Month: December 2017

North Korea’s Newest Missile Is Capable Of Carrying Multiple Warheads

Contrary to the South Korean government’s initial analysis, the missile launched by North Korea into the waters west of Japan yesterday could represent an important advancement in the country’s missile technology that would allow it to carry multiple warheads.

According to a report in Japanese business newspaper Nikkei, photos of the Hwasong-15 published by local North Korean media showcase a newly developed launch system and casing.

Rodong Sinmun, a mouthpiece for the North's ruling Workers' Party of Korea, published photos of the Hwasong-15, the country's latest intercontinental ballistic missile, at liftoff and mounted on what appears to be a newly developed mobile launch system. The missile seems to involve a completely new rocket, judging by its size and shape, South Korea's Ministry of National Defense said Thursday. The ministry's initial analysis Wednesday claimed the Hwasong-15 was merely a retooled version of the Hwasong-14 ICBMs launched in July.

The shape of the rocket’s nose cone suggests that it was designed with an eye toward carrying multiple warheads, which could make it easier for the North to outfit the rocket with a nuclear payload. Also, by possessing the capability to strike multiple sites with one missile, it would make it more difficult for anti-missile defense systems to intercept it.

The latest missile's nose cone is more rounded than that of its predecessor. This could indicate it was designed with an eye toward a multiple-warhead system, Chang Young-keun of the Korea Aerospace University said in response to questions from South Korea's Yonhap News Agency. It was generally agreed that inserting multiple warheads into the Hwasong-14's pointed nose cone would be difficult.

 

A missile capable of striking multiple sites at once would be more difficult for ship- and land-based defense systems to fully neutralize than a single-warhead missile. North Korea, long thought to be seeking this technology, would pose a much greater threat as a result.

To be sure, the rounded nose cone may have been designed solely to protect the missile as it reenters Earth’s atmosphere. Atmospheric re-entry has long been a major obstacle for the North’s missile program.

The missile's shape may also be related to technology intended to protect its payload from the stress of re-entering the Earth's atmosphere, said Kim Jung-bong, a professor at Hanzhong University. Heavy use of high-performance material such as carbon fiber could account for the rounded form, Kim said.

 

Re-entry technology is considered a major hurdle blocking North Korea from deploying a functional ICBM. A warhead must survive the intense heat and pressure of re-entry to be useful as a weapon. The North is thought to have obtained high-performance materials, using them in its quest to clear that barrier.

Finally, the rounded nose might be necessary to allow North Korea to load its rudimentary nuclear warheads on the rocket. US and Japanese officials now believe the North is less than two years away from being able to successfully strike the continental US with nuclear weapon.

A rounder nose cone also allows for a larger payload, perhaps intended to let Pyongyang mount a nuclear warhead on the rocket, a source at Japan's Ministry of Defense said. The North's technology is "certainly advancing," Adm. Katsutoshi Kawano, chief of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces' Joint Staff, told reporters Thursday. Japan will operate under the assumption that "the threat has grown," he said.

Furthermore, the missile’s added girth suggests that it has been outfitted with two engines for the first two stages of flight instead of one.

The Hwasong-15 is 30 centimeters wider than its predecessor at around 2 meters, one expert said. This suggests the missile contains two engines in the first of its two stages, up from one in the Hwasong-14, said Kim Dong-yup, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul. The increased thrust could put the entire U.S. mainland within the missile's range without any reduction in the weight of the payload, the professor said.

 

A Rodong Sinmun editorial posted online Thursday called the launch of the Hwasong-15 a watershed moment for the North. Many think locking down multiple-warhead technology will take some time. But Pyongyang's progress toward a functional ICBM is undeniable.

While there’s still no guarantee the North could pull off a nuclear strike with a high degree of accuracy, a nuclear weapon detonated several hundred miles above the center of the country could destroy the US by causing a giant electromagnetic pulse. Such an attack could kill hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people by wiping out access to electricity across the entire continent.

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“What Can We Do…?”

Authored by Eric Peters via EricPetersAutos.com,

Until enough people’s minds are changed about coercion and collectivism, resistance is futile.

The debate will continue to be about how much should be stolen from whom and for what purpose – rather than about whether anything should be stolen by anyone for any purpose.

As things are, many people believe it is ok to steal from others – provided the stealing is done on their behalf by other people (these are called “tax collectors”) and the stolen goods are called by pleasant but intellectually dishonest, morally evasive names (examples include Social Security, welfare, foreign aid, grants and so on).

Using this technique of doublethink, people are able to do things to other people – or urge they be done to other people, on their behalf – without feeling ashamed or guilty, as they would if they were to do these things themselves, personally.

This “surgical excision” of the psychologically normal human revulsion for other-than-defensive violence and for the use of violence to take things from others is the keystone of the coercive collectivist system. Dislodge it and the whole edifice collapses.

It is that simple – and that hard.

Simple, because the moral principle is already established.

