Tag: news

Another (legacy deal) bites the dust…

 

Source: MichealPRamirez.com

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Authored Carey Wedler via TheAntiMedia.com,

Though right-wing commentators continue to decry the ‘war on cops,’ the latest data released by the country’s top law enforcement undermines that alarmist narrative.

According to the FBI’s annual Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted report, released this week, there were fewer police deaths in 2017 than in 2016. In 2016, 118 law enforcement officers died in the line of duty while in 2017, that number was 93.

More telling is the type of death the officers suffered. Last year, 46 officers were killed “feloniously” on the job while 47 died in accidents. As the FBI’s press release noted, “Both numbers have decreased from 2016, during which 66 officers were feloniously killed and 52 were accidentally killed, for a total of 118 line-of-duty deaths.”

The data is collected from “local, state, tribal, campus, and federal law enforcement agencies from around the country, as well as organizations that track officer deaths.”

A closer look at the statistics reveals further just how nonexistent the war on cops actually is. Of the 46 officers feloniously killed on the job, five were ambushed (defined as “entrapment/premeditation” by the FBI) and 3 were victims of unprovoked attacks. Twenty-one died during “investigative or enforcement activities,” which include traffic stops, investigating suspicious persons, or tactical situations.

In other words, they were killed doing the jobs they signed up to do (consider the popular refrain that ‘cops risk their lives’ — that’s part of the job description), though police officer does not even crack the top ten most dangerous jobs in the United States.

The takeaway here is that while some officers die on the job – and that is unfortunate – the deliberate sentiment to kill officers simply because they are police officers is not on the rise.

Thirty-five officers died in car accidents — more than four times the number killed by ambushes and unprovoked attacks (eight) — and according to the FBI, “of the 29 officers killed in automobile accidents, 12 were wearing seatbelts, and 15 were not,” though two of the officers not wearing seatbelts were sitting in parked cars.  Regardless, more officers died in car accidents while not wearing seatbelts (a violation of the laws they enforce, as it happens) than died as a result of flagrant attacks on their lives isolated from situational circumstances.

Further, the total number of officers killed by accident far dwarfs the number killed in ambushes or unprovoked attacks, and the total is still greater than all law enforcement deaths recorded in the annual report.

Further still, the number of cops killed feloniously was higher in 2016, 2014, 2012, 2011, 2010, and 2009 than it was last year, suggesting the rate of cop murders is subject to fluctuation and not consistently on the rise.

In another relevant detail, zero federal law enforcement agents were killed in 2017. In 2016, one was killed.

Despite the ongoing claims that police are under assault (as they continue to assault the public) — and despite congressional action to designate killing police officers a hate crime — for yet another year, this war on cops notion is proving to be nothing more than a myth.

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With Harvey Weinstein’s eventual indictment supposedly coming any day now (of course, both the NYPD and LAPD have been hinting that indictments are imminent for months), the disgraced Hollywood megaproducer’s estranged wife, Georgina Chapman, has come forward to do an interview with Vogue – her first since the scandal broke nearly eight months ago.

During her wide-ranging interview, she recounts the initial shock of learning of her husband’s misdeeds (she claims she had no inkling of his predatory behavior) – how she lost 10 pounds in five days, and fled the US with her children.

When the one-two punch of all of the allegations against Weinstein landed in early October—first the New York Times investigation, followed by the much more damning piece in The New Yorker a few days later—Chapman was in a kind of stupor. “I lost ten pounds in five days. I couldn’t keep food down.” I ask her how long it took for her to absorb the information. “About two days,” she says. “My head was spinning. And it was difficult because the first article was about a time long before I’d ever met him, so there was a minute where I couldn’t make an informed decision. And then the stories expanded and I realized that this wasn’t an isolated incident. And I knew that I needed to step away and take the kids out of here.”

She fled to Los Angeles with the children, while her partner, Craig, did her best to steady the ship. “Our friendship always comes first, so foremost, I was worried for Georgina,” Craig says. “Secondly, we have so many talented, loyal people who work for us, some who’ve been here for twelve, thirteen years, so my concern was to get to the office and get the collections out, so that people could be paid and pay their rents.”

The article also addresses accusations of complicity leveled at Chapman, who is widely suspected of being aware of her partner’s predations.

Because of the scale of Weinstein’s abuse and manipulations—and the lengths he allegedly went to to cover them up—there is a widely held assumption of complicity on Chapman’s part. “She must have known” is what so many people say at dinner parties. “The thing that pains me,” says her friend the model and singer Karen Elson, “is that when anyone finds out that I know George, that’s the first thing they say. Like she is somehow responsible for his hideous behavior. When I say, ‘Well, actually she didn’t know,’ it becomes this other judgment: ‘How could she not have known?’ Or: ‘Well, that’s on her if she didn’t.’ It’s so complicated.”

It’s complicated, but it is also the oldest story in the book. Even Chapman points out that – putting aside the enormity of her situation – women are betrayed by their husbands every day because they turn out to be not the men their wives thought they were. “I don’t want to be viewed as a victim,” she says, “because I don’t think I am. I am a woman in a shit situation, but it’s not unique.”

Before Weinstein’s fall, Chapman says she believed their marriage to be a happy one. She said being married to Weinstein gave her confidence, and that he often aided her in her career.

Chapman first met Weinstein socially, at a party, and they began dating on and off. “I was living in England, and I had just come out of a relationship, so it was very slow.” Was it a good marriage? “That’s what makes this so incredibly painful: I had what I thought was a very happy marriage. I loved my life.” Asked if she was ever suspicious about his behavior, she says, “Absolutely not. Never.” For one thing, he traveled constantly. “And I’ve never been one of those people who obsesses about where someone is.”

