Local radio is reporting that at least one person has been killed and several injured after multiple shots were fired in a tram in a Dutch city of Utrecht.
A square around a tram station outside downtown Utrecht is on lockdown following the shooting, local media reported. Police have cordoned off the area and adjacent streets, but the perpetrator managed to escape.
The police is investigating the shooting at the #24oktoberplein in Utrecht this morning. An possible terrorist motif is part of the investigation.
In the latest blow to both Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration, the WSJ reported overnight that Federal prosecutors and Department of Transportation officials are scrutinizing the development of Boeing 737 MAX jetliners and in particular its anti-stall (MCAS) system, inquiries described as “unusual” and which come amid probes of regulators’ safety approvals of the new plane.
The Seattle Times separately reported that Boeing’s safety analysis of a new flight control system on 737 MAX jets had several crucial flaws.
According to the WSJ, a “grand jury in Washington, D.C., issued a broad subpoena dated March 11 – a day after the Ethiopian Airlines crash a week ago – to at least one person involved in the 737 MAX’s development, seeking related documents, including correspondence, emails and other messages.” The subpoena, with a prosecutor from the Justice Department’s criminal division listed as a contact, sought documents to be handed over later this month.
It wasn’t immediately clear if the Justice Department’s probe is related to scrutiny of the FAA by the DOT inspector general’s office, reported earlier Sunday by The Wall Street Journal and that focuses on a safety system that has been implicated in the Oct. 29 Lion Air crash that killed 189 people, according to a government official briefed on its status. Aviation authorities are looking into whether the anti-stall system may have played a role in last week’s Ethiopian Airlines crash, which killed all 157 people on board. The WSJ sources add that the inspector general’s inquiry focuses on ensuring relevant documents and computer files are retained.
The Justice Department probe involves a prosecutor in the fraud section of the department’s criminal division, a unit that has brought cases against well-known manufacturers over safety issues, including Takata Corp.
The news comes at a sensitive time for both the FAA, which was among the last regulators to ground the 737 Max following a broad global response (led by China) and for Boeing, whose stock has tumbled in the aftermath of the latest crash, and as the WSJ notes, “it is highly unusual for federal prosecutors to investigate details of regulatory approval of commercial aircraft designs, or to use a criminal probe to delve into dealings between the FAA and the largest aircraft manufacturer the agency oversees.”
Probes of airliner programs or alleged lapses in federal safety oversight typically are handled as civil cases, often by the DOT inspector general. The inspector general, however, does have authority to make criminal referrals to federal prosecutors and has its own special agents.
Ironically, over the years, U.S. aviation companies and airline officials have been sharply critical of foreign governments, including France, South Korea and others, for conducting criminal probes of some plane makers, their executives and in some cases, even individual pilots, after high-profile or fatal crashes. The FAA’s current enforcement policy stresses enhanced cooperation with domestic airlines and manufacturers—featuring voluntary sharing of important safety data—instead of seeking fines or imposing other punishment.
News of the U.S. government scrutiny comes shortly after Ethiopia’s transport minister, Dagmawit Moges, said there were “clear similarities” between the two crashes. U.S. officials cautioned that it was too early to draw conclusions because data from the black boxes of the Ethiopian Airlines plane still need to be analyzed. The two crashes – which may be linked to the same structural defect on the airliner – have sparked the biggest crisis Boeing has faced in about two decades, threatening sales of a plane model that has been the aircraft giant’s most stable revenue source and potentially making it more time consuming and difficult to get future aircraft designs certified as safe to fly.
The FAA said Sunday that the 737 MAX, which entered service in 2017, was approved to carry passengers as part of the agency’s “standard certification process,” including design analyses; ground and flight tests; maintenance requirements; and cooperation with other civil aviation authorities. Agency officials in the past have declined to comment on various decisions regarding specific systems. Sunday’s statement said the agency’s “certification processes are well established and have consistently produced safe aircraft.”
Earlier, a Boeing spokesman said: “The 737 MAX was certified in accordance with the identical FAA requirements and processes that have governed certification of all previous new airplanes and derivatives. The FAA considered the final configuration and operating parameters of MCAS during MAX certification, and concluded that it met all certification and regulatory requirements.”
Boeing Chief Executive Dennis Muilenburg said in a statement Sunday the company continues to support the Ethiopian investigation, “and is working with the authorities to evaluate new information as it becomes available.” Muilenburg added: “As part of our standard practice following any accident, we examine our aircraft design and operation, and when appropriate, institute product updates to further improve safety.”
Governments world-wide have grounded the MAX, an updated version of the decades-old 737, while investigators and engineers seek clues.
