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Authored by Andrei Akulov via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

On September 18, the US Senate voted to ban the use of products from the Moscow-based cyber security firm Kaspersky Lab by the federal government, citing national security risk. The vote was included as an amendment to an annual defense policy spending bill approved by the Senate on the same day. The measure pushed forward by New Hampshire Democrat Jeanne Shaheen has strong support in the House of Representatives, which also must vote on a defense spending bill. The legislation bars the use of Kaspersky Lab software in government civilian and military agencies.

On September 13, a binding directive issued by Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Elaine Duke, ordered federal agencies to remove Kaspersky Lab products from government computers over concerns the Russia-based cybersecurity software company might be vulnerable to Russian government influence. All federal departments and agencies were given 30 days to identify any Kaspersky products in use on their networks. The departments have another 60 days to begin removal of the software. The statement says, «The department is concerned about the ties between certain Kaspersky officials and Russian intelligence and other government agencies, and requirements under Russian law that allow Russian intelligence agencies to request or compel assistance from Kaspersky and to intercept communications transiting Russian networks». The Russian law does not mention American networks, nevertheless it is used as a pretext to explain the concern.

Similar bans against US government use of Kaspersky products have been suggested before. In 2015, Bloomberg News reported that the company has «close ties to Russian spies».

According to US News, scrutiny of the company mounted in 2017, fueled by U.S. intelligence assessments and high-profile federal investigations of Russian interference in the 2016 election. This summer, the General Service Administration, which oversees purchasing by the federal government, removed Kaspersky from its list of approved vendors. In June, a proposal prohibiting the US military from using the company's products was reportedly included in the Senate's draft of the Department of Defense's budget rules. US intelligence leaders said earlier this year that Kaspersky Lab was already generally not allowed on military networks.

Kaspersky Lab has been producing widely lauded anti-virus software for 20 years. Today, it boasts 400 million customers around the world. Suspected of being involved in cyber espionage, the leading antivirus programs producer concluded that it was «caught in the middle of a geopolitical fight» and is being «treated unfairly even though the company has never helped, nor will help, any government in the world with its cyberespionage or offensive cyber efforts». Eugene Kaspersky, co-founder and CEO of Kaspersky Lab, has repeatedly denounced the allegations against his company as false and lacking credible or public evidence. He accepted the invitation to testify before the US House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. The testimony is scheduled on Sept. 27. Too late! Even if he proves that his company is innocent, the ban will be in force. It has been introduced without giving him a chance to speak on the issue and dissipate the fears.

Kaspersky highlighted that more than 85% of its revenue comes from outside Russia. The US measure will inevitably damage the company’s image and undermine the competitive position of the Russian company internationally. Best Buy has already said it will no longer sell software made by the Russian company.

All the decisions have been taken without giving the company a chance to openly address or mitigate the concerns. There has been no thorough investigation of its activities on US soil. No credible evidence has been presented to support the accusations. It all smacks of unfair competition. The Kaspersky Lab software is quite popular in the United States, and the company’s competitors will no doubt look to capitalize on this opportunity.

The move is part of anti-Russian hysteria that hit the United States. Kaspersky Lab has come under a politically-charged attack simply because it is Russian. Can anybody imagine Russia’s authorities saying that Apple and Microsoft were working hand in glove with the CIA and, therefore, their products were considered a security threat and should be banned?

A few months ago the authorities of New Hampshire, the state Jeanne Shaheen is from, were seriously considering a ban on Russian vodka imports and sales! Meanwhile, the US energy exporters use the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act to vie for the European energy market.

On August 14, President Trump signed a memorandum that directs US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to determine whether an investigation is needed into alleged unfair Chinese trade practices. The move represents the first step in a process that could allow the president to impose tariffs on Chinese imports or other punishing trade actions. The struggle for «fair trade practices» takes place against flagrant violations of international competition rules by the United States as illustrated by the unfair treatment of Kaspersky Lab.

At the same time, the US takes no measures against Microsoft, which is abusing its dominance in the PC operating system market, creating obstacles for independent software security vendors by distributing its own Defender anti-virus software with the ubiquitous Windows operating system.

The message has been sent. Hypocrisy at the core of US internet agenda is becoming untenable. It cannot continue to advocate for an open web, while at the same time using the tactics of unfair competition. The narrative that United States is the defender of free Internet appears to be dead.

via http://ift.tt/2xpmxOO Tyler Durden

After being force-fed more stimulus than John Belushi, and endless rounds of buying any and every asset that dares to expose any cracks in the potemkin village of fiat folly, Japan remains stuck firmly in what Abe feared so many years ago – a "deflationary mindset."