Excluding psychological defectives – the relatively small population in every society that does not feel ashamed or guilty about the use of violence (these people are called “criminals”) most people do feel ashamed and guilty when they steal or resort to violence.

And hence, most people do not steal or resort to violence.

It is a broadly accepted moral principle that theft and violence are wrong things; that those who steal and threaten to harm others in order to get what they want are not good people. This is half the battle, already won.

The problem is the disconnect which occurs once you transcend from the individual to the group.  

For some reason, most people – who are good people, basically – are able to not feel shame or guilt when the very things they understand instinctively as well as intellectually to be wrong when they do them on their own are done by people acting in some “official” capacity.

Theft becomes not-theft by the same method that Orwell’s character O’Brien in the novel 1984 used to persuade Winston Smith that the four fingers he was holding up were really five – with the difference being cognitive dissonance on a mass rather than an individual scale, inculcated from youth by a kind of warping of the critical faculty rather than by crude torture, as in the book.

The same person who would never threaten or assault his neighbor in order to take his property or dictate to him how he will be allowed to us his property (even if he had the physical power to do so) refrains from doing so because of the internal “check” of the guilt/shame mechanism about doing violence to others and stealing; yet this same person will feel good about going to the ballot box on election day and pulling a lever that will empower a proxy to do precisely the same things.

He will proudly wear an “I voted” sticker – and gladly accept the stolen goods he receives via proxy theft. He will advocate and defend this, even to the extent of considering his receipt of stolen goods an entitlement (as for instance “my” Social Security). The ends are immaterial; the means are always the same.

So long as it is called anything but what it actually is. So long as the violence necessary to obtain it is obscured from sight – and thought –  much in the same manner that one encounters a steak, neatly wrapped, without thinking about the cow that was killed to provide it.

The horror is camouflaged by verbiage.

Social Security. Obamacare. Aid to whomever. All the numerous form of government “help.” All of it comes – obviously enough, if one thinks about it honestly – not from the government but from our neighbors, taken from them against their will in exactly the same way that an ordinary thief takes their property. Only it is called something else and so considered – somehow – to be a normal, acceptable thing. The “price we pay for civilization.”

Organized, codified, legalized thievery without even the self-ware honesty of the street mugger.

Could anything be less “civilized”?

It is exceptionally odd.

These same people also accept the idea that a man wearing a certain kind of costume (i.e., a “law enforcer”) may assault them, effectively at will. And worse, they approve such assaults upon others whose personal activities do not affect them in any way – yet somehow offend their sensibilities.

And then object when the same sort of thing is done to them by others, whose sensibilities are also offended, but for different reasons.

Liberals vs. conservatives. Democrats vs. Republicans. It is a battle over means – but the ends are always the same.

Deconditioning these essentially good but horribly misled people is the first – admittedly gigantic – step away from coercive collectivism. It will be the hardest part, in part because these people are to some degree unconscious. A conscious mind knows that theft is theft in the same way and for the same reason that a chicken is a chicken and not a Labrador Retriever or a pile of wood.

This is self-evident to the conscious mind. It is what Aristotle had in mind when he talked about “A is A” – a thing is what it is and cannot simultaneously be something else. Government schools very deliberately tamp down the critical faculty in favor of repetition exercises – each thing treated as a separate and unrelated thing. Linguistic falsehood being one of the fathers of moral relativism and the grandfather of the much worse things which always proceed from that.

But get people awake . . . get them to see  . . . and the unconscious acceptance of generations can be dissipated in a moment.

It is that easy to change the world – by changing the words. By demanding that words be used precisely; that language not be used to obfuscate but to clarify.

Thomas Paine understood this power – and used it to greater effect than the armies of the British Empire at its very peak. He changed people’s minds about a doctrine which had been accepted as not only normal but reasonable by most people – by good people – for  generations: The “divine right” of kings.

Paine’s clear, concise language rendered this not merely ridiculous but obnoxious. The idea that a man in an ermine robe with a tiara on his head was somehow special, set apart from other men and entitled to rule over them. Kings suddenly became what they always were in fact: Men who trampled upon the rights of other men.

Only now – courtesy of Paine – people saw it.

It will be the same, some day, with coercive collectivism – whether practiced by Republicans or Democrats, liberals or conservatives. One day, it will also be seen for what it is – and regarded as both ridiculous and obnoxious.

The world can change in an instant.

It begins with a thought.

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In Shocking Verdict, San Francisco Jury Acquits “Kate’s Law”-Victim’s Killer

In a verdict that has shocked many in the Bay Area (and across America), a jury of six men and six women in sanctuary city San Francisco found illegal immigrant (and five-time deportee) Jose Ines Garcia Zarate not guilty in the death of Kate Steinle.

Mr. Garcia Zarate had been homeless at the time of the shooting and had multiple felony convictions and five prior deportations to Mexico. He had been set free from jail only months before the shooting, in defiance of requests by federal immigration authorities, who had asked that he be held longer so he could be deported again.

The backlash to his release into the community crescendoed when Donald Trump invoked Ms. Steinle’s killing as he campaigned for president.