And so, as 737 Max scrutiny grows and as Boeing and the FAA now seek to deflect increased government attention to one another – Boeing stock is once again tumbling, and is down 3% in premarket trading…
… erasing most of Friday’s gains which followed a report from Boeing that a software “fix” is being rolled out, which in light of the latest news, may no longer be useful especially if the government finds that “shot cuts” were taken in the development of the plane.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2TboUw5 Tyler Durden
The Nordstream 2 pipeline represents the last stand of U.S. influence over the internal affairs of Europe.
Once finished it will stand as a testament to the fundamental split between the European Union and the United States.
Europe will this as its first successful defense of its newly-declared independence. And the U.S. will have to come to terms with no longer having control overseas.
This is a theme repeating itself all around the world right now.
Your view of Nordstream 2 depends on who you are.
If you are the U.S. it is a massive rebuke of the post-WWII institutional order mostly paid for by the U.S. to rebuild Europe and protecting it from the scourge of the U.S.S.R.
From Europe’s perspective it’s, “Job well done and all that but Russia isn’t a threat anymore and it is time for us to come out from underneath the U.S.’s shadow.”
And if you are Russia Nordtream 2 is the wedge driving these two adversaries apart while improving national security on your western border.
Europe has imperial ambitions of its own and Nordstream 2 is a very important part of that. Those ambitions, however, are not in line with those in the U.S., particularly under the “leadership” of Donald Trump.
Trump has this strange idea that the U.S. has gotten nothing in return for our running the world these past seventy-odd years. Our massive trade deficit is wealth stolen by our trade partners in Trump’s simplistic mind.
He refuses to see the wealth we’ve ‘lost’ as squandered by decades of corruption, sloth, regulatory over-reach, etc.
And so, to Trump, Nordstream 2 is an abomination because he’s funding NATO to protect Europe from Russia but they then are increasing the amount of gas they buy from that very same ‘enemy.’
And that should tell you where all of this is headed in the long run.
The dissolution of NATO through attrition by both Russia and the EU.
The U.S. Senate has no interest in telling the President to sanction the companies building Nordstream 2. It may not stop Trump from doing so anyway.
The real reason Trump won’t sanction Nordstream 2 is the same reason he will fold to China on trade: dollar liquidity and world trade.
He’s already done enough damage. Now he’s staring re-election in the face with a hostile Federal Reserve.
If he were going to do sanction Nordstream 2 he would have. In fact, this vote in the European Parliament sis a feeble last gasp to stop the pipeline not the shrewd move of a guy holding pocket aces.
Precisely because the U.S. hasn’t imposed sanctions on it yet this is all we have left, pathetic virtue signaling.
If it’s going to happen it has to be before the European Parliamentary elections in May when we can expect at least a doubling of Euroskeptic representation.
If things continue to spiral out of control in France, Italy hardens even further against the EU and Brexit is postponed Euroskeptics could be the largest block in the Parliament come July.
At that point we’ll see a sincere lowering of the influence of the infamous Soros List in that body and possibly in the European Commission itself. And, if anything, more pipeline deals and investment in Russian energy.
In fact, a Euroskeptic Parliament could lift sanctions on Russia completely.
Moreover, Ukraine’s upcoming elections will likely bring someone to power not thoroughly beholden to the U.S.’s strategy there.
Between that and Ukrainian parliamentary elections later this year we’ll likely see Ukraine and Gazprom renegotiate the gas transport contract, bringing even more Russian gas to the continent.
And that will only make Trump even madder than he is now. He has staked so much of his overall strategy on the U.S. as a powerful petroleum exporter. He needs markets for that gas.
Europe and China are two obvious ones but Russia has him outflanked now on both.
The end of this interminably shallow expansion brings the U.S. face to face with an unsustainable fracking boom as debt-servicing spikes demand for the dollar sparking a sharp rise in interest rates.
Optics are important and this image captures what both parties wanted to convey. This meeting is the beginning of a shift in the relationship between Germany and Russia for the better.
And the question is why?
The obvious answer is necessity brought about by pressure being placed on both countries by Donald Trump through sanctions and tariffs and their shared interests represented by the Nordstream 2 pipeline.
And all that implies.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2TSsrE5 Tyler Durden
Wilhelmsen and Airbus are conducting the world’s first commercial shore-to-ship drone delivery trial, according to Hellenic Shipping News.
The team is testing its “Skyways” drone delivery system in Singapore, which marked the start of its commercial trial operations.
The first test allowed the Airbus-built drone to lift off from the Marina South Pier and fly almost 1 mile to Eastern Working Anchorage. The drone then landed on the deck of the Swire Pacific Offshore (SPO)’s Anchor Handling Tug Supply (AHTS) vessel and discharged its 3 lbs. cargo before returning to its base.
Wilhelmsen believes that “Skyways” offers a more cost-effective, speedier and safer means of delivering small high-priority items to vessels moored outside the port.