It’s very difficult now for people to imagine that there was ever anything good about Harvey Weinstein. But the fact remains that before all of the horrifying revelations, most people thought Weinstein could be an asshole and a bully, but they didn’t think he was a monster. There is always that beauty-and-the-beast mystery: What does she see in him? When I ask Chapman what the initial attraction was, she says, “Well, he’s a wonderful father to my kids. But initially? He’s charismatic. He’s an incredibly bright, very learned man. And very charitable. He paid for a friend of mine’s mother, who had breast cancer, to go to a top doctor. He was amazing like that. He is amazing like that. That is the tough part of this . . . this black-and-white thing . . . life isn’t like that.” When I tell her that a friend of the couple’s told me that Weinstein gave Chapman confidence, she says, “Yes. Absolutely. He was a wonderful partner to me. He was a friend and a confidant and a supporter. Yes, he’s a big personality. . . . And . . . but . . . I don’t know. I wish I had the answers. But I don’t.”

Interestingly, Chapman recalls how she got to know Huma Abedin – of all people – during the summer of 2017, just months before the Weinstein story broke.

Abedin, who also spoke with Vogue for the story, described Chapman as “stunning” and “funny”.

Last summer Chapman got to know Huma Abedin, a few months before the news of the allegations about Weinstein broke, during play dates between their sons. Now they are supertight. “We just . . . bonded,” Abedin says and lets out a dark laugh. “In allll kinds of ways. This particular club, ironically, it’s not such a small one: women who have had to endure it in such a public way, women like Georgina and me. People don’t feel sorry for us; you don’t get that empathy. People think you’re beautiful, you’re thin, you’re rich, you’re photographed on the red carpet, and you get stuck in this category. There’s so much more depth beyond all that with Georgina.”

Over the summer, Abedin came to see that depth. “You look at her from the outside, if you don’t know her, and you think, She’s perfect,” says Abedin. “She could be a model for the clothes she designs. But when you go to the house, she opens the door without any makeup on, and she’s stunning, and she’s funny and goofy with her children—who are clearly the most important people in her life. She’s at the stove making chicken fingers and French fries, and she’s one of the realest people I know. There’s nothing entitled about her. You believe she is someone who works really hard at being a good and present mom, and doing her job really well.”

After selling the family homes in Connecticut, the Hamptons and the West Village, Chapman is in the process of moving to a farm in Upstate New York with her children, whom she says respond well to animals.

On the day I visited her office, I noticed that Chapman kept checking her phone, like she was waiting for news. Turns out, she was: She had put a bid on a house in upstate New York—a farm—and was hoping to find out if the bid was accepted. “Fingers crossed,” she said. With the sale of all the family homes—in the Hamptons, Connecticut, and the West Village—Chapman is trying to get herself and the children situated. “As soon as this happened, I had this crazy vision: I know what I need to do. I need to move to a farm upstate. My daughter loves riding; my son responds to animals. I need to build a farm.”

Because of the divorce and the fact that they have two children together, Chapman is one of the few people who’s known to be in regular contact with Weinstein, who has been hiding out in Arizona since he unwittingly became the face of the #MeToo movement.

Asked about his state of mind, Chapman deflected the question. “Clearly when I was married to him I didn’t know anything about his state of mind, so I’m probably not the best person to ask.”

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Authored by Matthew Continetti via FreeBeacon.com,

Kanye West, Jordan Peterson, and the revolt against political correctness…

On May 15, 1939, philosopher John Dewey issued a statement to the press announcing the formation of the Committee for Cultural Freedom. Attached were the committee’s declaration of principles and the names of 96 signatories. The following day, at a meeting inside Columbia University’s Low Library, the committee adopted its official manifesto.

“Never before in modern times,” the document began, “has the integrity of the writer, the artists, the scientist, and the scholar been threatened so seriously.”

The committee’s members included anthropologists, philosophers, journalists, dramatists, attorneys, educators, and historians. Politically, they ran the gamut from democratic socialists to New Deal liberals to nineteenth-century liberals who embraced the market without serious qualification. What unified them was their commitment “to propagate courageously the ideal of untrammeled intellectual activity.” The “fundamental criteria for evaluating all social philosophies today,” their manifesto read, are “whether it permits the thinker and the artist to function independently of political, religious, or racial dogmas.” The basis for this alliance between such disparate persons, they continued, was “the least common denominator of a civilized culture – the defense of creative and intellectual freedom.”

It was the existence of Popular Front groups who toed the Stalinist line in science, literature, social thought, and the arts that moved the committee’s chief organizer, Sidney Hook, to action. “It seemed to me that it was necessary to challenge this massive phenomenon that was corrupting the springs of liberal opinion and indeed making a mockery of common sense,” Hook wrote in his autobiography, Out of Step (1987). “I decided to launch a new movement, based on general principles whose validity would be independent of geographical or national boundaries and racial or class membership.”

Hook’s committee was the precursor of the international Congress for Cultural Freedom, convened in Berlin in June 1950, and the affiliated American Committee for Cultural Freedom organized in 1951. At that first meeting in Berlin, Arthur Koestler read from the dais the “Manifesto of Freedom,” which held “as self-evident” that “intellectual freedom is one of the inalienable rights of man,” and that such freedom “is defined first and foremost by his right to hold and express his own opinions, and particularly opinions which differ from those of his rulers. Deprived of his right to say ‘no,’ man becomes a slave.”

The America of 2018, needless to say, is a much different place than the America of 1939 and 1951. Nazi Germany is long gone, extinguished in a war that killed 60 million souls. The Soviet Union disappeared 27 years ago, after a Cold War that lasted some five decades. Print media have collapsed and been replaced by digital and social media that limit the power of gatekeepers and extend the reach of minority viewpoints. If the late 1930s and early 1950s are the baseline, the world of 2018 is much more free.