As The New York Times reports, Ms. Steinle’s death in July 2015 fed into a fierce debate over whether immigrants without legal status should be deported more aggressively, and over the role local law enforcement should play.

Ms. Steinle, known as Kate, a 32-year-old medical equipment saleswoman, was walking along Pier 14 in San Francisco when she was struck by a bullet and collapsed into her father’s arms.

Mr. Garcia Zarate acknowledged firing the weapon, but said it was an accident.

Zarate and his defense team maintained the argument that the suspect found the stolen weapon on the pier that day and it "just fired."

 

The gun belonged to a federal Bureau of Land Management ranger and was stolen from his parked car a week earlier.

 

The bullet ricocheted on the pier's concrete walkway before it struck Steinle, killing her. Zarate has admitted to shooting Steinle, but says it was an accident.

Defense attorney Matt Gonzalez said Garcia Zarate found the gun at the pier… but the stories of what happened copntradicted one another…

He said it was wrapped in cloth, and when Garcia Zarate unwrapped it, the gun accidentally discharged.

 

But in a police interrogation, Garcia Zarate admitted to firing the gun, saying he was aiming at a seal.

 

He also told police that he stepped on the gun, causing it to fire.

But still, after six days of deliberation, the illegal Mexcian immigrant was acquitted of murder and manslaughter charges and also found not guilty of assault with a firearm.

Garcia Zarate was found guilty of illegal firearms possession, which carries a sentence of 16 months to three years.

*  *  *

The public defender wasted no time in focusing his thoughts on President Trump and his administration…saying Zarate was "extremely relieved" by the outcome and that while Steinle's death "was a horrible tragedy," it was used as "political fodder for then candidate Donald Trump's anti-immigration agenda."

 Adachi added, "Despite the unfairly politicized atmosphere surrounding this case, jurors focused on the evidence, which was clear and convincing, and rendered a just verdict."

In a response to the verdict, Attorney General Jeff Sessions released a statement saying that despite California's attempt at a murder conviction, Zarate was able to walk away with only a firearm possession conviction because he was not turned over by San Francisco to ICE.

"When jurisdictions choose to return criminal aliens to the streets rather than turning them over to federal immigration authorities, they put the public's safety at risk," the statement said.

 

"San Francisco's decision to protect criminal aliens led to the preventable and heartbreaking death of Kate Steinle."

 

Sessions continued, "I urge the leaders of the nation's communities to reflect on the outcome of this case and consider carefully the harm they are doing to their citizens by refusing to cooperate with federal law enforcement officers."

Social media erupted with outrage at the verdict (with very few – if any attempting to defend the verdict)…

And even politically-correct politicians piped in…

We suspect it will not be long before President Trump has something to say about this verdict.

 

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Jose Garcia-Zarate, at Center of “Sanctuary City” Controversy, Acquitted on Murder and Manslaughter Charges

When a bullet from a gun in the hands of Jose Garcia-Zarate, a non-citizen in the U.S. who had been arrested and deported multiple times, ricocheted off the ground and killed sightseer Kate Steinle on a San Francisco pier in July 2015, it set off a national debate, which then-candidate Donald Trump inflamed, over the merits or demerits of certain cities’ policies of not actively enforcing federal U.S. immigration law or cooperating in handing over illegal immigrants to federal authorities.

Defense Lawyer Matt Gonzalez

If Garcia-Zarate had been deported again (he had already been five times) as federal law insisted he should have been (he had been in San Francisco city custody on a warrant regarding fleeing from an old marijuana charge from 1995, moved to them from federal custody for felony illegal re-entry to the U.S.) prior to Steinle’s being shot, went the argument, she would still be alive.

Today after six days of deliberation, a Superior Court jury in San Francisco acquitted Garcia-Zarate on murder, manslaughter, and assault charges, finding him guilty only on a lesser charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm.

That carries a minimum sentence of 16 months, according to this Courthouse News report by Dave Tartre. The maximum sentence he faces is three years, according to a detailed report on the outcome from Vivian Ho at the San Francisco Chronicle.

The jury seemed to have been convinced by defense arguments that Garcia-Zarate had no direct intention of firing the .40-caliber Sig Sauer pistol that he found that day on the waterfront, four days after it had been stolen from a U.S. Bureau of Land Management ranger’s car nearby.

The defense insisted, as per the Chronicle, that Garcia-Zarate, “who had a history of drug crimes but no record of violence, found the gun wrapped in a T-shirt or cloth under his seat on the pier just seconds before it discharged in his hands.” His public defenders insisted he “had never handled a gun and was scared by the noise, prompting him to fling the weapon into the bay, where a diver fished it out a day later.”

Assistant District Attorney Diana Garcia for the prosecution insisted in closing arguments that Garcia-Zarate was playing “his own secret game of Russian roulette.” The defense on the contrary painted the incident as pure accident, and the jury accepted that interpretation. Even the involuntary manslaughter charge would require the jury’s belief that he had been acting recklessly.