As Bloomberg reports, cash and deposits held by Japanese households rose for 42nd straight quarter at the end of June as the nation’s consumers continued to favor saving over spending.

The "deflationary mindset" that the Bank of Japan is battling to overcome was also evident in the money laying idle in corporate coffers, which stayed near an all-time high, according to quarterly flow of funds data released by the BOJ on Wednesday.

Still, as Bloomberg optimistically notes, with the economy expanding much faster than its potential growth rate, greater inflationary pressures could be on the way, which may prompt a shift in behavior by consumers and companies… or not!

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Authored by Caitlyn Johnstone via Medium.com,

When it comes to 9/11, there are two groups of people: those who don’t know exactly what happened, and those who orchestrated it.

Nearly everyone on earth belongs in the former category, but a lot of folks like to pretend they have a rock solid understanding of the events which transpired on that fateful day in 2001. Scoffing mainstream adherents like to pretend they’re confident that the official narrative is accurate, but they aren’t. A lot of hardcore conspiracy analysts like to pretend they know the real story, but they don’t. There’s simply not enough publicly available information for anyone to be certain exactly how things went down that day; all we can know for sure is that (A) the official story is riddled with plot holes, and (B) the American power establishment has an extensive and well-documented history of using false flags and propaganda to manipulate the public into supporting evil acts of military interventionism.

If you think you know for a fact that the official story of what happened on September 11, 2001 is the true account and that all conspiracy theories have been “debunked”, you are ignorant.

If you think you know the precise details of how what really happened differs from the official story, you’ve spent way too much time diving down conspiracy theory rabbit holes and should probably ease off the weed. There’s no need to get all defensive and go bedding yourself down to one hard doctrine of certainty when the US power establishment has already discredited itself so thoroughly. It’s unnecessary to plunge deep into theory when these people’s track record is so firmly established in fact.

Here are just a few of the times the US government is known to have distorted the reality of events in order to manufacture public support for military intervention, which is per definition what a false flag is:

The False Nayirah Testimony

On October 10, 1990 a 15 year-old girl known only as Nayirah testified before the Congressional Human Rights Caucus about the horrors that Iraqi troops were inflicting upon the people of Kuwait. Her testimony that hundreds of babies had been taken out of their incubators and left to die on hospital floors was repeated as fact by Amnesty International, the mass media, numerous senators, and President H. W. Bush, tugging at the heartstrings of America and manufacturing support for American action in the Gulf War.

It was a lie. Nayirah was in fact the daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador to the US, and her TV-friendly “removing babies from incubators” testimony was false. It never happened.

Former CIA Director Bush with the Kuwaiti Ambassador, who watched his daughter’s false testimony before congress

The Gulf of Tonkin Incident

In 2005 a declassified historical study by the NSA revealed that one of the two incidents which were used to propel America into the disastrous Vietnam War happened the opposite of the way it was reported to have happened, and the second of the two incidents did not happen at all. The allegation that there were “deliberate” and “unprovoked” attacks upon the US Navy in the Gulf of Tonkin on August 2 and August 4 of 1964 was solemnly affirmed by President Johnson, which led to the swift passage of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution authorizing full presidential authority to commit US military power to the Vietnamese intervention.

In reality the August 2 incident was not in any way “unprovoked”, and it was in fact America’s USS Maddox which fired upon North Vietnamese boats first. On August 4 there was no engagement with any ships whatsoever, with Johnson privately admitting a year later that “For all I know, our navy was shooting at whales out there.”

The USS Maine

“But when the smoke was over, the dead buried and the cost of the war came back to the people in an increase in the price of commodities and rent?—?that is, when we sobered up from our patriotic spree?—?it suddenly dawned on us that the cause of the Spanish-American War was the price of sugar.”

~ Emma Goldman

This goes way back. The video above describes how the Spanish-American war was brought on by a highly suspicious explosion upon the USS Maine while it was docked at the Havana Harbor in 1898, combined with the anti-Spain narratives of the plutocrat-owned newspapers of that time. Like all US wars, it was extremely profitable and benefitted the very rich.

*  *  *

This tradition of using lies to rally the unwashed masses behind military endeavors on behalf of the rich and powerful has probably been going on since the dawn of civilization, and it is only humanity’s increasing adeptness at networking and sharing information which has enabled us to begin catching on to the deceitful manipulations of the people who rule us. Our history books are doubtless riddled with countless inaccuracies as to the real reasons underlying violent conflicts between various kingdoms and factions, because the few literate people who were permitted to write the official historic accounts of them had full control of the narrative at the time.