“Delivery of essential spares, medical supplies and cash to master via launch boat, is an established part of our portfolio of husbandry services, which we provide day in and day out, in ports all over the world. Modern technology such as Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), is just a new tool, albeit a very cool one, with which we can push our industry ever forward and improve how we serve our customers,” said Marius Johansen, VP Commercial for Wilhelmsen Ships Agency.
The project is a joint effort between Airbus, Wilhelmsen and the Singapore government. Wilhelmsen was tasked with setting up the logistics for the drone to operate in controlled airspace. Airbus provided the expertise in drones to develop the aircraft for shore-to-ship deliveries.
“We are thrilled to launch the first trial of its kind in the maritime world. Today’s accomplishment is a culmination of months of intense preparation by our dedicated team, and the strong collaboration with our partner, as we pursue new terrain in the maritime industry,” says Leo Jeoh, Airbus Skyways Lead.
The ongoing trial will focus on offshore supply vessels moored about 1 mile from the pier. The next trial is slated for the coming months, will focus on a flight range of about 2 miles from shore.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2JjSTTa Tyler Durden
The last century witnessed a plethora of ideology-based regimes: The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the People’s Republic of China, the United Arab Republic and the Buddhist Socialist State of Myanmar among others. The pretension behind all those labels was that rather than being the art of solving the people’s problems, politics was a means of advancing the real or imagined goals of an ideology.
Another thing the three crisis-struck regimes (Iran, Algeria, Venezuela) have in common is that they are all oil-and-gas states, which means that because they don’t depend on income from taxation, they can regard their people as expensive and bothersome extras.
In all three countries, the traditional military holds the balance of power between the ruling elite of which their own top brass is part and the mass of the rebellious citizenry.
Three crises in three continents: Iran in Asia, Algeria in Africa and Venezuela in Latin America. Do they have anything in common?
Pictured: Supporters of Venezuela’s opposition leader Juan Guaidó gathered at a Citizens’ Assembly on March 16, 2019 in Valencia, Venezuela. (Photo by Eva Marie Uzcategui/Getty Images)
The obvious thing they have in common is that all three crises are rooted in a sharp disconnect between a discontented but combative people thirsty for change and a tired but arrogant ruling elite hell-bent on hanging onto power.
Despite differences that might appear striking at first glance, all three countries have many other things in common.
They all have ideological regimes reflected in their official names. All three call themselves “republic” but render the term ambiguous through modifiers. The Iranian regime calls itself “Islamic” which it takes to mean rule by a section of the Shiite clergy under a self-styled “Supreme Guide”. The Algerian regime uses the double-barrel modifier “people’s democratic” to render the term “republic” meaningless. The Venezuelan regime obtains a similar result with the term “Bolivarian republic.”
All three hark back to the last century which witnessed a plethora of ideology-based regimes: The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the People’s Republic of China, the United Arab Republic and the Buddhist Socialist State of Myanmar among others. The pretension behind all those labels was that rather than being the art of solving the people’s problems, politics was a means of advancing the real or imagined goals of an ideology.
All three regimes are based in synthetic myths of recent coinage.
The Islamic Republic of Iran boasts about its genesis in the so-called “Islamic Revolution” of 1979, which consisted of four or five months of riots culminating in the Shah’s decision to leave the country, creating a power vacuum that the mullahs filled with little difficulty.
Unlike classical revolutions that witness genuine and often prolonged conflict between opposing ideologies, the Iranian revolution happened so quickly and so easily as to deprive even its leaders from the possibility of creating a revolutionary biography for themselves.
The People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria sees its roots in the imaginary “military victory” over the French army, the second most powerful in NATO at the time. It ignores the fact that the “liberation army” that seized power soon after independence had played a marginal role in actual fighting.
Algeria did not win independence on any battleground but thanks to a dramatic change of political perspectives in France and across the globe, plus the courageous obstinacy of the Algerian civilian population.
In Venezuela, the myths are built around a doctored biography of Simón Bolívar, who had dreamt of a grand united states of South America and even served as president of Bolivia, Peru and Grand Colombia at a time those lands had not yet developed distinctive national identities. Had Bolívar been around today, he would have been scandalized by attempts at casting him in the role of a Venezuelan nationalist promoting a pseudo-socialistic project.
Another thing the three crisis-struck regimes have in common is that they are all oil-and-gas states, which means that because they don’t depend on income from taxation, they can regard their people as expensive and bothersome extras.
Iran, Algeria and Venezuela are all members of the so-called Non-Aligned Movement and have hosted its summits. In that context they have retained some memory of the Cold War as regimes sympathetic to the Soviet bloc and opposed to the so-called Free World led by the United States. The umbrella term for that hodgepodge is “Third Worldism,” which means presenting Western democracies as enemies while trying to benefit from the economic, social and cultural possibilities they offer.
