Tag: news

Authored by Jeff Thomas via InternationalMan.com,

Ancient Greece is credited as raising the societal structure to new heights. Whenever this period is referred to, philosophers and historians are quick to mention that the ancient Greeks gave the world Democracy.

Yet, Socrates, who is regarded as having been a rather thoughtful fellow, eyed democracy with deep suspicion. He was right to do so.

Socrates argued to Adeimantus that voting in an election is a skill – one that must be developed. It was not an inherent intuition that all people possessed from birth.

As such, he felt that only those who had taken the time to hone this particular skill should be allowed to vote.

Perhaps coincidentally, he was put on trial in 399 BC for corrupting the youth of Athens with his philosophies. A jury of five hundred Athenians decided by a narrow margin that he was guilty. He was put to death by the hoi polloi of his day for having and disseminating ideas.

And so, the politicians of the day rid themselves of a troublemaker – an individual who had the cheek to question the leaders of the day and how they came to be chosen.

Beginning in 1762, a young Thomas Jefferson sat in the study of the older and wiser George Wythe for three years, the equivalent of a master’s degree, after he had graduated from the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia.

One of the topics extensively discussed was the failings of the concept of democracy.

On the surface, it sounded good: People had a choice to pick who would lead them. But should everyone get in on the vote? At that time, of course, the vote was restricted to men only and, at that, only those who were Caucasian and owned land.

As such, Mr. Jefferson became not only eligible to vote at age fifteen, but eligible to become a candidate for the House of Burgesses.

Well, this is all entertaining history and it’s perhaps quaint to consider the standards of the late eighteenth century (and, indeed, Socrates’ time) as regards democracy. But of what value is it today?

After all, most all of us agree today that women should most assuredly be allowed to not only vote, but hold the highest public office. Any man who thinks otherwise would find himself without many female friends and very possibly, without a mate.

Also, we’d find it odd indeed that one would need to be of the landed gentry to qualify as a voter.

So, how did a relatively evolved society of eighteenth century Williamsburg justify its voting restrictions?

Well, it was assumed that no one should be able to vote for candidates if they owned no land, since that candidate, if elected, would have the power to pass laws that affected landowners. Surely, if he were able to do so, he might pander to his electorate and seize the property of landowners or otherwise redistribute wealth.

Additionally, when a woman married, any property she owned would pass to her husband, thus making her similarly unqualified to vote.

Mr. Jefferson learned from his mentor, Mr. Wythe, the importance of education if an individual were to qualify to vote. Surely a country bumpkin who was illiterate had not the knowledge to understand which candidate was qualified to create legislation.

And so, Mr. Jefferson was inclined to agree with Socrates that the very concept of democracy was flawed. As he commented often,

“A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.”

The question, for millennia, has therefore been what should qualify a person to be allowed to vote for his representatives. The reader may well agree that, today, as women take an equal place in society and have equal opportunity for education, they qualify as much as their male counterparts. And certainly the same is true regarding race.

Also, today, social elevation does not require land ownership. An individual is more likely to prosper because he possesses a laptop than if he possesses an acre of land.

But what of the now-forgotten argument that only those who had taken the time to hone this particular skill should be allowed to vote?

If an individual, regardless of gender or race, has not pursued enough education to understand the gravity of legislation and its effects upon a nation, should he be allowed to vote?

Well, even today, restrictions remain, but as we’ve seen, there’s a different set of restrictions.

To vote in the US, an individual must now be a US citizen. He must also be eighteen years of age (presumably, he must have the maturity that comes with secondary education). And he is prohibited from voting if he’s in prison.

Clearly, these restrictions are intended to rule out those who, in the modern world, are less than qualified to select a suitable candidate for public office.

It’s safe to say that the bar has been lowered considerably since the late eighteenth century. But the US is on the cusp of lowering that bar considerably further. This promises to also lower both the standard of living and the quality of life.

The US is in the early stages of a cultural and political revolution. One faction seeks to retain a conservative US, while the other seeks dramatic change in favor of those whom both Messrs. Socrates and Jefferson would have regarded as “unqualified to vote.”

A major push is under way to lower the voting age, allow those in prison to vote and allow non-citizens to vote. The objective is to end conservatism forever, in favour of a more collectivist society.

There can be no question that, if this effort succeeds, the addition of millions of less-qualified voters would forever change the type of candidates who would be successful. Mr. Jefferson’s warning would be fulfilled – there would be mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people would have the right to take away the rights of the other forty-nine.

This imbalance would guarantee the worst possible leadership, courtesy of the blessing of the new majority. It’s entirely likely that two major parties would continue to exist, but they would both be collectivist.

In such a system, virtually everyone could vote, but there would be little point in showing up to do so.