But threats remain. Totalitarian systems in Russia, China, and their former Marxist-Leninist satellites have transformed, with the exception of North Korea, into systems of authoritarian control that permit some economic liberty while maintaining state sovereignty over politics, society, and culture. The authoritarians use “sharp power” to interfere in democratic elections, bully and exploit Western corporations and universities, and influence public discourse through information warfare. A renascent Marxism competes with, and to a large extent has been subsumed by, the ideology of multiculturalism and its attendant identity politics.

It is this ideology and politics that have captured America’s most prestigious intellectual, cultural, and media institutions.

The university, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and increasingly formerly “neutral” and “objective” platforms such as the New York Times and the Atlantic have come under the sway of racial and sexual dogmas and attitudes that brook no disagreement. Membership in these institutions, which play a crucial role in elite opinion-formation, and the social networks in which they are embedded, is contingent on agreement with or silence about certain ideas of “white privilege,” patriarchal “oppression,” “Islamophobia,” and “gender fluidity.” To dissent from these ideas – to exercise one’s right to say no – invites not only anathematization from polite society but also the loss of one’s job and, in some cases, physical threats.

Just as happened in the twentieth century, an unlikely group of compatriots has emerged to resist the contemporary domestic challenge to cultural freedom. Reading Bari Weiss’s recent article on the “intellectual dark web,” one cannot help being struck by the diversity of opinion and partisan allegiance among the renegade thinkers challenging political correctness and its stigmatization of arguments that violate its axioms of group identity, racial strife, and transgenderism. A stultifying intellectual atmosphere, in which the subjective emotional responses of designated victim groups take precedent over style, argument, and empirical evidence, makes for unexpected alliances. Who would have thought that Kanye West would become, in the space of a few Tweets, the most famous and recognized champion of individual free thought in the world today? Who could have anticipated that New Atheist Sam Harris would find himself in a united front with Jordan Peterson, who instructs his millions of acolytes in the continued relevance of biblical story?

The new advocates for cultural freedom are different from their forebears. They are more ethnically and sexually diverse. Practically all of them operate outside the academy. They are not self-consciously organized as a movement. To some extent, of course, this lack of institutionalization is related to present historical conditions. The mid-twentieth century was an era of bigness, of vast bureaus, of hierarchical corporations where political life, especially on the left, was divided and subdivided into party, committee, and cell. The early twenty-first century is too fractured, disaggregated, and anarchic for such precise construction and coordination. This is a time of weak relationships, of loose affiliations. People drop in and out of movements at the press of a “like,” “Tweet,” or “send” button. And because our media are unbundled, and the multiple means of personal expression so accessible, no one authority has monopoly power to distinguish reasonable dissenters from cranks. This creates an opportunity for the enforcers of political correctness, who are quick to associate the enemies they unfairly deride as racists with genuine ones.

What has come into being is not a committee or congress but a Coalition for Cultural Freedom. This wide-ranging assembly of critics opposed to the consensus that dominates the commanding heights of culture, entertainment, and media is neither centrally directed nor unified, not precisely delineated or philosophically consistent. But they do all believe in what Gaetano Mosca called “juridical defense,” pluralism in opinion and institutions to guard against conformity and repression. And the fact that Kanye’s heresy and Weiss’s reporting were greeted with contumely, derision, outrage, and agony is evidence for the strength of such conformity, the desire for such repression.

Political correctness reigns in San Francisco, Hollywood, and Berkeley, it is making inroads into New York and the permanent bureaucratic government in Washington, D.C., but its position is insecure, unstable. The ferocity with which challenges to the ideology are met signifies not power but weakness. All it takes to end the hegemony of political correctness is to combat or ignore its will to intimidation. And that is happening.

The simple truth is that people do not like being reduced to their skin color, and they hate being called racists. So they tend to abandon the figures and organizations that see them as nothing but biased, sexist, bigoted dullards who belong in a basket of deplorables.

They may not voice their opinion to a pollster for fear of social ostracism. But they reveal their preferences through action.

Hillary Clinton can tell you as much. So can ESPN, and the NFL, and the Hollywood studios whose social justice masterworks are rewarded at the Oscars but not at the box office. Google and Facebook have also felt the backlash from censoring non-woke voices. Conversely, the success of American Sniper, Donald Trump, Jordan Peterson, and Roseanne has revealed the size of the audience willing to abandon the poses of political correctness for authenticity and disruption.

“The defense of intellectual liberty today imposes a positive obligation: to offer new and constructive answers to the problems of our time,” wrote the authors of the Freedom Manifesto.

“We address this manifesto to all men who are determined to regain those liberties which they have lost and to preserve and extend those which they enjoy.”

Those ranks included Sidney Hook and Arthur Koestler. Today they have been joined by Jordan Peterson, Charles Murray, Christina Hoff Sommers, and, yes, Kanye West.

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Yesterday we reported on a disturbing op-ed in the Wall Street Journal by Kimberly Strassel suggesting the FBI had a mole within the Trump campaign. 

After a battle between House Intel Committee Chair Devin Nunes (R-CA) and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein over the release of classified information that was so top-secret that the DOJ refused to show Nunes on the grounds that it “could risk lives by potentially exposing the source, a U.S. citizen who has provided intelligence to the CIA and FBI” – the agency finally relented on Wednesday, allowing Nunes and Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) to receive a classified briefing.

This U.S. citizen, according the WSJ report, is a spy that the FBI embedded in the Trump campaign – and Strassel says she knows who it is but won’t say. 

“I believe I know the name of the informant, but my intelligence sources did not provide it to me and refuse to confirm it. It would therefore be irresponsible to publish it.”