The Khomeinists in Iran hate the American “Great Satan” but send their children to the US for study and their old ones to Western Europe for medical treatment. Many top officials of the Islamic Republic have their money, often ill-gotten, laundered through Western European and, more recently, Canadian banks.
The Algerian ruling elite say they hate France, the former colonial power, but many “decideurs” (decision-makers) own properties there and many others spend their retirement there. For at least the past 30 years, the same elite has been selling gas to France at prices below the international average.
The Venezuelan situation is no different. The so-called Bolivarian elite has tied the nation’s economy to the United States more tightly than ever while rhetoric against “Yankee Imperialism” has intensified.
All three regimes have created a rentier class [people who live from the rents they charge, rather than from labor (ed.)] whose chief function is to provide at least the illusion of a popular base for them. In Iran that role is played by the so-called “living martyrs”, “families of martyrs”, and “Ansar (supporters) Hezbollah”. The 400,000-strong “Mobilization of the Dispossessed” provides the military backbone of that base.
In Algeria the network of “Mujahidin” (Holy Warriors) plays a similar role along with armed auxiliaries raised during the bad days of the 1990s. In Venezuela, the 600,000-man “Bolivarian” paramilitary, created by the late Hugo Chavez, serve a similar function.
In all three countries the traditional military holds the balance of power between the ruling elite of which their own top brass is part and the mass of the rebellious citizenry.
The latest analyses indicate that in Iran, the bulk of the military is still unwilling to switch sides in favor of the protesting masses. But there are also signs that it might not be ready to automatically crush a popular uprising.
In Algeria the military, closely linked to big business, has distanced itself from the elite of “decideurs“, forcing them to offer a first concession by withdrawing the candidacy of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika.
In Venezuela, the top brass still hesitates to take sides, making it possible for President Nicolas Maduro, regarded as a usurper by many, to keep his armed Bolivarian paramilitary mobilized.
All three regimes have failed to develop credible and enduring institutions capable of arbitrating conflicts and clashes of ideas and interests inherent in every human society. This is why the outcome of their current crises depends on the confrontation between the street and the barracks.
That is what happens to what one might call “short-term” socio-political systems from the Nazi Germany to the USSR, to Peronism in Argentina and Nasserism in Egypt. All “short-term” systems end in a span of time that must be regarded as brief in broader historic terms. In them, everything is intense, everything including the inevitable fall.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2TH5x3f Tyler Durden
With so many little wars to keep track of, you probably haven’t noticed that the US has quietly been increasing its airstrikes against targets in Somalia.
In recent months, dozens of Al-Shabaab terrorist suspects have been killed by American drones and planes in Somalia, reportedly thanks to a surplus becoming available from Syria. However, in a familiar pattern, the US military has denied any civilians were harmed, while locals and aid agencies deny that denial.
A former US ambassador to Somalia told the New York Times:
“It could be there is some well-thought-out strategy behind all of this, but I really doubt it.”
Another former US government official described Somalia as a “massive war on autopilot.”
RT’s Polly Boiko takes a look at a secret secret war no one’s noticed.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2HpBjv7 Tyler Durden
Does it pay ‘to be good’? Is it still possible to play by the rules in this mad world, governed by brigands?
What if the rules are defined and ratified by all countries of the world, but a small group of the strongest (militarily) nations totally ignores them, while using its professional propagandists to reinterpret them in the most bizarre ways?
Describing the world, I often feel that I am back in my primary school.
When I was a child, I had the misfortune of growing up in a racist Czechoslovakia. Being born in the Soviet Union, and having an half Russian and half Asian mother, I was brutally beaten up between classes, from the age of seven. I was systematically attacked by a gang of boys, and humiliated and hit for having ‘Asian ears’, for having an ‘Asian mother’, for being Russian.
During winters, my shoes were taken out into the bitter cold and pissed into. The urine turned into ice. The only consolation was that ‘at least’ I was Russian and Chinese. If I was a Gypsy (Roma) boy, I would most likely not have made it, at least without losing an eye, or without having my hands broken.
I tried to be polite. I did my best to ‘play by the rules’. I fought back, first only half-heartedly.
Until one day, when a kid who lived next door, fired his air gun and barely missed my eye. Just like that, simply because I was Russian… and Asian, just because he had nothing better to do, at that particular moment. And because he felt so proud to be Czech and European. Also, because I refused to eat their shit, to accept their ‘superiority’, and humiliate myself in front of them. Both mother and I were miserable in Czechoslovakia, both of us dreamt about our Leningrad. But she made a personal mistake and we were stuck in a hostile, provincial and bombastic society which wanted to “go back to Europe”, and once again be part of the bloc of countries, which has been ruling and oppressing the world, for centuries.