*  *  *

With another US election cycle on the horizon, the political circus is heating up again. Dozens of Democratic presidential candidates are running on a platform of increased government spending and higher taxes. All of which will push the US closer to an economic crisis greater than we’ve ever seen. That’s why Doug Casey’s team has prepared a timely video that outlines how it will all play out and how to prepare. Click here to watch it now.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2KKZGnX Tyler Durden

Amazon hit back against Joe Biden on Thursday after the former Vice President levied an attack at the online retail giant for paying nothing in corporate taxes last year. 

“I have nothing against Amazon, but no company pulling in billions of dollars of profits should pay a lower tax rate than firefighters and teachers,” said Biden in a Thursday tweet, linking to an April 29 story in the New York Times. 

I have nothing against Amazon, but no company pulling in billions of dollars of profits should pay a lower tax rate than firefighters and teachers. We need to reward work, not just wealth. https://t.co/R6xaN3vXGT

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) June 13, 2019

Amazon did not take kindly to Biden’s bashing, tweeting back “We’ve paid $2.6B in corporate taxes since 2016,” adding “We pay every penny we owe.” 

“Congress designed tax laws to encourage companies to reinvest in the American economy. We have. $200B in investments since 2011 & 300K US jobs. Assume VP Biden’s complaint is w/ the tax code, not Amazon.” 

We’ve paid $2.6B in corporate taxes since 2016. We pay every penny we owe. Congress designed tax laws to encourage companies to reinvest in the American economy. We have. $200B in investments since 2011 & 300K US jobs. Assume VP Biden’s complaint is w/ the tax code, not Amazon. https://t.co/uPUv1Tzlma

— Amazon News (@amazonnews) June 13, 2019

Looks like Amazon has won this round…

I applaud Amazon fighting back against campaign Fake News™.

— Nick Flor-ProfessorF (@ProfessorF) June 13, 2019

As an @amazon shareholder, I applaud them. Keep up the good work!

— Eileen J (@longislpatriot) June 13, 2019

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2Ifaqcs Tyler Durden

Authored by Tom Luongo via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

Headlines abound about the massive surge in US shale oil production. The energy independence-cheering punditocracy hail this as a great victory. This includes President Trump.

And it would be if this surge in production was built on financially stable ground. But it isn’t. The fracking industry continues to bleed massive amounts of cash. As I pointed out in an article earlier this week, when accounting for this inconvenient truth much of the U.S’s return to dominance in the energy space is a lot of hot air.

Nick Cunningham’s article at Oilprice.com tells the tale.

Heading into 2019, the industry promised to stake out a renewed focus on capital discipline and shareholder returns. But that vow is now in danger of becoming yet another in a long line of unmet goals.

“Another quarter, another gusher of red ink,” the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, along with the Sightline Institute, wrote in a joint report on the first quarter earnings of the shale industry.

The report studied 29 North American shale companies and found a combined $2.5 billion in negative free cash flow in the first quarter. That was a deterioration from the $2.1 billion in negative cash flow from the fourth quarter of 2018. “This dismal cash flow performance came despite a 16 percent quarter-over-quarter decline in capital expenditures,” the report’s authors concluded.

This lack of profitability is maintained solely through financial engineering and a continued bull market in structured credit in the US due to the needs of pension funds to make a 7.5% yield to maintain their defined benefit payouts.

They aren’t the only ones fueling this fracking boom but it is a major driver of both US equities and the commercial paper market. This is just another consequence of the Federal Reserve’s zero-bound interest rate policy.

So, why is this Trump’s foreign policy Achilles’ heel? Because with the global economy slowing down, US domestic production is already in massive oversupply. There is a glut of oil and gas so profound that it ensures the bottom lines of these companies will not improve, leaving them at the mercy of these creditors.

The good news for them, in the short run, is that they will likely be able to continue in their Ponzi-like ways, because the Fed will start cutting interest rates by September.

But from a foreign policy perspective Trump is betting on restricting the supply of oil from ‘competitors’ to make US oil more attractive. There are two problems with this.

First, other countries with lower costs of production can keep the market in relative equilibrium, living on small profits, but profits nonetheless.

Second, and more importantly, US shale oil has an upper limit on demand since it’s too light for most refineries and requires blending with heavier feedstock. This is why, for example, US imports of Russian oil are rising rapidly to feed Gulf coast refineries starved of Venezuelan oil thanks to Trump trying to take it off the market.

Countries like Venezuela and Iran can, and will, compete on price. They can and will find ways around Trump’s sanctions. Again Russia moves in to provide a market deficit, this time payment clearing services through already US sanctioned banks.

With each new tariff or sanction on a third-party Trump further alienates US producers from all industries from foreign markets.

