Tag: finance

The Deep State Closes In On The Donald, Part 3: The Capture Is Complete

Authored by David Stockman via Contra Corner blog,

Read Part 1 here.

Read Part 2 here.

The Donald seems to be taking a Deep Breath on his Syria bombfest, but the Deep State has him by the orange hairs. So we doubt the delay will last much longer. [he didn’t!]

That’s because our Art of the Deal genius is getting bamboozled yet again. They are telling him that wiping out up to a dozen Syrian airfields, military installations and a dog-eared factory or two that can be identified as chemical weapons sites will amount to some pretty serious Shock & Awe where it counts: That is, the mere witnessing of it will cause the Fat Boy of Pyongyang to brown his ample trousers, thereby getting his “mind right” for the upcoming summit.

That’s exactly the kind of macho-bargainer stuff that the Donald thrives on, and is further proof that the Deep State has figured out exactly how to press his buttons.

To be sure, Trump is no innocent victim. He voluntarily made himself hostage to the War Party by surrounding himself with failed generals and the most rabid war-mongers to be found in the Imperial City—-John Bolton, Mike Pompeo and Gina Haspel.

Indeed, you have to wonder. How could anyone with even a half-baked notion of America First think that a hard core interventionist like John Bolton should be brought up right close and personal to the POTUS ear lobes, Walrus mustache and all?

But whatever the Donald was thinking when he made such horrendous choices for his top national security posts, these denizens of the War Party have wasted no time shoving their own agenda right down his throat.

And at the top of that agenda is systematic, relentless escalation of provocations against Russia and Iran. That’s because confrontation with these demonized states is the best way to keep Imperial Washington (and therefore the entire country) on a war-footing and the national security gravy train overflowing with fiscal largesse.

As we indicated in Part 1, the impending attack on Syria is actually a shot across the bow aimed at Tehran and Moscow. The cover story is simply a humanitarian sounding ruse. Ostensibly, Bashar Assad is being administered a good hard spanking via a barrage of cruise missile birch switches.

That begs the question, of course, of how homeland security is actually enhanced by selectively spanking some malefactors and not others.

In this case, even the surely bogus claim that 40 civilians were gassed in Douma hardly compares to the 10,000 civilians that have been slaughtered by American bombs delivered by the Saudi air force in Yemen; or the thousands of anti-government prisoners that have been summarily executed by General al-Sisi in Egypt under this stewardship of Washington’s $1.2 billion annual stipend; or the thousands of civilians that Israel has killed during its periodic “lawn-mowing” exercises on the Gaza Strip.

Obviously, Washington shouldn’t even be in the spanking business because no one appointed America as the world’s policeman or moral proctor. But even if that were the true purpose (it’s not) of the impending act of naked aggression against the sovereign government of Syria, you would think there at least ought to be a semblance of proof that the alleged chemical attack actually occurred.

Unlike in past Syrian incidents, in fact, the way is wide open for an honest determination of what actually happened. That’s because the last rebel hold-outs in Eastern Ghouta are now all dead or have vacated the area on busses arranged by the Syrian government as part of the relocation deal that sent them to rebel-held Idlib province in the northwest.

Consequently, Douma is now safe for western journalists, government officials and international investigators from the Organization for the Prevention of Chemical Warfare (OPCW) to visit the alleged sites of the attack and find the evidence.

Of course, Syrian and Russian officials who have visited the area say there is no evidence of victims, bodies, chlorine residue or that the sole hospital in the community was ever over-run with victims of toxic chemical agents. That alone is remarkable given initial reports that there were upwards of a thousand victims of the purported attack.

But now the Russian government has gone a striking step further. They are claiming they have evidence that the whole thing was staged. That is, that an incident which has the world on the brink of war was just another false flag attack of the kind that the barbaric jihadists attacking the Syrian government have serially orchestrated since the original Ghouta event and Obama’s infamous “red line” of August 2013.

A Russian government spokesman said the ministry had found those who took part in filming the rent-a-mob chemical attack in Syria’s Douma and these people told how the video had been shot.

“Today, the Russian defense ministry has other evidence proving the United Kingdom’s direct involvement in the organization of this provocation in Eastern Ghouta,” he said

In his words, the so-called White Helmets were pressed by London in a period from April 3 to 6 to hurry up with the implementation of the planned provocation. “The White Helmets were told that in a period from April 3 to 6 Jaysh al-Islam militants would conduct a series of massive artillery bombings of Damascus. It would provoke a retaliation operation by government forces and the White Helmets were to use it to stage a provocation with an alleged use of chemical weapons,” he said.

 According to Konashenkov, officers of the Russian defense ministry spoke with two Syrian who had taken part in filming the framed-up attack. Both have medical diplomas and work with the emergency department of Douma’s hospital. The two men do not conceal their names. They told Russian officers that all those who had been taken to hospital during the filming had no symptoms of exposure to toxic agents.

“When the patients were receiving first aid unidentified people burst into the hospital, some were holding video cameras,” the spokesman cited them as saying. “These people started shouting, fanning hysteria. They carried hose and douched all present with water crying out that all of them had been exposed to poisonous agents.”

“The patients and their relatives yielded to panic and began to pour water on each other. After this scene was caught on video, these unidentified people fled,” he added.

This is what is called evidence in the civilized world, he stressed, adding that Russia had repeatedly warned about provocations with the alleged use of chemical weapons against civilians plotted by militants in Eastern Ghouta.

We don’t know whether the Russian government is lying or not, but since the whole world has been invited to come and make its own determination, we doubt it. After all, they have produced local citizens from the Douma hospital and elsewhere in the community who say they witnessed the fabrication. If these witnesses and the Russians are lying, that will quickly become evident.

To the contrary, you can’t bury the evidence—including the bodies— of a chlorine attack that allegedly caused hundreds of deaths and injuries. If it happened, the OPCW investigators and journalists will fund it; and if they don’t, it didn’t.

Meanwhile, why in the world are they gathered in the Situations Room arguing about targets and how to minimize risks of a direct hit on Russian military personal, when the Donald could actually pick up the red phone and tell Putin that he’ll have an investigation team on the ground at Douma tomorrow AM?