The air gun and almost losing my eye turned out to be the last straw. I teamed up with my friend, Karel, whose only ‘guilt’ was that at 10, he weighed almost 100 kilograms. It was not his fault, it was a genetic issue, but the kids also ridiculed him, eventually turning him into a punching bag. He was a gentle, good-natured kid who loved music and science-fiction novels. We were friends. We used to plan our space travels towards the distant galaxies, together. But at that point, we said ‘enough’! We hit back, terribly. After two or three years of suffering, we began fighting the gang, with the same force and brutality that they had applied towards us and in fact towards all those around us who were ‘different’, or at least weak and defenseless.
And we won. Not by reason, but by courage and strength. I wish we did not have to fight, but we had no choice. We soon discovered, how strong we were. And once we began, the only way to survive was to win the battle. And we did win. The kids, who used to torment us, were actually cowards. Once we won and secured some respect, we also began sheltering and protecting the ‘others’, mainly weak boys and girls from our school, who were also suffering attacks from the gang of those ‘normal’, white, and mainstream Czechs.
* * *
There are self-proclaimed rulers of the world: Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand and Israel.
And there are two other groups: the nations which are fully cooperating with the West (such as Indonesia, Thailand, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, South Korea, Colombia or Uganda), and those that are decisively refusing to accept Western dictates, such as Russia, China, DPRK, Syria, Eritrea, Iran, South Africa, Venezuela, Cuba, and Bolivia.
The first group does almost nothing to change the world. It goes with the flow. It accepts the rule of the bullies. It collaborates, and while it is at it, tries to at least gain some privileges, most of the time unsuccessfully.
The second group is well aware of the dismal state of the world. It maneuvers, resists, and sometimes fights for its survival, or for the survival of others. It tries to stick to its principles, or to what used to be called ‘universal values’.
But can it really survive without confrontation?
The West does not tolerate any dissent. Its culture has been, for centuries, exceedingly aggressive, bellicose, and extremist: “You are with us, that is ‘under us’, or you are against us. If against us, you will be crushed and shackled, robbed, raped, beaten and in the end, forced to do what we order, anyway.”
Russia is perhaps the only nation which has survived, unconquered and for centuries, but at the unimaginable price of tens of millions of its people. It has been invaded, again and again, by the Scandinavians, French, Brits, Germans, and even Czechs. The attacks occurred regularly, justified by bizarre rhetoric: ‘Russia was strong’, or ‘it was weak’. It was attacked ‘because of its Great October Socialist Revolution’, or simply because it was Communist. Any grotesque ‘justification’ was just fine, as far as the West was concerned. Russia had to be invaded, plundered and terribly injured just because it was resisting, because it stood on its feet, and free.
Even the great China could not withstand Western assaults. It was broken, divided, humiliated; its capital city ransacked by the French and Brits.
Nothing and no one could survive the Western assaults: in the end, not even the proud and determined Afghanistan.
* * *
A Chinese scholar Li Gang wrote in his The Way We Think: Chinese View of Life Philosophy:
“Harmony” is an important category of thought in traditional Chinese culture. Although the concept initially comes from philosophy, it stands for a stable and integrated social life. It directly influences Chinese people’s way of thinking and dealing with the world…
In the ancient classic works of China, “harmony” can, in essence, be understood as being harmonious. Ancient people stressed the harmony of the universe and the natural environment, the harmony between humans and nature, and what is more, the harmony between people…
Traditional Chinese people take the principle as a way of life and they try their best to have friendly and harmonious relations. In order to reach “harmony”, people treat each other with sincerity, tolerance and love, and do not interfere in other people’s business. As the saying goes, “Well water does not intrude into river water”
Could anything be further from the philosophy of Western culture, which is based on the constant need to interfere, conquer and control?
Can countries like China, or Iran, or Russia, really survive in a world that is being controlled by aggressive European and North American dogmas?
Or more precisely: could they survive peacefully, without being dragged into bloodstained confrontations?
* * *
The onset of the 21st Century is clearly indicating that ‘peaceful resistance’ to brutal Western attacks is counter-productive.
Begging for peace, at forums such as the United Nations, has been leading absolutely nowhere. One country after another has collapsed, and had no chance to be treated justly and to be protected by international law: Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya.
The West and its allies like Saudi Arabia or Israel are always above the law. Or more precisely, they are the law. They twist and modify the law however it suits them; their political or business interests.
Harmony? No, they are absolutely not interested in things like harmony. And even if a huge country like China is, then it is seen as weak, and immediately taken advantage of.
Can the world survive if a group of countries plays totally against all the rules, while most of the planet tries to stick, meticulously, to international laws and regulations?