Mole hunt

In February, The Last Refuge reported that Trump campaign advisor Carter Page was working as an “under-cover employee” (UCE) for the FBI – helping the agency build a case against “Evgeny Buryakov,” Then – seven months later, the FBI told a FISA court Page was a spy.

In April 2017, writing a story about Carter Page (trying to enhance/affirm the Russian narrative), the New York Times outlined Page’s connections to the Trump campaign.  However, New York Times also references Page’s prior connection to the Buryakov case. If you ignore the narrative, you discover the UCE1 description is Carter Page.  READ [Notice how the story is shaped] LINK HERE –The Last Refuge

When asked over Twitter by OANN‘s Jack Posobiec whether it was him, Page denied the charge – replying “But if what I’m hearing alleged is correct, it’s a guy I know who splits most his time between inside the Beltway and in one of the other Five Eyes countries,” adding “And if so, it’d be typical: swamp creatures putting themselves first.”

No @JackPosobiec, not me. But if what I’m hearing alleged is correct, it’s a guy I know who splits most his time between inside the Beltway and in one of the other Five Eyes countries.

And if so, it’d be typical: swamp creatures putting themselves first.https://t.co/lt2U4w2iGp

— Carter Page, Ph.D. (@carterwpage) May 11, 2018

Another person of interest is Stefan Halper, a foreign policy expert and Cambridge professor who is connected to the CIA and its British counterpart, MI6.

Halper set up a February, 2016 meeting between Trump campaign advisor George Papadopoulos and former Australian High Commissioner (and Clinton pal) Alexander Downer. Downer’s tip to Australian authorities that Papadopoulos knew of hacked emails which would be harmful to Hillary Clinton was a major factor in the FBI’s decision to launch its counterintelligence operation against the Trump campaign. 

Halper had several other contacts with Trump campaign officials, as the Daily Caller‘s Chuck Ross reported in March. 

Halper’s September 2016 outreach to Papadopoulos wasn’t his only contact with Trump campaign members. The 73-year-old professor, a veteran of three Republican administrations, met with two other campaign advisers, The Daily Caller News Foundation learned. –Daily Caller

Interestingly, The New York Post‘s Paul Sperry points out that Stefan Halper’s Wikipedia page had been updated to include “He has been exposed as a CIA and M-16 spy behind the FBI Russiagate investigations of the Trump Campaign and is an informant to the Mueller Special Prosecutor investigation” – an addition which was quickly deleted.

Interesting recent addition to STEFAN A HALPER’s Wikipedia page …

“He has been exposed as a CIA and M-16 spy behind the FBI Russiagate investigations of the Trump Campaign and is an informant to the Mueller Special Prosecutor investigation.”https://t.co/WF9sCL6H3m

— Paul Sperry (@paulsperry_) May 11, 2018

Good catch! It’s already been removed. Here are the screenshots. pic.twitter.com/3fdLLOGrSf

— 🇺🇸 MAGA 🇺🇸 (@drdrjojo) May 11, 2018

Perhaps Page and Halper are connected through London-based Hakluyt & Co. – founded by three former British intelligence operatives in 1995 to provide the kind of otherwise inaccessible research for which select governments and Fortune 500 corporations pay huge sums. 

Interestingly, Alexander Downer has been on their advisory board for a decade, while Halper is connected to Hakluyt through Jonathan Clarke, with whom he has co-authored two books. You can find a June 2004 video of the pair discussing their first book here. (h/t themarketswork.com)

Jonathan Clarke is the U.S. Representative – Director U.S. Operations for Hakluyt. Clarke is a fairly public figure – but it was quite difficult to locate references to his association with Hakluyt.

Given the lengthy association between Halper and Clarke, I expect we will find additional ties between Halper, other members of Hakluyt and members of British Intelligence.

Halper’s association with former MI6 Head Richard Dearlove – via their previous positions at Cambridge Intelligence Seminar –  is already known. –Themarketswork.com

Here’s Posobiec’s take on the FBI mole situation and Hakluyt. In short “Page got played” and the rabbit hole appears to be very deep… 

BREAKING: FBI Trump Source https://t.co/Q5MS5t2NL9

— Jack Posobiec🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) May 11, 2018

Paul Sperry made another titillating tweet Friday morning, in which he writes:

“DEVELOPING: A major new front is opening in the political espionage scandal. In summer 2016, Brennan with his FBI liaison Strzok, along with help from Kerry @ State, were trying to set Russian espionage traps for minor players in the Trump campaign through cultivated intel assets”

DEVELOPING: A major new front is opening in the political espionage scandal. In summer 2016, Brennan with his FBI liaison Strzok, along with help from Kerry @ State, were trying to set Russian espionage traps for minor players in the Trump campaign through cultivated intel assets

— Paul Sperry (@paulsperry_) May 11, 2018

As we reported in March, Nunes and the House Intelligence Committee was investigating the Obama State Department under John Kerry for its involvement in the dissemination of the unverified “Steele Dossier,” along with a second anti-Trump dossier written by Clinton confidant Cody Shearer. Nunes referred to this as “Phase 2” of his committee’s probe into Russian influence in the 2016 US election. 

Nunes is also investigating whether former CIA director John Brennan perjured himself during Congressional testimony about the Steele Dossier. As Paul Sperry wrote in February:

In his May 2017 testimony before the intelligence panel, Brennan emphatically denied the dossier factored into the intelligence community’s publicly released conclusion last year that Russia meddled in the 2016 election “to help Trump’s chances of victory.”

Brennan also swore that he did not know who commissioned the anti-Trump research document (excerpt here), even though senior national security and counterintelligence officials at the Justice Department and FBI knew the previous year that the dossier was funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign. –RealClear Investigations

So, if Sperry’s tweet is correct, the Obama State department, CIA, and FBI conspired to set “Russian espionage traps” for minor players in the Trump campaign, and the FBI had a mole within the Trump campaign, that giant sucking sound you might hear is nothing short of the US Intelligence community starting to implode.