We have not doubt that Cool Hand Vlad would say “be my guest”. And we also have no doubt that Pat Buchanan hit the nail on the head in his recent missive when he noted:

We cannot forever fight other peoples’ wars without ending up on the same ash heap of history as the other world powers before us.

And why not talk directly to our adversaries there?

If Trump can talk to Kim Jong-un, who used an anti-aircraft gun to execute his uncle and had his half-brother murdered in a Malaysian airport with a chemical weapon, why cannot we talk to Assad?

In 1974, Richard Nixon flew to Damascus to establish ties to Assad’s father, the future “Butcher of Hama.” George H.W. Bush enlisted Hafez al-Assad and 4,000 Syrian troops in his Gulf War to liberate Kuwait.

All over this city, and across the Middle East, there are people who wish to conscript U.S. wealth and power to advance their goals and achieve their visions. Having let them succeed so often has diminished us as a superpower from what we were at the end of the Cold War.

This should stop, and the nation knows it.

Among the reasons Democrats nominated Barack Obama and America elected him was that his opponents, Hillary Clinton and John McCain, supported the Iraq war Obama opposed.

Among the reasons the Republican Party nominated Trump and the nation elected him was that he promised to take us out and keep us out of wars like the one in Syria.

Is it not ironic that today our War Party, which, almost to a man, loathed Trump and rejected his candidacy, is goading and cheering him on, deeper and deeper into the Syrian quagmire?

And that gets us to the meat of the matter. Donald Trump has now been taken hostage by the machinery of the Deep State and has become the tool of its destructive agenda.

For instance, John Bolton is an advocate of America Uber Alles—the very antithesis of America First. In fact, he is an emissary for what might be termed the “Bibi First” wing of the War Party.

Netanyahu’s entire misbegotten reign as head of the Israeli government has been based on demonizing Iran, thereby gluing together a motley coalition of rightwing religious and settler parties in the parliament.

In the present circumstances, the over-riding agenda of the “Bibi First” wing is to ashcan the Iranian Nuke deal when it comes up for certification on May 12.

That’s because an Iran that rejoins the community of nations, reengages in trade and commerce with the rest of the world and adheres to the nuke deal, which it has every intention of doing if Washington sticks to its end of the bargain, is an Iran that puts the lie to the entire demonization campaign that has been conducted by the neocons in Washington and Israel for the past 25 years.

Needless to say, that is a scenario that the War Party cannot abide. It would put Bibi Netanyahu out of business and severely erode the case for the hundreds of billions that are being wasted on Washington’s conventional military capacities.

After all, if Washington didn’t have the Persian Gulf to police or a dog in the Sunni-Shiite religious and political struggles, it wouldn’t be wasting $30 billion per pop on new aircraft carriers and their battle-group armadas.

So the Deep State has moved heaven and earth to bring the Donald into its thrall and to bury every vestige of his incipient pivot toward an honest and affordable national security policy based on America First.

If the Tomahawk cruise missiles fly toward Syria over the weekend [they did], we will know that the capture has been complete; and that the Oval Office is now occupied by a hostage of the very Deep State that he campaigned against, and which, in any event, will soon sacrifice him to the vengeful furies of the Mueller witchunt.

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Syrian Army Declares Victory Over Rebels In Eastern Ghouta, Just Hours After Airstrikes

While many are asking what particular purpose Trump’s Syrian airstrikes served in retaliation to Assad’s alleged use of chemical weapons, for the Syrian president events of the past week were clearly worth it because moments ago the Syrian Army declared the the rebel enclave of Ghouta – ground zero of last weekend’s alleged chemical weapon scandal – has been retaken.

In an ironic twist, according to Syrian forces the last group of militants has left their last stronghold – the city of Douma in the Damascus suburbs – less than 24 hours after Western coalition members the US, the UK, and France fired over 100 missiles at targets inside of Syria in a response to an alleged chemical attack in the city.

And, according to state media, the Syrian army command has announced that Eastern Ghouta is now free of militants, the AP reports. According to the SANA news agency, the Syrian army is determined to eradicate terrorism in Syria, regardless of what power backs the terrorism, in order to restore security and stability in the country.

“All the terrorists have left Douma city, their last bastion in eastern Ghouta,” the army statement said.

At the same time, the Russian Defense Ministry said that 21,000 people, including militants and their family members, have been evacuated from Eastern Ghouta.

Maj. Gen. Yuri Yevtushenko, head of Russia’s Reconciliation Center for Syria, said that 3,976 militants left Douma by bus on Friday. He added that at least 67,680 have left the embattled Damascus suburb.

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Here’s What Will Happen After a Huge Earthquake Inevitably Hits California

Authored by Jennifer Swann via Vice.com,

Nobody knows when “The Big One” is going to hit California, but here’s how experts think it will play out when it does…

California is the land of beaches, mountains, and all the legal marijuana you can stomach. It’s also, inconveniently, a dangerous minefield riddled with nasty fault lines that rupture without much warning, generating massive earthquakes that can level buildings, pulverize roads, and kill lots of people in the span of seconds.

The San Andreas is the most notorious of these faults. It runs roughly 800 miles long and produces quakes so catastrophic that there’s a 2015 action movie about it starring The Rock. The southern section of the fault generates earthquakes every 150 years on average, and considering some parts of it haven’t ruptured in more than 200 years, Southern California is overdue for a major shaking, otherwise known as “the Big One.”

“There is no fault that is more likely to break [in California] than the San Andreas Fault,” says Jonathan P. Stewart, professor and chair of UCLA’s Civil and Environmental Engineering department and an expert in earthquakes. “Small local earthquakes—the Northridge earthquake, the San Fernando earthquake—they can kill people in the dozens, they can have freeways coming down, they can affect dams, and all of that is bad,” he says. “But it doesn’t really pose an existential threat to our economy, our ability to live here.” A large earthquake on the San Andreas Fault, on the other hand, he says, could create a devastating threat to humanity, infrastructure, and the economy, with implications that extend nationally and even globally.