It can, but it would create a totally twisted, totally perverse world, as ours actually already is. It would be a world of impunity on one end, and of fear, slavery and servility at the other.
And it is not going to be a ‘peaceful world’, anyway, because the oppressor will always want more and more; it will not be satisfied until it is in total, absolute control of the planet.
Accepting tyranny is not an option.
So then, what is? Are we too scared to pronounce it?
If a country is attacked, it should defend itself, and fight.
As Russia did on so many occasions. As Syria is doing, at great sacrifice, but proudly. As Venezuela will and should do, if assaulted.
China and Russia are two great cultures, which were to some extent influenced by the West. When I say ‘influenced’, I mean forcefully ‘penetrated’, broken into, brutally violated. During that violent interaction, some positive elements of Western culture assimilated in the brains of its victims: music, food, even city planning. But the overall impact was extremely negative, and both China and Russia suffered, and have been suffering, greatly.
For decades, the West has been unleashing its propaganda and destructive forces, to ‘contain’ and devastate both countries at their core. The Soviet Union was tricked into Afghanistan and into a financially unsustainable arms race, and literally broken into pieces. For several dark years, Russia was facing confusion, intellectual, moral and social chaos, as well as humiliation. China got penetrated with extreme ‘market forces’, its academic institutions were infiltrated by armies of anti-Communist ‘intellectual’ warriors from Europe and North America.
The results were devastating. Both countries – China and Russia – were practically under attack, and forced to fight for their survival.
Both countries managed to identify the threat. They fought back, regrouped, and endured. Their cultures and their identities survived.
China is now a confident and powerful nation, under the leadership of President Xi Jinping. Present-day Russia under the presidency of Vladimir Putin is one of the mightiest nations on earth, not only militarily, but also morally, intellectually and scientifically.
This is precisely what the West cannot ‘forgive’. With each new brilliant electric vehicle China produces, with each village embracing the so-called “Ecological Civilization”, the West panics, smears China, portrays it as an evil state. The more internationalist Russia becomes, the more it protects nations ruined by the West – be it Syria or Venezuela – more relentless are West’s attacks against its President, and its people.
Both China and Russia are using diplomacy for as long as it is constructive, but this time, when confronted with force, they indicate their willingness to use strength to defend themselves.
They are well aware of the fact that this is the only way to survive.
For China, harmony is essential. Russia also has developed its own concept of global harmony based on internationalist principles. There is hardly any doubt that under the leadership of China and Russia, our world would be able to tackle the most profound problems that it has been facing.
But harmony can only be implemented when there is global concept of goodwill, or at least a decisive dedication to save the world.
If a group of powerful nations is only obsessed with profits, control and plunder, and if it behaves like a thug for several long centuries, one has to act, and to defend the world; if there is no alternative, by force!
Only after victory, can true harmony be aimed at.
At the beginning of this essay, I told a story from my childhood, which I find symbolic.
One can compromise, one can be diplomatic, but never if one’s dignity and freedom was at risk. One can never negotiate indefinitely with those who are starving and enslaving billions of human beings, all over the world.
Venezuela, Syria, Afghanistan and so many countries are now bleeding. Soon, Iran could be confronted. And Nicaragua. And DPRK. And perhaps China and Russia themselves could face yet another Western invasion.
A ‘harmonious world’ may have to be built later; definitely one day, but a little bit later.
First, we have to make sure that our humanity survives and that Western fascism cannot consume further millions of innocent human lives.
Like me and my big childhood friend Karel at an elementary school in former Czechoslovakia; Russia and China may have to once again stand up and confront ‘unharmonious barbarity’; they may have to fight, in order to prevent an even greater disaster.
They do not want to; they will do everything possible to prevent war. But the war is already raging. Western colonialism is back. The brutal gang of North American and European countries is blocking the road, clenching fists, shooting at everyone who dares to look up, and to meet their gaze: “Would you dare?” their eyes are saying.
“Yes, we would!” is the only correct answer.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2TMbufp Tyler Durden
While intelligence agencies were looking in all the wrong places, a conspicuous target slipped through the cracks…
Now that the bodies of 49 innocent human beings are lying in a Christchurch, New Zealand, morgue — gunned down by a heavily armed terrorist — New Zealand media are asking the obvious questions: why didn’t our intelligence agencies know there were xenophobic, murderous, white supremacists on the loose in Christchurch?
“Questions are being asked of the nation’s security services in the wake of a mass shooting described as ‘one of New Zealand’s darkest days,”Stuff.co.nz reports and quotes a University of Waikato professor of international law, Alexander Gillespie, as saying:
“If it’s a cell we need to ask why weren’t they detected, because that’s why we have security services and it may be that those services have been looking under the wrong rocks.’ ”
Still from video the gunman shot of his own rampage. (Twitter)
According to the same article, in response to the terrorist attack, “A crisis meeting of national security agencies was held at Police National Headquarters in Wellington after the shooting.“
In the NZ Herald, veteran intelligence reporter David Fisher asked many pertinent questions in an opinion piece titled “Christchurch massacre – what did we miss and who missed it?”