This is why we’ve been seeing increasingly blatant panic from existing power structures about alternative media. Whoever controls the narrative controls the world. It is only by general societal consensus that power exists where it exists, that money works the way it works, etc. At any time the public could stop honoring existing power structures and create an entirely different model for itself, deciding to distribute resources and allocate responsibilities in a way that benefits more people more efficaciously than the current paradigm. It is only by their ability to manipulate and control the mainstream narrative that powerful people have been able to keep this from happening.

If the power elites didn’t need the consent of the public to rule, they wouldn’t have to lie constantly about their reasons for war. The public would never consent to military interventions if politicians were allowed to appear on CNN and say “Yeah well America has become a stronghold for the most powerful plutocracy in the history of civilization and it needs to maintain its status as the world’s only superpower in order to protect the investments of that plutocracy. This is why we have to keep knocking the pillars of support out from underneath Russia and China, and why I get millions in re-election campaign donations.”

My more pessimistic readers won’t like hearing this, but the reality is that Americans are basically good people who generally want what’s best for the world. If they weren’t, the unelected power establishment which rules over them wouldn’t have to keep making up lies about babies in incubators and protecting their family from Weapons of Mass Destruction in order to secure US hegemony. If they ever told the public the truth, they’d be dealing with hundreds of millions of heavily-armed Americans telling them to get their sociopathic asses out of here.

Obama Urged Trump To Continue Neoconservative Foreign Policy#Trump #Obama #letter #neoconhttps://t.co/b4BMZqpof2

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) September 4, 2017

What this means is that those of us who want what’s best for America and the world instead of endless war and economic oppression are necessarily locked in a media war with the plutocracy and its cronies. The populist alternative media owned and operated by ordinary people is the natural enemy of the plutocrat-owned mainstream media designed to prop up the existing power structure with establishment propaganda. Our ability to win this media war increases the more networked and internet-literate our society becomes, which is why the oligarchs have been working overtime to shut us down with corporate censorship.

There is no reason to believe anything these lying sociopaths say, especially not about something that has served such a crucial role in their openly stated agenda to ensure US dominance over the world using its military and economic might. When you’ve got the extremely influential neoconservative think tank Project for the New American Century saying in September of 2000 that it would require “a new Pearl Harbor” to advance this agenda, and then getting exactly that one year later in an American tragedy which was used to manufacture support for greatly expanded US military interventionism, there’s no good reason to take all that in with a trusting “Yeah, that sounds legit.”

These people are liars, and they are depraved. They have no problem using lies to kill a million Iraqis and thousands of US soldiers to advance their agendas, and there’s no reason to believe they wouldn’t kill US civilians as well. There’s no harm in familiarizing yourself with all the details about the various conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11 if that’s what you want to spend your brainpower on, but really all you need to know is that these people are known liars who have no problem slaughtering countless people to advance their agenda of global domination. There is no reason to trust them and many reasons not to. End of.

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Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

I remember back in mid-2013 when the Federal Reserve fielded the notion of a "taper" of quantitative easing measures. More specifically, I remember the response of mainstream economic analysts as well as the alternative economic community. I argued fervently in multiple articles that the Fed would indeed follow through with the taper, and that it made perfect sense for them to do so given that the mission of the central bank is not to protect the U.S. financial system, but to sabotage it carefully and deliberately. The general consensus was that a taper of QE was impossible and that the Fed would "never dare." Not long after, the Fed launched its taper program.

Two years later, in 2015, I argued once again that the Fed would begin raising interest rates even though multiple mainstream and alternative sources believed that this was also impossible. Without low interest rates, stock buybacks would slowly but surely die out, and the last pillar holding together equities and the general economy (besides blind faith) would be removed. The idea that the Fed would knowingly take such an action seemed to be against their "best self interest;" and yet, not long after, they initiated the beginning of the end for artificially low interest rates.

The process that the Federal Reserve has undertaken has been a long and arduous one cloaked in disinformation. It is a process of dismantlement. Through unprecedented stimulus measures, the central bank has conjured perhaps the largest stock and bond bubbles in history, not to mention a bubble to end all bubbles in the U.S. dollar.

Stocks in particular are irrelevant in the grand scheme of our economy, but this does not stop the populace from using them as a reference point for the health of our system. This creates an environment rife with delusion, just as the open flood of cheap credit created considerable delusion before the crash of 2008.