Scientists don’t know exactly where the Big One will hit or how large it will be when it does, but they do have some ideas: One of the most likely scenarios, according to a 2008 federal study, is a 7.8 magnitude earthquake starting at the Salton Sea and running up through Lake Hughes, on a 200 mile long section of the fault that, in parts, hasn’t ruptured since 1680—almost two centuries before California became part of the United States and long before it had any major infrastructure.

The largest possible earthquake that can strike throughout most of the San Andreas is an 8.4 magnitude, according to Southern California Earthquake Center spokesperson Mark Benthien, who says the bigger the earthquake, the lower the probability of it striking. While the impact depends on a range of unknowable factors, here’s what experts say might happen in the moments, hours, and days immediately after the big one rattles California.

During the Quake

Buildings Crumble and People Die

All earthquakes produce high frequency motions that have the potential to badly damage nearby structures, but “earthquakes of different magnitudes produce motions that are damaging to different types of structures,” says Stewart. “When we design tall buildings in downtown LA, we’re definitely thinking about the San Andreas fault. But for more typical structures, say a two-story apartment building, a house, the critical earthquake […] is going to be the smaller faults that are nearby.”

Unreinforced structures—typically made of bricks, cinderblocks, or adobe—unsurprisingly fare the worst. California banned construction of these buildings in 1933, but plenty of them still exist and would not fare well in a major earthquake. Buildings with wooden frames are a lot better off because the wood can withstand shaking, but not all of them are created equal: Apartments and condos with parking tucked underneath tend to collapse because they don’t have enough structural support. Steel towers, although they’re typically pretty sturdy, aren’t immune to destruction: the federal report predicts that five steel high-rises will collapse and 10 others will be red-tagged, or unsafe to enter, after the big one hits.

“Residential structures tend to be better than our business structures,” says Benthien. “A lot of our office buildings were built in the late ‘60s, early ‘70s, and are quite vulnerable, much more so than our wood frame residential structures.” For that reason, he says, earthquakes that strike at night tend to have fewer fatalities than those that hit during the day.

The death toll probably won’t be as bad as movies like San Andreas—which Benthien calls “Hollywood fantasy”—make it out to be. Scientists predict that a magnitude 7.8 earthquake along the southern San Andreas would likely kill about 2,000 people—or less than .1 percent of Southern California’s population of more than 22 million.

Luckily, the San Andreas fault is far enough inland that its rupture wouldn’t disrupt the ocean floor and cause a tsunami, according to Benthien. He says the biggest threat of a tsunami comes from smaller faults off the coast, particularly in far northern California, where the Cascadia subduction zone begins in Cape Mendocino and stretches about 500 miles north to Vancouver.

Power Lines Collapse

“The first thing [to fail] is usually electricity. It’s usually almost instantaneous,” says Brad Aagaard, a research geophysicist at the United States Geological Survey’s Earthquake Science Center. It doesn’t take an enormous earthquake for that to happen: A magnitude 6 would do the trick, Aagaard says.

The degree of damage depends on how many electric power transmission lines intersect with the part of the fault that ruptures. The southernmost section of the San Andreas fault, for example, crosses more than 140 different transmission lines, according to the 2008 analysis. “There’s a lot of electricity lines crossing. If it’s crossing from one tower to the next tower and the towers don’t collapse, you can have the fault moving underneath and it’s probably alright,” says Stewart. “Of course, if the towers do collapse, then you’re going to have some issues.” Those issues might include wildfires, which could erupt as a result of damage to the power lines. (Because most major transmission towers are in remote areas, they wouldn’t pose a huge risk of harm to people if they fell down, says Stewart.)

A suggestion: Stock up on flashlights, keep your phone and laptop charged, and hoard some extra batteries, because you may be forced to reenact pioneer days if the power lines are downed. Stuffing a wad of cash under your mattress could be a good idea, too, since banks, ATMs, and credit cards might not work for a couple of days.

Oil and Gas Pipelines Rupture

If you think dealing with a dead iPhone and navigating your apartment—which may or may not still be standing—by candlelight is rough, wait until high-pressure gas lines rupture. When they break, they leak gas into the air, which can potentially ignite and cause explosions. The myriad natural gas and petroleum pipelines running through the Cajon Pass, a mountain pass between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, are particularly vulnerable to damage, says Benthien. The area not only lies on top of the San Andreas Fault, but it was actually formed by previous fractures in it.

Similar to power lines, the extent of the damage would depend on how many major gas and oil lines cross the fault when it moves. For some perspective: The southernmost section of the San Andreas fault alone intersects with 39 pipelines. One thing you can do to prepare, says Stewart, is to make sure you have access to an automatic shut off valve on the gas line running through your home. If you live in an apartment, ask your landlord if you have access to it.

Water and Sewer Pipes Fail

The Los Angeles Aqueduct, the Colorado Aqueduct, and the California Aqueduct are just some of the major networks that pump water into Southern California from the northern and eastern parts of the state. They also all cross the San Andreas Fault and could be catastrophically ruptured in a large-scale earthquake. “We would have to make do without all that imported water,” says Stewart. “It would be a race against the clock. Can we get these aqueducts repaired in time before we run out of our local water supply?”

Even if the aqueducts don’t break, a major earthquake would probably damage the water pipes, which presents a whole other set of problems: “How do you actually get the water from where it’s stored once it comes out of these aqueducts to people’s houses and businesses?” says Stewart. “This is going to be one of the biggest impacts actually. You’re going to turn on your tap, you’re not going to be able to use it.” Even if the water does come out of the tap, Stewart warns, it could potentially be contaminated from broken sewer lines, so the utility companies would have to issue warnings not to use it.

Part of the problem is that “many of the pipelines of Southern California have been in the ground for [up to] 100 years, and so they’re vulnerable, they’re breaking,” says Benthien. “You hear about water main breaks, you see it on the news. Those happen even when there’s not rumbling and shaking.” One piece of expert advice: Keep at least a two-week supply of water in your house so you won’t have to fight your neighbors over bottled water when the shit hits the fan.

