“This new story is the same. Buzzfeed hired Anthony Ferrante, a former FBI agent who also served on the National Security Council under President Obama to look into Russiagate and the Steele dossier. Ferrante is helping Buzzfeed fend off lawsuits brought against them in London. Ferrante has been to a few conferences with Link Campus officials in the last year. Maybe they told him about the CIA and FBI training programmes at Link Campus.”

* * *

Disobedient Media: “Are there any additional aspects of this story that have been reported in a particularly sloppy fashion?”

Chris Blackburn: “Simona Mangiante has become a media darling, faced with soft-ball questions when interviewed by George Stephanopoulos (ABC News) and then Ari Melber (MSNBC). More importantly, Mangiante has been interviewed by Robert Mueller’s team. Her relationship with Gianni Pittella and Mifsud are highly suspect. Did she know Pittella attended the DNC presidential campaign launch for Hillary?”

* * *

Disobedient Media: Does it surprise you to see zero coverage or response to the story, despite its obvious implications and also in the face of being tweeted by Wikileaks, making ignorance seem unlikely? 

Chris Blackburn: “I think it’s a big leap of faith for many. I’m not shocked or alarmed. However, I’ve had fantastic responses from journalists and academics in private. I think Wikileaks will get a boost because Mifsud is ground zero for Russiagate. Adam Schiff, Trey Gowdy, and Devin Nunes have all said Joseph Mifsud is the start alongside the Trump Tower meting. If the collusion narrative is to be kept alive- Mifsud is the key. The media have to keep coming back to him.”

Chris continued: “The lawsuit by the DNC is also focussed on Mifsud and George Papadopoulos. Journalists don’t like messy stories that contradict popular narratives. They are also hostile to Donald Trump which is understandable. Unfortunately, they are only going to show their profession in poor light by misconstruing facts in this way. If Trump wasn’t such a divisive figure with controversial policies, this Russiagate story would have probably failed at the first hurdle. The media, shell-shocked Democrats and former intelligence leaders (potentially involved in a smear campaign) seem to be the ones giving it oxygen to survive.”

* * *

Disobedient Media: “Many of those who have consistently called attention to serious problems in the various Trump-Russia collusion and Russian hacking stories are notably not Trump supporters. The significance of this fact is that their objections are not based on ideological grounds, but come from a commitment to truth.

Disobedient Media: What does the overall manipulation of this story by the media say to you about the state of the press?

Chris Blackburn: “I think Russiagate is a unique story. It could only have happened in America. Former President Obama highlighted lobbying as the most corrosive factor in the American political system and vowed to regulate it in his second term. He got shot down by lobbyists.”

“All aspects of American political life have been touched by Russiagate. It has shown blatant media bias, undeclared lobbying, money laundering, pay-for-play, law enforcement corruption, mishandling of corruption cases, leaking, manipulation it has it all.”

“Journalists that are level headed and balanced are in short supply. Investigative journalism is dying in the legacy press because it is expensive, but it is being picked up by independents. That is a good sign. But how long can it be sustained.”

“We live in a Wiki world now. The digital age makes it easy for anyone to check the accuracy of a story. WikiLeaks and others have shown that bad policy and actions can be exposed with ease. Julian Assange is being made to pay a heavy price. Political actors from all sides have tried to resist or outright manipulate the new reality.”

“We need honest media and honest policymakers to get with the program. Democracy will die if we don’t. The public has now been switched on and is hungry for information. Governments, district, and local councils are opening up by digitizing everything. Openness and accountability are becoming the new reality, realpolitik and manipulation need to be resigned to the history books.  Hopefully, the fallout from Russiagate can begin to start that process.”

In closing, this writer would like to thank Chris Blackburn for the generosity of time spent researching and articulating pertinent facts on Mifsud’s all-too-numerous ties with Western intelligence. Disobedient Media will continue to report on media machinations surrounding Joseph Mifsud as they arise.

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Hawaii’s Mount Kilauea volcano has erupted, sending ash miles into the sky and spewing fountains of lava in a residential area which has been captured on stunning drone footage. The eruption of Mount Kilauea caused a mass evacuation in the residential area of Leilani estates, with the the drone showing lava oozing through a local forest.

Shortly after the event, Hawaii’s Governor David Ige activated the military reservists from the national guard to aid desperate residents to evacuate the area.

He tweeted: “I am in contact with Mayor Harry Kim and Hawai‘i County, and the state is actively supporting the county’s emergency response efforts. I have also activated the Hawai‘i National Guard to support county emergency response teams with evacuations and security.”