Today, we find our economic fundamentals in complete disarray, but the overwhelming fantasy within stocks still remains. Why? Because yet again, for some reason, no one is ready to accept the reality that the Fed is pulling the plug on America's fiscal life support. Nary a handful of economists in the world think that the Fed will raise interest rates one more time this year if ever again, and the threat of a balance sheet reduction is the furthest thing from everyone's mind. Daytrading investors are utterly convinced they have the Fed by the short hairs. I say, the situation is actually in reverse.

The minutes from the Fed's July Open Market Committee Meeting indicate that while the central bank has been the savior of stock investors for several years, the party is about to end. Comments on the risks a bull market might pose to "financial stability" have been more frequent the past couple of months

Only a few weeks ago, former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan commented that bond markets could collapse and bring stocks down with them do to overvaluations and increasing interest rates.

Recent spikes in markets despite a steady stream of natural disasters, threats of war with North Korea, as well as "increased inflation" (according to Fed models) due to the damage wrought by Hurricane Harvey suggest that the Fed will indeed continue hiking rates into our ongoing financial collapse.

The next FOMC meeting will conclude on the 20th of this month, and the question is, will the Fed surprise with a rate hike and/or balance sheet reduction program? I believe the odds are much higher than many people seem to think. [ZH: we now know that The Fed did announce the start of the balance sheet reduction program as Brandon forecast]

First, let's be clear, historically the Fed's predictable behavior has been to skip major policy actions in September and then startle markets with renewed and aggressive actions in December. People placing bets on a Fed rate hike in September would look at this pattern and say "no way." However, the narrative I see building in Fed rhetoric and in the mainstream media is that stock markets have become "unruly children" and that the Fed must become a "stern parent," reigning them in before they are crushed under the weight of their own naive enthusiasm.

In my view, the Fed will continue to do what it says it is going to do — raise interest rates and reduce and remove stimulus, and that the mainstream narrative will soon be adjusted to suggest that this is "necessary;" that stock markets need a bit of tough love.

If the Fed means to follow through with its stated plans for "financial stability" in markets, then the only measure that would be effective in shell-shocking stocks back to reality would be a surprise hike, a surprise announcement of balance sheet reduction or both at the same time.

If the Fed intends to continue cutting off life support to equities and bonds in preparation for a controlled demolition of the U.S. economy, then there is a high probability at the very least of a balance sheet reduction announcement this week with strong language indicating another rate hike in December. I also would not completely rule out a surprise rate hike even though September is usually a no-action month for central banks.

This would fit the trend of central banks around the globe strategically distancing themselves from artificial support for the financial structure. Last week, the Bank of England surprised investors with an open indication that they may begin raising interest rates "in the coming months." The Bank Of Canada surprised some economists with yet another rate hike this month and mentions of "more to come." The European Central Bank has paved the way for a tapering of stimulus measures according to comments made during its latest meeting early this month. And, the Bank of Japan initiated taper measures in July.

Even Forbes is admitting that there appears to be a "coordinated tightening of monetary policy" coming far sooner than the mainstream expects. If you understand how the Bank for International Settlements controls policy initiatives of national central bank members, then you should not be surprised that central banks all over the world are pursuing the same actions and the same rhetoric. The only difference between any of them is the pace they have chosen in taking the punch bowl away from the party.

The point is, when it comes to the fiat peddlers, there are indeed a few sure things, but continued stimulus is not one of them. One thing that is certain is that they will act in concert as they are clearly doing now in terms of policy tightening. Another thing that is certain is that if they plant a notion in the mainstream media — such as the notion that they are "worried about overvaluations in stocks" and that interest rates must rise, then they will follow through as they always have. Perhaps not at the pace the mainstream expects, or the pace I expect, but certainly somewhere in-between.

Finally, it behooves me to mention again that the Fed has done all of this before. In the lead up to the stock market crash of 1929, the central bank bloated stocks with easy credit measures and low interest rates, only to hike rates in the name of "quelling inflation." This hacked the legs out from under markets with a machete, and the rest is history. The hidden purpose behind this tactic is extraordinary centralization on a global scale. The Fed is not interested in the health of the U.S. economy, it is interested in total globalization of all economies under one totalitarian umbrella. To make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs.

Of course, the Fed will not engineer a market crash in a vacuum. It is my suspicion that the next Fed meeting will be followed by a geopolitical distraction — the most likely candidate being increasing conflict with North Korea.

Do not be fooled by the magic show. The real threat to us all is the central banking and international banking apparatus, including the BIS and the IMF. From now until the end of this year, remain vigilant.

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The Great Recession destroyed the job market for workers without college degrees, and the situation hasn’t gotten any better.

This begs the question – can you still enjoy a high standard of living without a college degree? And what are the highest paying jobs for people without a traditional higher education?