“We need answers,” says Fisher.
“The NZSIS [New Zealand’s equivalent of the FBI] – and its electronic counterpart, the Government Communications Security Bureau – have more funding than ever, and almost double the staff numbers they had six years ago. They also now have the most powerful legislation they have ever had.”
We know thanks to the findings of an inquiry by the State Services Commission last December that as many as a dozen government agencies, including the NZ Police, were too busy squandering their resources spying on NGOs such as GreenpeaceNZ; political parties such as the New Zealand Green Party and then-Internet Party aligned Mana Movement, as well as on anti-TPP protesters and activists such as myself.
As if that weren’t egregious enough, they were even spying on Christchurch earthquake insurance claimants and historical victims of institutional state child abuse.
An ex-cabinet minister and now chief executive of Greenpeace New Zealand, Russel Norman called it“New Zealand’s Watergate moment.”
(Youtube still)
The government contractor engaged to perform the on-the-ground victimization of targets is the notorious Thompson & Clark Investigations Limited — a company I had been publicly naming since April of 2012 for having targeted my independent media team and me. A company that we now know was illegally granted access to New Zealand police databases on thousands of occasions, and that has been linked to the NZ Security Intelligence Services.
In 2014 acclaimed New Zealand investigative journalist Nicky Hager — himself judged by a court to have been wrongfully targeted by the NZ Police as a result of his reporting — revealed in his seminal book “Dirty Politics”that a political network that went as high as the Office of the prime minister of New Zealand– under ex-Prime Minister John Key, who was then minister in charge of the NZ security services — had targeted dozens of journalists,as well as other political targets and issue-based dissenters.
What the police and intelligence agencies of New Zealand must recognize is thus: Journalism is not terrorism. Non-violent pro-democratic activism is not terrorism. Dissent is not terrorism.
Arming yourself with weapons and violently attacking innocent people is terrorism.
Holding to Account
Agencies that for too long have been blurring thedistinction between what is and isn’t terrorism, must now be held to account.
I was spied on for my independent journalism and my legal, pro-democratic activism. Despite having no history of violence, no access to weapons, no weapons training and no extremist ideological beliefs.
Internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom, founder of the Internet Party of New Zealand, of which I am party president, was spied on by both the New Zealand and United States governments for as little as a suspected civil violation, alleged copyright infringement.
Yesterday, the mania and obsessive hatred of an actual terrorist in Christchurch in possession of automatic weapons, culminated in his posting a racist manifesto online and then live streaming his hate crime in real time. Yet he was never spied on.
While the intelligence agencies were looking in all the wrong places, someone who should have been a target slipped through the cracks.
Let that sink in.
Some will say that as injured parties of the intelligence agencies, we just have an axe to grind and are exploiting this tragedy to criticize them.
But as always, it is those very agencies that have failed their charges, who will be first in line to exploit the news cycle in a quest to justify the provision of ever more money, more power, more resources and ultimately, the ability for them to engage in ever more spying.
The question is, how will they choose to employ those gains once they are inevitably granted?
In the absence of meaningful intervention by oversight bodies or an official inquiry — and if their recent history is any measure — the answer may well be: poorly, undemocratically, and unjustly.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2F8zdMx Tyler Durden
The son of Gregory and Marcia Abbott, two parents involved in the recent college admissions scandal, defended his parents to the New York Post outside of the family’s Fifth Avenue building this week – while smoking a blunt and promoting his latest rap CD.
“Rapper” Malcom Abbott said about the scandal:
“They’re blowing this whole thing out of proportion. I believe everyone has a right to go to college, man.”
In the midst of smoking a moderately sized blunt, Malcolm continued: “I didn’t go to college”.
His father is the founder of food and beverage distributor International Dispensing Corporation and his sister was one of the college students in question. She allegedly had her ACT and SAT scores boosted as a result of bribes her parents paid.
After he got done defending his parents, the ponytailed Malcolm, who raps under the name “Billa”, then told the New York Post to check out his music. “Check out my CD, ‘Cheese and Crackers,’ ” he said. Upon leaving the building later in the day with his brother, he said that his parents had “got roped into [this by] some guy who f–king cheated them.”
That defense should hold up in court.
More specifically, Abbott’s parents are being accused of paying $125,000 in bribes to help their daughter get into college. The man they allegedly paid the bribes to – scheme mastermind William Rick Singer – paid off a test proctor to inflate their daughter’s test scores to a perfect 800 on the SAT math and 710 on the SAT verbal. On the ACT test, her score of 23 out of 36 was changed to a near perfect 35, according to court documents. Both parents were out on $500,000 bail at the time.