I wrote in July 2015 critiquing Rand Paul’s unlibertarian approach to the sanctuary city issue in the wake of Steinle’s death, noting that:

as Nick Gillespie pointed out last week, despite immigration restrictionist fantasies that illegal immigrants = crime wave, a sanctuary city such as San Francisco…has a lower murder rate than many comparable non-sanctuary cities. Much-touted increased deportations of “criminal immigrants” are much more often about violators of traffic laws, not laws against person or property. Higher rates of immigration do not equal higher rates of actual crime.

It’s curious for Rand Paul, or any Republican, to get outraged in this case that laws exist that, if more toughly enforced, could potentially have saved a life—even though in the staggeringly vast majority of cases enforcing deportation laws would save no lives but but merely bedevil or harm someone trying to peacefully live and sell his labor or services to others.

A selection of Reason TV videos on the facts about sanctuary cities can be found here, concluding that “New immigrants, including illegal immigrants, are less likely to commit violent or property crimes than U.S. citizens, and there’s little evidence that crime rates are higher in sanctuary cities than in non-sanctuary cities.”

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Resolved: The Welfare State Should Be Abolished

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Foundation For Economic Ecucation,

That the welfare state is for the purpose of helping the poor is one of the great fictions of our time…

I was honored to be the guest speaker of the Yale University Political Union last week, addressing the need to abolish the welfare state. The structure of the union breaks down students into “parties” based on political ideology. The guest speaks and then the students challenge. This is followed by minor speeches and challenges from students. The entire event lasts two hours, and the guest gets the final word.

A word on the students themselves: I was amazed at the erudition, decorum, and adult-like collegiality among them. It seems almost out of some movie I’ve seen, something set in the 1920s. I’m not entirely sure the students fully realize just how special they are. With a student body like this, I suspected that they learn more from engagement with each other than from their classes. Several students confirmed this. And, to be clear, this was true regardless of political outlook.

I, of course, was speaking on behalf of the pure free-market position on the welfare state, going further even than F.A. Hayek to say that the whole thing ought to be scrapped. There is nothing that the welfare state contributes to our lives that couldn’t be replaced by the normal operations of the market and civil society. In the end, I lost the debate, two to one, which is not a surprise, but I hope I planted plenty of seeds of doubt about the merit of the welfare state.

Command and Control

This whole topic is widely misunderstood. People think of the welfare state as a system of redistribution to help the poor improve their lot in life. Those who oppose it, we are told, are greedy advocates for the interests of the rich.

My contention is that this is just a story we tell ourselves that has nothing to do with the history and current reality of the welfare state. The welfare state is a system of command and control, imposed by the political elites, that targets politically marginalized groups in a way that, through both bad and good intentions, excludes them from participation in mainstream society.

The grim history is undeniable. Going back 100 years, controls on wages, working hours, marriage, migration, and professions were heavily influenced by eugenic and white supremacist ideology and pushed forward with the intention to mold population demographics in a way approved by political elites.

This is not the story anyone is taught in class. Mostly this history is suppressed, especially by champions of the welfare state. We are supposed to believe that the purpose of the welfare state was to help people. But I explained that the US already had a huge and growing structure of private welfare in place, particularly as provided by religious institutions dedicated to helping widows, orphans, and new immigrants.

A great example is Mother Cabrini of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. They opened orphanages all over the East and West Coasts, managing hundreds of properties including hospitals and schools. But for the “Progressive” intellectuals of the period, these institutions were considered unprofessional and entirely too undisciplined, and they sought to displace these institutions with secular and publicly funded services. They succeeded.

Between 1905 and the mid-1930s, the welfare state was built and came to replace private provision. Funding sources dried up following the double blow of the income tax and estate tax, together gutting the fortunes that had been so generous to charitable institutions. Public provision did not make up the difference. But the big change was regulatory. A great example of early efforts is the minimum wage. When it was first presented, it was designed not to raise the wages of the poor but to raise the bar of entry into the workforce as high as possible so as to exclude “unfit” portions of the population (for more on this, see my full article.)

The same story can be told about maximum hours legislation, immigration restriction, marriage licenses, public schools, business regulation, and so much more. The rationale was slightly different in each case but the main goal was the same: to control and manage the population through coercion.

Where do we get this idea that the welfare state is designed to help people live a better life? It began to emerge during the New Deal, but that was just a cover. The New Deal was really about creating large-scale business cartels. The story repeats itself: the people who construct and manage the institutions of the welfare state are not the poor; they are privileged intellectuals working with power elites in industry and government. It has always been so.

Not What We Think

But let’s look today at the workings of the modern welfare state. The idea that it actually helps the poor is unsupportable. It is funded by vast payroll and excise taxes that harm the poor and middle class disproportionately (the rich pay most of the income taxes). Of the more than $1 trillion of spending that today constitutes what people call the welfare state, most of the dollars end up in the hands of the cartelized medical industry, which results in higher prices, less competition, and lower quality service.