This new chart, from HowMuch.net, sheds some light on these pressing questions.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks which professions do not require a college education, how many people currently hold those jobs, and their median salaries. We combined this information into a scatter plot graph. The more dots you see, the more people work in that profession. And the higher the dots on the vertical axis, the more money they make.

You can quickly see some pretty interesting trends. There are a lot of people without college degrees who make a great living. The median household income in the U.S. is $56,516. By that standard, all the jobs on our chart pay well above average.

Specialization is the key to earning a high wage, especially in an area that cannot be outsourced. Elevator installers, power plant operators, transportation inspectors—these are all professions that require a high level of skill and must be done in person by someone with years of experience and certifications. Regardless of how automation affects the economy, you won’t ever be able to replace jobs like firefighting and law enforcement, despite what futuristic movies like Minority Report may have you believe.

Top Ten Highest Paying Jobs Without Needing a Degree 

1. Nuclear power reactor operator – $91,170 (salary) & 7,170 (workers)

2. Transport manager – $89,190 (salary) & 113,270 (workers)

3. Police supervisor – $84,840 (salary) & 100,200 (workers)

4. Power distributor – $81,900 (salary) & 11,380 (workers)

5. Elevator installer – $78,890 (salary) & 22,240 (workers)

6. Detective – $78,120 (salary) & 104,980 (workers)

7. Commercial pilot – $77,200 (salary) & 38,980 (workers)

8. Media equipment worker – $75,700 (salary) & 18,620 (workers)

9. Electrician – $75,670 (salary) & 23,060 (workers)

10. Power plant operator – $74,690 (salary) & 35,010 (workers)

And now, a word of caution. The top 25 professions where you don’t need a college degree only employ about 1.4 million people. That’s a lot of people, but the entire working population in the U.S. is over 205 million people. In other words, these jobs not only demand years of experience and specialization, but they’re also pretty rare. And don’t be mistaken: you may not need a college degree, but you do need some type of post-secondary training. You can’t just graduate high school and start your own electrical company. You have to work as an apprentice or join a training program first.

That being said, it’s still possible for people without a formal college education to earn a respectable salary. The big takeaway from our chart is that you want to be in a position that can’t easily be replaced through automation or outsourcing. If you can find a career like that, then you’re in good shape to enjoy a high standard of living.

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Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,

North Korea, Iran, Venezuela are targets in "compassionate" America's war on the "wicked few." It's almost as though Washington felt its hegemony threatened…

Paul Delaroche, Napoléon à Fontainebleau, 1840. With other global powers increasingly at odds with US foreign policy under Donald Trump, the nation's hegemony on the world stage may soon face its own crisis point.

This was no “deeply philosophical address”. And hardly a show of  “principled realism” – as spun by the White House. President Trump at the UN was “American carnage,” to borrow a phrase previously deployed by his nativist speechwriter Stephen Miller.

One should allow the enormity of what just happened to sink in, slowly. The president of the United States, facing the bloated bureaucracy that passes for the “international community,” threatened to “wipe off the map” the whole of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (25 million people). And may however many millions of South Koreans who perish as collateral damage be damned.

Multiple attempts have been made to connect Trump’s threats to the madman theory cooked up by “Tricky Dicky” Nixon in cahoots with Henry Kissinger, according to which the USSR must always be under the impression the then-US president was crazy enough to, literally, go nuclear. But the DPRK will not be much impressed with this madman remix.

That leaves, on the table, a way more terrifying upgrade of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Trump repeatedly invoked Truman in his speech). Frantic gaming will now be in effect in both Moscow and Beijing: Russia and China have their own stability / connectivity strategy under development to contain Pyongyang.

The Trump Doctrine has finally been enounced and a new axis of evil delineated. The winners are North Korea, Iran and Venezuela. Syria under Assad is a sort of mini-evil, and so is Cuba. Crucially, Ukraine and the South China Sea only got a fleeting mention from Trump, with no blunt accusations against Russia and China. That may reflect at least some degree of realpolitik; without “RC” – the Russia-China strategic partnership at the heart of the BRICS bloc and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) – there’s no possible solution to the Korean Peninsula stand-off.

In this epic battle of the “righteous many” against the “wicked few,” with the US described as a “compassionate nation” that wants “harmony and friendship, not conflict and strife,” it’s a bit of a stretch to have Islamic State – portrayed as being not remotely as “evil” as North Korea or Iran – get only a few paragraphs.