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Authored by MN Gordon via EconomicPrism.com,

This week brought forward more evidence that we are living in a fabricated world.  The popular storyline presents a world of pure awesomeness.  The common experience, however, grossly falls short.

On Tuesday, for example, the Labor Department reported there were a record 6.6 million job openings in March.  Based on the Labor Department’s data, there were enough jobs available – exactly – for the 6.6 million Americans who were actively looking for a job.  What a remarkable feat!

In fact, this is the first time there’s been a job opening for every unemployed person since the Labor Department began keeping track of job openings nearly 20 years ago.  Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at MUFG Union Bank, took one look at the jobs and labor report and exclaimed: “The labor market is literally on fire it is so hot with job openings!”

Now, obviously, not every person is qualified for every job.  A person’s skills often don’t match up with those required for a certain job.  This may be why the unemployment rate’s 3.9 percent, not 0.0 percent.

Still, doesn’t the perfect harmony of a precise 1:1 ratio of job openings to unemployed persons strike you as being contrived?  Well, that’s because it is.

This statistic, like many of the official numbers, is fake.  It’s a fabrication.  And it doesn’t stand up to the empirical first-hand experience of broad cross-sections of the population.

Fabrications

Is the labor market really so hot with job openings that it’s literally on fire?  The Labor Department’s fake numbers say so.  Nonetheless, let’s cross check their accuracy.

To clarify, there are various ways to reduce the unemployment rate.  There are hard ways.  And there are easy ways.  Reducing the unemployment rate by increasing the number of people that are working is hard.  It take time, hard work, and discipline.  Moreover, it takes strong economic growth.

But no one likes time, hard work, and discipline.  Instead, everyone likes the opposite.  Everyone likes instant gratification, lethargy, and flexibility – especially government statisticians.

Hence, the quicker, easier, and simpler way to reduce the unemployment rate is to stop counting some of the people that fall in the unemployed category.  Make them, in effect, disappear.  Problem solved!  Here, Erik Sherman, writing for Forbes, explains how the fiction is written:

“The number of jobs increased by 164,000 in April.  But the number of unemployed dropped by 239,000 between March and April.

“That is why the employment-population ratio — the percentage of all people of working age (16 and up, including people who have stopped looking for work) that are employed — dropped from 60.4 percent to 60.3 percent.  More people disappeared from the labor rolls.”

This is how statistics are conveniently fudged and fabricated.  Of course, the disappeared unemployed didn’t actually vanish from the face of the earth.  They were merely disappeared from the unemployment rate statistics.

Still, fake numbers don’t somehow make the economy awesome.  Rather, they make the economy a constructed work of fiction.  The sole purpose of fake number is political expedience.

How to Get Ahead in Today’s Economy

Another cross check to the Labor Department’s fake numbers is wage growth.  An economy with a low unemployment rate should be an economy with high worker demand.  An economy with high worker demand should be an economy where workers have the opportunity to name their price.

In short, today’s economy – the one with an unemployment rate of 3.9 percent – should be an economy with strong wage growth.  But wage growth isn’t strong.  In fact, any wage growth there is, has been more than consumed by inflation.  People may get a raise, they may make more money in a nominal sense, but inflation eats up the extra money and then some.

How is it possible that the unemployment rate is 3.9 percent, yet wage growth is softer than a warm pile of mashed potatoes? 

Simple.  The unemployment rate is fake.

So what’s an industrious fellow to do, to get ahead in today’s economy?  Here are several options:

Option 1: Work harder and more hours, skimp and save, and stay out of debt.  Several years of this, however, and there will be no more available hours left in the day to work; though you may have squirreled away a small horde of nuts.

Option 2: Strike out on your own.  With any luck, and after a decade or two of hard work and sacrifice, you’ll be an overnight success.

Option 3: Check out of the workforce, and spend your days camped out on a portable picnic chair at the Santa Monica Public Library.  There’s free Wi-Fi!

As far as we can tell, it’s best to simultaneously do both Option 1 and Option 2.  While it may at times be masochistic, and there’s no guarantee of success, if you stay interested, and keep your sense of urgency, you’ll always have hope.

And having a little hope, no doubt, will put you ahead of nearly everyone else.

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Even as CNN is out with a new report condemning Iran for denying any responsibility or role in the latest massive exchange of fire between Israel and Syria, The New York Times has admitted (albeit buried deep in the story) that Israel was the actual aggressor and initiator of hostilities which threatened to spiral out of control overnight Wednesday and into Thursday morning.

While CNN and most Israeli and mainstream media sources blame Iran for initiating an attack on Israel, on the very day of the early morning strikes (Thursday), the Times acknowledged, “The barrage [of Syria/Iran missiles] came after an apparent Israeli missile strike against a village in the Syrian Golan Heights late Wednesday.”

This is significant as Israel is seeking to cast Iran as an aggressor on its border which must be dealt with preemptively; however Syria’s response—which involved between 20 and 50 missiles launched in return fire—imposed new rules of engagement on a situation in which Israel previously acted with impunity. 

And though multiple international reports have pointed to strikes landing on the Israeli side, Israel has apparently been extremely careful in preventing photographs or video of any potential damage to see the light of day. According to professor of Middle East history Asad AbuKhalil, “Israel censor still hasn’t allowed any reports about casualties or damage.”

Up until recently, Assad had not taken the bait of Israeli provocation for years now in what we previously described as a kind of “waiting game” of survival now, retaliation later. But with the Syrian Army now victorious around the Damascus suburbs and countryside, and with much of Syria’s most populous regions back under government control, it appears that Assad’s belated yet firm response to the Israeli large scale attack has changed the calculus. 