Somewhere, in prison, Martin Shkreli is shaking his head.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2FcWZXG Tyler Durden
We are witnessing a worldwide environmental collapse, and nobody seems to know how to stop it.
As you will see below, a study that was just released that looked at more than 5,000 species of birds, mammals and amphibians discovered that nearly a quarter of them “will almost certainly face extinction”. Never before has our society faced such a massive collapse of life on a planetary scale, and yet the vast majority of the population doesn’t seem concerned about what is happening. Species after species is being permanently wiped out, and most of us couldn’t care less.
The time for action is now. According to this new study, over 1,200 species will soon be extinct unless dramatic action is taken. The following comes from the Guardian…
More than 1,200 species globally face threats to their survival in more than 90% of their habitat and “will almost certainly face extinction” without conservation intervention, according to new research.
Scientists working with Australia’s University of Queensland and the Wildlife Conservation Society have mapped threats faced by 5,457 species of birds, mammals and amphibians to determine which parts of a species’ habitat range are most affected by known drivers of biodiversity loss.
Once these species are gone, they will be gone forever.
Scientists are telling us that we have entered “the sixth major extinction” in the history of our planet. A brand new survey of 73 scientific reports that was just released has come to the conclusion that the total number of insects on the globe is falling by 2.5 percent per year. If we stay on this current pace, the survey warns that there might not be “any insects at all” by the year 2119. And since insects are absolutely critical to the worldwide food chain, that has extremely ominous implications for all of us.
In case you are wondering, humanity would not survive very long without insects.
In fact, it has been estimated that if all bees go extinct that most of humanity will be wiped out within ten years.
The global food chain is literally dying right in front of our eyes, and I cannot understand why more people are not deeply alarmed by this.
We are facing an unprecedented crisis in our oceans as well. Researchers in Canada have discovered that levels of phytoplankton have dropped by about 40 percent since 1950…
The tiny organisms, known as phytoplankton, also gobble up carbon dioxide to produce half the world’s oxygen output—equaling that of trees and plants on land.
But their numbers have dwindled since the dawn of the 20th century, with unknown consequences for ocean ecosystems and the planet’s carbon cycle.
Researchers at Canada’s Dalhousie University say the global population of phytoplankton has fallen about 40 percent since 1950.
Without phytoplankton, our oceans would quickly become giant “dead zones”, and at the pace we are going we don’t have too long before that will happen.
And the truth is that the frightening drop in phytoplankton levels is already having a dramatic impact on the food chain. I have shared the following quote from Chris Martenson before, but it is worth sharing again…
Fewer phytoplankton means less thiamine being produced. That means less thiamine is available to pass up the food chain. Next thing you know, there’s a 70% decline in seabird populations.
This is something I’ve noticed directly and commented on during my annual pilgrimages to the northern Maine coast over the past 30 years, where seagulls used to be extremely common and are now practically gone. Seagulls!
Next thing you know, some other major food chain will be wiped out and we’ll get oceans full of jellyfish instead of actual fish.
Are you starting to understand where I am coming from?
Our planet is literally dying, and there is only a very, very limited amount of time to do anything about it.
Meanwhile, western civilization is dying as well. Paul Joseph Watson has just produced a video entitled “The Collapse Of Western Civilization”, and it is perhaps the finest video that he has created to date. If you have not seen it yet, I would encourage you to check it out.
In an accompanying article, Watson listed some of the evidence that our society is in the process of collapsing…
From spiritual bankruptcy, to mass chemical dependence, to rampant addiction to sensual stimulation.
Almost every factor that precedes the collapse of great civilizations has been met by the west.
Our destruction is long overdue.
Depression is at its highest level ever. Drug addiction is at its highest level ever.
People identifying as Christians is at its lowest level ever.
As usual, Watson is right on the money. We have lost our values, we have no clear direction as a society, and we are deeply, deeply miserable. Just consider the following numbers from the CDC…
The number of deaths from alcohol, drugs and suicide in 2017 hit the highest level since federal data collection started in 1999, according to an analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data by two public health nonprofits.
The national rate for deaths from alcohol, drugs and suicide rose from 43.9 to 46.6 deaths per 100,000 people in 2017, a 6 percent increase, the Trust for America’s Health and the Well Being Trust reported Tuesday.
Most people do not have a reason to get out of bed in the morning. Without meaning and purpose, most people drift aimlessly through life, and that must change.
Time is running out for our exceedingly vacuous society. We are literally destroying ourselves and everything around us, and here in the western world we have completely lost our values. We are on a road to nowhere, and we will soon be overtaken by the consequences of our very foolish actions.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2F7SJc2 Tyler Durden