The art of unraveling a deal

According to the Trump Doctrine, Iran is “an economically depleted rogue state whose chief exports are violence, bloodshed and chaos,” a “murderous regime” profiting from a nuclear deal that is “an embarrassment to the United States.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted: “Trump’s ignorant hate speech belongs in medieval times – not the 21st century UN – unworthy of a reply.” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov once again stressed full support for the nuclear deal ahead of a P5+1 ministers’ meeting scheduled for Wednesday, when Zarif was due to be seated at the same table as US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Under review: compliance with the deal. Tillerson is the only one who wants a renegotiation.

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani has, in fact, developed an unassailable argument on the nuclear negotiations. He says the deal – which the P5+1 and the IAEA all agree is working – could be used as a model elsewhere. German chancellor Angela Merkel concurs. But, Rouhani says, if the US suddenly decides to unilaterally pull out, how could the North Koreans possibly be convinced it’s worth their while to sit down to negotiate anything with the Americans ?

What the Trump Doctrine is aiming at is, in fact, a favourite old neo-con play, reverting back to the dynamics of the Dick Cheney-driven Washington-Tehran Cold War years.

This script runs as follows: Iran must be isolated (by the West, only now that won’t fly with the Europeans); Iran is “destabilizing” the Middle East (Saudi Arabia, the ideological foundry of all strands of Salafi-jihadism, gets a free pass); and Iran, because it’s developing ballistic that could – allegedly – carry nuclear warheads, is the new North Korea.

That lays the groundwork for Trump to decertify the deal on October 15. Such a dangerous geopolitical outcome would then pit Washington, Tel Aviv, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi against Tehran, Moscow and Beijing, with European capitals non-aligned. That’s hardly compatible with a “compassionate nation” which wants “harmony and friendship, not conflict and strife.”

Afghanistan comes to South America

The Trump Doctrine, as enounced, privileges the absolute sovereignty of the nation-state. But then there are those pesky “rogue regimes” which must be, well, regime-changed. Enter Venezuela, now on “the brink of total collapse,” and run by a “dictator”; thus, America “cannot stand by and watch.”

No standing by, indeed. On Monday, Trump had dinner in New York with the presidents of Colombia, Peru and Brazil (the last indicted by the country’s Attorney General as the leader of a criminal organization and enjoying an inverted Kim dynasty rating of 95% unpopularity). On the menu: regime change in Venezuela.

Venezuelan “dictator” Maduro happens to be supported by Moscow and, most crucially, Beijing, which buys oil and has invested widely in infrastructure in the country with Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht crippled by the Car Wash investigation.

The stakes in Venezuela are extremely high. In early November, Brazilian and American forces will be deployed in a joint military exercise in the Amazon rainforest, at the Tri-Border between Peru, Brazil and Colombia. Call it a rehearsal for regime change in Venezuela. South America could well turn into the new Afghanistan, a consequence that flows from Trump’s assertion that “major portions of the world are in conflict and some, in fact, are going to hell.”

For all the lofty spin about “sovereignty”, the new axis of evil is all about, once again, regime change.

Russia-China aim to defuse the nuclear stand-off, then seduce North Korea into sharing in the interpenetration of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU), via a new Trans-Korea Railway and investments in DPRK ports. The name of the game is Eurasian integration.

Iran is a key node of BRI. It’s also a future full member of the SCO, it’s connected – via the North-South Transport Corridor – with India and Russia, and is a possible future supplier of natural gas to Europe. The name of the game, once again, is Eurasian integration.

Venezuela, meanwhile, holds the largest unexplored oil reserves on the planet, and is targeted by Beijing as a sort of advanced BRI node in South America.

The Trump Doctrine introduces a new set of problems for Russia-China. Putin and Xi do dream of reenacting a balance of power similar to that of the Concert of Europe, which lasted from 1815 (after Napoleon’s defeat) until the brink of World War I in 1914. That’s when Britain, Austria, Russia and Prussia decided that no European nation should be able to emulate the hegemony of France under Napoleon.

In sitting as judge and executioner, Trump’s “compassionate” America certainly seems intent on echoing such hegemony.

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A day after Bridgewater Associates Founder Ray Dalio claimed that bitcoin was "definitely in a bubble" partly because he said the digital currency was too difficult to spend, CoinTelegraph is reporting that the first-ever bitcoin-only real-estate transaction has been completed in Texas.

The transaction "illustrates crypto's potential to transform how financial transactions are conducted," according to Futurism.com.

The Texas-based real estate brokerage firm Kuper Sotheby’s International Realty, the firm that reperesented the buyer, declined to disclose the number of bitcoins that were exchanged for the home. Futurism.com noted the ease with which the transaction was conducted. "The buyer simply transferred the bitcoin to the seller, who then converted it into US dollars."