Even NYT admits towards end of the article that Israel initiated the exchange of fire:

“The barrage came after an apparent Israeli missile strike against a village in the Syrian Golan Heights late Wednesday.”

So why isn’t this the lead or headline???https://t.co/P0Nw9AqkXz

— Trita Parsi (@tparsi) May 10, 2018

Damascus has now signaled to Israel that its acts of aggression will be costly as Syrian leadership has shown a willingness to escalate. But how did this new and increasingly dangerous situation come about, and which side actually has the upper hand? 

* * *

Below is a dispatch authored and submitted by Elijah Magnier, Middle East based chief international war correspondent for Al Rai Media, who is currently on the ground in the region and has interviewed multiple officials involved in the conflict.

Israel hits Syrian and Iranian objectives and weapons warehouses again (evacuated weeks before) for the fourth time in a month. 28 Israeli jets participated in the biggest attack since 1974. Tel Aviv informed the Russian leadership of its intentions without succeeding in stopping the Syrian leadership from responding. Actually, what is new is the location where Damascus decided to hit back: the occupied Golan Heights (20 rockets were fired at Israeli military positions).

Syria, in coordination with its Iranian allies (without taking into consideration Russian wishes) took a very audacious decision to fire back against Israeli targets in the Golan. This indicates that Damascus and its allies are ready to widen the battle, in response to continual Israeli provocations.

But what is the reason why new Rules of Engagement (ROE) were imposed in Syria recently?

For decades there was a non-declared ROE between Hezbollah and Israel, where both sides were aware of the consequences. Usually, Israel prepares a bank of target objectives with Hezbollah offices, military objectives and warehouses and also specific commanders with key positions within the organization. Israel hits these targets, updated in every war. However, the Israelis react immediately against Hezbollah commanders, who have the task of supporting, instructing and financing Palestinians in Palestine, and above all the Palestinians of 1948 living in Israel. This has happened on many occasions where Hezbollah commanders related to the Palestinian dossier were assassinated in Lebanon.

Last month, Israel discovered that Iran was sending advanced low observable drones dropping electronic and special warfare equipment to Palestinians. The Israeli radars didn’t see these drones going backward and forward with their traditional radars, but were finally able to identify one drone using thermal detection and acoustic deterrence, to down it on its last journey.

In response to this, Israel targeted the Syrian military airport T-4 used by Iran as a base for these drones. But Israel was not satisfied and wanted to take further revenge, hitting several Iranian and Syrian targets during the following weeks.

Tel Aviv believed it could get away with repetitively hitting Iranian objectives without triggering a military response. Perhaps Israel really believed that Iran was afraid of becoming engaged in a war with Israel, with the US ready to take part in any war against the Islamic Republic from its military bases spread around Syria, in close vicinity to the Iranian forces deployed in Syria. Obviously, Iran has a different view from the Israelis, the Americans and even the Russians, who like to avoid any contact at all cost.

‘Israel retaliates’

The ridiculous trope that sums up ‘mainstream’ reporting on the Middle East. Israel: so often the victim, rather than the aggressor. Fake news. pic.twitter.com/bOfP0ANJmu

— Media Lens (@medialens) May 10, 2018

Regardless of how many Israeli jets took part in the latest attack against Iranian and Syrian objectives and how many missiles were launched or intercepted, a serious development has occurred: the Syrian high command broke all pre-existing rules and found no obstacle to bombing Israel in the occupied Golan Heights.

Again, the type of missiles or rockets fired by Syria against Israeli military objectives it is not important or whether these fell into an open space or hit their targets. What is important is the fact that a new ROE is now in place in Syria, similar to the one established by Hezbollah over Kiryat Shmona near the Lebanese border, when militants fired anti-aircraft cannons every time Israel violated Lebanese airspace in the 2000.

Basically Israel wanted to hit objectives in Syria but claims not to be looking for confrontation. Israel would have liked to continue provoking Syria and Iran in the Levant, but claims to be unwilling to head towards war or a battle. Israel would like to continue hitting any target it chooses in Syria without suffering retaliation.

But with its latest attack, Israel’s “unintended consequences” or provocation has forced the Syrian government to consider the occupied Golan Heights as the next battlefield. If Israel continues and hits beyond the border area, Syria will think of sending its missiles or rockets way beyond the Golan Heights to reach Israeli territory.

NEW MAP: #Israel strikes multiple targets in #Syria following rocket barrage pic.twitter.com/I3af5NzVO1

— Le Beck Int’l (@LeBeckInt) May 10, 2018

Actually, Hezbollah’s secretary general Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah said a few years back: “Leave Lebanon outside the conflict. Come to Syria where we can settle our differences.” Syria, logically, has become the battlefield for all countries and parties to settle their differences, the platform where the silent war between Israel and Iran and its allies is finding its voice.

In Damascus, sources close to the leadership believe Israel will continue attacking targets. However, Israel knows now where Syria’s response will be.This is what Israel has triggered but didn’t expect. Now it has become a rule.

The Israeli Iron Dome is inefficient and unable to protect Israel from rockets and missiles launched simultaneously. Now the battle has moved into Syrian territory occupied by Israel to the reluctance of Tel Aviv, and Russia. Iran and Syria are not taking into consideration Russia’s concern to keep the level of tension low if Israel is not controlling itself. Syria recognizes the importance of Russia and its efficient role in stopping the war in Syria and all the military and political support Moscow is offering.

However, Damascus and Tehran have other considerations, especially the goal of containing Israel. They have trained over 16 local Syrian groups ready to liberate the Golan Heights or to clash with any possible Israeli advance into Syrian territory.