Immediate Aftermath of the Quake

Communication Breaks Down

Living without Internet, phone service, and social media sounds anxiety-inducing enough as it is, but it could be a scary reality after the big one hits. “For many people, if they can’t go on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram, it may be more troublesome than if they don’t have water,” says Benthien. He’s thinking about instances where people might get trapped under rubble or separated from their friends and family and don’t have phone service or Internet to call for help or ask for resources.

It may sound counterintuitive, but if you do have cell service immediately after an earthquake, Benthien warns, don’t use it to make a phone call. He recommends sending a text instead, which uses up a fraction of the bandwidth on the cell network. “The phone system is not designed for everybody to be able to pick up their phone and make calls at the same time,” he says. That can lead to outages. If you really have to make a call, dial someone out of state and let them know you’re okay (or not) so you’re not jamming up the local phone lines.

Longterm Effects

Businesses Shut Down and the Economy Tanks

California boasts one of the largest economies in the world—but that may not be the case after the big one hits. Major transportation networks like railroads and highways could be shut down for days, weeks, or even months. Maybe the most detrimental shutdown would be the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, which handle about a quarter of all cargo entering the US. “The whole country is going to be impacted,” says Benthien, who adds that a lot of major retailers stock their stores around the country with inventory that arrives on ships docked at these major West Coast ports. Because most of the inventory is based on demand, if these ports closed, even for a couple of days, plenty of big box stores like Target and Walmart could have empty shelves for a while, even in areas that weren’t hit by an earthquake. (Consider that further motivation to stock up on water and other essentials now.)

“If you can’t unload the ships and get the stuff off the ships, then it won’t go through the stores,” says Benthien.

Not only that, but plenty of people could be out of work because their companies are forced to shut down, at least temporarily, due to power and water outages or building damage. “All these places that need water to do their business, they can no longer operate, they can no longer pay their employees,” Benthien says. Even someone whose employer isn’t impacted might not be able to get to work anyway: The highway they use to get to work might be fractured, their home could be uninhabitable or need major repairs, or worse, they might need time to search for family members.

The estimated total financial cost of the big one in California? About $200 billion. That’s according to researchers who compiled the 2008 federal analysis, so the number is likely even higher now. They took into account potential devastation in four major categories: damage to buildings, non-structural damages, destruction of lifelines and infrastructure, and losses due to fires.

The estimated total impact of just building damage is $33 billion, not counting the costs following a potential quake-induced fire. It’s a hefty price tag, especially considering that most Californians don’t have earthquake insurance, which is rarely included in homeowners or renters’ insurance. Just over 14 percent of homeowners and 5 percent of renters with residential insurance have an earthquake policy, which typically covers damage to belongings and personal property like furniture and the cost of relocating to either new or temporary housing, according to 2016 data from the California Earthquake Authority. (The state agency, which supplies most of the state’s earthquake insurance, doesn’t keep statistics on how many Californians don’t have residential insurance.)

A California law passed in 1971, a year after the San Fernando Earthquake destroyed thousands of homes and businesses, requires the state to establish earthquake fault zones and distribute maps of all active faults to the cities, counties, and state agencies that control construction projects around them. Those agencies are then required to conduct a geological investigation before approving any new construction; if they find an active fault line, they have to require that developers set buildings at least 50 feet away from it. These rules are obviously intended to prevent construction on active fault lines, but they’re not always enforced: a 2013 LA Timesinvestigation that found that officials in LA approved more than a dozen construction projects on or near fault lines because they said the state hadn’t yet designated the areas as earthquake fault zones. A law passed in Los Angeles in 2015 attempts to remedy some of these oversights by requiring the owners of particularly vulnerable buildings to either prove their properties have been retrofitted or get permits to do so.

The city allows property owners to take years, and depending on the building type, decades to complete the retrofitting process, however. The best thing you can do in the meantime is prepare for the worst: Buy a first aid kit, get trained in emergency medical response—FEMA offers a program—and keep tabs on less-able-bodied friends and neighbors who may need your help after the ground stops shaking. “It’s what you do before the earthquake that will determine your quality of life afterwards,” says Benthien. “That’s really what it comes down to.”

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China Considers Taking Its Boot Off Equity Market’s Throat

It appears that China is ready to re-enable some speculative excess once again in its stock market.

Bloomberg reports that China is considering a relaxation of stock-index futures trading curbs that were introduced during the nation’s 2015 market crash, people familiar with the matter said.

No, that is not a misprint on the chart, volume dried up in 2015 after regulators blamed the derivatives for exacerbating equity losses and cut position limits by 98 percent.

Daily trading in the contracts is still about 99 percent below its peak, despite a small relaxation of curbs in February 2017.

Looser restrictions are likely to be welcomed by hedge funds and other professional money managers who depend on futures to implement their investment strategies in a market where shorting stocks is difficult.

However, an ulterior motive for Chinese authorities to unleash the infamous China gambling mania once again on stocks may be more about maintaining confidence in the economy – remember a strong stock market MUST mean a strong economy.

Just as surging commodity prices meant surging global demand and a strong economy, right? Oh wait, silly – that was nothing but reflexive shifts with China’s almost incessant credit impulse…

We do note that the proposal comes amid a flurry of recent statements from top Chinese officials reaffirming the country’s commitment to financial reform.

 

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Unidentified Warplanes Strike Iranian Military Base In Southern Syria: SkyNews Arabia

Trump’s mission in Syria may be “accomplished”, but Israel’s is just getting be getting started (as we speculated).

According to an unconfirmed report by SkyNews Arabia and well as pro-opposition sources, a huge explosion was heard at the Iranian base Jabal Azzan located in Syria’s Aleppo after it was struck by “unidentified warplanes.”

Israel’s Jerusalem Post also reports that an airstrike appears to have taken place in Southern Aleppo:

  • POSSIBLE STRIKE AGAINST IRAN BASE, WEAPONS WAREHOUSE IN SOUTHERN ALEPPO SYRIA FOLLOWING REPORTS OF EXPLOSIONS: JPOST

An unconfirmed photo of the strike:

The alleged Iranian airbase was first disclosed in late February, when Fox News published images showing a military base northeast of Syria’s capital. According to the report, Iran’s Al Quds force is operating the post.