And the Saudis are trapped in the middle. They now know they can’t expand production because demand is so poor. In fact, they cut production by 120,000 barrels in May. So much for their assurance to Trump that they will take up Iran’s losses.

Prices are falling because of inventory builds which imply slack demand not higher supply.

Moreover, OPEC wants to continue the production cuts, but Russia has signaled strongly that they are uninterested in joining them. Putin knows he has Saudi Arabia on price because Russia is budgeted for $40 per barrel while the Saudis need a multiple of that.

He will continue to drive a wedge between the Saudis and the US on oil market share. The Saudis cannot afford to lose any while Russia can ramp production or expand its oil-for-goods program with Iran to expand theirs.

What’s Trump going to do, sanction Russia further?

A contracting global economy is a recipe for low oil prices begetting bankruptcies across the shale space. This is why Trump is exhorting the Fed to cut rates, to allow the fracking Ponzi a little more time to bring Iran to heel.

This is the game of chicken Trump is playing with China, Russia and Iran. He’s betting on the short-term pain creating capitulation. They are playing the long game getting him to over-extend himself. There are always workarounds to mitigate that pain and eventually those workarounds become the new normal as people’s habits change.

President Putin understands Russia can make serious gains playing good cop to Trump’s bad cop.

Russia has made it clear to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Trump directly that it will not horse-trade Iran’s presence in Syria for a small concession on Europe, despite the conciliatory note struck diplomatically.

Moreover, Putin knows Trump can’t be trusted to keep or implement his word anyway, so no agreement is possible on the now myriad issues between them. So, Russia and China will support Iran as best as they can while pursuing their own paths to strengthen their relationship.

A stronger Chinese/Russian alliance creates new paths for capital to flow away from Trump’s prying and threats.

At the G-20 Trump will go in with a list of demands from Putin on helping him with his Israel plans, which, in the end, is what all of this is about. But I don’t see Putin giving Trump an inch. Putin has told Trump he’s reached his limit with John Bolton’s Syria balkanization plans by launching the campaign to retake Idlib.

That all Trump can do is fulminate about ‘civilians’ is the height of hypocrisy and impotence as more and more evidence of NATO’s hand in arming the terrorists in Syria comes to light.

Jared Kushner’s “Deal of the Century” has been delayed again because there’s no support for it outside of the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

In the end time is always on the side of the defenders in any conflict like this one, especially one built on the fragile edifice of an oil market ready to implode thanks to continued malinvestment and price distortions.

Waiting out the insanity is the best path here. It may end with Trump being forced into a catastrophic conflict with Iran, as Alistair Crooke suggests, but it will also expose the US’s financial instability that much faster as the dollar and global interest rates spike and the edifice of debt maintaining these insane policies deflates.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2XRwYpf Tyler Durden

Two of the three versions of Lockheed’s beleaguered F-35 fighter jet suffer from previously unreported problems that could put the Joint Strike Fighter at a serious disadvantage in a dogfight with an adversary, according to documents obtained by Defense News.

If left unresolved, the following ‘category 1’ glitches will be icing on the cake of Lockheed’s $400 billion quagmire (partial list via Defense News); 

• When the F-35B vertically lands on very hot days, older engines may be unable to produce the required thrust to keep the jet airborne, resulting in a hard landing.
• After doing certain maneuvers, F-35B and F-35C pilots are not always able to completely control the aircraft’s pitch, roll and yaw.
• Supersonic flight in excess of Mach 1.2 can cause structural damage and blistering to the stealth coating of the F-35B and F-35C.
• Cabin pressure spikes in the cockpit of the F-35 have been known to cause barotrauma, the word given to extreme ear and sinus pain.
• The spare parts inventory shown by the F-35’s logistics system does not always reflect reality, causing occasional mission cancellations.
• If the F-35A and F-35B blows a tire upon landing, the impact could also take out both hydraulic lines and pose a loss-of-aircraft risk.
• Possible maneuvering issues when the aircraft is operating above a 20-degree angle of attack.
• The F-35’s logistics system currently has no way for foreign F-35 operators to keep their secret data from being sent to the United States.

On that last one – this means that there’s no way that the eleven countries which have committed to buying F-35s will be able to prevent the Untied States from spying on their maneuvers (Sorry Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Italy, Israel, the Netherlands, Norway, Japan, South Korea, Turkey and the United Kingdom).

Of note, the F-35 program had 111 “category 1” deficiencies as of January 2018, defined as major flaws that impact safety or mission effectiveness. By May 24 2018, that had decreased to 64 open category 1 issues out of a total 913 deficiencies according to the documents. 

The Pentagon pushes back

F-35 DoD program executive Mat Winter told Defense News that none of the identified issues represent any serious or catastrophic risk to pilots, missions or the F-35 airframe. 

After being contacted by Defense News, the program office created two designations of category 1 problems to highlight the difference between issues that would qualify as an emergency and others that are more minor in nature.