“In all of my 33 years of closing transactions, I honestly couldn’t have expected something so unique to go so smoothly,” Kuper Sotheby’s Sheryl Lowe, the buyer’s agent, said in a press release. “In a matter of 10 minutes, the bitcoin was changed to U.S. dollars and the deal was done!”

Located in the central part of Austin, the property is just a few miles away from downtown.

Futurism opines that the real estate transaction is "further proof" that bitcoin isn’t “a fraud." Instead, the transaction is another example of the increasing acceptance of cryptocurrencies, which are poised to revolutionize a variety of industries beyond finance, from transportation to entertainment to politics.

According to Futurism, the home has grand entertaining areas, a master suite, and a chef-worthy kitchen. Sheryl Lowe of Kuper Sotheby’s that she “honestly couldn’t have expected something so unique to go so smoothly.” She said the seller was able to convert the bitcoin into US dollars in a matter of minutes.

“In a matter of 10 minutes, the Bitcoin was changed to US Dollars and the deal was done!” she said in a statement.

News of the sale comes about a week after one UK company focused on building affordable housing for young professionals said it would begin accepting bitcoin for down payments on its properties.

Hear that, Ray?

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Bitcoin has largely recovered from a selloff earlier in the month that was triggered by news that Chinese authorities were cracking down on local exchanges after banning initial coin offerings. The selloff worsened after JP Morgan Chase & CO CEO Jamie Dimon called bitcoin a "fraud" and said he would fire any traders caught speculating in it. One coin was trading at $4,006 on CoinDesk Wednesday morning.

Earlier today, we noted that the price of a share of the Swiss National Bank climbed back above the price of one bitcoin on Wednesday thanks to a 13% jump. The bitcoin price, meanwhile, was largely flat.

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Authored by Toni Airaksinen via CampusReform.org,

University of California, Los Angeles research professor recently slammed the impact of “excessive immigration” on the labor market in a message to the campus community.

Benjamin Zuckerman, professor of Astronomy and president of Californians for Population Stabilization, argued in an essay for The Daily Bruin that immigration, both legal and illegal, has a negative impact on native-born Americans.

“For many years the United States has admitted a million legal immigrants a year. This, combined with illegal immigration, has had a significant impact on low-income American workers, who are disproportionately persons of color,” Zuckerman contends.

Due to high rates of immigration, there is an unusually “abundant pool of cheap labor,” which he argues “contributes to the transfer of wealth from lower to upper strata of society, thus increasing income inequality.”

“This is one reason why Californians for Population Stabilization supports reduced levels of immigration, and not because of ‘racism’ or ‘xenophobia,’” he assures his readers, responding to an op-ed written by UCLA alum Hector Prado, which alleged that Zuckerman’s anti-immigration work is rooted in exactly those prejudices.

While students at UCLA have been quick to allege that Zuckerman is racist, his arguments are undergirded by concern with overpopulation, not immigration per se, and the mission of his own organization is rooted in concern over California’s burgeoning population.

“California’s population has doubled, from 20 million to nearly 40 million in just the last forty years,” the website states.

 

“More population growth has meant more pollution, more degradation of our environmental treasures, more traffic, overcrowded schools, higher taxes, longer waits at emergency rooms, [and] even more job competition.”

However, Californians for Population Stabilization take care to note that immigration itself isn’t bad, but simply that “America’s antiquated immigration policy” causes problems, arguing that the country imports “millions of people with little to no regard for whether they have a skill set that matches the country’s economic needs.”

In his essay for The Bruin, Zuckerman even suggests that population stabilization is consistent with left-wing values such as concern over climate change.

"The importance of a prompt stabilization of the U.S. population is not a newfound concept,” he writes.

 

“In fact, it was highlighted as one of the two most important steps the U.S. must take toward sustainability, according to the 1996 Population and Consumption Task Force Report of former President Bill Clinton’s Council on Sustainable Development.”

Zuckerman concludes by insisting that “this nation can no longer afford to delay reasoned discussion about explosive population growth.”

Campus Reform reached out to Zuckerman for an interview, but he was unable to respond in time for publication.

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We’ve spent a lot of time of late discussing the impact of opioids on the American workforce.  While it is unclear exactly how much of an impact opioids are having on the steadily declining labor force participation rate, one thing is clear: nearly half of working age men not in the labor force today take some form of opioids on a daily basis.