There is a reason why obtaining medical insurance and service is so difficult as compared with buying groceries or software. It is precisely because of so much state involvement. It has ended up restricting, not expanding, access.

Or consider food stamps. These aren’t for the poor. The program is administered by the Department of Agriculture to create a guaranteed market for big agriculture.

Imagine if the big three automakers could back “car stamps” so that taxpayers were forced to pay for cars for people in a certain demographic. It’s nice work if you can get it.

I concluded my speech by calling for a complete end to the welfare state as a necessary part of ending the hegemonic control by the ruling class. If you want to see what the state really does to the poor, visit the traffic court, the jails, the prisons, or see how policing works in poor communities. The state is not the friend of the poor.

The Responses

As you can imagine, my presentation confounded many of the people on the left–which probably constituted fully two-thirds of the people present. Following my speech, speaker after speaker pleaded for the need for the state to take from the rich and give to the poor as if this had never been tried. It’s like a narrative that some minds just cannot shake, despite all the evidence.

Still, I found their speeches fascinating because of the pervasive mistakes in their thinking.

First, not one speaker on the left seemed to connect the issue of poverty alleviation with the solution of wealth creation. Failing to address the issue of where wealth comes from–the zero-sum mindset here is pervasive–they have yet to learn the basic lesson that Adam Smith tried to explain two and a half centuries ago. He explained that wealth comes from the expansion of the division of labor, trade, innovation, and a flourishing commercial society. The dramatic decline in poverty around the world over the last 20 years comes not from more welfare but from expanding markets.

Second, not one speaker on the left seemed interested in the problem of granting the state power over people’s lives, which is very strange. An underlying assumption of their comments was that the state is a benevolent institution that is wise enough to pass and implement legislation that promotes social justice. It seems to be completely lost on these people that political establishments operate according to self-interest and end up advancing themselves most of all. Certainly, no state is interested in the precise political vision of Yale students.

Third, not one speaker on the left seemed particularly interested in the real history and experience of the welfare state as it has been practiced. Indeed, they seemed unwilling to defend any aspects of the status quo, even though policy has been striving for 100 years to implement precisely what they claim to favor. Why the lack of interest in the failures of the past? I suppose it is somewhat analogous to how today’s socialists are uninterested in the history of the Soviet Union or Mao’s China.

Welfare, Diversity, and Fascism

In my concluding remarks, I drew attention to the complex political dynamics between welfare and diverse population groups living under the same regime. People genuinely resent having their money taken and transferred to groups with which they feel no integral relationship. The welfare state, then, ends up exacerbating religious, racial, gender, and language conflicts, giving rise to populist movements that trend fascist. The advocates of the welfare state bear some responsibility for the rise of authoritarianism around the world.

These remarks were obviously unwelcome by the “social justice” crowd in attendance. Though I faced a lot of opposition, I do have to credit the students for not shutting me down and instead keeping the debate civil. As I mentioned, I was voted down by a margin of 2 to 1, but my hosts were thrilled with this result.

Your speaking appearance yesterday evening at Yale was memorably phenomenal! I was so very grateful for all of the substantive content and energetic explanations which you provided to our Yale Political Union assembly! Having brought in [other speakers], I can say proudly that in terms of intensive argumentation you topped the list!

In my perspective your arguments at yesterday evening’s debate were unrivaled; none of the opponents of your views who spoke during the debate actually provided convincing ideas and arguments that could match your own….This afternoon you were the subject of many campus conversations.

This is what it is all about: advancing good ideas, furthering the conversation, promoting engagement, and encouraging people to rethink the ideologies of top-down social management.

I had a wonderful experience. In some way, I lived my dream: to advocate the abolition of the welfare state at one of the places where the ideology of welfarism was born.

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Gartman: “We Are Going To See Tax Legislation Pass Either Tonight Or Tomorrow”

In a dramatic showdown on the Senate floor on Thursday afternoon, the Senate tax bill came this close to being killed by deficit hawks, and in the resulting chaotic aftermath, votes and debates which were scheduled for Thursday evening have now been pushed back to Friday morning. Who could have possibly foreseen it? Well, anyone who listened to Dennis Gartman on CNBC this afternoon, for one.

The “world renowned commodity guru” and closely followed market strategist – for all the wrong reasons – appeared on CNBC’s Power Lunch to discuss the market, saying the fact that the stock market wants to climb even higher is “stunning” but true.

“You’re at this point in the stock market where it can do anything. It’s gone parabolic,” the Gartman Letter published said. “It is stunning to me, surprising to me, but it still wants to go up.”

Sharing some of his expert insight, Gartman said the bull market “will stop one of these days”, having recently called the market “egregiously overpriced” and declared on November 15 that “the bear market is upon us we fear.” He also predicted when the bull market does end, it “will end badly.”

Well, he may be right, but for all the wrong reasons: what caught our attention was not his forecast, we have published enough of those to know their true worth, but his prediction about what happens in the Senate tonight or tomorrow:

“We are going to see this tax legislation be passed by the Senate either tonight, or tomorrow morning some time.”