“CAT 1-As are loss of life, potential loss of life, loss of material aircraft. Those have to be adjudicated, have to be corrected within hours, days. We have no CAT 1-A deficiencies,” Winter said.

Instead, the deficiencies on the books all fall under category 1B, which represents problems “that have a mission impact with a current workaround that’s acceptable to the war fighter with the knowledge that we will be able to correct that deficiency at some future time,” Winter added. –Defense News

Greg Ulmer, Lockheed’s Vice President for the F-35 program, said that F-35s already in the field are meeting or exceeding performance specifications. 

“These issues are important to address, and each is well understood, resolved or on a path to resolution,” said Ulmer, adding “We’ve worked collaboratively with our customers, and we are fully confident in the F-35’s performance and the solutions in place to address each of the items identified.”

Of course, acting defense secretary Patrick Shanahan may disagree – reportedly describing the F-35 program as “fucked up,” according to the Washington Post. 

Fighter pilots are shaking their heads

Defense News approached two fighter pilots – one retired and one active duty, who offered their perspectives on the F-35. 

The recently retired aviator said some of the issues jumped off the page at him, including the cabin over-pressurization issue, given the rash of over-pressurization issues in other aircraft, including the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, EA-18G Growler and F-22 Raptor.

But perhaps the most serious for aerial combat operations is the combination of maneuvering issues when the aircraft is operating above a 20-degree angle of attack and the issue of possible structural damage and damage to the low-observable coating when using the afterburner. That coating helps provide the F-35 a stealth capability.

“The one that stood out to me was, wait a minute, you’re telling me that the latest, greatest aircraft — [a] $100 million aircraft — can’t perform?” the retired fighter pilot said. “It has random oscillations, pitch and yaw issues above 20A?” –Defense News

The active duty pilot, on the other hand, said that the list of deficiencies weren’t a huge concern, and that given the plane’s relatively recent introduction such problems are inevitable. 

“That document looks like growing pains for an aircraft that we tried to do a whole lot to all at once,” said the aviator. “You’re going to see that if you dig back at what Super Hornets looked like for the first few years. Go back in the archives and look at [the F-14] Tomcat — think about that with the variable sweep-wing geometry, the AUG9 radar: There was a lot of new technology incorporated into the aircraft, and there is going to be growing pains.”

“I don’t see anything in that document that makes me say: ‘Holy sh–, what did we buy?’ If the questions is, ‘Why does the aircraft have all these problems?’, I don’t know, it may sound trite, but it’s a really f–ing complicated machine.” 

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2XRvYS1 Tyler Durden

Authored by Jason Ditz via AntiWar.com,

For the second time in less than a month, US forces carried out airstrikes “in self defense” in Afghanistan, only to discover that they were actually attacking Afghan security forces. The Wednesday strike ended up wiping out an entire unit, though officials have yet to disclose the exact number of deaths, beyond it apparently being everyone present.

The previous attack saw US ground troops believing they were under fire, and the warplanes attacking police, killing 18.

In this case, too, US officials said they believed the troops came under fire, and the airstrikes targeted the Afghan forces, who had been firing machine guns.

Despite all the talk of self defense and US troops being “under effective fire,” officials insist not a single US casualty occurred. US officials expressed “regret” for the deaths of Afghan partners.

Interestingly, however, US spokesman Col. David Butler praised the operation as “extensively planned and coordinated” with the Afghan forces, with an eye toward preventing exactly what ended up happening.

An investigation is promised, but all too often the investigations into incidents like these, where the result was particularly embarrassing, never really publicly end, and the day of the attack ends up the last we hear about it.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2KQ3Laj Tyler Durden

As the trade war intensifies between China and the US, Chinese at the Shanghai consumer electronics fair were able to vent their trade frustrations with America through bashing a life-sized bobblehead of President Trump with a hammer, reported AFP.

Japanese tech firm Soliton Systems managed the “stress-relief” station at the Consumer Electronics Show Asia (CES Asia) from 11 to 13 of June at the Shanghai New International Expo Center (SNIEC) where anyone who could swing a hammer and had hatred towards the US for sparking an economic war – could relieve stress.

“The reason we chose Trump is because he is in a sense very outstanding among all the American presidents from the past,” Takenori Ohira, a manager with Soliton Systems’ AI robots and Internet of Things (IoT) division told AFP. “That is why we chose him.”

AFP interviewed Wang Dongyue, 31, who said he wished he used his “hands and feet” to strangle the bobblehead of President Trump. “I think the hammer isn’t satisfying enough,” Dongyue said after he whacked the bobblehead.

“I don’t have a good impression of him to be frank, because he’s not very friendly to China now,” Dongyue said.