But, as Bloomberg points out today, drug abuse among those still gainfully employed is perhaps an even bigger problem for American manufacturing employers because of the safety concerns it presents.  Meanwhile, the additional drug testing costs associated with maintaining a safe work environment, in an era in which opioid addiction is spiraling out of control, tend to “mount up” as additional employees are required just to manage rigorous testing programs.

At Philip Tulkoff’s food-processing plant in Baltimore, machines grind tough horseradish roots into puree. “If you put your arm in the wrong place,” the owner says, “and you’re not paying attention, it’s going to pull you in.” It’s not a good place to be intoxicated.

 

Drug abuse in the workforce is a growing challenge for American business. While economists have paid more attention to the opioid epidemic’s role in keeping people out of work, about two-thirds of those who report misusing pain-relievers are on the payroll. In the factory or office, such employees can be a drag on productivity, one of the U.S. economy’s sore spots. In the worst case, they can endanger themselves and their colleagues.

 

That’s why Tulkoff practices zero-tolerance. One randomly chosen employee gets tested every month, “and we’re gonna move it to two.” The costs mount up: He has to hire a third-party company to select the worker, and pay the clinic to conduct tests. Money is wasted training workers who subsequently drop out when they fail the screening.

 

“We caught someone recently, saw him injecting,’’ said Jay Steinmetz, chief executive of Barcoding Inc. The Baltimore company creates software, and provides equipment, that helps businesses manage their inventory. It’s a desk environment, with none of the grinding machinery that poses risks for Tulkoff’s staff.

Of course, other manufacturing companies have decided to take the opposite approach on drug testing as too rigorous a program would inevitably just result in excessive layoffs in an already tight labor market.

It’s no wonder that not every boss is as rigorous as Tulkoff. “I know people who’ve said, ‘I can’t do it, I would lose too many people’,” he says.

 

At the moment, 57 percent of employers say they perform drug tests, according to the National Safety Council. Out of those, more than 40 percent don’t screen for synthetic opioids like oxycodone — among the most widely abused narcotics, and one of the substances that new federal rules are targeting.

 

“I have heard manufacturers over the years say, ’We wish we didn’t have to test for drugs,’ because they lose money when they can’t fill those positions,’’ he said.

 

Meanwhile, “no-call, no-show” employees, those who simply take a job just long enough to score their next hit, are devastating to workplace productivity.

And there’s no guarantee that new hires will stick around. Drug problems are accelerating the turnover among staff.

 

“In the last three weeks, we’ve had six people come, get trained, and then are no-call, no-shows,’’ Greenblatt said. He said the biggest loss comes from taking high-performing employees out of the production process so they can train new hires. “That person is diverted into the completely unproductive task of teaching someone who’s going to leave in a day or two.’’

 

Productivity growth in the U.S. economy has been slowing for decades. There’s little consensus about the causes. But there are signs that the spread of drug-abuse could be contributing to the problem.

One Ohio factory owner shared her story with WTVR saying that although she has numerous blue-collar jobs available at her company, she struggles to fill positions because so many candidates fail drug tests. Regina Mitchell, co-owner of Warren Fabricating & Machining in Hubbard, Ohio, told The New York Times that four out of 10 applicants otherwise qualified to be welders, machinists and crane operators will fail a routine drug test. While not quite as bad as the adverse hit rate hinted at by the Beige Book, this is a stunning number, and one which indicates of major structural changes to the US labor force where addiction and drugs are keeping millions out of gainful (or any, for that matter) employment.

Speaking to CNN’s Michael Smerconish, Mitchell said that her requirements for prospective workers were simple: “I need employees who are engaged in their work while here, of sound mind and doing the best possible job that they can, keeping their fellow co-workers safe at all times,” she said.

This has proven to be a problem.

“We have a 150-ton crane in our machine shop. And we’re moving 300,000 pounds of steel around in that building on a regular basis. So I cannot take the chance to have anyone impaired running that crane, or working 40 feet in the air.”

While President Trump addressed his blue-collar base in Ohio this week, returning to his campaign theme of getting local communities back to work and returning jobs to America from overseas, the problem may not be a scarcity of jobs: it is workers who are not under the influence. As Mitchell said she has jobs… she just doesn’t have sober applicants. For 48 of the 50 years her company has been around, drug abuse had never been an issue, she told Smerconish.

“It hasn’t been until the last two years that we needed to have a policy, a corporate policy in place, that protects us from employees coming into work impaired,” she said.

Maybe instead of focusing how to perpetuate the US waiter and bartender job recovery, the BLS – and the administration – should contemplate how to eliminate the pervasive addiction problem which is rapidly becoming a structural hurdle for America’s millions of unemployed.

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