Israel triggered what it has always feared and has managed to get a new battlefield, the Golan heights. It is true that Israel limited itself to bombing weapons warehouses never hit before. It has bombed bases where Iranian advisors are based along with Syrian officers (Russia cleared most positions to avoid the embarrassment of being hit by Israel). It is also true that Israel didn’t regularly bomb Iranian military and transport aircraft carrying weapons to Syria, or the main Iranian center of control and command at Damascus airport. This means that not all parties are pushing for a wider escalation, so far.

Can the situation get out of control? Of course it can, the question is when?!?

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Authored by Elizabeth Vos via DisobedientMedia.com,

Disobedient Media has consistently covered the work of The Forensicator over the last nine months. Our previous report focused on the first in a series of findings made by the analyst, which reveal intricate issues stemming from the Guccifer 2.0 persona’s earliest publications, as well as the establishment media’s culpability in broadcasting the documents as part of a larger Russian hacking narrative.

This article will focus on the second work published by the Forensicator in his ongoing series, titled: Media Mishaps: Early Guccifer 2 Coverage. The Forensicator sums up the results of his latest work:

Wittingly, or not, the media served a critical role in getting the message out that there were “Russian fingerprints” inside the first document that Guccifer 2 disclosed.

The media became Guccifer 2.0’s assistant by completing the long path from the original Trump opposition report to the final published PDF’s with Russian error messages in them (the so-called “Russian fingerprints”).

As described by the Forensicator, the emergence of wide public exposure to Guccifer 2.0’s first document and the Cyrillic error messages embedded within it depended solely on the work of establishment media. The outlets involved worked to make the technical details of the matter digestible for broad public consumption, and concluded that the errors in the document constituted evidence of a successful Russian-state-sponsored hack of the DNC.

While this may not represent a shocking revelation to those who have followed the lumbering progress of the Russian hacking narrative, the Forensicator’s new report indicates the degree to which there may have been active or unwitting cooperation between the Guccifer 2.0 persona and key press outlets who published the earliest reports on the alleged hacker’s publication of the ‘Trump Opposition report.’

Leading the charge in such press coverage was The Washington Post, who reported on June 14, 2016, that the DNC alleged that it had been hacked by Russian operatives. The following day, Guccifer 2.0 made his official debut.  He shared several documents with at least two media outlets: The Smoking Gun and Gawker. The outlets focused on Guccifer 2.0’s first document, a doctored version of a Trump Opposition Report that the DNC claimed had been stolen by Russian hackers. Both media outlets published Guccifer 2.0’s first publication as a PDF file on their websites.

As discussed by the Forensicator and Disobedient Media, the fact the email to which the opposition report was attached was later published in the Podesta Email collection by Wikileaks does not prove that Guccifer 2.0 and Wikileaks shared a source on the document. However, it does suggest that either the DNC, the operators of the Guccifer 2.0 person, or both parties had access to Podesta’s emails. This raises questions as to why the DNC would interpret the use of this particular file as evidence of Russian penetration of the DNC.

Returning to the timeline of events surrounding media coverage of the Guccifer 2.0 persona’s debut, one recalls that the following day, on June 16, 2016, Ars Technica published an article, titled “Guccifer” leak of DNC Trump research has a Russian’s fingerprints on it.  The “Russian fingerprints” cited were the error messages, written in the Cyrillic alphabet, which were included near the end of Gawker’s PDF printout of the opposition report. The errors are presented, with notation via the Forensicator, below:

Image via The Forensicator

The Forensicator’s findings describe the procedure by which Ars Technica opened Guccifer 2’s document, seeing the error messages in English despite Gawker’s PDF showing them in Russian. In response to this inconsistency, Ars Technica argued that the Russian error messages must have appeared when the file was printed as a PDF. The outlet also made the surprising claim that Gawker got its PDF file directly from Guccifer 2.0. This statement, as highlighted by the Forensicator in the following image, raises serious questions regarding the relationship between major press outlets and supposed Russian hackers.

It is important to not that the possibility that the respective outlets worked directly with those responsible for the Guccifer 2.0 persona cannot be proven, or ruled out, based on the currently available evidence.

 

It is also highly interesting that in this incredibly early Ars Technica report on the Guccifer 2.0 persona’s publication of an attachment from a Podesta email would use the term “leaker,” as opposed to “hacker,” in coverage which ultimately implied the DNC had been hacked by Russians. In fact, the article did not use the term one, but three times, including the article’s subtitle. One can only wonder if this apparent Freudian slip represented an unintentional admission of the real circumstances of the initial security breach at the DNC from which all later ‘Russian hacking’ controversy stems.

The Forensicator’s latest work provides a close reading of the metadata for the PDF’s published by The Smoking Gun and Gawker, shown in the table below. In reviewing his work, one notices that Gawker used LibreOffice and that The Smoking Gun used Word for Mac to create their PDF files.

The Forensicator’s analysis destroys Ars Technica’s speculative theory, by pointing out that Gawker‘s PDF has Russian error messages because Guccifer 2’s 1.doc was opened in LibreOffice:

If we open 1.doc in LibreOffice, the Russian error messages are visible.  They will be displayed in Russian, independent of the user’s language settings.  Why?  This behavior derives from the fact that LibreOffice handles these invalid (empty) URL’s differently than Microsoft Word for Windows.

We observe that LibreOffice does not issue an error when it encounters an empty URL inside a HYPERLINK field; it simply prints the text defined by \fldrslt.  The \fldrslt value in this case is the display text for the URL, which happens to be the Russian error message.  LibreOffice prints that Russian error message independent of the user’s current language setting; it thinks it is simply the URL’s display text.