“They should have a boxing glove. That would feel better,” another conference attendee, Liu Di, said after he observed others strike the bobblehead.

The continuing trade war between both countries deepened in May when President Trump announced a 25% tariff on $200 billion of Chinese goods. In response, China placed a 25% tariff on $60 billion of US goods.

Trump has since threatened to slap tariffs on another $300 billion of Chinese goods if China’s leader Xi Jinping doesn’t meet him at the 2019 G20 Osaka summit in Japan. The move would likely trigger a full-blown trade war.

There has been a change in the way that Beijing manages nationalist sentiment inside China. Until May the government suppressed hawkish views on the US-China relationship, but with a strong possibility the trade war is about to deepen again, it seems an anti-America movement across the country is beginning, something we reported on over the weekend…

 

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2WInUGn Tyler Durden

Authored by Daisy Luther via The Organic Prepper blog,

People like to think of Ebola as a disease that only strikes superstitious locals in the deepest jungles of the Democratic Republic of Congo. But just like the last time the disease made it to our shores, there are warning signs and it’s time to start paying attention.

There are several events in the news that when looked at together, lead to concerns we could be looking at a replay of 2014.

This article is not being written to demonize people from certain regions or the world, to bring up arguments for or against immigration, or to scare the pants off you. It’s a collection of facts that I’ve written with as little bias as possible.

A quick recap of the 2014 outbreak that made its way to our shores

Everyone remembers the Ebola outbreak of 2014. It ripped through West Africa for two years, killing over 11,000 people and sickening nearly 30,000. But the reason WE remember it in the United States is that it crept into our country. Shortly after the CDC warned us to prepare for a potential Ebola pandemic, the first case was diagnosed in Dallas, Texas, when a man from West Africa visited the hospital on two occasions, having been turned away the first time as just having “the flu.” The original patient died, and two nurses caring for him caught the potentially deadly virus. One patient completely overwhelmed an entire hospital.

It is honestly shocking that more people didn’t become ill, as one nurse traveled on a plane while sick, and in another incident, a doctor in New York City who had volunteered in Guinea was also diagnosed. All in all, eleven people in the United States were treated for Ebola (that we know of, anyway) and it certainly wasn’t because of the expert handling of the near-crisis. It was pure luck.

There were all sorts of mismanagement. Everything from not requiring a quarantine of travelers returning from the affected area to housing 11 potential cases in a hotel to a ship from Liberia with sick passengers being allowed to dock in New Orleans to the near-disastrous handling of contaminated samples in Dallas, it is an absolute miracle that there was no major outbreak in the US.

If there were hundreds or thousands of patients across the country, it wouldn’t take long for things to devolve into absolute chaos. Ebola can have a death rate as high as 90%.

1) The DRC is in the midst of the second largest Ebola outbreak in history.

According to the World Health Organization, confirmed cases of Ebola have exceeded 2000 in the DRC. This makes it the second-largest outbreak in history, after the 2014-2016 epidemic.

There are several reasons that the WHO has been unable to get a handle on this outbreak. Last year, I wrote about how the families of Ebola patients were breaking them out of quarantine and taking them to prayer meetings. I also wrote that the disease had reached a major urban center, increasing the likelihood of its spread.

The area at the heart of the outbreak is a warzone, which makes it difficult for doctors to treat patients, and at the same time, the patients are untrusting of modern medicine. People are fleeing Ebola-stricken villages in fear, which just makes the spread more likely.

2) Ebola is no longer contained within the DRC

Today it was reported that Ebola has hopped the border into Uganda, where today, a young patient died. The five-year-old deceased has two relatives who have also tested positive.

Zero Hedge reports:

On Wednesday, health experts in both countries were scrambling to understand how the boy’s relatives crossed the border on June 9th, and who they may have infected along the way. The boy was taken to a Ugandan hospital after vomiting blood and exhibiting other symptoms, while two relatives of the boy also tested positive for Ebola. Uganda has been heavily screening visitors from Congo for signs of fever, and has vaccinated more than 4,700 health workers against the disease according to a joint statement by WHO and Ugandan officials.

Uganda’s health ministry said the boy’s mother, who is Congolese but married to a Ugandan and living in the Kasese district of Uganda, had travelled back to Congo to nurse her sick father, who subsequently died of Ebola. On returning to Uganda, the boy had started coughing up blood and vomiting and was taken to Kagando hospital where health workers immediately suspected Ebola.

A sample of his blood tested positive for Ebola and on Wednesday two of the boy’s relatives were also confirmed to have contracted the disease. –Financial Times (source)

Experts have warned if Ebola spreads into other countries that the virus will become even more difficult to contain.

Angola, which shares a border with the DRC, has closed that border to prevent the spread of the virus into their country.