Well, it’s not gonna be tonight… and tomorrow morning’s chances just went limit down.

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Martin Armstrong Warns: 2018 Is The Year Of Earthquakes

Authored by Martin Armstrong via ArmstrongEconomics.com,

The Great San Francisco Earthquake struck on April 18th, 1906 (1906.295).

Based upon our model that monitors earthquakes due to their impact on the economy (1906 quake led to the Panic of 1907 and the formation to create the Federal Reserve in 1913), the risk for a major earthquake turns up in 2018.

Why? Actually from two aspects.

This will be the 13th wave of 8.6 years from 1906 which puts the risk starting 2018.095 (Feb 3/4. 2018).

However, perhaps a more important model is simply looking at quakes that are 7.0 or higher regardless of where they are. When we focus on this level of activity, here too what emerges is a 31.4-year cycle of intensity. This also turns up in 2018. The real intensity appears to extend into 2021.

There is a new theory that some scientists have put forward.

This new theory was published in Geophysical Research Letters earlier this year, by Roger Bilham of the University of Colorado and Rebecca Bendick of the University of Montana. Their hypothesis predicts that because of Earth actually slows down in its rotation, there will be a sharp rise in large earthquakes come 2018. 

The forecast is based upon looking at earthquakes since 1900 that were greater than 7.0 displays a cycle that is approximately every 32 years for an uptick in these large quakes. They argue that the only factor which strongly correlates is a slight slowing of the Earth’s rotation in a five-year period before the uptick. While I cannot confirm or deny that the cause of the cycle is the slowing of the Earth’s rotation, I can confirm that the cycle exists. Indeed, a Magnitude 7.0 earthquake hit 45 miles from New Caledonia on November 19th, 2017 at 5:43 PM.

The Tokyo Earthquake of 1923 came 17.2 years after the San Francisco Earthquake.

That was two 8.6-year waves after 1906. The 17.2-year frequency for 7.0+ quakes was due then in 1940. On May 19th, 1940, Imperial Valley, California, in the United States was hit by a 7.1 quake which was followed by the November 10th, 1940 Vrancea, Romania quake registering 7.4 in magnitude. The next 17.2-year target was 1957. Here we hade four major quakes hit; March 9th, 1957 Andreanof Islands, Alaska coming in at 8.6 in magnitude, April 25th, 1957 Fethiye, Mu?la, Turkey  with a 7.1 quake, May 26th, 1957 Abant, Bolu, Turkey at 7.1 in magnitude, and December 4th, 1957 Govi-Altai Province, Mongolia with a 8.1 quake.

The next 17.2-year target was 1974/75. This produced four quakes starting on October 3rd, 1974 Near Lima, Peru registering 8.1, then February 4th, 1975 Haicheng, Liaoning, China 7.0, May 26th, 1975 North Atlantic earthquake 7.9, and July 8th, 1975 Bagan, Myanmar, coming in at 7.5 in magnitude. The next target was 1992 which produced three major quakes starting on April 25th, 1992 Cape Mendocino, California, at 7.2 in magnitude, followed by the June 28th, 1992 Landers, California, at 7.3 on the scale, and September 2nd, 1992 in Nicaragua with a 7.7 quake. The next target was 2009 corresponding with the low in the Crash of 2007-2009. The financial market6s captured the headlines that year, but there were 16 earthquakes in 2009 alone that measured 7.0 or greater with one exceeding 8.0. The next target for intensity will be 2026.

The coming year of 2018 will be the start of an uptick in earthquake intensity. Of course, this is a worldwide model and not one specific to any single city.

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Russian Marines Deploy To North Korean Border After ICBM Launch

After Russia announced on Wednesday that North Korea's latest intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launch constituted a "provocative act" while also calling on all sides to "stay calm", major Russian military maneuvers have been reported today along Russia's tiny stretch of border with North Korea.

According to an alarming report detailing the new Russian military build-up in Newsweek:

Russian marines have practiced landing operations at its border with North Korea, following Pyongyang’s controversial missile launch test this week, the military said. Russian naval infantry servicemen and the crews of Russia’s Pacific Fleet ships Admiral Nevelskoy and Peresvet, carried out a swift, amphibious charge on a beachhead in the Primorye region, Russia’s only one to border North Korea.

 

The cargo and staff boarded Admiral Nevelskoy at Desantnaya Bay and simulated the landing at the Klerk training range, both of which are in Primorye, Pacific Fleet spokesman Nikolay Voskresenskiy told state-run news agency RIA Novosti. Peresvet made its pickup elsewhere but also arrived in the area near Klerk.


Image via The Baghdad Post

Though this is not the first time such Russian military drills have taken place (similar fears over a US-North Korea war led to Russian troop deployment near the border last April), it is certainly a sign that Russia desires to back its diplomacy with muscle in a direct signalling to Pyongyang. The Russian-North Korean border (by the standards of the official Russian definition) consists of 17 kilometers of "terrestrial border" and 22.1 km of "maritime border" – and is the shortest of the international borders of Russia.