For more information, please see “https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/syria/israeli-satellite-images-reveal-iran-builds-military-base-near-syria-1.5863736Israeli Satellite Images Reveal: Iran Builds Military Base Near Damascus”

While it is too early to determine who launched the attack, since none of the western forces have claimed responsibility, the most likely party is Israel which as a reminder, was also the first to strike Syria last Monday, almost a week before the US-coalition forces also unloaded on Syria.

Developing.

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“Never Fight A Land War In Asia…” – A Rant

Authored by “Dr.D” via Raul Ilargi Meijer’s Automatic Earth blog,

Too annoyed to comment on the attack. But hey, really NOT attacking would be the change here.

There was a recent article, falsely saying:

“[H]is successful repression of the Chechen revolt…hardly endeared Putin to the Chechens.”

Oddly, this was from Russia Today. No, the Chechen war was a gruesome and unpopular war, however it was just part of the MacKinderesque plan of first lying, killing, then robbing Russia up front by lowering the price of Russia’s exports gold and oil (using Saudi oil and Canadian gold), starting an arms race, then collapsing the ruble and empowering every corrupt, criminal oligarch we could find using pallets of $100 bills. No joke, official record. Russia’s collapse and the Chechen war was no “accident”, no natural consequence of the socialism system or collapse, but a soup-to-nuts military operation. We had the nuts, and they were in the soup. The “accident” here was trusting anything the West says, ever. Haven’t they ever heard about the Indians?

Anyway, the 100-year-old plan of MacKinder, father of geopolitics, was believed by other tottering dinosaurs like Brzezinski in an age no longer run by the horse and cannon and that plan was to cut open the “long, soft underbelly” of Russia, which started with funding Islamic fighters (terrorists) out of Afghanistan (admitted and applauded), then move on through Islamic Chechens, Uzbeks, Kazaks, etc. Although completely crippled, Putin – who was put in power BY the west, BY Clinton – nevertheless stopped them in Chechnya, and was naturally savaged by the West for defending his nation in a proxy Civil War. For beyond hating men and families, they hate nations, for all these things restrain murderous self-serving psychopathy.

It’s a little more complicated than that as the USSR was broken up, there were cross-protectorate treaties, but that’s very typically 1,000-year Russian way. They don’t have ethnic and religious problems, or not in the western sense, because they do what America claims to do (with the States for example) and leave people alone, to be individual states, customs, religions, and people. They also don’t have a problem with Putin, as the Russian Way is really a sort of monarchism in the old sense, with a king and court and advisors, and always has been back through him, the Soviets, Stalin, Romanov, Peter, and back since they were Russian.

What’s my point? They don’t think about things the way we do. Not entirely. Chechnya was not “breaking away” and “fighting Russia” as reported, it was subverted by the West TO attack Russia. Chechens know this, but like all CIA ops, half of the target country were for and half were against. So when Putin wouldn’t stop sending the army in and leveled the country (like we’ve done in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and everywhere else we’ve ever been) half the Chechen people were in support of Putin – or anyone! – to restore law, order, Chechen customs, and peace against the ISIS-like radical Wahhabists who were funded by Saudi Arabia as indeed he did, in the brutal respect-only-strength way they do things in that part of the world.

What? That’s crazy. Yes? So how do you explain that the present Chechen leader – a nation as sovereign as Canada – told Putin at the start of the Syrian war he would send any number of Chechen fighters to any place on the planet, and kill anybody Putin wanted, and consider it an personal honor. And these are deeply Islamic, hard-core militants. You see, despite also being hard-core Islamists and all around hard-bodies, they too hate Saudi Arabia, Wahhabists, and the intervention of the West that devastated their country. Killing millions of southern Russians for the goal of killing more northern Russians, as it were, every child growing up in rubble-filled war zone. What’s not to hate?

…But why would we report that? That we made a treaty with Russia, invaded on all sides anyway, then killed +2 million with Disaster Capitalism and +2 million more in the ‘Stans with the intent of wiping Russia off the map?

You see Reagan didn’t want to WIN the Cold War. He wanted to END it. The Cheney-Rumsfeld-Dr. Strangelove wing could never forgive that. His body wasn’t cold before they were back, this time behind Clinton, to finish the occupation of Russia as the last step to world domination. This is why the crazies back in the PNAC days were desperate to nuke the helpless Russia even then. They were right. If you didn’t nuke them, openly attack them, they would survive and escape, which would ultimately thwart the Neocon/Deep State plans to take over the world. And so they have.

But as we see today, they never give up. They’re still aching to start a world-wide nuclear exchange and openly agitating 24/7 on CNN to do so. No amount of bombing is enough, no number of bankrupted, shattered cities are too many just to get Russia out of the way, whose historic job, sadly but heroically, is to crush and utterly destroy the idiotic plans of megalomaniac warmongers from the West like Hitler and Napoleon, and dash them to pieces on the rocks of reality. Because the West never restrains its maniacs, it empowers them.

Being a country the size of Canada, Russia doesn’t escape this, but in the irrefutable monkey-hammering Russia gives, like say destroying 30 German divisions and 5 Million men with little more than hunting rifles and force of will – most of all the fighting in WWII – or killing 500,000 of Napoleon’s 650,000 and sending him back barefoot, well, even the western propaganda and passion for self-delusion can’t hide that…but it doesn’t help Russia any to get shot when finally facing down their violent, meth-addled neighbors. Russia knows this, and they will in fact bomb the West with iron resolve if we don’t cut it out, yet we show no signs of coming to our senses. We never have before. Russia is what stops them, going way back.

You’d think we’d learn something. Brzezinski did. Just before he died he said his life-long plan to destroy Russia, culminating in WWIII by cutting off the Ukraine with the New Charge of the Light Brigade was a complete failure. This is the 100 year plan of MacKinder, and these dinosaurs just won’t die. They won’t learn. They have no imagination, doing the same failed thing over and over, generation after generation. Maybe we’ll have to as well.