I am in contact with @MayorHarryKim, and the state is actively supporting the county’s emergency response efforts. I have activated the Hawai‘i National Guard to provide support to county emergency response personnel to help with evacuations and security. @Hawaii_EMA pic.twitter.com/SgfEYW7PiE

— Governor David Ige (@GovHawaii) May 4, 2018

Meanwhile, a fourth eruption from a new fissure in Kilauea’s east rift zone opened Friday morning as authorities continued to urge Leilani Estates residents to get out while they still can.  The situation in the Puna subdivision continues to get more dire, and Hawaii County Civil Defense authorities have issued this ominous warning to households that choose not to heed mandatory orders to leave: “First responders may not be able to come to the aid of residents who refuse to evacuate.”

The new breakout comes after three eruptions earlier in the day, which sent lava cutting through forest and roads in Leilani Estates and significantly damaged at least two homes. Residents described the eruption as sounding like a “freight train.”

At least a dozen small earthquakes rattled the region since midnight, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Resident Ikaika Marzo said he could feel several quakes shake the area in the early morning hours and saw the second eruption around 1:30 a.m.. It lasted for about two hours, he said.

The two new eruptions happened less than a day after the volcano’s first eruption created a fissure in the community, spewing lava into the air as high as utility poles, covering roads and nearing several homes.

HVO said the first eruption that started in late afternoon Thursday ended about 6:30 p.m., after creating a fissure that sent lava soaring as high as 125 feet into the air. About 10:30 p.m., geologists confirmed the fissure (whose length was not immediately clear) was no longer erupting.

* * *

A volcanic crater vent – known as Puu Oo – collapsed earlier this week, sending lava down the mountain’s slopes towards populated areas.

Quoted by Express, Hawaiian Volcano Observatory geologist Janet Babb said residents in the area should remain vigilant because “lava could break to the surface, and it could do so fairly quickly” adding that “It’s a situation worth monitoring very closely.”

The good news, so far, is that “the seismicity on the lower east rift zone had declined and the tilt had slowed down so that indicates that the intrusion has stalled or paused.” Still, “what we don’t know is if this intrusive event is over or if it’s just taking a pause and it may pick back up.”

Meanwhile, the USGS put out a statement which read: “A collapse of the Pu’u’ ‘O’o crater floor Monday afternoon on Kilauea Volcano’s East Rift Zone has prompted an increase in seismicity and deformation along a large section of the rift neon, with seismicity currently occurring as far east as Hwy 130.“

Scientists have said an outbreak of lava could occur and may reach the surface in the area east of Pu’u’ ‘O’o, although they could not say exactly where or when the outbreak would happen.

Resident Ikaika Marzo told Hawaii News Now that he saw “fountains” of lava as high as 125 feet (38 m). Other residents also told the news network that they smelled burning brush and heard tree branches snapping.

“An outbreak of lava in a new location is one possible outcome. At this time it is not possible to say with certainty if or where such an outbreak may occur, but the area downright (east) of Pu’u’ ‘O’o is the most likely location, as this is where seismicity and deformation have been concentrated overnight.”

According to photos on social media, a plume of red ash rose from the volcano’s Pu’u ‘O’o vent high into the sky over the island. The Puna Geothermal plant was shutting down, according to local media, while Hawaii Electric Light said crews were disconnecting power in the areas impacted by the active lava flow.

Of course, the eruption of the Kilauea Volcano is hardly a surprise: it has been erupting nearly continuously for more than three decades. Lava flows from the volcano, one of five on the island, have covered 48 square miles (125 sq km), according to the US Geological Survey.

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Less than two months after a self-driving Uber vehicle struck and killed a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona; local news stations are reporting that a Waymo minivan in autonomous mode was involved in a crash in Chandler, Arizona.

The head-on collision occurred at the intersection of Chandler Boulevard and Los Feliz Drive, said Seth Tyler, a Chandler Police Department detective.

However, as opposed to the Uber incident, Tyler told Phoenix New Times:

“The Waymo vehicle is not the violator vehicle. It just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

The driver behind the wheel of the Waymo minivan sustained minor injuries, Tyler said, but he could not confirm whether the other driver had injuries. Both vehicles had to be towed after the collision, which was first reported by ABC15.

All of which is positive since the Waymo CEO John Krafcik proudly proclaimed following the Uber crash in March that his company’s technology would have avoided the crash.

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