3) The Department of Border Patrol just apprehended a large group of people from Africa

In a press release, the Border Patrol announced on May 31 that they had apprehended 116 people from Africa trying to cross the Mexican/US border.

U.S. Border Patrol agents assigned to the Del Rio Station apprehended a large group of 116 individuals Thursday.

“Large groups present a unique challenge for the men and women of the Del Rio Sector,” said Chief Raul Ortiz. “This large group from Africa further demonstrates the complexity and severity of the border security and humanitarian crisis at our Southwest border.”

Agents performing line watch operations apprehended the group after they illegally crossed the Rio Grande into the U.S. around 10:30 p.m.

This is the first large group apprehended in the Del Rio Sector and the first large group of people from Africa – including nationals from Angola, Cameroon and Congo – apprehended on the Southwest border this year. (source)

Here’s a video of the apprehension. This link came from the press release above.

4) And these aren’t the only people from the DRC coming into the United States through Mexico.

Border Patrol says that there’s an uptick of migrants from this part of the world entering the United States through the Southern border.

On June 5, agents assigned to the Eagle Pass Station arrested a group of 34 people from the continent of Africa. Since May 30, more than 500 people from the continent of Africa have been arrested by the U.S. Border Patrol in Del Rio Sector. Agents have encountered immigrants from Africa crossing the Rio Grande River in multiple separate events, including one group of over 100 individuals. These groups are primarily made up of family units from the Republic of the Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Angola. (source)

On June 6, San Antonio news station put out a desperate plea for French-speaking volunteers to help with an influx of migrants from the area. Interim Assistant City Manager Dr. Collen Bridger shared the details of the situation with KEN 5:

Bridger said the Congolese migrants began to arrive in town on Tuesday. They told Migrant Resource Center workers, they traveled with a group of about 350 migrants through Ecuador to the southern border.

“When we called Border Patrol to confirm, they said, ‘yea another 200 to 300 from the Congo and Angola will be coming to San Antonio,’” Bridger said.

That included Masengi, a Congolese migrant, who didn’t want to have his face on camera but told KENS 5 via Google Translate he arrived to the southern border as an asylum seeker.

He said he came to America for security reasons and said, “My family is staying in my country but with the help of the USA I can get it back.” (source)

San Antonio will be sending the asylum seekers to other cities across the United States.

…The city opened up the Frank Garrett Center to house the Congolese migrants for the weekend, but after that, they’re not sure where they’ll house them especially since they don’t know how long some of them will be here.

“The plan was 350 of them would travel from San Antonio to Portland. When we reached out to Portland Maine they said, ‘Please don’t send us any more. We’re already stretched way beyond our capacity,” Bridger said.

“So we’re working with them [the migrants] now to identify other cities throughout the United States where they can go and begin their asylum seeking process. (source)

Obviously, just because a person is Congolese doesn’t mean they are infected with Ebola. These are just a series of connecting facts to which we should pay attention.

At this time, there is no evidence that anyone has Ebola in the United States, including Congolese asylum seekers. Border Patrol has said this internet rumor is not true.

5) The medical screening process is overwhelmed

Another concern is the quick screening process performed by physicians at the border. There has been a massive influx of immigrants crossing through from Mexico into the United States and the system is overwhelmed.

While every person crossing has some kind of health check-up, Ebola is difficult to catch in the early stages. According to the CDC:

Diagnosing Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) shortly after infection can be difficult. Early symptoms of EVD such as fever, headache, and weakness are not specific to Ebola virus infection and often are seen in patients with other more common diseases, like malaria and typhoid fever.

To determine whether Ebola virus infection is a possible diagnosis, there must be a combination of symptoms suggestive of EVD AND a possible exposure to EVD within 21 days before the onset of symptoms (source)

I was unable to find detailed information on the exact screening process for asylum seekers crossing the border from Mexico. If someone locates it, please share it in the comments so I can update this article.

Update: Here’s a link to the CDC’s recommended screening process for refugees. It particularly notes tests for Hepatitis, HIV, parasites, malaria, STDs, and tuberculosis, along with some general tests. Keep in mind that the symptoms of Ebola may not show up for 21 days, so it’s possible for a person to pass a medical exam during the incubation period.

There are quarantine stations at all US points of entry and laws that cover isolation and quarantine. As for how long people are quarantined, it appears it may be 72 hours.  There’s obviously going to be some travel time, too, but it really depends on how the asylum seeker reached the border. Did they spend months walking through Mexico on foot? If so, they would have already shown symptoms. But it has not been made clear how they arrived at the border.

(Thank you to Sandy and Lisa for this additional information.)

Conclusion

The stage is being set for what could be a catastrophe of epic proportion. Here’s what you need to know to prep for a potential Ebola outbreak in the United States and here’s a detailed book about prepping for a variety of pandemics. Here’s more information about how Ebola is transmitted.