Maybe we — or rather the Deep State — won’t stop until Russia drops a Satan-II missile, a single one of which would destroy New England. Or a nuclear sub drone hits NY. Or their pop-up stealth pods level Charleston. Or they sink every U.S. surface ship on the planet in 5 minutes using the Sunburn missile. Easy as pushing a button. U.S. military power is leveled, the people set back 75 years, 120 Million dead. Is that what you want America? On behalf of whom? Dick Cheney, HSBC, the City of London?

But there is reason to hope, as core right figurehead Tucker Carlson recently gave a steely antiwar commentary to reach the dinosaur viewers of Fox News, Republicans-by-name. Although driven back to the darkest corners, what remains of the real Left is historically anti-war, although you’d never know it by the way 90% of the party acts. That’s seen in this far-left (or rather the People’s Left) far-left (or rather the People’s Left) Jimmy Dore video.

But if the Right and Left come together against collective bankruptcy and suicide, then they can unite against the Deep State of Dr. Strangelove, and turn back to human priorities, against the God-knows-what priority of killing everyone on earth they can find, one by one, for any reason they can come up with.

Doesn’t it sound like we should be against this? I am. Are you?

“Never fight a land war in Asia” — Princess Bride

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Mueller Has Evidence Michael Cohen Traveled To Prague According To Report; Cohen Hits Back

Special counsel Robert Mueller has evidence that Donald Trump’s personal lawyer and confidant, Michael Cohen, made a secret late-summer trip to Prague as the 2016 presidential campaign was in its final stretch, reports McClatchy.

[I]nvestigators have traced evidence that Cohen entered the Czech Republic through Germany, apparently during August or early September of 2016 as the ex-spy [Steele] reported, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is confidential. He wouldn’t have needed a passport for such a trip, because both countries are in the so-called Schengen Area in which 26 nations operate with open borders. The disclosure still left a puzzle: The sources did not say whether Cohen took a commercial flight or private jet to Europe, and gave no explanation as to why no record of such a trip has surfaced. –McClatchy

If true, it would confirm a portion of the infamous “Steele Dossier” used to obtain a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to spy on a Trump campaign associate. The dossier was created by former MI6 agent Christopher Steele, and relies heavily on Kremlin officials and other Russian sources. 

Of note, the FBI would not pay Steele $50,000 when he couldn’t verify the claims in his dossier. 

Mr. Steele met his F.B.I. contact in Rome in early October, bringing a stack of new intelligence reports. One, dated Sept. 14, said that Mr. Putin was facing “fallout” over his apparent involvement in the D.N.C. hack and was receiving “conflicting advice” on what to do.

The agent said that if Mr. Steele could get solid corroboration of his reports, the F.B.I. would pay him $50,000 for his efforts, according to two people familiar with the offer. Ultimately, he was not paid. –New York Times

The dossier claims that during Cohen’s secret trip to Prague, he met with a prominent ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, purported to be Konstantin Kosachev.

In response to McClatchy’s claims, Cohen hit back on Saturday. 

“Bad reporting, bad information and bad story,” Cohen tweeted, calling out the reporter behind the story, Peter Stone, by name. “No matter how many times or ways they write it, I have never been to Prague. I was in LA with my son. Proven!”

Following the release of the Steele dossier, Cohen tweeted a picture of his passport, along with the hashtag #fakenews. 

Cohen has had a rough week. On Monday, his home, office and hotel room were raided by the DOJ, who seized documents, bank records, and other evidence potentially related to porn star Stormy Daniels, a taxi medallion business Cohen ran, and other activities.

Then on Friday, the DOJ announced that Cohen has been “under criminal investigation” for months in New York over various business dealings.

Later Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Cohen arranged a $1.6 million payoff to a former Playboy model in late 2017 who says she was impregnated by a top Republican fundraiser, “according to people familiar with the matter” (96 hours after the raid). 

Michael Cohen, whose office, home and hotel room were raided by federal agents this week, arranged the payments to the woman on behalf of Elliott Broidy, a deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee with ties to Mr. Trump, the people familiar with the matter said. Mr. Broidy, a Los Angeles-based venture capitalist, works on the Republican committee with Mr. Cohen, who is also a national deputy finance chairman.

The deal, which hasn’t previously been reported, prohibits the Los Angeles woman from disclosing her alleged relationship with Mr. Broidy in exchange for $1.6 million to be paid to her over two years in quarterly installments, these people said. The first payment was due Dec. 1, according to one of the people.-WSJ

The Broidy agreement resembles a $130,000 deal in which Cohen agreed to pay former porn star Stephanie Clifford – prohibiting her from discussing an alleged sexual affair with President Trump from 2006. The Broidy agreement “uses the same pseudonyms for Mr. Broidy and the woman with whom he was allegedly involved – David Dennison and Peggy Peterson,” according to the WSJ.

Bring in the Taint Team

As the DOJ sets about grundling around in Cohen’s records, federal prosecutors have reportedly set up a “taint team,” also called a “privilege team,” which is tasked with reviewing materials obtained in the raid prior to them being handed over to the prosecutorial team. 

“The taint team lawyers review the documents and remove anything that is covered by the attorney client privilege,” CNN chief legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin wrote in an email. “They pass the non-attorney client material to the investigators, who are not ‘tainted’ by contact with the privileged material.”

“Attorney-client privilege is dead!” tweeted President Trump on Tuesday morning – referring to the legal privilege protecting the majority of communications between a client and their attorney. 

No so, said former New Jersey governor and onetime head of Trump’s transition team. 

“Attorney-client privilege is not dead, because of the way the Justice Department is going to approach this,” Christie said. “There’s going to be a taint team. They call it a taint team because you don’t want to taint the prosecutors who are actually investigating it by seeing potentially privileged information that they have no right to see.”

Christie added that the team would “separate it into stuff that’s privileged and stuff that isn’t. And then of the stuff that’s privileged, is there any evidence of a crime or fraud?”

We’re sure the taint team will be of the same ethical caliber as the rest of the DOJ, so Cohen and Trump have nothing to worry about. It would be unlikely that the water-tight, leak-proof Justice Department would find compromising – yet privileged evidence against Trump, and then use it as leverage over he or his associates in a leak similar to, we assume, the Broidy agreement. 