Meanwhile, TASS reports that a delegation of Russian lawmakers currently visiting the North Korean capital is seeking to meet with officials there in order to deliver an official Russian message of condemnation over the latest missile test.  According to TASS:

"A delegation of the State Duma [the lower chamber of the Russian parliament – TASS], led by Kazbek Taisayev, is currently in Pyongyang under the ‘Group of Friendship’ program with the North Korean parliament. So far, we were unable to establish any contact with them. But I’m sure that our lawmakers will deliver Russia’s stance during meetings and negotiations with representatives of the North Korean leadership," Leonid Slutsky, the chairman of the State Duma International Affairs Committee, told TASS on Tuesday.

Russian military forces in the country's Primorye and the far eastern Kamchatka regions are engaged in a series of war games and training exercises which involve about 1,000 soldiers, paratroopers, and over 150 pieces of military hardware and transport vehicles, and which will also reportedly involve live fire exercises. The drills were announced separately from previously planned war games, which is a clear indicator that they are in response to the escalating rhetoric between North Korea and the US over recent missile launches. 


The tiny stretch of the Russia-North Korean land border is about 17 km long. Image source: Quora

As Newsweek explains, Russia is deeply troubled by the North Korean program yet also points the finger at a US policy in the region which Russia claims is overly aggressive and designed to put the Pyongyang government on the defensive:

Moscow opposes North Korea’s nuclear program on principle and protested the regime’s latest missile launch. However, Russia has insisted that the U.S. must shoulder part of the blame for stirring the North Korean regime into a frenzy and “provoking” further tests with its ongoing defense commitments to nearby Japan and South Korea.

Indeed, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov repeated the long standing Russian position on Thursday, saying that US military drills near the Korean peninsula “consciously directed at provoking Pyongyang to some new snap actions,” according to Interfax news agency.

North Korea alarmed the international community on Tuesday when, after a two-month lull, it fired a Hwasong-15 ICBM into the waters west of Japan. State media touted the launch as its most powerful missile yet. Judging by the missile’s peak height reached during its flight, experts say the North now has the capacity to strike nearly any location in the Continental US. The North's state media released dozens of photos and a video after Wednesday’s launch of the new Hwasong-15 missile, which North Korean leader Kim Jong Un declared had “finally realized the great historic cause of completing the state nuclear force”. 

US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley has urged countries to cut trade ties with North Korea over the latest tests, something which Russia has refused to do, though India cut ties in 2015, which was a significant blow to the North's economy as India was its second largest trading partner. 

But FM Lavrov pushed back against US pressure and threats of military and economic warfare, telling a security summit meeting in Belarus on Thursday, "We have the impression that all of this is done specially so that Kim Jong Un will go off the rails and take yet another reckless step."

Lavrov then cautioned: "It’s sad. If they want to find a pretext for the destruction of North Korea, as the U.S. representative stated in the U.N., let them say that straight. Then we will take a decision on how to react to that."

Following Tuesday's launch, Trump promised new sanctions in a tweet, saying that after a phone call with China’s leader Xi Jingping about "the provocative actions" of North Korea, he would impose "additional major sanctions" and that "this situation will be handled!"  Though Kim Jong Un has appeared unbowed in the face of US sanctions and regional allied military war games, it remains to be seen what the potential for increased Russian pressure and diplomacy might do.

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We Give Up! Government Spending And Deficits Soar Pretty Much Everywhere

Authored by John Rubino via DollarCollapse.com,

A recurring pattern of the past few decades involves governments promising to limit their borrowing, only to discover that hardly anyone cares. So target dates slip, bonds are issued, and the debts keep rising.

This time around the timing is especially notable, since eight years of global growth ought to be producing tax revenues sufficient to at least moderate the tide of red ink. But apparently not.

In Japan, for instance, government debt is now 250% of GDP, a figure which economists from, say, the 1990s, would have thought impossible.

Over the past decade the country’s leaders have proposed a series of plans for balancing the budget, and actually did manage to shrink debt/GDP slightly in 2016. But now they seem to have given up, and are looking for excuses to keep spending:

Japan plans extra budget of $24-26 billion for fiscal 2017

(Hellenic Shipping News) – Japan’s government is set to compile an extra budget worth around 2.7-2.9 trillion yen ($24-26 billion) for the fiscal year to March 2018, with additional bond issuance of around 1 trillion yen to help fund the spending, government sources told Reuters.

 

Following October’s big election win, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s cabinet has made plans to beef up childcare support, boost productivity at small and medium-sized companies, and strengthen competitiveness of the farm, fishery and forestry industries.

In the UK, a balanced budget has been pushed back from 2025 to 2031:

Britain in the red until 2031: Bid to balance the books pushed back yet again

(Daily Mail) – Philip Hammond’s ambition to get Britain’s finances back into the black receded further last night – as the Treasury watchdog said he would struggle to eliminate the deficit before 2031.