The United States dodged the bullet last time Ebola cast its shadow here. Will we get that lucky again?

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2Zp9E2o Tyler Durden

Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

A new article by Forbes reports that the CEO of Crowdstrike, the extremely shady cybersecurity corporation which was foundational in the construction of the official CIA/CNN Russian hacking narrative, is now a billionaire.

George Kurtz ascended to the billionaire rankings on the back of soaring stocks immediately after the company went public, carried no doubt on the winds of the international fame it gained from its central protagonistic role in the most well-known hacking news story of all time. A loyal servant of empire well-rewarded.

The CEO of the Atlantic Council-tied Crowdstrike, which formed the foundation of the official CIA/CNN Russian hacking narrative, is now a billionaire. I’m telling you, the real underlying currency of this world is narrative and the ability to control it.https://t.co/XsBCvkIDzJ

— Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz) June 12, 2019

Never mind that US government insiders like Hillary Clinton had been prepping for escalations against Russia well in advance of the 2016 elections, and that their preexisting agendas to shove a geostrategic obstacle off the world stage benefitted from the hacking narrative as much as George Kurtz did.

Never mind that Crowdstrike is tied to the NATO narrative management firmknown as the Atlantic Council, which receives funding from the US government, the EU, NATO, Gulf states and powerful international oligarchs. Never mind either that Crowdstrike was financed with a whopping $100 million from Google, which has had a cozy relationship with US intelligence agencies since its very inception.

Never mind that to this day the DNC servers have not been examined by the FBI, nor indeed were they examined by the Special Counsel of Robert “Iraq has WMD” Mueller, preferring instead to go with the analyses of this extremely shady outfit with extensive and well-documented ties with the oligarchic leaders of the US-centralized empire. Also never mind that the Crowdstrike analyst who led forensics on those DNC servers had in fact worked for and was promoted by Robert Mueller while the two were in the FBI.

As I never tire of saying, the real underlying currency in our world is not gold, nor bureaucratic fiat, nor even raw military might. The real underlying currency of our world is narrative, and the ability to control it.

As soon as you really grok this dynamic, you start noticing it everywhere. George Kurtz is one clear example today of narrative control’s central role in the maintenance and expansion of existing power structures, as well as an illustration of how the empire is wired to reward those who advance pro-empire narratives and punish those who damage them; just compare how he’s doing to how Julian Assange is doing, for example.

But you see examples pop up every day:

• The US State Department just got busted using a $1.5 million troll farm to manipulate public discourse on social media about Iran.

• Video footage has just surfaced of the OPCW Director General admitting that the OPCW did indeed deliberately omit any mention in its official findings of a report from its own investigation which contradicts the establishment narrative about a chemical strike in Douma, Syria, an admission which answers controversial questions asked by critics of western imperialism like myself, and which the mainstream media have not so much as touched.

• Mintpress News broke a story the other day about a new narrative management operation known as “The Trust Project”, a coordinated campaign by establishment-friendly mass media outlets for “gaming search-engine and social-media algorithms in collusion with major tech companies like Google and Twitter.”

• In a new interview with The Canary, UN Special Rapporteur on torture Nils Melzer explicitly named the mass media as largely responsible for Assange’s psychological torture, excoriating them for the way that they “have shown a remarkable lack of critical independence and have contributed significantly to spreading abusive and deliberately distorted narratives about Mr Assange.”

• In a new essay called “Freeing Julian Assange”, journalist Suzie Dawson reports that “Countless articles appear to have been obliterated from the internet” about Assange and WikiLeaks, amounting to some 90 percent of the links Dawson examined which were shared in tweets by or about WikiLeaks and Assange since 2010.

• I just finished reading this excellent Swiss Propaganda Research essayabout the little-known fact that “most of the international news coverage in Western media is provided by only three global news agencies based in New York, London and Paris.”

Any one of these could have a full-length Caitlin Johnstone essay written about it. I write about this stuff for a living, and even I don’t have the time or energy to write full articles about every single narrative control tool that the US-centralized empire has been implementing into its arsenal. There are too damn many of them emerging too damn fast, because they’re just that damn crucial for maintaining existing power structures.

Because whoever controls the narrative controls the world.

Power used to be much easier to identify in our society: just look for the fellow with the sparkly hat made of gold sitting in a really big chair and bossing everyone around. As our society advanced philosophically, however, people began to tire of having every aspect of their society determined by some schmuck in a golden hat, and started fighting for ideals called “freedom” and “democracy” in their respective nations. And, as far as our parents and teachers have taught us, freedom and democracy are exactly what we have now.