The above explanation iterates the method by which Gawker created its PDF with “Russian fingerprints”, but leaves one wondering how The Smoking Gun produced its PDF containing Russian error messages?  The Smoking Gun did not use LibreOffice – they used Word for Mac instead.  The Forensicator runs this down, writing:

“Surprisingly, Word for Mac behaves differently from Word for Windows, when it encounters an empty URL.  Word for Mac behaves similarly to LibreOffice; it quietly accepts the empty URL and simply displays the hyperlink text (defined by the \fldrslt function code) inside the document.  This text happens to be a Russian error message, written in Cyrillic.”

The Forensicator points out that if both media outlets had opened Guccifer 2’s 1.doc in Word for Windows, the error messages would have appeared in English, and there would never have been any “Russian fingerprints” – and therefore Russian hacking – story.  Given that the vast majority of users have Microsoft Word for Windows, it is especially surprising that both Gawker and The Smoking Gun used a different word processing application.

In his previous report, the Forensicator explained the multi-step complex process used to embed the Russian error messages into 1.doc, in other words, the Guccifer 2.0 persona’s side of the operation in producing the initial Russian hacking ‘evidence.’  Now, we learn from his newest report, that a final critical final step was needed to have those Russian error messages appear in the published PDF’s – the journalists had to print those PDF’s with either LibreOffice or Word for Mac. Given this, the Forensicator makes this critical summary point:

“The media became Guccifer 2’s assistant by completing the long path from the original Trump opposition report to the final published PDF’s with Russian error messages in them (the so-called Russian fingerprints).”

The Forensicator mentions that his analysis depends on the assumption that both Gawker and The Smoking Gungenerated their own PDF’s.  If instead, they received their PDF documents from those behind the construction of the Guccifer 2.0 persona or a third party and didn’t inform their readers of this ‘chain-of-custody’ of their evidence, serious questions as to the integrity of their reporting process are inevitably raised.

In this way, the respective media outlets can be said to have taken an active role (wittingly or not) in advancing the “Russian fingerprints” narrative. They achieved this by describing Guccifer 2.0’s publication of the Trump Opposition report as an incident related to Russian hacking, and most importantly, by using the required operating systems and settings to create Cyrillic error messages used to substantiate these claims. Placing the intent of the journalists involved and the ominous reference by Ars Technica to a ‘leaker’ aside, Gawker and The Smoking Gun can be said to have acted as final messengers of the Guccifer 2.0 persona and those behind it. 

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The value of all the bitcoins sitting in underground bunkers owned by wealth-management startup Xapo has been the subject of intense speculation ever since the company first allowed journalists into the catacombs where the family offices of the world’s wealthiest people stash their digital gold.

Now, Bloomberg – after conversations with two purported clients – has produced a figure: Somewhere around $10 billion. Several sources said that number would be “a good approximation” – though the price can still be volatile.

Interestingly enough, with its reputation unmatched by other firms, Xapo has in effect created something more than just a bitcoin vault. It’s essentially the first private bank for rich bitcoiners.

Because in addition to its security offerings, Xapo also provides customers with a bitcoin debit card and access to a bitcoin trading desk.

Already, the company’s holdings – which constitute roughly 7% of the global bitcoin supply – are higher than 98% of the 5,670 banks in the US.

“Everyone who isn’t keeping keys themselves is keeping them with Xapo,” said Ryan Radloff of CoinShares, which has more than $500 million of Bitcoin stored at Xapo. “You couldn’t pay me to keep it with a bank.”

Founded by Argentine entrepreneur and PayPal board member Wences Casares, who is widely credited with turning the Valley’s VC billionaires on to bitcoin, the company has amassed a network of underground vaults, including a decommissioned Swiss military bunker.

Thanks to Cesares’ reputation, Xapo has managed to attract venture investments from some of the Valley’s biggest names, including LinkedIn Corp. co-founder Reed Hoffman and former Wall Street trader Mike Novogratz, who is, of course, is in the process of setting up his own crypto “merchant bank” that might end up competing with Xapo.

It also has relationships with major crypto investment firms, such as Grayscale and CoinShares.

Xapo’s clients aren’t limited to wealthy individuals. First Block Capital, one of Canada’s first registered crypto firms, chose Xapo to be its custodian – the first sign that the institutional market for crypto custody could some day dwarf Xapo’s private business.

“Every part of their DNA is geared to security,” said Sean Clark, First Block’s founder, who noted the vault’s fingerprint scanners were equipped with a pulse reader to prevent amputated hands from being used. “Whenever we make big transfers they FaceTime us, we have duress words, if it’s big enough they’ll fly out to see us.”

To pursue institutional investors, Xapo President Ted Rogers hired Peter Najarian, a veteran of emerging-market trading at UBS Group and Royal Bank of Scotland Group, to oversee outreach to pension funds, private banks, assets managers, family offices and hedge funds.

The perceived lack of an institutional-grade custodial solution for Bitcoin has been one of the sticking points for many money managers looking to try the asset class. Xapo says its already offering precisely that solution. If it persuades them of its merits, the implications for Bitcoin would be profound.

“A fraction of that kind of institutional money flowing into the space would be a tidal wave,” Najarian said.

However, there’s one factor that could limit Xapo’s growth, particularly as the crypto market outside of bitcoin grows (assuming the alt-coin universe hasn’t already reached its zenith). The company only works with bitcoin because of Cesares’ belief that it alone will succeed. 

For everybody who’s not wealthy enough (or too cheap) to pay a third party for an elaborate private-storage scheme, individuals can always store their private keys – the tool that gives them access to their bitcoin – on a hard drive that’s air-gapped from the Internet.

Of course, no solution is 100% safe from hackers and thieves. And at the end of the day, that reality might be enough to indefinitely stave off the “mainstream adoption” that bitcoiners say is just around the corner.

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