 

The Chancellor had promised to balance the books by 2025. The target has been pushed back twice already, after George Osborne’s pledge in his 2010 Budget to balance the books ‘within five years’, before he revised the figure to 2020.

 

In its assessment to accompany the Budget, the Office for Budget Responsibility said it was now ‘unlikely’ that the Chancellor would balance the books by 2025 as he had hoped.

 

It said the Government was on course to wipe out the deficit in 2030-31, 30 years after the country was last in surplus.

 

That would be the longest period of consecutive deficits on record – eclipsing the 25-year borrowing binge between 1793 and 1817 that included the Napoleonic Wars.

In the US, “tax reform” – the alteration of the tax code to make it simpler and more fair – has morphed into tax cutting, which is of course a lot easier:

Donald Trump is going to build a big, beautiful deficit and rely on China to help pay for it

(Washinton Post) – Assuming they pass, Republican tax plans are forecast to increase the federal debt by about $1.3 trillion to $1.6 trillion over the coming decade, though scoring and specifics vary. This is the same debt that, campaigning in Ohio, Trump called “a weight around the future of every young person in this country.”

 

But now that it’s time to pass a tax plan that nonpartisan observers agree will require deficit spending, Republicans are on board with growing the federal debt. Large-scale borrowing will help make up the gap in lower tax revenue while avoiding some painful cuts to government programs.

 

To cover that shortfall, Trump’s government and its successors will be issuing additional Treasury bonds for decades to come, with Eric Toder, co-director of the Tax Policy Center, posting that one version of the bill would grow the debt as a share of the economy by 10.1 percentage points by 2037. About half of those bonds will end up being held abroad, according to Joseph Gagnon, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

 

Treasury data compiled by the St. Louis Fed shows that foreign central banks, investors and corporations already own $6.17 trillion in Treasury bonds in the second quarter, compared with $5.73 trillion for private domestic investors. More than a third of those international investors are based in two countries: China and Japan.

China, meanwhile, is taking a different path. Instead of financing big government deficits by issuing bonds, Beijing borrows relatively little but encourages its businesses, local governments and “state-owned companies” to borrow like crazy. So its total debt is soaring:

China’s debt grew in September at fastest pace in four years

(Asia Times) – A Reuters analysis of more than 2,000 China-listed firms showed total debt at the end of September jumping by 23% from a year ago, according to a report Sunday. The increase, which comes amid an ongoing deleveraging campaign, represented the fastest pace of growth since 2013.

 

The analysis shows the degree to which de-risking and deleveraging efforts have been concentrated within financial sector so far, with real estate and industrial sectors leading the way in debt growth.

 

According to the report, debt servicing costs have accounted for close to a quarter of state-owned companies’ revenue. That ratio rose to 27% in the second quarter before falling to just below 25% in the third quarter on increased revenue.

To put the above in visual terms, here’s an infographic from Howmuch.com that shows per-capita government debt for the world’s major countries. Note that a Japanese family of five’s share of its government’s debt is close to $450,000 while in the US a similar family owes $300,000. That’s in addition to their mortgages, car loans, credit cards, etc.

Obviously debts of this magnitude can’t and therefore won’t be repaid. Which means the coming decade will be defined by how — and how quickly — we end up defaulting.

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Satellite Photos Show North Korea Preparing Another Missile Launch

North Korea carried out its first missile test in more than two months earlier this week, ending the longest stretch of calm since President Trump took office. But according to satellite images exclusively obtained by Fox News, the North Korean military is already constructing another launch pad at the Panghyon Airbase in North Pyongyang – the same site where it carried out its July 4 launch of an ICBM.

This suggests that the North is already preparing for its next missile test.

Analysts at Image Sat International spotted the construction just days after the rogue nation launched an ICBM that North Korea claimed was powerful enough to carry a “super-heavy nuclear warhead” that could strike the “mainland of the U.S."

According to the ImageSat analysts, who are closely following North Korean military activity, this is “the first time that they have decided to rebuild a site that they have used before."

The photos, dated Nov. 23 and 24, appear to show the development of another launch pad just a few yards away from the one used during the July 4 Hwasong-14 ICBM launch, as well as a newly renovated access road.

Constructed in the 1980s, the Panghyon site is North Korea's primary aircraft production, repair, and research facility.

The satellite images also show the construction of an aircraft hangar, as well as airplanes being moved and stored in hangers on the tarmac.

With the recent launch of another ICBM and the construction of additional launching pads, North Korea continues to defy the US-led world outrage over its nuclear program and is determined to bring it to completion.

The Hwasong-15 rocket tested by the North Tuesday was themost powerful of the three ICBMs tested by the Kim regime so far. Furthermore, the mobile night launch appeared aimed at testing new capabilities and demonstrating that Pyongyang would be able to strike back to any attempt at a preventative strike against the regime. The missile's peak height and record flight time also helped confirm the Pentagon's worst fears: The North now possesses the capability to strike nearly any target on the continental US.

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