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Is College Worth The Cost?

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk,

New schools are popping up. Some offer one year programs but no college degree. Good idea?

Ben Carlson at Wealth of Common Sense is irked by the question: Is College Worth the Cost?

Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian gave some advice to young people in a recent interview with the New York Times:

“Do you really need to go to college? There is a huge student loan debt problem in this country. I think there’s going to need to be a drastic change in how these universities work. And I also think we’ve lambasted the trades for way too long. You can make six figures as a welder.”

These kinds of statements irk me, especially when they come from rich entrepreneurs. This line of thinking reeks of survivorship bias.

Successful entrepreneurs must understand they’re the minority. Most businesses fail and most 18 year-olds don’t have what it takes to start, let alone run their own business. I certainly would have been lost at that age trying to make a go at it on my own.

I get what Ohanian is trying to say here. There are plenty of problems with the higher education system. It’s too expensive. Most students aren’t given enough guidance in terms of how their preferred area of study will lead to actual employment or how much that employment will pay. Student loans can also be a huge burden after school for many.

In many ways, much like personal finance, people are mostly on their own when it comes to figuring these things out, which is a shame.

Are we really expecting 18 year-olds to perform a cost-benefit analysis on whether or not they should go to college or skip it altogether and go straight to the working world to save on the tuition costs? Better yet, how many adults perform a cost-benefit analysis when they purchase a new car or house? How many adults do you know who track their spending? Create a household budget? Pay down their debt every month? Save enough for retirement?

One Year of ‘College’ With No Degree

Let’s now consider One Year of ‘College’ With No Degree, But No Debt And a Job at the End.

As a high-school senior in Hampton, Va., Aidan Cary applied last year to prestigious universities like Dartmouth, Vanderbilt and the University of Virginia.

Then he clicked on the website for a one-year-old school called MissionU and quickly decided that’s where he wanted to go.

Mr. Cary, 19 years old, is enrolled in a one-year, data-science program. He studies between 40 and 50 hours a week, visits high-tech, Bay Area companies as part of his education, and will pay the San Francisco-based school a percentage of his income for three years after he graduates.

MissionU, which enrolled its first class in September, is part of new breed of institutions that bill themselves as college alternatives for the digital age. The schools—whose admission rates hover in the single digits—comparable to the Ivy League, according to the schools—offer a debt-free way to attain skills in hot areas and guaranteed apprenticeships with high-tech companies. Together those create a pipeline to well-paying high-tech jobs.

What they lack is an accredited degree, the longtime entry ticket to a professional career, and the traditional trappings of college including a full liberal arts education.

“The degree is dead. You need experience,” says the website for Praxis, a five-year-old digital school based in South Carolina.

Stunningly Simple Choice

There is no choice here, at least for Mr. Cary. One would have to be a fool to turn down the opportunity.

There is no catch, but there is a problem. These schools get 10,000 applications for 50 spots. They will take the brightest of the brightest, knowing full well the kids can be placed in a high-paying job.

Everyone wins. Those accepted make a great salary after one year, and they finish school with no debt.

Skip College and Go to Trade School

​Parents are stumped Why an Honors Student Wants to Skip College and Go to Trade School.

Raelee Nicholson earns A’s in her honors classes at a public high school south of Pittsburgh and scored in the 88th percentile on her college boards.

But instead of going to college, Ms. Nicholson hopes to attend a two-year technical program that will qualify her to work as a diesel mechanic. Her guidance counselor, two teachers and several other adults tell her she’s making a mistake.

When she was 14, Raelee rebuilt a car with her older cousin. She doesn’t listen to those trying to dissuade her from her passion. “Diesel mechanics charge $80 an hour,” she says.

Less Than Useless Guidance Counselor

Raelee should tell her guidance counselor to go to hell.

The counselor no doubt wants her to blow $80,000 or more on college, and walk away with some sort of degree in a field in which she has no interest.

With no interest in her major, she would be precisely qualified to work at Target or Walmart in a job she hated.

It’s crazy.

Irked

Let’s return to Ben Carlson who is irked when entrepreneurs say skip college.

I think Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian was spot on in this important sense: It is beyond stupid to go to college if you do not want to, especially if you have other viable options.

Carlson asks “Are we really expecting 18 year-olds to perform a cost-benefit analysis on whether or not they should go to college or skip it altogether and go straight to the working world to save on the tuition costs?“

Fair enough. But if they cannot do that, then they also cannot figure out that going $80,000 in debt for a humanities degree is a bad idea.

Carlson and guidance counselors give kids horrendous advice and pressure them on the need to go to college, willy nilly, even when many of the kids are bright enough to figure things out on their own.

Worse yet, those who have no business going to college at all end up in college precisely because they cannot do what Carlson asks, and also because of incessant pressure to blow money on education.

I am a proponent of trade schools, of one year colleges with no degree (if you can get in), and also 4-year degrees in colleges overseas.

Some kids are bright enough to figure this out on their own. The rest need a bit of genuine guidance instead of a preach job on the need for a four-year college education.

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OPCW Investigators Arrive In Damascus As Moscow Insists “White Helmets” Staged Gas Attack

The US-led coalition’s missiles have already blasted craters into the ground near Damascus and Homs (and while the attacks produced no fatalities, the US and Russia have presented dramatically different accounts of strike), but investigators from the United Nation’s chemical weapons watchdog are only just arriving in Damascus to begin processing the scene of the brutal chemical weapons attack in Douma last week that left at least 70 people dead.

 

 

Both Syria and Russia called for an OPCW inquiry into the attack, while Russia has claimed that it has evidence US-backed “white helmets” – a US-funded “humanitarian” NGO long applauded by the mainstream media for its efforts – had a hand in fabricating evidence. The US State Department, meanwhile, has asserted that it has “proof” the Syrian government was behind the attack (though it has neglected to release any details about this purported “proof” to the public). Furthermore, the US has blamed Russia for failing to ensure that chemical weapons stockpiles in Syria had been destroyed, per RT.