Except that’s all crap. Freedom and democracy only exist within the western empire to the extent that it keeps up appearances. Because the trouble with democracy, it turns out, is that human minds are very hackable, as long as you’ve got the resources. Wealthy and powerful people do have the resources, which means that it’s very possible for wealthy and powerful people to manipulate the masses into voting in a way that consistently benefits the wealthy and powerful. This is why billionaires and narrative controlconsistently go hand-in-hand.

This dynamic has allowed for western power structures to operate in a way that western democracy was explicitly designed to prevent: for the benefit of the powerful instead of for the benefit of the voting populace. So now we’ve got people in so-called liberal democracies voting to maintain governments which advance wars which don’t benefit them, to advance intrusive surveillance and police state policies which oppress them, to advance austerity policies which harm them, to advance labor policies which exploit them, and to maintain ecocidal environmental policies which threaten the very survival of our species. All because the wealthy and powerful are able to use their wealth and power to manipulate the way people think and vote.

I remember in the run-up to the Iraq War a friend I had known all my life suddenly said to me, ‘We must do something about this monster in Iraq.’ I said, ‘When did you first think that?’ He answered honestly, ‘A month ago’. #Propaganda @medialens

— Malcolm Pryce (@exogamist) April 12, 2018

This is why I pay far more attention in my work to narrative control than to politics. Politics is downstream from narrative control, which is why the 2020 US presidential race is already a contest to see what level of Democratic corporatist warmonger will be running against the incumbent Republican corporatist warmonger. The narrative-controlling class does its level best to hide the fact that anything’s fundamentally wrong with the system, then when people notice it’s deeply broken they encourage them to use completely impotent tools to fix it. “Don’t like how things are run? Here, vote for our otherpuppet!”

The root of all our problems right now is the fact that human minds are very hackable with enough resources, combined with the fact that war, oppression, exploitation and ecocide are highly profitable. This dynamic has caused human collective consciousness to generally dead-end into a kind of propagandized, zombified state in which all our knowledge and all our thinking moves in alignment with the agendas of existing power structures. It’s much easier to continue believing the official narratives than to sort through everything you’ve been told about your society, your nation and your world since grade school and work out what’s true and what’s false. Many don’t have the time. Many more don’t have the courage.

We will remain in this collective dead-end, hurtling toward either Orwellian dystopia or extinction via climate collapse or nuclear armageddon, until we find a way out of it. It won’t come from the tools our rulers have given us, and it won’t come from repeating any of the old patterns which got us here. In order to escape from the increasingly adept narrative control matrix that is being built around our collective mind by the powerful, we’re going to have to change our relationship with narrative altogether. We will either pass this great test or we will fail it, and we absolutely have the freedom to go either way.

*  *  *

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via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2ICUSOG Tyler Durden

Can you imagine? Plane sized autonomous delivery vehicles zooming above major metropolitan areas delivering goods that could radically transform the cargo industry.

According to The Verge, delivery drones are being pilot tested across the country. In the last 5.5 months, Amazon has announced plans to deliver packages, Alphabet’s Wing received FAA approval for deliveries, and UPS has been testing its medical drone delivery service in Northern Virginia.

Instead of sending truckloads of goods on congested highways, cargo drones can seamlessly fly between distribution centers and businesses, reducing their carbon footprint but also cutting down delivery time significantly.

The Verge noted that cargo drones are “coming in all shapes and sizes.”

Last month, Boeing completed the first outdoor flight tests of the cargo air vehicle (CAV). The CAV is designed to carry a payload up to 500 pounds.

Sabrewing, a startup in Camarillo, Calif., is developing a prototype cargo-carrying drone that’s due to begin test flights in 2020. The drone can fly 180 knots (207 miles per hour) with a cruising altitude of 22,000-feet.

Cargo drone startup Natilus is working on a 30-foot drone that’s about the size and weight of a General Atomics’ MQ-1 Predator.

Sichuan Tengden Technology, a Bejing based Chinese startup company, is developing a cargo drone that can haul 20 tons of cargo.

Each of these companies is developing a long-range cargo drone, hoping they can be the first to soar through the skies.

Natilus, Sichuan Tengden Technology, and Elroy Air are expected to be operational by next year.

Elroy Air’s autonomous Chaparral system is expected to partner with FedEx, DHL, and UPS for package deliveries. According to David Merrill, CEO of Elroy Air, building cargo drones at this scale has been an enormous investment, but it’ll likely pay off in the coming years

.

Airfreight accounts for about 1% of world trade volume (by tonnage) and 35% of the world trade volume when determined by the value of shipped goods. With the proliferation of cargo drones, set to launch in the next several years, it seems that the transportation industry will go through a transformation period. But don’t expect these drones to fly overhead in this economic cycle, the technology will be in high demand after the next global recession by companies who need innovative technologies to cut down on cost.

 

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2IcLNNA Tyler Durden