The agency was set up to oversee and guarantee the destruction of chemical weapons and to investigate instances of their use. The agency will examine samples taken from attack victims to determine the chemical used as it tries to uncover the perpetrator. Syria, Russia, the UK, the US, France and Russia are all members of the organization.

OPCW

This isn’t the first time OPCW has visited Syria in recent memory. It carried out a similar investigation in 2017, when the organization found that sarin or a sarin-like substance was employed in the town of Khan Shaykhun, but did not undertake an on-the-ground inspection of the site.

Evidence put forward in the agency’s report revealed the gas was most likely released to the north of the settlement. However, it did not attribute blame to the April 2017 attack, which was carried out in an area not controlled by the government of the Syrian Arab Republic at the time.

* * *

Meanwhile, the Russian Ministry of Defense says it has proof that the gas attack in Douma was staged to give the West an excuse to justify a military intervention in Syria, according to Major-General Igor Konashenkov.

It also accused the British government of pressuring the perpetrators to speed up the “provocation.” The MoD released interviews with two men who are purported to be the only doctors on the ground in Douma. They said video showing victims suffering from a chemical weapons attack was actually damage from smoke inhalation after a bomb struck a building, per RT.

“The Russian Defense Ministry also has evidence that Britain had a direct involvement in arranging this provocation in Eastern Ghouta,”  “We know for certain that between April 3 and April 6 the so-called White Helmets were seriously pressured from London to speed up the provocation that they were preparing.”

As we reported on Thursday, Russia has uncovered evidence that the White Helmets helped plant evidence and fabricate photos of the alleged victims of the attack.

Furthermore, Konashenkov said Russia hoped that international monitors from OPCW would confirm Russia’s findings. He added that Eastern Ghouta is trying to return to a peaceful existence after being liberated from militant groups by Syrian government forces.

Earlier this week, Russia’s MoD said in a statement that experts who had been sent by Russia to investigate “found no traces of the use of chemical agents” following a search of the site, adding that “all these facts show… that no chemical weapons were used in the town of Douma, as it was claimed by the White Helmets.”

“All the accusations brought by the White Helmets, as well as their photos… allegedly showing the victims of the chemical attack, are nothing more than a yet another piece of fake news and an attempt to disrupt the ceasefire,” said the Russian Reconciliation Center.

Russia’s ambassador to the UN said earlier this week that the White Helmets were “mendaciously acting under the cloak of health professionals” and instead were spreading western propaganda.

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Why We May Be Headed For Another “Minsky Moment”

Authored by Jesse Fedler via TheFedlerReport.com,

I recently ran across a terrific chart in Grant’s Interest Rate Observer that got me thinking about Hyman Minsky and The Financial Instability Hypothesis. After remaining relatively unknown during the course of his lifetime, Minsky really came to fame in the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis as his hypothesis helped to explain what left most economists baffled: the fundamental cause of the crisis.

Clearly, though, he has been forgotten just as quickly because, considering where we stand today, it’s obvious the economists with the greatest power to prevent another crisis have still not adopted his insights into their frameworks.

To begin to understand the current situation in Minsky terms we must first understand the hypothesis:

The first theorem of the financial instability hypothesis is that the economy has financing regimes under which it is stable, and financing regimes in which it is unstable. The second theorem of the financial instability hypothesis is that over periods of prolonged prosperity, the economy transits from financial relations that make for a stable system to financial relations that make for an unstable system. In particular, over a protracted period of good times, capitalist economies tend to move from a financial structure dominated by hedge finance units to a structure in which there is large weight to units engaged in speculative and Ponzi finance.

Next we need to understand what these financing units are:

Hedge financing units are those which can fulfill all of their contractual payment obligations by their cash flows… Speculative finance units are units that can meet their payment commitments on “income account” on their liabilities, even as they cannot repay the principle out of income cash flows… For Ponzi units, the cash flows from operations are not sufficient to fulfill either the repayment of principle or the interest due on outstanding debts by their cash flows from operations.

And this is what reminded me of Minsky when I read the recent article in Grant’s with the accompanying chart below. It shows the percent of companies in the S&P 500 that would fall into Minsky’s “Ponzi unit” category. Specifically, Bianco Research defines these “zombies” as companies whose interest expense is greater than their 3-year average EBIT (earnings before interest and taxes). Currently, we face the greatest percentage of “Ponzi units” in at least 20 years.

This should be worrisome to investors and even more so to those managing monetary policy because it suggests that financial instability within the economy may be greater than any other time over the past couple of decades. Minsky again:

It can be shown that if hedge financing dominates, then the economy may well be an equilibrium seeking and containing system. In contrast, the greater the weight of speculative and Ponzi finance, the greater the likelihood that the economy is a deviation amplifying system.

Those last three words are critical. “A deviation amplifying system,” simply means an economy built on a virtuous cycle that risks evolving into a vicious one. So long as interest rates remain low and investor risk appetites remain strong zombies will thrive and the economy will, as well, relatively speaking of course. However, should interest rates rise and risk appetites reverse course the risk of a self-reinforcing downturn grows. Minsky explains:

In particular… if an economy with a sizeable body of speculative financial units is in an inflationary state, and the authorities attempt to exorcise inflation by monetary constraint, then speculative units will become Ponzi units and the net worth of previously Ponzi units will quickly evaporate. Consequently, units with cash flow shortfalls will be forced to try to make position by selling out position. This is likely to lead to a collapse of asset values.

Interest rates have been rising for nearly two years now and the Fed seems to have turned its attention from cultivating a wealth effect in the economy by supporting asset prices via quantitative easing to reining in inflation by unwinding those policies and raising the Fed Funds rate. In the process, by way of the Minsky Hypothesis, they may end up undoing everything they strove so hard to achieve over the better part of the past decade.

It’s not hard to imagine just how vulnerable these zombies might be to rising interest rates and waning risk appetites. Should they be forced into liquidation a resulting collapse in asset values could present a major problems for the economy as there are plenty of reasons to believe the wealth effect may be even more powerful to the downside than it was to the upside. Either way, the threat to the economy posed by the greatest corporate zombie army in history is surely enough to make Minsky roll over in his grave.

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